“The sons of the Britons, leaving the British sea, landed on these shores at the period when the barbarian Saxon conquered the isle. These children of a beloved race established themselves in this country, glad to find repose after so many griefs. In the meantime the unfortunate Britons who had not quitted this country were decimated by plague. Their corpses lay without sepulchre. The major portion of the isle was depopulated. Then a small number of men, who had escaped the sword of the invaders, abandoned their native land to seek refuge, some among the Scots (Irish), the rest in Belgic Gaul.” The plague to which reference is made is the Yellow Death, that carried off Maelgwn Gwynedd, King of Wales, 547. The invasion was not a military occupation; the settlers encountered no resistance. Every account we have represents them as landing in a country that was denuded of its population, except in the district of Vannes and on the Loire. In or about 514 Riwhal, son of a Damnonian king, arrived with a large fleet on the north-east coast, and founded the colony and principality of Domnonia on the mainland. One swarm came from Gwent, that is to say, Monmouthshire and Glamorganshire, where the Britons were hard pressed by the Saxons; and this Gwentian colony planted itself in the north-west of the Armorican peninsula, and called it Leon, or Lyonesse, after the Caerleon that had been abandoned. This Leon was afterwards annexed to Domnonia in Brittany, so as to form a single kingdom. Again another swarm took possession of the western seaboard, and called that Cornu, either after their Cornwall at home, or because Finisterre is, like that, a horn thrust forward into the Atlantic. By degrees Vannes, itself a Gallo-Roman city, was enveloped by the new-comers, so that in 590 the Bishop Regalis complained that he was as it were imprisoned by them within the walls of his city. The Gallo-Roman prelate disliked these British invaders and their independent ways. S. Melanius of Rennes and S. Felix of Nantes shared his dislike. The prelates exercised much of the magisterial authority of the imperial governors, and to this the newly-arrived Britons refused to submit. The Britons brought with them their own laws, customs, and organisation, both civil and ecclesiastical, as well as their own language. They were at first few in numbers, and did not desire to emancipate themselves wholly from Britain. Consequently, although establishing themselves in clans, they held themselves to be under the sovereignty of their native princes at home. This appears from the coincidence of the names of the kings in Armorica and in insular Domnonia.[25] About the downs may be seen numerous cairns and barrows. Some of these have been explored, and some fine urns of the Bronze Age, that were found near Gunwalloe, are now in the Truro Museum.