After the events of 429, it appears that the course of history somewhat changed. The ‘Alleluia’ victory apparently checked serious foreign invasions, but there is no reason to doubt that, as the ‘Historia’ says, Britain was in alarm. The Roman world was in wild disorder, which must have affected Britain; but when, in 447, Germanus once more came to combat Pelagianism, we do not hear of foreign war. Yet a Gallic chronicle says that Britain was conquered by the Saxons in 441, and Gildas states that in 446 some British provincials sent a miserable letter, called ‘The groans of the Britons,’ to the great general Aëtius, who then upheld the Roman name in Gaul. The latter statement we can neither accept nor deny. Possibly it is only one of Gildas’s rhetorical flights; possibly, if the incident occurred, it referred only to a single community. The Gallic chronicler may have been misinformed, or his chronology may be wrong. In any case, his statement must be rejected. Perhaps there was a raid in 441, the consequences of which were exaggerated by those who were responsible for the report made of it in Gaul. It seems impossible that, if the English conquest had already begun in 447, we should hear nothing of it in connection with the second visit of Germanus.
The only conclusion to which it is possible to come is that after the ‘Alleluia’ victory Britain, though more or less harassed by sporadic raids, was for some years comparatively free from barbarian attacks.
CHAPTER IV
THE ENGLISH CONQUEST
Although the English invasion of Britain is by far the most important of all those which have affected the island, it is impossible to focus any very clearly defined picture of the happenings during the long period of nearly two centuries that followed the so-called departure of the Romans. The picture is blurred, but certain strong outlines are conspicuous, and in this chapter an attempt has been made to concentrate attention on these salient features.
The incident which led to the English invaders obtaining a secure foothold in south-east Britain was probably connected with internal troubles rather than foreign invasions. The Celtic chieftains of the south-west were less occupied than their northern contemporaries in repelling foreign invaders. They must have cast longing eyes upon the wealthy Romanized cities, and cherished hopes of bringing them, or some of them, under their sway. Vortigern, one of these rulers, probably prince of the Silures, seems to have partially succeeded in doing so, and about A.D. 450 appears as supreme over the south as far as Dover Straits. Whether his suzerainty extended north of the Thames must be considered very doubtful.
The ‘Historia Brittonum’ describes the situation as follows:
‘After the above-said war, the assassination of their rulers, and the victory of Maximus, who slew Gratian, and the termination of the Roman power in Britain, they were in alarm forty years. Vortigern then reigned in Britain, and in his time the people had cause of dread, not only from the inroads of the Picts and Scots, but also from the Romans, and their apprehensions of Ambrosius.’
The passage is a very confused one, and what appear to be the significant sentences are italicized. The opening statement is a kind of summing-up of the confused sections which precede it. It has been seriously misunderstood by several authors, but its meaning is fairly obvious. The chronology of the ‘Historia’ is its most hopeless feature, but here it presents no great difficulty. Forty years after the end of the Roman power, Vortigern reigned in Britain. As we have seen, direct Roman rule ended in 410-411. We therefore arrive at the year 450-451. Bede says that Hengist entered Britain in the reign of Marcianus and Valentinian III.—i.e., after 450; but he is out in his reckoning, and so makes the date A.D. 449. Gildas makes it after 446. Probably it was after 447, for in that year St. Germanus again came to Britain, and no foreign troubles are mentioned. On the other hand, the ‘Historia’ says that Vortigern died while St. Germanus was in the island—i.e., in 447. This would place the invasion of Kent in 445 or 446, and if it really did occur then, it agrees somewhat better with the famous letter to Aëtius recorded by Gildas. But we dare not trust Gildas for anything before 470, and the ‘Life of St. Germanus’ used by the compilers of the ‘Historia’ was evidently a very fanciful work. On the whole the chronology of the English invasions is very uncertain. The one definite indication is that Vortigern’s reception of Hengist took place forty years after the end of Roman power in Britain.