Nevertheless, a kernel of truth doubtless lingers in the traditional story.  Thanet was afterwards one of the first landing-places of the Danes:  and its isolated position—­for a broad belt of sea then separated the island from the Kentish main—­would make it a natural post to be assigned by the Welsh to their doubtful piratical allies.  The inlet was guarded by the great Roman fortress of Rhutupiae:  and after the fall of that important stronghold, the English may probably have occupied the principality of East Kent, with its capital of Canterbury.  The walls of Rochester may have held out longer:  and the West Kentish kingdom may well have been founded by two successful battles at the passage of the Medway and the Cray.

The legend as to the settlement of Sussex is of much the same sort.  In 477, AElle the Saxon came to Britain also with the suspiciously symmetrical number of three ships.  With him came his three sons, Kymen, Wlencing, and Cissa.  These names are obviously invented to account for those of three important places in the South-Saxon chieftainship.  The host landed at Kymenes ora, probably Keynor, in the Bill of Selsey, then, as its title imports, a separate island girt round by the tidal sea:  their capital and, in days after the Norman conquest, their cathedral was at Cissan-ceaster, the Roman Regnum, now Chichester:  while the third name survives in the modern village of Lancing, near Shoreham.  The Saxons at once fought the natives “and offslew many Welsh, and drove some in flight into the wood that is named Andredes-leag,” now the Weald of Kent and Sussex.  A little colony thus occupied the western half of the modern county:  but the eastern portion still remained in the hands of the Welsh.  For awhile the great Roman fortress of Anderida (now Pevensey) held out against the invaders; until in 491 “AElle and Cissa beset Anderida, and offslew all that were therein; nor was there after even one Briton left alive.”  All Sussex became a single Saxon kingdom, ringed round by the great forest of the Weald.  Here again the obviously unhistorical character of the main facts throws the utmost doubt upon the nature of the details.  Yet, in this case too, the central idea itself is likely enough,—­that the South Saxons first occupied the solitary coast islet of Selsey; then conquered the fortress of Regnum and the western shore as far as Eastbourne; and finally captured Anderida and the eastern half of the county up to the line of the Romney marshes.

Even more improbable is the story of the Saxon settlement on the more distant portion of the south coast.  In 495 “came twain aldermen to Britain, Cerdic and Cynric his son, with five ships, at that place that is cleped Cerdices ora, and fought that ilk day with the Welsh.”  Clearly, the name of Cerdic may be invented solely to account for the name of the place:  since we see by the sequel that the English freely imagined such personages as pegs on which to hang their mythical history.[1] For, six