Chapter XXXVIII: Reign Of Clovis.—Part V

In a century of perpetual, or at least implacable, war, much
courage, and some skill, must have been exerted for the defence
of Britain. Yet if the memory of its champions is almost buried
in oblivion, we need not repine; since every age, however
destitute of science or virtue, sufficiently abounds with acts of
blood and military renown. The tomb of Vortimer, the son of
Vortigern, was erected on the margin of the sea-shore, as a
landmark formidable to the Saxons, whom he had thrice vanquished
in the fields of Kent. Ambrosius Aurelian was descended from a
noble family of Romans; 138 his modesty was equal to his valor,
and his valor, till the last fatal action, 139 was crowned with
splendid success. But every British name is effaced by the
illustrious name of Arthur, 140 the hereditary prince of the
Silures, in South Wales, and the elective king or general of the
nation. According to the most rational account, he defeated, in
twelve successive battles, the Angles of the North, and the
Saxons of the West; but the declining age of the hero was
imbittered by popular ingratitude and domestic misfortunes. The
events of his life are less interesting than the singular
revolutions of his fame. During a period of five hundred years
the tradition of his exploits was preserved, and rudely
embellished, by the obscure bards of Wales and Armorica, who were
odious to the Saxons, and unknown to the rest of mankind. The
pride and curiosity of the Norman conquerors prompted them to
inquire into the ancient history of Britain: they listened with
fond credulity to the tale of Arthur, and eagerly applauded the
merit of a prince who had triumphed over the Saxons, their common
enemies. His romance, transcribed in the Latin of Jeffrey of
Monmouth, and afterwards translated into the fashionable idiom of
the times, was enriched with the various, though incoherent,
ornaments which were familiar to the experience, the learning, or
the fancy, of the twelfth century. The progress of a Phrygian
colony, from the Tyber to the Thames, was easily ingrafted on the
fable of the Aeneid; and the royal ancestors of Arthur derived
their origin from Troy, and claimed their alliance with the
Caesars. His trophies were decorated with captive provinces and
Imperial titles; and his Danish victories avenged the recent
injuries of his country. The gallantry and superstition of the
British hero, his feasts and tournaments, and the memorable
institution of his Knights of the Round Table, were faithfully
copied from the reigning manners of chivalry; and the fabulous
exploits of Uther’s son appear less incredible than the
adventures which were achieved by the enterprising valor of the
Normans. Pilgrimage, and the holy wars, introduced into Europe
the specious miracles of Arabian magic. Fairies and giants,
flying dragons, and enchanted palaces, were blended with the more
simple fictions of the West; and the fate of Britain depended on
the art, or the predictions, of Merlin. Every nation embraced and
adorned the popular romance of Arthur, and the Knights of the
Round Table: their names were celebrated in Greece and Italy; and
the voluminous tales of Sir Lancelot and Sir Tristram were
devoutly studied by the princes and nobles, who disregarded the
genuine heroes and historians of antiquity. At length the light
of science and reason was rekindled; the talisman was broken; the
visionary fabric melted into air; and by a natural, though
unjust, reverse of the public opinion, the severity of the
present age is inclined to question the existence of Arthur. 141

138 (return) [ Bede, who in his chronicle (p. 28) places
Ambrosius under the reign of Zeno, (A.D. 474-491,) observes, that
his parents had been “purpura induti;” which he explains, in his
ecclesiastical history, by “regium nomen et insigne ferentibus,”
(l. i. c. 16, p. 53.) The expression of Nennius (c. 44, p. 110,
edit. Gale) is still more singular, “Unus de consulibus gentis
Romanicae est pater meus.”]

139 (return) [ By the unanimous, though doubtful, conjecture of
our antiquarians, Ambrosius is confounded with Natanleod, who
(A.D. 508) lost his own life, and five thousand of his subjects,
in a battle against Cerdic, the West Saxon, (Chron. Saxon. p. 17,
18.)]

