History of Britain From The Flood To A.D. 700 | Part Four

History of Britain From The Flood To A.D. 700 | Part Four

THE ARTHURIAN ERA

THE Roman Empire, West of the Alps, fell Dec. 31, A.D. 406, before that “movement of the nations” termed in the Triads, “the Black Invasion.” These nations were the Huns, Goths, Vandals, Burgun­dians, Franks, and Alani. The Huns proceeded from Eastern Tartary; the Goths, or Get e, from Southern Russia; the Vandals, Burgundians, and Alani from Central Germany; the Franks from Western Germany. Southern Germany and Northern Italy were conquered by the Ostro-Goth (Oestricht, Austria),—France by the Franks,—Spain by the Suevi, Vandals, and Visigoths,—Northern Africa by the Vandals,—Hungary by the Huns. The Goths, Franks, and Vandals had, prior to A.D. 400, enrolled themselves stipendiaries of the empire, stipulating in return for large blocks of territory to defend its frontiers against all invaders. The armies of the empire had been in fact barbarianized—that is, recruited almost wholly from non-Roman sources long before the dissolu­tion of its Civil Constitution, and some of its most responsible offices were discharged by barbarian statesmen. Thus, Stilicho, its most sagacious politician and commander, was a Vandal.

A.D. 398, Alaric, the Goth, of the race of Balti, applied in his capacity of chief of the Gothic army of defence, for the master-generalship of the whole empire. The dignity being conferred by the emperor Honorius on Stilicho, Alaric, abjuring his allegiance, invaded Italy, but was with the aid of the British legions defeated by Stilicho, with immense slaughter, at Pollentia in Lombardy.

Alaric, after a second defeat at Verona, withdrew his forces, reduced to one third their number, to the wilds of Germany. A.D. 406, a new inundation under Rhadagisus passing the Alps, the Po and the Apennines besieged Florence, but were over-thrown on the Hills of Fæsulæ by the Vandal generalissimo, with the loss of their leader and 140,000 men. The rest, computed at 250,000 con­sisting of Suevi, Vandals, Alani, and Burgundians, effected the passage of the Alps, routed the Franks—to whom the defence of the German frontier had been committed—with the loss of 20,000 men, and crossed the Rhine, 31st Dec. A.D. 406. Mentz was destroyed; Strasburg, Spires, Rheims, Tournay, Arras, Amiens, plundered and burnt. The seven-teen provinces of Gaul to the foot of the Pyrenees succumbed without a second engagement to their arms.

The numbers which for the next century and a half continued to be disgorged by the wide regions of Northern Asia and Europe upon the South and West almost exceed belief. As an instance of the gigantic scale on which military operations during this period were conducted, at the battle of Lyons, A.D. 448, between OEtius and Attila the Hun, the forces engaged exceeded 800,000 men, of whom between 200,000 and 300,000 are computed to have fallen on the field. The most sanguinary engage­ments of modern ages appear in comparison to be mere skirmishes.

A few examples will illustrate the characters and institutions of some of the nations of “the Black Invasion.”

“The Huns, says Jornandez, the Gothic historian, put to flight by the terror inspired by their countenance those whom their bravery could never have subdued. The livid color of their face had some-thing frightful in it; it was not a face, but a formless mass of flesh in which two black and sinister spots filled the place of eyes. Their aspects were not those of men, but of beasts, standing on their hind legs as if it were in mockery of our species.” An ordinary tax imposed by these brutal savages on the countries they overran was a certain number of young women, with a view to mitigate if pos­sible the hideousness of the race.

The Thuringian Germans, states Gibbon, “massacred their hostages as well as their cap­tives. Two hundred young maidens were tortured with exquisite cruelty—their bodies torn asunder by wild horses, or their bones crushed under the weight of rolling waggons, and their unburied limbs abandoned in the public roads as a prey to dogs and vultures.”

“The Kings of the German Tribes, writes Sismondi, were only conspicuous by their crimes and vices. They were above the law, and it would be difficult to find in any class of men, even among those whom public justice has consigned to the hulks and galleys, so many examples of atrocious crimes, assassinations, poisonings, and above all, fratricides, as these royal families afforded during the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries. The German nations whom they ruled were accustomed to con­sider their kings as a race apart, distinguished from themselves by their long hair—a race not subject to the same laws nor moved by the same feelings. These kings keeping themselves aloof from all other men were singular in having family names and in intermarrying with each other; and we owe to them the introduction of relationship between crowned heads, which was before unknown in the world.”

“From Clovis to Charles Martel, the grand-father of Charlemagne, states Eyre Crow, the last English historian of France, there existed not a personage worthy of the reader’s attention. There is not recorded an event or anecdote which would excite any feeling but disgust.” This observation will apply with nearly equal force to all the Saxon kings before Alfred. These and the rest of the invading nations continued pagans long after they had quartered amongst them the conquered pro­vinces. The old Celto-Roman population was reduced to serfdom. The heads of the barbarian clans became kings by as it was afterwards impiously termed “divine right;” the inferior chiefs became barons, or owners of the land and its serfs. The Roman civil law by which the Con­tinent had been ruled was abolished, and the feudal system was at first rudely but afterwards system­atically imposed. The feudal system regarded the people as an inferior species of mankind to those chiefs who traced their descent to Balti or Odin, the pagan gods or idols; and who in right of it claimed exemption from all human laws and respon­sibility. To this system of mingled heathenism, brute force, and servility, the Briton of these Islands never ceased to present a front of scorn and hostility —- hence the deadly and protracted nature of the wars which ensued between him and the German or serf-nations with whom it originated.

