The history of England, from the earliest times to the Norman ConquestHodgkin, Thomas
History
The history of England, from the earliest times to the Norman Conquest
Hodgkin, Thomas
Great Britain -- History -- To 1066
That is all the information vouchsafed us as to the conquest of Kent,
which was evidently not an easy matter, taking as it did nearly thirty
years to finish. Possibly ere the strife was ended the invaders
somewhat modified their views as to the military worthlessness of the
Britons. London, which is transiently mentioned here in the annal for
456 is not mentioned again in the Chronicle till 851. We hear of it,
however, in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History in 604. The history of Kent
is a blank from the year 473 till 565 when Ethelbert, who afterwards
embraced Christianity, began his long reign of fifty-three years.
_Sussex._--We know from other sources that, far on into the Middle
Ages, Sussex was divided from Kent by the dense forest of the
Andredesweald or Andredesleag, and accordingly the conquest of one
country by no means necessitated the conquest of the other, which is
assigned to a considerably later date than that given for the landing
of Hengest and Horsa.
A.D. 477. Aelle with three sons and three keels come to the place
called Cymenes ora. He slays many “Welshmen,” and drives others to take
refuge in the wood that is called Andredesleag.
A.D. 485. He fights with “Welshmen” near Mearcredesburn.
A.D. 491. “Aelle and Cissa begirt Andredesceaster and slay all who
dwell therein, nor was there for that reason one Briton left alive.”
This wholesale butchery of the British defenders of the Roman fortress
of Anderida, overlooking Pevensey Bay, has naturally attracted much
attention, and is constantly appealed to by those who maintain that
the earlier stages of the Saxon conquest were an absolute war of
extermination. It is to be observed that Aelle, who founded an
exceptionally short-lived dynasty, is not credited with any long line
of ancestors reaching back to the mythic Woden. Chichester, capital of
the South Saxon kingdom, founded probably on the site of the Roman city
of Regnum, is said to have derived its name from Cissa, son of Aelle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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