1807.] On the Settlement of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain. 53 
the adjacent islands, which had been the 
first and principal seats of the Saxons. 
el this Cerdic conquered the Isle of 
Wight (A. D. 530), where he killed a 
great number of Britons in Withgaraby- 
rig, now Carisbrook-castie, on the said 
island, which be and his son Cenric 
(A. D. 584) gave up to his nephews Stuf 
and Vithear, as a settlement for them 
and their Jutes, This was the last ac- 
tion Bs Cerdic, for he died in the same 
year.* Vithgar died ten years after, and 
was bates in Withgarabyrig, so naiued 
after him. 
While the Angles and Saxons were 
thus confirming and extending their pow- 
er in Britain, Arthur. was engaged in 
splendid and distant conquests, the occa- 
sion of which was.this. Sicheling, king 
of Northméer and Southmdert, left his. 
kingdom to Lot, his nephew, who was 
married to Arthur’s sister. Schoning, 
in his etry of Norway,| hasa conjec cture, 
that Sichelin is the same as Sikling, the 
Poeeral royal appellation in the an gent 
North{, which shews, that this account 
of the British historians is founded on 
some northern bard. In this expedi- 
tion Arthur conquered the Orkneys, and 
reduced Gunfas, their king, to sub- 
jection. -In the mean tine the Nor- 
wegians, unwilling to obey a foreigner, 
had placed one Rikulf on the throne, 
and fortified their towns awd towers, the 
latter of which, it is seen from Ossian, 
* Rapin, (in)his, Hist. d@Angl..iiliv.. 2, 
says, §* Les Rois successeurs de Cerdick fu- 
rent surnommez Gewichiens, du 
Gewish Pun de lers ancétres, qui selon les 
apparences étoit recommandable parmi sa na- 
tion.”” This ancestor of Cerdic, it is seen 
from ourauthor, v. i. p. 84, was Givis, a de- 
scendant of Odin, by Baldar, who, about the 
year 290, was tributary king of Anglia, un- 
der Denmark, but. afterwards, during the 
weak reign of Uffo, made himself indepen- 
dent; and on Agenwit, king of the Saxons 
in Stormorn and Ditmarsh, crossing the Elbe 
with a nunierous tribe of his people, appears 
to have obtained also the sovereignty of those 
countries which he had left. ‘¢ At lease 
(says Mr. Suhm) it is certain that Cerdic, the 
first West-Saxon king in England, descended 
from him, and that the whole West Saxon 
nation was called the Gevisian, aiter him.” 
Transl. 
A part of Norway, with the adjoining 
islands, which has still retained the same 
names. It lies between the sixty-second and 
sixty-third degrees of northern latitude. 
Transl. 
t Especially used by the Ska/ds, in their 
poetical compositions. Trans/. 
Montuty Mac, No, 158. 
nom ‘de’ 
they had long before this time, in 
the third and fourth century; for he 
speaks of Lochlin, that is Scandinavia. 
Rikulf was slain in the battle, and Arthur 
invested Lot with the royal power. The 
truth of this account iscoufirmed by the cir- 
cumstance that about seventy years after 
there was a king of North and Southméer 
whose name was Arthor, who, no doubt, 
was a descendant of. Arthor’ stamily. At 
length this excellent king was bereft of 
his life and kingdom by Mordred, hisown 
nephew, who entered into a confederacy 
with the West Saxon king Cenric: and 
with the Picts and Scots against his inas- 
terand uncle. In the battle (A. D. 542) 
Mordred fell with many petty kings of the 
Picts and Scots, and Irish. But on 
Afthur’s side were slain Ve alvein, the son 
of Lot, Lot himself, Olbrickt, a Norve- 
gian king, Eskil, king of [aie neeand Cad- 
dor, Arthur’s father-in-law. Arthur hime 
self was mortally wounded, and carried to 
the island of Avalania, now Glastonbury, 
where he died on the 2d of May. Such 
was the end of the famous Arthur, whose 
exploits are not only rendered obscure 
and dubious by the numerous romances 
and marvellous fables that have been 
written of him, but the reality of which 
has even been denied; nay, the moderns, 
who are sometimes too rigid critics, have 
thereby been induced not only to reject 
most oF his military achievements, “but 
even to question his very existence. 
(Vol. J. p. 888-344). 
After his death, the misfortunes of the 
Britons continually increased, 1 propor- 
tion to the progress of the Anglo-Saxons, 
which was not alittle facilitated and pro- 
moted by the mtestine divisions of the 
Britons, and by the great decay of morals 
that existed among them. Gildas, a Bri- 
tish historian of that time, gives a hi- 
deous description of’ five, then living, 
British knngs. A few years after the 
death of Arthur, Ida came (perhaps from 
Saxony to the south of the Elbe, though 
he was himself of Anglian descent) with, 
a flect of forty ships to Flensburg*, and 
established, in the — after his arrival, 
the Northumbrian kingdom of Benue 
He founded Babanburh+ which he first 
fortified with palisades, afterwards with 
a wall. He had six lemtimate sons by 
his queen, and six others s by concubines, 
He was not only a great warrior, but also 
a wise raler, and maintained zood order 
rt a lr ES, 
* Now Flamborough, in Yorkshire. 
+t Now Bamborow, in Nesthumberland. 
2 : 
ws in 
