race that has given King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table to
English literature. By 600 A.D., after a century and a half of
struggle, the Anglo-Saxons had probably occupied about half of
England.

They did not build on the civilization that Rome had left when she
withdrew in 410, but destroyed the towns and lived in the country. The
typical Englishman still loves to dwell in a country home. The work of
Anglo-Saxon England consisted chiefly in tilling the soil and in
fighting.

The year 597 marks an especially important date, the coming of St.
Augustine, who brought the Christian faith to the Anglo-Saxons.
Education, literature, and art followed finding their home in the
monasteries.

For nearly 400 years after coming to England, the different tribes
were not united under one ruler. Not until 830 did Egbert, king of the
West Saxons, become overlord of England. Before and after this time,
the Danes repeatedly plundered the land. They finally settled in the
eastern part above the Thames. Alfred (849-900), the greatest of
Anglo-Saxon rulers, temporarily checked them, but in the latter part
of the tenth century they were more troublesome, and in 1017 they made
Canute, the Dane, king of England. Fortunately the Danes were of the
same race, and they easily amalgamated with the Saxons.

These invasions wasted the energies of England during more than two
centuries, but this long period of struggle brought little change to
the institutions or manner of life in Anglo-Saxon England. The
_witan_, or assembly of wise men, the forerunner of the present