In spite of these doleful complaints, Britain made a better fight against her invaders than did any other of the provinces which the Romans were constrained to abandon in the fifth century. But, unfortunately for themselves, the Britons were inspired by the usual Celtic spirit of disunion, and fell asunder into many states the moment that the hand of the master was removed. Sometimes they combined under a single leader, when the stress of invasion was unusually severe, but such leagues were precarious and temporary. The list of their princes shows that some of them were Romanized Britons, others pure Celts. By the side of names like Ambrosius, Constantine, Aurelius, Gerontius, Paternus, we have others like Vortigern, Cunedda, Maelgwn, and Kynan. Arthur, the legendary chief under whom the Britons are said to have turned back the Saxon invaders for a time, was--if he ever existed--the bearer of a Roman name, a corruption of Artorius. But Arthur's name and exploits are only found in romantic tales; the few historians of the time have no mention of him. [Sidenote: =Christianity in Britain.=] Celtic Britain, when the Romans abandoned it, had become a Christian country. Of the details of conversion of the land, we have only a few stories of doubtful authenticity; but we know that British bishops existed, and attended synods and councils on the continent, and that there were many churches scattered over the face of the land. The Britons were even beginning to send missionaries across the sea in the fifth century. St. Patrick, the apostle of the Irish Gael, was a native of the northern part of Roman Britain, who had been stolen as a slave by Scottish pirates, and returned after his release to preach the gospel to them, somewhere about the year 440. His name (Patricius) clearly shows that he was a Romanized Briton. A less happy product of the island was the heretical preacher Pelagius, whose doctrines spread far over all Western Europe, and roused the anger of the great African saint, Augustine of Hippo. Here we must leave Celtic Britain, as the darkness of the fifth century closes over it. For a hundred and fifty years our knowledge of its history is most vague and fragmentary, and when next we see the island clearly, the larger half of it has passed into the hands of a new people, and is called England, and no longer Britain. FOOTNOTES: [1] London, St. Albans, Colchester. [2] Comes Littoris Saxonici. CHAPTER II. THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH. In the early half of the fifth century it seemed likely that Britain would become the prey of its old enemies the Picts and Scots, rather than of the more distant Saxons. But the wild tribes of the North came to plunder only, while the pirates from the Elbe and Eider had larger designs.