CHAPTER VII.THE TOWNS.

582. Thorpe, i. 216. Æðelstán complains on another occasion that the oaths andwedswhich had been givento the king and his witanwere all broken: “quia iuramenta et vadia, quae regi et sapientibus data fuerunt, semper infracta sunt et minus observata quam Deo et saeculo conveniant.” Æðelst. iii. § 3. Thorpe, i. 218. Again: Æðelstán the king makes known, that I have learned that our peace is worse kept than is pleasing to me, or as was ordained at Greatley; and my witan say that I have borne with it too long.... Because the oaths, and weds, andborhsare all disregarded and broken which on that occasion were given, etc. Æðelst. iv. § 1. Thorpe, i. 220.

583. Conc. Wihtbordes stán. Eádg. Supp. § 1. Thorpe, i. 272.

584. “Lex consensu populi fit, et constitutione regis.” Edict. Pistense. an. 864. Pertz, iii. 490, § 6.

585. Æðelst. v. § 11. Thorpe, i. 240.

586. There is evidence of their doing this on a somewhat less solemn occasion, though perhaps it was a shiremoot. Æðelstán, a duke, booked land to Abingdon, by witness of bishop Cynsige, archbishop Wulfhelm, Hroðweard, and other prelates. The boundaries were solemnly led, and then the assembled bishops and abbots excommunicated any one who should dispossess the monastery: and all the people that stood round about cried “So be it! So be it!” “And cwæð ealle ðæt folc ðe ðǽr embstód, Sý hit swá. Amen. Amen.” “Et dixit onmis populus qui ibi aderat, Fiat, Fiat. Amen.” Cod. Dipl. No. 1129.

587. Hist. Eccl. iii. c. 25.

588. Hen. Hunt. lib. iv.

589. Cod. Dipl. No. 73.

590. Cod. Dipl. No. 186.

591. Ibid. No. 364.

592. Ibid. No. 1103.

593. “Iusto valde iudicio totius populi, et seniorum et primatum,” etc. “Ideoque decretum est ab omni populo,” etc. Cod. Dipl. No. 374.

594. Hist. Eccl. ii. 5.

595. Ibid. ii. 9.

596. Ibid. ii. 13.

597. Beda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 13.

598. Beda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 14.

599. Chron. Sax. an. 657. Cod. Dipl. No. 984.

600. Beda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 25.

601. Beda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 29.

602. Beda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 5. Chron. Sax. an. 673.

603. Beda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 17. Chron. Sax. an. 675, 680. Cod. Dipl. No. 991.

604. Beda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 28. Cod. Dipl. No. 25.

605. Cod. Dipl. No. 26.

606. The Saxon Chronicle, which often errs in its dates by two years, puts this in 694. But the year 696 is ascertained by the indiction, which was the ninth.

607. Thorpe, i. 36.

608. Chron. Sax. an. 694. Cod. Dipl. No. 996.

609. Cod. Dipl. Nos. 50, 51.

610. Ibid. No. 54.

611. Hist. Eccl. v. 18.

612. Beda, Hist. Eccl. v. 19.

613. Beda, Hist. Eccl. v. 18.

614. Cod. Dipl. No. 82.

615. Cod. Dipl. No. 87.

616. Cod. Dipl. No. 99.

617. Chron. Sax. an. 755. Flor. Wig. 755. Æðelw. ii. 17. Hen. Hunt. lib. iv. See the remarks in the text, p.219seq.of this volume.

