As the Saxons came over at intervals in separate
bodies, the Britons, however at first unwarlike, were tempted to make
resistance; and hostilities, being thereby prolonged, proved more
destructive to both parties, especially to the vanquished. The first
invaders from Germany, instead of excluding other adventurers, who must
share with them the spoils of the ancient inhabitants, were obliged to
solicit fresh supplies from their own country; and a total extermination
of the Britons became the sole expedient for providing a settlement and
subsistence to the new planters. Hence there have been found in history
few conquests more ruinous than that of the Saxons, and few revolutions
more violent than that which they introduced.
So long as the contest was maintained with the natives, the several
Saxon princes preserved a union of counsels and interests; but after the
Britons were shut up in the barren countries of Cornwall and Wales, and
gave no further disturbance to the conquerors, the band of alliance was
in a great measure dissolved among the princes of the Heptarchy. Though
one prince seems still to have been allowed, or to have assumed, an
ascendant over the whole, his authority, if it ought ever to be deemed
regular or legal, was extremely limited; and each state acted as if it
had been independent, and wholly separate from the rest Wars, therefore,
and revolutions and dissensions, were unavoidable among a turbulent and
military people; and these events, however intricate or confused, ought
now to become the objects of our attention But, added to the difficulty
of carrying on at once the history of seven independent kingdoms, there
is great discouragement to a writer, arising from the uncertainty, at
least barrenness, of the accounts transmitted to us.
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