Introduction.

have belonged to two tribes—the Angles and the Saxons¹.

Of the two Teutonic tribes, the Angles were the first converted.

English Britain was unequally divided between the two. The Angles possessed the whole country from the Friths to the Thames, together with Kent and South Hampshire; the Saxons all the south-west portion of Britain, together with Middlesex and Essex. The Angles therefore were far more widely spread than the Saxons.

Thus it happened that when Pope Gregorius undertook the conversion of England, it was for Angles rather than Saxons that his mission was intended. The slave-boys in the Roman market-place had been Angles from Deira: and it so happened that the readiest path to the heart of England lay through an Angle prince; for Æthelberht of Kent had already married a Christian, and was at that moment tolerating Christian worship in the city where he resided. The Gospel received a courteous hearing in Kent (A.D. 597), and its missionaries began to think of new conquests. Still it is in Angle kingdoms that it is most tolerantly received. Eorpwald of East Anglia was baptized before A.D. 626. When Paulinus preached in Northhumbria,

¹ It will be observed that no room is left in this classification for the Jutes, who are classed with the Angles. This is done after much deliberation, the following being, in summary, the principal reasons which induce a belief that the Jutes were at least more closely akin to the Angles than to the Saxons.

1. The authorities which are most nearly contemporary favour this classification. The poet of Beówulf (according to Kemble nearly contemporaneous with the events he relates) makes Hengest an Eoten Jute or Jute, and makes him come from ‘Ongle.’ Nennius represents him as an Angle. Against this is to be set the fact that Ethelwerd assigns a local habitation to the Gioti Jutes north of Anglia: and that Geographus Ravennas the Ravenna Geographer (seventh century) speaks of Anschis Angles as a Saxon.

2. The Angles of Northhumbria seem to have been specially akin to the Jutes of Kent. Nennius (M. H. B. p. 75) represents Soemil who invaded Northhumbria as Hengest’s grandfather: and before Ida took the title of king in Bernicia, A.D. 547, Lappenberg, i. 119, thinks that the Northhumbrians had been governed by the kings of Kent. It was directly from Kent to Northhumbria that Christianity marched, and when Wulfhere of Mercia invaded Wessex, A.D. 661, the only districts that he subdued and retained were Wiht the Isle of Wight and Mean, the two Angle colonies among the West Saxons. See p. 239, note 5.