618. Cod. Dipl. Nos. 139, 140, 143.

619. Chron. Sax. an. 782.

620. Chron. Sax. an. 785. Flor. Wig. 785.

621. Cod. Dipl. No. 151.

622. Cod. Dipl. No. 153.

623. Chron. Sax. an. 788. Flor. Wig. 788.

624. Sim. Dunelm. 787.

625. Cod. Dipl. Nos. 155, 156, 157.

626. Chron. Sax. an. 789.

627. Cod. Dipl. No. 159.

628. Cod. Dipl. No. 162.

629. Rog. Wend. i. 257.

630. Cod. Dipl. Nos. 164, 167.

631. Chron. Sax. an. 796. Cod. Dipl. Nos. 172, 173.

632. Cod. Dipl. No. 175.

633. Ibid. No. 1018.

634. Ibid. No. 1019.

635. Ibid. No. 176.

636. Ibid. No. 116. Another act, Ibid. No. 1023.

637. Cod. Dipl. Nos. 185, 1024.

638. Ibid. Nos. 183, 184.

639. Cod. Dipl. No. 186.

640. Cod. Dipl. No. 190.

641. Ibid. No. 256.

642. Ibid. Nos. 196, 220.

643. Ibid. No. 197. Chron. MS. Wincelc. an. 811.

644. Cod. Dipl. No. 208.

645. Ibid. No. 218.

646. Ibid. No. 1031.

647. Ibid. No. 219.

648. Ibid. No. 220: see also No. 1034.

649. In some Saxon original, no doubt, “and eal dúgoð, ge cyriclíces ge woroldlíces hádes.”

650. Cod. Dipl. Nos. 1035, 1036, 1038.

651. Ibid. No. 240.

652. Ibid. No. 1044.

653. Ibid. No. 240.

654. Ibid. No. 256.

655. Cod. Dipl. No. 265.

656. Chron. Sax. an. 853.

657. Cod. Dipl. No. 275.

658. Chron. Sax. an. 868.

659. Cod. Dipl. No. 314.

660. Chron. Sax. an. 878. Flor. Wig. 878.

661. Thorpe, i. 152seq.

662. Cod. Dipl. No. 1066.

663. Ibid. Nos. 327, 1068.

664. Ibid. No. 1073.

665. Ibid. No. 1075.

666. Chron. Sax. an. 901.

667. Cod. Dipl. No. 1087.

668. Cod. Dipl. No. 338.

669. Ibid. Nos. 1082, 1084.

670. Leg. Eádw. § 4. Thorpe, i. 162.

671. Cod. Dipl. No. 1091.

672. Ibid. No. 1096.

673. Ibid. No. 499.

674. Chron. Sax. an. 911.

675. Cod. Dipl. No. 499.

676. Ibid. No. 1101.

677. Ibid. No. 352.

678. Cod. Dipl. No. 353.

679. Ibid. No. 1103.

680. Ibid. No. 1102.

681. Ibid. No. 1105.

682. Ibid. No. 361.

683. Ibid. Nos. 1107, 1108.

684. Ibid. No. 361.

685. Ibid. No. 364.

686. Ibid. No. 365.

687. Ibid. Nos. 367, 1112.

688. Ibid. No. 1113.

689. Ibid. No. 1129.

690. Thorpe, i. 240.

691. Ibid. i. 194.

692. Thorpe, i. 216.

693. Ibid. i. 217.

694. Ibid. i. 220. This however may have been in 926, when Æðelstán was in that city.

695. Leg. Eádm. Thorpe, i. 244, 252.

696. Cod. Dipl. No. 411.

697. Chron. Sax. an. 947.

698. Chron. Sax. an. 948.

699. Cod. Dipl. No. 499.

700. Ibid. No. 528.

701. Cod. Dipl. Nos. 1265, 1266.

702. Ibid. No. 580.

703. Chron. Sax. an. 977.

704. Ibid. an. 978.

705. Cod. Dipl. No. 598.

706. Thorpe, i. 272.

707. Chron. Sax. an. 979.

708. Ibid. an. 992.

709. Cod. Dipl. No. 684.

710. Chron. Sax. an. 994. Ll. Æðelr. 11. Thorpe, i. 284.

711. Chron. Sax. an. 995.

712. Cod. Dipl. No. 692.

713. Ibid. No. 696.

714. Ibid. No. 698.

715. Thorpe, i. 292.

716. Cod. Dipl. No. 698.

717. Thorpe, i. 280, 294.

718. Ibid. i. 280.

719. Cod. Dipl. No. 702.

720. Chron. Sax. an. 998.

721. Thorpe, i. 284.

722. Chron. Sax. an. 999.

723. Cod. Dipl. No. 704.

724. Chron. Sax. an. 1002

725. Cod. Dipl. No. 707.

726. Chron. Sax. an. 1004.

727. Ibid. an. 1006.

728. Cod. Dipl. No. 1305.

729. Chron. Sax. an. 1009.

730. Chron. Sax. an. 1010.

731. Ibid. an. 1011.

732. Ibid. an. 1012.

733. Ibid. an. 1014.

734. Chron. Sax. an. 1015.

735. Thorpe, i. 314.

736. Thorpe, i. 366.

737. Chron. Sax. an. 1016.

738. Thorpe, i. 358.

739. Chron. Sax. an. 1020.

740. Chron. Sax. an. 1036.

741. Cod. Dipl. Nos. 765, 766.

742. Chron. Sax. an. 1042. At Gillingham. Will. Malm. i. 332, § 197. “Nihil erat quod Edwardus pro necessitate temporis non polliceretur, ita, utrinque fide data, quicquid petebatur sacramento firmavit. Nec mora Gillingcham congregato concilio, rationibus suis explicitis, regem effecit (Godwinus) hominio palam omnibus dato: homo affectati leporis, et ingenue gentilitia lingua eloquens, mirus dicere, mirus populo persuadere quae placerent. Quidam auctoritatem eius secuti, quidam muneribus flexi, quidam etiam debitum Edwardi amplexi.”

