[**]
The same historians add, that Vortimer died; and that Vortigern,
being restored to the throne, accepted of a banquet from Hengist, at
Stonehenge, where three hundred of his nobility were treacherously
slaughtered, and himself detained captive.[***] But these stories seem
to have been invented by the Welsh authors, in order to palliate the
weak resistance made at first by their countrymen, and to account for
the rapid progress and licentious devastations of the Saxons.[****]
After the death of Vortimer, Ambrosius, a Briton, though of Roman
descent, was invested with the command over his countrymen, and
endeavored, not without success, to unite them in their resistance
against the Saxons. Those contests increased the animosity between the
two rations, and roused the military spirit of the ancient inhabitants,
which had before been sunk into a fatal lethargy.
[* Bede, lib. i. cap. 15. Usher, p. 226. Gildas,
sect. 24.]
[** Nennius, Galfr. lib. vi. cap. 12.]
[*** Nennius, cap. 47. Galfr.]
[**** Stillingfleet's Orig. Britt. p. 324,325.]
Hengist, however, notwithstanding their opposition, still maintained his
ground in Britain and in order to divide the forces and attention of the
natives he called over a new tribe of Saxons, under the command of his
brother Octa, and of Ebissa, the son of Octa; and he settled them in
Northumberland.
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