CHAPTER V.
THE ENGLISH IN THEIR NEW HOMES.
If any trust at all can be placed in the legends, a lull in the conquest followed the first settlement, and for some fifty years the English--or at least the West Saxons--were engaged in consolidating their own dominions, without making any further attack upon those of the Welsh.

It may be well, therefore, to enquire what changes of manners had come over them in consequence of their change of place from the shores of the Baltic and the North Sea to those of the Channel and the German Ocean.
As a whole, English society remained much the same in Britain as it had been in Sleswick and North Holland.

The English came over in a body, with their women and children, their flocks and herds, their goods and chattels.

The peculiar breed of cattle which they brought with them may still be distinguished in their remains from the earlier Celtic short-horn associated with Roman ruins and pre-historic barrows.

They came as settlers, not as mere marauders; and they remained banded together in their original tribes and families after they had occupied the soil of Britain.
From the moment of their landing in Britain the savage corsairs of the Sleswick flats seem wholly to have laid aside their seafaring habits.
They built no more ships, apparently; for many years after Bishop Wilfrith had to teach the South Saxons how to catch sea-fish; while during the early Danish incursions we hear distinctly that the English had no vessels; nor is there much incidental mention of shipping between the age of the settlement and that of AElfred.