Author: MJ Porter, author

What sources are available?

In order to locate the end of Roman Britain it is necessary to conduct a detailed and systematic critique of the available sources from the period that the end of Roman Britain is purported to have come about. This is not such an onerous task as might be expected as sources for the period are scant and offer piecemeal information. After this has been attempted it should be possible to determine if a date or event can be said to mark the end of Roman Britain. At the present time there is a wealth of theories given as to when Roman Britain ended. Dark in his ‘Civitas to Kingdom’ published in 1994 argues that

‘…. Eastern England passed out of Roman political domination in the course of the first decade of the fifth century and was re-defended by sub-Roman authorities in the early to mid fifth century. By the late fifth century, most of it was controlled by Anglo-Saxons,’[1]

whilst Higham in his 1994 book argues that

‘it is accepted by all sides that the year 441 represents the date at which Saxon rule within a large part of Britannia became known to a southern Gaulish chronicler,’[2]

and as such Roman Britain must have ended by that date at the latest. As these differing interpretations all rely wholly on the same written sources and so it is necessary to have a deep understanding of these sources before reaching any conclusions or agreeing with other historians interpretations of events.

Sources for the end of Roman Britain, which is taken to have occurred from the 5^th century onwards, with a readily given date of 410 as the official date for the end of Roman Britain taken after Zosimus who stated that they

‘expelled their Roman rulers and set up their own governments as far as lay within their power’[3],

are few and nearly all continental. It must here be noted that even Zosimus is a later commentator so had the advantage of hindsight when writing his work.

Gildas’ De Excidio Britanniae (DEB)

The only native source is that of Gildas’ De Excidio Britanniae (DEB). This source is extremely problematic and needs to be considered with care and attention. For the purpose of this essay, the problems of ancient document transition to our own times will be only lightly touched on, yet it is essential to understand that only the information available to us can be interpreted, and if this can be shown to be incorrectly transcribed, then the reliance on the source is extremely problematic.

There is still no consensus amongst historians as to when the DEB was actually written. Convincing arguments have been postulated by Higham for a date in 480,

‘he was apparently writing in or about AD480 from the comparative safety (in this context) of a British community between the Thames and the Channel which was under indigenous rule but subject to the ultimate protection of the Saxons.’

Gildas himself comments that the siege of Badon Hill

‘was the year of my birth: as I know one month of the forty-fourth year since then has already passed,’[5]

but gives no further details about the year of Badon Hill. This has led to a debate about when Badon Hill took place. This must be seen to be a worthwhile debate as it does mark the only datable event in the entire DEB. Lapidge has further argued for an early sixth century date for Gildas’s writing, whilst admitting that

‘to think in such terms is to imply that much more of the fabric of Roman civilisation was still visible in sixth-century Britain than has hitherto been assumed.’[6]

Coupled with the problems in dating the DEB there is also the difficulty of placing where the DEB was written. Whilst Higham above postulates that it was written in the south of the country, there have been equally convincing arguments that he was writing in the north of the country (Miller) and also that he may have been writing in Wales. The only compelling reason to discredit the northern association with Gildas comes from his confusion over the purpose and building of Hadrian’s Wall which has been taken to show that he was not a native northerner, as does his confusion about the home of the Picts. The geographical location of Gildas has also been assumed to lie outside that of the five tyrants he berated,

‘…. the assumption that he necessarily lived and worked outside their orbit merely because he attacked them so openly is far from conclusive.’[7]

This carries with it the assumption that we can correctly place the five tyrants and this is not always the case. Surely for an assumption to be based on the available information, that information must be seen to be above reinterpretation!