743. Chron. Sax. an. 1043.

744. Flor. Wig. an. 1044.

745. Cod. Dipl. Nos. 776, 777.

746. Ibid. Nos. 779, 783.

747. Ibid. No. 786.

748. Chron. Sax. an. 1047.

749.Chron. SaxChron. Sax. an. 1048.

750. Ibid. an. 1050.

751. Cod. Dipl. No. 799.

752. Chron. Sax. an. 1055.

753. Ibid. an. 1065.

CHAPTER VII.THE TOWNS.

We have now arrived at that point of our enquiry at which it behoves us to bestow our attention upon the origin and growth of towns among the Anglosaxons; and to this end we shall find it expedient to carry our researches to a still earlier period, and investigate, though in a slight degree, the condition of their British and Roman predecessors in this respect. At first sight it would seem natural to suppose that where a race had long possessed the outward means and form of civilization,—a race among whom great military and civil establishments had been founded, who had clustered round provincial cities, the seats of a powerful government, and whose ports and harbours had been the scenes of active commerce,—there need be little question as to the origin of towns and cities among those who conquered and dispossessed them. It might be imagined that the later comers would have nothing more to do than seize upon the seats from which they had expelled their predecessors, and apply to their own uses the established instruments of convenience, of wealth or safety. Further enquiry however proves that this induction would be erroneous, and that the Saxons did not settle inthe Roman towns. The reason of this is not difficult to assign: a city is the result of a system of cultivation, and it is of no use whatever to a race whose system differs entirely from that of the race by whom it was founded. The Curia and the temple, the theatre and thermae, house joined to house and surrounded by a dense quadrangular wall, crowding into a defined and narrow space the elements of civilization, are unintelligible to him whose whole desire centres in the undisturbed enjoyment of his éðel, and unlimited command of the mark. The buildings of a centralized society are as little calculated for his use as their habits and institutions: as well might it have been proposed to him to substitute the jurisdiction of thepraetor urbanusfor the national tribunal of thefolcmót. The spirit of life is totally different: as different are all the social institutions, and all the details which arise from these and tend to confirm and perpetuate them.

Nevertheless we cannot doubt that the existence of the British and Roman cities did materially influence the mode and nature of the German settlements; and without some slight sketch of the growth and development of the former, we shall find it impossible to form a clear notion of the conditions under which the Anglosaxon polity was formed.

If we may implicitly trust the report of Caesar, a British city in his time differed widely from what we understand by that term. A spot difficult of access from the trees which filled it, surrounded with a rampart and a ditch, and which offered arefuge from the sudden incursions of an enemy, could be dignified by the name of anoppidum, and form the metropolis of Cassivelaunus[754]. Such also among the Slavonians were thevici, encircled by anabbatisabbatisof timber, or at most a paling, proper to repel not only an unexpected attack, but even capable of resisting for a time the onset of practised forces: such in our own time have been found the stockades of the Burmese, and the Pah of the New Zealander: and if our skilful engineers have experienced no contemptible resistance, and the lives of many brave and disciplined men have been sacrificed in their reduction, we may admit that even theoppidaof Cassivelaunus, or Caratac or Galgacus, might, as fortresses, have serious claims to the attention of a Roman commander. But such anoppidumis no town or city in the sense in which those words are contemplated throughout this chapter: by a town I certainly intend a place enclosed in some manner, and even fortified: but much more those who dwell together in such a place, and the means by which they either rule themselves, or are ruled. I mean a metaphysical as well as a physical unit,—not exclusively what was a collection of dwellings or a fortification, but a centre of trade and manufacture and civilization.

If the Romans found none such, at least they leftthem, in every part of Britain. The record of their gradual and successive advance shows that, partly with a politic view of securing their conquests, partly with the necessary aim of conciliating their soldiery, they did establish numerousmunicipiaandcoloniaehere, as well as military stations which in time became the nuclei of towns.

