and population alike declined under a
crushing system of taxation, under restrictions which fettered industry,
under a despotism which crushed out all local independence. And with
decay within came danger from without. For centuries past the Roman
frontier had held back the barbaric world beyond it, the Parthian of the
Euphrates, the Numidian of the African desert, the German of the Danube
or the Rhine. In Britain a wall drawn from Newcastle to Carlisle bridled
the British tribes, the Picts as they were called, who had been sheltered
from Roman conquest by the fastnesses of the Highlands. It was this mass
of savage barbarism which broke upon the Empire as it sank into decay. In
its western dominions the triumph of these assailants was complete. The
Franks conquered and colonized Gaul. The West-Goths conquered and
colonized Spain. The Vandals founded a kingdom in Africa. The Burgundians
encamped in the border-land between Italy and the Rhone. The East-Goths
ruled at last in Italy itself.

[Sidenote: Conquests of Jute and Saxon]

It was to defend Italy against the Goths that Rome in the opening of the
fifth century withdrew her legions from Britain, and from that moment the
province was left to struggle unaided against the Picts. Nor were these
its only enemies. While marauders from Ireland, whose inhabitants then
bore the name of Scots, harried the west, the boats of Saxon pirates, as
we have seen, were swarming off its eastern and southern coasts. For some
thirty years Britain held bravely out against these assailants; but civil
strife broke its powers of resistance, and its rulers fell back at last
on the fatal policy by which the Empire invited its doom while striving
to avert it, the policy of matching barbarian against barbarian. By the
usual promises of land and pay a band of warriors was drawn for this
purpose from Jutland in 449 with two ealdormen, Hengest and Horsa, at
their head. If by English history we mean the history of Englishmen in
the land which from that time they made their own, it is with this
landing of Hengest's war-band that English history begins. They landed on
the shores of the Isle of Thanet at a spot known since as Ebbsfleet. No
spot can be so sacred to Englishmen as the spot which first felt the
tread of English feet. There is little to catch the eye in Ebbsfleet
itself, a mere lift of ground with a few grey cottages dotted over it,
cut off nowadays from the sea by a reclaimed meadow and a s