AN ENGLISH SH/KS. 191 



eastern Britain they learned the tongue of their masters, 

 and came to be counted as Celtic serfs. Thus, at the 

 time when Britain comes forth into the full historic glare 

 of Roman civilisation, we find the country inhabited by 

 a Celtic aristocracy' of Aryan type round-headed, fair- 

 haired, and blue-eyed ; together with a plebs of Celticised 

 Euskarian or half-caste serfs, retaining, as they still 

 retain, the long skulls and dark complexions of their 

 aboriginal ancestors. This was the ethnical composition 

 of the Sussex population at the date of the first Roman 

 invasions. 



Under the bronze-weaponed Celts, a very different 

 type of civilisation became possible. In the first place 

 a more extended chieftainship resulted from the improved 

 weapons and consequent military power ; and all Britain 

 (at least, towards the close of the Celtic domination) 

 became amalgamated into considerable kingdoms, some 

 of which seem to have spread over several modern shires. 

 Sussex, however, enclosed by its barrier of forest, would 

 naturally remain a single little principality of itself, held, 

 at least in later times, by a tribe known to the Eomans 

 as Regni. Traces of Celtic occupation are mainly con- 

 fined to the Downs and the seaward slope of Sussex 

 Proper ; in the broad expanse of the Weald, they are 

 few and far between. The Celts occupied the fertile 

 valleys and alluvial slopes, cut down the woods by the 

 river sides and on the plains, and built their larger and 

 more regular camps of refuge upon the Downs, for 

 protection against the kindred Cantii beyond the Weald, 

 or the more distantly-related Belgas across the Hayling 

 tidal flats. Of these hill-forts, Hollingbury Castle, near 