It is however scarcely possible that Caesar and Strabo can be strictly accurate in their reports, or that there were from the first only such towns in Britain as these authors have described. It is not consonant to experience that a thickly peopled and peaceful country[755]should long be without cities. A commercial people[756]always have some settled stations for the collection and interchange of commodities, and fixed establishments for the regulation of trade. Caesar himself tells us that the buildings of the Britons were very numerous, and that they bore a resemblance to those of the Gauls[757], whose cities were assuredly considerable. Moreover a race so conversant with the management of horses as to use armed chariots for artillery, are not likely to have been without an extensive system of roads, and where there are roads, towns will not long be wanting. Hence when, less than eighty years after the return of the Romans to Britain, and scarcely forty after the complete subjugation of theisland by Agricola, Ptolemy tells us of at least fifty-six cities in existence here[758], we may reasonably conclude that they were not all due to the efforts of Roman civilization.

Caesar says indeed nothing of London, yet it is difficult to believe that this was an unimportant place, even in his day. It was long the principal town of the Cantii, whom the Roman general describesas the most polished of the inhabitants of Britain; and as we know that there was an active commercial intercourse between the eastern coast of England and Gaul, it is at least probable that a station, upon a great river at a safe yet easy distance from the sea, was not unknown to the foreign merchants who traded to our shores[759]. One hundred and sixteen years later it could be described as a city famous in a high degree for the resort of merchants and for traffic[760]: but of these years one hundred had been spent in peace and in the natural development of their resources by the Britons, undisturbed by Roman ambition; and we have therefore ample right to infer that from the very firstCair Lunden had been a place of great commercial importance. The Romans on their return found and kept it so, although they did not establish a colonia there. The first place which received this title with all its corresponding advantages was Camelodunum, probably the British Cair Colun, now Colchester in Essex[761].

As the settlement of the nations, and their reduction under a centralizing system, followed the victories of the legions, municipia and coloniae arose in every province, the seats of garrisons and the residences of military and civil governors: while as civilization extended, the Britons themselves, adopting the manners and following the example of their masters, multiplied the number of towns upon all the great lines of internal communication. It is difficult now to give from Roman authorities only a complete list of these towns; many names which we find in theitinerariaand similar documents, being merely post-stations or points where subordinate provincial authorities were located; but the names of fifty-six towns have been already quoted from Ptolemy, and even tradition may be of some service to us on this subject[762].Nennius sums up with patriotic pride the names of thirty-four principal cities which adorned Britain under his forefathers, and many of these we can yet identify: amongst them are London, Bristol, Canterbury, Colchester, Cirencester, Chichester, Gloucester, Worcester, Wroxeter, York, Silchester, Lincoln, Leicester, Doncaster, Caermarthen, Carnarvon, Winchester, Porchester, Grantchester, Norwich, Carlisle, Chester, Caerleon on Usk, Manchester and Dorchester[763]. To these from other sources we may add Sandwich, Dover, Rochester, Nottingham, Exeter, Bath, Bedford, Aylesbury and St. Alban’s.

Whatever the origin of these towns may have been, it is easy to show that many of them comprised a Roman population: the very walls by which some of them are still surrounded, offer conclusive evidence of this; while in the neighbourhood of others, coins and inscriptions, the ruins of theatres, villas, baths, and other public or private buildings, attest either the skill and luxury of the conquerors, or the aptness to imitate of the conquered[764].But a much more important question arises; viz. how many of them were ruled freely, like the cities of the old country, by a municipal body constituted in the ancient form: what provision, in short, the Romans made or permitted for the education of their British subjects in the manly career of citizenship and the dignity of self-government[765].

The constitution of a provincial city of the empire, in the days when the republic still possessed virtue and principle, was of this description, at all events from the period of the Social, Marsic or Italian war, when the cities of Italy wrested isopolity, or at least isotely, from Rome. The state consisted of the whole body of the citizens, without distinction, having a general voice in the management of their own internal affairs. The administrative functions however resided in a privilegedclass of those citizens, commonly calledCuriales,Decuriones,Ordo Decurionum(or sometimesOrdoalone), and occasionallySenatus. They were in fact to the whole body of the citizens what the Senatus under the Emperors was to the citizens of Rome[766], and their rights and privileges seem in general to have varied very much as did those of the higher body. They were hereditary, but, when occasion demanded an increase of their numbers, self-elected. Out of this college of Decuriones theMagistratusor supreme executive government proceeded. In the better days I believe these were always freely chosen for one year, by the whole community, but exclusively from among the members of the Ordo: and after Tiberius at Rome transferred the elections from the Comitia to the Senate, the Decuriones in the provinces may have become the sole electors, as they were the only persons capable of being elected. The Magistratus had the supreme jurisdiction, and were the completion of the communal system: they bore different names in different cities, but usually those of Duumviri or Quatuorviri, from their number. Sometimes, but very rarely, they were named Consules. In fact the general outline of this constitution resembled as much as possible that of Rome itself, which was only the head of a confederation embracing all the cities of Italy.

