SOURCE: Leo Sherley-Price, in an introduction to Bede: A History of the English Church and People, translated by Leo Sherley-Price, revised edition, Penguin Books, 1968, pp. 15-32.

In the following excerpt, Sherley-Price explores the background of Bede's historical writings and describes his chief merits as a historian.

The centuries on which Bede concentrates are a crucial and formative period in our island history, during which the future shape and pattern of the English Church and nation were beginning to emerge. Once the shield of Roman protection was withdrawn, the Celtic peoples of Britain were steadily forced to yield ground before the ever increasing pressure of the incoming Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, and were driven westward into the remote and inaccessible regions along the storm-swept Atlantic coast. Even here they enjoyed little security, and were harried by raiding parties of Irish pirates, as Saint Patrick, himself a victim, describes in...