From Macmillan's Magazine.ligion as the conquered, yet it was not from

THE ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH NATION.

THREE LECTURES.

BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN.

LECTURE III.

the conquered that they embraced it. They embraced it moreover in a form so far differing from the religion of the conquered as to awaken sectarian disputes from the very beginning. These are the simple facts of history, facts which no one who has ordina

solutely unmixed, yet it is not more mixed than the blood of other nations; that the Englishman of the nineteenth century as truly represents, and is as probably descended from, the Englishman of the sixth century, as the Briton, the Dane, or the HighGerman of the nineteenth century represents and is descended from the Briton, the Dane, or the High-German of the sixth?

In my two former lectures I have striven to set before you the plain facts of the origin and early history of the English nation.ry historical knowledge and insight will disWe are a Low-Dutch people, who left our pute. The question is only as to the inferold home in the course of the fifth and sixth ence to be drawn from the facts. Am I or centuries and found ourselves a new home am I not justified in inferring from those by conquest in the Isle of Britain. That facts that the English of the nineteenth cenisland, lately a Roman province, had been tury are essentially the descendants of the a short time before left to itself, and was in English of the fifth and sixth centuriesa state of utter anarchy and disorganization. that the population which they found in the Its invaders were invaders of a different land which they conquered was for the most kind from the other Teutonic settlers in the part killed or driven out that such remEmpire. While the conquerors of the con- nants of them as survived, and such other tinental provinces had all been brought strangers as have since made either warlike more or less under Roman and Christian or peaceful settlements among us, have influences, the Angles and Saxons still re- been simply absorbed into the greater Engmained in their old barbarism and their old lish mass? Am I or am I not justified in heathenism. On the other hand, the with-inferring, that, though our blood is not abdrawal of the Roman power from Britain had of itself awakened strictly national feelings, and a spirit of national resistance, such as did not exist elsewhere. From these two differences, above all others, arose a wide difference between the Teutonic Conquest of Britain and the Teutonic conquests on the Continent. On the Continent the settlement was speedy; it met with little resistance, with no strictly national re- That is my position. I have already givsistance; it involved comparatively little en the evidence for it; not every scrap of change beyond the transfer of political pow-evidence which I could bring in a work to er; the conquered were neither slain, driv-be pored over in the closet, but that broad en out, nor enslaved; they retained their and simple kind of evidence which is best laws and a fixed share of their possessions; suited to come home to the minds of a popthe conquerors gradually adopted the lan- ular audience. I have brought evidence guage and the religion of the conquered, enough, I think, to do what I hold to be the and in the course of centuries they were ab- great object of lectures of this kind, to set sorbed into their greater mass. In Britain you reading and thinking for yourselves. on the other hand the conquest was an af- It is now time to look, in the same rough fair of centuries; the invaders everywhere and general way in which alone we can met with a resolute national resistance; the look, at some of the arguments which are land was won bit by bit by hard fighting, brought on the other side. There are writand the periods of success on the part of ers who, not out of mere ignorance, not out the conquerors alternated with times of re- of a mere slip of the tongue, assert that the verse during which the work of conquest English people are not mainly descended stood still. In the end the laws, the arts, from the Teutons who conquered Britain, the language, the creed, of the conquered but from the Britons whom they conquered. people were swept away; the conquerors In a word they tell us that Englishmen are retained their own laws and language, and not Englishmen, but that they are somethough they at last embraced the same re-thing else.

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united nation. But remember that AngloSaxon does not mean Saxons in England as distinguished from Saxons somewhere else; it does not mean people who lived before 1066 as distinguished from people who lived afterwards. It is simply a shorter way of saying “ Angles and Saxons," and a shorter way still is saying "English." In short, "English" and "Anglo-Saxon" are words which mean exactly the same thing, and to say that Englishmen are not AngloSaxons is exactly the same thing as saying that Englishmen are not Englishmen.

When men speak in this way, what they really mean is one or both of two very different things, which they generally contrive to confuse together. We say that the English are Teutons, speaking a Teutonic lan

