rminare_ then bore its etymological sense of
expatriation or expulsion, if not merely of confiscation,
while it certainly did not imply the idea of slaughter,
connoted by the modern word.

The English Chronicle, our third authority, was first compiled at the
court of AElfred, four and a-half centuries after the Conquest; and so
its value as original testimony is very slight. Its earlier portions are
mainly condensed from Baeda; but it contains a few fragments of
traditional information from some other unknown sources. These
fragments, however, refer chiefly to Kent, Sussex, and the older parts
of Wessex, where we have reason to believe that the Teutonic
colonisation was exceptionally thorough; and they tell us nothing about
Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and East Anglia, where we find at the present
day so large a proportion of the population possessing an unmistakably
Celtic physique. The Chronicle undoubtedly describes the conflict in the
south as sharp and bloody; and in spite of the mythical character of the
names and events, it is probable that in this respect it rightly
preserves the popular memory of the conquest, and its general nature. In
Kent, "the Welsh fled the English like fire;" and Hengest and AEsc, in a
single battle, slew 4,000 men. In Sussex, AElle and Cissa killed or drove
out the natives in the western rapes on their first landing, and
afterwards massacred every Briton at Anderida. In Wessex, in the first
struggle, "Cerdic and Cynric offslew a British king whose name was
Natanleod, and 5,000 men with him." And so the dismal annals of rapine
and slaughter run on from year to year, with simple, unquestioning
conciseness, showing us, at least, the manner in which the later
English believed their forefathers had acquired the land. Moreover,
these frightful details accord well enough with the vague generalities
of Gildas, from which, however, they may very possibly have been
manufactured. Yet even the Chronicle nowhere speaks of absolute
extermination: that idea has been wholly read into its words, not
directly inferred from them. A great deal has been made of the massacre
at Pevensey; but we hear nothing of similar massacres at the great Roman
cities--at London, at York, at Verulam, at Bath, at Cirencester, which
would surely have attracted more attention than a small outlying
fortress like Anderida. Even the Teutonic champions themselves admit
that some, at least, of the Celts were incorporated