Of all the nations, however, whom the carcass of the Great Empire allured from their lagoons and forests, over towering the rest as a species by him-self, stood forth the Saxon of the Seas. His name among the non-marine populations of the Con­tinent inspired inexpressible terror. Of fabulous attachment to the wave and the storm, rioting in the undisputed possession of the ocean, their very religion, combat and havoc, the Saxons had estab­lished a prestige above Goth, Vandal, or Hun, for cruelty and insensibility to danger. Of apparent ubiquity, formidable alike from their innate solidity, their effective arms, their habit of closing in dense columns with their enemies, their invasion might have shaken the framework of the Roman Empire in its zenith. The Saxon confederation, extending from the mouths of the Rhine to the Lower Baltic, consisted of various tribes of Gothic extraction, the principal of which were the Saxons (Sacæ), Jutes Getæ), and Angles, occupying the territory south and south-west of the Cimbric Chersonese (Denmark). The Chersonese itself were peopled by the descend-ants of the ancient Kimbri, between whom and the Saxons a mortal antagonism prevailed. Uniting with the Scandinavian tribes of Llochlyn (Norway), these became the Danes and Normans of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, carrying with them wherever they went their old hatred of their Saxon neighbors. The Saxon confederation diverged into two branches—one, striking inward, extended its acquisitions so far that Eginhard, the secretary of Charlemagne, states that A.D. 800, they consti­tuted more than one half of Germany. This was Continental Saxondom. It was subdued and added to the Franco-German empire by Charlemagne—its Saxon population being nearly exterminated. The other threw itself in a succession of invasions from A.D. 420 to A.D. 58o, on the British Island—wrestled 220 years after its first landing (i.e., in the sixth generation) the Pendragonate or military supremacy from the Kymry, and fusing with the British Lloegrians and Coraniaid, became the mainstock of the modern English. Their sover­eignty gave way A.D. 1014 temporarily to the Danish, and permanently to the Norman, A.D. I066, as the Norman gave way in turn to the native British, restored A.D. 1485.

To explain the origin of the Saxons, the most absurd fictions have been invented. No mention of them occurs in History until A.D. 140. Tacitus, A.D. 8o, does not even name them in his “Germania.” From A.D. 141 to A.D. 260, no one again mentions them. A.D. 280, they were taken into service by Carausius, the British emperor; trained by British officers to naval manoeuvres and incor­porated with the British empire. A.D. 347, they were again in league with Magnentius, another British emperor. From this period their power steadily increased — new tribes, the Chauci, Chamavi, Fusii, Batavi, Toxandri, Morini, join­ing the confederacy, which A.D. 400, embraced all Northern Germany, from the Rhine to Lithuania and the Baltic. A.D. 368, in conjunction with the Picts, they invaded Kent, slew Nectarides and Fullofaudes, the Roman Counts, and made an attempt on London, but were defeated by Theo­dosius. A.D. 369, they were again defeated by the British fleets under Theodosius in three naval engagements off the Humber, in the Forth, and at the Orkneys. On intelligence of these disasters reaching the confederation, it poured its forces against the Roman legions on the Rhine. The Roman general fell back till reinforced, when an armistice was concluded—the Saxons giving up 10,000 of their ablest young men to recruit the imperial armies. The rest were to retire unmolested, but on their retreat were treacherously ambuscaded, and after a brave resistance, slaughtered by the Roman troops. A.D. 396, they were again defeated by Stilicho. A.D. 410, they formed a league with the Bretons of Armorica against Euric the Goth, and ravaged France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Germany. A.D. 425, in league with the Picts, they were defeated by St. Germanus, on the Halleluia Field, near Mold. A.D. 449, they connect them-selves permanently with British History, by the landing of Hengist and Horsa, at the invitation of Vortigern, on the Kentish island of Thanet.

We now resume the thread of British history, at the election of Constantine, prince of Armorica, to the throne, A.D. 406.

The news of the fall of Gaul reached Britain early in the spring of the following year. The restoration of British independency had been effected with little or no hostile feeling towards the Old Empire. A considerable Roman element pervaded the population—many of the leading nobility were of Brito-Roman blood, and could not without emotion survey the ruin spread over the fairest portion of the Continent by the Heathen Hordes. Constantine was called upon to lead the British army to the deliverance of Gaul. He landed at Boulogne, June A.D. 407—defeated the Suevi at Amiens, advanced to Paris, and there received the submission of all Gaul north of the Loire. In the south two reverses were experienced —- one of his generals, Estyn, falling by treachery, another Nevigastes in the field. A.D. 408, Aug. 23, Stilicho, with the exception of OEtius and Belisarius, the last great champion of Rome, was assassinated by Sarus, at the instigation of the base emperor Honorius. He had shortly before ‘earnestly advised the senate to secure for the empire the services of Alaric, the Goth, at an annual payment of 4,000 pounds’ weight of gold. The advice was taken, and Alaric was ordered to march against Constan­tine, now proclaimed emperor of the West; instead of which, on hearing of the death of Stilicho, he moved upon Rome. He was bought off by an enormous ransom, and retired at the head of 100,000 men and 40,000 liberated slaves to Lombardy. Sarus meanwhile having been defeated by Constantine at Vienne, Spain and the Honorian cohorts declared in favor of the British king, who thus reigned with-out a rival from the Hebrides to Gibraltar, over not only the old Roman populations, but over the recent barbarian conquerors themselves. Honorius now recognized him as Augustus—divided the Western empire with him, and requested his aid to repel Alaric’s second meditated attack upon Rome. Constantine crossed the Alps; at his approach the Goth withdrew into Germany. The two emperors held a conference at Milan, after which Constantine returned to Gaul. One branch of the ancient British Dynasty—the family of Con­stantine the Great—had now for a century governed the Eastern empire; nor did it pass from the sway of their posterity for another thousand years, till A.D. 1465. Another branch, had Constantine used his fortune with moderation, might have handed down the throne of the West to their remote des­cendants, dividing thus the old Roman world between them. A.D. 410, Constantine was so ill-advised as to supersede his able general, Geraint, Duke of Cornwall, whom he had appointed Regent of Spain, by his son Constans—Alaric about the same time capturing Rome (Aug. 24), and abandon­ing it for three days to the fury of his barbarians. Geraint rebelling crossed the Pyrenees, met Con­stantine and Constantius, the general of Honorius, at Arles, and being defeated, put an end to his own existence. The flower of the British legions perished in this battle. A fresh rupture ensuing with Honorius, Constantine was defeated by Con­stantius and Ulphilas, and secretly put to death with Julian his eldest son, Nov. I Ith, 411. Of the British army, part returned to Britain, part settled in Armorica.

Constantine was the third British sovereign that within a century had crossed the channel and reigned at Paris, as absolute masters of the whole West, as Wellington and the British army of occupation were of France, from A.D. 1815-21.

Constantine was succeeded A.D. 412, by his second son, Constans. Vortigern his relative, pos­sessed of large estates in most parts of the kingdom, caused him to be assassinated by his Pictish Guards, A.D. 420; the two youngest sons of Constantine, Ambrosius and Uthyr, being saved from a similar fate by a rapid flight into Bretagne. Vortigern, in a public convention, placed the crown, like Richard III and Napoleon in later times, on his own head. The character of Vortigern, the second of the arch-traitors of the Isle of Britain, is depicted in the blackest colors by the British historians; and even now his name is rarely men­tioned without some epithet of hatred and execra­tion. He seems indeed to approach very nearly to the character generally considered fabulous—a monster whose vices were unredeemed by a single virtue.

