Quantum tamen potuero, non tam ex scripturis patriæ scriptorumve monimentis—quippe quæ, vel si qua fuerint, aut ignibus hostium exusta, aut civium exsilii classe longius deportata, non compareant,—quam transmarina relatione, quæ crebris irrupta intercapedinibus, non satis claret.—_Hist. Gild._ 4. Footnote 107: It is hardly conceivable that Gildas, if he was a native of Strathclyde, as is generally supposed, could have used the language he does regarding the northern part of the island; but there is much confusion regarding his life, and great difficulty in ascertaining the real events of it. Usher came to the conclusion that there were at least two persons of the name, whom he distinguishes as Gildas Albanus and Gildas Badonicus, whose acts have been confounded together, and his opinion has been very generally adopted. Mabillon considered that there was only one Gildas. There are four lives of St. Gildas preserved. One by Caradoc of Llancarvan, printed in Stevenson’s edition of his writings; another in the Bodleian, printed by Capgrave; another by a monk of Ruys, printed by Mabillon; and a fourth in the British Museum, still in MS. (Egerton, No. 7457). It is, however, impossible to compare these lives without seeing that they relate to the same person. Gildas in his work states that the battle of Badon was fought in the year he was born, and that he was then forty-four years, which, as that battle was fought, according to the Annales Cambriæ, in 516, gives us 560 as the year in which he composed his history. The confusion has arisen, in this as in everything relating to Welsh history, from not discriminating between his acts compiled before Geoffrey of Monmouth’s fabulous history appeared, and those which bear the impress of that work. The third and fourth life belong to the former period; that by Caradoc of Llancarvan, and the second, which is substantially the same, to the latter.