The death of Conall opened the succession to the children of Gabran according to the law of tanistry, and so far as we can gather from a statement in Adamnan’s Life of St. Columba, it fell to Eoganan to fill the throne, but St. Columba was led by a vision to prefer his brother Aidan, whom he solemnly inaugurated as king of Dalriada, in the island of Iona.[[144]] It is more probable that he was led to prefer Aidan from his possessing qualities which pointed him out as the fittest man to redeem the fortunes of the Dalriads, and took this mode of giving a sanction to his choice, which Aidan appears soon to have vindicated, as he is termed in the Albanic Duan ‘king of many divisions,’[[145]] that is, of extended territories. The Dalriads seem, as yet, to have been considered as forming a part of Irish Dalriada, and as a colony from them, to have been still subject to the mother tribe; but St. Columba resolved to proceed a step further, and to make him an independent king. Accordingly he, along with Aidan, attended a great council held at Drumceat in the year 575, when a discussion arose between him and the king of Ireland as to the future position of Scotch Dalriada towards Ireland, and it was agreed that the Scotch Dalriads should be freed from all tributes and exactions, but should join with the Irish Dalriads, as the parent stock, in all hostings and expeditions.[[146]] Aidan thus became, as it were, the second founder of the Dalriadic colony in Scotland, and its first monarch as an independent kingdom.[[147]]
The Saxons.
The third of the Barbarian tribes who had assailed the Roman province, and afterwards effected a settlement in the island, and the second of those who were foreign settlers, were the Saxons. The traditionary account of their settlement is thus given. Gildas tells us that when the Picts and Scots crossed the southern wall in their last invasion of the province, and drove the Britons before them, the provincial Britons applied to Aetius, a powerful Roman citizen, for protection. He states that this letter bore the address ‘To Aetius, now consul for the third time, the groans of the Britons,’ and contained the expression, ‘The Barbarians drive us to the sea; the sea throws us back on the Barbarians; thus two modes of death await us, we are either slain or drowned;’[[148]] that no assistance being given from Rome, the more warlike part of the Britons overthrew their enemies, who had been for so many years living in their country; that the Picts then settled for the first time in the northern part of the island, and the Scots returned to Ireland; that this was followed by a great plenty in Ireland; that a rumour suddenly arose that their inveterate foes were rapidly approaching to destroy the whole country, and to take possession of it, as of old, from one end to the other; that a council was called to settle what was best and most expedient to be done to repel the irruptions and plunderings of these nations; and that the councillors, along with that proud tyrant, the leader of the Britons,[[149]] sealed the doom of their country by inviting in among them the fierce and impious Saxons, ‘a race,’ says the Christian and patriotic Gildas, ‘hateful alike to God and men,’ to repel the invasions of the northern nations. They arrive in three “cyuls” or long ships, and land on the eastern side of the island, where they settle. They are followed by a larger body of their countrymen, who join them. The Barbarians, being thus introduced as soldiers and supplied with provisions, become dissatisfied with their monthly provisions, break the treaty, and proceed to destroy the towns and lands till they reach the Western Sea. Then follows a lamentable description of the ruin caused by them; and of the Britons, some were enslaved, some fled over the sea, and others took arms under a leader of the Roman nation—Ambrosius Aurelianus, attack their cruel conqueror and obtain a victory. A war then follows, in which sometimes the citizens and sometimes the enemy have the advantage, till the year of the siege of the Badon Mount,[[150]] which was also the year of his birth. Such is a résumé of Gildas’s narrative of the settlement of the Saxons in Britain, and to it only two dates can be attached. There is no question that the letter which was sent to Aetius belongs to the year 446, when he was for the third time consul; and the siege of Badon Hill took place, according to the Annales Cambriæ, in the year 516.
Procopius, who wrote at the same time as Gildas, tells us that three very numerous nations possess Brittia, over each of which a king presides; which nations are named ‘Angeloi,’ ‘Phrissones,’ and those surnamed from the island, ‘Brittones,’ He thus considers that those whom Gildas calls generally Saxons, consisted of two nations, the Angles and the Frisians; but he tells us nothing as to their settlement in the island.
In our present text of Nennius we find three different accounts of the settlement of the Saxons. The first is thus told us. ‘After the departure of the Romans, the Britons were forty years in anxiety. Guorthegirn then reigned in Britain, and while he reigned he was oppressed by fear of the Scots and Picts, the Roman power, and the dread of Ambrosius. In the meantime three cyuls came from Germany, driven into exile, in which were Hors and Hengist. Guorthegirn received them kindly, and gave them the island of Thanet. While Gratianus the Second and Equantius were ruling at Rome, the Saxons were received by Guorthegirn in the 347th year after the passion of Christ.’[[151]] The 347th year after the passion of Christ is equal to the 374th year after his incarnation, and in that year Gratianus was consul a second time in conjunction with Æquitius. He then proceeds, ‘After the Saxons had continued some time in the island of Thanet, Guorthegirn promised to supply them with clothing and provision, on condition they would engage to fight against the enemies of his country, but is unable to fulfil his engagement, and bids them depart. Hengist then sends for reinforcements, who come in sixteen vessels with his daughter.’ Then follows the well-known incident of the banquet, and the cession of Kent. Hengist then proposes to send for his son and his cousin to fight against the Scots, and asks Guorthegirn to give them the regions next the northern wall. Octa and Ebissa come with forty cyuls, and circumnavigating the Picts lay waste the Orkneys, and occupy several districts beyond the Frisian sea, as far as the confines of the Picts. They are followed by other ships, which come to Kent.[[152]]
The second account is this—‘From the first year in which the Saxons came into Britain to the fourth year of King Mervin are reckoned four hundred and twenty-nine years.’[[153]] The fourth year of the reign of Mervin, king of North Wales, corresponds with the year 821, and this places the arrival of the Saxons in the year 392.
