" Mordred, the wicked traitor, at length disturbs all this
tranquillity and grandeur, and brings over barbarous people from
different countries. Arthur falls in battle. The Saxons prevail, and the
Britons retire into Cornwall and Wales.
Amid the bewildering mass of the obscure and the fabulous which our
history presents of the first century and a half of the Saxon
colonization, there are some well-established facts which are borne out
by subsequent investigations. Such is Bede's account of the country of
the invaders, and the parts in which they settled. This account,
compared with other authorities, gives us the following results. They
consisted of "the three most powerful nations of Germany--Saxons,
Angles, and Jutes." The Saxons came from the parts which, in Bede's
time, were called the country of the Old Saxons. That country is now
known as the duchy of Holstein. These, under Ella, founded the kingdom
of the South Saxons--our present Sussex. Later in the fifth century, the
same people, under Cerdic, established themselves in the district
extending from Sussex to Devonshire and Cornwall, which was the kingdom
of the West Saxons.
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