The variety of opinions, and the many questions that have been agitated, concerning the country and time of the birth of S. Patrick, render it necessary to clear up these disputed points before proceeding with the main story of his life. It would be a waste of time to examine all the various opinions, that have been started on this subject, such as his having been born in Cornwall, in Pembrokeshire,[51] or, what is strangest of all, in Ireland itself. The prevalent opinion since Usher's time has been that he was born at Kilpatrick, near Dumbarton. Usher was led astray by the scholiast on Fiech's hymn. Fiech says that S. Patrick was born at Nemthur (the holy tower) in Britain, and the scholiast identified this place with Alcwith, now Dumbarton. The scholiast guessed this, not knowing that the term Britain also applied to the whole of the North of Gaul, inhabited by the Armorican Gauls.[52] Indeed Probus calls S. Patrick's country, and the town where his family lived, Arimuric, or Armorica. In the life of S. Fursey, we are told that this saint crossed the sea into the province of Britain, and proceeded through Ponthieu. Now Ponthieu is a maritime tract in Picardy, near Boulogne; and it is also to be observed that this district is said in the life of S. Fursey "to be called by the moderns Normandy." But S. Patrick in his confession says, "My father was Calpurnius, a deacon, son of Potitus, a priest, of the town of Bonavem Taberniæ. He had near the town a small villa Enon, where I became a captive." Bonavem (Ben-avon, _British_, the headland above the river) is the modern Boulogne-sur-mer, and the district of Taberniæ is Terouanne, in which it is situated. Boulogne was the Bonona[53] of the Romans, and its Gallic name Ben-avon, exactly describes its situation on the summit of a hill. On the very edge of the cliff, a little east of the port, are the remains of the tower built by Caligula (A.D. 40), when he marched to the shore of the channel with an army of 100,000 men, boasting that he intended to invade the opposite coast of Britain, but contenting himself with gathering a few shells, which he called the spoils of the ocean. The tower is supposed to have been intended for a lighthouse, and its modern name La Tour d'Orde, a corruption of _Turris Ardens_, points it out as having been used for this purpose. A very good case is, however, made out for a site on the Roman Wall, in which case Patrick would be the son of one of the Roman colonists or defenders of the wall, and a native of Cumberland. In his epistle against Coroticus, S. Patrick tells us he was of an honourable family according to the flesh, his father having held the office of decurion, which conferred a certain amount of nobility. Clerks were not then forbidden to hold such offices. He calls the Romans his fellow citizens, and this circumstance, coupled with the fact, that the names of S. Patrick, of his father, and of his grandfather, are purely Latin,