A somewhat similar arrangement was introduced into the cities of the various countries which, under the name of provinces, were brought within the influence of the Roman power: only that in these the communal organization was throughout subordinated to the regulation and control of the Consularis, the Legatus, Procurator, and other officers military and fiscal, who administered the affairs of the province. A principal point of distinction between the free communities of Italy and the dependent provincial corporations lay in this: that in the latter, the magistrates were indeed elected by the Ordo or Curia, but upon the nomination of the Roman governor: their jurisdiction in suits was consequently very limited, while political functions were for the most part confined to the civil and military officers of the empire.

As long as the condition of the imperial city itself was tolerably easy, and the provinces had not yet been flooded with the vice, corruption and misery which called for and rendered possible the victories of the barbarians, the condition of the provincial decurions was on the whole one of honour and advantage. They formed a kind of nobility, a class distinguished from their fellow-citizens by a certain rank and privileges, as they were assuredly also distinguished from them by superior wealth: they resembled in fact an aristocracy of county families at this day, with its exclusive possession of the magistrature and other local advantages. On the other hand they were responsible for the public dues, the levies, the annona or victuallingof forces, thetributumor raising of the assessed taxes; and thus they were rendered immediately subject to the exactions of the fiscal authorities, and especially exposed to the caprice and illegal demands of the Roman officials[767]—a class universallyinfamous for tyrannical extortion in the provinces: and in yet later times, when the land itself frequently became deserted, through the burthen of taxation and exaction[768], they were compelled to undertake the cultivation of the relinquished estates, that the fiscus might be no loser. Gradually as the bond which held the fragments of the empire together was loosened, and as limb after limb dropped away from the mouldering colossus, the condition of a Decurion became so oppressive that it was found necessary to press citizens by force into the office: some committed suicide, others expatriated themselves, in order to escape it. The statewas obliged to forbid by law the sale of property for the purpose of avoiding it; freemen went into the ranks, or subjected themselves to voluntary servitude, as a preferable alternative; nay at length vagabonds, people of bad character, even malefactors, were literally condemned to it[769]. This tends perhaps more than any fact to prove the gradual ruin of the municipal as well as the social fabric, and the miserable condition of the provinces under the later emperors.

However, in the better days of Vespasian, Trajan and the Antonines we are not to look for such a state of society; and in the provinces, the Ordo, though exposed to many harsh and painful conditions, yet held a position of comparative dignity and influence. I have compared them to a county aristocracy, but there is perhaps a nearer parallel, for in the Roman empire it is difficult to distinguish the county from the town. The position of the Decurions can hardly be made clearer than by a reference to the Select (that is self-elected) Vestries of our great metropolitan parishes before the passing of Sir John Hobhouse’s Acts; or to the town-councillors and aldermen of our country-towns, before the enactment of the Municipal Corporations’ Bill. Whoso remembers these bodies with their churchwardens on the one hand, their mayors, borough-reeves and aldermen on the other,—their exclusive jurisdiction as a magistracy,—their exclusive possession of corporation property, tolls,rents and other sources of wealth,—their private rights in the common land, held by themselves or delegated to theirclients,—their custody of the public buildings, and sole management of civic or charitable funds,—their patronage as trustees of public institutions,—their franchise as electors,—their close family alliances, and the methods by which they contrived to recruit their diminished numbers, till they became a very aristocracy among a people of commoners[770],—whoso, I say, considers these phænomena of our own day, need have little difficulty not only in understanding the condition of a Decurion in the better days of the Roman empire: but, if he will cast his thought back into earlier ages, he may find in them no little illustration of the nature, rights and policy of the Patriciate, under the Republic.

