[*] This is that Arthur so much celebrated in the
songs of Thaliessin, and the other British bards, and whose military
achievements have been blended with so many fables, as even to give
occasion for entertaining a doubt of his real existence. But poets,
though they disfigure the most certain history by their fictions, ana
use strange liberties with truth where they are the sole historians, as
among the Britons, have commonly some foundation for their wildest
exaggerations. Certain it is, that the siege of Badon was raised by the
Britons in the year 520; and the Saxons were there discomfited in a
great battle.[**] This misfortune stopped the progress of Cerdic; but
was not sufficient to wrest from him the conquests which he had already
made. He and his son Kenric, who succeeded him, established the kingdom
of the West Saxons, or of Wessex, over the counties of Hants, Dorset,
Wilts, Berks, and the Isle of Wight, and left their new-acquired
dominions to their posterity. Cerdic died in 534, Kenric in 560.
While the Saxons made this progress in the south, their countrymen were
not less active in other quarters. In the year 527, a great tribe of
adventurers, under several leaders, landed on the east coast of Britain;
and after fighting many battles, of which history has preserved no
particular account, they established three new kingdoms in this island.
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