But whatever was the condition of the other parts of Europe, it is generally agreed that the state of Britain was the worst of all.  Some writers have asserted, that, except those who took refuge in the mountains of Wales and in Cornwall, or fled into Armorica, the British race was in a manner destroyed.  What is extraordinary, we find England in a very tolerable state of population in less than two centuries after the first invasion of the Saxons; and it is hard to imagine either the transplantation or the increase of that single people to have been in so short a time sufficient for the settlement of so great an extent of country.  Others speak of the Britons, not as extirpated, but as reduced to a state of slavery; and here these writers fix the origin of personal and predial servitude in England.

I shall lay fairly before the reader all I have been able to discover concerning the existence or condition of this unhappy people.  That they were much more broken and reduced than any other nation which had fallen under the German power I think may be inferred from two considerations.  First, that in all other parts of Europe the ancient language subsisted after the conquest, and at length incorporated with that of the conquerors; whereas in England the Saxon language received little or no tincture from the Welsh; and it seems, even among the lowest people, to have continued a dialect of pure Teutonic to the time in which it was itself blended with the Norman.  Secondly, that on the continent the Christian religion, after the Northern irruptions, not only remained, but flourished.  It was very early and universally adopted by the ruling people.  In England it was so entirely extinguished, that, when Augustin undertook his mission, it does not appear that among all the Saxons there was a single person professing Christianity.

[Sidenote:  A.D. 500]

The sudden extinction of the ancient religion, and language appears sufficient to show that Britain must have suffered more than any of the neighboring nations on the continent.  But it must not be concealed that there are likewise proofs that the British race, though much diminished, was not wholly extirpated, and that those who remained were not, merely as Britons, reduced to servitude.  For they are mentioned as existing in some of the earlier Saxon laws.  In these laws they are allowed a compensation on the footing of the meaner kind of English; and they are even permitted, as well as the English, to emerge out of that low rank into a more liberal condition.  This is degradation, but not slavery.[27] The affairs of that whole period are, however, covered with an obscurity not to be dissipated.  The Britons had little leisure or ability to write a just account of a war by which they were ruined; and the Anglo-Saxons who succeeded them, attentive only to arms, were, until their conversion, ignorant of the use of letters.