The Monarchy of Britain

Extract

The achievement of which St David has become the symbol and patron stands out like a mountain massif on a starlit night. The detail is obscure, but the patient work of historians, geographers, archaeologists, philologists and the experts in place-names, church dedications and folk-lore are gradually having their effect. The main peaks are already clear and unmistakable. Furthermore, this achievement, as we consider it, serves to emphasise that truth on which wisdom has always insisted—the futility of paying attention to the ignis fatuus of immediate success and failure. First, however, the setting must be grasped. By the year 400 Stilicho had pacified and reorganised Britain; he then withdrew the regular legionary troops. The problem of the western hill-country, much of which had been occupied by Goidelic pirates and settlers, was left, it would appear, to Cunedda, who probably held the office of the Dux Britanniarum. He was, it would seem, the commander of a corps of foederati who had been settled beyond the Wall of Hadrian. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather all bore Roman names. His grandfather, Paternus, was surnamed Bais rudd, of the Red tunic, which denoted probably the official purple of Rome; and it has been suggested that his great-grandfather, Tacitus, had been a protege of Constantine the Great. The mixture of Celtic and Roman names appears among his sons.

Cunedda’s expedition was a success. In conjunction, probably, with the Ordovices of Powys, he and his sons expelled the Goidels from the greater part of Wales.