The Roman and English - Conquest

The Roman and English - Conquest

Jules Cæsar invaded Great Britain in 55 B.C. and again in the following year ; he revealed the country to the Roman world but did not conquer it. The conquest of England was undertaken by the Emperor Claudius in A.D. 42 and pursued till near the close of the first century. It was in honour of the victories of Claudius in Britain that his son received the title of Britannicus. By that time, the victories of Agricola, who was governor of Britain from 78 to 84, hat carried it as far as the Forth. Though the Roman occupation lasted until the early years of the fifth century, latin did not succeed in superseding the language of the conquered nation; it was spoken only in the towns and by the educated classes. With the exception of castra (= camp) found in names of places such as Lancaster or Chester, strata (= street), and colonia (as in Lincoln), no Latin word introduced into Britain in that period has passed directly into the English tongue.

Quite different in this respect was the English Conquest. After the Romans, confronted with legions and leave the island to itself, the Britons were exposed to the incessant raids of the Picts, their hardy neighbours of the north. They were also harassed along their shores by daring freebooters – Jutes, Angles and Saxons – who came across the North Sea from Jutland, from Engleland (the district we now call Sleswick) and from the plains of Low Germany extending from the Elbe to the Rhine. The Britons tried to play the sea-rovers against the mountaineers, with the result that, attracted by promises of land and gold, band of warriors sailed from Jutland in 449 with their chiefs Hengist and Horsa, ready to make themselves the masters of the land. The victory of Aylesford, a village in Kent, on the right bank of the Medway, sealed the down of Britain. The new conquerors were merciless in their triumph. The possessors of the soil were ruthlessly slain or driven away. Fleeing from slaughter, large numbers of Britons crossed over to Armorica, where they settled and were able to preserve unharmed their language and their time-honoured traditions. On the soil of Armorica, henceforth called Brittany, the Arthurian legend blossomed into lais which later on furnished the themes of innumerable songs recited by “trouvères” at the French and Norman Courts; in this last form they were brought back to England by the Normans in the XIth century.