re now my humble self may be witnessed among
strangers" ("Confession").

ST. PATRICK MADE CAPTIVE BY NIALL OF THE NINE HOSTAGES.

GIBBON narrates that about the middle of the fourth century the "sea
coast of Gaul and Britain were exposed to the depredations of the
Saxons" (vol. i., P- 739); and Bertrand, in his "History of Boulogne,"
admits that the city was plundered by the Saxons in the year 371, but
that the invaders spared Caligula's tower and lighthouse on account of
its usefulness for their safe navigation. The silence of local history
concerning two raids made by the Irish Scots into Armorica in the years
388 and 402 is not surprising, seeing that French writers admit that
there is practically no history of Armorica or more than a century
after the Saxon raid in the year 371. Gibbon, however, in his history
of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," narrates that "the
hostile tribes of the North, who detested the pride and power of the
King of the World, suspended their domestic feuds, and the barbarians
of the land and sea, the Picts, the Scots, and the Saxons, spread
themselves with rapid and irresistible fury from the walls of Antoninus
to the shores of Kent" (vol. i., p. 744). Keating supplements this
information by describing the two raids made by the Irish Scots into
Armorica; the first of which took place in the year 388, and the second
in 402, or about that time. This Irish historian is considered by
Professor Stokes to be a most trustworthy authority. "Keating," writes
the Professor, "had access to the Munster Documents, which are now
lost. He gives a long account of the Irish invasions of England and
France exactly corresponding to the statements of the Roman historian,
Amianus Marcellinus, and to the 'Annals of the Four Masters'" ("Ireland
and the Celtic Church," p. 38, note).

Of the raids of King Niall into Armorica the first is the more
interesting, for it proves, first, that St. Patrick was born in the
year 373, and, next, that he was captured neither in North Britain, nor
Wales, but in Armorican Britain.

To escape from these conclusions, Doctor Lanigan, who held that St.
Patrick was born in the year 387, writes as follows: "I find in Keating
but one expedition of Niall to the coast of Gaul, during which he says,
in another place, that St. Patrick with two hundred of the noblest
youth were brought away. . . . This event occurred in the latter end of
Niall Naoigiallach's reign, and not