ands at the
mouth of the Elbe, or off the shore afterwards submerged in what is now
the Zuyder Zee, the English or Saxon pirates crossed the sea with the
prevalent north-east wind, and landed all along the provincial coasts of
Gaul and Britain. As the empire decayed under the assaults of the Goths,
their ravages turned into regular settlements. One great body pillaged,
age after age, the neighbourhood of Bayeux, where, before the middle of
the fifth century, it established a flourishing colony, and where the
towns and villages all still bear names of Saxon origin. Another horde
first plundered and then took up its abode near Boulogne, where local
names of the English patronymic type also abound to the present day. In
Britain itself, at a date not later than the end of the fourth century,
we find (in the "Notitia Imperil") an officer who bears the title of
Count of the Saxon Shore, and whose jurisdiction extended from
Lincolnshire to Southampton Water. The title probably indicates that
piratical incursions had already set in on Britain, and the duty of the
count was most likely that of repelling the English invaders.

As soon as the Romans found themselves compelled to withdraw their
garrison from Britain, leaving the provinces to defend themselves as
best they might, the temptation to the English pirates became a thousand
times stronger than before. Though the so-called history of the
conquest, handed down to us by Baeda and the "English Chronicle,"[1] is
now considered by many enquirers to be mythical in almost every
particular, the facts themselves speak out for us with unhesitating
certainty. We know that about the middle of the fifth century, shortly
after the withdrawal of the regular Roman troops, several bodies of
heathen Anglo-Saxons, belonging to the three tribes of Jutes, English,
and Saxons, settled _en masse_ on the south-eastern shores of Britain,
from the Firth of Forth to the Isle of Wight. The age of mere plundering
descents was decisively over, and the age of settlement and colonisation
had set in. These heathen Anglo-Saxons drove away, exterminated, or
enslaved the Romanised and Christianised Celts, broke down every vestige
of Roman civilisation, destroyed the churches, burnt the villas, laid
waste many of the towns, and re-introduced a long period of pagan
barbarism. For a while Britain remains enveloped in an age of complete
uncertainty, and heathen myths intervene between the Christian
historical pe