A Childs History of England | Page 7

plunder them. They were repulsed by CARAUSIUS,
a native either of Belgium or of Britain, who was appointed by the Romans to the
command, and under whom the Britons first began to fight upon the sea. But, after this
time, they renewed their ravages. A few years more, and the Scots (which was then the
name for the people of Ireland), and the Picts, a northern people, began to make frequent
plundering incursions into the South of Britain. All these attacks were repeated, at
intervals, during two hundred years, and through a long succession of Roman Emperors
and chiefs; during all which length of time, the Britons rose against the Romans, over and
over again. At last, in the days of the Roman HONORIUS, when the Roman power all
over the world was fast declining, and when Rome wanted all her soldiers at home, the
Romans abandoned all hope of conquering Britain, and went away. And still, at last, as at
first, the Britons rose against them, in their old brave manner; for, a very little while
before, they had turned away the Roman magistrates, and declared themselves an
independent people.
Five hundred years had passed, since Julius Caesar's first invasion of the Island, when the
Romans departed from it for ever. In the course of that time, although they had been the
cause of terrible fighting and bloodshed, they had done much to improve the condition of
the Britons. They had made great military roads; they had built forts; they had taught
them how to dress, and arm themselves, much better than they had ever known how to do
before; they had refined the whole British way of living. AGRICOLA had built a great

wall of earth, more than seventy miles long, extending from Newcastle to beyond Carlisle,
for the purpose of keeping out the Picts and Scots; HADRIAN had strengthened it;
SEVERUS, finding it much in want of repair, had built it afresh of stone.
Above all, it was in the Roman time, and by means of Roman ships, that the Christian
Religion was first brought into Britain, and its people first taught the great lesson that, to
be good in the sight of GOD, they must love their neighbours as themselves, and do unto
others as they would be done by. The Druids declared that it was very wicked to believe
in any such thing, and cursed all the people who did believe it, very heartily. But, when
the people found that they were none the better for the blessings of the Druids, and none
the worse for the curses of the Druids, but, that the sun shone and the rain fell without
consulting the Druids at all, they just began to think that the Druids were mere men, and
that it signified very little whether they cursed or blessed. After which, the pupils of the
Druids fell off greatly in numbers, and the Druids took to other trades.
Thus I have come to the end of the Roman time in England. It is but little that is known
of those five hundred years; but some remains of them are still found. Often, when
labourers are digging up the ground, to make foundations for houses or churches, they
light on rusty money that once belonged to the Romans. Fragments of plates from which
they ate, of goblets from which they drank, and of pavement on which they trod, are
discovered among the earth that is broken by the plough, or the dust that is crumbled by
the gardener's spade. Wells that the Romans sunk, still yield water; roads that the Romans
made, form part of our highways. In some old battle-fields, British spear-heads and
Roman armour have been found, mingled together in decay, as they fell in the thick
pressure of the fight. Traces of Roman camps overgrown with grass, and of mounds that
are the burial-places of heaps of Britons, are to be seen in almost all parts of the country.
Across the bleak moors of Northumberland, the wall of SEVERUS, overrun with moss
and weeds, still stretches, a strong ruin; and the shepherds and their dogs lie sleeping on it
in the summer weather. On Salisbury Plain, Stonehenge yet stands: a monument of the
earlier time when the Roman name was unknown in Britain, and when the Druids, with
their best magic wands, could not have written it in the sands of the wild sea-shore.

CHAPTER II
- ANCIENT ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS

THE Romans had scarcely gone away from Britain, when the Britons began to wish they
had never left it. For, the Romans being gone, and the Britons being much reduced in
numbers by their long wars, the Picts and Scots came pouring in, over the broken and
unguarded wall of