the discreet silence
of their annalist. Hengist might hope to achieve the conquest of
Britain; but his ambition, in an active reign of thirty-five years, was
confined to the possession of Kent; and the numerous colony which he had
planted in the North, was extirpated by the sword of the Britons. The
monarchy of the West Saxons was laboriously founded by the persevering
efforts of three martial generations. The life of Cerdic, one of the
bravest of the children of Woden, was consumed in the conquest of
Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight; and the loss which he sustained in
the battle of Mount Badon, reduced him to a state of inglorious repose.
Kenric, his valiant son, advanced into Wiltshire; besieged Salisbury, at
that time seated on a commanding eminence; and vanquished an army
which advanced to the relief of the city. In the subsequent battle of
Marlborough, his British enemies displayed their military science. Their
troops were formed in three lines; each line consisted of three distinct
bodies, and the cavalry, the archers, and the pikemen, were distributed
according to the principles of Roman tactics. The Saxons charged in
one weighty column, boldly encountered with their short swords the
long lances of the Britons, and maintained an equal conflict till the
approach of night. Two decisive victories, the death of three British
kings, and the reduction of Cirencester, Bath, and Gloucester,
established the fame and power of Ceaulin, the grandson of Cerdic, who
carried his victorious arms to the banks of the Severn.

After a war of a hundred years, the independent Britons still occupied
the whole extent of the Western coast, from the wall of Antoninus to the
extreme promontory of Cornwall; and the principal cities of the inland
country still opposed the arms of the Barbarians. Resistance became
more languid, as the number and boldness of the assailants continually
increased. Winning their way by slow and painful efforts, the Saxons,
the Angles, and their various confederates, advanced from the North,
from the East, and from the South, till their victorious banners were
united in the centre of the island. Beyond the Severn the Britons still
asserted their national freedom, which survived the heptarchy, and even
the monarchy, of the Saxons. The bravest warriors, who preferred
exile to slavery, found a secure refuge in the mountains of Wales: the
reluctant submission of Cornwall was delayed for some ages; and a band
of fugi