I put the proposition purposely in this broad shape, because I know it is a shape which the holders of the doctrine of which I speak would at once reject. If there are any holders of that doctrine in this room, they need not trouble themselves to get up and protest; I can do the protesting for them; I know exactly what they wish to say. They wish to say that they do not maintain any such monstrous doctrine as that Englishmen are not Englishmen, but something else; what they maintain is that Englishmen are not wholly or chiefly AngloSaxons. I think I have now at least put it pretty fairly. But I thought it right to put it the other way too, because I really believe that most of the controversy and confusion on the subject is owing to nothing in the world but mere confusion and careless-guage; that they are the same people, ness as to nomenclature. You will say that speaking the same language, as when they nomenclature is my hobby; and so it is. came to Britain in the fifth century, allowBut it has become my hobby because longing only for those changes in language and study and experience has shown me its par- everything else which cannot fail to happen amount importance; because I know that in fourteen hundred years. Then they say, ideas and the names of those ideas always "Oh but the English are not the Angloinfluence one another, and that clear ideas Saxons." By this they mean one or both and a confused nomenclature never can ex- of two things, either of which may be true ist together. I would ask objectors what or false, but which have nothing to do with they mean by Anglo-Saxons. I know what one another. Sometimes they mean that I mean by it. Anglo-Saxon is a word the English language has changed so much, which I very seldom use, because it is of all chiefly through causes which are the result words the most likely to be misunderstood; of the Norman Conquest, that it has become but it is in itself a perfectly good word and another language, and that it is not right to has a perfectly good meaning. It is often call modern English by the same name as used in the charters, the public documents, Old-English. The old form they call Angloof the tenth and eleventh centuries, but it Saxon, and the people who spoke it Anglois not often used except in public docu- Saxons; the new form they call English, ments. It is seldom used except in the and the people who speak it Englishmen. royal title, where we often find the King This objection, you will at once see, has called "King of the Anglo-Saxons." This rothing to do with anything which happened means simply King of the Angles and Sax- before the Norman Conquest. It is conons, King of the nation formed by an union sistent with believing that the people whom of Angles and Saxons. Rex Anglo-Saxo- the Normans found here were of the purest num is simply a short way of saying Rex Teutonic blood and spoke the purest TeuAnglorum et Saxonum. And King of the tonic language. The other proposition is Angles and Saxons is of course a fuller and that the people whom the Normans found in more correct title than King of the Angles England were not a Teutonic, but mainly a or English alone. But, as a matter of fact, Celtic people, a Celtic people of course who after the Teutonic states in Britain had been had learned to speak Teutonic. Now this fused into one kingdom, though "Anglo- objection has nothing to do with anything Saxons" was doubtless the more correct which happened after the Norman Conquest. and solemn description, "Angli," "Eng- It is consistent with believing in the most lish," was the one commonly used, while perfect identity in blood and speech and 'Saxon was never used as the name of the everything else between the Englishman of

the nineteenth century and the Englishman | it was not our own word; it was borrowed, of the eleventh. Only it affirms that neither it was adopted, from some other language; the one nor the other has any right to be there was a time when it was not in use and called Teutonic. Now you will see that when it would have been looked upon as a these two propositions have absolutely noth- purely foreign word. There must have ing to do with one another. You may be- been, if we could only find him out, some lieve or disbelieve either, or neither, or one man who brought it in as a novelty, and both, without one having the slightest influ- some particular day when he used it for the ence on the other. But I can see that the first time. But the old words which have two are often unconsciously mixed up to- always been in use, the words which English gether in the minds of those who will not has in common with other Teutonic lanaccept the identity of the English of the guages, house and child and man and father nineteenth century with the English in the and mother and so forth, cannot be said to fifth. Of both these doctrines I must say a be derived from anything. They have allittle, but I need not say nearly so much ways been in use; the utmost change that about the first as about the second. The has happened to them is some small change first is in some sort a question of words; it in spelling or perhaps in sound. The modis hardly a question of facts, except so far ern forms cannot be said to be derived from as words themselves are facts. Our lan- the older forms, any more than a man can guage, as I have already said, has greatly be said to be derived from himself when he changed in the space of eight hundred years. was some years younger. So again I have It has changed so much that the English of seen such phrases as "the Anglo-Saxon eight hundred years back is at first sight or language giving way to the English, or behearing unintelligible. In this however I ing exchanged for the English." Now these would remind you that English in no way expressions are perfectly correct when they differs from other languages; the language are applied to cases in which one language spoken in any other part of Europe eight really displaces another. Thus English has hundred years back is at first sight or hear- displaced Welsh as the language of Corning unintelligible to those who know only wall. That is to say, people left off speakits modern form. If any one chooses to ing Welsh and took to speaking English, call this a difference of language, it is sim- there being of course an intermediate stage ply a question of words. If any one chooses when most people spoke both languages. to call the later form English and the older The English language, as a ready made form Anglo-Saxon, he is using what I think whole, displaced the Welsh language as is a very confused and misleading nomencla- another whole. But there was no time ture, but he is not necessarily saying any- when men in England left off talking one thing which is incorrect in point of fact. language called Anglo-Saxon and took to The objection to this way of speaking is talking another language called English. mainly this. It leads men to confound one There was no time when one man could sort of change with quite another sort of have said to another, “I speak English and change. If we allow ourselves to talk of you speak Anglo-Saxon." But there was a English and Anglo-Saxon as two different time when one man in Cornwall could have languages, we shall almost be sure to con- said to another, "I speak English and you found their relations to one another with speak Welsh." The difference between quite a different sort of relations. One of Anglo-Saxon, or Old-English, or whatever ten sees such expressions as that a modern we call it, and the English which we speak English word is derived from the Anglo- now, is not a difference between one lanSaxon, while another modern English word guage and another, any more than the difis derived from the Latin or some other for- ference between a man when he is young eign language. The word derived is here and the same man when he is old is the difused in two quite different senses. A Ro-ference between one man and another. mance word in modern use, the word derived The change has been very great, but it has itself or any other, may be strictly said to not been the displacement of one language be derived from the Latin. That is to say, by another, but a change within the lan

