48 THE DOVER ROAD 



Hengist and Horsa, brother-chiefs* of the Jutish- 

 Saxons, landed at Ebbsfleet, in Thanet, at the invita- 

 tion of Vortigern, who sought their aid against the 

 Picts and the Sea-rovers. They came in three ships, 

 and their original force could scarcely have numbered 

 more than five hundred men. But, having warred 

 for the Britons, and fought side by side with them 

 against the Scots, they soon perceived how defenceless 

 was the land. " They sent," says the Anglo-Saxon 

 chronicler, " to the Angles, and bade them be told of 

 the Avorthlessness of the Britons, and the richness of the 

 land." In response to this invitation, there came from 

 over sea the men of the Old Saxons, the Jutes, and the 

 Angles ; and, six years after the landing of the two 

 brothers, these treacherous allies, strengthened in 

 number, felt strong enough to attempt the seizure of 

 Kent. Pretexts for a quarrel were readily found, and, 

 through the mists that hang about the scanty records 

 of that time, we hear first of the Battle of Aylesford, 

 fought in 455, in which the Britons experienced their 

 first great defeat. Here, though, Horsa Avas slain, 

 and to Hengist, with his son Esc, was left the foundation 

 of the Saxon kingdom of Kent. The Battle of Crayford 

 for a time left all this fertile corner of England to the 

 Saxons. " The Britons," says the chronicler, " forsook 

 the land of Kent, and in great consternation fled to 

 London." But, though enervated by long years of 

 luxury, and so greatly demoralised by defeats, the 

 Britons had yet some force left. Vortigern, " the 

 betrayer of Britain," as he has come down to us in the 

 pages of history, was overthrown by another enemy, 

 a rival British prince, that doughty Romanised 



* The real names of these two brothers are unknown. They took the 

 names by which they are known in liistory from the banners under which 

 their men fought ; banners which bore the cognizance of a white iiorse : 

 Hengist and Horsa being merely the Jutish-Saxon words for " horse " and 

 " mare." The Danish, indeed, still use the word " hors " for mare, and a 

 survival of the old badge of these fierce pagans is still to be met with in the 

 familiar white horse of Brunswick-Hanover. The prancing steed that remains 

 to this day the Kentish device, with its dauntless motto " Tnvicta," is also 

 a survival from the days when Hengist and Horsa founded the first Saxon 

 kingdom in Britain. 



