[19] Some MSS. read juvenilis, others militaris.
[20] Some MSS. read succensæ.
[21] These are supposed to be long vessels, somewhat like galleys, and it would appear, as well from Brompton, col. 897, as from so small a number containing a body equal to a military enterprise like that described here and in other places, that they were of considerable burden.
[22] Bede i. 15. The people of Kent and of the Isle of Wight were Jutes; the East, South, and West Saxons, were Saxons; and of the Angles came the East-Angles, Mid-Angles, Mercians, and Northumbrians. For the limits of the several kingdoms of the Heptarchy, see Chap. VI. The Cottonian MS. (Claud. ix.) reads, Wichtis.
[23] At Aylesford, A.D. 455; at Crayford, 457; at Wippedsfleet (supposed, but very doubtful, Ebbsfleet, in Thanet), 465; and the fourth, A.D. 473, the place not mentioned. See Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 465.
[24] Said to be Bannesdown, near Bath. Giraldus Cambrensis says, the image of the Virgin was fixed on the inside of Arthur’s shield, that he might kiss it in battle. Bede erroneously ascribes this event to A.D. 493. (Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, b. i. c. 6.)
[25] According to Sprott, Hengist died in 488, and was succeeded by his son Octa, vel Osca. Osca died A.D. 408, and Esc, his son, ascended the throne. In the year 522 Ermenric, the father of king Ethelbert, reigned. Ethelbert became king of Kent in 558.
[26] The difference seems to have arisen from carelessness in the scribe; as the Saxon Chronicle states him to have ascended the throne A.D. 560, and to have died 616: which is exactly fifty-six years, although it asserts him to have reigned only 53.
[27] See Wilkins’s “Leges Anglo-Saxonicæ,” and the Textus Roffensis.
[28] The name of the second queen of Ethelbert is not mentioned, probably on account of this incest.