Welshmen were doubtless spared from the very first, nothing is more
certain than the fact that they became thoroughly Anglicized. A few new
words from Welsh or Latin were introduced into the English tongue, but
they were far too few sensibly to affect its vocabulary. The language
was and still is essentially Low German; and though it now contains
numerous words of Latin or French origin, it does not and never did
contain any but the very smallest Celtic element. The slight number of
additions made from the Welsh consisted chiefly of words connected with
the higher Roman civilisation–such as wall, street, and chester–or the
new methods of agriculture which the Teuton learnt from his more
civilised serfs. The Celt has always shown a great tendency to cast
aside his native language in Gaul, in Spain, and in Ireland; and the
isolation of the English townships must have had the effect of greatly
accelerating the process. Within a few generations the Celtic slave had
forgotten his tongue, his origin, and his religion, and had developed
into a pagan English serf. Whatever else the Teutonic conquest did, it
turned every man within the English pale into a thorough Englishman.

But the removal to Britain effected one immense change. "War begat the
king." In Sleswick the English had lived within their little marks as
free and independent communities. In Britain all the clans of each
colony gradually came under the military command of a king. The
ealdormen who led the various marauding bands assumed royal power in the
new country. Such a change was indeed inevitable. For not only had the
English to win the new England, but they had also to keep it and extend
it. During four hundred years a constant smouldering warfare was carried
on between the foreigners and the native Welsh on their western
frontier. Thus the townships of each colony entered into a closer union
with one another for military purposes, and so arose the separate
chieftainships or petty kingdoms of early England. But the king's power