hundred years the Roman sword secured order and peace without
Britain and within, and with peace and order came a wide and rapid
prosperity. Commerce sprang up in ports among which London held the
first rank; agriculture flourished till Britain became one of the
corn-exporting countries of the world; the mineral resources of the
province were explored in the tin mines of Cornwall, the lead mines of
Somerset or Northumberland, and the iron mines of the Forest of Dean.
But evils which sapped the strength of the whole empire told at last, on
the province of Britain.

Wealth 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 borderland between Italy and
the Rhone. The East Goths ruled at last in Italy itself.

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 forty 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, Hengist
and Horsa, at their head.

I