It is also important to understand the motives behind Gildas’s DEB. Certainly it is no dry chronicle with a list of consular dates and appropriate happenings. Gildas was writing at a time when he feared for the spiritual welfare of the people of Britain. His intention was not to provide as concise and accurate history of Britain as he could write. Instead it was to highlight the plight he felt the Britons to be in. As such his emphasis was not on the facts that historians would find most useful in determining the end of Roman Britain but in finding facts that fit his intended template – that Britons could find respite from the evils that had befallen them by seeing to their own spiritual welfare. As Higham states,

‘Gildas was not writing an objective, historical account of British history but a piece of dialectic which utilised the past to establish a system of causality appropriate to the present.’[8]

‘Gildas’s business was with examples and anecdotes, not the continuous warp of history and his case might well have been weakened by reference to more than a single exemplar of each sort.’[9]

So what does Gildas actually tell the reader about the state of Britain at this time? Again, this is not a simple question to answer. Regardless of where Gildas wrote his work his view of Britain at that time was differentiated by the Roman view of Britain,

‘his Britannia was … close kin to the Britanniae – the provinces of the late Roman British diocese. He may even have been ignorant of the survival of free indigenous communities in the far north throughout the Roman period, if he ever considered the question.’[10]

This means that his work informs about the areas of Britain which were Romanised – that is the lowland areas of Britain, namely the south of Britain, whilst his tyrants are thought to have lived in what is now Cornwall and Wales (Higham). The content of his work also informs that,

‘the most frightening feature …. is not the destruction of city life in Britain, or the breakup of the imperial system with its guarantee of peaceful life, but rather the destruction of knowledge itself – knowledge of the outside world and knowledge of the past had been wiped out of men’s minds.’[11]

With specific reference to events in Britain at this time Gildas informs of the career of the usurper Maximus; of him taking troops away from Britain when he left; of the invasions of Scots and Picts at this time and the request that was sent to Rome to ask for aid. He tells how they did receive some aid but that the troops quickly returned home and that the Scots and Picts quickly reasserted themselves, and that when Rome was again appealed to for help, Britain was told to defend itself although Rome did offer advice on how this should be done. However the Scots and Picts again returned and the people of Britain sent a letter to Aetius asking for assistance but received none. In the meantime Britain was devastated by famine, and attacks from the Irish, whilst the Picts stayed home for once. During this time the people recovered and the island became wealthy and turned away from their Christianity.

Gildas then goes on to detail some of the kings who have ruled in Britain, naming five of them and giving them all various crimes against God. Those listed are Constantine, Aurelius Caninus, Vortipor, Cuneglasus and Maglocunus, with the implication that there was a further sixth Saxon king,

‘Gildas offers a vision of a contemporary Britain which was unevenly divided between the five British tyrants in the west and a powerful, but shadowy, Saxon king ruling the remainder.’

Thus, Gildas is actually incredibly informed about events in Britain at this time, or at least what was the former Roman province. The impression given is of an island in constant flux and constant danger of invasion, which is ultimately abandoned by its Roman overseers. However, the lack of dates makes the whole narrative extremely difficult to piece together with any amount of precision. From Gildas it is fair to say that he presents a picture of the province of Britanniae which is constantly changing, and of course for Gildas, in mortal peril of losing its place under the watchful eye of God.

So what else can be implied about Britain at this time from the words of Gildas? Britain was by this time, obviously, open to the ideas of Christianity. It has been argued persuasively by both Dark and Thompson that Britain at the end of the Roman age was becoming increasingly Christian – either from the bottom up – that is from the lower classes (Dark) or from the top down – that is from the upper classes(Thompson). Whichever viewpoint is taken it is important to remember that the Roman Empire had only relatively recently adopted Christianity as its main religion, displacing the pagan gods. As such Britain had been influenced enough by the time of Gildas’s writing that he could safely assume that his intended audience would understand his biblical references and his desire for spiritual reform.

