Or, changing the expression:—
1. The differentiæ of the people of Kent, part of Sussex, and the Isle of Wight (if any), are to be explained by the differentiæ of the original Jute immigrants—
2. Those of the rest of Sussex, Wessex, Essex, and Middlesex, by those of the Saxons—
3. Those of the people of Norfolk, &c., by those of the Angles.
Such is our reasoning, and such a sketch of our philological researches—assuming that the opinions just exhibited, concerning the dates, conductors, localities, and order, are absolute and unimpeachable historical facts.
[§ 13]. Criticism of the aforesaid details.—As a preliminary to this part of the subject, the present writer takes occasion to state once for all, that nearly the whole of the following criticism is not his own (except, of course, so far as he adopts it—which he does), but Mr. Kemble's, and that it forms the introduction to his valuable work on the Saxons in England.
1. The evidence to the details just given, is not historical, but traditional.—a. Bede, from whom it is chiefly taken, wrote more than 300 years after the supposed event, i.e., the landing of Hengist and Horsa, in A.D. 449.
b. The nearest contemporary author is Gildas, and he lived at least 100 years after it.
2. The account of Hengist's and Horsa's landing, has elements which are fictional rather than historical—a. Thus "when we find Hengist and Horsa approaching the coasts of Kent in three keels, and Ælli effecting a landing in Sussex with the same number, we are reminded of the Gothic tradition which carries a migration of Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Gepidæ, also in three vessels, to the mouths of the Vistula."
b. The murder of the British chieftains by Hengist is told totidem verbis, by Widukind, and others of the Old Saxons in Thuringia.