37.  The Saxons and Angles conquer Britain.

The success of the first band of sea robbers in Britain (S36) stimulated other bands to invade the island (477-541).  They slaughtered multitudes of Britons and made slaves of many more.  The conquerors named the parts of the country which they settled, from themselves.  Each independent settlement was hostile to every other.  Thus Sussex was the home of the South Saxons, Wessex of the West Saxons, Essex of the East Saxons. (See map opposite.) Finally, a band of Angles came from a little corner, south of the peninsula of Denmark, which still bears the name of Angeln.  They took possession of all of eastern Britain not already appropriated.  Eventually, they came to control the greater part of the land, and from them, all the other tribes, when fused together, got the name of Angles or English (S50). (See map opposite.)

38.  Resistance made by the Britons; King Arthur.

Meanwhile the Britons had plucked up courage and made the best fight they could.  They were naturally a brave people (SS2, 18).  The fact that it took the Saxons more than a hundred years to get a firm grip on the island shows that fact.  The legend of King Arthur’s exploits also illustrates the valor of the race to which he belonged.  According to tradtion this British Prince, who had become a convert to Christianity (S25), met and checked the invaders in their isolent march of triumph.  The battle, it is said, was fought at Mount Badon or Badbury in Dorsetshire.  There, with his irresistable sword, “Excalibur,” and his stanch British spearmen, Arthur compelled his foes to acknowledge that he was not a myth but a man[1] able “to break the heathen and uphold the Christ.”

[1] See “Arthur” in the “Dictionary of National British Biography”; and Professor Rowley in Low and Pulling’s “Dictionary of English History,” p. 434.  See also Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “History of the Britons” and Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King.”

39.  The Saxons or English force the Britons to retreat.

But though King Arthur may have checked the pagan Saxon invaders, he could not drive them out of the country.  They had come to stay.  On the other hand, many Britons were forced to take refuge among the hills of Wales.  There they continued to abide.  That ancient stock never lost its love of liberty.  More than eleven centuries later their spirit helped to shape the destinies of the New World.  Thomas Jefferson andseveral of the other signers of the Declaration of American Independence were either of Welsh birth or of direct Welsh descent.

40.  Gregory and the English Slaves.

The next period, of nearly eighty years, is a dreary record of constant battles and bloodshed.  Out of this very barbarism a regenerating influence finally arose.

In their greed for grain, some of the English tribes did not hesitate to sell their own children into bondage.  A number of these slaves, exposed in the market place in Rome, attracted the attention of a monk named Gregory.