History of England (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HISTORY OF ENGLAND CHAPTER I. BRITAIN BEFORE THE ENGLISH CONQUEST. The Britons; Ireland and Scotland (i)?the Roman Con- guest; invasion of Julius Casar; Cassivelaunus; description of the Britons (2)?Claudius; Caractacus (3) ?the Isle of Mona; Boadicea (4)?Roman Britain; Agricola; the Roman Wall; Hadrian; Severut (y?the British Church; St. Alban (6). t. The British Isles.?England, the southern part of the Isle of Britain, has its name from the Angles or English, a Teutonic people who, with other kindred tribes, came over from the mainland of Europe, and won themselves a new home in Britain. They found the land already occupied by a Celtic- speaking people, the Britons, who still exist under the name of Welsh. The Celts and the Teutons are both branches of the great Aryan family of mankind, to which nearly all the nations of Europe belong; and the earliest known Aryan inhabitants of Britain belonged to the Celtic branch; but it is believed that before them the land was overspread by a people who were not Aryans, and whom the Celts drove into the west of the island. There are however no written records of the coming of the Celts, or of the races which preceded them: so that our opinions are mainly formed upon the evidence afforded by bones, weapons, and tools found in the caves which served the unknown men of old for dwelling or burial-places, and in the tombs called cromlechs, which still remain in many parts of Britain. In the island of Ireland, formerly called lerne and Scotia, there was a another Celtic people, the Scots or Gael, who afterwards made a settlement in Caledonia or North Britain, which from them came to be called Scotland. Two Celtic languages are still spoken in the British Isles. These are the Gaelic, dialects of which survive in parts of Ireland, i...