At length a time came when the Romans could no longer defend their own native country against the nations in the north of Europe. The soldiers were then withdrawn from Britain (about the year 440), and the people left to govern themselves. The Caledonians, who did not like to be so much straitened in the north, took advantage of the unprotected state of the Britons to pour in upon them from the other side of the wall, and despoil them of their lives and goods. The British had no resource but to call in another set of protectors, the Saxons, a warlike people who lived in the north of Germany, and the Jutes and Angles, who inhabited Denmark. The remedy was found hardly any better than the disease. Having once acquired a footing in the island, these hardy strangers proceeded to make it a subject of conquest, as the Romans had done before, with this material difference, that they drove the British to the western parts of the island, particularly into Wales, and settled, with new hordes of their countrymen, over the better part of the land. So completely was the population changed, that, excepting in the names of some of the hills and rivers, the British language was extinguished, and even the name of the country itself was changed, from what it originally was to Angle-land or England, a term taken from the Angles. The conquest required about two hundred and fifty years to be effected, and, like that of the Romans, it extended no farther north than the Firths of Forth and Clyde. Before the Britons were finally cooped up in Wales, many battles were fought; but few of these are accurately recorded. The most distinguished of the British generals were the Princes Vortimer and Aurelius Ambrosius. It is probably on the achievements of the latter that the well-known fables of King Arthur and his knights are founded.
England, exclusive of the western regions, was now divided into seven kingdoms, called Kent, Northumberland, East Anglia, Mercia, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex, each of which was governed by a race descended from the leader who had first subdued it; and the whole have since been called by historians the Saxon Heptarchy, the latter word being composed of two Greek words, signifying seven kingdoms. To the north of the Forth dwelt a nation called the Picts, who also had a king, and were in all probability the people with whom Agricola had fought under the name of Caledonians. In the Western Highlands there was another nation, known by the name of the Scots, or Dalriads, who had gradually migrated thither from Ireland, between the middle of the third century and the year 503, when they established, under a chief named Fergus, a monarchy destined in time to absorb all the rest. About the year 700 there were no fewer than fifteen kings, or chiefs, within the island, while Ireland was nearly in the same situation. In Britain, at the same time, five languages were in use, the Latin, Saxon, Welsh, the Pictish, and the Irish. The general power of the country has been found to increase as these nations and principalities were gradually amassed together.
Although three of the Saxon kingdoms, Wessex, Mercia, and Northumberland, became predominant, the Heptarchy prevailed from about the year 585 to 800, when Egbert, king of Wessex, acquired a paramount influence over all the other states, though their kings still continued to reign. Alfred, so celebrated for his virtues, was the grandson of Egbert, and began to reign in the year 871. At this time the Danes, who are now a quiet, inoffensive people, were a nation of pirates, and at the same time heathens. They used to come in large fleets, and commit dreadful ravages on the shores of Britain. For some time they completely overturned the sovereignty of Alfred, and compelled him to live in obscurity in the centre of a marsh. But he at length fell upon them when they thought themselves in no danger, and regained the greater part of his kingdom. Alfred spent the rest of his life in literary study, of which he was very fond, and in forming laws and regulations for the good of his people. He was perhaps the most able, most virtuous, and most popular prince that ever reigned in Britain; and all this is the more surprising, when we find that his predecessors and successors, for many ages, were extremely cruel and ignorant. He died in the year 901, in the fifty-third year of his age.
CONQUEST BY THE NORMANS.
The Saxon line of princes continued to rule, with the exception of three Danish reigns, till the year 1066, when the crown was in the possession of a usurper named Harold. The country was then invaded by William, Duke of Normandy, a man of illegitimate birth, attended by a large and powerful army. Harold opposed him at Hastings (October 14), and after a well-contested battle, his army was defeated, and himself slain. William then caused himself to be crowned king at Westminster; and in the course of a few years he succeeded, by means of his warlike Norman followers, in completely subduing the Saxons. His chiefs were settled upon the lands of those who opposed him, and became the ancestors of most of the present noble families of England.
Previously to this period, the Church of Rome, which was the only surviving part of the power of that empire, had established its supremacy over England. The land was also subjected to what is called the feudal system (see History of the Middle Ages), by which all proprietors of land were supposed to hold it from the king for military service, while the tenants were understood to owe them military service in turn for their use of the land. All orders of men were thus kept in a chain of servile obedience, while some of the lower orders were actually slaves to their superiors.
In the year 853, Kenneth, king of the Scots, had added the Pictish kingdom to his own, and his descendant Malcolm II, in 1020, extended his dominions over not only the south of Scotland, but a part of the north of England. Thus, putting aside Wales, which continued to be an independent country, under its own princes, the island was divided, at the time of the Norman Conquest, into two considerable kingdoms, England and Scotland, as they were for some centuries afterwards. Ireland, which had also been invaded by hordes from the north of Europe, was divided into a number of small kingdoms, like England under the Saxon Heptarchy.
EARLY NORMAN KINGS.
William, surnamed The Conqueror, reigned from 1066 to 1087, being chiefly engaged all that time in completing the subjugation of the Saxons. He is allowed to have been a man of much sagacity, and a firm ruler; but his temper was violent, and his disposition brutal. At the time of his death, which took place in Normandy, his eldest son Robert happening to be at a greater distance from London than William, who was the second son, the latter individual seized upon the crown, of which he could not afterwards be dispossessed, till he was shot accidentally by an arrow in the New Forest, in the year 1100. Towards the close of this king’s reign, the whole of Christian Europe was agitated by the first Crusade—an expedition for the recovery of the Holy Land from the Saracens. Robert of Normandy had a high command in this enterprise, and gained much fame as a warrior; but while he was in Italy, on his return, his youngest brother Henry usurped the throne left vacant by William, so that he was again disappointed of his birthright. Henry I—surnamed Beauclerc, from his being a fine scholar—was a prince of some ability; but he disgraced himself by putting out the eyes of his eldest brother, and keeping him nearly thirty years in confinement. Such barbarous conduct shows that in this age might was the only right, and that men hesitated at no actions which might promise to advance their own interests.
Cotemporary with William the Conqueror in England, was Malcolm III in Scotland, surnamed Canmore, from his having a large head. This prince, after overthrowing the celebrated usurper Macbeth, married Margaret, a fugitive Saxon princess, through whom his posterity became the heirs of that race of English sovereigns. He was a good prince, and by settling Saxon refugees upon his lowland territory, did much to improve the character of the Scottish nation, who are described as having been before this time a nation in which there was no admixture of civilization. At Malcolm’s death, in 1093, the crown was contested for a while by a usurper called Donald Bane, and the elder sons of the late monarch, but finally fell to the peaceable possession of his youngest son David I, who was a prince of much superior character, apparently, to the Norman sovereigns who lived in the same age. The church of Rome having now gained an ascendancy in Scotland, David founded a considerable number of monasteries and churches for the reception of the ministers of that religion. All the most celebrated abbacies in Scotland took their rise in his time.