CHAPTER III.
BRITAIN AFTER THE ROMANS.
Obscurity of history of Britain after the departure of Romans.
The termination of the Roman dominion in Britain produced a great and marked change in its political position and destinies. It ceased to form a part of the great European Empire, and for the time lost the link which connected it with the civilisation of the west. It no longer took part in the common life of the western nations; and, isolated from all that created for them a common interest, or unconsciously combined them in a common struggle, out of which the elements of a new historical world were to emerge, it seemed to relapse into that state of barbarism from which the influence of the Roman dominion had for the time extricated it. The British Isles seemed as it were to retire again into the recesses of that western ocean from which they had emerged in the reign of the Emperor Claudius; and a darkness, which grew more profound as their isolated existence continued, settled down upon them and shrouded their inhabitants from the eye of Europe till the spread of that great and paramount influence which succeeded to the dominion of the Roman Empire, and inherited its concentrating energy—the Christian Church—took Britain within its grasp, and the works of its monastic and clerical writers once more brought its fortunes within the sphere of history.
Settlement of barbaric tribes in Britain.
When the page of history once more opens to its annals, we find that the barbaric nations, whom we left harassing the Roman province till the Romans abandoned the island, had now effected fixed settlements within the island, and formed permanent kingdoms within its limits. South of the Firths of Forth and Clyde we find her containing a Saxon organisation and tribes of Teutonic descent hitherto known by the general name of Saxons, in full possession of her most valuable and fertile districts, and the Romans of the old British provincials confined to the mountains of Wales and Cumbria, the western districts extending from the Solway to the Clyde, and the peninsula of Cornwall. North of the Firths we find the barbaric tribes of the Picts and Scots, which had so often harassed the Roman province from the north and west, formed into settled kingdoms with definite limits; while Hibernia or Ireland now appears under the additional designation of Scotia.[[102]]
Ignorance of Britain by writers of sixth century.
So little was known of Britain during this interval of upwards of a century and a half, so undefined were the notions of the Continental writers, that Procopius, writing from Constantinople in the sixth century, describes Britain as extending from east to west, and consisting of two islands, ‘Brittia’ and ‘Brettannia,’ Brittia lay nearest Gaul, and was divided by a wall, the country to the east of which, or that nearest the Continent, he believed to be inhabited, fertile, and productive, and to be occupied by three nations,—the ‘Angiloi,’ ‘Phrissones,’ and ‘Brittones synonymous with the Isle;’ but the region to the west of the wall, by which he indicates Caledonia or the districts north of the Forth and Clyde, he only knew as a region infested by wild beasts, and with an atmosphere so tainted that human life could not exist; and he repeats a fable derived, he says, from the inhabitants, that this region was the place of departed spirits. The country south of the Humber he considered a separate island, named ‘Brettannia.’[[103]]
Stephanus Byzantinus, writing from the same place half a century earlier, considered ‘Albion,’ ‘Brettia,’ and ‘Pretania’ separate islands, inhabited respectively by the ‘Albiones,’ ‘Brettanoi,’ and ‘Pretanoi.’[[104]]
Even Gildas, himself of British descent, and writing from the neighbouring shore of Armorica, takes his description of the size of Britain from the cosmogony of Ethicus, written two centuries earlier, merely qualifying it by the addition, ‘except where the headlands of sundry promontories stretch farther into the sea,’[[105]] apparently referring to Caledonia, but he evidently considered the country north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde as a separate island from the rest of Britain. He applies the same epithet of ‘transmarine’ to its inhabitants and to the Scots from Ireland. He calls the regions between the walls the extreme part of the island, and he writes of its transactions as if he had no personal knowledge of them, but had received them by report from a distant land; for he says he will relate his history,[[106]] ‘so far as he is able, not so much from the writings and written memorials of his native country, which either are not to be found, or if ever there were any of them have been consumed in the fires of the enemy, or been carried off by his exiled countrymen, as from foreign report, which, from the interruption of intercourse, is by no means clear.’[[107]]
Position of Britain at this time as viewed from Rome.