In the two succeeding centuries, which were to elapse before the country definitely inclined to become English, an intensely Celtic feeling, embodied in the legends of King Arthur and wholly opposed to Roman ideas, had time to spring up. Judged by their ornament, it is to this period that most of the bronze enamelled arms and trappings in the British Museum belong. The golden corselet found in a barrow in Flint, together with many traditions of the finding of golden armour, such as the helmet of pure gold set with gems found in a bronze vase and presented to Katharine of Arragon, suggest the idea that serviceable qualities became sacrificed to a love of display. At this time it is said the Britons, in obsolete and fantastic panoply, bore an evil reputation, as being vain and fruitful in menaces, but slow and little to be feared in action. Their frightfully demoralised state, if not greatly overdrawn by Gildas, called for a day of reckoning and the condign, almost exterminating, punishment which overtook them. The agents destined to execute the vengeance of Providence were the Frisian pirates, the scourge of the Channel, who had with difficulty been kept in awe by the most powerful Roman fleets. The country, left to the divided rule of clergy, nobles, and municipalities, and described as "glittering with the multitude of cities built by the Romans," presented a tempting and easy prey to these professors of rapine. They were Teutons, who relied mainly on the Fram or spear-like javelin, as when Tacitus described them, and still carried the round gaudily-painted buckler, though then strengthened with an iron umbo and rim. Their weapons had been perfected in a long series of grim experiences in actual war, and they had added to their equipment a sword and dagger, and some kind of simple headpiece. That they had adopted any complete defence of plate-armour in the Roman fashion is improbable, but they were apparently entirely unacquainted with chain-mail. In the history of armour in Britain this period, taken as a whole, can only be regarded as a very primitive age of plate. To be an efficient protection plate-armour must, however, be of an intolerable weight, at least to men on foot, making celerity of movement impossible. We cannot close the chapter better than by instancing the dreadful fate of the Æduan Crupellarians, related by Tacitus, who clothed themselves in unwieldy iron plate, impenetrable to sword and javelin. Though the main army was overthrown, these kept their ranks as if rooted to the ground, until, fallen upon with hatchets and pickaxes, armour and men were crushed together and left on the ground an inanimate mass. This lesson was not forgotten by the nations of Europe who fought on foot with Rome, and no such use of body-armour among them is again recorded. II _The Mailed Warrior_