garrison from Britain, leaving the provinces to defend themselves as
best they might, the temptation to the English pirates became a thousand
times stronger than before. Though the so-called history of the
conquest, handed down to us by Bæda and the "English Chronicle,"[1] is
now considered by many enquirers to be mythical in almost every
particular, the facts themselves speak out for us with unhesitating
certainty. We know that about the middle of the fifth century, shortly
after the withdrawal of the regular Roman troops, several bodies of
heathen Anglo-Saxons, belonging to the three tribes of Jutes, English,
and Saxons, settled _en masse_ on the south-eastern shores of Britain,
from the Firth of Forth to the Isle of Wight. The age of mere plundering
descents was decisively over, and the age of settlement and colonisation
had set in. These heathen Anglo-Saxons drove away, exterminated, or
enslaved the Romanised and Christianised Celts, broke down every vestige
of Roman civilisation, destroyed the churches, burnt the villas, laid
waste many of the towns, and re-introduced a long period of pagan
barbarism. For a while Britain remains enveloped in an age of complete
uncertainty, and heathen myths intervene between the Christian
historical period of the Romans and the Christian historical period
initiated by the conversion of Kent. Of South-Eastern Britain under the
pagan Anglo-Saxons we know practically nothing, save by inference and
analogy, or by the scanty evidence of archæology.

[1] For an account of these two main authorities see further
on, Bæda in chapter xi., and the "Chronicle" in chapter
xviii.

According to tradition the Jutes came first. In 449, says the Celtic
legend (the date is quite untrustworthy), they landed in Kent, where
they first settled in Ruim, which we English call Thanet–then really an