We come into touch with authentic history with the reign of Vortigern, when Hengist and Horsa sailed over to Britain.
An extract from Robert of Gloucester is given in _Specimens of Early English_, Part II.
The other great work of the same date is the vast collection edited for the Early English Text Society by Dr Horstmann in 1887, entitled, _The Early South-English Legendary_, or Lives of Saints.

It is extant in several MSS., of which the oldest (MS.

Laud 108) originally contained 67 Lives; with an Appendix, in a later hand, containing two more.

The eleventh Life is that of St Dunstan, which is printed in _Specimens of Early English_, Part II, from another MS.
Soon after the year 1300 the use of the Southern dialect becomes much less frequent, with the exception of such pieces as belong particularly to the county of Kent and will be considered by themselves.

There are two immense manuscript collections of various poems, originally in various dialects, which are worth notice.
One of these is the Harleian MS.No.2253, in the British Museum, the scribe of which has reduced everything into the South-Western dialect, though it is plain that, in many cases, it is not the dialect in which the pieces were originally composed; this famous manuscript belongs to the beginning of the fourteenth century.