originally equivalent to Angle, whilst
amongst the whole of the remaining Celtic population they were only
known as Saxons. The mode in which the English treated the Britons was
very different from that of the Romans, who were a civilised people
and aimed at governing a conquered race. The new-comers drove out the
Britons in order to find homes for themselves, and they preferred to
settle in the country rather than in a town. No Englishman had ever
lived in a town in his German home, or was able to appreciate the
advantages of the commerce and manufacture by which towns are
supported. Nor were they inclined to allow the inhabitants of the
Roman towns to remain unmolested in their midst. When Anderida was
captured not a Briton escaped alive, and there is good reason to
believe that many of the other towns fared no better, especially as
the remains of some of them still show marks of the fire by which they
were consumed. What took place in the country cannot be certainly
known. Many of the British were no doubt killed. Many took refuge in
fens or woods, or fled to those portions of the island in which their
countrymen were still independent. It is difficult to decide to what
extent the men who remained behind were spared, but it is impossible
to doubt that a considerable number of women were preserved from
slaughter. The conquerors, at their landing, must have been for the
most part young men, and when they wanted wives, it would be far
easier for them to seize the daughters of slain Britons than to fetch
women from the banks of the Elbe.

8. =The Cultivators of the Soil.=--When the new-comers planted
themselves on British soil, each group of families united by kinship
fixed its home in a separate village or township, to which was given
the name of the kindred followed by 'ham' or 'tun,' the first word
meaning the home or dwelling, the second the earthen mound which
formed the defence of the community. Thus Wokingham is the home of the
Wokings, and Wellington the 'tun' of the Wellings. Each man had a
homestead of his own, with a strip or strips of arable land in an open
field. Beyond the arable land was pasture and wood, common to the
whole township, every villager being entitled to drive his cattle or
pigs into them according to rules laid down by the whole township.

9. =Eorls, Ceorls, Gesiths.=--The population was divided into Eorls
and Ceorls. The Eorl was hereditarily distinguished by birth, and the
Ceorl was a sim