Open [38.2 MB]

Irish Principality
in Wales
Gildas talks of the Britons eventually overthrowing the
Irish enemies "who had for so many years been living
in their country," by which he means not Wales but
Britain. However,
it is certain that the Irish formed a
still strong military and colonizing power in Britain in
the days of Gildas. The historian of the Britons says
that after the departure of Maximus and his death in
the year 388 at Aquileia, Britain "utterly ignorant as she
was of the art of war groaned in amazement for many
years under the cruelty of two foreign nations the Irish
from the northwest, and the Picts from the north." From
other passages it would really seem as if the Romans suc-
ceeded in driving the Irish over the Mare Hibernicum
on some occasions: "So did our illustrious defenders (the
Romans) vigorously drive the enemies' band beyond the
sea, if any could so escape them; for it was beyond those
same seas that they transported, year after year, the
plunder which they had gained, no one daring to resist
them."
Their departure was, however, only for a brief space.
When the Romans had gone "they hastily land again
from their boats in which they had been carried beyond
the Cichican valley" (Irish Sea). "Moreover having
heard of the departure of our friends and their resolution
never to return, they seized with greater boldness than
before on all the country towards the extreme north as
far as the wall." 1
From 407, when the tyrant Constantine crossed with
the Roman armies to Gaul, to 446 (the third consulship of
Aetius) Irish power seems to have been consolidating over
all Britain. It appears to have reached its high-water
mark round the middle of the fifth century. As it receded
iDe Excldio Britannlae, Liber Querulus, Migne, Pat. Lat, LXIX, cols.
329-92; Monumenta Germ. Hist., Auct. Antiquiss., 13.
169