rs secured themselves in their new possessions in a far more
efficacious manner than by force of arms.

The Britons remained under the yoke of Rome until A.D. 418, when the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that "This year the Romans collected all
the hoards of gold that were in Britain; and some they hid in the earth,
so that no man afterwards might find them, and some they carried away with
them into Gaul," and in A.D. 435 we find the record that "This year the
Goths sacked the city of Rome and never since have the Romans reigned in
Britain." The Brigantes were thus once more free to work out their own
destiny, but the decay of their military prowess which had taken place
during the Roman occupation made them an easy prey to the daring Saxon
pirates who, even before the Romans finally left England, are believed to
have established themselves in scattered bodies on some parts of the
coast. The incursions of these warlike peoples belong to the Saxon era
described in the next chapter.

CHAPTER VI

_The Forest and Vale in Saxon Times_

A.D. 418 to 1066

There seems little doubt that the British remained a barbarous people
throughout the four centuries of their contact with Roman influences, for
had they progressed in this period they would have understood in some
measure the great system by which the Imperial power had held the island
with a few legions and a small class of residential officials. Having
failed to absorb the new military methods, when left to themselves, there
was no unifying idea among the Britons, and they seem to have merely
reverted to some form of their old tribal organisation. The British cities
constituted themselves into a group of independent states generally at war
with one another, but sometimes united under the pressure of some external
danger. Under such circumstances they would select some chieftain whose
period of ascendency could be measured only by the continuance of the
danger.

From Bede's writings we find that the Scots from the west and the Picts
from the north continually harassed the Britons despite occasional help
from Rome, and despite the wall they built across the north of England. In
these straits the British invited help from the Angles and Saxons, who
soon engaged the northern tribesmen and defeated them. The feebleness of
the Britons having become well known among the continental peoples, the
Angles, Saxons and Jutes began to steadily swarm across the North Sea in
p