In the second edition of Tindal’s Rapin there is a print representing the Kings of the Heptarchy in council. The president, Monarch or Bretwalda, is very amusingly made larger and more ferocious than the rest, to express his superior dignity! ----- This description has at least the advantage of detail and of consistency, even though it should unfortunately lack that of truth; but most of those who in more modern times have adopted the hypothesis, refrain from giving us any explanation of the fact it assumes: they tell us indeed the title, and profess to name those who successively bore it, but they are totally silent as to the powers of this great public officer, as to the mode of his appointment, the manner in which he exerted his authority, or the object for which such authority was found necessary. I must frankly confess that I am unable to find any evidence whatever in favour of this view, which appears to me totally inconsistent with everything which we know of the state and principles of society at the early period with which we have to deal. In point of fact, everything depends upon the way in which we construe a passage of Beda, together with one in the Saxon Chronicle, borrowed from him, and the meaning which history and philology justify us in giving to the words made use of by both authors. As the question is of some importance, it may as well be disposed of at once, although only two so-called Bretwaldas are recorded previous to the seventh century. Modern ingenuity, having hastily acquiesced in the existence of this authority, has naturally been somewhat at a loss to account for it; yet this is obviously the most important part of the problem: accordingly Mr. Sharon Turner looks upon the Bretwalda as a kind of war-king, a temporary military leader: he says[9],— “The disaster of Ceawlin gave safety to Kent. Ethelbert preserved his authority in that kingdom, and at length proceeded to that insulary predominance among the Anglosaxon kings, which they called the Bretwalda, or the ruler of Britain. Whether this was a mere title assumed by Hengist, and afterwards by Ella, and continued by the most successful Anglosaxon prince of his day, or conceded in any national council of all the Anglosaxons, or ambitiously assumed by the Saxon king that most felt and pressed his temporary power,—whether it was an imitation of the British unbennaeth, or a continuation of the Saxon custom of electing a war-cyning, cannot now be ascertained.” ----- Footnote 9: Hist. Angl. Sax. bk. iii. ch. 5, vol. i. p. 319. ----- To this he adds in a note:— “The proper force of this word Bretwalda cannot imply conquest, because Ella the First is not said to have conquered Hengist or Cerdic; nor did the other Bretwaldas conquer the other Saxon kingdoms.” Again he returns to the charge: in the eighth chapter of the same book, he says[10]:—