guage itself. It is therefore better and clearer to speak of it as one language throughout, and to call it throughout by that one name by which it has always been called by those who spoke it.

of the presumption of language till somebody proves that they were something else. If a man says that the English of the ninth century were not Teutonic, he must be ready to show what they were, and how it came Still, a man may choose to say that the to pass that they exchanged their own lanchanges which have happened in the English guage, whatever it was, for a Teutonic lanlanguage during the last eight hundred guage. The answer is of course ready, years, the loss of inflexions and the infusion" Oh, the Britons, when conquered by the of Romance words into the vocabulary, have Angles and Saxons, adopted their language, gone so far that he thinks it best to speak as many other nations have adopted the lanof it as another language. He may even, guages of other nations." I ask for proof: though I cannot conceive any reason for do- I ask for a parallel. It is true that nations ing so, think good to call the older speech have often adopted the languages of other Anglo-Saxon and the later speech English. nations. They have sometimes adopted the If so, it is only his nomenclature that I quar- language of those whom they have conrel with. He may himself be perfectly right quered; they have sometimes adopted the in all his facts, though he uses a nomencla- language of those who have conquered them. ture which is certain to lead other people But this has always been under circumstanwrong. The other objection, the objection ces widely different from anything which can that the English people, say in the ninth, be conceived as happening at the English tenth, or eleventh century, were not a Teu- Conquest of Britain. Take for instance the tonic people, involves still graver errors. language of Rome herself. Latin became People who speak in this way are not throughout the whole Roman Empire the merely calling right facts by wrong names; speech of government, law, and military they are utterly wrong in the facts them- discipline. And in a large part of the Emselves. I put it to the sense of those who pire it became also the speech of common heard my last lecture. Is it possible that life. It became the speech of common life the differences which I then pointed out be- wherever the Roman conqueror came also tween the English Conquest of Britain and as a teacher and a civilizer, wherever the the other Teutonic conquests can be consis- sway of Rome was not a mere sway of tent with the belief that the English, power, but a sway which carried with it a whether of the ninth or of the nineteenth marked improvement upon the earlier state century, are simply Celts more or less Teu- of things. The living tongues of Gaul, tonized? I appeal to the evidence of your Spain, and Dacia show how complete was own tongues and your own ears. Do you the conquest made by the Latin speech speak Welsh? do you speak Latin? I trow wherever it had to struggle only against not; whatever tongues we may have learned languages less formed and cultivated than since, we learned English and nothing else itself. But wherever the Greek tongue had from our mothers and nurses. There is the taken hold, whether through original Helgreat fact of fourteen hundred years; a very lenic descent, through Greek colonization, simple fact, but a very great one. We do or through Macedonian conquest, there not speak Welsh or Latin, but we do speak Latin strove in vain against the speech English. And those who carry opposition which set the model to its own literature. to my views to the furthest point, will not Not only did Greek hold its own in all the deny that English is even now more Teu- Hellenic and Hellenized provinces; it went tonic than anything else; they will not deny far to displace Latin as the tongue of polite that a thousand years back it was almost intercourse among Latin-speaking people wholly Teutonic. Now the presumption is themselves. Roman Emperors wrote their that people using a Teutonic speech are a Teutonic people. Do not misunderstand me; I do not say that the fact that a people uses a Teutonic speech is a proof that they are a Teutonic people; I only say that it is a presumption that they are so. I mean that we may assume them to be Teutonic, unless somebody can show that they are not. I am not bound to prove that the English, say of the ninth century, were a Teutonic people, any more than I am bound to prove that the Welsh of the same age were a Celtic people. I accept both facts on the strength

