r as it goes,
of Keltic blood.

In the next generation we have to deal with both historical facts and
traditions connected with the pedigree of Constantine the Great. That he
was born in Britain, and that his mother was of low origin, are the
historical facts; that she was the daughter of King Coel of Colchester
is the tradition. The latter is of any amount of worthlessness, and no
stress is laid upon it. The former are considered confirmatory of the
present view. The chief support, however, lies in the British character
of the name.

In the Panegyric of Mamertinus on the Emperor Maximian, one of the
Augusti, who shared the imperial power with Diocletian, we have the
first mention of the Picts. Worthless as the Panegyrists are when we
want specific facts, they have the great merit of being cotemporary to
the events they allude to; for allusions of a tantalizing and
unsatisfactory character is all we get from them. However, Mamertinus is
the first writer who mentions the Picts, and he does it in his notice of
the revolt of Carausius.

More important than this is a passage which gives us an army of Frank
mercenaries in the City of London, as early as A.D. 290--there or
thereabouts. It is a passage of which too little notice has, hitherto,
been taken--"By so thorough a consent of the Immortal Gods, O
unconquered Caesar, has the extermination of all the enemies, whom you
have attacked, _and of the Franks more especially_, been decreed, that
even those of your soldiers, who, having missed their way on a foggy
sea, reached the town of London, destroyed promiscuously and throughout
the city the whole remains of that mercenary multitude of barbarians,
that, after escaping the battle, sacking the town, and, attempting
flight, was still left--a deed, whereby your provincials were not only
saved, but delighted by the sight of the slaughter."

One German tribe, then at least, has set its foot on the land of Britain
as early as the reign of Diocletian; and that as enemies. How far their
settlement was permanent, and how far the particular section of them,
mentioned by Mamertinus, represented the whole of the invasion, is
uncertain. The paramount fact is the existence of hostile Franks in
Middlesex nearly 200 years before the epoch of Hengist.

Were there Saxons as well? This is a question for the sequel. At
present, I remark, that Mamertinus mentions them by name but without
placing them on the soil of Britain. They merely vex