also conclude that it was the Severn Sea which was the cause of the subdivision, and that therefore Wales was included in Britannia Secunda. Each of these Britannias was ruled by a governor called praeses or president, but the military command was in the hands of another official, who was called the Comes Brittaniae.
Whether the reasoning just elaborated will be substantiated or otherwise by fresh discoveries, this at least is certain, that it is unquestionably to the kings and ecclesiastics of the smaller Britannia which we have just delineated that St. Gildas, who died after the middle of the sixth century, addresses his well-known Epistola.[1] Beginning with the words Reges habet Britannia, sed tyrannos (Britannia hath kings but they are tyrants), he proceeds to address five of the principal ones by name, commencing with him of Devon, and going in regular order until he reaches him of Anglesey, whom God hath 'made
- ↑ I would refer the reader at this point to my articles on the authorship of the Excidium Britanniae as distinct from the Epistola Gildae in the Celtic Review (Edinburgh) for April, July, and October, 1905 ; also in the St. David's College Magazine for December, 1904. Mr. E. W. B. Nicholson has replied in the Celtic Review for April, 1906, in an article which for the moment can well be left alongside of the original contributions. The contention is that the first twenty-six chapters of the work, now commonly attributed to Gildas, formerly constituted a distinct book known as Excidium Britanniae, which was written by a 'Roman' Briton towards the close of the seventh century somewhere in the neighbourhood of the mouth of the Severn. This work was considerably ' edited ' by some one who ignorantly or deliberately misunderstood it, probably both. In this form it passed into the hands of Bede, who used it as his chief and almost only authority for what he had to say of fifth-century Britain. Almost all that Bede professes to know of this period is taken from the Excidium, which he seems to ascribe to Gildas (H. E. I. 22), although he gives no evidence that he was familiar with the genuine work of that monk, viz. the Epistola Gildae, to which the Excidium was subsequently prefixed.