A.D. 430, the Saxons, Picts, and Irish broke through the Wall of Severus, at Thirlwall, ravaged the country, and besieged Chester. St. Germanus, brother-in-law of the British king of Armorica, being engaged at the time in suppressing the Pelagian heresy, first broached by Morgan, or Morein, president of Bangor, led the British army against them, and gave them a total defeat at Maes Garmon, on the Alun, near Mold. A.D. 435, Vorti­gern was publicly excommunicated by the same intrepid prelate at a synod of the British Church at St. Albans, for incestuous commerce with his own daughter. From this date, the traitor medi­tated the calling in of the Saxon confederation into the affairs of Britain. In early life he had served in the armies of Valentinian with two of the most distinguished Saxon king-chiefs of the sacred race of Odin—two brothers, Hengist and Horsa. With them secret communications were opened. The policy of engaging the barbarian mercenaries of one nation to garrison the frontiers against the incursions of another had, we have seen, been long established in the Roman empire; but this was the first precedent of the kind in Britain. An irrup­tion of the Picts, encouraged by Vortigern, supplied the pretext desired. Hengist and Horsa landed at Thanet (Ruthin Isle), between which and the mainland ran, so late as Bede’s time, the Want-sum, three stadia broad and fordable only in two places. Another armament landed at the mouth of the Nen, near Peterborough. Uniting, they defeated the Picts at Stamford, near Lincoln.

Alice, the daughter of Hengist, called Ronwen, (the white breast, Rowena, Ronixa,) at the festivi­ties given in celebration of the victory at Chilham castle, Kent, excited a deep passion in the heart of the infatuated Vortigern. To secure her hand, he bestowed Kent on his father-in-law, Hengist. Gorangon, the disinherited prince, appealed for redress to the national Gorsedd. In despite of the powerful influence of the court, or Vortigern faction, the Saxons were ordered to quit Britain—Vortigern solemnly deposed, and Vortimer, his eldest son, raised to the throne and Pendragonate. Hengist allying himself with the red Irish (Scots), and Picts, took the field at Aylesford, in Kent, A.D. 455, when he was attacked by the British army under Vortimer and his brother Kyndeirn. Horsa and Kyndeirn fell in single combat, and Hengist was defeated. Three more Saxon defeats at Cray-ford, Stone, and Thanet (A.D. 457—62), resulted in their capitulation at the latter place on condi­tion of being permitted to return with their wives and children to the Continent.

A.D. 463, Vortimer died, poisoned by Ronwen. At his dying request his tomb was raised on the spot in Thanet whence he had taken the last view of the departing sails of the invaders. At the Gorsedd in London, Vortigern was restored to the throne—the second of “the three fatal counsels of the Isle of Britain.” Hengist was re-invited con­ditionally that he came with no larger retinue than five hundred men. Ebusa, a brother of Hengist, with his son Octa, landed however in the Firth of Forth, with an armament of three hundred vessels. The British nation flew to arms. A con­ference was proposed by Hengist and accepted by Vortigern. It was held at Stonehenge (Hengist’s stones), and attended by most of the nobility of Britain. On the sixth day, at the high feast, when the sun was declining, was perpetuated the “Massacre of the Long Knives“—the blackest crime, with the exception of that of St. Bartholo­mew, in the annals of any nation. The signal for the Saxons to prepare to plunge their knives, con­cealed in their boots and under their military cloaks, into the breast of their gallant and unsuspicious conquerors, was “Let us now speak of friendship and love.” The signal for action were the words, “Nemet your Saxas,” i.e., “Out with their knives,” and the raising of the banner of Hengist—a white horse on a red field—over the head of Vortigern. Four hundred and eighty of the Christian chivalry of Britain fell before sunset by the hand of the pagan assassins—three only of name, Eidol Count of Glocester, and the princes of Venedotia and Cambria escaping, the first by almost superhuman strength and presence of mind. Priests, Ambassadors, Bards, and the boyish scions of many noble families, were piled together in one appalling spectacle on the site of the banquet, (Moel (Ewe, the Mound of Carnage), about three hundred yards north of the great Druidic temple. The horror produced by this act of unexampled perfidy was never effaced from the British mind. “Death to the man that trusts the stranger” became henceforth the watchword for hostilities, that so far as the eldest tribe of the Kymry were concerned, may be said to have lasted with trans­ient interruptions till the ascension of the Tudors to the throne. Ambrosius and Uthyr were sum­moned from Armorica. The nation flocked to their standard. Vortigern who had secreted himself from the storm of national odium behind the defiles of Snowden was besieged, and with Ronwen and his principal adherents, consumed by fire, near Nevin, in Carnarvonshire. Hengist himself was taken prisoner at the battle of Maesbeli, tried and executed as an assassin, at Coningsburgh, in York­shire—so called (King’sburg) from the mound raised over him. Octa and Ebusa, who had escaped to York, shortly afterwards surrendered themselves with chains in their hands and sand on their heads, declaring “their gods were vanquished by the god of the Britons.” They were settled as a barrier against the Picts on the Firth of Forth. From them descend the Scotch of the Lothians.

The Saxon Chronicle, the work on which the Anglo-Saxon story of the Teutonic settlement of England has hitherto rested, is rejected by the most recent Anglo-Saxon historians as a spurious pro­duction of the Augustine Monks of Canterbury. “The more I examine the question,” states Kemble, (History of the Anglo-Saxons, p. 16) “ the more completely I am convinced that the received accounts of the Saxon emigrations, sub­sequent fortunes, and ultimate settlement, are devoid of historical truth in every detail.” This repudiation, by the Anglo Saxon historians of their own authorities is a very curious and perplexing circumstance, leaving us either no foundation at all, or one purely British for this portion of our history. It is certain, as Kemble elsewhere admits, that Saxon England, as the Saxon Church, was essentially the child of Papal Rome—that her clergy were the emissaries of Rome, and that what we term the Saxon Histories, are nothing else than the writings of Monks of the Roman Church, animated by a spirit of intense hatred and mendacity towards the British Church and Nationality. The Saxons themselves brought no alphabet with them into Britain—they adopted the British ; most of the terms of agricultural, domestic, and civil life, supposed to be Saxon, are pure Lloegrian British, unchanged since the days of Cesar. The Augustine Monks introduced the Roman alphabet. Of their very limited knowledge of Latin itself, the first clause in the Saxon Chronicle may be cited in evidence. Mistaking “hyberna” for Hibernia, they send Cesar after his first campaign in Britain, into Ireland instead of into winter quarters. As late as A.D. 878, Alfred could not find six priests in all Saxondom competent to write and read Latin, and was obliged to have recourse to the British Church for a lawgiver and teacher (Asser, Bishop of St. David’s), for his rude sub­jects. Leaving, however, these questions to be settled by the Anglo-Saxon Historians themselves, we shall here before we proceed with the British, give the Anglo-Saxon or Augustine version hitherto received of the progress of the Saxon arms, abbreviated from their National Chronicle.

