As a whole, English society remained much the same in Britain as it had been in Sleswick and North Holland. The English came over in a body, with their women and children, their flocks and herds6, their goods and chattels7. The peculiar8 breed of cattle which they brought with them may still be distinguished9 in their remains10 from the earlier Celtic short-horn associated with Roman ruins and pre-historic barrows. They came as settlers, not as mere11 marauders; and they remained banded together in their original tribes and families after they had occupied the soil of Britain.
From the moment of their landing in Britain the savage12 corsairs of the Sleswick flats seem wholly to have laid aside their seafaring habits. They built no more ships, apparently13; for many years after Bishop14 Wilfrith had to teach the South Saxons how to catch sea-fish; while during the early Danish incursions we hear distinctly that the English had no vessels15; nor is there much incidental mention of shipping16 between the age of the settlement and that of ?lfred. The new-comers took up their abode17 at once on the richest parts of Roman Britain, and came into full enjoyment18 of orchards19 which they had not planted and fields which they had not sown. The state of cultivation20 in which they found the vale of York and the Kentish glens must have been widely different from that to which they were accustomed in their old heath-clad home. Accordingly, they settled down at once into farmers and landowners on a far larger scale than of yore; and they were not anxious to move away from the rich lands which they had so easily acquired. From being sailors and graziers they took to be agriculturists and landmen. In the towns, indeed, they did not settle; and most of these continued to bear their old Roman or Celtic titles. A few may have been destroyed, especially in the first onset21, like Anderida, and, at a later date, Chester; but the greater number seem to have been still scantily22 inhabited, under English protection, by a mixed urban population, mainly Celtic in blood, and known by the name of Loegrians. It was in the country, however, that the English conquerers took up their abode. They were tillers of the soil, not merchants or skippers, and it was long before they acquired a taste for urban life. The whole eastern half of England is filled with villages bearing the characteristic English clan24 names, and marking each the home of a distinct family of early settlers. As soon as the new-comers had burnt the villa23 of the old Roman proprietor25, and killed, driven out, or enslaved his abandoned serfs, they took the land to themselves and divided it out on their national system. Hence the whole government and social organisation26 of England is purely27 Teutonic, and the country even lost its old name of Britain for its new one of England.
In England, as of old in Sleswick, the village community formed the unit of English society. Each such township was still bounded by its mark of forest, mere, or fen28, which divided it from its nearest neighbours. In each lived a single clan, supposed to be of kindred blood and bearing a common name. The marksmen and their serfs, the latter being conquered Welshmen, cultivated the soil under cereals for bread, and also for an unnecessarily large supply of beer, as we learn at a later date from numerous charters. Cattle and horses grazed in the pastures, while large herds of pigs were kept in the forest which formed the mark. Thus the early English settled down at once from a nation of pirates into one of agriculturists. Here and there, among the woods and fens29 which still covered a large part of the country, their little separate communities rose in small fenced clearings or on low islets, now joined by drainage to the mainland; while in the wider valleys, tilled in Roman times, the wealthier chieftains formed their settlements and allotted30 lands to their Welsh tributaries31. Many family names appear in different parts of England, for a reason which will hereafter be explained. Thus we find the Bassingas at Bassingbourn, in Cambridgeshire; at Bassingfield, in Notts; at Bassingham and Bassingthorpe, in Lincolnshire; and at Bassington, in Northumberland. The Billings have left their stamp at Billing, in Northampton; Billingford, in Norfolk; Billingham, in Durham; Billingley, in Yorkshire; Billinghurst, in Sussex; and five other places in various other counties. Birmingham, Nottingham, Wellington, Faringdon, Warrington, and Wallingford are well-known names formed on the same analogy. How thickly these clan settlements lie scattered32 over Teutonic England may be judged from the number which occur in the London district alone—Kensington, Paddington, Notting-hill, Billingsgate, Islington, Newington, Kennington, Wapping, and Teddington. There are altogether 1,400 names of this type in England. Their value as a test of Teutonic colonisation is shown by the fact that while 48 occur in Northumberland, 127 in Yorkshire, 76 in Lincolnshire, 153 in Norfolk and Suffolk, 48 in Essex, 60 in Kent, and 86 in Sussex and Surrey, only 2 are found in Cornwall, 6 in Cumberland, 24 in Devon, 13 in Worcester, 2 in Westmoreland, and none in Monmouth. Speaking generally, these clan names are thickest along the original English coast, from Forth33 to Portland; they decrease rapidly as we move inland; and they die away altogether as we approach the purely Celtic west.
