And now the Romanized British towns began to shew their lack of faith in imperial protection, by strengthening themselves by walls. A special Roman commander was appointed, charged with the defence of the Saxon shore. The shore was dotted by strong forts, garrisoned by a legion of ten thousand men. The thick forests which lined the coast to the westward of Southampton water were considered sufficient guards against invasion in that quarter. As long as the Romans remained in Britain they were able to repel the attacks of their barbarous assailants. But when the fated hour came—when Rome in her death-struggle with the Teutonic hordes, whose gripe was at her throat in every one of her dominions in western Europe, and even in Italy itself, had to recall her troops from Britain—then the encircling foes closed in upon their prey. In withdrawing, in 410, his troops from Britain, the Emperor Honorius, grandson of the general Theodosius we have mentioned, told the people in a letter to provide for their own government and defence. We may imagine how ill prepared, after ten generations of servitude, the Romanized Britons were for such an emergency. But they had fortified towns with their municipal institutions, and under the general sway of Rome they had lost their tribal distinctions, and become a more united people; and not in any one of the Romanized lands which became a prey to the barbarians did these encounter so prolonged and so energetic a resistance as in Britain. For some thirty years after the Roman evacuation of the province, it held out or maintained a fluctuating struggle with its enemies. The Scoto-Irish bucaneers were not only continuing their raids upon the western coast, but they planted settlements in Argyle to the north of Agricola’s wall, and in Galloway— between the two walls. And the Picts were ever making incursions from the north. The policy was tried of hiring barbarian against barbarian. The Picts were the nearest and most persistent danger; and the marauders from over the North Sea,—Saxons, Angles, and Jutes, were, if not hired as mercenaries, permitted to hold a footing in the land, as a defence against Pictish invasion. About 450, three keels filled with Jutes, under two brothers, Hengist and Horsa, with a white horse as their cognisance, came by invitation from their own home—which is from them called Jutland—and landed on the Isle of Thanet on the eastern Kentish shore, making this their base for further conquests. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Anglo-Saxons in Britain.