THE NAME OF ENGLAND AND OF THE

ENGLISH.

Two brothers and adventurers of an obscure Saxon tribe raised their ensign at the White Horse on British land: the visit was opportune, or it was expected - this remains a state secret. Right welcomed by the British monarch and his perplexed council amid their intestine dissensions, as friendly allies renowned for their short and crooked swords called saxons, which had given a generic name to their tribes.

These descendants of Woden, for such even the petty chieftains deemed themselves, whose trade was battle and whose glory was pillage, showed the spiritless what men do who know to conquer, the few against the many. They baffled the strong and they annihilated the weak. The Britons were grateful. The Saxons lodged in the land till they took possession of it. The first Saxon founded the kingdom of Kent; twenty years after, a second in Sussex raised the kingdom of the South-Saxons; in another twenty years appeared the kingdom of the West-Saxons. It was a century after the earliest arrival that the great emigration took place. The tribe of the Angles depopulated their native province and flocked to the fertile island, under that foeman of the Britons whom the bards describe as "The Flame Bearer," and "The Destroyer." Every quality peculiar to the Saxons was hateful to the Britons; even their fairness of complexion. Taliessin terms Hengist "a white-bellied hackney," and his followers are described as of "hateful hue and hateful form." The British poet delights to paint "a Saxon shivering and quaking, his white hair washed in blood ;" and another sings how "close upon the backs of the pale-faced ones were the spear points."*

* Britannia after the Romans, 62, 4to.

66

Already the name itself of Britain had disappeared among the invaders. Our island was now called "Saxony beyond the Sea," or West Saxon land;" and when the expatriated Saxons had alienated themselves from the land of their fathers, those who remained faithful to their native hearths perhaps proudly distinguished themselves as "the old Saxons," for by this name they were known by the Saxons in Britain.

Eight separate, but uncertain kingdoms, were raised on the soil of Britain, and present a moveable surface of fraternal wars and baffled rivals. There was one kingdom long left kingless, for "No man dared, though never so ambitious, to take up the sceptre which many had found so hot; the only effectual cure for ambition that I have read” these are the words of Milton. Finally, to use the quaint phrase of the Chancellor Whitelock, "the octarchy was brought into one." At the end of five centuries the Saxons fell prostrate before a stronger race.

But of all the accidents and the fortunes of the Saxon dynasty, not the least surprising is that an obscure town in the dutchy of Sleswick, Anglen, is commemorated by the transference of its name to one of the great European nations. The Angles, or Engles, have given their denomination to the land of Britain - Engle-land is England, and the Engles are the English.*

How it happened that the very name of Britain was abolished, and why the Anglian was selected in preference to the more eminent race, may offer a philosophical illustration of the accidental nature of LOCAL NAMES.

There is a tale familiar to us from youth, that Egbert,

* It is a singular circumstance that our neighbors have preserved the name of our country more perfectly than we have done by our mutilated term of England, for they write it with antiquarian precision, Angle-terre · the land of the Angles. Our counties bear the vestiges of these Saxons expelling or exterminating the native Britons, as our pious Camden ejaculates, "by God's wonderful providence."

the more powerful king of the West-Saxons, was crowned the first monarch of England, and issued a decree that this kingdom of Britain should be called England; yet an event so strange as to have occasioned the change of the name of the whole country remains unauthenticated by any of the original writers of our annals.* No record attests that Egbert in a solemn coronation assumed the title of " King of England." His son and successor never claimed such a legitimate title; and even our illustrious Alfred, subsequently, only styled himself " King of the West-Saxons."

The story, however, is of ancient standing; for Matthew of Westminister alludes to a similar if not the same incident, namely, that by "a common decree of all the Saxon kings, it was ordained that the title of the island should no longer be Britain, from Brute, but henceforward be called from the English, England." Stowe furnishes a positive circumstance in this obscure transaction "Egbert caused the brazen image of Cadwaline, king of the Britons, to be thrown down." The decree noticed by Matthew of Westminister, combined with the fact of pulling down the statue of a popular British monarch, betrays the real motive of this singular national change; whether it were the suggestion of Egbert, or the unanimous agreement of the assembled monarchs who were his tributary kings, it was a stroke of deep political wisdom; it knitted the members into one common body, under one name, abolishing, by legislative measures, the very memory of Britain from the land. Although, therefore, no positive evidence has been produced, the state policy carries an internal evidence which yields some sanction to the obscure tradition.

*The diligent investigator of the history of our Anglo-Saxons concludes that this unauthorized tale of the coronation and the decree of Egbert is unworthy of credence.

Camden, in his first edition, had fixed the date of the change of the name as occurring in the year 810; in his second edition he corrected it to 800. Holinshed says about 800. Speed gives a much later date, 819. It is evident that these disagreeing dates are all hazarded conjectures.

It is a nicer difficulty to account for the choice of the Anglian name. It might have been preferred to distinguish the Saxons of Britain from the Saxons of the Continent; or the name was adopted, being that of the far more numerous race among these people. Four kingdoms of the octarchy were possessed by the Angles. Thus doubtful and obscure remains the real origin of our national name, which hitherto has hinged on a suspicious fact.

The casual occurrence of the ENGLES leaving their name to this land has bestowed on our country a foreign designation; and for the contingency was nearly occurring- had the kingdom of Northumbria preserved its ascendency in the octarchy, the seat of dominion had been altered. In that case, the Lowlands of Scotland would have formed a portion of England; York would have stood forth as the metropolis of Britain, and London had been but a remote mart for her port and her commerce. Another idiom, perhaps too other manners, had changed the whole face of the country. We had been Northmen, not Southerns; our neighborhood had not proved so troublesome to France. But the kingdom of Wessex prevailed, and became the sole monarchy of England. Such local contingencies have decided the character of a whole people.*

The history of LOCAL NAMES is one of the most capricious and fortuitous in the history of man; the etymologist must not be implicitly trusted, for it is necessary to be acquainted with the history of a people as much as the history of languages, to be certain of local derivations. We have recently been cautioned by a sojourner in the most ancient of kingdoms,† not too confidently to rely on etymology, or to assign too positively any reason for the origin of LOCAL No etymologist could have accounted for the name

NAMES.

* "Mitford's Harmony of Language," 429. I might have placed this possible circumstance in the article "A History of Events which have not happened," in "Curiosities of Literature."

† Sir GARDINER WILKINSON, in the curious volume of his recondite discoveries in the land of the pyramids.

of our nation had he not had recourse to our annals. Sir Walter RALEIGH, from his observations in the New World, has confirmed this observation by circumstances which probably remain unknown to the present inhabitants. The actual names given to those places in America which they still retain, are nothing more than the blunders of the first Europeans, demanding by signs and catching at words by which neither party were intelligible to one another.*

* History of the World, 167, fo. 1666. We have also a curious account of the ancient manner of naming persons and places among our own nation in venerable Lambarde's Perambulations of Kent, 349, 453.