140 (return) [ As I am a stranger to the Welsh bards, Myrdhin,
Llomarch, and Taliessin, my faith in the existence and exploits
of Arthur principally rests on the simple and circumstantial
testimony of Nennius. (Hist. Brit. c. 62, 63, p. 114.) Mr.
Whitaker, (Hist. of Manchester, vol. ii. p. 31-71) had framed an
interesting, and even probable, narrative of the wars of Arthur:
though it is impossible to allow the reality of the round table.
* Note: I presume that Gibbon means Llywarch Hen, or the
Aged.—The Elegies of this Welsh prince and bard have been
published by Mr. Owen; to whose works and in the Myvyrian
Archaeology, slumbers much curious information on the subject of
Welsh tradition and poetry. But the Welsh antiquarians have never
obtained a hearing from the public; they have had no Macpherson
to compensate for his corruption of their poetic legends by
forcing them into popularity.—See also Mr. Sharon Turner’s Essay
on the Welsh Bards.—M.]

141 (return) [ The progress of romance, and the state of
learning, in the middle ages, are illustrated by Mr. Thomas
Warton, with the taste of a poet, and the minute diligence of an
antiquarian. I have derived much instruction from the two learned
dissertations prefixed to the first volume of his History of
English Poetry. * Note: These valuable dissertations should not
now be read without the notes and preliminary essay of the late
editor, Mr. Price, which, in point of taste and fulness of
information, are worthy of accompanying and completing those of
Warton.—M.]

Resistance, if it cannot avert, must increase the miseries of
conquest; and conquest has never appeared more dreadful and
destructive than in the hands of the Saxons; who hated the valor
of their enemies, disdained the faith of treaties, and violated,
without remorse, the most sacred objects of the Christian
worship. The fields of battle might be traced, almost in every
district, by monuments of bones; the fragments of falling towers
were stained with blood; the last of the Britons, without
distinction of age or sex, was massacred, 142 in the ruins of
Anderida; 143 and the repetition of such calamities was frequent
and familiar under the Saxon heptarchy. The arts and religion,
the laws and language, which the Romans had so carefully planted
in Britain, were extirpated by their barbarous successors. After
the destruction of the principal churches, the bishops, who had
declined the crown of martyrdom, retired with the holy relics
into Wales and Armorica; the remains of their flocks were left
destitute of any spiritual food; the practice, and even the
remembrance, of Christianity were abolished; and the British
clergy might obtain some comfort from the damnation of the
idolatrous strangers. The kings of France maintained the
privileges of their Roman subjects; but the ferocious Saxons
trampled on the laws of Rome, and of the emperors. The
proceedings of civil and criminal jurisdiction, the titles of
honor, the forms of office, the ranks of society, and even the
domestic rights of marriage, testament, and inheritance, were
finally suppressed; and the indiscriminate crowd of noble and
plebeian slaves was governed by the traditionary customs, which
had been coarsely framed for the shepherds and pirates of
Germany. The language of science, of business, and of
conversation, which had been introduced by the Romans, was lost
in the general desolation. A sufficient number of Latin or Celtic
words might be assumed by the Germans, to express their new wants
and ideas; 144 but those illiterate Pagans preserved and
established the use of their national dialect. 145 Almost every
name, conspicuous either in the church or state, reveals its
Teutonic origin; 146 and the geography of England was universally
inscribed with foreign characters and appellations. The example
of a revolution, so rapid and so complete, may not easily be
found; but it will excite a probable suspicion, that the arts of
Rome were less deeply rooted in Britain than in Gaul or Spain;
and that the native rudeness of the country and its inhabitants
was covered by a thin varnish of Italian manners.

142 (return) [ Hoc anno (490) Aella et Cissa obsederunt
Andredes-Ceaster; et interfecerunt omnes qui id incoluerunt; adeo
ut ne unus Brito ibi superstes fuerit, (Chron. Saxon. p. 15;) an
expression more dreadful in its simplicity, than all the vague
and tedious lamentations of the British Jeremiah.]

