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ence of a remote province, the separation was not embittered by the reproach of tyranny or rebellion; and the claims of allegiance and protection were succeeded by the mutual and voluntary offices of national friendship."

183

Britain.

This revolution dissolved the artificial fabric of civil and State of military government; and the independent country, during a A.D. 409-449 period of forty years, till the descent of the Saxons, was ruled by the authority of the clergy, the nobles, and the municipal towns.1 184 I. Zosimus, who alone has preserved the memory of this singular transaction, very accurately observes that the letters of Honorius were addressed to the cities of Britain.185 Under the protection of the Romans, ninety-two considerable towns had arisen in the several parts of that great province; and, among these, thirty-three cities were distinguished above the rest by their superior privileges and importance.186 Each of these cities, as in all the other provinces of the empire, formed a legal corporation, for the purpose of regulating their domestic policy; and the powers of municipal government were distributed among annual magistrates, a select senate, and the assembly of the people, according to the original model of the Roman constitution. 187 The management of a common revenue, the exercise of civil and criminal jurisdiction, and the habits of public counsel and command were inherent to these petty republics; and, when they asserted their independence, the youth of the city and of the adjacent districts would naturally range themselves under the standard of the magistrate. But the desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burdens, of political society

the reign of Honorius. Yet our modern historians and antiquaries extend the term of their dominion; and there are some who allow only the interval of a few months between their departure and the arrival of the Saxons.

183 Bede has not forgot the occasional aid of the legions against the Scots and Picts; and more authentic proof will hereafter be produced that the independent Britains raised 12,000 men for the service of the emperor Anthemius in Gaul.

184 I owe it to myself, and to historic truth, to declare that some circumstances in the paragraph are founded only on conjecture and analogy. The stubbornness of our language has sometimes forced me to deviate from the conditional into the indicative mood. [On Britain, cp. works mentioned in vol. i. App. 5.]

185 Πρὸς τὰς ἐν Βρεταννία πόλεις. Zosimus, l. vi. p. 383 [10].

186 Two cities of Britain were municipia, nine colonies, ten Latii jure donatae, twelve stipendiaria of eminent note. This detail is taken from Richard of Cirencester, de Situ Britanniæ, p. 36; and, though it may not seem probable that he wrote from the Mss. of a Roman general, he shews a genuine knowledge of antiquity, very extraordinary for a monk of the fourteenth century. [The treatise is a forgery of the 18th century, by one Bertram; cp. vol. i. Appendix 2.]

187 See Maffei, Verona Illustrata, part i. 1. v. p. 83-106.

is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord; nor can it reasonably be presumed that the restoration of British freedom was exempt from tumult and faction. The pre-eminence of birth and fortune must have been frequently violated by bold and popular citizens; and the haughty nobles, who complained that they were become the subjects of their own servants,188 would sometimes regret the reign of an arbitrary monarch. II. The jurisdiction of each city over the adjacent country was supported by the patrimonial influence of the principal senators; and the smaller towns, the villages, and the proprietors of land consulted their own safety by adhering to the shelter of these rising republics. The sphere of their attraction was proportioned to the respective degrees of their wealth and populousness; but the hereditary lords of ample possessions, who were not oppressed by the neighbourhood of any powerful city, aspired to the rank of independent princes, and boldly exercised the rights of peace and war. The gardens and villas, which exhibited some faint imitation of Italian elegance, would soon be converted into strong castles, the refuge, in time of danger, of the adjacent country; 189 the produce of the land was applied to purchase arms and horses, to maintain a military force of slaves, of peasants, and of licentious followers; and the chieftain might assume, within his own domain, the powers of a civil magistrate. Several of these British chiefs might be the genuine posterity of ancient kings; and many more would be tempted to adopt this honourable genealogy, and to vindicate their hereditary claims, which had been suspended by the usurpation of the Caesars.190 Their situation and their hopes would dispose them to affect the dress, the language, and the customs of their ancestors.

188 Leges restituit, libertatemque reducit,
Et servos famulis non sinit esse suis.

Itinerar. Rutil. 1. i. 215.

If the

189 An inscription (apud Sirmond., Not. ad Sidon. Apollinar. p. 59) describes a castle, cum muris et portis, tuitioni omnium, erected by Dardanus [Praet. Praef. of Gaul in 409 and 411-13] on his own estate near Sisteron, in the second Narbonnese, and named by him Theopolis. [See C. I. L. xii. 1524; the stone is on the road from Sisteron to St. Genies in Provence. Dardanus is not stated to have given its name to the village or castle of Theopolis (now hamlet of Théon), but to have given it walls and gates.]

