upon British Ethnology. 
201 
from the frontiers of Gaul and Germany must thus have 
been exported into Britain, and many Britons have been 
settled on the continent, without any record of the event 
having come down to us. It is known, however, Mr. Seebohm 
remarks, that “ deportations of tribesmen of the Alamannic 
group were repeatedly made into Britain.” 20 It is thus obvious 
both that a very large number of foreign settlers must have 
been introduced into Britain during the nearly four centuries 
of Boman rule, and also that the settlers came from all parts 
of the Boman empire. 
The next invaders of Britain, the Angles, Saxons, and 
Jutes, were, on the whole, a tall, fair people with oval skulls. 
They appear to have first landed here about the middle of 
the fifth century, soon after the withdrawal of the Bomans. 
The Jutes are said to have settled in Kent and the Isle of 
Wight; the Saxons in Essex, Sussex, and Hampshire; and 
the Angles on the east coast from Suffolk to Northumberland. 
Landing in considerable numbers, and speaking a low-German 
tongue mutually intelligible, it is not surprising that they 
soon made themselves supreme over a considerable area of 
Britain towards the east and south coast, when we consider 
the care taken by the Bomans to deprive the Britons of all 
power or wish to help themselves, and of all feeling of nation¬ 
ality. The documentary evidence bearing upon this invasion 
is very slight and unsatisfactory, the earliest work dealing 
with the subject being that of Gildas, who wrote in the 
middle of the sixth century, and whose work is rather a 
fiery sermon denouncing the vices of the Britons and their 
chiefs, than anything else. “The notions of Gildas,” says 
Mr. Gairdner, 21 “ at least as to the order and succession of 
events, are exceedingly confused and inaccurate, nor are 
they in harmony with well-informed Greek and Boman 
writers as to the events themselves. But from the early part 
of the fifth century Greek and Boman writers tell us nothing 
of the affairs of Britain, and Gildas is the original authority 
used by Bede and succeeding writers as the basis of our early 
English history.” Bede’s ‘ Ecclesiastical History of the 
20 Seebohm, ‘ The English Village Community.’ 
21 Early ‘Chroniclers of Europe.’ 