Other cities of a less favoured description were governed directly as præfectures, by an officer sent from Rome, who centred in himself all the higher branches of administration: in these cities the functions of the Ordo were greatly curtailed; little was left them but to attend to the police of the town and markets, the determination of trifling civil suits, the survey of roads or buildings; and, in conjunction with the heads of the guilds (“collegia opificum”) the vain and mischievous attempt to regulate wages and prices. On the other hand a few cities had what was called theJus Italicum, or right to form a free corporation, in every respectidentical with those of the cities of Italy, that is to say identical in plan with that of Rome itself. The provinces of the Roman empire must have contained many of these privileged states which thus enjoyed a valuable pre-eminence over their neighbours, the reward of public services: but history has been sparing of their names, and in western Europe, three only, Cologne, Vienne and Lyons are particularly mentioned[771]. In all the cities which had not this privilege, after the close of the fourth century we find a particular officer called the Defensor, who was not to be one of the curiales, who was to be elected by the whole body of the citizens and not by the curiales only, and who must therefore be looked upon in a great degree as the representative of the popular against the aristocratic element, as the support of the Cives against the Senatus and Duumvir. In the cities of Gaul, the bishops for the most part occupied this position, which necessarily led to results of the highest importance, from the peculiar relation in which it placed them to the barbarian invaders[772]. From all these details it appears that very different measures of municipal freedom were granted under different circumstances.

We have considered the general principles of Roman provincial government, and we now ask, how were these applied in the case of Britain? Theanswer is much more difficult to give than might be imagined. Wealthy as this country was, and capable of conducing to the power and well-being of its masters, it seems never to have received a generous, or even fair treatment from them. The Briton was to the last, as at the first, “penitus toto divisus orbe Britannus,” and his land, always “ultima Thule,” was made indeed to serve the avarice or ambition of the ruler, but derived little benefit to itself from the rule. “Levies, Corn, Tribute, Mortgages, Slaves”—under these heads was Britain entered in the vastledgerof the Empire. The Roman records do not tell us much of the details of government here, and we may justly say that we are more familiar with the state of an eastern or an Iberian city than we are with that of a British one. A few technical words, perfectly significant to a people who, above all others, symbolized a long succession of facts under one legal term, are all that remain to us; and unfortunately the jurists and statesmen and historians whose works we painfully consult in hopes of rescuing the minutest detail of our early condition, are satisfied with the use of general terms which were perfectly intelligible to those for whom they wrote, but teach us little. “Ostorius Scapula reduced the hither Britain to the form of a province[773],”—conveyed ample information to those who took the institutions of the Empire for granted wherever its eagles flewabroad: to us they are nearly vain words, a detailed explanation of which would be valuable beyond all calculation, for it would contain the secret of the weakness and the sudden collapse of the Empire. But what little we can gather from ancient sources does not induce us to believe that Britain met with a just or enlightened measure of treatment at the hands of her victors. Violence on the one hand, seduction on the other, were employed to destroy the spirit of resistance, but we do not learn that submission and docility were rewarded by the communication of a fair share of those advantages which spring from peace and cultivation. Agricola, whose information his severe and accomplished son-in-law must be considered to reproduce, tells us that, on the whole, the Britons were not difficult subjects to rule, as long as they were not insulted by a capricious display of power: “The Britons themselves are not backward in raising the levies and taxes, or filling the offices[774], if they are only not exposed to insult in doing it. Insult they will not submit to; for we have beaten them into obedience, but by no means yet intoslavery.” In this peaceable disposition Agricola saw the readiest means of producing a complete and radical subjection to Rome; and on this basis he formed his plan of rendering resistance powerless. He entirely relinquished the forcible method of his predecessors and applied himself to break down the national spirit by the spreading of foreign arts and luxuries among the people; judging rightly that the seductive allurements of ease and cultivation would ere long prove more efficient and less costly instruments than the constant and dangerous exercise of military coercion. “Those who did not deeply sound the purposes of men, called this civilization; but it was part and parcel of slavery itself[775].” Temples there were, fora, porticoes, baths and luxurious feasts, Roman manners and Roman vices, and to support them loans, usurious mortgages and ruin. But we seek in vain for any evidence of the Romanized Britons having been employed in any offices of trust or dignity, or permitted to share in the really valuable results of civilization: there is no one Briton recorded of whom we can confidentlyassert that he held any position of dignity and power under the imperial rule: the historians, the geographers, nay even the novelists (who so often supply incidental notices of the utmost interest), are here consulted in vain; nor in the many inscriptions which we possess relating to Britain, can we point out one single British name. The caution of Augustus and Tiberius had from the first detected the difficulties which would attend the maintenance of the Roman authority in Britain: the feeling at home was, that it would be much more profitable to raise a small revenue in Gaul upon the British exports and imports, than to attempt to draw tribute from the island, which would require a considerable military force for its collection[776]. During their administration therefore the island was left undisturbed; and even after Claudius had relinquished this wise moderation, and engaged the Roman arms in a career of unceasing struggles, Nero felt anxious to abandon a conquest which promised little to the state and could only be maintained by the most exhausting efforts. That thisreasonable object was defeated in part by the vanity of the Romans themselves is probable[777]: but a more cogent reason is to be found in the interests of the noble usurers, of which we have seen so striking an example in the philosophical Seneca. Against such motives even the moderation and justice of an Agricola could avail but little: and after his recall and disgrace by Domitian, it is easy to imagine that the Roman officials here would not be too anxious by their good government to attain a dangerous popularity. Selfish and thoroughly unprincipled as the Roman government was in all its dependencies, it is little to be thought that it would manifest any unusual tenderness in this distant, unprofitable and little known possession: and I think we cannot entertain the least doubt that the condition of the British aborigines was from the first one of oppression, and was to the very last a mere downward progress from misery to misery. But such a system as this—ruinous to the conquered, and beneficial even to the conquerors only as long as they could maintain the law of force—had no inherent vitality. It rested upon a crime,—a sin which in no time or region has the providence of the Almighty blessed,—the degradation of one class on pretext of benefiting another. And as the sin, so was also the retribution. The Empire itself might have endured here, had the Romanstaught the Britons to be men, and reconstituted a vigorous state upon that basis, in the hour of ruin, when province after province was torn away from the city, and the curse of an irresponsible will in feeble hands was felt through every quarter of the convulsed and distracted body. But the Britons had been taught the arts and luxuries of cultivation that they might be enervated. Disarmed, except when a jealous policy called for levies to be drafted into distant armies,—congregated into cities on the Roman plan, that they might forget the dangerous freedom of their forests,—attracted to share and emulate the feasts of the victors, that they might learn to abhor the hard but noble fare of a squalid liberty,—supported and encouraged in internal war, that union might not bring strength, and that the Roman slave-dealer might not lack the objects of his detestable traffic,—how should they develop the manly qualities on which the greatness of a nation rests? How should they be capable of independent being, who had only been trained as instruments for the ambition, or victims to the avarice, of others? To crown all, their beautiful daughters might serve to amuse the softer hours of their lordly masters; but there was to be noconnubium, and thus a half-caste race inevitably arose among them, growing up with all the vices of the victors, all the disqualifications of the vanquished. Nor under such circumstances can population follow a healthy course of development, and a hardy race be produced to recruit the power and increase the resources of the state. No priceis indeed too great to pay for civilization,—the root of all individual and national power; but mere cultivation may easily be purchased far too dearly. It is not worth its cost if it is obtained only by the sacrifice of all that makes life itself of value.