190 The establishment of their power would have been easy indeed, if we could adopt the impracticable scheme of a lively and learned antiquarian; who supposes that the British monarchs of the several tribes continued to reign, though with subordinate jurisdiction, from the time of Claudius to that of Honorius. See Whitaker's History of Manchester, vol. i. p. 247-257.

princes of Britain relapsed into barbarism, while the cities studiously preserved the laws and manners of Rome, the whole island must have been gradually divided by the distinction of two national parties; again broken into a thousand subdivisions of war and faction, by the various provocations of interest and resentment. The public strength, instead of being united against a foreign enemy, was consumed in obscure and intestine quarrels; and the personal merit which had placed a successful leader at the head of his equals might enable him to subdue the freedom of some neighbouring cities, and to claim a rank among the tyrants 191 who infested Britain after the dissolution of the Roman government. III. The British church might be composed of thirty or forty bishops,192 with an adequate proportion of the inferior clergy; and the want of riches (for they seem to have been poor 193) would compel them to deserve the public esteem by a decent and exemplary behaviour. The interest, as well as the temper, of the clergy was favourable to the peace and union of their distracted country; those salutary lessons might be frequently inculcated in their popular discourses; and the episcopal synods were the only councils that could pretend to the weight and authority of a national assembly. In such councils, where the princes and magistrates sat promiscuously with the bishops, the important affairs of the state, as well as of the church, might be freely debated; differences reconciled, alliances formed, contributions imposed, wise resolutions often concerted, and sometimes executed; and there is reason to believe that, in moments of extreme danger, a Pendragon, or Dictator, was elected by the general consent of the Britons. These pastoral cares, so worthy of the episcopal character, were interrupted, however, by zeal and superstition; and the British clergy incessantly laboured to eradicate the Pelagian heresy,

181 Αλλ ̓ οὖσα ὑπὸ τυράννοις ἀπ ̓ αὐτοῦ ἔμενε. Procopius, de Bell. Vandal. 1. i. c. 2, p. 181. Britannia fertilis provincia tyrannorum, was the expression of Jerom, in the year 415 (tom. ii. p. 255, ad Ctesiphont.). By the pilgrims, who resorted every year to the Holy Land, the Monk of Bethlem received the earliest and most accurate intelligence.

182 See Bingham's Eccles. Antiquities, vol. i. 1. ix. c. 6, p. 394. [See an important paper on Early British Christianity by F. Haverfield in English Historical Review, July, 1896. The archæological evidence is mustered.]

193 It is reported of three British bishops who assisted at the council of Rimini, A.D. 359, tam pauperes fuisse ut nihil [proprium] haberent. Sulpicius Severus, Hist. Sacra, 1. ii. p. 420 [c. 41]. Some of their brethren, however, were in better circumstances.

Assembly

of the seven

provinces of Gaul.

A.D. 418

which they abhorred as the peculiar disgrace of their native country.194

It is somewhat remarkable, or rather it is extremely natural, that the revolt of Britain and Armorica should have introduced an appearance of liberty into the obedient provinces of Gaul. In a solemn edict,195 filled with the strongest assurances of that paternal affection which princes so often express and so seldom feel, the emperor Honorius promulgated his intention of convening an annual assembly of the seven provinces: a name peculiarly appropriated to Aquitain, and the ancient Narbonnese, which had long since exchanged their Celtic rudeness for the useful and elegant arts of Italy.196 Arles, the seat of government and commerce, was appointed for the place of the assembly; which regularly continued twenty-eight days, from the fifteenth of August to the thirteenth of September, of every year. It consisted of the Prætorian præfect of the Gauls; of seven provincial governors, one consular and six presidents; of the magistrates, and perhaps the bishops, of about sixty cities; and of a competent, though indefinite, number of the most honourable and opulent possessors of land, who might justly be considered as the representatives of their country. They were empowered to interpret and communicate the laws of their sovereign; to expose the grievances and wishes of their constituents; to moderate the excessive or unequal weight of taxes; and to deliberate on every subject of local or national importance, that could tend to the restoration of the peace and prosperity of the seven provinces. If such an institution, which gave the people an interest in their own government, had been universally established by Trajan or the Antonines, the seeds of public wisdom and virtue might have been cherished and propagated in the empire of Rome. The privileges of the subject would have secured the throne of the monarch; the abuses of an

194 Consult Usher, de Antiq. Eccles. Britannicar. c. 8-12.

195 See the correct text of this edict, as published by Sirmond (Not. ad Sidon. Apollin. p. 147). Hincmar of Rheims, who assigns a place to the bishops, had probably seen (in the ninth century) a more perfect copy. Dubos, Hist. Critique de la Monarchie Françoise, tom. i. p. 241-255.

196 It is evident from the Notitia that the seven provinces were the Viennensis, the maritime Alps, the first and second Narbonnese, Novem populania, and the first and second Aquitain. In the room of the first Aquitain, the Abbé Dubos, on the authority of Hincmar, desires to introduce the first Lugdunensis, or Lyonnese. [The Seven Provinces are not to be confused with Septimania; op. Appendix 19.]

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