143 (return) [ Andredes-Ceaster, or Anderida, is placed by Camden
(Britannia, vol. i. p. 258) at Newenden, in the marshy grounds of
Kent, which might be formerly covered by the sea, and on the edge
of the great forest (Anderida) which overspread so large a
portion of Hampshire and Sussex.]

144 (return) [ Dr. Johnson affirms, that few English words are of
British extraction. Mr. Whitaker, who understands the British
language, has discovered more than three thousand, and actually
produces a long and various catalogue, (vol. ii. p. 235-329.) It
is possible, indeed, that many of these words may have been
imported from the Latin or Saxon into the native idiom of
Britain. * Note: Dr. Prichard’s very curious researches, which
connect the Celtic, as well as the Teutonic languages with the
Indo-European class, make it still more difficult to decide
between the Celtic or Teutonic origin of English words.—See
Prichard on the Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations Oxford,
1831.—M.]

145 (return) [ In the beginning of the seventh century, the
Franks and the Anglo-Saxons mutually understood each other’s
language, which was derived from the same Teutonic root, (Bede,
l. i. c. 25, p. 60.)]

146 (return) [ After the first generation of Italian, or
Scottish, missionaries, the dignities of the church were filled
with Saxon proselytes.]

This strange alteration has persuaded historians, and even
philosophers, that the provincials of Britain were totally
exterminated; and that the vacant land was again peopled by the
perpetual influx, and rapid increase, of the German colonies.
Three hundred thousand Saxons are said to have obeyed the summons
of Hengist; 147 the entire emigation of the Angles was attested,
in the age of Bede, by the solitude of their native country; 148
and our experience has shown the free propagation of the human
race, if they are cast on a fruitful wilderness, where their
steps are unconfined, and their subsistence is plentiful. The
Saxon kingdoms displayed the face of recent discovery and
cultivation; the towns were small, the villages were distant; the
husbandry was languid and unskilful; four sheep were equivalent
to an acre of the best land; 149 an ample space of wood and
morass was resigned to the vague dominion of nature; and the
modern bishopric of Durham, the whole territory from the Tyne to
the Tees, had returned to its primitive state of a savage and
solitary forest. 150 Such imperfect population might have been
supplied, in some generations, by the English colonies; but
neither reason nor facts can justify the unnatural supposition,
that the Saxons of Britain remained alone in the desert which
they had subdued. After the sanguinary Barbarians had secured
their dominion, and gratified their revenge, it was their
interest to preserve the peasants as well as the cattle, of the
unresisting country. In each successive revolution, the patient
herd becomes the property of its new masters; and the salutary
compact of food and labor is silently ratified by their mutual
necessities. Wilfrid, the apostle of Sussex, 151 accepted from
his royal convert the gift of the peninsula of Selsey, near
Chichester, with the persons and property of its inhabitants, who
then amounted to eighty-seven families. He released them at once
from spiritual and temporal bondage; and two hundred and fifty
slaves of both sexes were baptized by their indulgent master. The
kingdom of Sussex, which spread from the sea to the Thames,
contained seven thousand families; twelve hundred were ascribed
to the Isle of Wight; and, if we multiply this vague computation,
it may seem probable, that England was cultivated by a million of
servants, or villains, who were attached to the estates of their
arbitrary landlords. The indigent Barbarians were often tempted
to sell their children, or themselves into perpetual, and even
foreign, bondage; 152 yet the special exemptions which were
granted to national slaves, 153 sufficiently declare that they
were much less numerous than the strangers and captives, who had
lost their liberty, or changed their masters, by the accidents of
war. When time and religion had mitigated the fierce spirit of
the Anglo-Saxons, the laws encouraged the frequent practice of
manumission; and their subjects, of Welsh or Cambrian extraction,
assumed the respectable station of inferior freemen, possessed of
lands, and entitled to the rights of civil society. 154 Such
gentle treatment might secure the allegiance of a fierce people,
who had been recently subdued on the confines of Wales and
Cornwall. The sage Ina, the legislator of Wessex, united the two
nations in the bands of domestic alliance; and four British lords
of Somersetshire may be honorably distinguished in the court of a
Saxon monarch. 155

147 (return) [ Carte’s History of England, vol. i. p. 195. He
quotes the British historians; but I much fear, that Jeffrey of
Monmouth (l. vi. c. 15) is his only witness.]

