CHAPTER VI - THE CYMRY IN THE FIFTH CENTURY

Summary

hope

That generous, buoyant spirit is a power

Which in the virtuous mind doth all things conquer,

It bears the hero on to arduous deeds,

It lifts the saint to heaven.

Joanna Baillie: The Beacon, act ii. scene iii.

§ 1. The progeny of Cogidunus, and the inhabitants of the cities first founded and peopled by the Romans, retained a lingering inclination for dependence upon Rome. Britain was their birthplace, but they formed a mere faction there, and their groans for casual assistance, rightly interpreted, expressed an habitual desire for the renewed residence of powerful protectors, whose presence might restore to that faction their former predominance over the primæval race. In the course of this century, many families of Roman settlers hid their treasures in the earth, and migrated to Gaul, carrying with them their most portable wealth.

Communications having been re-opened with the capital of the Western Empire, the temporary assistance of a Roman legion was on two different occasions received by the Britons, a.d. 416 and 418. At a still later date (a.d. 472) the Britons sent an army of 12,000 men, at the request of the Emperor Anthemius, to the assistance of his friends in Gaul. This army was led by a king of Britain called Riothamus.

§ 2. Besides the free tribes of Alban, who from generation to generation burst through all barriers, to despoil land more fertile than their own; and besides the rovers from the Baltic and the Elbe, who continued with emulative audacity to assail various parts of the coast, the western side of the island had of late been violently attacked by Scottish clans direct from the Irish shores.