f
any civil or military constitution; and their uncertain rulers wanted
either skill, or courage, or authority, to direct the public force
against the common enemy. The introduction of the Saxons betrayed their
internal weakness, and degraded the character both of the prince and
people. Their consternation magnified the danger; the want of union
diminished their resources; and the madness of civil factions was more
solicitous to accuse, than to remedy, the evils, which they imputed to
the misconduct of their adversaries.

Yet the Britons were not ignorant, they could not be ignorant, of the
manufacture or the use of arms; the successive and disorderly attacks
of the Saxons allowed them to recover from their amazement, and the
prosperous or adverse events of the war added discipline and experience
to their native valor.

[Footnote 132: See Gildas de Excidio Britanniae, c. i. p. l. edit.
Gale.]

[Footnote 133: Mr. Whitaker (Hist. of Manchester, vol. ii. p. 503, 516)
has smartly exposed this glaring absurdity, which had passed unnoticed
by the general historians, as they were hastening to more interesting
and important events]

While the continent of Europe and Africa yielded, without resistance,
to the Barbarians, the British island, alone and unaided, maintained
a long, a vigorous, though an unsuccessful, struggle, against the
formidable pirates, who, almost at the same instant, assaulted the
Northern, the Eastern, and the Southern coasts. The cities which had
been fortified with skill, were defended with resolution; the advantages
of ground, hills, forests, and morasses, were diligently improved by the
inhabitants; the conquest of each district was purchased with blood; and
the defeats of the Saxons are strongly attested by 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; besieg