“A.D. 449, Hengist and Horsa land in Britain; they invite the Angles—they describe the luxury of the Britons, the richness of the land. Then came the three powers of Germany —Angles, Jutes, Saxons. A.D. 455, Hengist and Horsa fought the Britons at Aylesford. Horsa is slain. A.D. 457, Hengist and his son Esc fought the Britons at Wippensfleet, and slew 12 generals, all Walsch. Wipped the Thane was slain. A.D. 473, Hengist and Œsc fought with the Welsh (Britons). A.D. 477, Ella came to Britain and fought with the Welsh at Cymershore. A.D. 485, Ella fought with the Welsh at Mercredslum. A.D. 490, Ella and Cissa took the city of Andred (Pevensey,) and did not leave one Briton alive in it. A.D. 495, Cerdic and Cynric landed at Cerdics-ora and fought the Welsh the same day. A.D. 501, Porta, Beda, and Mela landed at Portsmouth and fought with the Welsh and killed a young Briton of high rank. A.D. 5o8, Cerdic and Cvnric slew the British King, Nathan Leod, and five thousand men with him. A.D. 510, Stuff and Wightgar landed at Cerdicsora and fought with the Welsh. A.D. 519, Cerdic and Cynric fought with the Britons at Cerdicsley.”

Here—being the period occupied by the reign and Pendragonate of Arthur, follows a blank of thirty-three years, — sarcastically termed by Gibbon, the “discreet silence” of the Saxon Historians.

“A.D. 552, Cynric fought with the Britons at Sarum. A.D. 556, Ceaulin and Cynric fought with the Britons at Banbury. A.D. 571, Cuthulf fought with the Britons at Bedford. A.D. 577, Ceaulin fought with the Britons at Dereham. A.D. 584, Ceaulin and Cutha fought with the Britons at Frethern. A.D. 591, a great battle was fought at Wanborough, and Ceaulin was driven by the Britons out of his kingdom. A.D. 597, Ceolwulf began to reign, and constantly fought with the Welsh. This year came Augustin and his, companions to England. A.D. 607, Ethelfrith, king of Northumbria, led his army to Chester, where he slew an innumerable host of the Walsch, and so was fulfilled the prophecy of Augustin, If the Welch will not have peace with us, they shall perish at the hands of the Saxons.’ There were slain 1200 priests, who came hither to pray for the army of the Welsh (the Bangor massacre.) A.D. 614, Cynegils and Cwichelm fought against the Welsh at Bampton. A.D. 633, this year Edwin king of Northumberland was slain by Cadwallo the Briton and Penda, on the 14th of October. Osfrid his son was slain with him. Cadwallo and Penda destroyed all the lands north of Humber. A.D. 642, Oswald king of the North­umbrians was slain at Maserfield (Oswestry). His body was buried at Bardsey. A.D. 645, king Kenwal was expelled A.D. 651, king Oswin was slain. A.D. 652, king Anna was slain. A.D. 655, king Penda and thirty princes with him were slain at Wingfield. The Mercians became Christians. A.D. 661, the men of the Isle of Wight were made Christians. A.D. 664, this year began the Great Plague in Britain. A.D. 685, Cadwalla began to contend for the kingdom. A.D. 686, Cadwalla (the Cadwaladr Sanctus of the British Chronicles) desolated Kent. A.D. 688, Cadwalla went to Rome and was baptized by Pope Sergius, and died there,, and was buried in his baptismal garments in the church of St. Peter; to him succeeded Ina (the Ivor of the British Chronicles), and reigned 33 years. He built Glastonbury for a monastery, and then went to Rome and died there. A.D. 743, Ethelbald of Mercia and Cuthred of the West Saxons fought with the Walsh. A.D. 755, Cynwulf fought many hard battles with the Walsch. A.D. 787, this year came the first fleet of the Northmen (Danes) into Britain. A.D. 833, this year king Egbert fought with the Northern Pirates at Charmouth; a great slaughter was made, and the Danish men remained master of the field.”

We shall dismiss the Saxon Chronicle with a few remarks. 1st, If authentic and genuine, it appears that for a hundred years (A.D. 449—552) after their landing under Hengist and Horsa, not a single battle—that in which Nathan Leod (Llew) fell, excepted—was fought by the Saxons in the interior or elsewhere than on the spot of their disembarkation and under the protection of their marine camps; and that in all these the Britons were the assailents, the Saxons acting merely on the defensive. The character of these pacific disembarkation as here represented must have been sadly misconceived by our ancestors ; but in truth the Saxons were no gentle colonizers—they were a race of pagan warriors, equally ferocious and fear-less, and one inference can alone be drawn from such confessions as the above—that instead of finding, as they anticipated, an easy prey, such as the Franks had found in France, and Visigoths in Spain, the Ostrogoths in Italy, the Vandals in Africa,—they were encountered by a race to whose arms these nations themselves had recently yielded on the Continent. Instead of such emperors as Honorius, or such mercenary generals as Stilicho, they were met by a succession of native heroes —Vortimer, Ambrosius, Uthyr, Arthur, Urien, Ivor, Cadwallo—and curbed with an arm of iron within their naval stalls on the margin of the sea, until the fifth generation, when they had long ceased to be foreigners and had become British, not German Saxons. 2nd, The kingdom of the West Saxons is-admitted to have been overthrown by the Britons after the great battle of Wan-borough. 3rd. With the exception of a petty pre­datory—excursion on the Isle of Wight, no expedi­tion of the Saxon arms is recorded during the reign of Arthur—thus confirming the complete reduction of the Teutonic invaders universally assigned among his other exploits by history and European tradition to this king. 4th, The massacre of Bangor is gloried in as the fulfilment of the menaces of Augustin against the Church and Nation which had peremptorily rejected the pretensions of the Papacy. 5th, The career of Cadwallo and his re-conquest of the North of Britain are admitted. 6th, His son Cadwaladr Sanctus is claimed under the name of Cadwalla—a novelty in Saxon nomen­clature as a Saxon king, his mother being a sister of Penda, king of Mercia. Ivor is similarly con­verted into Ina—the West Saxons being unable to pronounce the British v. 7th, Three hundred and forty years after the landing of Hengist, and one hundred and fifty years after the Llcegrians had Saxonized, whilst the war still raged with unabated keenness between the elder-tribe, the Kymry, and the Teuto-Britons in the West—the Kymry, or Cimbri of the Baltic enter the arena under the name of Norsemen, Daciaid, Daniaid, Danes, and strike in their own right for the crown and heritance of the island. With these statements of the Anglo-Saxon authorities themselves before us, it appears an historical absurdity to speak of an Anglo-Saxon conquest of England in any other light than a Monkish fiction for interested purposes of the Roman Catholic church. We resume the British narrative.

