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Updated: July 22, 2025
For a century and a half a thick darkness seems to overspread the history of our country. In the Anglo-Saxon writers we can trace little, with any distinctness, beyond the brief and monotonous records of victories and slaughters. Hengist and Æsc slew four troops of Britons with the edge of the sword. Hengist then vanishes, and Ælla comes with his three sons.
After leaving their house in the Broedestrat, the principal street of Leyden, they proceeded towards an elevation in the centre of the city, on the summit of which rose the ancient tower of Hengist, generally so called from the belief that the Anglo-Saxon conquerors of Britain crossed over from Holland.
With them I have raided English coasts, dared the Pillars of Hercules, forayed the Mediterranean, and sat in the high place of government over the soft sun-warm peoples. I am Hengist and Horsa; I am of the ancient heroes, even legendary to them.
Hengist, with very little opposition, subdued the province of Kent, and there laid the foundation of the first Saxon kingdom. Every battle the Britons fought only prepared them for a new defeat, by weakening their strength and displaying the inferiority of their courage. Vortigern, instead of a steady and regular resistance, opposed a mixture of timid war and unable negotiation.
The missionaries landed in 597 in the Isle of Thanet, at the spot where Hengist had landed more than a century before; and Ethelbert received them sitting in the open air, on the chalk-down above Minster where the eye nowadays catches miles away over the marshes the dim tower of Canterbury.
After this the barbarians became firmly incorporated, and were assisted by foreign pagans; for Vortigern was their friend, on account of the daughter* of Hengist, whom he so much loved, that no one durst fight against him-in the meantime they soothed the imprudent king, and whilst practising every appearance of fondness, were plotting with his enemies.
A right learned clerk was he, a bishop of his orders, and brother by blood to that Earl Eldof, of whom you have heard. "My counsel to the king," said the bishop, "is to do to the traitor Hengist our earthly adversary that which holy Samuel did in old days to King Agag, when he was made captive. Agag was a prince, passing proud, the right glorious king of the people of Amalek.
In the press, Eldof the Earl lighted on Hengist. Hatred gave him eyes, and he knew him again because of the malice he owed him. He deemed that the time and the means were come to satisfy his lust. Eldof ran in upon his foe, striking him mightily with his sword. Hengist was a stout champion, or he had fallen at the stroke.
Hengist was seated very close the king. He held the king fast by his mantle, so that this murder passed him by. But those who gripped the knives thrust the keen blades through cloak and mantle, breast and bowels, till there lay upon back or belly in that place nigh upon four hundred and sixty men of the richest and most valiant lords of the kingdom.
But here perhaps the reader will ask what is meant by "the treachery of the long knives?" whether he does or not I will tell him. Hengist wishing to become paramount in Southern Britain thought that the easiest way to accomplish his wish would be by destroying the South British chieftains.
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