n clans or families. The head of the clan built a ship, and taking
with him his family and relations, founded a settlement in wild Britain,
or wherever the winds happened to carry them. They were very fierce
and relentless in war, and committed terrible ravages on the helpless
Britons, sparing neither men, women, nor children, burning buildings,
destroying and conquering wherever they went.

Bede tells the story of doings of the ruthless Saxons:--

"The barbarous conquerors ... plundered all the neighbouring cities and
country, spread the conflagration from the eastern to the western sea
without any opposition, and covered almost every part of the devoted
island. Public as well as private structures were overturned; the
priests were everywhere slain before the altars; the prelates and
the people, without any respect of persons, were destroyed with fire
and sword; nor was there any to bury those who had been thus cruelly
slaughtered. Some of the miserable remainder, being taken in the
mountains, were butchered in heaps. Others, spent with hunger, came
forth and submitted themselves to the enemy for food, being destined
to undergo perpetual servitude, if they were not killed even upon the
spot. Some, with sorrowful hearts, fled beyond the seas; others,
continuing in their own country, led a miserable life among the woods,
rocks, and mountains, with scarcely enough food to support life, and
expecting every moment to be their last."

Many antiquaries believe that the extirpation of the Britons was not so
complete as Bede asserts, and that a large number of them remained in
England in a condition of servitude. At any rate, the almost entire
extinction of the language, except as regards the names of a few rivers
and mountains, and of a few household words, seems to point to a fairly
complete expulsion of the Britons rather than to a mingling of them with
the conquering race.

What remains have we in our English villages of our Saxon forefathers,
the makers of England? In the first place we notice that many of the
names of our villages retain the memory of their founders. When the
family, or group of families, formed their settlements, they avoided the
buildings and walled towns, relics of Roman civilisation, made clearings
for themselves in the primeval forests, and established themselves in
village communities. In the names of places the suffix _ing_, meaning
_sons of_, denotes that the village was first occupied by the c