It could be said that the person of Gildas himself is more important than his writing. The fact that he wrote in Latin, the language of the Roman aristocracy and administration points to an education received in Latin; the fact that he wrote about Britain in mainly biblical terms which he believed his audience would understand; the fact that he used as his base earlier Latin texts; and the fact that it can be argued that his writing was actually intended as a sermon points very much to the culture of Rome still being current and immediate when he produced his DEB. This could be said to show a continuing Roman culture when the Romans should have already left British shores, and so perhaps pushing the end of Roman Britain further back than the year 410. As Higham argues,

‘Gildas’s own education in grammar and rhetoric may imply that the law courts and magistracies, which had provided the normal career path of the aristocracy in the Roman provinces, were still functioning, or at least expected to resume functioning, when his parents were considering his educational needs, some thirty years before the date of composition.’[15]

He also asserts that,

‘perhaps it was his own (Gildas’s) generation which was the first to witness the final separation of civil government and jurisdiction from its traditional urban setting.’[16]

Gildas offers something more than a narrative of the end of Roman Britain as he in a sense embodies the end of Roman Britain. If it can be said with confidence that Gildas was a product of the last generation of Romanised gentry in Britain then he presided over the final severance of Britain from Rome, whenever that happened.

Continental Sources

The writings contained in the other sources purporting to date from the fifth century are less detailed and yet the work of disentangling the author from his background is just as relevant if the work is to be correctly interpreted.

The work of Constantius of Lyon on St Germanus of Auxerre was written circa 480-490 and before 494, according to Thompson, and so could be said to have been written at the same that Gildas was writing, if we accept Higham’s view on dating. It is a work of hagiography and as such does not have as its basis a historically accurate account of St Germanus, and indeed contains no dates. It was written up to 60 years after events which are mentioned in it, and it is important to bear in mind this time discrepancy between its characters and its author. The only datable moment stems from a notice in Prosper’s Chronicle which dates Germanus’ visit to Britain to 429. However, is it prudent to rely on another ancient text to verify an entry in an equally ancient text?

The purpose of the work is always to show St Germanus in as good a light as possible, possibly to the detriment of then known facts, which can now no longer be independently verified. As Thompson argues,

‘we must not be over-optimistic about our chances of learning much about the history of fifth century Britain from his pages.’[17]

However, it behoves the historian to try for the simple reason that it is a contemporary source,

‘we cannot afford to ignore any ancient author who speaks at some length about Britain.’[18]

This work can be placed geographically and the author is well known, an advantage over the work of Gildas. With this work it is possible to interpret the author’s bias and also account for information contained or omitted within its text.

Constantius’ text relating to Britain concerns the visit of St Germanus to Britain to counter the Pelagian threat. There is much debate as to whether or not he visited Britain once, or twice and when these visits took place. As mentioned above, the first visit has been dated to 429 through correlation with Prosper’s Chronicles. Whether it is a correct assumption to marry the two sources together or not, is certainly open to debate and needs to be borne in mind when discussing the validity of either text to the debate on the state of Britain in the fifth century. However the text is relevant and informative about certain aspects of Britain at this time, and must be explored in depth for this information. Thompson has written at great length on this work and has made a number of valuable comments about what the Pelagian controversy in Britain meant about the state of Romanisation in Britain at this time. The fact that the controversy spread so quickly and was so popular has lead Thompson to argue that this,

‘was perhaps only possible in a land where the Emperor’s power could no longer be felt’.[19]

When on his second visit to Britain Constantius informs that the Pelagians were sent into exile by the Church congregation Thompson argues,

‘where else in the Roman world, or in what had until recently been the Roman world, could a preacher’s congregation send men into exile?’[20]

Following this argument forward, Thompson wonders if this action could have been taken as a result of knowledge of the law enacted by Honorius on 30/4/418 which decreed that anyone found discussing Pelagianism were liable to be arrested by anyone and condemned to inexorable exile. If this were the case then it would show that Roman law still had some validity in Britain in the 430s onwards. However this argument is slightly laboured and Thompson is quick to comment that,

‘it would be a bold man who would assert that Roman legislation of 418 could have been enforced in Britain in the 430s or 440s’.[21]

Again this may simply be a matter of Constantius being aware of this legislation when he wrote in the 480s and using it to make Germanus appear in as Christian light as possible. Indeed the very incident has doubt cast on it by a source written by Prosper which states that the Pope was responsible for removing the Pelagians from Britain.

