Every record and every indication shows them to us as fiercer heathen prototypes of the Scotch clans in the most lawless days of the Highlands.

Incapable of union for any peaceful purpose at home, they learned their earliest lesson of subordination in their piratical attacks upon the civilised Christian community of Roman Britain.

We first meet with them in history in the character of destroyers and sea-robbers.

Yet they possessed already in their wild marshy home the germs of those free institutions which have made the history of England unique amongst the nations of Europe..