ck upon those of the Welsh. It
may be well, therefore, to enquire what changes of manners had come over
them in consequence of their change of place from the shores of the
Baltic and the North Sea to those of the Channel and the German Ocean.

As a whole, English society remained much the same in Britain as it had
been in Sleswick and North Holland. The English came over in a body,
with their women and children, their flocks and herds, their goods and
chattels. The peculiar breed of cattle which they brought with them may
still be distinguished in their remains from the earlier Celtic
short-horn associated with Roman ruins and pre-historic barrows. They
came as settlers, not as mere marauders; and they remained banded
together in their original tribes and families after they had occupied
the soil of Britain.

From the moment of their landing in Britain the savage corsairs of the
Sleswick flats seem wholly to have laid aside their seafaring habits.
They built no more ships, apparently; for many years after Bishop
Wilfrith had to teach the South Saxons how to catch sea-fish; while
during the early Danish incursions we hear distinctly that the English
had no vessels; nor is there much incidental mention of shipping between
the age of the settlement and that of AElfred. The new-comers took up
their abode at once on the richest parts of Roman Britain, and came into
full enjoyment of orchards which they had not planted and fields which
they had not sown. The state of cultivation in which they found the vale
of York and the Kentish glens must have been widely different from that
to which they were accustomed in their old heath-clad home. Accordingly,
they settled down at once into farmers and landowners on a far larger
scale than of yore; and they were not anxious to move away from the rich
lands which they had so easily acquired. From being sailors and graziers
they took to be agriculturists and landmen. In the towns, indeed, they
did not settle; and most of these continued to bear their old Roman or
Celtic titles. A few may have been destroyed, especially in the first
onset, like Anderida, and, at a later date, Chester; but the greater
number seem to have been still scantily inhabited, under English
protection, by a mixed urban population, mainly Celtic in blood, and
known by the name of Loegrians. It was in the country, however, that the
English conquerers took up their abode. They were tillers of the soil,
not merchants o