‘All in all, these events suggest that Britain was still subject to the Roman Church if not to the Emperor and that papal policy was being pursued with confidence on the fringes of the world’. [22]

What does the fact that Constantius allows the congregation to remove the threat of heresy from Britain say about those who were in power at this time? Constantius has very sparse detail about Britain and mentions only one British name and gives no indication of political authority at the time.

‘What the Vita describes seems to be a land from which the Roman administration has wholly disappeared and in which, apart from the indifferent man of tribunician power, nothing very obvious has taken its place’.[23]

This cannot be taken to mean that there was none. Constantius is ill informed about Britain. In contrasting his work with Proper’s he also states that,

‘Prosper gives us in five lines of the printed text more ‘hard’ information about the ecclesiastical position in Britain than Constantius is able to convey, or choose to convey, in many pages’.[24]

Perhaps in view of all these difficulties it would be better to disregard anything that Constantius writes about Britain at this time as many of his comments simply invite more questions than they answer? Perhaps as with Gildas, it would be better to look at the person of Constantius himself and make comments based on what he himself embodies? In which case it would be that those on the Continent, even those within the church hierarchy, were ill informed about events in Britain at this time.

Yet there are other sources which show that this may not have been the case. Prosper of Aquitaine and the anonymous author of the Chronicle of 452 were also working on the Continent and whilst constrained by the style they wrote in, that of continuators of Jerome’s Chronicles, they do make some mention of Britain during the fifth century. Prosper first added to Jerome’s Chronicles in 433 and then, according to Muhlberger, returned to the Chronicles again on numerous occasions between 433 and 455. He produced at least 4 versions of his text, and the best informed versions are those of 445 and 455 – there are no complete copies of the 451 edition, and that of 433 can only be detected by a close examination of the later editions. This is important to note. Prosper had 22 years to think about events he transcribes, and it is possible that his viewpoints may have changed during this time, and revisions might have been made dependent on later consequences of the actions commented upon. Prosper seems to have come from Aquitaine and then moved to Provence and finally onto Rome and seems to have been born around 390. His chronicle was,

‘immediately popular, finding readers during his lifetime not only in Rome but also in Africa’.

Prosper records the first expedition of Germanus to Britain in Chapter 1301, which has been used to collaborate the work of Constantius.

‘It is one of the few notices of British affairs after 410 by any fifth century author’ [26]

but as Muhlberger comments,

‘he had no more intrinsic interest in Britain than the majority of his contemporaries … the story was included to commemorate another victory for the orthodox over the Pelagians, and even more to demonstrate the leading part taken by the Roman church in the fight for the true faith, even in remote corners of the world’.[27]

As such, once again, the information available now is tempered with the bias of the author and his overwhelming concern with glorifying the Christian church.

A further source is that of the anonymous Chronicler of 452. This source has recently undergone a revival and historians are now more readily accepting of the information contained within it. However, the fact that it is anonymous presents problems akin to the work of Gildas. It is not possible to determine who the author was and what his bias was. It is necessary to allude this information from that given in the text and also from the manuscript tradition. What can be said with some certainty is that,

‘he was, like Prosper, a devout Christian of an ascetic bent, he even seems to have lived in Marseille, where Prosper resided in the 420s and 430s’.[28]

Yet Muhlberger makes the point that ‘the two men were not in sympathy’[29]. Whilst it can be argued that both men were writing at a similar time they both have completely different outlooks on events at this time and the anonymous author of 452 ‘saw decline and defeat affecting both church and state.’[30]

So what does the author inform of events in Britain at this time? In Chapter 62 he stated,

‘The British provinces were laid waste by an invasion of Saxons’

and in chapter 126

‘The British provinces, which up to this time had suffered various defeats and catastrophes, were reduced to Saxon rule.’

