Dr. James Fergusson, in his learned and elaborate work on the "Rude Stone Monuments of all Countries," although stoutly contending for the historical verity of the victories ascribed to Arthur by Nennius, somewhat brusquely rejects the Lancashire sites, because, on his visit to the localities indicated by Whitaker and others, he found no megalithic remains to support his ingenious hypothesis respecting battle-field memorials. He says "I am much more inclined to believe that Linnuis is only a barbarous Latinization of Linn, which in Gaelic and Irish means sea or lake. In Welsh it is Lyn, and in Anglo-Saxon Lin, and if this is so, 'In regione Linnuis' may mean in the Lake Country." However, he confesses he can find no river Duglas in that district, and in another sentence he regards the nearness of the sea to Wigan as an objectionable element on military grounds. I hold a contrary view. A defeated commander near Wigan had the great Roman road for retreat either to the north or south, besides the vicinal ways to Manchester and Ribchester. The objection, moreover, is valueless, from the simple fact that battles _have_ been fought in the localities, as is attested both by historic records and discovered remains. Henry of Huntingdon, who wrote in the earlier portion of the twelfth century, regarded Arthur as a genuine historical character, and attributed the then ignorance of precise localities of the twelve battles described by Nennius to "the Providence of God having so ordered it that popular applause and flattery, and transitory glory, might be of no account." William of Malmsbury, in the twelfth century, although evidently aware of the legendary character of the mass of the Arthurian stories, seems, however, to have had some confidence that a substratum of historic truth underlying or permeating the mass, might, with skill and diligence, eventually be extracted. Probably a few years before Geoffrey's work appeared, he writes--"That Arthur, about whom the idle tales of the Bretons (_nugæ Britonum_) craze to this day, one worthy not to have misleading fables dreamed about him, but to be celebrated in true history, since he sustained for a long time his tottering country, and sharpened for war the broken spirit of his people."