THE HISTORY OF BRITAIN, That Part especially, now called ENGLAND; From the First Traditional Beginning, continued to the NORMAN CONQUEST. Collected out of the ancienteft and best Authors thereof. Published from a Copy corrected by the Author himself. THE THE FIRST BOOK. HE beginning of nations, thofe excepted of whom facred books have spoken, is to this day unknown. Nor only the beginning, but the deeds alfo of many fucceeding ages, yea, periods of ages, either wholly unknown, or obfcured and blemished with fables. Whether it were that the ufe of letters came in long after, or were it the violence of barbarous inundations, or they themselves at certain revolutions of time, fatally decaying, and degenerating into floth and ignorance; whereby the monuments of more ancient civility have been fome destroyed, fome loft. Perhaps difefteem and contempt of the public affairs then prefent, as not worth recording, might partly be in caufe. Certainly ofttimes. we fee that wife men, and of best ability, have forborn to write the acts of their own days, while they beheld with a juft loathing and difdain, not only how unworthy, how perverfe, how corrupt, but often how ignoble, how petty, how below all hiftory the perfons and their actions were; who, either by fortune or fome rude election, VOL. IV. B had had attained as a fore judgment and ignominy upon the land, to have chief fway in managing the commonwealth. But that any law, or fuperftition of our philofophers, the Druids, forbad the Britains to write their memorable deeds, I know not why any out of Cæfar * fhould allege: he indeed faith, that their doctrine they thought not lawful to commit to letters; but in most matters elfe, both private and public, among which well may history be reckoned, they ufed the Greek tongue; and that the British Druids, who taught those in Gaul, would be ignorant of any language known and ufed by their difciples, or fo frequently writing other things, and fo inquifitive into higheft, would for want of recording be ever children in the knowledge of times and ages, is not likely. Whatever might be the reason, this we find, that of British affairs, from the firft peopling of the ifland to the coming of Julius Cæfar, nothing certain, either by tradition, hiftory, or ancient fame, hath hitherto been left us. That which we have of oldeft feeming, hath by the greater part of judicious antiquaries been long rejected for a modern fable. Nevertheless there being others, befides the first fuppofed author, men not unread, nor unlearned in antiquity, who admit that for approved ftory, which the former explode for fiction; and feeing that ofttimes relations heretofore accounted fabulous have been after found to contain in them many footfteps and reliques of fomething true, as what we read in poets of the flood, and giants little believed, till undoubted witneffes taught us, that all was not feigned; I have therefore determined to bestow the telling over even of thefe reputed tales; be it for nothing elfe but in favour of our English poets and rhetoricians, who by their art will know how to use them judicioufly. But I might alfo produce example, as Diodorus among the Greeks, Livy and others among the Latins, Polydore and Virunnius accounted among our own writers. I intend not with controverfies and quotations to delay or interrupt the fmooth courfe of hiftory; much less to * Cæf. 1. 6. argue argue and debate long who were the firft inhabitants, with what probabilities, what authorities each opinion hath been upheld; but fhall endeavour that which hitherto hath been needed moft, with plain and lightfome brevity, to relate well and orderly things worth the noting, fo as may best inftruct and benefit them that read. Which, imploring divine affiftance, that it may redound to his glory, and the good of the British nation, I now begin. THAT the whole earth was inhabited before the flood, and to the utmost point of habitable ground from those effectual words of God in the creation, may be more than conjectured. Hence that this ifland aifo had her dwellers, her affairs, and perhaps her ftories, even in that old world thofe many hundred years, with much reason we may infer. After the flood, and the difperfing of nations, as they journeyed leifurely from the east, Gomer the eldest fon of Japhet, and his offspring, as by authorities, arguments, and affinity of divers names is generally believed, were the firft that peopled all thefe west and northern climes. But they of our own writers, who thought they had done nothing, unlefs with all circumftance they tell us when, and who firft fet foot upon this ifland, prefume to name out of fabulous and counterfeit authors a certain Samothes or Dis, a fourth or fixth fon of Japhet, (who they make, about 200 years after the flood, to have planted with colonies, firft the continent of Celtica or Gaul, and next this ifland; thence to have named it Samothea,) to have reigned here, and after him lineally four kings, Magus, Saron, Druis, and Bardus. But the forged Berofus, whom only they have to cite, no where mentions that either he, or any of thofe whom they bring, did ever pafs into Britain, or fend their people hither. So that this outlandish figment may eafily excufe our not allowing it the room here fo much as of a British fable. That which follows, perhaps as wide from truth, though feeming lefs impertinent, is, that thefe Samotheans under the reign of Bardus were fubdued by Albion, a giant, fon of Neptune; who called the island after his own name, and ruled it 44 years. Till at length paffing over into Gaul, in aid of his brother Leftrygon, against whom Hercules was hafting out of Spain into Italy, he was there flain in fight, and Bergion alfo his brother. Sure enough we are, that Britain hath been anciently termed Albion, both by the Greeks and Romans. And Mela, the geographer, makes mention of a ftony shore in Languedoc, where by report fuch a battle was fought. The reft, as his giving name to the ifle, or even landing here, depends altogether upon late furmifes. But too abfurd, and too unconscionably grofs is that fond invention, that wafted hither the fifty daughters of a strange Dioclefian king of Syria; brought in, doubtlefs, by fome illiterate pretender to fomething mistaken in the common poetical ftory of Danaus king of Argos, while his vanity, not pleased with the obfcure beginning which trueft antiquity affords the nation, laboured to contrive us a pedigree, as he thought, more noble. Thefe daughters by appointment of Danaus on the marriage-night having murdered all their husbands, except Linceus, whom his wife's loyalty faved, were by him, at the fuit of his wife their fifter, not put to death, but turned out to fea in a ship unmanned; of which whole fex they had incurred the hate and as the tale goes, were driven on this ifland. Where the inhabitants, none but devils, as fome write, or as others, a lawless crew left here by Albion, without head or governor, both entertained them, and had iffue by them a fecond breed of giants, who tyrannized the Ifle, till Brutus came. The eldest of these dames in their legend they call Albina; and from thence, for which caufe the whole scene was framed, will have the name Albion derived. Incredible it may feem fo fluggish a conceit fhould prove so ancient, as to be authorised by the elder Ninnius, reputed to have lived above a thousand years ago. This I find not in him; but that Hiftion, fprung of Japhet, had four fons; Francus, Romanus, Alemannus, and Britto, of whom the Britains; as true, I believe, as that those other nations, whofe names are refembled, came of the other three; if thefe dreams give not juft occafion • Hollinshed. to |