148 (return) [ Bede, Hist. Ecclesiast. l. i. c. 15, p. 52. The
fact is probable, and well attested: yet such was the loose
intermixture of the German tribes, that we find, in a subsequent
period, the law of the Angli and Warini of Germany, (Lindenbrog.
Codex, p. 479-486.)]

149 (return) [ See Dr. Henry’s useful and laborious History of
Great Britain, vol. ii. p. 388.]

150 (return) [ Quicquid (says John of Tinemouth) inter Tynam et
Tesam fluvios extitit, sola eremi vastitudo tunc temporis fuit,
et idcirco nullius ditioni servivit, eo quod sola indomitorum et
sylvestrium animalium spelunca et habitatio fuit, (apud Carte,
vol. i. p. 195.) From bishop Nicholson (English Historical
Library, p. 65, 98) I understand that fair copies of John of
Tinemouth’s ample collections are preserved in the libraries of
Oxford, Lambeth, &c.]

151 (return) [ See the mission of Wilfrid, &c., in Bede, Hist.
Eccles. l. iv. c. 13, 16, p. 155, 156, 159.]

152 (return) [ From the concurrent testimony of Bede (l. ii. c.
1, p. 78) and William of Malmsbury, (l. iii. p. 102,) it appears,
that the Anglo-Saxons, from the first to the last age, persisted
in this unnatural practice. Their youths were publicly sold in
the market of Rome.]

153 (return) [ According to the laws of Ina, they could not be
lawfully sold beyond the seas.]

154 (return) [ The life of a Wallus, or Cambricus, homo, who
possessed a hyde of land, is fixed at 120 shillings, by the same
laws (of Ina, tit. xxxii. in Leg. Anglo-Saxon. p. 20) which
allowed 200 shillings for a free Saxon, 1200 for a Thane, (see
likewise Leg. Anglo-Saxon. p. 71.) We may observe, that these
legislators, the West Saxons and Mercians, continued their
British conquests after they became Christians. The laws of the
four kings of Kent do not condescend to notice the existence of
any subject Britons.]

155 (return) [ See Carte’s Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 278.]

The independent Britons appear to have relapsed into the state of
original barbarism, from whence they had been imperfectly
reclaimed. Separated by their enemies from the rest of mankind,
they soon became an object of scandal and abhorrence to the
Catholic world. 156 Christianity was still professed in the
mountains of Wales; but the rude schismatics, in the form of the
clerical tonsure, and in the day of the celebration of Easter,
obstinately resisted the imperious mandates of the Roman
pontiffs. The use of the Latin language was insensibly abolished,
and the Britons were deprived of the art and learning which Italy
communicated to her Saxon proselytes. In Wales and Armorica, the
Celtic tongue, the native idiom of the West, was preserved and
propagated; and the Bards, who had been the companions of the
Druids, were still protected, in the sixteenth century, by the
laws of Elizabeth. Their chief, a respectable officer of the
courts of Pengwern, or Aberfraw, or Caermarthen, accompanied the
king’s servants to war: the monarchy of the Britons, which he
sung in the front of battle, excited their courage, and justified
their depredations; and the songster claimed for his legitimate
prize the fairest heifer of the spoil. His subordinate ministers,
the masters and disciples of vocal and instrumental music,
visited, in their respective circuits, the royal, the noble, and
the plebeian houses; and the public poverty, almost exhausted by
the clergy, was oppressed by the importunate demands of the
bards. Their rank and merit were ascertained by solemn trials,
and the strong belief of supernatural inspiration exalted the
fancy of the poet, and of his audience. 157 The last retreats of
Celtic freedom, the extreme territories of Gaul and Britain, were
less adapted to agriculture than to pasturage: the wealth of the
Britons consisted in their flocks and herds; milk and flesh were
their ordinary food; and bread was sometimes esteemed, or
rejected, as a foreign luxury. Liberty had peopled the mountains
of Wales and the morasses of Armorica; but their populousness has
been maliciously ascribed to the loose practice of polygamy; and
the houses of these licentious barbarians have been supposed to
contain ten wives, and perhaps fifty children. 158 Their
disposition was rash and choleric; they were bold in action and
in speech; 159 and as they were ignorant of the arts of peace,
they alternately indulged their passions in foreign and domestic
war. The cavalry of Armorica, the spearmen of Gwent, and the
archers of Merioneth, were equally formidable; but their poverty
could seldom procure either shields or helmets; and the
inconvenient weight would have retarded the speed and agility of
their desultory operations. One of the greatest of the English
monarchs was requested to satisfy the curiosity of a Greek
emperor concerning the state of Britain; and Henry II. could
assert, from his personal experience, that Wales was inhabited by
a race of naked warriors, who encountered, without fear, the
defensive armor of their enemies. 160