Gotta the son of Vortigern and Rowena suc­ceeded in renewing the league between the Red Irish and the Saxon confederation. He landed at the Menai, where he and Guilloman his ally were met, defeated, and slain, by Uthyr. Aurelius Ambrosius was the same year poisoned by a Saxon, Eopa, instigated to the foul act by Gotta. He was buried at Ambresbury, in Wiltshire.

The British church during this era continued to extend itself on every side. It held full com­munion with the primitive Gallic church. St. Germanus (Garmon) and St. Lupus (Bleiddan) the suppressors of the Pelagian heresy were Armori­cans of the royal family of Conan, Constantine, and Arthur. St. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, was born at Rhos, in Pembrokeshire. His first name was Maelwyn. He was baptized Patricius or Patrick, ordained priest A.D. 425, by St. Germanus, and afterwards bishop to the Scots (Irish), by Amandus, archbishop of Bourdeaux. In the course of sixty years he converted all Ireland to the faith. He died in his 121St year, and was buried by St. David at Glastonbury. His father was Calpurnius, his mother Consuessa, sister of St. Martin, archbishop of Tours and apostle of southern Gaul. Another sister of St. Martin married Gorthol, prince of the Strathclyde Britons, to whom she bore St. Ninian, the apostle of the southern Picts. He founded the cathedral of Whithern (Candida Casa) A.D. 440. The Roman emperor Anthemius requesting aid from Uthyr against Euric, king of the Visigoths, Uthyr landed at Havre, at the head of 12,000 men, (A.D. 470). An engagement took place, but the Roman procon­sul failing to effect a junction, Uthyr was obliged to yield the field and retire into Burgundy. Advantage was taken of his absence by Octa and Ebusa, to raise the standard of rebellion. On his return Uthyr was discomfited by them at York, but afterwards defeated and took them prisoners at Dumbarton castle. Confined in the Tower of London, they escaped by bribing the guards, to Germany, collected fresh forces from the con-federation, disembarked at Yarmouth, and march­ing to Verulam, were there routed and slain by the Pendragon. Uthyr Postumus, Pendragon, died at London, in his 90th year, A.D. 500. He was succeeded by his son Arthur, then in his twentieth year.

The life and career of this monarch, the most popular and widely-renowned of all the heroes of ancient and modern times, belongs rather to the history of chivalry and civilization than to any one land or race. As the founder of European chivalry and the champion of Christendom against the pagan hordes of the North, he created a new era, new characters, and a new code in the military annals of mankind. His exploits and those of his marshals, more or less exaggerated, form part of the literature of almost every language in Europe and Asia. Around him and his court revolved from the sixth to the sixteenth century innumerable cycles of epics, martial lyrics, lays, traditionary narratives and brilliant romanzas, such as have never graced any other theme with the sole excep­tion of that of the ancestral city of his race—“the fall of Troy divine.” “ Arthur is known, writes an author of the middle ages, in Asia as in Britain ; our pilgrims returning from the East and West talk of him; Egypt and the Bosphorus are not silent; Rome, the mistress of cities, sings his actions; Antioch, Armenia, Palestine, celebrate his deeds. Not only our own countries but the Spaniards, Italians, Gauls, and Swedes beyond the Baltic record to this day in their books the illustrious actions of this most noble king.”

Our space will only permit us to epitomize the principal events of his reign, A.D. 500-542. Arthur was born at Tintagel castle, Cornwall. His mother was Eigra, of the Cuneddine dynasty of Venedotia, He was educated by St. David at Caerleon, crowned by St. Dubricius, and within a month afterwards took the field against a fresh league of the Teutonic tribes which had been formed on the news of Uthyr’s demise. The war which ensued and which was terminated by the decisive battle of Mont Badon, (A.D. 522), was conducted on both the Christian and Pagan sides with extraordinary vigor and determination. The Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, the leading tribes, appear to have literally drawn their last man from the Continent—for Bede declares that their old countries were in his time (A.D. 700) and had long been deserts without a single human inhabitant. The possession of Odin blood was, we have observed, with the Anglo-Saxon and other Gothic tribes, the indispensable condition of kingship—the greater part of the Odin lineage threw itself into this pagan crusade against Britain, carrying with them the whole physical and fanatic force of the warlike nations over whom they swayed a species of divine sceptre. The Odin pedigree of these chiefs was regarded by their followers as the guarantee for success and a certain pass to every Saxon who fell under their banner to the future joys of Valhalla. To meet this formidable heathen fraternity, Arthur organized the Order of Christian Chivalry, commonly known as that of the Round Table. Its companions were selected from all Christians without distinction of race, climate, or language — they bound themselves to oppose the progress of paganism, to be loyal to the British throne, to protect the defenceless, to show mercy to the fallen, upon a foe in the battle field. The Odin chiefs of greatest eminence were Colgrin, Baldulph, Cheldric, Cerdic, Osca, Otho, Urcwin, Oslac, Elesa, Egbricht, Alred—all these fell in the war. The twelve celebrated victories of the young Pendragon were as follows. 1st, at Gloster; 2nd, at Wigan (the Combats), 10 miles from Mersey. The battle lasted through the night. In A.D. 1780, on cutting through the tumuli, three cart loads of horse-shoes were found and removed. 3rd, at Blackrode. 4th, at Penrith, between the Loder and Elimot, on the spot still called King Arthur’s castle. 5th, on the Douglas, in Douglas vale. 6th, at Lincoln. 7th, on the edge of the Forest of Celidon, (Ettrick Forest) at Melrose. 8th, at Caer Gwynion. 9th, between Edinburgh and Leith. loth, at Dumbarton. 11th, at Brixham, Torbay. 12th, at Mont Badon, above Bath.

