Saxons Quotes

All the youth ..., who are rich enough to be able to devote themselves to it be set to learn ... until they are able to read English writing well.

If any one plot against the king's life, of himself, or by harboring of exiles, or of his men; let him be liable in his life and in all that he has.... He who plots against his lord's life, let him be liable in his life to him, and in all that he has ...

England has become the habitation of outsiders and the dominion of foreigners. Today, no Englishman is earl, bishop, or abbot, and newcomers gnaw away at the riches and very innards of England; nor is there any hope for an end of this misery.

… the keenest observer of William the Conqueror's Norman robbers and Saxon swineherds would have failed to foretell the great dominant race which has come from them by free growth and good culture.

I will be to you both a father and an adviser; despise not my counsels, and you shall have no reason to fear being conquered by any man or any nation whatever; for the people of my country are strong, warlike, and robust: if you approve, I will send for my son and his brother, both valiant men who at my invitation will fight against the Scots, and you can give them the countries in the north, near the wall called Gual.

The nation of the West-Saxons do not allow a queen to sit beside the king, nor to be called a queen, but only the king's wife …. all the nobles of that land swore together, that they would never let any king reign over them, who should attempt to place a queen on the throne by his side.

There was among that barbarous [Cambrian] people a public law from former days that a girl who committed fornication in her father’s house, and was found to be pregnant, would be cast headlong from the brow of the highest mountain, and her seducer would be beheaded….with the Saxons from olden days, almost up to these modern times, a sanction endured that any virgin who was deflowered willingly in her father’s house should be buried alive, without any hope of retraction, and the violator himself was to be hanged over her tomb….If such zeal for chastity inflamed pagans, who were ignorant of divine laws, because of their honor and the observance of their fathers’ traditions, what should a Christian do, who is bound fast to the custody of chasteness by the divine law?

The second part of all his revenues, which came yearly into his possession, and was included in the receipts of the exchequer, as we mentioned a little before, he, with ready devotion, gave to God, ordering his ministers to divide it carefully into four parts, on the condition that the first part should be discreetly bestowed on the poor

If a man be slain, we estimate all equally dear, English and Danish, at 8 half marks of pure gold

Free Englishmen had independently settled North America in precisely the same their Saxon ancestors … had possessed themselves of the island of Britain.

As in the days of Edward I, the citizenry may be called upon to enforce the justice of the state, not faintly and with lagging steps but honestly and bravely and with whatever implements and facilities are convenient and at hand.

When they [the Briton Nobles] are sufficiently inebriated, I will cry out, 'Nimed eure Saxes,' then let each draw his knife, and kill his man; but spare the king [Vortigern], on account of his marriage with my daughter, for it is better that he should be ransomed than killed.

If the Welsh will not have peace with us, they shall perish at the hands of the Saxons.

Ethelwerd the youngest … was consigned to the schools of learning, where, with the children of almost all the nobility of the country, and many also who were not noble, he prospered under the diligent care of his teachers. Books in both languages, namely, Latin and Saxon, were both read in the school. They also learned to write; so that before they were of an age to practice manly arts, namely, hunting and such pursuits as befit noblemen, they became studious and clever in the liberal arts.