156 (return) [ At the conclusion of his history, (A.D. 731,) Bede
describes the ecclesiastical state of the island, and censures
the implacable, though impotent, hatred of the Britons against
the English nation, and the Catholic church, (l. v. c. 23, p.
219.)]

157 (return) [ Mr. Pennant’s Tour in Wales (p. 426-449) has
furnished me with a curious and interesting account of the Welsh
bards. In the year 1568, a session was held at Caerwys by the
special command of Queen Elizabeth, and regular degrees in vocal
and instrumental music were conferred on fifty-five minstrels.
The prize (a silver harp) was adjudged by the Mostyn family.]

158 (return) [ Regio longe lateque diffusa, milite, magis quam
credibile sit, referta. Partibus equidem in illis miles unus
quinquaginta generat, sortitus more barbaro denas aut amplius
uxores. This reproach of William of Poitiers (in the Historians
of France, tom. xi. p. 88) is disclaimed by the Benedictine
editors.]

159 (return) [ Giraldus Cambrensis confines this gift of bold and
ready eloquence to the Romans, the French, and the Britons. The
malicious Welshman insinuates that the English taciturnity might
possibly be the effect of their servitude under the Normans.]

160 (return) [ The picture of Welsh and Armorican manners is
drawn from Giraldus, (Descript. Cambriae, c. 6-15, inter Script.
Camden. p. 886-891,) and the authors quoted by the Abbe de
Vertot, (Hist. Critique tom. ii. p. 259-266.)]

By the revolution of Britain, the limits of science, as well as
of empire, were contracted. The dark cloud, which had been
cleared by the Phoenician discoveries, and finally dispelled by
the arms of Caesar, again settled on the shores of the Atlantic,
and a Roman province was again lost among the fabulous Islands of
the Ocean. One hundred and fifty years after the reign of
Honorius, the gravest historian of the times 161 describes the
wonders of a remote isle, whose eastern and western parts are
divided by an antique wall, the boundary of life and death, or,
more properly, of truth and fiction. The east is a fair country,
inhabited by a civilized people: the air is healthy, the waters
are pure and plentiful, and the earth yields her regular and
fruitful increase. In the west, beyond the wall, the air is
infectious and mortal; the ground is covered with serpents; and
this dreary solitude is the region of departed spirits, who are
transported from the opposite shores in substantial boats, and by
living rowers. Some families of fishermen, the subjects of the
Franks, are excused from tribute, in consideration of the
mysterious office which is performed by these Charons of the
ocean. Each in his turn is summoned, at the hour of midnight, to
hear the voices, and even the names, of the ghosts: he is
sensible of their weight, and he feels himself impelled by an
unknown, but irresistible power. After this dream of fancy, we
read with astonishment, that the name of this island is Brittia;
that it lies in the ocean, against the mouth of the Rhine, and
less than thirty miles from the continent; that it is possessed
by three nations, the Frisians, the Angles, and the Britons; and
that some Angles had appeared at Constantinople, in the train of
the French ambassadors. From these ambassadors Procopius might be
informed of a singular, though not improbable, adventure, which
announces the spirit, rather than the delicacy, of an English
heroine. She had been betrothed to Radiger, king of the Varni, a
tribe of Germans who touched the ocean and the Rhine; but the
perfidious lover was tempted, by motives of policy, to prefer his
father’s widow, the sister of Theodebert, king of the Franks. 162
The forsaken princess of the Angles, instead of bewailing,
revenged her disgrace. Her warlike subjects are said to have been
ignorant of the use, and even of the form, of a horse; but she
boldly sailed from Britain to the mouth of the Rhine, with a
fleet of four hundred ships, and an army of one hundred thousand
men. After the loss of a battle, the captive Radiger implored the
mercy of his victorious bride, who generously pardoned his
offence, dismissed her rival, and compelled the king of the Varni
to discharge with honor and fidelity the duties of a husband. 163
This gallant exploit appears to be the last naval enterprise of
the Anglo-Saxons. The arts of navigation, by which they acquired
the empire of Britain and of the sea, were soon neglected by the
indolent Barbarians, who supinely renounced all the commercial
advantages of their insular situation. Seven independent kingdoms
were agitated by perpetual discord; and the British world was
seldom connected, either in peace or war, with the nations of the
Continent. 164

