[Footnote 1:  About A.D. 405 Patrick was carried off from Bannavem Taberniae.  If this represents the Romano-British village on Watling Street called Bannaventa, near Daventry in Northants (Victoria Hist. i. 186), the raids must have covered all the midlands:  see Engl.  Hist.  Review, 1895, p. 711; Zimmer, Realenc. fuer protestantische Theol. x. (1901), Art.  ‘Keltische Kirche’; Bury, Life of St. Patrick, p. 322.  There are, however, too many uncertainties surrounding this question to let us derive much help from it.]

[Footnote 2:  Engl.  Hist.  Review, xix. 625; Fox, Victoria Hist. of Hampshire, i. 371-2.]

The same destruction came also on the population.  During the long series of disasters, many of the Romanized inhabitants of the lowland regions must have perished.  Many must have fallen into slavery, and may have been sold into foreign lands.  The remnant, such as it was, doubtless retired to the west.  But, in doing so, it exchanged the region of walled cities and civilized houses, of city life and Roman culture, for a Celtic land.  No doubt it attempted to keep up its Roman fashions.  The writers may well be correct who speak of two conflicting parties, Roman and Celtic, among the Britons of the sixth century.  But the Celtic element triumphed.  Gildas, about A.D. 540, describes a Britain confined to the west of our island, which is very largely Celtic and not Roman.[1] Had the English invaded the island from the Atlantic, we might have seen a different spectacle.  The Celtic element would have perished utterly:  the Roman would have survived.  As it was, the attack fell on the east and south of the island—­that is, on the lowlands of Britain.  Safe in its western hills, the Celtic revival had full course.

[Footnote 1:  How much of Britain was still British when Gildas wrote, he does not tell us.  But he mentions only the extreme west (Damnonii, Demetae); his general atmosphere is Celtic, and his rhetoric contains no references to a flourishing civilization.  We may conclude that the Romanized part of Britain had been lost by his time, or that, if some part was still held by the British, long war had destroyed its civilization.  Unfortunately we cannot trust the traditional English chronology of the period.  As to the date of Gildas, cf.  W.H.  Stevenson, Academy, October 26, 1895, &c.; I see no reason to put either Gildas or any part of the Epistula later than about 540.]

It is this Celtic revival which can best explain the history of Britannia minor, Brittany across the seas in the western extremity of Gaul.  How far this region had been Romanized during the first four centuries seems uncertain.  Towns were scarce in it, and country-houses, though not altogether infrequent or insignificant, were unevenly distributed.  At some period not precisely known, perhaps in the first half or the middle of the third century, it was in open rebellion, and the commander of the Sixth Legion