philosophical works in the tongue of their Greek subjects; no Greek philosopher ever stooped to write his works in the tongue of his Roman master. Greek, Latin, Arabic, have displaced a vast number of earlier tongues in Europe, Asia, and Africa. They displaced the earlier tongues wherever the Greek, Roman, or Saracenic conqueror was decidedly the superior in arts as well as arms of the nations which he overcame. But the ancient tongues of Syria and Egypt have lived through all three conquests. Each is now the speech only of a small rem

yond all doubt implies the displacement of those who spoke it. That is to say, the English Conquest, during its heathen stage, was a conquest of extermination, so far as that name can be applied to any conquest at all.

nant, because only a small remnant of the nation survives; but so far as the nation exists, its speech has not been displaced. So the Teutonic conquests of Gaul, Spain, and Italy failed to displace Latin; the Turkish conquest of south-eastern Europe has failed to displace Greek, Slavonic, Al- Ingenious men go on further to tell us banian, and the Latin of Dacia; the might that, after all, purely Teutonic as the oldest of Russia has striven in vain to get rid of form of English seems to be, there is a large Polish, German, and Swedish in their con- Celtic and Latin element mingling with it. quered territories. But on the other hand Again I repeat, no language ever kept its German, High and Low, has displaced Sla- vocabulary perfectly pure. If the English, vonic as the speech of large populations on settling themselves in a country where Celthe eastern frontier of Germany, because tic and Latin had been spoken, had not the German came among the Slaves, not adopted a single Celtic or Latin word, that only as a conqueror, but as the teacher of assuredly would have been the marvel, and a higher civilization and a purer religion, not the other way. There is not a single as the missionary alike of Rome's Cæsar European colony, not even those who have and of Rome's Pontiff. So the tongues of been most diligent in extirpating the native the various colonizing nations of Europe, inhabitants, who have not picked up a English and Spanish above all, have dis- word or two from them before their destrucplaced the original tongues of countless tion was quite finished. From India and barbarous nations in their several colonial China, where we appear as conquerors and empires. The law seems to be an universal traders, not as mere destroyers, we pick up one; in a case of mere conquest, mere set- more words. A few Celtic words made tlement, where the conquered are simply their way into Latin; a few Latin words politically subdued and are not further dis- made their way into Greek. When two naturbed, the speech of the higher civilization, tions come into contact, whether as friends whether that of the conquerors or of the or as enemies, each will always borrow a conquered, is sure to triumph. Where few words from the other. The words there is no very marked difference in point adopted will be words expressing something of civilization, the language of the con- specially belonging to the people from quered, as the language of the greater num- whom they are borrowed; words like tea, ber, will probably triumph. Take for in- shawl, and sash, which seem familiar enough stance our own conquest by the Normans. now, are neither Teutonic, Celtic, nor There was no overwhelming superiority on Latin, but come from the tongues of the either side; Norman and Englishman had different Eastern nations from which we each something to learn of the other; the first got the things. So the word basket, final result was that the greater English there can be no manner of doubt, is a Celmass absorbed the smaller Norman mass, tic word, and it has found its way from the and that the English tongue, though a good Celtic both into Latin and into English. I deal modified by the struggle, did in the am not master of the antiquities of basketend win back its old place from the French. making, but I conceive that there must No instance can be shown in which a small have been some special merit about the body of conquerors, settling among a peo- Celtic baskets which commended them, ple more civilized than themselves, commu- name and thing, to the adoption of two disnicated their own language to them. If the tinct sets of conquerors. But the integrity English people were mainly of Celtic de- of a language, Latin, English, or any other, scent, if the Angles and Saxons had been is not touched by taking in a few stray simply a small body, settling among the guests of this kind. Let us see what the conquered and at most forming an aristoc- Celtic and Latin element in the earliest racy among them - had the English Con- English really is. Let us look first at the quest, in short, been only such a conquest local nomenclature. We have been triumas the Frankish conquest of Gaul or the phantly asked whether, if the English peoNorman Conquest of England-we may ple had been purely Teutonic, Celtic names set it down as absolutely certain that the like Kent, Bernicia, Deornarice or Deira, speech of the conquered would have tri- would have become the names of English umphed in the end, and that we should now be speaking, not a Teutonic, but a Romance or, far more probably, a Celtic language. Under the circumstances of the English Conquest, the displacement of language be

kingdoms. I am standing here in Deira, and I do not think that I have around me an assembly of Welshmen. It is possible there may be among my hearers some citizen of Massachusetts or Connecticut. Does