Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/275

Rh ENGLAND PART II. HISTORY. ENGLAND, the land of the Angles or English, is, according to its etymology, the distinctive name of that part of Britain in which, by reason of the Teutonic conquests in the fifth and sixth centuries, the Teutonic race and speech became dominant. The name is in itself equally applicable to the older home of the Angles in Germany ; but, though cognate forms, as Angdn, are to be found there, the exact forms Anr/ha or fJufjtand do not seem to have beeniu use. As applied to later settlements of Englishmen, settlements made by men starting from Britain, it is used with direct and conscious reference to the elder England. New England implies Old England. The name is thus etymolo- gically applicable to English settlements anywhere; histori cally it belongs to the great English settlement in Britain. And, in its use for many ages past, it has not taken in the whole of that part of Britain which is historically English. Part of northern England was at an early time detached from the English kingdom to form part of Scotland. And agiin, from the p.lrt of England so detached, the English tongue, and much of English blood, has further spread over part of the proper Scotland. In modern usage then England means somewhat less than the land which is marked out by its strict etymology. It does not mean the whole of the Teutonic part of Britain, but only that part of it which has formed the kingdom of England since the present line between England and Scotland was drawn. But in any case it should be remembered that the name is a purely political mme. Britain is a certain part of the earth s surface, with unchangeable physical boundaries. England, Scotland, Wales, are political names of parts of Britain, which have had different meanings at different times, accord ing as the part of Britain to which they have been applied has been larger or smaller. It is also to be remembered that these political names are comparatively modern. England, for instance, is not heard of by that name till late iu the tenth century. In fact it hardly could have been a formal title, used in the country itself, till the many English settlements in Britain had become one kingdom. It is not, a^ we shall see, the oldest name for the Teutonic part of Britain. But a* the various English kingdoms were fused into one, England became and remained the name of that one. England then is that part of Britain which came and ruin lined under the direct rule of the king of the English. It thus excludes Scotland, meaning by Scotland, as by England, a greater and a smaller space at different times. It also in strictness excludes Wales. Legal phraseology is not quite consistent on this head; but the more accurate description of South Britain is &quot;England and Wales,&quot; rather than &quot; England &quot; only. Wales, first under its own princes, then under the English kings, was long a depend- ency of England rather than a part of England ; and its complete political incorporation with England has not alto gether destroyed its separate character. England then is the name which certain historical events caused to be applied to a part of the isle of Britain. The history of England therefore strictly begins with the begin ning of those events which caused part of Britain to become England. The history of England has no concern with the earlier history of Britain, except so far as is needed to make the working of those causes intelligible. Nor need it dwell on the earlier history of the English before they came into Britain further than is needed for the same end. The history of England begins when the English first settled in Britain. But, in order to understand this settlement, some account must be given of the earlier condition both of the settlers themselves and of the land in which they settled. Britain in the fifth century, the time of the settlement which gave to so large a part of the island the name of England, was in a state unlike any other part of the world. The greater part of the island, all that is now called England and Wales, with a considerable part of what is now called Scotland, had formed a Roman province, but had been cut off from the empire by the act of the imperial power itself. As the Roman legions had been a hundred and thirty years earlier withdrawn from Daciaby Aurelian, so they were in the early years of the fifth century with drawn from Britain by Honorius. The Teutonic invaders therefore found in Britain, what they did not find in Gaul or Spain, an independent people, who doubtless kept many memories and fruits of their long subjection to Rome, but who had ceased to be actual Roman subjects. The people whom the English found in the possession of this, restored and somewhat precarious independence were the Celtic people of the Britons. It is not here needful to determine certain curious points of controversy, how far the purely Celtic character of the inhabitants of Britain had been modified by intermixture, either with races earlier than their own settlement or with Teutonic or other settlers during the time of Roman dominion. All the probabilities of the case would certainly go against the belief that the Celts found the isle of Britain wholly uninhabited. That they were the first Aryan settlers there can be no reasonable doubt ; but, even in the absence of any kind of evidence, we should expect that the first Aryan settleis would, in Britain as elsewhere, find earlier non-Aryan settlers in possession of the land. One set of inquirers have made it highly probable that the cromlechs and other primaeval remains, which used to be vaguely called Druidical, are really the works of a race of inhabitants earlier than the Celts. Another set of inquirers have, from the physio logical point of view, brought plausible arguments to show, not only that such an earlier non- Aryan population existed, but that it actually forms a perceptible element in the present population of South Britain. It has been argued that a large part of the population of the border shires of England and Wales is in truth neither English nor British, but conies of a non-Aryan stock akin to the Basques of Gaul and Spain. So, on the other hand, it has been argued that a part of the eastern coast of Britain had received Teutonic inhabitants earlier than the conquest of Britain by the Romans. It has been argued too, and in this case argued with undoubted certainty, that, under the Roman occupation, soldiers and other subjects and allies of the empire of various races, the Teutonic race among others, settled in the Roman province of Britain, and helped to form a part of its inhabitants. But, if all these doctrines are admitted in their fullest extent, they in no way affect the political history of England. They simply prove that the British people whom the English found in possession of the isle of Britain had, like all other nations in all other times and places, had the purity of their blood more or less affected by foreign intermixture. They in nowise affect the fact that the English invaders found in this island a people who, for all practical and historical purposes, must be looked upon as Celtic, a people in whom the dominant blood, and the dominant national being, was undoubtedly Celtic. In the eye of general history they must be looked on, as they were in the eyes of their English conquerors themselves, as Britons. They were Britons;, modified no doubt in every respect by their long subjection to Rome, but still essentially a British, that is, a Celtic people. And it is further clear Britain in tbe fifth cen tury. The Britous. Questioo of earlier inhabit ants.