of the ' Saxon Shore ' to his assistance. The details of trie story have been rendered obscure by the misconceptions[1] of later times, which transfigured Vortigern into a King of Britain who received continental supplies in the island of Thanet in order to withstand enemies who were threatening his country at the Wall of Hadrian ! Vortigern's invitation to the Saxons has consequently been magnified out of all reason, and completely torn from its true setting. It was certainly a blow aimed at the Romani of Britannia, which appears to have met with no small success seeing how the memory of Vortigern was afterwards execrated ; and it is clearly one of the remnant of the Roman faction who is originally responsible for the Excidium Britanniae of the pseudo-Gildas towards the close of the seventh century.
The office of gwledig, like that of the English bretwalda,
- ↑ These misconceptions originated with the ' edited ' copy of the Excidium Britanniae placed in Bede's hands, where Britannia was ignorantly or maliciously identified with Roman Britain, or rather with the island of Britain ! It cannot be too much insisted upon that we learn from the Excidium Britanniae almost all that Bede knew or chose to know of fifth-century Britain, and that the former therefore, and not the latter, is the ' original authority ' with which the student has to deal in his researches into this period of history.
