However roughly he dealt with the material civilization of Britain while the struggle went on, it was impossible that such a man could be a mere destroyer.

War in fact was no sooner over than the warrior settled down into the farmer, and the home of the ceorl rose beside the heap of goblin-haunted stones that marked the site of the villa he had burned.

The settlement of the English in the conquered land was nothing less than an absolute transfer of English society in its completest form to the soil of Britain.

The slowness of their advance, the small numbers of each separate band in its descent upon the coast, made it possible for the invaders to bring with them, or to call to them when their work was done, the wives and children, the laet and slave, even the cattle they had left behind them.

The first wave of conquest was but the prelude to the gradual migration of a whole people.
It was England which settled down on British soil, England with its own language, its own laws, its complete social fabric, its system of village life and village culture, its township and its hundred, its principle of kinship, its principle of representation.