This entry has been dated to 440-441. Yet,

‘he had no profound interest in Britain and possessed few details about conditions there. He simply invoked the name of Britain to supplement his pictures of a defeated empire in the process of disintegration.’[31]

Still, he provides information that no other sources does – the victories that Magnus Maximus won over the Picts and Scots before he went to Gaul. Muhlberger has compared the works of the Chronicler of 452 with the work of Narration De Imperatorbis Domnus Valentinianae et Theodosianae and has concluded from this work that the Chronicler of 452 viewed events differently in Britain and that,

‘something occurred about a decade before the Chronicler wrote that appeared to mark the transition between a Britain harassed by enemies and suffering from disaster, and a Britain finally subjugated by the Saxons.’[32]

His source viewed this as happening under the reign of Honorius when,

‘Britain was forever removed from the Roman name’[33]

whereas the 452 Chronicler viewed this as happening in 440-441, thirty years later. It must be borne in mind that the Chronicler,

‘was preoccupied with events that might seem unimportant to us … but which to him were near and threatening.’

An examination of the main ‘historical’ sources for the fifth century in Britain leaves a gaping hole where knowledge has been forever lost. However it would be wrong to discredit all these sources on the grounds mentioned above – be they bias or inability to place adequately in time and place,

As Muhlberger comments,

‘the words of the fifth century chronicles have been preserved for us not because of their individual brilliance, but because they took part in a collective enterprise … they were contributing to the continuing history of the church, in the hope that their part in it would be useful and instructive for those who followed them.’[36]

This can also be applied to Gildas, although Muhlberger was mainly writing with the continental fifth century chronicles of Prosper, 452 and Hydatius in mind. As such what is left to the historian is the preoccupation of Christian men to a world that appeared to be fracturing and for which the only salvation that could be found was in the words of God and works to the glory of God. Any other information provided is purely secondary to the primary purpose.

It would be wrong to pick and choose which information was most relevant from these sources and this is something that historians needs to desist from doing. The work of the chroniclers was relevant and immediate to the time they were written. It was history in the making and needs to be considered as a whole, whilst understanding its limitations. All sources agree that at some point in the fifth century the idea of a Roman Britain came to an end – that is the physical presence of Romans in Britain appeared to come to an end. That’s not the same thing as saying that Roman Britain ended. The administration and physical structure of Britain remained to a greater or lesser degree for much of this time, and depending on when Gildas’s work is dated to, can be seen to be embodied in the very presence of Gildas himself. It would also be incorrect to assume that just because generals and troops failed to come to Britain during this time that Roman involvement ended. Certainly, the church was involved in Britain as the works of Constantinus, Prosper and the anonymous work of 452 are at pains to show. The Saxons may have arrived, and they may have taken over the government of much of the old Britannia. How they did so is open to debate, but it would be safe to assume that after the rape and pillaging had taken place, they took advantage of the superstructure already in place and more than likely, benefited from it.

The 1600th anniversary of the ‘end’ of Roman Britain?

The year 2010 will give historians and archaeologists alike the opportunity to use the 1600 year anniversary of the supposed exit of the Romans from Britain to question accepted beliefs and to look a little further than the written sources available from the time that Roman Britain can be said to have ended. As archaeology is constantly finding new fifth-century sites, and especially coins, it has become understandable that the standardised interpretation of the beginning and end of Roman Britain can no longer be sustained. Archaeologists and historians need to work together, with other specialists, such as numismatics to clearly define when Roman Britain ended, if it did at all. Surely it would be far more helpful to see Roman Britain merging into sub-Roman Britain before again merging into Saxon England. Perhaps the continuity needs to be stressed instead of the break.

