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 antiquaries, and certainly unconnected with Roman Britain (see ). Instead, we may distinguish four main groups of roads radiating from London, and a fifth which runs obliquely. One road ran south-east to Canterbury and the Kentish ports, of which Richborough (Rutupiae) was the most frequented. A second ran west to Silchester, and thence by various branches to Winchester, Exeter, Bath, Gloucester and South Wales. A third, known afterwards to the English as Watling Street, ran by St Albans Wall near Lichfield (Letocetum), to Wroxeter and Chester. It also gave access by a branch to Leicester and Lincoln. A fourth served Colchester, the eastern counties, Lincoln and York. The fifth is that known to the English as the Fosse, which joins Lincoln and Leicester with Cirencester, Bath and Exeter. Besides these five groups, an obscure road, called by the Saxons Akeman Street, gave alternative access from London through Alchester (outside of Bicester) to Bath, while another obscure road winds south from near Sheffield, past Derby and Birmingham, and connects the lower Severn with the Humber. By these roads and their various branches the Romans provided adequate communications throughout the lowlands of Britain.

IV. The End of Roman Britain.—Early in the 4th century it was necessary to establish a special coast defence, reaching from the Wash to Spithead, against Saxon pirates: there were forts at Brancaster, Borough Castle (near Yarmouth), Bradwell (at the mouth of the Colne and Blackwater), Reculver, Richborough, Dover and Lymme (all in Kent), Pevensey in Sussex, Porchester near Portsmouth, and perhaps also at Felixstowe in Suffolk. After about 350, barbarian assaults, not only of Saxons but also of Irish (Scoti) and Picts, became commoner and more terrible. At the end of the century Magnus Maximus, claiming to be emperor, withdrew many troops from Britain and a later pretender did the same. Early in the 5th century the Teutonic conquest of Gaul cut the island off from Rome. This does not mean that there was any great “departure of Romans.” The central government simply ceased to send the usual governors and high officers. The Romano-British were left to themselves. Their position was weak. Their fortresses lay in the north and west, while the Saxons attacked the east and south. Their trained troops, and even their own numbers, must have been few. It is intelligible that they followed a precedent set by Rome in that age, and hired Saxons to repel Saxons. But they could not command the fidelity of their mercenaries, and the Saxon peril only grew greater. It would seem as if the Romano-Britons were speedily driven from the east of the island. Even Wroxeter on the Welsh border may have been finally destroyed before the end of the 5th century. It seems that the Saxons though apparently unable to maintain their hold so far to the west, were able to prevent the natives from recovering the lowlands. Thus driven from the centres of Romanized life, from the region of walled cities and civilized houses, into the hills of Wales and the north-west, the provincials underwent an intelligible change. The Celtic element, never quite extinct in those hills and, like most forms of barbarism, reasserting itself in this wild age—not without reinforcement from Ireland—challenged the remnants of Roman civilization and in the end absorbed them. The Celtic language reappeared; the Celtic art emerged from its shelters in the west to develop in new and medieval fashions.

 

1. History.—The history of Britain after the withdrawal of the Roman troops is extremely obscure, but there can be little doubt that for many years the inhabitants of the provinces were exposed to devastating raids by the Picts and Scots. According to Gildas it was for protection against these incursions that the Britons decided to call in the Saxons. Their allies soon obtained a decisive victory; but subsequently they turned their arms against the Britons themselves, alleging that they had not received sufficient payment for their services. A somewhat different account, probably of English origin, may be traced in the Historia Brittonum, according to which the first leaders of the Saxons, Hengest and Horsa, came as exiles, seeking the protection of the British king, Vortigern. Having embraced his service they quickly succeeded in expelling the northern invaders. Eventually, however, they overcame the Britons through treachery, by inducing the king to allow them to send for large bodies of their own countrymen. It was to these adventurers, according to tradition, that the kingdom of Kent owed its origin. The story is in itself by no means improbable, while the dates assigned to the first invasion by various Welsh, Gaulish and English authorities, with one exception all fall within about a quarter of a century, viz. between the year 428 and the joint reign of Martian and Valentinian III. (450–455).

For the subsequent course of the invasion our information is of the most meagre and unsatisfactory character. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle the kingdom of Sussex was founded by a certain Ella or Ælle, who landed in 477, while Wessex owed its origin to Cerdic, who arrived some eighteen years later. No value, however, can be attached to these dates; indeed, in the latter case the story itself is open to suspicion on several grounds (see ). For the movements which led to the foundation of the more northern kingdoms we have no evidence worth consideration, nor do we know even approximately when they took place. But the view that the invasion was effected throughout by small bodies of adventurers acting independently of one another, and that each of the various kingdoms owes its origin to a separate enterprise, has little probability in its favour. Bede states that the invaders belonged to three different nations, Kent and southern Hampshire being occupied by (q.v.), while Essex, Sussex and Wessex were founded by the Saxons, and the remaining kingdoms by the  (q.v.). The peculiarities of social organization in Kent certainly tend to show that this kingdom had a different origin from the rest; but the evidence for the distinction between the Saxons and the Angli is of a much less satisfactory character (see ). 