ponere maluerunt, quam id tenere punctum temporis preposition; as, Defessus sum ambulando. A discendo contra religionem. Cic. Imperavit triennio, et decem facile deterretur. Cæsar dando, sublevando, ignosmensibus. Suet. Sometimes with a preposition; ascendo, gloriam adeptus est. In apparando consumunt

diem.

A gerund in dum is used in manner of an accusative after prepositions governing that case; as, Ad capiendum hostes. Ante domandum ingentes tollent animos. Virg. Ob redimendum captivos. Inter cœnandum.

Gerunds in signification are ofttimes used as participles in dus; Tuorum consiliorum reprimendorum causâ. Cic. Orationem Latinam legendis nostris efficies pleniorem. Cic. Ad accusandos homines præmio ducitur.

Ferè in diebus paucis, quibus hæc acta sunt. Ter. Rarely with a genitive; as, Temporis angusti mansit concordia discors. Lucan.

Also nouns betokening space between places are put in the accusative, and sometimes in the ablative; as, Pedem hinc ne discesseris. Abest ab urbe quingentis millibus passuum. Terrà marique gentibus imperavit.

Nouns that signify place, and also proper names of greater places, as countries, be put after verbs of moving or remaining, with a preposition, signifying to, from, in, or by, in such case as the preposition requireth ; as Proficiscor ab urbe. Vivit in Anglia. Veni per Galliam in Italiam.

But if it be the proper name of a lesser place, as of a city, town, or lesser island, or any of these four, Humus, domus, militia, bellum, with these signs, on, in, or at, before them, being of the first or second declension, and singular number, they shall be put in the genitive; if of the third declension, or plural number, or this word rus, in the dative or ablative; as, Vixit Romæ, Londini. Ea habitabat Rhodi. Conon plurimum Cypri vixit. Cor. Nep. Procumbit humi bos. Domi bellique simul viximus. Militavit Carthagini, or Carthagine. Studuit Athenis. Ruri or rure educatus est.

If the verb of moving be to a place, it shall be put If in the accusative; as Eo Romam, domum, rus. from a place, in the ablative; as Discessit Londino. Abiit domo. Rure est reversus.

Sometimes with a preposition; as A Brundusio proUt ab Athenis in Boeotiam fectus est, Cic. Manil. irem. Sulpit. apud Cic. Fam. 1. 4. Cum te profectum

ab domo scirem. Liv. 1. 8.

Construction of Passives.

A VERB passive will have after it an ablative of the doer, with the preposition a or ab before it, sometimes without, and more often a dative; as Virgilius legitur Fortes creantur fortibus. Hor. Tibi fama petatur. And neutro-passives, as Vapulo, veneo, liceo, exulo, fio, may have the same construction; as Ab hoste venire.

a me.

Sometimes an accusative of the thing is found after a passive: as Coronari Olympia. Hor. Epist. 1. Cyclopa movetur. Hor. for saltat or egit. Purgor bilem.

Id.

Construction of Gerunds and Supines.

GERUNDS and supines will have such cases as the verb from whence they come; as Otium scribendi liteAd consulendum tibi. ras. Eo auditum poetas.

A gerund in di is commonly governed both of substantives and adjectives in manner of a genitive; as Causa videndi. Amor habendi. Cupidus visendi. Certus eundi. And sometimes governeth a genitive plural; as Illorum videndi gratiâ. Ter.

Gerunds in do are used after verbs in manner of an ablative, according to former rules, with or without a

A gerund in dum joined with the impersonal est, and implying some necessity or duty to do a thing, may have both the active and passive construction of the verb from whence it is derived; as Utendum est ætate. Ov. Pacem Trojano a rege petendum. Virg. Iterandum eadem ista mihi. Cic. Serviendum est mihi amicis. Plura dixi, quam dicendum fuit. Cic.

pro Sest. Construction of Verb with Verb.

WHEN two verbs come together, without a nominative case between them, the latter shall be in the infinitive mood; as Cupio discere. Or in the first supine after verbs of moving; as Eo cubitum, spectatum. Or in the latter with an adjective; as Turpe est dictu. Facile factu. Opus scitu.

But if a case come between, not governed of the former verb, it shall always be an accusative before the infinitive mood; as Te rediisse incolumem gaudeo, Malo me divitem esse, quam baberi.

And this infinitive esse, will have always after it an accusative, or the same case which the former verb governs; as Expedit bonos esse vobis. Quo mihi commisso, non licet esse piam. But this accusative agree eth with another understood before the infinitive; as Expedit vobis vos esse bonos. Natura beatis omnibus esse dedit. Nobis non licet esse tam disertis. The same construction may be used after other infinitives neuter or passive like to esse in signification; as Maximo tibi postea et civi, et duci evadere contigit. Val. Max. 1. 6.