Britain was not unified before the Romans came, during the Roman ‘occupation’, or after the Romans had left. As such, the idea of a ‘Roman’ Britain is erroneous to start with. There are several problems, the most fundamental of which is that there needs to be a coherent and agreed-upon definition of what Roman Britain was, what came before it, and what came after. Only then can it be even remotely possible to determine if it ended and when that end came about? None of these concepts is easy to define, because when the available evidence for the entire 500 or so years, which encompasses Britain before the Romans, after the Romans, and also during the Romans, is examined, the sources available are slight, and archaeology, linguistics and science must be used to supplement the scanty sources available. These historical sources need to be examined within the context that they were written and analysed for the information that they can provide, not for the information that it is beyond their powers to supply. What can be said with certainty is that the answer cannot yet be definitively defined, as Sam Moorhead says in the March/April 2010 edition of British Archaeology when discussing the 1600-year anniversary of the ‘end of Roman Britain,’

‘by the end of 2010 …. we will know much more about the end of Roman Britain. But we will probably all still disagree when it ended!’

The historians of the fifth century all disagreed on when Roman Britain ended, and Wood gives a valuable argument as to why this was so,

‘there is nothing to suggest that the people of Britain were worried by these developments; already they had passed out of the Imperial orbit, but they had done so slowly and without any clear awareness of the significance of the changes taking place.’[38]

‘Ultimately the end of Roman Britain is the history of fifth and sixth century opinion and, because of the nature of our sources, Continental opinion at that,’[39]

as such it is not our place to say when Roman Britain ended – we need to look back to the commentators of the day and accept their opinions and view on what was happening. Hindsight cannot play a part because it is too easy to adopt our own biases and inflict them on the past. As such all that can be said with confidence is that at some point in the fifth century, Romanised Britain ceased to be a part of the Roman Empire in the physical sense of belonging, and nothing further than that can be confidently asserted.

[1] K. R Dark, Civitas to Kingdom – British Political Continuity 300-800’(Leicester, 1994) Pg 54

[2] N Higham The English Conquest: Gildas and Britain in the Fifth Century (Manchester, 1994)Pg 121

[3] S. Ireland Roman Britain, A Sourcebook (New York, 1986) pg 168-9

[4]N. Higham The English Conquest: Gildas and Britain in the Fifth Century (Manchester, 1994) Pg 176

[5] M. Winterbottom, (ed. And trans), Gildas: The Ruin of Britain and Other Documents. Arthurian Periiod Sources Vol 7 (Chichester, 1978)Pg 28

[6] M. Lapidge., ‘Gildas’s Education and the Latin Culture of Sub Roman Britain’ in M.Lapidge and D.N. Dumville (eds), Gildas: New Approaches (Woodbridge, 1984), pp27-50 pg 50

[7] N. Higham The English Conquest: Gildas and Britain in the Fifth Century (Manchester, 1994)Pg 97

[8] N Higham ‘The English Conquest: Gildas and Britain in the Fifth Century’ (Manchester, 1994)Pg 21

[9] N Higham ‘The English Conquest: Gildas and Britain in the Fifth Century’ (Manchester, 1994)Pg 21

[10] N Higham ‘The English Conquest: Gildas and Britain in the Fifth Century’ (Manchester, 1994)Pg 90

[11] E A Thompson., Germanus of Auxerre and the End of Roman Britain (Woodbridge, 1984) pg 115

[12] M. Winterbottom, (ed. And trans), Gildas: The Ruin of Britain and Other Documents. Arthurian Period Sources Vol 7 (Chichester, 1978)Pg 25

[13] M. Winterbottom, (ed. And trans), Gildas: The Ruin of Britain and Other Documents. Arthurian Period Sources Vol 7 (Chichester, 1978)Pg 27

[14] N Higham The English Conquest: Gildas and Britain in the Fifth Century (Manchester, 1994)Pg 166

