But the Britons, as incapable of exerting self-defence as of enjoying liberty, reaped no advantage from these bequests. So little had they profited by the instructions of the Romans, that they knew not how to retrieve each others fatigue by the change of sentinels upon their ram parts. " They fell asleep, (says Gildas,) upon their posts, and were dragged off the battlements by the hooks of the barbarians. The Scots and Picts broke over their walls like wolves into a sheep-fold, retired with their booty, and returned every succeeding year. Instead of resisting them, the British states, divided among petty tyrants, turned their feeble arms against each other, till a famine, which was succeeded by a pestilence, threat ened depopulation to the whole southern part of the island. In 446, the fame of hltius, the Roman prefect in Gaul, afforded a forlorn hope of assistance from the Roman arms. .2Etius was addressed in a letter, entitled, the groans of the Britons to the thrice appointed tEtius. " The barbarians," (said they,) " drive us into the sea, and the sea drives us back upon the swords of the bar barians." Łtius might pity the suppliants, but could spare them no assistance, employed as he was in oppo sing Attila, king of the Iluns.
Despairing of all power to resist their northern inva ders, the Britons applied, (it is said) for assistance to the Saxons, a people inhabiting that peninsula, called the Cimbric Chersonesus, which is bounded by the Elbe on the south, by the German ocean on the west, and by the Baltic sea on the north and cast. The tribes of this nation had been hitherto known to the Britons only by visits of depredation to their coasts. It is said by the Saxon historians, that the states of the island were con vened, and that by the advice of Vortigern, prince of the Silures, the fatal resolution was adopted, of offering their country and their liberties to the Saxons, if they would defend them agaibst the Picts and Scots. That the spirit of the Britons was sufficiently humble to apply to the Romans, in the terms that have been described, may easily be conceived : they knew the value of Roman pro tection, and the Romans w ere a civilized people ; but that they besought the Saxons, a pagan race, known to them only by their ferocity, to accept of their liberties and properties, and that they laid themselves at once at their mercy, in beseeching them for their aid, is a thing so improbable, that the partial authority of the Saxon authors is insufficient to confirm it. It is at variance with human nature, and with that immediate resistance to the Saxons, which the Britons immediately made when they began to seize upon their possessions. We may therefore suppose the first visit of the Saxons to have been accidental, or, if they came invited, that it was only by a small portion of the natives who took them into their pay. The Saxon ships, which we cannot sup pose to have conveyed more than a few hundred men,• arrived on the British coast in 449. The leaders of the troops were Hengist and Horsa, the fabled descendants of \Voden. By their aid the Picts and Scots were de feated ; but the Saxons, glad to settle in the fertile fields of a delightful island, in exchange for the bleak shores of the Baltic, invited over fresh reinforcements of their.
countrymen, and, from the auxiliaries, became the mas ters of the natives. The Britons exerting, when it was too late, a valour that had been dormant, or wasted it self in civil war, opposed their new tyrants occasionally with success. In one of their battles with the Saxons, the chieftain Horsa fell. His brother, Hengist, in spite of all his victories, so much boasted by the Saxon annal ists, does not appear to have penetrated beyond Kent. By degrees, however, the Saxon power reduced the na tives either to entire submission, or drove those who re tained independence to the mountains of Wales, of Corn wall, and Cumberland. This was effected a considerable time before the reign of King Robert.* The proper history of Britain as one kingdom, does not commence till the beginning of the seventeenth cen tury. In 1603, James the Sixth of Scotland, and First of England, succeeded to the throne of Elizabeth. He was the great-grandson of Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry VII.; and his right to the crown was farther strengthened by the act of Parliament, which had settled the succession on the heirs of Henry VII. by the dying bequest of Elizabeth. As the memory of disputed suc cession was yet fresh in the minds of the English, 'The joy of the nation at James's accession was 'qry great. A Protestant and undisputed successor, and a sovereign who was to extinguish the hostilities of Scotland, seem ed to be a golden era in the public welfare.
But the popularity of James hardly survived Ins arri val in England. The people, who had crowded around him with shouts and acclamations of happiness, were forbidden, by the pride or timidity of the monarch, spew their loyalty infghis noisy manner, and in a short time it became unnecessary to forbid them. He disgust ed the English, by heaping favours on unpopular fami lies, and by multiplying the Scots as well as English new nobility. A conspiracy, which, though obscurely deve loped, was certainly detected in the first year of his reign, attests the discontent of some of the leading characters in the alipm. The Lords Cobbam and Gray de Wilton wet 7ected with it, and it was made at a subsequent the pretext for Raleigh's execution. .4f all those who had hoped for advantage from the accession of James, the puritans, a body of believers now important from their numbers, and destined to take a de cisive share in the events of the subsequent reign, had been the most sanguine, and were the most disappointed. They imagined, that the king of a Presbyterian nation would be propitious to a similar church. But James, in his heart, detested presbytery, and gave an audience to the leaders of the puritans only for the pleasure of in sulting them. In a conference which those dissenters held with the bishops at Hampton Court, he answered their chief objections himself, so much to the satisfac tion of the dignified churchmen, that one of their num ber, Bishop \Vhitgift, said, he verily believed the king spoke by the spirit of God.