Sometimes a noun adjective or substantive goverus an infinitive: as Audax omnia perpeti. Dignus amari. Consilium ceperunt ex oppido profugere. Cæs. Minari divisoribus ratio non erat. Cic. Verr. 1.

Sometimes the infinitive is put absolute for the preterimperfect or preterperfect tense: as, Ego illud sedulo negare factum. Ter. Galba autem multas similitudines afferre, Cic. Ille contra hæc omnia ruere, agere vitam. Ter.

Construction of Participles.

PARTICIPLES govern such cases as the verb from whence they come, according to their active or passive signification; as, Fruiturus amicis. Nunquam audita mihi. Diligendus ab omnibus. Sate sanguine divum. Telamone creatus. Corpore mortali cretus. Lucret. Nate dea. Edite regibus. Lævo suspensi loculos tabulasque lacerto. Hor. Census equestrem summam. Id.

THE FIRST BOOK.

withy

is part. DS &

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either by tradition, history, or ancient fame, hath hitherto been left us. That which we have of oldest seeming, hath by the greater part of judicious antiquaries been long rejected for a modern fable.

THE beginning of nations, those excepted of whom sacred books have spoken, is this day unknown. das Nor only the beginning, but the deeds also of many succeeding ages, yea, periods of ages, either wholly unknown, or obscured and blemished with fables. Whether it were that the use of letters came in long after, or were it the violence of barbarous inundations, or they themselves, at certain revolutions of time, fatally decaying, and degenerating into sloth and ignorance; whereby the monuments of more ancient civility have been some destroyed, some lost. Perhaps disesteem and contempt of the public affairs then present, as not worth recording, might partly be in cause. Certainly oftimes we see that wise men, and of best ability, have forborn to write the acts of their own days, while they beheld with a just loathing and disdain, not only how unworthy, how perverse, how corrupt, but often how ignoble, how petty, how below all history, the persons and their actions were; who, either by fortune or some rude election, had attained, as sore judgment and ignominy upon the land, to have chief sway in managing the commonwealth. But that any law, or superstition of our philosophers, the Druids, forbad the Britains to write their memorable deeds, I know not why any out of Cæsar should allege: he indeed saith, that their doctrine they thought not lawful to commit to letters; but in most matters else, both private and public, among which well may history be reckoned, they used the Greek tongue; and that the British Druids, who taught those in Gaul, would be ignorant of any language known and used by their disciples, or so frequently writing other things, and so inquisitive into highest, would for want of recording be ever children in the knowledge of times and ages, is not likely. Whatever might be the reason, this we find, that of British affairs, from the first peopling of the island to the coming of Julius Caesar, nothing certain,

a Cæs. 1.6.

THE HISTORY OF BRITAIN,

THAT PART ESPECIALLY, NOW CALLED ENGLAND;

FROM THE FIRST TRADITIONAL BEGINNING, CONTINUED TO THE
NORMAN CONQUEST.

COLLECTED OUT OF THE ANCIENTEST AND BEST AUTHORS THEREOF.

[PUBLISHED FROM A COPY CORRECTED BY THE AUTHOR HIMSELF, 1670.]

Nevertheless there being others, besides the first supposed author, men not unread, nor unlearned in antiquity, who admit that for approved story, which the former explode for fiction; and seeing that ofttimes relations heretofore accounted fabulous have been after found to contain in them many footsteps and reliques of something true, as what we read in poets of the flood, and giants little believed, till undoubted witnesses taught us, that all was not feigned; I have therefore determined to bestow the telling over even of these reputed tales; be it for nothing else but in favour of our English poets and rhetoricians, who by their art will know how to use them judiciously.

I might also produce example, as Diodorus among the Greeks, Livy and others among the Latins, Polydore and Virunnius accounted among our own writers. But I intend not with controversies and quotations to delay or interrupt the smooth course of history; much less to argue and debate long who were the first inhabitants, with what probabilities, what authorities each opinion hath been upheld; but shall endeavour that which hitherto hath been needed most, with plain and lightsome brevity, to relate well and orderly things worth the noting, so as may best instruct and benefit them that read. Which, imploring divine assistance, that it may redound to his glory, and the good of the British nation, I now begin.

