Alban, according to the legend, was a pagan resident of Verulam, who charitably gave shelter to a Christian priest, named Amphibalus, and was converted by him. Amphibalus having escaped by Alban's assistance, the latter was seized, and refusing to renounce his faith, was scourged and beheaded. On the spot where he suffered martyrdom "a church built of wonderful workmanship" afterwards arose, to which a monastic institution was added by Offa about 787, the abbot of which afterwards received from Pope Adrian IV. precedence over all others, on account of its patron saint being regarded the proto-martyr of England. The saint

Jerusalem taken by the Romans
The Emperor Hadrian makes the Eu-
phrates the limit of the Roman
Empire

The Persian Empire founded by Ardi

sheer

Constantinople made the capital of the Eastern Empire.

A.D. 418.

A.D.

A.D.

354

117

226

The Vandals establish themselves in Gaul

377

406

324

The Gothic kingdom of Spain founded 414

"This year the Romans collected all the treasures that were in Britain, and some they hid in the earth, so that no one has since been able to find them; and some they carried with them into Gaul."

With this passage from the Saxon Chronicle the authentic history of Britain ceases for a period of nearly sixty years. In the interval are usually placed certain events mentioned in the writings of Gildas and Nennius, but nothing is to be drawn from their statements that can be reduced to chronological accuracy; for the first gives no dates, and the few found in the latter are contradictory. Though some, perhaps several, of the events may be true, it is impossible to assign dates to the reputed marriage of Guorthigirn (Vortigern) to the daughter of Hengist; the murder of the British nobles; the numerous battles said to have been fought with various success by Guorthemir (Vortimer) and Ambrosius against the invaders; the death of Horsa, or the foundation of the first Saxon kingdom.

By comparing, however, these statements with the few scattered notices to be found in Zosimus and other writers of the period, we learn that, the Roman power being finally withdrawn, the British cities formed themselves into a varying number of independent states, usually at war with each other, but occasionally united by some common danger into a confederacy, with an elective chieftain whose

power lasted no longer than the emergency. Such a ruler probably was Vortigern, who,-pressed at once by the northern tribes and the sea rovers, and by rivals for power, of whom one named Ambrosius, of Roman extraction, was the most formidable,-bears the reproach of having called in the aid of the Saxons against both his foreign and domestic foes. Recent inquirers have attempted to shew that the well-known names of Hengist and Horsa, ascribed to their leaders, are not proper names, but rather titles of honour, (signifying war-horse and mare,) bestowed on many daring leaders of bands, and that the first employment of mercenaries, who soon leagued with the enemy, and at length became numerous enough to rule the country they were hired to guard, should be placed at least as early as the year 429, or twenty years before the era usually assigned.

It seems hopeless to attempt to identify the sites of the numerous battles that ensued, or to assign satisfactory dates to them; indeed, the whole sum of our knowledge on the matter may be said to be comprised in the statement of the Saxon Chronicle under the year 473: "Hengest and Æsc fought against the Welsh (Walas or Wealas), and took spoils innumerable; and the Welsh fled from the Angles (Englan) like fire."

Several applications for aid are stated by Nennius to have been made to the Romans, particularly one addressed to "Etius thrice consul'," which is

i Passages thus marked, during the Saxon Era, unless some other work is cited, are taken from the English version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, published in the Monumenta; and although I have found it necessary, especially in the poetical portions, slightly to condense, I have the authority of the

surviving Editor of that invaluable work for saying that the sense of the original has been carefully preserved.

In the original, Hengst or Hengest, and Hors. Therefore, if made at all, between the years 446 and 454, when he was consul for the fourth time.

couched in most abject terms, and is known in history by the title of the "groans of the Britons;" some succour seems occasionally to have been afforded, but it had no permanent effect on the contest.

In addition to the miseries of war the Britons suffered at this time from religious dissensions, until the spread of the Pelagian heresy induced them to apply to the bishops of Gaul for spiritual aid. Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, twice visited the island for the purpose (probably in 428 and 446), and on one occasion he also gave them military assistance, by leading a body of newly baptized Britons against their enemies, and gaining a victory known as the "Hallelujah," from the cry with which his converts fell upon their heathen foes.

Meantime the western division of the mighty empire of Rome, of which Britain had so long formed a part, was falling into utter ruin. Rome was abandoned by the emperors (A.D. 404), who, surrounded by barbarian mercenaries, sought ignoble safety amid the marshes of Ravenna, where they

were in reality little more than puppets in the hands of their ministers. Iberia was occupied by the Vandals as early as 410; Gaul was about the same time partitioned among the Visigoths, the Burgundians, the Germans, and the Roman settlers, and ere long became a Frankish kingdom (A.D. 418). The movements of the various German tribes in Germany itself, and the encroachments of barbarian races, drove the Goths and other nations into Italy, where they took firm root, and it is a Gothic historian who relates how, after the death of Valentinian III., Rome was in the course of twenty years occupied by eight "tyrants" in succession. The last of them, contemptuously styled Augustulus, was in 476 deposed by Odoacer, the captain of the Herulian guard, who, despising the empty name of emperor, governed the country for a while with wisdom and success under the modest title of Patrician, until he in his turn was defeated and soon after treacherously slain by Theodoric, the founder of the Gothic dynasty in Italy (A.D. 493).

CONSIDERING the light estimation in which all the countries that they termed barbarous were held by the Greeks and Romans, it is not surprising to find even their best writers abounding in fables and idle fancies, when mentioning a region so remote as Britain. They speak of the Country of "the painted Britons," "the horrid Britons," as adjoining Thule, the region of enchantments; and both Strabo and Diodorus Siculus gravely affirm that men live in the neighbouring isle of lerne with difficulty on account of the cold, and are cannibals. But perhaps the most remarkable instance of how little was really known of Britain after ages of Roman occupation is to be found in the following passage from Procopius, who lived in the sixth century, was a man of action, an extensive traveller, and a senator, yet felt it necessary, "lest he should be charged with ignorance," though evidently not a believer himself, to mix with his History of the

Gothic War" so wild a fiction as the following: :

"In the northern ocean lies the island Brittia, not far from the continent, but as much as 200 stadia, right opposite to the outlets of the Rhine, and is between Britannia and the island Thule.

For Britannia lies somewhere towards the setting sun, at the extremity of the country of the Spaniards, distant from the continent not less than 4,000 stadia.

" De Bell. Gothic., lib. iv. c. 20.