This last defeat, A.D. 520, was so crushing that it destroyed ‘the Saxon confederation itself, nor did any foreigner attempt to set hostile foot on the Island till Ida landed A.D. 550, in Northumbria, eight years after Arthur’s death. From A.D. 520, to this latter date, such of the Saxons as were not expelled or exterminated remained in peaceful allegiance to the British throne, many of them serv­ing in and contributing to its foreign conquests.

The only portion of France unsubdued by Clovis and his Franks was Bretagne, now ruled over by Hoe!, the cousin and subject of Arthur. Reviving, as the Henries and Edwards were wont to do to liter ages, the claims of his predecessors to the Gallic dominions, Arthur in five years (A.D. 521-6) achieved the conquest of Gaul—Chlodomir, the suc­cessor of Clovis, falling in the great battle on the plain of Langres. Arthur was crowned at Paris the same year that Justinian succeeded to the Eastern empire. The conquests of the mother-countries of the pagan nations themselves followed from A.D. 527—35,—Old Saxony, Denmark, Frisia, North Germany, and the whole of Scandinavia as far as Lapland, being subdued in succession. Johannes Magnus, archbishop of Upsal, the historian of ancient Denmark, charges Arthur with having ruled these Northern conquests (lib. viii. c. 31,) with excessive rigor. From A.D. 535 to 541, the Arthurian empire extending from Russia to the Pyrenees, enjoyed undisturbed repose. Milan two years before had been taken by the Goths, and three hundred thousand citizens—every male adult, put to the sword by the brutal captors. In order to liberate Italy and add it to the Christian empire of Britain, Arthur conducted his forces again to the Continent, leaving his insular dominions under the Regency of Modred, the eldest son of his sister Anna or Morgana, and Llew Cynvarch (Lotho), king of Scotland. The name of Modred stands out in unenviable prominence as that of the “third arch-traitor of the Isle of Britain.” Arthur had advanced as far as the Alps when intelligence reached him that Modred had rebelled, and aided by pagan levies, seized the throne. Retracing his march Arthur defeated the traitor in two engage­ments at Dover and Winchester. The third and last known as “the ‘three black days of Camlan,” was fought at Camerford, within a few miles of Tintagel castle. It lasted three days, no less than 100,000 of the chivalry of Britain falling on the fatal field. Arthur himself sorely wounded was conveyed by Taliesin, Morgana, and others of his court, to Avallon. His farewell words to his knights—” I go hence in God’s time, and in God’s time I shall return,” created an invincible belief that ,God had removed him, like Enoch and Elijah, to Paradise without passing through the gate of death ; and that he would at a certain period return, re-ascend the British throne, and subdue the whole world to Christ. The effects of this persuasion were as extraordinary as the persuasion itself, sustaining his countrymen under all reverses, and ultimately enabling them to realize its spirit by placing their own line of Tudors on the throne. As late as A.D. 1492, it pervaded both England and Wales. “ Of the death of Arthur, men yet have doubt,” writes Wynkyn de Worde, in his chronicle, “ and shall have for evermore, for as men say none wot whether he be alive or dead.” The aphanismus or disappearance of Arthur is a cardinal event in British history. The pretended discovery of his body and that of his queen Ginevra, at Glastonbury, was justly ridiculed by the Kymry as a Norman invention. ‘Arthur has left his name to above six hundred localities in Britain. His court at Caerleon was the resort of all the genius and erudition of the age ; amongst its distinguished ornaments may be mentioned St. David, St. Cadog, Merlin Ambrosius, Llywarch, Taliesin, Aneurin, Golyddan, St. Kentigern, St. lltyd, &c. The genuine works of Aneurin—his “ British History,” and “ Life of Arthur,” are lost; the work of Gildas, which at one time passed for the former, is a forgery of Aldhelm, the Roman catholic Monk of Malmesbury. Some of the poetical compositions of Llywarch, Merlin, Taliesin, Aneurin, and Golyddan, have come down to our times.

Arthur was succeeded (A.D. 543,) by Constantine, Duke of Cornwall—Constantine by Aurelius Conan (A.D. 547,)—Conan by Malgwyn Gwynedd, Prince of Venedotia (A.D. 55o,) celebrated for his strength and beauty of person. Ida the Angle landed (A.D. 547,) with sixty ships at Bamborough—many and great battles, writes Henry of Huntingdon, were fought between him and the Britons. The battle of Gododin, in which the Britons were defeated with the loss of three hundred and sixty Torquati (nobles entitled to wear the torq), and Aneurin taken prisoner, was fought A.D. 556, at Cattrick. Hostili­ties were for a time suspended by the marriage of Ida with Bina, daughter of Culvinod, Duke of Deifr (Deira, Durham), but they soon re-com­menced, and Ida fell by the hand of Owain ap Urien, Prince of Cambria. The progress of the Angles in the North, observes Sharon Turner, is slow and involved in obscurity. Northumbria—the east of England, between the Forth and the Humber, was reduced the next century to a wilder­ness by Cadwallo, Lin revenge of the Bangor massacre by its king Edelfrith. William of Malmesbury states, it was covered even in his time with ruins of the noble cities and temples of the Roman era. When Egbert took possession of it, A.D. 840, about 4,000 families constituted the whole population. It was subsequently conquered and peopled by the Danes, and called Daneland —- hence the marked difference between the populations of northern and southern England.

Malgwyn was succeeded by his son Rhun, (A.D. 56o,) —- Rhun by Beli, (A.D. 586,) Beli by Iago, (A.D. 592,) —Iago by Cadvan, (A.D. 603). During all these reigns the wars between the Kymry and the various hordes who landed or attempted to land from the Continent and northern Europe continued with little or no intermission. Columba, or Colum­kil, (the dove of the church) a Presbyter of the Hiberno-British church evangelized the Western Picts and Scots (A.D. 565), and founded the cele­brated monastery of Iona or I-colm-kil. His dis­ciple, St. Aidan, in the next century converted the Northumbrian Angles. Aidan King of Cumbria suffered a signal defeat A.D. 603, from Edelfrith, grandson of Ida, though Edelfrith’s brother, Adel-red, and all his vanguard fell in the earlier part of the day.