THAT the whole earth was inhabited before the flood, and to the utmost point of habitable ground from those effectual words of God in the creation, may be more than conjectured. Hence that this island also had her dwellers, her affairs, and perhaps her stories, even in that old world those many hundred years, with much

of

reason we may infer. After the flood, and the dispers- | Incredible it may seem so sluggish a conceit should ing of nations, as they journeyed leisurely from the prove so ancient, as to be authorized by the elder Nineast, Gomer the eldest son of Japhet, and his offspring, nius, reputed to have lived above a thousand years ago as by authorities, arguments, and affinity of divers This I find not in him: but that Histion, sprung names is generally believed, were the first that peopled | Japhet, had four sons; Francus, Romanus, Alemannus, all these west and northern climes. But they of our and Britto, of whom the Britains;* as true, I believe, as that those other nations, whose names are resembled, own writers, who thought they had done nothing, unless with all circumstance they tell us when, and who came of the other three; if these dreams give not just first set foot upon this island, presume to name out of occasion to call in doubt the book itself, which bears fabulous and counterfeit authors a certain Samothes or that title. Dis, a fourth or sixth son of Japhet, (who they make, about 200 years after the flood, to have planted with colonies, first the continent of Celtica or Gaul, and next this island; thence to have named it Samothea,) to have reigned here, and after him lineally four kings, Magus, Saron, Druis, and Bardus. But the forged Berosus, whom only they have to cite, no where mentions that either he, or any of those whom they bring, did ever pass into Britain, or send their people hither. So that this outlandish figment may easily excuse our not allowing it the room here so much as of a British fable.

|

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That which follows, perhaps as wide from truth, though seeming less impertinent, is, that these Samotheans under the reign of Bardus were subdued by Albion, a giant, son of Neptune; who called the island after his own name, and ruled it 44 years. Till at length passing over into Gaul, in aid of his brother Lestrygon, against whom Hercules was hasting out of Spain into Italy, he was there slain in fight, and Bergion also his brother.

Sure enough we are, that Britain hath been anciently termed Albion, both by the Greeks and Romans. And Mela, the geographer, makes mention of a stony shore in Languedoc, where by report such a battle was fought. The rest, as his giving name to the isle, or even landing here, depends altogether upon late surmises. But too absurd, and too unconscionably gross is that fond invention, that wafted hither the fifty daughters of a strange Dioclesian king of Syria; brought in, doubtless, by some illiterate pretender to something mistaken in the common poetical story of Danaus king of Argos, while his vanity, not pleased with the obscure beginning which truest antiquity affords the nation, laboured to contrive us a pedigree, as he thought, more noble. These daughters by appointment of Danaus on the marriage-night having murdered all their husbands, except Linceus, whom his wife's loyalty saved, were by him, at the suit of his wife their sister, not put to death, but turned out to sea in a ship unmanned; of which whole sex they had incurred the hate and as the tale goes, were driven on this island. Where the inhabitants, none but devils, as some write, or as others, a lawless crew left here by Albion, without head or governor, both entertained them, and had issue by them a second breed of giants, who tyrannized the isle, till Brutus came.

de

Hitherto the things themselves have given us a warrantable dispatch to run them soon over. But now of Brutus and his line, with the whole progeny of kings, to the entrance of Julius Cæsar, we cannot so easily be discharged; descents of ancestry, long continued, laws and exploits not plainly seeming to be borrowed, or devised, which on the common belief have wrought no small impression; defended by many, nied utterly by few. For what though Brutus and the whole Trojan pretence were yielded up; (seeing they who first devised to bring us from some noble ancestor, were content at first with Brutus the consul; till better invention, although not willing to forego the name, taught them to remove it higher into a more fabulous age, and by the same remove lighting on the Trojan tales in affectation to make the Britain of one original with the Roman, pitched there;) yet those old and inborn names of successive kings, never any to have been real persons, or done in their lives at least some part of what so long hath been remembered, cannot be thought without too strict an incredulity.

The eldest of these dames in their legend they call Albina; and from thence, for which cause the whole scene was framed, will have the name Albion derived.

• Hollinsbed.

For these, and those causes above mentioned, that which hath received approbation from so many, I have chosen not to omit. Certain or uncertain, be that upon the credit of those whom I must follow; so far as keeps aloof from impossible and absurd, attested by ancient writers from books more ancient, I refuse not, as the due and proper subject of story. The principal author is well known to be Geoffrey of Monmouth; what be was, and whence his authority, who in his age, or be fore him, have delivered the same matter, and such like general discourses, will better stand in a treatise by themselves. All of them agree in this, that Bru tus was the son of Silvius; he of Ascanius; whose father was Eneas a Trojan prince, who at the burning of that city, with his son Ascanius, and a collected number that escaped, after long wandering on the sea, arrived in Italy. Where at length by the assistance of Latinus king of Latiam, who had given him his daughter Lavinia, he obtained to succeed in that kingdom, and left it to Ascanius, whose son Silvius (though Roman histories deny Silvius to be the son of Ascanius, had married secretly a niece of Lavinia.

She being with child, the matter became known to Ascanius. Who commanding his “magicians to inquire by art, what sex the maid had conceived," had answer, "that it was one who should be the death of both his parents; and banished for the fact, should after all, in a far country, attain the highest honour." The prediction failed not, for in travail the mother died. And

+ Henry of Huntingdon, Matthew of Westminster.