Chapter V

Summary

Chapter five begins

As was described in the previous chapter, tyrants had, in their pride and rashness, stripped Britain of every able-bodied warrior. And so, deprived of Roman help, and with no-one to defend her from her enemies, the country was ravaged from coast to coast, under the constant attacks of the Irish and the Picts. The Britons discussed and devised a plan. Guithelinus, archbishop of London, sailed over to Little Britain and asked if he might take King Aldroenus, who was the fourth to reign there after Conanus, back to Britain with him to bring help to that country. When Britain's disastrous plight had been described to the king, he sent his brother Constantine, with two thousand soldiers, to free the country from barbarian attack, and to assume the crown. So Constantine came over to Britain, with the archbishop, rallied the young men of the island, engaged the enemy, and was victorious, thanks to that holy man Guithelinus.

The Britons, who had been scattered far and wide, now flocked together. A meeting was held at Cirencester, and there they made Constantine king. They gave him a wife of noble Roman descent who bore him three sons: Constans, Aurelius Ambrosius, and Uther Pendragon. The king handed over his first-born son Constans to be received into the monastic order, in the church of Amphibalus in Winchester. Aurelius and Uther he entrusted to Guithelinus to bring up.

Ten years later, Constantine was killed through the treachery of a Pict in his retinue and the Britons’ loyalties to their rulers were soon being split apart into factions. Vortigern, earl of the Gewissei, was striving with all his might to win the crown and sought to gain through treachery what was not his by right of birth. Knowing that Constans, the son of Constantine, was of a slothful and dull-witted disposition, he took him from Winchester, where he had been a monk, and brought him to London. And, because the archbishop of London had died and no-one else was willing to anoint Constans, on the grounds that he was being transformed Wortigernus uice episcopi manu sua diadema capiti Constantis imponens, in regem eum eleuauit.

Sublimatus itaque Constans, totam iustitiam regni et semetipsum in consilium Wortigerni commisit. Nullius enim asperitatis, nullius erat iustitiae, et ideo nec a populo suo, nec a uicinis gentibus timebatur.