2 ENGLISH RURAL LIFE 



in those days some small towns, the bulk of the popu- 

 lation must have been occupied in hunting and agri- 

 culture and lived in small and scattered hamlets. They 

 cultivated the land on some simple co-operative 

 system, employing as a rule, in accordance with a 

 custom common to many primitive nations, the method 

 to be described hereafter of strip farming. Under the 

 control of the Romans the country was developed, 

 hard roads were laid out through the land, towns were 

 built and the area under corn was greatly increased. 

 As time went on Christianity and the civilization that 

 accompanied Christianity spread, so that in the Vth 

 century, when the Romans withdrew from Britain to 

 defend their own country from Asiatic barbarians, 

 much of the land must have been under cultivation, 

 and a considerable section of the people were, it may 

 be assumed, intelligent, and on the whole well-to-do. 



Such was the condition of this island when towards 

 the middle of the Vth century the Teutonic tribes, 

 Jutes, Angles, Frisians and Saxons, our 

 The Anglo- English ancestors, began to come across 

 invasion. the North Sea. The first arrivals doubt- 

 less came on friendly missions, but when 

 they found that the race who inhabited this country 

 had, owing to many centuries of peace under Roman 

 rule become unaccustomed to war, the newcomers must 

 soon have formed the plan of making the fruitful 

 fields of England their home. And as Asiatic bar- 

 barians began to push their way into their part of 

 Europe, more and more of the tribesmen crossed over 

 the ocean and spread through the country, driving 

 before them the main body of the Celts, who retreated 

 in some districts to the neighbouring hills, but generally 



