Pauli Iovii Novocomensis opera quotquot extant omnia

virtue had raised, and for some years they fought with such rage that when the Gauls also—humanely having sent reinforcements to the Britons who had been surrounded by the unusual wickedness of the barbarians—the Angles, having lost a huge multitude of their own, and with three of their kings slaughtered by the enemy's iron, seemed likely to pay penalties worthy of their ferocity and treachery. This would have happened had not the fates, which even then were promising the empire to the English virtue, snatched away Arthur, King of Britain, flourishing in the vigor of his age and spirit and in the glory of his achievements, in the very course of his victory. This is that Arthur, celebrated by the poets’ praise among all nations for his immense greatness of spirit, who consecrated the peers of the round table, chosen for their heroic virtue, as devoted to the most august laws of friendship.

That table is still kept religiously, memorable as a witness to admirable virtue, and it is shown to distinguished guests, as it was recently to Charles Caesar original: "Carolo Caesari", referring to Emperor Charles V at the city of Winchester, but with the names of the Peers around the margins worn away by much rot. While these names were being replaced—by the unlearned judgment of those who inflicted injury upon the majesty of antiquity—it almost happened that, as if of suspected authenticity, it lost a great part of its dignity. But for Arthur, his praise and an eternity consecrated by literature remain, even with the very rude epitaph on his laborious tomb, which we have appended, inscribed by a poet who was divining, and pleasing in its Laconian brevity, so that it might be read not only at Glastonbury, where he is entombed, but everywhere in the world, to the merit of the divine King: HERE LIES ARTHUR, THE ONCE KING AND THE KING TO BE.

But after Arthur was snatched away by fate rather than his own accord, other kings succeeded him, entirely different in character and fortune, so that Cadwaladr, the last of all, when he was broken by adverse battles and abandoned by the help of the Gauls, had lost heart and left the name of the Kingdom and the island to the victorious Angles. Then indeed the rugged mountains and muddy marshes were a refuge for the Britons. That region, extended on a direct side to the setting sun, pertains to the Silures, according to the author Tacitus—a most warlike nation of old—the Ordovices, and the Cornovii, who at last took a new name from the victorious Angles. For they were all called Welsh Vualles Welsh, which signifies in the Germanic tongue those who are foreign and speak another language. Thus the native Britons, driven from their ancestral soil, settled in a rugged region and one most protected by the barriers of nature. The Angles pursued them through narrow paths in vain, and finally, their ferocity softening, they permitted the vanquished to have a seat that would bear witness to the fame of their own virtue and happiness.

Cast out in this way and forced into the mountainous and sterile part of the island, the Britons—because they were pressed by their own multitude and the narrowness of land that was not at all vacant—gathered a great band of light-armed and audacious men and crossed over into the nearby Armorican shore of Gaul. The Diabolitae and Siscians, a calamitous and desperate people, provided them seats by a certain clemency and necessity, especially at the port of Vidanum, which is called Brest today. From these colonists, we see that the principality of Brittany in Gaul was clearly founded, which in our age has been reduced to a province by right of dowry and has been added to the kings of France. The people of this extreme continent are called Bretons Britonnantes Bretons; they use a language entirely distinct from the rest of the Gauls, as it is one that was once common to all the peoples of the island. This is proven by this remarkable conjecture: that the Welsh (as we said above) are understood by the Bretons as the ancient Britons, and neither the English nor the Scots perceive them at all. Thus, the opinion of those who think the ancient language of the Gauls was preserved among the Bretons can easily be refuted here, since the Romans, through frequent commerce and the perpetual winter quarters of their legions, had introduced the Roman speech to all of Gaul. By this method, to the An-