Hengest, Gwrtheyrn and the Chronology of Post-Roman Britain

In this book, the author makes use of the methodology he developed in Origins of Arthurian Romances (McFarland 2012) in order to reevaluate the post–Roman history of Britain. He begins by delving into the historical contexts of the key traditional players of the fifth century—Hengest and Gwrtheyrn. A better understanding of these two characters allows for a reexamination of the persons and events of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries. The text that follows entirely realigns how those centuries can be seen from a chronological as well as a military and political standpoint. The fifth century was not a time of British and Germanic fragmentation as they separated from Rome, but one of slow integration and the formation of kingships that were a result of the economic realities of surviving without the dying giant.