The Saxon invasions were a rude disturbance to the progress of English civilisation. The Romanised Britons lay more and more at the mercy of the invaders, as the soldiery were called away to take part in the last struggles of the western Empire in Italy. Barbarians from the country north of the wall, Saxon and Jutish pirates from across the sea, saw in the monuments of the Roman occupation fair ground for pillage. It is difficult to estimate the destruction caused by the invaders. But, apart from the havoc wrought by the Teutonic immigrants and the northern tribes, it is certain that the walled city of Roman times did not commend itself as a habitation to the new settlers. The fact that their settlements flank Roman roads, like Ermine street or the Fosseway, at distances of a mile or so from the main thoroughfare, proves little in itself; for the villas of the Roman period, which probably included, like the _latifundia_ of Italy, a considerable population of labourers on each estate, lay at some distance from the main roads. The frequent villages—hams, tuns, and worths—were, however, a new feature; and the life of each village, for which a clearing was made in the wooded country-side, was pastoral, not military. This fact is of importance with regard to the scanty traces of defensive fortifications constructed during the Saxon occupation. Here and there natural opportunities prompted the Saxon invaders to found settlements on sites of Roman cities. The geographical position of London or Exeter, at the head of a broad estuary, made such places natural centres of traffic, of high importance to trade routes. On the other hand, while some of the larger provincial capitals preserved their life in part, other _urbes_ and the smaller _oppida_, or walled towns, were left desolate. Pons Aelii, near the east end of the Roman wall, was abandoned until in the tenth century a small monastery was founded on the site, and the cluster of houses which gathered round it received the name of Muncanceaster (Monkchester). The place, however, did not recover its importance or become a permanent settlement until the Conqueror founded there his New Castle on the Tyne, which became the nucleus of the city of the middle ages and modern times. The military stations of the Saxon shore were ruined and abandoned. We know of the sack of Anderida in 492 A.D.: the walls of the station were left standing, but the later settlement of Pevensey grew up in the open country outside the walls. Richborough, Othona at the mouth of the Blackwater, Burgh Castle, sheltered no new settlements: the new villages or towns, Sandwich, Bradwell, Burgh, were all at a distance from the Roman walls or outside their area. Othona (Ythanceaster) was deserted when Cedd made it a missionary centre in the seventh century; and the little church, which exists to-day and may have been Cedd’s own church, was built across the site of the east gate of the station. In