Of all the tribes of the Germanic race none was more cruel than the Saxons. Their very tribe name, which spread to the whole confederacy of Northern tribes, was supposed to be derived from the use of a weapon, the seax, a short one-handed sword. Although tradition and the Venerable Bede assign the conquest of Britain to the Angles, Jutes and Saxons together, and although the various settlements have tribal peculiarities, it is probable that before their general exodus from Schleswig-Holstein the Saxons had virtually incorporated the other two strains.

Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples: The Birth of Britain (65)