far corroborate the accuracy of each other. Whence the
original author of the _Historia Britonum_ derived his list, is as
unknown as the original authorship of the work itself. Some of Bede's
sources of information are alluded to by himself. Albinus, Abbot of St.
Augustine's, Canterbury, and Nothhelm, afterwards Archbishop of
Canterbury, "appear," observes Mr. Stevenson, "to have furnished Bede
with chronicles in which he found accurate and full information upon
the pedigrees, accessions, marriages, exploits, descendants, deaths and
burials of the kings of Kent."[184] That the genealogical list itself is
comparatively accurate, there are not wanting strong reasons for
believing. The kings of the different seven or eight small Anglo-Saxon
kingdoms of England all claimed--as the very condition and charter of
their regality--a direct descent from Woden, through one or other of his
several sons. To be a king among our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, it was
necessary, and indeed indispensable, both to be a descendant of Woden,
and to be able to prove this descent. The chronicles of most ancient
people, as the Jews, Irish, Scots, etc., show us how carefully the
pedigree of their royal and noble families was anciently kept and
retained. And surely there is no great wonder in the Saxon kings of Kent
keeping up faithfully a knowledge of their pedigree--say from Bede's
time, backwards, through the nine or ten generations up to Hengist, or
the additional four generations up to Woden. The wonder would perhaps
have been much greater if they had omitted to keep up a knowledge, by
tradition, poems, or chronicles, of a pedigree upon which they, and the
other kings of the Saxon heptarchy, rested and founded--as descendants
of Woden--their whole title to royalty, and their claim and charter to
their respective thrones.[185]

But a stronger objection against the idea of the Cat-stane being a
monument to the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa rises up in the
question,--Is there any proof or probability that an ancestor of Hengist
and Horsa fought and fell in this northern part of the island, two
generations before the arrival of these brothers in Kent?

It is now generally allowed, by our best historians, that before the
arrival of Hengist and Horsa in Kent, Britain was well known at least to
the Saxons and Frisians, and other allied Teutonic tribes.

Perhaps from a very early period the shores and comparative riches of
our island were known to