Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/519

] it lay desolate for nearly three centuries until it was rebuilt by Æthelflaed, the Lady of the Mercians. The slaughter of the monks of Bangor may be taken as an example of the fate of the British Christians, and the sack of Chester illustrates the treatment of the British towns and cities. The conflict between the two races did not lose its deadly character until the English became converts to Christianity.

The British, as they were gradually pushed westward, took refuge in Brittany and in Ireland, and under their influence the north of Ireland became a great centre from which Christianity and civilisation spread not merely over a large part of England and Scotland, but over Scandinavia, Germany, and as far south as St. Galle. To them we owe the illuminated missals, the elaborate chalices, and the sculptured crosses in which the late Celtic designs are blended with the Germanic, introduced into Britain by the English, and into Ireland by the Danes and Norse.

The English came over to Britain not as bodies of fighting men, but with their wives and families and household stuff; and the migration was so complete that, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Angleland which they forsook was left desolate for four centuries afterwards. They effected as great a revolution in farming in Britain as in the language and whole political system, and with them appears, for the first