Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/400

 Vortigern invites them to return, and soon after, by treacherously arming themselves for a peaceful conference, they obtain complete mastery of the country. The king then flees with his wives to the west and there perishes miserably, consumed by fire from heaven.

The next to deal with the story of Vortigern was Geoffrey of Monmouth, who manipulates it with his customary skill. The British king is identified with the Gerontius who figures in the history of Britain about 409, and Bede's brief notice of this man is expanded into a narrative which tells how Vortigern, at first simple earl of Wessex (‘consul Gewisseorum’), raises to the throne and then supplants Constans, once a monk and the son of Constantine of Brittany. In the story of the English conquest Geoffrey, in the main, follows Nennius (ascribing the work, however, to Gildas), but is more circumstantial. He supplies the name of Hengist's daughter, Rowen being, no doubt, as Professor Rhys points out (Celtic Heathendom, p. 154), a misreading of the traditional Welsh name ‘Rhonwen,’ i.e. white mane. ‘Vortimerus’ is represented as dying by poison, the victim of Rowen's hate; the ‘treachery of the long knives’ is located at Amesbury; Ambrosius Aurelius, who finally overwhelms Vortigern, is brother to Constans, and thus his triumph restores the former line of princes. Thus told, the story became extremely popular, appearing in the Welsh Triads (where Vortigern is ‘Gwrtheyrn Gwrthenau,’ i.e. of repelling lips), Roger of Wendover's ‘Chronicle,’ and many other works.

The story of Vortigern consists in part of mere folk-fables; a continental parallel to the ‘long knives’ incident is, for instance, to be found in Widukind, and Vortigern and Ambrosius have been treated as the Cronus and Zeus of British mythology (Celtic Heathendom, p. 152). It also owes its form in part to the desire to explain place-names. Thus there was in Northern Britain a ‘Cair Guorthigirn,’ whither accordingly Vortigern is taken by Nennius after his discomfiture in Eryri. There was also a ‘Guorthigirniaun,’ in later Welsh Gwerthrynion, a region in our Radnorshire of which the princes in the eighth century traced descent to Pasgen, son of Vortigern, and hither also Nennius brings the king in his last ignominious retreat. Finally he makes him die at ‘arcem Guorthigirni,’ an unidentified ‘Dinas Gwrtheyrn’ on the banks of the Teifi. It was no doubt a local tradition, interpreting a place-name, which led Geoffrey to fix the scene of Vortigern's death at Gannerew, near Monmouth; and Pennant, on similar grounds, makes a case in favour of Nant Gwrtheyrn, at the foot of the Rivals (Tours, 1810 edit. ii. 391). Yet, when these deductions have been made, there may still be an historical residuum in the story, apart from the facts given by Gildas. The antagonism of Vortigern and Ambrosius, though not referred to in Gildas's narrative, is quite consistent with his account of the two princes, and there is much that is plausible in the view, first put forward by Guest (Origines Celticæ, ii. 172–3) and adopted by Green (Making of England, p. 37), that they were the leaders of a native and a Roman party respectively among the Britons. The successes of Guorthemir, Geoffrey's ‘Vortimerus’ and the ‘Gwerthefyr Fendigaid’ (i.e. blessed) of the Welsh Triads, also wear, as recited by Nennius, an historical aspect, though the battles do not appear to tally with those of the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,’ and the relations of Guorthemir and Ambrosius are somewhat perplexing.



VOSSIUS, ISAAC (1618–1689), canon of Windsor, and scholar, born at Leyden in 1618, was the seventh child of Gerard John Vos (1577–1649), the famous Dutch scholar, by his second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Francis du Jon (Junius). The family name was usually latinised into Vossius. Gerard Vos was invited over to England about the same time as [q. v.], and, like him, was presented by Laud to a canonry in Canterbury Cathedral (1629) in recognition, it is supposed, of the value of his ‘Historia Pelagiana.’ He got permission from Charles I to return to the Low Countries, and in 1633 he was appointed to the chair of history in the newly founded university of Amsterdam. He was on intimate terms with the celebrated English classical editor [q. v.], and Farnaby's ‘Latin Grammar’ is based to a certain extent upon that which Vossius wrote for the Elzevir press in 1629. Among his English correspondents, besides Farnaby, were Brian Duppa, Dudley Carleton, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the Duke of Buckingham, the prelates Laud, Ussher, and Sterne, and Christopher Wren (see Vossii et Clarorum Virorum Epistolæ, London, 1690, fol.). All the sons of Gerard Vos were precocious scholars.

Isaac was educated partly by his father, an oracle of classical learning, and partly by