Historic byways and highways of Old England . re driven west-ward. The Jutes and the Saxons came in largebodies, but the Angles, it would appear, cameefi masse, and there was nothing for it but thatthe Briton should retreat. This accounts for the fact that the Anglo-Saxons retained here, or rather transplantedto this land, the habits and customs of theirformer life. There was no amalofamation withthe Briton, nothing to tone down or to changetheir social peculiarities. Under the Roman rulethe country had become highly civilized, but thenew-comers made short work of the evidences ofcivilization.
Historic byways and highways of Old England . re driven west-ward. The Jutes and the Saxons came in largebodies, but the Angles, it would appear, cameefi masse, and there was nothing for it but thatthe Briton should retreat. This accounts for the fact that the Anglo-Saxons retained here, or rather transplantedto this land, the habits and customs of theirformer life. There was no amalofamation withthe Briton, nothing to tone down or to changetheir social peculiarities. Under the Roman rulethe country had become highly civilized, but thenew-comers made short work of the evidences ofcivilization. They let the roads and cities(they had no towns in their fatherland) fall intoutter disrepair. They stamped out Christianitywith fire and sword from end to end of their newdomain. They occupied a civilized and Christianland, and they restored it to its primitivebarbarism. They wanted villages such as theyhad had before, so they got rid of the stonehouses of the Romans by fire, and in their placesubstituted their groups of wooden homesteads,. with barns and cattle-sheds, surrounded by roughstockades, and destitute of roads. Let us pause for a moment to look at thebuildings in which these forefathers of ours classes of men whom we have to considerhere were but two, the eorlas, or nobles, and theceorlas, churls, or freemen. For, taking thecountry at a glance, we see it, after the settlementof the Ando-Saxons, dotted over with manorsinterspersed among the woodland and forest whichcovered half the surface, these manors havingeach the timber-built hall of the lord surroundedby the huts of the churls. What the house ofthe noble was we learn from the poem ofBeowulf, for though it relates the life of Gothsand Danes, it gives us the information we seekabout Angles and Saxons. One large, long roomformed the family-room, the eating-room, and thesleeping-room. The sleeping berths were againstthe walls ; they were benches, used by day asshelves. In the middle of the hall was a lon
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Keywords: ., bookauthorandrewswilliam1848190, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900
