their equal and sacred lineage from Woden, the god of war. It has
been pretended, that this republic of kings was moderated by a general
council and a supreme magistrate. But such an artificial scheme of
policy is repugnant to the rude and turbulent spirit of the Saxons:
their laws are silent; and their imperfect annals afford only a dark and
bloody prospect of intestine discord. [131]

[Footnote 130: All these tribes are expressly enumerated by Bede, (l.
i. c. 15, p. 52, l. v. c. 9, p. 190;) and though I have considered Mr.
Whitaker's remarks, (Hist. of Manchester, vol. ii. p. 538-543,) I do not
perceive the absurdity of supposing that the Frisians, &c., were mingled
with the Anglo-Saxons.]

[Footnote 1301: This term (the Heptarchy) must be rejected because an
idea is conveyed thereby which is substantially wrong. At no one period
were there ever seven kingdoms independent of each other. Palgrave, vol.
i. p. 46. Mr. Sharon Turner has the merit of having first confuted
the popular notion on this subject. Anglo-Saxon History, vol. i. p.
302.--M.]

[Footnote 131: Bede has enumerated seven kings, two Saxons, a Jute, and
four Angles, who successively acquired in the heptarchy an indefinite
supremacy of power and renown. But their reign was the effect, not of
law, but of conquest; and he observes, in similar terms, that one of
them subdued the Isles of Man and Anglesey; and that another imposed a
tribute on the Scots and Picts. (Hist. Eccles. l. ii. c. 5, p. 83.)]

A monk, who, in the profound ignorance of human life, has presumed to
exercise the office of historian, strangely disfigures the state of
Britain at the time of its separation from the Western empire. Gildas
[132] describes in florid language the improvements of agriculture,
the foreign trade which flowed with every tide into the Thames and the
Severn the solid and lofty construction of public and private edifices;
he accuses the sinful luxury of the British people; of a people,
according to the same writer, ignorant of the most simple arts, and
incapable, without the aid of the Romans, of providing walls of stone,
or weapons of iron, for the defence of their native land. [133] Under
the long dominion of the emperors, Britain had been insensibly moulded
into the elegant and servile form of a Roman province, whose safety
was intrusted to a foreign power. The subjects of Honorius contemplated
their new freedom with surprise and terror; they were left destitute o