A prince with a Celtic name may have ruled Kent in 450.

There were, indeed, plenty of rulers with barbaric names in the fourth and fifth centuries of the Empire.

But the tale cannot be called certain history.] [Footnote 2: Thus, he refers to Silchester, and so good a judge as Stubbs once suggested that for this he had some authority now lost to us.

Yet the mere fact that Geoffrey knows only the English name Silchester disproves this idea.

Had he used a genuinely ancient authority, he would have (as elsewhere) employed the Roman name.