[Early Britain by Grant Allen]@TWC D-Link book
Early Britain

CHAPTER II
9/14

As soon as the war was over, each tribe returned to its own independence.
Indeed, the only really coherent body was the village or kindred: and the whole course of early English history consists of a long and tedious effort at increased national unity, which was never fully realised till the Norman conquerors bound the whole nation together in the firm grasp of William, Henry, and Edward.
In personal appearance, the primitive Anglo-Saxons were typical Germans of very unmixed blood.

Tall, fair-haired, and gray-eyed, their limbs were large and stout, and their heads of the round or brachycephalic type, common to most Aryan races.

They did not intermarry with other nations, preserving their Germanic blood pure and unadulterated.

But as they had slaves, and as these slaves must in many cases have been captives spared in war, we must suppose that such descriptions apply, strictly speaking, to the freemen and chieftains alone.

The slaves might be of any race, and in process of time they must have learnt to speak English, and their children must have become English in all but blood.
Many of them, indeed, would probably be actually English on the father's side, though born of slave mothers.


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