Anglo-Saxons; Great Britain -- History -- Anglo-Saxon period, 449-1066
In the cities, indeed, it would seem that the Britons remained in great
numbers. The Welsh bards complain that the urban race of Romanised
natives known as Loegrians, "became as Saxons." Mr. Kemble has shown
that the English did not by any means always massacre the inhabitants of
the cities. Mr. Freeman observes, "It is probable that within the
[English] frontier there still were Roman towns tributary to the
conquerors rather than occupied by them;" and Canon Stubbs himself
remarks, that "in some of the cities there were probably elements of
continuous life: London, the mart of the merchants, York, the capital of
the north, and some others, have a continuous political existence."
"Wherever the cities were spared," he adds, "a portion, at least, of the
city population must have continued also. In the country, too,
especially towards the west and the debateable border, great numbers of
Britons may have survived in a servile or half-servile condition." But
we must remember that in only two cases, Anderida and Chester, do we
actually hear of massacres; in all the other towns, Bæda and the
Chronicle tell us nothing about them. It is a significant fact that
Sussex, the one kingdom in which we hear of a complete annihilation, is
the very one where the Teutonic type of physique still remains the
purest. But there are nowhere any traces of English clan nomenclature in
any of the cities. They all retain their Celtic or Roman names. At
Cambridge itself, in the heart of the true English country, the charter
of the thegn's guild, a late document, mentions a special distinction of
penalties for killing a Welshman, "if the slain be a ceorl, 2 ores, if
he be a Welshman, one ore." "The large Romanised towns," says Professor
Rolleston, "no doubt made terms with the Saxons, who abhorred city
life, and would probably be content to leave the unwarlike burghers in a
condition of heavily-taxed submissiveness."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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