3, 4. The valleys of the Thames and Severn.
5. Cheshire and South Lancashire.
6. Norfolk and Suffolk.
The Roman blood, then, in Britain seems to have been inconsiderable, even when we class as Roman everything which was other than British. That the language, however, was chiefly Latin—more[103] or less modified—is what we infer from the analogies of Gaul and Spain. The history, too, of four centuries of civilization and corruption is Roman also. That there was a bodily evacuation of Britain by the Romans, a concealment of treasures, and a migration to Gaul, rests upon no authority earlier than that of the Anglo-Saxon writers, some five centuries later. The country was rather a theatre for usurpers and rebels; none of whom can be shewed to have either left the island, or to have been exterminated by the Anglo-Saxon invasion—an invasion to which, in a future chapter, an earlier date, and a more gradual operation than is usually assigned will be attributed.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Niebuhr's Lectures, p. iii, 312.
[11] Referred to some time between the reigns of Valens and Honorius.