Library, p. 65, 98) I understand
that fair copies of John of Tinemouth's ample collections are preserved
in the libraries of Oxford, Lambeth, &c.]

[Footnote 151: See the mission of Wilfrid, &c., in Bede, Hist. Eccles.
l. iv. c. 13, 16, p. 155, 156, 159.]

[Footnote 152: From the concurrent testimony of Bede (l. ii. c. 1, p.
78) and William of Malmsbury, (l. iii. p. 102,) it appears, that
the Anglo-Saxons, from the first to the last age, persisted in this
unnatural practice. Their youths were publicly sold in the market of
Rome.]

[Footnote 153: According to the laws of Ina, they could not be lawfully
sold beyond the seas.]

[Footnote 154: The life of a Wallus, or Cambricus, homo, who possessed a
hyde of land, is fixed at 120 shillings, by the same laws (of Ina, tit.
xxxii. in Leg. Anglo-Saxon. p. 20) which allowed 200 shillings for a
free Saxon, 1200 for a Thane, (see likewise Leg. Anglo-Saxon. p. 71.)
We may observe, that these legislators, the West Saxons and Mercians,
continued their British conquests after they became Christians. The laws
of the four kings of Kent do not condescend to notice the existence of
any subject Britons.]

[Footnote 155: See Carte's Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 278.]

The independent Britons appear to have relapsed into the state of
original barbarism, from whence they had been imperfectly reclaimed.
Separated by their enemies from the rest of mankind, they soon became
an object of scandal and abhorrence to the Catholic world. [156]
Christianity was still professed in the mountains of Wales; but the rude
schismatics, in the form of the clerical tonsure, and in the day of the
celebration of Easter, obstinately resisted the imperious mandates
of the Roman pontiffs. The use of the Latin language was insensibly
abolished, and the Britons were deprived of the art and learning which
Italy communicated to her Saxon proselytes. In Wales and Armorica,
the Celtic tongue, the native idiom of the West, was preserved and
propagated; and the Bards, who had been the companions of the Druids,
were still protected, in the sixteenth century, by the laws of
Elizabeth. Their chief, a respectable officer of the courts of Pengwern,
or Aberfraw, or Caermarthen, accompanied the king's servants to war: the
monarchy of the Britons, which he sung in the front of battle, excited
their courage, and justified their depredations; and the songster
claimed for his legitimate prize the fairest heifer of the spoil.