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: CHAPTER III. Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons.—Its civilizing Effects.—They occupy the Roman Towns.—England attacked by the Danes.— The third, i. e. the Danish, Element of our Nation.—Danish Institutions and Customs.—Ferocity of their Attack on England.—Extent of their chief Settlements here.—Evidence of Danish Names of Places and Persons. — Alfred rescues Saxon England from them.—The Danish blends with the Saxon Element.—Fusion of the first three Elements of our Nation. The conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity (which was principally effected during the seventh century) did much to mitigate the wild fierceness of the conquerors, and also to modify their political and social institutions. The ecclesiastics from continental Christendom, who were the first missionaries to Saxon England, and who continued to migrate hither in no inconsiderable numbers, came from lands where the old Roman civilization had survived in a much greater degree than was the case in Britain. They were familiar with municipal self-government practised in populous and important cities; they were familiar, also, with the idea of imperial power, as it once had been wielded by Roman emperors in the West, and still lingered in the ostentatious though feeble grasp of the emperors of Constantinople. The Church, moreover (within the pale of which St. Augustine and his coadjutors brought the English nation), had her councils, her synods, and the full organization of a highly complex, but energetic and popularecclesiastical polity. She recruited her ranks from men of every race, and every class of society. She taught the unity of all mankind; and practically hroke down the barriers of caste and pedigree, by offering to all her temporal advantages as well as her spiritual blessings. She sheltered the remnan... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.