The British families of the interior had become
mingled with the settlers of Rome and its tributaries to whom grants of
land had been assigned as the rewards of military service; and the
coasts from the Humber to the Exe had been here and there peopled with
northern settlers, who had gradually planted themselves among the
Romanized British; and were, we may well believe, among the most active
of those who carried forward the commercial intercourse of Britain with
Gaul and Italy.
When, therefore, we approach the period of what is termed the Saxon
invasion, and hear of the decay, the feebleness, the cowardice, and the
misery of the Britons--all which attributes have been somewhat too
readily bestowed upon the population which the Romans had left
behind--it would be well to consider what these so-called Britons really
were, to enable us properly to understand the transition state through
which the country passed.
Our first native historian is Gildas, who lived in the middle of the
sixth century. "From the early part of the fifth century, when the Greek
and Roman writers cease to notice the affairs of Britain, his narrative,
on whatever authority it may have been founded, has been adopted without
question by Bede and succeeding authors, and accepted, notwithstanding
its barrenness of facts and pompous obscurity, by all but general
consent, as the basis of early English history.
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