The English families, however, probably tilled the soil by the aid of Welsh slaves; indeed, in Anglo-Saxon, the word serf and Welshman are used almost interchangeably as equivalent synonyms34. But though many Welshmen were doubtless spared from the very first, nothing is more certain than the fact that they became thoroughly35 Anglicized. A few new words from Welsh or Latin were introduced into the English tongue, but they were far too few sensibly to affect its vocabulary. The language was and still is essentially36 Low German; and though it now contains numerous words of Latin or French origin, it does not and never did contain any but the very smallest Celtic element. The slight number of additions made from the Welsh consisted chiefly of words connected with the higher Roman civilisation—such as wall, street, and chester—or the new methods of agriculture which the Teuton learnt from his more civilised serfs. The Celt has always shown a great tendency to cast aside his native language in Gaul, in Spain, and in Ireland; and the isolation37 of the English townships must have had the effect of greatly accelerating the process. Within a few generations the Celtic slave had forgotten his tongue, his origin, and his religion, and had developed into a pagan English serf. Whatever else the Teutonic conquest did, it turned every man within the English pale into a thorough Englishman.
But the removal to Britain effected one immense change. "War begat the king." In Sleswick the English had lived within their little marks as free and independent communities. In Britain all the clans38 of each colony gradually came under the military command of a king. The ealdormen who led the various marauding bands assumed royal power in the new country. Such a change was indeed inevitable39. For not only had the English to win the new England, but they had also to keep it and extend it. During four hundred years a constant smouldering warfare40 was carried on between the foreigners and the native Welsh on their western frontier. Thus the townships of each colony entered into a closer union with one another for military purposes, and so arose the separate chieftainships or petty kingdoms of early England. But the king's power was originally very small. He was merely the semi-hereditary general and representative of the people, of royal stock, but elected by the free suffrages41 of the freemen. Only as the kingdoms coalesced42, and as the power of meeting became consequently less, did the king acquire his greater prerogatives43. From the first, however, he seems to have possessed44 the right of granting public lands, with the consent of the freemen, to particular individuals; and such book-land, as the early English called it, after the introduction of Roman writing, became the origin of our system of private property in land.
Every township had its moot45 or assembly of freemen, which met around the sacred oak, or on some holy hill, or beside the great stone monument of some forgotten Celtic chieftain. Every hundred also had its moot, and many of these still survive in their original form to the present day, being held in the open air, near some sacred site or conspicuous46 landmark47. And the colony as a whole had also its moot, at which all freemen might attend, and which settled the general affairs of the kingdom. At these last-named moots48 the kings were elected; and though the selection was practically confined to men of royal kin4, the king nevertheless represented the free choice of the tribe. Before the conversion49 to Christianity, the royal families all traced their origin to Woden. Thus the pedigree of Ida, King of Northumbria, runs as follows:—"Ida was Eopping, Eoppa was Esing, Esa was Inguing, Ingui Angenwiting, Angenwit Alocing, Aloc Benocing, Benoc Branding, Brand Bald?ging, B?ld?g Wodening." But in later Christian50 times the chroniclers felt the necessity of reconciling these heathen genealogies51 with the Scriptural account in Genesis; so they affiliated52 Woden himself upon the Hebrew patriarchs. Thus the pedigree of the West Saxon kings, inserted in the Chronicle under the year 855, after conveying back the genealogy53 of ?thelwulf to Woden, continues to say, "Woden was Frealafing, Frealaf Finning," and so on till it reaches "Sceafing, id est filius Noe; he was born in Noe's Ark. Lamech, Mathusalem, Enoc, Jared, Malalehel, Camon, Enos, Seth, Adam, primus homo et pater noster."
