Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/424

 "Haec est in gremium victos quae sola recepit, Humanumque genus communi nomine fovit Matris non Dominae ritu, civesque vocavit Quos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit."

Alone her captives to her heart she pressed, Gave to the human race one common name, And—mother more than sovereign—fondly called Each son though far away her citizen.

W. F. R.

The whole country soon became a prey to the freebooters who crossed the North Sea in search of plunder. Of these, the Saxons under Cedric besieged Lincoln about 497 and, the Angles from the Elbe joining with them, made a strong settlement there which became the capital of Mercia and received a Saxon king. To these invaders, who came as plunderers but remained as colonists, we also owe much. In east Lincolnshire they certainly fostered agriculture, and like the Romans made salt-pans for getting the salt from sea water by evaporation.

The Saxons dominated the country for about the same time as the Romans, and were then themselves ousted with much cruelty and bloodshed by the Danes or Norsemen. But during their time Christianity had been introduced at the instance of Pope Gregory I., who sent Augustine and forty monks to Britain at the end of the sixth century to convert the Anglo-Saxons, and as Bertha, wife of Æthelbert, King of Kent, was a Christian, he met with considerable success, and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury. He was followed early in the seventh century by Paulinus, who came from York and built the first stone church at Lincoln. When, a hundred and fifty years later, the Danes made their appearance they found in several places monasteries and cathedrals or churches which they ruthlessly pillaged and destroyed; and they too, having come for plunder, remained as indwellers, settling in the eastern counties, not only near the coast but far inland, just as the Norsemen settled and introduced industrial arts on the west coast in Cumberland. Dane and Saxon struggled long and fiercely, the Danes being beaten in Alfred's great battle at Ethandune in Wilts, 878, but only to return in Edmund's reign and defeat the Saxons at Assandun in Essex under King Canute, 1016, after which, by agreement, they divided the country with Edmund Ironsides, and withdrew from Wessex, the region south