series of victories whose history is lost was giving to men of the same
Saxon tribe the coast district north of the mouth of the Thames. It is
probable however that the strength of Camulodunum, the predecessor of our
modern Colchester, made the progress of these assailants a slow and
doubtful one; and even when its reduction enabled the East-Saxons to
occupy the territory to which they have given their name of Essex a line
of woodland which has left its traces in Epping and Hainault Forests
checked their further advance into the island.

[Sidenote: Conquests of the Eagle]

Though seventy years had passed since the victory of Aylesford only the
outskirts of Britain were won. The invaders were masters as yet but of
Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, and Essex. From London to St. David's Head, from
the Andredsweald to the Firth of Forth the country still remained
unconquered: and there was little in the years which followed Arthur's
triumph to herald that onset of the invaders which was soon to make
Britain England. Till now its assailants had been drawn from two only of
the three tribes whom we saw dwelling by the northern sea, from the
Saxons and the Jutes. But the main work of conquest was to be done by the
third, by the tribe which bore that name of Engle or Englishmen which was
to absorb that of Saxon and Jute, and to stamp itself on the people which
sprang from the union of the conquerors as on the land that they won. The
Engle had probably been settling for years along the coast of Northumbria
and in the great district which was cut off from the rest of Britain by
the Wash and the Fens, the later East-Anglia. But it was not till the
moment we have reached that the line of defences which had hitherto held
the invaders at bay was turned by their appearance in the Humber and the
Trent. This great river-line led like a highway into the heart of
Britain; and civil strife seems to have broken the strength of British