2 NORTH SEA FISHERS AND FIGHTERS 



North Sea, bringing pirates and pillagers by whom the 

 Britons were destroyed wherever they were found. 



By way of rivers Thames, Ouse, Humber, Tees, and 

 Tweed these invaders sailed as far as they could go, 

 burning, pillaging, outraging, and killing. Barbarians 

 they came, barbarians they remained, and a century after 

 their landing even the Britons spoke with fierce contempt 

 of them as dogs and wolves. Yet when they were estab- 

 lished as conquerors they settled down as tillers of the 

 soil and administrators of the captured country. North- 

 umbria was formed, and Edwin, its sovereign, became 

 the greatest of the kings who reigned in England. 



On the very spot in Thanet where the Jutland war- 

 riors had set foot there landed Augustine, the bringer of 

 Christianity and gentler laws to the land which, for four 

 centuries, had been under the dominion of Rome and the 

 Roman legions. 



Along the North Sea borders of the country there 

 arose many of those famous institutions whose ruins may 

 be seen to-day by any voyager who skirts the coast. 

 On the island of lona Columba and his twelve disciples 

 founded a monastery and church, and that lonely spot 

 in the Hebrides was the battleground in after years of 

 many noble priests and North Sea fighters. lona to-day 

 gives numerous links with the sea-wolves of nearly fifteen 

 centuries ago. Lindisfarne, now called Holy Island, came 

 into being, and at Whitby, on the .high, stern cliffs of 

 Yorkshire, Hilda founded the splendid abbey whose ruins 

 are amongst the most majestic on the coast. Csedmon, 

 the father of English song, belonged to the band of 

 which royal Hilda was the head, and amongst them, too, 

 were illustrious followers like John of Beverley and 



