oubtful one; and even when its reduction enabled
the East Saxons to occupy the territory to which they have given their
name of Essex a line of woodland which has left its traces in Epping and
Hainault forests checked their farther advance into the island.

Though seventy years had passed since the victory of Aylesford only the
outskirts of Britain were won. The invaders were masters as yet but of
Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, and Essex. From London to St. David's Head,
from the Andredsweald to the Firth of Forth the country still remained
unconquered, and there was little in the years which followed Arthur's
triumph to herald that onset of the invaders which was soon to make
Britain England. Till now its assailants had been drawn from two only of
the three tribes whom we saw dwelling by the northern sea, from the
Saxons and the jutes. But the main work of conquest was to be done by
the third, by the tribe which bore that name of Engle or Englishmen
which was to absorb that of Saxon or Jute and to stamp itself on the
people which sprang from the union of the conquerors as on the land that
they won.

The Engle had probably been settling for years along the coast of
Northumbria and in the great district which was cut off from the rest of
Britain by the Wash and the Fens, the later East Anglia. But it was not
till the moment we have reached that the line of defences which had
hitherto held the invaders at bay was turned by their appearance in the
Humber and the Trent. This great river line led like a highway into the
heart of Britain; and civil strife seems to have broken the strength of
British resistance. But of the incidents of this final struggle we know
nothing. One part of the English force marched from the Humber over the
Yorkshire wolds to found what was called the kingdom of the Deirans.

Under the empire political power had centred in the district between the
Humber and the Roman wall; York was the capital of Roman Britain; villas
of rich land-owners studded the valley of the Ouse; and the bulk of the
garrison maintained in the island lay camped along its northern border.
But no record tells us how Yorkshire was won, or how the Engle made
themselves masters of the uplands about Lincoln. It is only by their
later settlements that we follow their march into the heart of Britain.
Seizing the valley of the Don and whatever breaks there were in the
woodland that then filled the space between the Humber and the Trent,
the