rigin. But many Saxon chiefs
of undoubted reality rested their pretensions upon a similar genealogy.
The myth was as flattering to the Anglo-Saxon pride of descent as the
corresponding myth that the ancient inhabitants of the island were
descended from the Trojan Brute was acceptable to the British race. But
amid much of fable there is the undoubted fact that Germanic tribes were
gradually possessing themselves of the fairest parts of Britain--a
progressive usurpation, far different from a sudden conquest. Amid the
wreck of the social institutions left by Rome, when all that remained of
a governing power was centred in the towns, it may be readily conceived
that the rich districts of the eastern and southern coasts would be
eagerly peopled by new settlers, whose bond of society was founded upon
the occupation of the land; and who, extending the area of their
occupation, would eventually come into hostile conflict with the
previous possessors.

For a century and a half a thick darkness seems to overspread the
history of our country. In the Anglo-Saxon writers we can trace little,
with any distinctness, beyond the brief and monotonous records of
victories and slaughters. Hengist and AEsc slew four troops of Britons
with the edge of the sword. Hengist then vanishes, and AElla comes with
his three sons. In 491 they besieged Andres-cester, "and slew all that
dwelt therein, so that not a single Briton was there left." Then come
Cerdic and Cynric his son; then Port and his two sons, and land at
Portsmouth; and so we reach the sixth century. Cerdic and Cynric now
stand foremost among the slaughterers, and they establish the kingdom of
the West Saxons and conquer the Isle of Wight.

In the middle of the century Ida begins to reign, from whom arose the
royal race of North-humbria. In 565 Ethelbert succeeded to the kingdom
of the Kentish-men, and held it fifty-three years. The war goes on in
the south-midland counties, where Cuthwulf is fighting; and it reaches
the districts of the Severn, where Cuthwine and Ceawlin slay great
kings, and take Gloucester and Cirencester and Bath. One of these fierce
brethren is killed at last, and Ceawlin, "having taken many spoils and
towns innumerable, wrathful returned to his own." Where "his own" was we
are not informed.

We reach, at length, the year 596, when "Pope Gregory sent Augustin to
Britain, with a great many monks, who preached the word of God to the
nation of the Angles." Bede ver