[Sidenote: Incursions of the Saxons and Angles into Britain;] Nor was the change of people to the disadvantage of Britain. Though not to the same extent, the Romanized Britons had imbibed the vices of their rulers, and were too effeminate to defend the lands the Romans had, in their extremity, abandoned. The coming of a new race, the Saxons and Angles of Schleswig, was needed to revive the energies of a population who had not been able to drive back the far more barbarous Picts, though, for a long time, under the Anglo-Saxon rule, also, commercial enterprise in Britain remained at a low ebb. For a while, indeed, even the faint light of learning, which remained when the Romans left, appears to have been almost extinguished by the long-continued and bloody wars which, during this gloomy period, depopulated the country and desolated the cities of Britain. [Sidenote: and its state soon afterwards.] Almost everything that is known of the state of Britain, and of its commerce and manufactures, from the time of its evacuation by Rome till the commencement of the eighth century, is derived from the ancient biographies of the Saints, then the chief, if not the sole, histories of the Western world; and faint indeed is the glimmering of light which these writers throw upon the state of navigation during those periods.[468] From these writers we get the story of the first Saxon expedition, together with the traditional tales of Hengist and Horsa, and of the fifteen hundred men, and the three long vessels or “ships” they came in. No reliance can, however, be placed, as Mr. Kemble has shown, on this statement; nor is it likely that the vessels of the northern pirates were superior to those Saxon craft already noticed, in which, on their second expedition, the Saxons are said to have landed seventeen thousand men on the shores of Britain. [Sidenote: London.] Indeed, the accounts of the internal state of Britain and Ireland during that portion of the dark ages to which we now refer, so far as regards its trade and manufactures, are of the most meagre description; and the little we do find is rather in the form of incidental notices in books devoted to other objects than commerce or science. For instance, it is merely to an incidental remark of the venerable Bede[469] that we are indebted for the earliest notes of London after the abdication of the Romans. Speaking of the East-Saxons, at the commencement of the seventh century, he says that “their metropolis is the city of London, which is situated on the bank of the aforesaid river (Thames), and is the mart of many nations resorting to it by sea and land;” adding that “King Ethelbert built the church of St. Paul, in the city of London, where he and his successors should have their episcopal see.”