History of the Fylde of LancashirePorter, John (Writer on the Fylde of Lancashire)
History
History of the Fylde of Lancashire
Porter, John (Writer on the Fylde of Lancashire)
Lancashire (England) -- History
There is little to be remarked, because little is known, respecting
the social and moral aspects of the untutored race which, in the
earliest historic age, sought a domicile or refuge amidst the forests
of the Fylde, or invaded its glades in search of prey. The habits of
the Setantii were simply those of other savage tribes who depended for
their daily sustenance upon their skill and prowess in the chase, and
whose intercommunion with the world beyond their own limited domains,
was confined to hostile or friendly meetings with equally barbarous
races whose frontiers adjoined their own. Certain disinterred roots were
necessary adjuncts to their repasts, and indeed, on many occasions, when
outwitted by the wild tenants of the woods, formed the sole item. Their
Druidical faith and the supreme power of the priesthood over their almost
every action, both secular and religious, have already been referred to
in an earlier page. The remorseless sacrifice of fellow beings on their
unhallowed altars, and the general spirit of cruelty and inhumanity
which pervaded all their rites, are not to be regarded as disclosing a
naturally callous and brutal disposition on the part of the Setantii, but
as indications of the deplorable ignorance in which they existed, and
the blind obedience which they yielded to the principles indoctrinated
by the Druids. That the Setantii, however submissive to the dictates
and requirements of their priests, were far from passively allowing the
encroachments of others on their liberties is shown by the promptitude
and fierceness with which they combatted the progress of the Roman
legions through their territory. No portion of the British conquest
cost the conquerors more trouble, time, and bloodshed, than did the land
peopled by the hardy and valorous Brigantes with their comparatively
small, but equally intrepid, neighbours and allies the Setantii. The two
most striking characteristics of the aboriginal Fylde inhabitants were
their ignorance and bravery, and whilst the former rivetted the chains
which held them in subjection to the priesthood, the latter incited them
to oppose to the death the usurpations of the stranger. There is nothing
of local interest to recount during the period the Romans held the
soil, but after their abdication, when the Anglo-Saxons violated their
faith and traitorously seized a land which they had come professedly
to protect, the Fylde began to evince symptoms of greater animation;
villages sprang up in different spots on the open grounds or clearings
in the woods; the solitary Roman settlement at Kirkham was appropriated
and renamed by the new arrivals, and, perhaps, for the first time a
population of numerical importance was established in the district.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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