under their victors: others, deserting their native country, took
shelter in the province of Armorica; where, being charitably received
by a people of the same language and manners, they settled in great
numbers, and gave the country the name of Britany [l].
[FN [l] Bede, lib. 1. cap. 15. Usher, p.226. Gildas, Sec. 24.]

The British writers assign one cause which facilitated the entrance of
the Saxons into this island; the love with which Vortigern was at
first seized for Rovena, the daughter of Hengist, and which that
artful warrior made use of to blind the eyes of the imprudent monarch
[m]. The same historians add, that Vortimer died; and that Vortigern,
being restored to the throne, accepted of a banquet from Hengist, at
Stonehenge, where 300 of his nobility were treacherously slaughtered,
and himself detained captive [n]. But these stories seem to have been
invented by the Welsh authors, in order to palliate the weak
resistance made at first by their countrymen, anal to account for the
rapid progress and licentious devastations of the Saxons [o].
[FN [m] Nennius, Galfr. lib. 6. cap. 12. [n] Nennius, cap. 47.
Galfr. [o] Stillingfleet's Orig. Brit. p. 324, 325.]

After the death of Vortimer, Ambrosius, a Briton, though of Roman
descent, invested with the command over his countrymen, and
endeavoured, not without success, to unite them in their resistance
against the Saxons. Those contests increased the animosity between the
two nations, and roused the military spirit of the ancient
inhabitants, which had before been sunk into a fatal lethargy.
Hengist, however, notwithstanding their opposition, still maintained
his ground in Britain; and in order to divide the forces and attention
of the natives, he called over a new tribe of Saxons, under the
command of his brother Octa, and of Ebissa, the son of Octa; and he
settled them in Northumberland. He himself remained in the southern
parts of the island, and laid the foundation of the kingdom of Kent,
comprehending the county of that name, Middlesex, Essex, and part of
Surrey. He fixed his royal seat at Canterbury; where he governed
about forty years, and he died in or near the year 488; leaving his
new-acquired dominions to his posterity.

The success of Hengist excited the avidity of the other northern
Germans; and at different times, and under different leaders, they
flocked over in multitudes to the invasion of this island. These
conquerors were chiefly comp