Such, upon the severest and most impartial examination of the facts which we possess, seems to me to have been the condition of the British population under the Romans. No otherwise can we even plausibly account for the instantaneous collapse of the imperial authority: it fell, with one vast and sudden ruin, the moment the artificial supports upon which it relied, were removed. Had Britain not been utterly exhausted by mal-administration, had there remained men to form a reserve, and resources to victual an army, the last commander who received the mandate of recall, would probably have thrown off his allegiance, and proclaimed himself a competitor for empire. Many tried the perilous game; all lost it, because the country was incapable of furnishing the means to maintain a contest: and in the meanwhile, the Saxons proceeded to settle the question in their own way. As such a state of society supplied no materials for the support of the Roman power, so it furnished no elements of self-subsistence when that power was removed; when that hour at length arrived, the possibility of which the overweening confidence in the fortune of the city had never condescended to contemplate. Before the eyes of all the nations, and amidst the ruins of a world falling topieces in confusion, was this awful lesson written in gigantic characters by the hand of God—that authority which rules ill, which rules for its own selfish ends alone, is smitten with weakness, and shall not endure. It was then that a long-delayed, but not the less awful retribution burst at last upon the enfeebled empire. Goth and Vandal, Frank and Sueve and Saxon lacerated its defenceless frontiers; the terrible Attila—the Scourge of God—ravaged with impunity its fairest provinces; the eternal city itself twice owed its safety to the superstition or the contemptuous mercy of the barbarians whose forefathers had trembled at its name even in the depths of their forest fastnesses; the legions, unable to maintain themselves, and called—but called in vain—to defend a state perishing by its own corruptions, left Britain exposed to the attack of fierce and barbarous enemies that thronged on every side. Without arms and discipline, and what is far more valuable than these, the spirit of self-reliance and faith in the national existence, the Britons perished as they stood: bowing to the inevitable fate, they passed only from one class of task-masters to another, and slowly mingled with the masses of the new conquerors, or fell in ill-conducted and hopeless resistance to their progress.

