II. BOOK mountains, caves, and woods, can only awake our suspicion that querulous declamation has usurped the place of history, in his verbose yet obscure composition, or has converted local incidents into a national catastrophe. He who has stated these things has also declared that the Britons, whom the Romans for near four centuries had civilised, could not build a wall, nor make arms without patterns 58; has mentioned nothing of the emperors, or transactions after Maximus; and has ascribed the walls of Hadrian and Severus to the fifth century, and the castles of the Saxon shore, so long before constructed, to a legion quitting Britain for ever. As far as Gildas can be supported and made intelligible by others, he is an acceptable companion. But he contains so much ignorant and exaggerated narration, and uses so many rhetorical generalities, that he cannot be trusted alone. 59 If any application was made to Etius from Britain, it must be referred to the period when the civil contests that pervaded it, invited the attacks of the northern invaders, and facilitated their progress, as we shall afterwards notice; and it may have been sent on behalf of particular districts only. 58 Gildas, s. 12. and s. 14. 59 Gildas. Bede, lib. i. c. 12. and 13. The errors of Gildas are not to be charged upon Bede; he has only adopted them because he had no other Latin document to use. The Roman account of British transactions ceased when the imperial troops finally quitted England. Native literature only could supply materials afterwards for future history; but the Saxons of Bede's age did not understand the British tongue. Hence Bede had no authority but Gildas for this part of his history. Nennius had certainly other materials before him; for, with some fables, he has added many original circumstances which are entitled to attention. CHAP. VIII. The History of BRITAIN, between the Departure of the ROMANS and the WHEN Zosimus mentions Britain, for the last time, in his history, he leaves the natives in a state of independence on Rome, so generally armed as to have achieved the exploits of Roman soldiers, and to have driven the invaders from their cities. This appears to be authentic history. We may assume the governing powers of the island, at that period, to have been the civitates or the territorial districts, because the emperor would of course have written to the predominant authority. This was the state of the island in or after the year 410, and to this we may add from others, that the Romans never regained the possession of it.' There is evi 1 Mr. Camden makes Britain return to the subjection of Ho norius, and to be happy for a while under Victorinus, who governed the province, and put a stop to the inroads of the Picts and Scots. Introd. 85. Henry, lib. i. c. i. p. 119. 8vo. enlarges still more; he states, that after the death of Constantine, Britain returned to the obedience of Honorius, who sent Victorinus with some troops for its recovery and defence; and that this general struck terror into all his enemies in this island; but the increasing distresses of the empire obliged Honorius to recal Victorinus, and all his troops, from the island.— There is no authority for this circumstantial detail. Rutilius, in his journey in Italy about 416, merely takes occasion to compliment Victorinus on his former honours. In this friendly digression he says, that the ferox Britannus knew his virtues, whom he had governed so as to excite their attachment. Itiner. 499. С НА Р. VIII. A. D. 410. II. BOOK dence that they assailed the liberties of 2 Armorica, but none that they contested with the Britons the enjoyment of their independence. THE Britons, who had been strong enough to repulse from their island, the barbarians who had overran Gaul, or who had taken advantage of that calamity to molest them, could not have been subdued without a serious invasion. Even the exposed and inferior Armorica maintained a vigorous resistance. But the dismal aspect of the Roman state, during the fifth century, coincides with the absolute silence of authors to prove that the Romans forbore to invade the British independence. THE majesty of the Capitol had departed; the world no longer crouched in submission before it; and even its own subjects are said to have rejoiced over its ruin. The Goths conquered Spain; a rebel arose from the tomb of Honorius; another general repeated the treason of Stilicho; and the terrible Genseric embarked with his Vandals against p. 14. ed. Amst. Whether he governed it under Theodosius or Honorius is not said. That he could have no command of troops is certain, because the vicarius or governor was a civil officer. The act of his government, according to Rutilius, was not then a recent thing, but at some distance, because he adds another event, which, he says, lately happened, "illustris nuper sacræ comes additus aulæ:" marking this honour as a recent event in 416. implies that the others were not recent; hence there is no reason to place him in Britain after 409. 2 Du Bos, Hist. Crit. p. 213. thinks, that the revolt of Armorica contributed more than any other event to establish la monarchie Françoise in Gaul. Armorica comprehended five of the seventeen provinces of Gaul. On its struggles for liberty, see Du Bos, and 1 Mascou, 453. 476.; also 3 Gibbon, 275.— It had afterwards many unfavourable conflicts with the Francs. Greg. Tours. lib. iv. and v. Freculphus, lib. ii. c 22. VIII. Africa: even Ætius was a subject of dubious fidel- C HA P. ity. At the head of 60,000 barbarians he extorted the honours he enjoyed, maintained his connection with the Huns and Alaric, and had to withstand the Francs and Suevi. The son of Alaric besieged Narbonne, the Belgic provinces were invaded by the Burgundians, and the desolating Attila at last burst upon Gaul.3 BUT whatever was the cause which induced Honorius to permit, or withheld his successors from molesting, the independence of Britain, it was an event which might have been made beneficial to every class of its inhabitants. The Romans had, in the beginning of their conquests in Britain, from motives of self-preservation, endeavoured to civilise it. When by their incentives, the national mind had been diverted from habits of warfare, to the enjoyments of luxury and the pursuits of commerce, the natives shared in the prosperity, the vices, and the institutions of the governing empire. At the end of the fourth century, the evils of corrupted civilisation, and of its invariable attendant, a weak, tyrannical and oppressive government, were dissolving in every part the decaying fabric of the Roman dominion. Its state at this period has been described to us by a contemporary, who though he writes with the antithesis without the genius of Seneca, yet was a man of sense and piety, and saw clearly and felt strongly the mischiefs which he laments, and the ruin to which they tended. He, 4 3 See Gibbon, iii. p. 262-271. and 327-432. 4 This was Salvian, an ecclesiastic of Marseilles. It occurs in his treatise De gubernatione Dei, which is published in the Magna Bibliotheca Patrum, vol. v. II. BOOK after detailing the social vices of the Roman world at that time—its general selfishness, rivalry, envy, profligacy, avarice, sensuality, and malignant competitions, expatiates on one important fact, which deserves our peculiar notice, from its destructive hostility to the stability of the empire, as well as to the welfare of every individual. This was not merely the weight and repetition of the taxations imposed by the government, but still more the permitted and overwhelming oppressions of the authorised tax-gatherers, exceeding their authority, and converting their office into the means of the most arbitrary and ruinous oppressions. State of the Roman He says, "In all the cities, municipia, and vil provinces. lages, there are as many tyrants as there are officers of the government; they devour the bowels of the citizens, and their widows and orphans; public burthens are made the means of private plunder; the collection of the national revenue is made the instrument of individual peculation; none are safe from the devastations of these depopulating robbers. The public taxation is a continual destruction: the burthens, though severe, would be more tolerable, if borne by all equally and in common; but they are partially imposed and arbitrarily levied hence many desert their farms and dwellings to escape the violence of the exactors; they seek exile to avoid punishment. Such an overwhelming and unceasing proscription hangs over them, that they desert their habitations. that they may not be tormented in them."5 SUCH were the evils under which the people of the Roman empire were groaning, from the con 5 Salvian, p. 89.91. |