Page:1909historyofdec04gibbuoft.djvu/196

 164 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xxxviii out distinction of age or sex, were massacred 149 in the ruins of Anderida ; 150 and the repetition of such calamities was frequent and familiar under the Saxon heptarchy. The arts and re- ligion, the laws and language, which the Komans had so care- fully 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 damna- tion of the idolatrous strangers. The kings of France main- tained the privileges of their Roman subjects ; but the ferocious Saxons trampled on the laws of Borne and of the emperors. The proceedings of civil and criminal jurisdiction, the titles of honour, 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 Ger- many. The language of science, of business, and of conversa- tion, which had been introduced by the Bomans, 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 ; 151 but those illiterate Pagans preserved and established the use of their national dialect. 152 Almost every name, conspicuous either in the church or state, reveals its 149 Hoc anno (490) Mils, et Cissa obsederunt Andredes-Ceaster ; et interfecerunt omnes qui id incoluerunt ; adeo ut ne unus Brito ibi superstes fuerit (Cbron. Saxon. p. 15), an expression more dreadful in its simplicity tban all the vague and tedious lamentations of the British Jeremiah. 150 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. [The fort of Anderida was at Pevensey on the Sussex coast. Cp. Haverfield's map of Boinan Britain, in Poole's Historical Atlas of Modern Europe.] 151 Dr. Johnson affirms that/ew 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. 152 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 Teu- tonic root (Bede, 1. i. c. 25, p. 60).