There was a tendency in the West apparently to hold together for common interests, but no longer to speak of one head. But note this interesting point. The West that felt some sort of common bond, called itself the _Cymry_, and only concerned the mountain land. It did not include, it carefully distinguished itself from the Christians of the more fertile Midlands and South and East, which it called “_Laghans_.” Along the east coast there was a sort of tradition of common headship, very nebulous indeed, but existent. Men talked of “chiefs of Britain,” “_Bretwaldas_,” a word, the first part of which is obviously Roman, the second part of which may be Germanic or Celtic or anything, and which we may guess to indicate a titular headship. But—and this must be especially noted—there was no conscious or visible cohesion among the little courts of the east and southeast coasts; there was no conscious and deliberate continued pagan attack against the Western Christians as such in the end of the sixth century when St. Augustine landed, and no Western Celtic Christian resistance, organized as such, to the chieftains scattered along the eastern coast. Each kinglet fought with each, pagan with pagan, Christian with Christian, Christian and pagan in alliance against pagan and Christian in alliance—and the cross divisions were innumerable. You have petty kings on the eastern coasts with Celtic names; you have Saxon allies in Celtic courts; you have Western Christian kings winning battles on the coasts of the North Sea and Eastern kings winning battles nearly as far west as the Severn, etc., etc. I have said that it is of capital importance to appreciate this point—that the whole thing was a chaos of little independent districts all fighting in a hotchpotch and not a clash of warring races or tongues. It is difficult for us with our modern experience of great and highly conscious nations to conceive such a state of affairs. When we think of fighting and war, we cannot but think of one considerable conscious _nation_ fighting against another similar _nation_, and this modern habit of mind has misled the past upon the nature of Britain at the moment when civilization reëntered the South and East of the island with St. Augustine. Maps are published with guesswork boundaries showing the “frontiers” of the “Anglo-Saxon conquest,” at definite dates, and modern historians are fond of talking of the “limits” of that conquest being “extended” to such and such points. There were no “frontiers:” there was no “conquest” either way—of east over west or west over east. There were no “extending” limits of Eastern (or of Western) rule. There was no “advance to Chester,” no “conquest of the district of Bath.” There were battles near Bath and battles near Chester, the loot of a city, a counter raid by the Westerners and all the rest of it. But to talk of a gradual “Anglo-Saxon conquest” is an anachronism.