The Keltic laws and monuments themselves supply conclusive evidence of the justice of these general observations. Throughout all the ages during which these populations were in immediate contact with Rome, not a single ray of Keltic nationalityis able to penetrate. It is only among the mountains of the Cymri, a savage race, as little subjugated by the Romans, as even to this moment by ourselves, that a trace of that nationality is to be found. There indeed, guarded by fortresses which nature itself made impregnable, the heartblood of Keltic society was allowed to beat; and the barbarians whom policy affected or luxury could afford to despise, grew up in an independence, features of which we can still recognize in their legal and poetical remains. The pride of the invaders might be soothed by the erection of a few castra, or praesidia or castella in the Welsh marches; the itinerary of an emperor might finish in a commercial city on the Atlantic; but in Wales the Romans had hardly a foot of ground which they did not overshadow with the lines of their fortresses; and to the least instructed eye, the chain of fortified posts which guard every foot of ground to the east of the Severn tells of a contemplated retreat and defence upon the base of that strong line of entrenchments.

And yet how insufficient are the laws and triads of the Cymri in point of mere antiquity! Let us do all honour to the praiseworthy burst of Keltic patriotism which has revived in our day: let us even concede that some few of the triads may carry us back to the sixth century: yet the earliest Cymric laws of which the slightest trace can be discovered, are those of Hywel in the tenth. And even, if with a courteous desire to do justice to the subject, we admit the historical existence of thefabulous Dynwall and fabulous Marcia[778], who has even insinuated that a single sentence of their codes survive; or that, if even if such existed, they had currency a single foot to the eastward of the Severn? Who can imagine that such laws ever had authority beyond the boundaries of a solitary sept, more fortunate than the rest, inasmuch as its record has not, like those of others, perished?

More directly to the purpose is the information we derive from Gildas, whose patriotism is beyond suspicion, and whose antiquity gives his assertions some claim to our respect[779]. He tells us that on the final departure of the Romans, including thearmatus miles,militaires copiae, andrectores immanes(by which last words he may possibly intend the civil officers calledrectores provinciarum), Britain wasomnis belli usu penitus ignara, utterly ignorant of the practice of war[780]: the island was consequently soon overrun by predatory bands of Picts and Scots whose ravages reduced the inhabitants to the extremest degree of misery: and these incursions were followed at no great interval of time by so violent a pestilence that the living were hardly numerous enough to bury the dead[781]. Then havingbriefly noticed the savage invasion of the Saxons, and a defeat which he says they sustained at Bath, and which is supposed to have been given them by Arthur in the year 520, he thus continues: “But not even now, as before, are the cities of my country inhabited; deserted and destroyed, they lie neglected even unto this day: for civil wars continue, though foreign wars have ceased[782].” We can easily imagine that a nation in anything like the state which Gildas describes, might suffer severely from the brigandage of banditti in the interior; and on the frontier, from raids and forays of the Picts and Scots. Attacks which even the disciplined soldiery of Rome found it necessary to bridle by means of such structures as the walls of Hadrian, Antonine and Severus, must have had terror enough for a disarmed and disheartened population; nor is it in the least degree improbable that the universal disorder, the withdrawal of the legions and some new immigration of Teutonic adventurers set in motion populations, which in various parts of the country had hitherto rested quietly under the nominal control of the Roman arms. But still it is not without surprise that we notice the absence of all evidence that the Britons even attempted to maintain the cities the Romans had left them, or to make a vigorous defence behind their solid fortifications, inexpugnable one would think by rude undisciplined assailants. It is true, we are told thatin half a century England had gone entirely out of cultivation, and that the land had again become covered with forests which alone supplied food for the inhabitants[783]: but if this were really the case—and it is not entirely improbable—it can only have had the effect of driving the population into the cities. That these were to a great extent still standing in the fifth century is certain, since Gildas, in the sixth, represents them as deserted and decaying; that the Saxons found them yet entire is obvious; in the tenth and twelfth centuries their ancient grandeur attracted the attention of observant historians[784]; and even yet their remainstestify to the astonishing skill and foresight of their builders. I cannot therefore but believe that Britain really was, as described, disarmed and disheartened, and most probably so depopulated as to be incapable of any serious defence: a condition which throws a hideous light upon the nature of the Roman rule and the practices of Roman civilized life.

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