But it must not be concealed that there are likewise proofs that the British race, though much diminished, was not wholly extirpated, and that those who remained were not, merely as Britons, reduced to servitude.

For they are mentioned as existing in some of the earlier Saxon laws.

In these laws they are allowed a compensation on the footing of the meaner kind of English; and they are even permitted, as well as the English, to emerge out of that low rank into a more liberal condition.

This is degradation, but not slavery.[27] The affairs of that whole period are, however, covered with an obscurity not to be dissipated.

The Britons had little leisure or ability to write a just account of a war by which they were ruined; and the Anglo-Saxons who succeeded them, attentive only to arms, were, until their conversion, ignorant of the use of letters.
It is on this darkened theatre that some old writers have introduced those characters and actions which have afforded such ample matter to poets and so much perplexity to historians.