84 PAPERS, ETC. 
tions than subterranean huts, had left Worle Hill for 
Axium, on the other side of the bay; and that their 
original habitations, having fallen into decay, soon became 
open holes, the wattle or brushwood roofs of which, 
having fallen in, afforded the material of the layer of dark 
mould mixed with pieces of stick, which we have almost 
invariably found in every one we have opened. 
In the course of four hundred years, under the Roman 
tyranny, the Britons became a degraded and enslaved, 
though highly civilized people; nor, if we may depend 
upon the lugubrious history of Gildas, was their situation 
much, if at all, improved under their own chieftains after 
the departure ofthe Romans from their country. On this 
miserable, though civilized and christian people, the flood 
of Saxon invasion burst like an overwhelming torrent, and 
a contest for life and death took place between the in- 
vaders and the Bretwallas, or British Welsh, as they are 
called in the Saxon Chronicle, which raged through the 
greater part of the fifth and sixth centuries. At length, 
in the year 577, Ceawlin, the West Saxon conqueror, 
overran this part of England, gained a great battle at 
Dyrham, slew three British chiefs, Conmail, Farinmail, and 
Condidan, and took the cities of Bath, Gloucester, and 
Cirencester. Now one of the skulls found, bears the marks 
of wounds such as no Celtic weapon that I have ever seen, 
could have inflicted ; nor is the short stabbing sword of 
the Romans at all more calculated to give such awful 
gashes, while the Saxon broad sword is the very weapon for 
the purpose. 
Again, neither the primitive Britons,nor the early Saxons, 
were slaves ; but the Romanized Britons were reduced to 
the most abject servitude ; and, as I have before said, their 
situation was but little improved after the departure of the 
