The History of England, Volume I The Britons and Romans The Heptarcy
by David Hume
Thus was established, after a violent contest of near a hundred and
fifty years, the Heptarchy, or seven Saxon kingdoms in Britain; and
the whole southern part of the island, except Wales and Cornwall, had
totally changed its inhabitants, language, customs, and political
institutions. The Britons, under the Roman dominion, had made such
advances towards arts and civil manners, that they had built twenty-
eight considerable cities within their province, besides a great
number of villages and country seats [d]. But the fierce conquerors,
by whom they were now subdued, threw every thing back into ancient
barbarity, and those few natives who were not either massacred or
expelled their habitations, were reduced to the most abject slavery.
None of the other northern conquerors, the Franks, Goths, Vandals, or
Burgundians, though they overran the southern provinces of the empire
like a mighty torrent, made such devastations in the conquered
territories, or were inflamed into so violent an animosity against the
ancient inhabitants. As the Saxons came over at intervals in separate
bodies, the Britons, however at first unwarlike, were tempted to make
resistance; and hostilities being thereby prolonged, proved more
destructive to both parties, especially to the vanquished. The first
invaders from Germany, instead of excluding other adventurers who
must share with them the spoils of the ancient inhabitants, were
obliged to solicit fresh supplies from their own country; and a total
extermination of the Britons became the sole expedient for providing a
settlement and subsistence to the new planters. Hence there have been
found in history few conquests more ruinous than that of the Saxons;
and few revolutions more violent than that which they introduced.
[ [d] Gildas. Bede. lib. 1.]
So long as the contest was maintained with the natives, the several
Saxon princes preserved a union of counsels and interests; but after
the Britons were shut up in the barren counties of Cornwall and Wales,
and gave no farther disturbance to the conquerors, the band of
alliance was in a great measure dissolved among the princes of the
Heptarchy. Though one prince seems still to have been allowed, or to
have assumed, an ascendant over the whole, his authority, if it ought
ever to be deemed regular or legal, was extremely limited; and each
state acted as if it had been independent, and wholly separate from
the rest. Wars therefore, and revolutions and dissensions, were
unavoidable among a turbulent and military people; and these events,
however intricate or confused, ought now to become the objects of our
attention. But, added to the difficulty of carrying on at once the
history of seven independent kingdoms, there is great discouragement
to a writer, arising from the uncertainty, at least barrenness, of the
accounts transmitted to us. The monks, who were the only annalists
during those ages, lived remote from public affairs, considered the
civil transactions as entirely subordinate to the ecclesiastical, and,
besides partaking of the ignorance and barbarity which were then
universal, were strongly infected with credulity, with the love of
wonder, and with a propensity to imposture; vices almost inseparable
from their profession and manner of life. The history of that period
abounds in names, but is extremely barren of events; or the events are
related so much without circumstances and causes, that the most
profound or most eloquent writer must despair of rendering them either
instructive or entertaining to the reader. Even the great learning
and vigorous imagination of Milton sunk under the weight; and this
author scruples not to declare, that the skirmishes of kites or crows
as much merited a particular narrative, as the confused transactions
and battles of the Saxon Heptarchy [e]. In order, however, to connect
the events in some tolerable measure, we shall give a succinct account
of the succession of kings, and of the more remarkable revolutions in
each particular kingdom; beginning with that of Kent, which was the
first established.