The Anglo-Saxons, as late as A.D. 1080, were in the habit of selling their own children as slaves to the southern nations. The principal slave-market was Bristol. Some of the children thus sold attracted in the slave-market at Rome the attention of Pope Gregory, and induced him to send a mis­sion, consisting of Augustin and forty monks, to convert the British Saxons to Christianity. They were well received by Bertha, the Christian wife of Ethelbert, the pagan regulus of Kent, and the old British church of St. Martin at Canterbury made over to them ; but Augustin soon shewed that the real object of the mission was rather to induce the British church itself to recognize Rome as the Papacy or the “ mother and mistress of all churches” than to evangelize the uncultivated serfs of the heathen chief. He requested an interview with the Bishops of the British church. The arch-bishop of Caerleon, or St. David’s, deputed Dunawd, abbot of Bangor, and the Bishops of Hereford, Worcester, Bangor, St. Asaph, Llandaff, Llanbadarn, and Margam, to meet him. Two conferences were held under the protection of Brochwel, prince of Powys, on the confines of Herefordshire or Ferrex, at Augustin’s Oak, (Austcliffe on the Severn). The second lasted seven days; Dunawd and the British Bishops disputed, states Leland, with great learning and gravity against the authority of Augustin—maintained the jurisdiction of the Archbishopric of St. David’s, and affirmed that the Ancient Britons would never acknowledge either Roman pretensions or Saxon usurpation. The conferences closed by the British Bishops delivering on behalf of the British church and people, the following rejection of the Papal claims—the oldest as also the most dignified national protest on record —-

“Be it known and declared to you, that we all, individually and collectively, are in all humility prepared to defer to the Church of God, and to the Pope of Rome, and to every sincere and godly Christian, so far as to love every one according to his degree, in perfect charity, and to assist them all by word and deed in becoming the children of God. But as for further obedience, we know of none that he whom you term the Pope, or Bishop of Bishops, can claim or demand. The deference which we have men­tioned we are ever ready to pay to him as to every other Christian; but in all other respects our obedience is due to the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Caerleon, who is alone under God our ruler to keep us right in the way of salvation.”

“The British Church,” remarks Sir Henry Spell-man, “acknowledged no superior to its arch-bishop of Caerleon, or St. David’s, but God alone; it knew nothing of the jurisdiction of any foreign power or potentate.” Augustin on the breaking up of the conference threatened the Kymry that as they would not accept peace from their brethren, they should have war from their enemies—if they would not preach life to the Saxons, they should receive death at their hands. The insolence of this menace from a friar of a petty mission and one chapel, amongst the barbarian pagans of Kent, to a church counting in Britain and on the Con­tinent four arch-bishoprics and thirty bishops amongst its officers, and such universities as Bangor and Llaniltyd amongst its establishments, is only equalled by the falsehoods implied in it—that the British Church had never preached the gospel to the pagan invaders. All Scotland, Ireland, and North Britain, had on the contrary either been or were then in the course of being evangelized by missionaries of the British Church, many of them men of high birth and attainments—Patrick, Ninian, Paulinus, Columba, Aidan, Kentigern, and others. The Isle of Wight and other parts within easy access of the Canterbury mission were not on the contrary converted till fifty years after the conference. Augustin found means however to execute his threat. At his persuasions Ethel­bert instigated Edelfrid, the pagan king of North­umbria, to invade the territories of Brochwel, Prince of Powys, who had supported Dunawd and the Bishops in their rejection of the Papal claims. Powys then embraced Cheshire and Shropshire—its capitols being Pengwern (Shrewsbury) and Chester. Edelfrid with an army of fifty thousand men poured into the Vale Royal, and was encountered by Brochwell at Chester. On an eminence near the field of battle were 1,200 British Priests of the university of Bangor, in their white canonicals, totally unarmed, assembled to offer up their prayers for the success of the Christian arms. Whilst the engagement was raging, Edelfrid observing them, asked who the soldiers in white were, and why instead of joining in the battle, they remained on their knees? On being informed that they were Priests of Bangor, engaged in prayer to the Christians’ God : “if they are praying against us to their God,” exclaimed the ferocious heathen, “ they are fighting against us as much as if they attacked us with arms in their hands.” Directing his forces in person against them, he massacred them to a man. He then advanced to the univer­sity itself, put as many priests and students as had not fled at his approach, to the sword, and consigned its numerous halls, colleges, and churches, to the flames. Thus was fulfilled, exclaims the pious Bede, the prediction of the blessed Augustin—the prophet being in truth the perpetrator. Attempting to force the passage of the Dee, Edelfrid was repulsed by Brochwel, and a few days afterwards routed with the loss of 10,000 of his men, by Cadvan ; he himself escaping wounded and with great difficulty to Litchfield. Cadvan pursued his victory by overrunning the country to the estuary of the Humber, and-besieg­ing Edelfrid in York. Peace was concluded by Edelfrid’s acknowledging the sovereignty of the Pendragon over the whole Island, and surrender­ing among others his youthful relative, Edwin king of Deira, as a hostage to the conqueror. The British army in returning halted on the scene of the devastation at Bangor; the ashes of the noble monastery were still smoking—its libraries, the col­lection of ages, were consumed—half ruined walls, gates, and smouldering rubbish were all that remained of its magnificent edifices, and these were everywhere crimsoned with the blood and inter­spersed with the bodies of priests, students, and choristers. The scene left a quenchless desire for further vengeance on the minds of the Kymric soldiery.

Colfwulf, the West Saxon king, penetrating into Siluria (A.D. 610,) was defeated by Teudric the hermit-king, then in this 100th year, on the banks of the Wye. Teudric expired in the moment of victory, supported by his officers on horseback, his dying gaze fixed on the Saxons in flight. He was buried at the old palace, at Matherne.

Kent and Essex relapsed (A.D. 616,) on the deaths of Ethelbald and Sebert into paganism. Edwin, king of Deira, had meanwhile been educated by Cadvan with his own son Cadwallo, at Carnarvon. A.D. 617, by the aid of Redwald of Essex, Edwin defeated and slew his uncle Edel­frid, on the east bank of the Idel, in Nottingham-shire. In A.D. 626, he was attempted to be assas­sinated with a poisoned dagger by Eomer, an emissary of Cuichelm of Wessex. His life was saved by his minister Lilla springing before him and receiving the dagger in his own bosom.