[15] N Higham The English Conquest: Gildas and Britain in the Fifth Century (Manchester, 1994)Pg 158

[16] N Higham The English Conquest: Gildas and Britain in the Fifth Century (Manchester, 1994)Pg 158

[17] E A Thompson., Germanus of Auxerre and the End of Roman Britain (Woodbridge, 1984) pg 14

[18] E A Thompson., Germanus of Auxerre and the End of Roman Britain (Woodbridge, 1984) pg ix

[19] E A Thompson., Germanus of Auxerre and the End of Roman Britain (Woodbridge, 1984) Pg 22

[20] E A Thompson., Germanus of Auxerre and the End of Roman Britain (Woodbridge, 1984) Pg 28

[21] E A Thompson., Germanus of Auxerre and the End of Roman Britain (Woodbridge, 1984) Pg 29

[22] I Wood., The End of Roman Britain: Continental Evidence and Parallels’ in M Lapidge and D.N. Dumville (eds) Gildas: New Approaches (Woodbridge, 1984) 1-25 Pg14

[23] E A Thompson., Germanus of Auxerre and the End of Roman Britain (Woodbridge, 1984) Pg 32

[24] E A Thompson., Germanus of Auxerre and the End of Roman Britain (Woodbridge, 1984) Pg 23

[25] S Muhlberger The Fifth Century Chroniclers. Prosper, Hydatius and the Gallic Chronicler of 452 (Leeds, 1990) Pg 55

[26] S Muhlberger The Fifth Century Chroniclers. Prosper, Hydatius and the Gallic Chronicler of 452 (Leeds, 1990) Pg 84

[27] S Muhlberger The Fifth Century Chroniclers. Prosper, Hydatius and the Gallic Chronicler of 452 (Leeds, 1990) Pg 85

[28]S Muhlberger The Fifth Century Chroniclers. Prosper, Hydatius and the Gallic Chronicler of 452 (Leeds, 1990) Pg 136

[29] S Muhlberger The Fifth Century Chroniclers. Prosper, Hydatius and the Gallic Chronicler of 452 (Leeds, 1990) Pg 136

[30] S Muhlberger The Fifth Century Chroniclers. Prosper, Hydatius and the Gallic Chronicler of 452 (Leeds, 1990) Pg 136

[31] S Muhlberger The Fifth Century Chroniclers. Prosper, Hydatius and the Gallic Chronicler of 452 (Leeds, 1990) Pg 179

[32] S Muhlberger The Fifth Century Chroniclers. Prosper, Hydatius and the Gallic Chronicler of 452 (Leeds, 1990) Pg 179

[33] S Muhlberger The Fifth Century Chroniclers. Prosper, Hydatius and the Gallic Chronicler of 452 (Leeds, 1990)Pg 179

[34] S Muhlberger The Fifth Century Chroniclers. Prosper, Hydatius and the Gallic Chronicler of 452 (Leeds, 1990) Pg 179

[35] E.A Thompson, Germanus of Auxerre and the End of Roman Britain pg 6

[36] S Muhlberger The Fifth Century Chroniclers. Prosper, Hydatius and the Gallic Chronicler of 452 (Leeds, 1990) Pg 278

[37] Sam Moorhead, British Archaeology March/April 2010 pg 21

[38] I Wood, ;The End of Roman Britain: Continental Evidence and Parallels’ in M Lapidge and D.N. Dumville (eds) Gildas: New Approaches (Woodbridge, 1984) 1-25 Pg1-2 Ian Wood Pg 25

[39] I Wood, ;The End of Roman Britain: Continental Evidence and Parallels’ in M Lapidge and D.N. Dumville (eds) Gildas: New Approaches (Woodbridge, 1984) 1-25 Pg1-2 Ian Wood

(Please note this is a historic blog post based on an essay I wrote as part of my MA in 2010. I have left it in place, as it remains interesting and relevant to my new trilogy.)