161 (return) [ See Procopius de Bell. Gothic. l. iv. c. 20, p.
620-625. The Greek historian is himself so confounded by the
wonders which he relates, that he weakly attempts to distinguish
the islands of Britia and Britain, which he has identified by so
many inseparable circumstances.]

162 (return) [ Theodebert, grandson of Clovis, and king of
Austrasia, was the most powerful and warlike prince of the age;
and this remarkable adventure may be placed between the years 534
and 547, the extreme terms of his reign. His sister Theudechildis
retired to Sens, where she founded monasteries, and distributed
alms, (see the notes of the Benedictine editors, in tom. ii. p.
216.) If we may credit the praises of Fortunatus, (l. vi. carm.
5, in tom. ii. p. 507,) Radiger was deprived of a most valuable
wife.]

163 (return) [ Perhaps she was the sister of one of the princes
or chiefs of the Angles, who landed in 527, and the following
years, between the Humber and the Thames, and gradually founded
the kingdoms of East Anglia and Mercia. The English writers are
ignorant of her name and existence: but Procopius may have
suggested to Mr. Rowe the character and situation of Rodogune in
the tragedy of the Royal Convert.]

164 (return) [ In the copious history of Gregory of Tours, we
cannot find any traces of hostile or friendly intercourse between
France and England except in the marriage of the daughter of
Caribert, king of Paris, quam regis cujusdam in Cantia filius
matrimonio copulavit, (l. ix. c. 28, in tom. ii. p. 348.) The
bishop of Tours ended his history and his life almost immediately
before the conversion of Kent.]

I have now accomplished the laborious narrative of the decline
and fall of the Roman empire, from the fortunate age of Trajan
and the Antonines, to its total extinction in the West, about
five centuries after the Christian era. At that unhappy period,
the Saxons fiercely struggled with the natives for the possession
of Britain: Gaul and Spain were divided between the powerful
monarchies of the Franks and Visigoths, and the dependent
kingdoms of the Suevi and Burgundians: Africa was exposed to the
cruel persecution of the Vandals, and the savage insults of the
Moors: Rome and Italy, as far as the banks of the Danube, were
afflicted by an army of Barbarian mercenaries, whose lawless
tyranny was succeeded by the reign of Theodoric the Ostrogoth.
All the subjects of the empire, who, by the use of the Latin
language, more particularly deserved the name and privileges of
Romans, were oppressed by the disgrace and calamities of foreign
conquest; and the victorious nations of Germany established a new
system of manners and government in the western countries of
Europe. The majesty of Rome was faintly represented by the
princes of Constantinople, the feeble and imaginary successors of
Augustus. Yet they continued to reign over the East, from the
Danube to the Nile and Tigris; the Gothic and Vandal kingdoms of
Italy and Africa were subverted by the arms of Justinian; and the
history of the Greek emperors may still afford a long series of
instructive lessons, and interesting revolutions.