IV. reigns of Ida's six immediate successors, induce us CHA P. to suppose them to have been shortened by the violent deaths of destructive warfare. 45 death. 559. THE death of Ida, in 559, produced a division of Ida's his associates. His son Adda succeeded; but one of his allied chieftains, also a descendant of Woden, quitted Bernicia, and sought with those who followed him a new fortune, by attacking the British kingdom of Deifyr, between the Tweed and the Humber. This chieftain was named Ella, and he succeeded in conquering this district, in which he raised the Angle kingdom of Deira, and reigned in it for thirty years. 46 Yet though able to force an establishment in this country, many years elapsed before it was completely subdued; for Elmet, which is a part of Yorkshire, was not conquered till the reign of his son, who expelled from it Certic, its British king.47 ment of ONE Jute, three Saxon, and three Angle king- Establishdoms were thus established in Britain by the year the octar560: in Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Essex, East Ang- chy. lia, Bernicia, and Deira. Another Angle-kingdom was about twenty-six years afterwards added in Mercia, which became in time more powerful and celebrated than any other, except that of the West Saxons, who at last conquered it. This kingdom of Mercia made the eighth which these bold adventurers succeeded in founding. It was formed the latest of all. The first enterprises of the Angles against the district in which it was raised, were 45 Thus his son Adda, his eldest son, reigned but seven years; Clappa, five; Theodulf, one; Freothulf, seven; Theodric, seven; and Ethelric, two. Flor. Wig. 221. 46 Flor. Wig. 221. Sax. Ch. 47 Nenn. Geneal. p. 117. 20. III. 560. BOOK those of inferior chieftains, whose names have not survived their day; and it seems to have been at first considered as a part of Deira, or an appendage to it. Its foundation is dated in 586.49 But although Crida is named as its first sovereign, yet it was his grandson, Penda, who is represented as having first separated it from the dominion of the northern Angles. 49. WHEN We contemplate the slow progress of the Saxon conquests, and the insulated settlements of the first adventurers, we can hardly repress our surprise, that any invader should have effected a permanent residence. Hengist was engaged in hostility for almost all his life; the safety of Ella, in Sussex, was little less precarious. The forces of either were so incommensurable with the numbers and bravery of the people they attacked, that nothing seems to have saved them from expulsion or annihilation, but the civil dissensions of the natives. Fallen into a number of petty states", in actual warfare with each other, or separated by jealousy, Britain met the successive invaders with a local, not with a national force, and rarely with any combination. The selfish policy of its chiefs, often viewing with satisfaction the misfortunes of each other, facilitated the successes of the Saxon aggressions. 48 Crida was the first Mercian sovereign, and grandfather to Penda; he began to reign, 586. 3 Gale Scriptores, 229. H. Hunt. 315. 2 Leland's Collectanea, 56., 1 ib. 258. Leland, ib. i. 211., from an old chronicle, observes, that the Trent divided Mercia into two kingdoms, the north and south. 49 Nenn. Geneal. 117. 50 Tota insula, diversis regibus divisa, subjacuit. Joannes Tinmuth ap Usher, 662. IV 560. Frisians in ALTHOUGH the people, who invaded Britain, CHA P. were principally Saxons, Angles, and Jutes, yet as the Saxon confederation extended from the Baltic to the Rhine, if not to the Scheldt, we can easily England. accredit the intimations, which we occasionally meet with, that Frisians", and their neighbours were mixed with the Saxons. The Britons maintained a long, though a disorderly and ill-conducted struggle, and many fleets of victims must have been sacrificed, by their patriotic vengeance, before the several kingdoms were established. In such a succession of conflicts, the invading chiefs would gladly enlist every band of rovers, who offered; and, as in a future day, every coast of Scandinavia and the Baltic poured their warriors on England, so is it likely that, in the present period, adventurers crowded from every neighbouring district. 52 In this part of our subject we are walking over the country of the departed, whose memory has not been perpetuated by the commemorating heralds of their day. A barbarous age is unfriendly to human fame. When the clods of his hillock are scattered, or his funereal stones are thrown down, the glory of a savage perishes for ever. after-ages, fancy labours to supply the loss, but In 51 Bede, lib. v. c. 10. Procop. lib. iv. p. 467. Colinus, ap Canneg. de Britten, p. 68.; and Ubb. Emm. p. 41.; and Spener, 361. 52 So Mascou also thinks, p. 527. Some of the Icelandic writings mention northern kings, who had dominions in Britain, in the sixth and seventh centuries. If they be not entirely fabulous, they may relate to some of these expeditions. On this period we may also recollect the life of the first Offa. See Matt. Paris. Vit. Offæ. BOOK her incongruities are visible; and gain no lasting belief. III. 560. Strandfrisii. OPPOSITE to the island of Northstrand, on the western shore of Sleswick, a small tract of land, dangerous from its vicinity to a turbulent sea, was in ancient times occupied by a colony of Frisians. They extended north from Husum for several miles along the sea-coast. In the middle of the district was the town Brested, surrounded by a rich soil, though sands extended beyond. It terminated about Langhorn. The people who dwelt on it were called Strandfrisii, and the tract was denominated Frisia Minor. The marshy soil was colonised by the natives of Friesland, in an age which has not been ascertained. Saxo speaks of Canute the Fifth's journey to it, and then describes it as rich in corn and cattle, and protected from the ocean by artificial mounds. It was a complete flat; the waters sometimes were terrible to it; fields were often burst, and carried off to another spot, leaving to their owner a watery lake. Fertility followed the inundation. The people were fierce, active, disdaining heavy armour, and expert with their missile weapons. 53 It is an opinion of Usher 54, that these Frisians, accompanied Hengist into England. To convert Hengist's Jutes into the Strandfrisii Jutes is an exertion of mere conjecture. These Frisii, as well as others from Friesland, may have joined in some 53 Pontanus, Chrorograph. 657. Saxo Grammaticus, lib. xiv. p. 260. Ed. Steph. and his Prefatio, p. 3. Frisia Major was not unlike it, as a low marshy soil, much exposed to the fury of the ocean. Saxo, lib. viii. p. 167.; and Steph. notes, 16. 54 Usher, Primord, 397. of the expeditions, and this probability is all that CHAP. can be admitted. IV. 560. ments of THE various parts of Britain, into which the Saxons and their confederates spread themselves, The settlemay be stated from the Irish primate's commentary the Jutes and Angloon Bede's brief distinction, which forms the basis of all our reasonings on the subject.55 THE JUTES possessed Kent, the Isle of Wight, and that part of the coast of Hampshire which fronts it. THE SAXONS were distinguished, from their situation, into South Saxons, who peopled Sussex. East Saxons, who were in Essex, Middlesex, West Saxons, in Surrey, Hampshire (the scite THE ANGLES were divided into East Angles, in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, 55 Bede has thus placed them. The Jutes in Kent and the Isle of Wight. The Saxons in Essex, Sussex, and Wessex. The Angles, whose native country remained in his time a desart, in East Anglia, Midland Anglia, Mercia, and all Northumbria, p. 52. Alfred, in his translation of the passage, makes no addition to this information. The people of Wessex were called Ge-wisi, in Bede's time and before, lib. iii. c. 7. Saxons. |