Hengist and Horsa's warriors were not Saxons, but members of the tribe
of the Jutes, who dwelt north of the Saxons in the Danish peninsula,
where a land of moors and lakes still bears the name of Jutland. But
the next band of invaders who seized on part of Britain were of Saxon
blood. An "alderman" or chief called Aella brought his war-band to the
southern shore of Britain in 477, and landed near the great fortress of
Anderida (Pevensey), one of the strongholds that had, in old days, been
under the care of the Roman "count of the Saxon shore." The followers
of Aella sacked this town, and slew off every living thing that was
therein. They went on to conquer the narrow slip of land between the
sea and the forest of the Weald, as far as Chichester and Selsea, and
made the chalky downs their own. Settling down thereon, they called
themselves the South Saxons, and the district got from them the name
of Sussex (Suth Seaxe). There Aella reigned as king, and many of his
obscure descendants after him.
[Sidenote: =Cerdic, 495.--Kingdom of the West Saxons.=]
Twenty years later, another band of Saxon adventurers, led by the
alderman Cerdic, landed on Southampton Water, west of the realm
of Aella (495), and, after a hard fight with the Britons, won the
valleys of the Itchen and the Test with the old Roman town of Venta
(Winchester). Many years after his first landing, Cerdic took the title
of king, like his neighbours of Kent and Sussex, and his realm became
known as the land of the West Saxons (Wessex). Gradually pushing onward
along the ridges of the downs, successive generations of the kings of
Wessex drove the Britons out of Dorsetshire and Wiltshire till the
line of conquest stopped at the forest-belt which lay east of Bath.
Here the advance stood still for a time, for the British kings of the
Damnonians, the tribes of Devon and Cornwall, made a most obstinate
defence. So gallant was it that the Celts of a later generation
believed that the legendary hero of their race, the great King Arthur,
had headed the hosts of Damnonia in person, and placed his city of
Camelot and his grave at Avilion within the compass of the western
realm.
[Sidenote: =Kingdom of the East Saxons.=]
While Cerdic was winning the downs of Hampshire for himself, another
band of Saxon warriors had landed on the northern shore of the Thames,
and subdued the low-lying country between the old Roman towns of
Camulodunum and Londinium, from the Colne as far as the Stour. This
troop of adventurers took the name of the East Saxons, and were the
last of their race to gain a footing on the British shores.
[Sidenote: =Kingdom of East Anglia, 520.=]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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