Of these two, Angul, the fountain, so runs the tradition, of the
beginnings of the Anglian race, caused his name to be applied to the
district which he ruled. This was an easy kind of memorial wherewith
to immortalise his fame: for his successors a little later, when they
gained possession of Britain, changed the original name of the island
for a fresh title, that of their own land. This action was much thought
of by the ancients: witness Bede, no mean figure among the writers of
the Church, who was a native of England, and made it his care to embody
the doings of his country in the most hallowed treasury of his pages;
deeming it equally a religious duty to glorify in writing the deeds of
his land, and to chronicle the history of the Church.

From Dan, however, so saith antiquity; the pedigrees of our kings
have flowed in glorious series, like channels from some parent spring.
Grytha, a matron most highly revered among the Teutons, bore him two
sons, HUMBLE and LOTHER.

The ancients, when they were to choose a king, were wont to stand on
stones planted in the ground, and to proclaim their votes, in order to
foreshadow from the steadfastness of the stones that the deed would be
lasting. By this ceremony Humble was elected king at his father's death,
thus winning a novel favour from his country; but by the malice of
ensuing fate he fell from a king into a common man. For he was taken by
Lother in war, and bought his life by yielding up his crown; such, in
truth, were the only terms of escape offered him in his defeat. Forced,
therefore, by the injustice of a brother to lay down his sovereignty, he
furnished the lesson to mankind, that there is less safety, though more
pomp, in the palace than in the cottage. Also, he bore his wrong so
meekly that he seemed to rejoice at his loss of title as though it were
a blessing; and I think he had a shrewd sense of the quality of a king's