Within a few generations the Celtic slave had forgotten his tongue, his origin, and his religion, and had developed into a pagan English serf.

Whatever else the Teutonic conquest did, it turned every man within the English pale into a thorough Englishman.
But the removal to Britain effected one immense change.

"War begat the king." In Sleswick the English had lived within their little marks as free and independent communities.

In Britain all the clans of each colony gradually came under the military command of a king.

The ealdormen who led the various marauding bands assumed royal power in the new country.