Ecclesiastical History of the English People

Introduction.

Some Christians probably remained as slaves.

The theory which was once received without question, that the Anglo-Saxon conquest had been a war of extermination, and that all the Britons who were left alive took refuge in Wales, Cornwall, or Cumberland, is now generally abandoned. Whatever may be thought as to the numerical proportion, or capacities, in which Britons continued to inhabit England, there is now no reason to doubt that there was still to be found a Celtic stratum, overlaid doubtless by many Teutonic strata, among the population. There would be more reason to believe this if, as is probable, the Anglo-Saxon conquest did not begin in A.D. 450, according to the popularly received story, but consisted of a gradual extrusion of the old inhabitants and colonization of the conquered territory, lasting perhaps for a period little short of three centuries. Such Britons as remained then under Anglo-Saxon rule would have been Christians. They may more than possibly have soon lost their Christianity; and it is not to be expected that a race of warlike lords would have brooked the teaching of their inferiors and serfs. But at any rate, though we estimate the influence which Christianity gained in this way at the lowest, this will still account for the fact that Christian ideas, when presented by any but foes, were no novelty to the English Teutons.

The Teutonic myths prepared the way for Christianity.

Another consideration of weight should be added to the foregoing. The Teutonic mythology was not so degraded but that it presented in fragments the outlines of the Christian scheme of salvation. The fact that a god had perished could sound strangely in the ears of no worshipper of Baldr; the great message of consolation—that he had perished to save sinful, suffering man—justified the ways of God, and added an awful meaning to the old myth. An earnest, thinking pagan would, I must believe, joyfully accept a version of his own creed, which offered so inestimable a boon in addition to what he had heretofore