Cadvan was succeeded by Cadwallo, A.D. 628. Edwin on hearing of his accession, and trusting to their early friendship, sent an embassy to Chester, requesting permission to wear a royal crown instead of the usual coronet of the sub-kings. Cadwallon peremptorily refused, stating that the usages of Britain had never permitted but one “Diadema Britannia, or crown of Britain, to be worn in the Island.” Incensed by the refusal, Edwin threw off his allegiance, and on Cadwallo’s invading Northumbria, defeated him in a great battle at Widdrington, eight miles north of Morpeth. Cadwallo after an exile of five years in Ireland and Armorica landed at Torquay. Penda Strenuus, king of Mercia, and ally of Edwin, was then (A.D. 634) besieging Exeter. The siege was raised, and Penda routed and taken prisoner by Cadwallo. On being liberated by the intercession of his sister at the feet of Cadwallo, he swore alle­giance to the Pendragon—an oath he observed with religious fidelity during his life. Cadwallo struck with the charms of Elditha, the sister, married her. The issue of the marriage was Cadwaladr Sanctus, the last Pendragon and sole monarch of Britain of the British dynasty; in his father’s right heir of Cambria, and in his mother’s of Mercia and Wessex. The career of Cadwallo from this date was so merciless that his name for generations after-wards continued a word of terror amongst the Anglo-Saxons. He bound himself by a vow, as sanguinary as that of Hannibal towards the Romans, that he would not leave an Angle alive between the Humber and the Forth, and he well nigh kept it. Sixteen victories of his are recorded in various parts of the kingdom by contemporary authors. Edwin and the flower of the Anglo-Saxon nobility fell before him at the battle of Hat-field Chase (Meigen), in Yorkshire, (A.D. 633)—long the theme of mournful song and dirge to the Saxon Scalds. Osric, Eanfrid, and with the excep­tion of Oswald, the whole Odin or Ida family of Northumbria were extirpated by him, and the country reduced by sword and fire to ashes and a wilderness. The year of these calamities (A.D. 634) was, states Bede, obliterated like the anniver­sary of the Allia in the Roman, from the Saxon calendar. It is singular that the only two instances recorded of thus discalendaring times of national disaster should have been caused by the victories of the same Kymric race over two of the most warlike nations of ancient and modern times—the Roman and the Saxon. Oswald collecting the relics of his kingdom led them (A.D. 635,) against the remorseless Briton and his general Penda, at Heavenfield (Dennisbourne), near Durham. Elevat­ing the cross on an earthen mound, he and his army knelt around it and offered up a simple but fervent prayer, “that the God of battles would deliver them from the proud tyrant that had sworn the destruction of their race.” The appeal was not in vain. Cadwallo and Penda were defeated with heavy loss. Success was not however of long con­tinuance, Oswald was defeated, slain, and his dead body crucified by Cadwallo at Maserfield, since then called Oswald’s-tree, (Oswestry). His body was interred at Bardsey, but his arms were deposited in silver shrines at Durham and Lindisfarne, and miracles attributed to them. This victory placed all Saxondom at the foot of the victor. Neither rival nor rebel disturbed the remainder of his reign, the security of which was further confirmed by a brief but sanguinary war which broke out between the two leading Saxon reguli, Penda and Oswy, and in which Penda with his principal officers, thirty in number, fell by their fool-hardy contempt of their opponents. The last years of Cadwallo’s reign were spent in London. He died in his 74th year, Nov. 15th, 664. His body was embalmed and entombed in a sarcophagus in the front of St. Martin’s church, surmounted by a group cast in brass, of himself, his armor-bearer, and steed. They remained till destroyed by the Danes, A.D. 1018.

Cadwaladr Sanctus, the last Kymric monarch of Britain till Harry Tudor, succeeded A.D. 664. He is the Cadwalla of Bede and the Saxon Chronicle. Kent rebelling and killing his brother Moel, (the Mull of the Saxon chronicle,) he punished it with great severity. Finding it impossible to unite under one sceptre, his father’s subjects—the Kymry, and his mother’s—the Geuissae, or West-Saxons and Mercians, he appears at an early period to have meditated retiring from the cares of royalty to a religious life. This determination was hast­ened by one of those visitations of the Almighty which more than all human revolutions or devices have so often changed the destinies of nations; the Black Plague, called by the British writers the Vengeance of God, (Dial Duw,) broke out A.D. 670, and raged for twelve years. Famine as usual accompanied its progress; the mortality was such that whole counties were left without an inhabi­tant, such of the population as were spared by the epidemic falling victims to the famine or despair. Companies of men and women, states Henry of Huntingdon, fifty and sixty in number, crawled to the cliffs and there joining hands, precipitated themselves in a body into the sea. The birds also perished in countless numbers. All distinction between Briton and Saxon was lost in this appal-ling state of things. Cadwallo abdicated the throne, and retiring to Rome died there, and was interred at St. Peter’s, 18th May, 689.

From this date to A.D. 720, follows a period of confusion and impenetrable obscurity. In the North the Britons of Strathclyde (A.D. 684) had annihilated the army of Egfrid, king of North­umbria, at Drumnechtar, in Forfarshire—Egfrid himself, Beort his general, and fifty thousand Angles falling on the field. No attempt, states Bede, writing A.D. 729, has since been made on “the liberties of the Britons—the Picts have recovered all their territories, and the power of the Angles has continued to retrograde.” The three kingdoms of the Strathclyde Britons, the British Picts, and the Scots of Ireland, finally united and became the kingdom of Scotland. The highlands remained as before occupied by the primitive British clans of Albyn, and were not incorporated under one government with the rest of the Island till A.D. 1745.

In the South, Idwal Iwrch, the son of Cadwaladr, with Ivor, second son of Alan II of Bretagne, and Ynyr his nephew, landed on the cessation of the pestilence to recover his hereditary dominions. ldwal was crowned Prince of Cambria, at Carnar­von—Ivor was received by Kernyw (Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall), and in the course of six years established himself firmly on the West-Saxon throne—Idwal abdicating his claim in right of his grandmother, the sister of Penda, in his favor. Ivor’s marriage with Ethelburga, cousin of Kentwyn, consolidated his power. On Kentwyn’s demise, he added Kent and Mercia to his dominions. The Saxons rebelling under Cynwulf, the Etheling, were again subdued A.D. 721. Ealdbert Etheling of South Saxony was slain by him, and South Saxony annexed A.D. 725.

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