The Anglo-Saxons, when they settled in Eastern and Southern Britain, were a horde54 of barbarous heathen pirates. They massacred or enslaved the civilised or half-civilised Celtic inhabitants with savage ruthlessness. They burnt or destroyed the monuments of Roman occupation. They let the roads and cities fall into utter disrepair. They stamped out Christianity with fire and sword from end to end of their new domain55. They occupied a civilised and Christian land, and they restored it to its primitive56 barbarism. Nor was there any improvement until Christian teachers from Rome and Scotland once more introduced the forgotten culture which the English pirates had utterly57 destroyed. As Gildas phrases it, with true Celtic eloquence58, the red tongue of flame licked up the whole land from end to end, till it slaked59 its horrid60 thirst in the western ocean. For 150 years the whole of English Britain, save, perhaps, Kent and London, was cut off from all intercourse61 with Christendom and the Roman world. The country consisted of several petty chieftainships, at constant feud62 with their Teutonic neighbours, and perpetually waging a border war with Welsh, Picts, and Scots. Within each colony, much of the land remained untilled, while the clan settlements appeared like little islands of cultivation in the midst of forest, waste, and common. The villages were mere groups of wooden homesteads, with barns and cattle-sheds, surrounded by rough stockades63, and destitute64 of roads or communications. Even the palace of the king was a long wooden hall with numerous outhouses; for the English built no stone houses, and burnt down those of their Roman predecessors65. Trade seems to have been confined to the south coast, and few manufactured articles of any sort were in use. The English degraded their Celtic serfs to their own barbaric level; and the very memory of Roman civilization almost died out of the land for a hundred and fifty years.
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1
lull
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| v.使安静，使入睡，缓和，哄骗；n.暂停，间歇 | |
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2
consolidating
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| v.（使）巩固， （使）加强( consolidate的现在分词 )；（使）合并 | |
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3
dominions
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| 统治权( dominion的名词复数 )； 领土； 疆土； 版图 | |
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4
kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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enquire
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| v.打听，询问；调查，查问 | |
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herds
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| 兽群( herd的名词复数 )； 牧群； 人群； 群众 | |
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7
chattels
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| n.动产，奴隶( chattel的名词复数 ) | |
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8
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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9
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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10
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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11
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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12
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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13
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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14
bishop
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| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
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15
vessels
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| n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人 | |
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shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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17
abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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18
enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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19
orchards
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| （通常指围起来的）果园( orchard的名词复数 ) | |
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20
cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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21
onset
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| n.进攻，袭击，开始，突然开始 | |
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22
scantily
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| adv.缺乏地；不充足地；吝啬地；狭窄地 | |
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villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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24
clan
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| n.氏族，部落，宗族，家族，宗派 | |
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proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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organisation
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| n.组织，安排，团体，有机休 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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fen
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| n.沼泽，沼池 | |
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fens
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| n.（尤指英格兰东部的）沼泽地带( fen的名词复数 ) | |
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30
allotted
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| 分配，拨给，摊派( allot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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tributaries
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| n. 支流 | |
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32
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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33
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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34
synonyms
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| 同义词( synonym的名词复数 ) | |
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35
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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36
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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37
isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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38
clans
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| 宗族( clan的名词复数 )； 氏族； 庞大的家族； 宗派 | |
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39
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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40
warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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41
suffrages
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| （政治性选举的）选举权，投票权( suffrage的名词复数 ) | |
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42
coalesced
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| v.联合，合并( coalesce的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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43
prerogatives
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| n.权利( prerogative的名词复数 )；特权；大主教法庭；总督委任组成的法庭 | |
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44
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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45
moot
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| v.提出；adj.未决议的；n.大会；辩论会 | |
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46
conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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47
landmark
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| n.陆标，划时代的事，地界标 | |
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48
moots
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| v.提出…供讨论( moot的第三人称单数 ) | |
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49
conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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50
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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51
genealogies
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| n.系谱，家系，宗谱( genealogy的名词复数 ) | |
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52
affiliated
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| adj. 附属的, 有关连的 | |
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53
genealogy
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| n.家系，宗谱 | |
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54
horde
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| n.群众，一大群 | |
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55
domain
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| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
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56
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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57
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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58
eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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59
slaked
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| v.满足( slake的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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60
horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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61
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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62
feud
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| n.长期不和；世仇；v.长期争斗；世代结仇 | |
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63
stockades
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| n.（防御用的）栅栏，围桩( stockade的名词复数 ) | |
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64
destitute
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| adj.缺乏的；穷困的 | |
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65
predecessors
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| n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 )；前辈；（被取代的）原有事物；前身 | |
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