half of Britain. At the date of his birth the northern Welsh still
retained their independence in Strathclyde; the Welsh proper still
spread to the banks of the Severn; and the West Welsh of Cornwall still
owned all the peninsula south of the Bristol Channel as far eastward as
the Somersetshire marshes. Beyond Forth and Clyde, the Picts yet ruled
over the greater part of the Highlands, while the Scots, who have now
given the name of Scotland to the whole of Britain beyond the Cheviots,
were a mere intrusive Irish colony in Argyllshire and the Western Isles.
He lived, in short, at the very period when Britain was still in the
act of becoming England; and no historical doubts of any sort hang over
the authenticity of his great work, "The Ecclesiastical History of the
English people." But Bæda unfortunately knows little more about the
first settlement than he could learn from Gildas, whom he quotes almost
_verbatim_. He tells us, however, nothing of extermination of the Welsh.
"Some," he says, "were slaughtered; some gave themselves up to undergo
slavery: some retreated beyond the sea: and some, remaining in their own
land, lived a miserable life in the mountains and forests." In all this,
he is merely transcribing Gildas, but he saw no improbability in the
words. At a later date, Æthelfrith, of Northumbria, he tells us,
"rendered more of their lands either tributary to or an integral part of
the English territory, whether by subjugating or expatriating[1] the
natives," than any previous king. Eadwine, before his conversion,
"subdued to the empire of the English the Mevanian islands," Man and
Anglesey; but we know that the population of both islands is still
mainly Celtic in blood and speech. These examples sufficiently show us,
that even before the introduction of Christianity, the English did not
always utterly destroy the Welsh inhabitants of conquered districts. And
it is universally admitted that, after their conversion, they fought
with the Welsh in a milder manner, sparing their lives as
fellow-Christians, and permitting them to retain their lands as