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The Saxon Invaders
The Saxon Invaders; Part 2

The Saxon Invaders; Part 2

The process of conquest was slow; it was not done by large forces working in combination. The country was reft from the Britons piecemeal. Each set of invaders came, coveted land, and had to press farther into the country, or along the coast, to get it. The fortune of war wavered. At Mount Badon, in 520, the West Saxons met with a crushing defeat which checked their advance for years, but on the whole the Britons lost ground steadily. The fighting was fierce; neither side spared the other; step by step, as the Saxons advanced, the Britons who were left alive withdrew. Few stayed to be slaves to the victors. Indeed between Britons and Saxons there could be no peace; year after year saw the Britons squeezed, first into the centre of the country, and then by degrees steadily westwards: the Britons were falling back towards the mountainous country where they had fought their last fight against the Romans.

Two battles are usually taken as marking the end of the Saxon conquest. These are the battle of Deorham in 577 and the battle of Chester in 613. Of course it is not true to say that with them fighting between Briton and Saxon comes to an end. Nor were the "Welsh", as the Saxons termed the Britons, subdued. Nearly another seven centuries had to pass before this was accomplished, but after these two battles there was no longer any question of which power was dominant in England. There was no hope of the Britons recovering their lost ground. Consequently these two battles deserve especial notice.

The victory of Deorham was won by the West Saxons under their King Ceawlin. The site of the battle is not far from Gloucester, and as a fruit of it, that city with Bath and Cirencester fell into Saxon hands. Yet the importance of the battle lies not in the extent of the conquest nor in the richness of the plunder, but in its locality. It gave the Saxons command of the Severn mouth, and so cut the Welsh of Wales off from the Welsh of the South-west of Britain. Precisely the same work was done in the north by the battle of Chester: this was won by an Anglian king, Ethelfrith of Northumbria, who, after hurling back an invasion of Picts at Dawstone near Jedburgh, fought his way westwards. The Welsh mustered all their forces against him. Two thousand monks came from the monastery of Bangoriscoed to pray for victory while the “Comrades” (The name which the Welsh had taken for themselves was Kymry, or Comrades. The name also survives in Cumberland) fought Ethelfrith was victorious, and remorselessly slew the monks, just as Suetonius Paulinus had massacred the Druids. " Whether they bear arms or no," said he, " they fight against us when they pray to their God." As by Deorham the Saxons won the Severn line, so Chester gave them the Dee. The Welsh were again divided. The men of Wales were split off from their kinsmen in Lancashire and Cumberland.

Chronology

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