The last account runs thus—‘Guorthegirn, however, held the supreme authority in Britain in the consulship of Theodosius and Valentinian, and in the fourth year of his reign the Saxons came into Britain, Felix and Taurus being consuls in the four hundredth year of the incarnation of our Lord.’[[154]] The consulship of Theodosius and Valentinian fell in the year 425, and that of Felix and Taurus in the year 428, which is thus given as the date of the settlement of the Saxons.
The geographer of Ravenna, who wrote in the same century in which the work which bears the name of Nennius was originally compiled, reports the tradition thus:—‘In the Western Ocean is the island which is called Britannia, where the nation of the Saxons formerly coming from ancient Saxony, with their chief Anschis, are now seen to inhabit.’[[155]]
Finally, Bede, in the succeeding century, the historian of the Anglic nation, gives us the traditionary history in the following shape. He repeats in very much the same terms the account given by Gildas of the incursions of the Picts and Scots beyond the southern wall; the letter to Aetius asking assistance, which, he adds, he was unable to give on account of the war with Blaedla and Attila, kings of the Huns; the great famine; the efforts made by the more warlike part of the Britons; the return of the Irish plunderers to their own home,[[156]] and the quietness of the Picts in the extreme part of the island; the great plenty which followed; the alarm of renewed invasion, when ‘they all agreed with their king Vortigern to call over to them and from the parts beyond the sea the Saxon nation.’[[157]] Bede then proceeds thus:—‘In the year of our Lord’s incarnation 449, Martian, being made emperor with Valentinian, and the forty-sixth from Augustus, ruled the empire seven years. Then the nation of the Angles or Saxons, being invited by the aforesaid king, arrived in Britain with three long ships, and had a place assigned them to dwell in by the same king in the eastern part of the island, that they might thus appear to be fighting for the country, whilst their real intentions were to enslave it. Accordingly they engaged with the enemy, who had come from the north to give battle, and obtained the victory; which, being known at home in their own country, as also the fertility of the country and the cowardice of the Britons, a more considerable fleet was quickly sent over, bringing a still greater number of men, which, being added to the former, made up an invincible army. The new-comers received from the Britons a place to inhabit among themselves, upon condition that they should wage war against their enemies for the peace and security of the country, whilst the Britons agreed to furnish them with pay.’ Bede then tells us that those who came over were of three nations, the Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes; and that from the Angles came all the tribes that dwell on the north side of the river Humber, and the other nations of the English, and that the two first commanders are said to have been Hengist and Horsa. He then says—‘In a short time swarms of the aforesaid nations came over into the island, and they began to increase so much that they became terrible to the natives themselves who had invited them. Having on a sudden entered into a temporary league with the Picts, whom they had by this time repelled to a distance by the force of their arms, they began to turn their weapons against their confederates.’[[158]] Bede then takes from Gildas the account of the ravages by the Saxons, and their victory by Ambrosius Aurelianus, down to the mention of the siege of ‘Mons Badonicus,’ which he places forty-four years after the arrival of the Saxons, or in the year 492. He then narrates the breaking out of the Pelagian heresy, the coming of Germanus and Lupus to Britain, the war upon the Britons by the Saxons and the Picts, which he connects with the league he had just mentioned as having been entered into between them, and the victory under the influence of Germanus, usually called the Allelujatic victory. This part of his narrative he takes from the life of Germanus, written within forty years of his death by Constantius of Lyons.[[159]]
Such is the form into which Bede has reduced this legendary history. Let us now see how far, by the aid of contemporary notices, we can extract the few really historical facts imbedded in it. Though Gildas tells us very distinctly that the Barbarians who assailed the Roman province after Maximus, who usurped the Empire, had departed with the Roman army, and the British youth consisted solely of the two nations of the Picts and Scots, yet certain it is that bodies of Saxons were joined with them in their incursions. For the fact that they formed one of the barbarian tribes who burst into the province in 360 we have the united testimony of Ammianus and Claudian, and the latter authority is equally clear that they formed one of the bands who invaded the province after Maximus and were driven back by Stilicho. Ammianus tells us that in 368 the Count of the Maritime Tract was slain, and in the Notitia Imperii we find the same functionary termed Count of the Saxon Shore. In the same document this designation of the Saxon Shore is also applied to the country about Grannona in Gaul,[[160]] where the Saxons had established regular settlements. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that the name of the Saxon Shore was given to the coast extending from the Wash on the north to near Portsmouth in the south, not because it was exposed to the ravages of the Saxons, but because they had likewise made settlements there.[[161]] We may well believe, then, that between the year 368 and the date of the Notitia, about the beginning of the fifth century, the Saxons who had been assailing the province from the east had effected a settlement on the shores of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Kent; and this accords with the two earliest dates given in Nennius, 374 and 392. The statement by Gildas that the Saxons came on the invitation of a proud tyrant and leader of the Britons, to whom, in the succeeding century, the name of Guorthegirn is given, and who is associated with the arrival of the Saxons at these early dates, seems to find its counterpart in the invitation given to the Barbarians to invade Gaul and Britain by Gerontius, a Count of Britain in the service of Constantine, in the year 407, and in the later form of the tradition they are certainly identified.[[162]] Bede tells us that after the arrival of the Saxons in 449 they united with the Picts, whom they had driven back, and attacked the Britons, when they were defeated in the Allelujatic victory; but Constantius, from whom this event is taken, and who was nearly a contemporary writer, dates this event in the year 429, thus showing the Saxons in combination with the Picts twenty years before the date assigned by Bede for the arrival of the former; and here again the true date of this event is in harmony with the third date assigned in Nennius for the arrival of the Saxons, viz., the year 428.