Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/329

Charles Dickens] for the British charioteers. The Romans undoubtedly conquered the country—finding the conquest not at all an easy one—and held it with varying fortune, for four hundred and sixty-five years. During all this time they made no attempt to exterminate or seriously oppress the people, as the Americans have done with the Red Indians within the last three centuries, there being no antipathy of race between the conquerors and the conquered, such as is found between white men and negroes, and the aborigines of America, Australia, and New Zealand.

On the departure of the Romans, the Britons were not only a numerous, but a highly civilised people—as civilisation was considered in that age—and powerful enough, if they could only have managed to agree among themselves, to assert and maintain their independence. But they did not agree; and the result was that they fell a prey to the Saxon invaders, whom one of their princes foolishly invited to take part in their internal commotions. All this is well known. But here a question arises to which the answer is not so clear. Did the Saxons, and after them the Danes, gain such a mastery over the aboriginal Britons as to exterminate the greater portion of them, and drive the small remainder into the mountain fastnesses of Wales. to the remote extremities of Cornwall, and across the Forth to the other side of the then formidable Grampians, that not even the Romans had ventured to cross in their career of conquest? The answer to this question has hitherto been in the affirmative. The ancient historians, and after them the modern school histories, have agreed in accepting this view of the case, and while admitting the English to be a mixed race—more mixed perhaps than any other European people—they have uniformly insisted that at the time of the conquest of England by the Normans, the English people were Anglo-Saxons, with a slight admixture of Danes and other Scandinavians, and that the Cymri, and Celts, were nowhere to be found within the limits of the now United Kingdom, except in Cornwall, Wales, the Isle of Man, Ireland, and the Highlands of Scotland. Dr. Nicholas asserts that this historical statement is untrue, and not only untrue but incredible, that the great majority of the English people at the time of the Conquest were Celts: that the Norman invaders were themselves Celts—recruited to a great extent in Armorica, now called Britany—and that this invasion, as far as numbers went, was a consequent augmentation of the Celtic element in what is now the great and conquering British race: a race that happily, at an early period of its history, adopted the Saxon, or Anglo-Saxon language, in all parts of the island where the Celts did not keep wholly aloof from the invaders, as in Wales, the Isle of Man, and the mountains of Scotland.

The first and only original authority for the commonly received statement, which Dr. Nicholas undertakes to refute, is Gildas. Who is Gildas? He was monk, born in England in or about the year 514. His name or designation implies that he was a Celt, and is derived apparently from gille or gil, a child, and daorsa, captivity or bondage. He went to Armorica, or Britany, in 550, and at some time during the ten subsequent years wrote his book called De Excidio Britanniæ, in which he told the melancholy story of the degeneracy, conquest, flight, and extermination of the Ancient Britons. He declares that the Britons, reduced to a "wretched remnant," sent their "groans" to the Roman Consul Aëtius, imploring his aid against the Scots and Picts (who, it should be remembered, were Celts as well as they), stating "that the barbarians drove them to the sea, and that the sea drove them back to the barbarians; that these two modes of death awaited them; that they were either slain or drowned." He adds, "that the Romans, affording them no aid, their councillors agreed with that proud tyrant Furthrigern (Vortigern) to invite the fierce and impious Saxons—a race hateful to God and man. Nothing was ever so pernicious to our country A multitude of whelps came forth from the lair of the barbaric lioness. They first landed on the east shore of the island, and there fixed their sharp talons Some of the miserable remnant (of the Britons), being taken in the mountains, were murdered in great numbers; others, constrained by famine, came and yielded themselves to be slaves for ever to their foes; others passed beyond the seas with loud lamentations." This very melancholy story was copied from Gildas a century afterwards, by the venerable Bede, and three centuries afterwards by Nennius, and thence found its way, unquestioned, into the ordinary histories of England. Dr. Nicholas expresses the greatest contempt for Gildas as an authority—asserts that there were three or four persons of the name, and that he cannot distinguish which was which; but allowing, for the sake of argument, that he was an authentic person, and the author of the Excidium, he asks how far he is to be considered an adequate authority for the statements he makes? By no means mistrusting his own judgment in the matter, he nevertheless, like a prudent man, supports his conclusions by those of other writers, and notably by those of Gibbon, and of Mr. Thomas Duffus Hardy, the highest living authority on the subject of early English history. Gibbon, speaking of Gildas, describes him as a monk, who, in profound ignorance of human life, had presumed to exercise the office of historian, and had strangely disfigured the state of Britain at the time of its separation from the Roman Empire. Mr. Hardy proclaims the narrative of Gildas to be "meagre," and "involved in a multitude of words;" says that he has but an "indistinct acquaintance" with the events he describes; that he is confused and declamatory; that his statements, except in very few instances, cannot be traced to any known source; and that when he comes to his own time he is, if possible, more obscure than when he discusses bygone ages. As regards his authorities, Gildas himself confesses "that he wrote more from foreign relations, than from written evidences pertaining to his own country."