A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

2. The first Reporters of this Story agree not in the time wherein the matter mentioned in it, should fall out. Bede lib. 1. cap. 4. assigns it unto the year 156. which was twenty two years before Eleutherius was Bishop, as Baronius manifests. Henricus de Erfordia ascribes it unto the nineteenth year of the reign of Verus the Emperor who reigned not so many years at all. Ado refers it unto the time of Commodus with some part of whose reign the Episcopacy of Eleutherius did indeed contemporate. 2. Geoffrey of Monmouth the chief promoter of this report, joineth it with so many lies and open fictions, as may well draw the Truth of the whole story into Question. So that divers would have us believe that some such thing was done at one time or other, but when they cannot tell. 3. Both the Epistle of Eleutherius, and the reporters of it, do suppose that Lucius to whom he wrote, was an Absolute Monarch in England, King over the whole Kingdom with Supreme Authority and Power, ruling his Subjects by the Advice of his Nobles, without being obnoxious unto or dependent in his Government on any others. But this Supposition is so openly repugnant to the whole story of the State of things in the Province of England in those days, so that it is beyond the wit of man to make any reconciliation between them: For besides that Caesar and Tacitus do both plainly affirm, that in the days of the Romans ••ance upon this Island, there was no such King or Monarch among the Britons, but that they were all divided into several Toparchies, and […] •ortal feuds and variance among themselves, […] de for the conquest of them all, it was now ⟨p. 429⟩become a Presidiary Province of the Roman Empire, and had been so from the days of Claudius, as Suetonius, Tacitus and Dio inform us. Especially was it reduced into, and settled in that form by Pub. Ostorius in the days of Nero, upon the Conquest of Boadicia Queen of the Iceni, and fully subjected in its remainders unto the Roman Yoke and Laws, after some strugglings for liberty, by Julius Agricola in the days of Vespasian, as Tacitus assures us in the life of his Father in Law. In this Estate Britain continued under Nerva and Trajan, the whole Province being afterwards secured by Hadrian from the incursion of the Picts and other barbarous Nations, with the defence of his famous walls, whereof Spartianus gives us an account.

2. The first Reporters of this Story agree not in the time wherein the matter mentioned in it, should fall out. Beda lib. 1. cap. 4. assigns it unto the year 156. which was twenty two years before Eleutherius was Bishop, as Baronius manifests. Henricus de Erfordia ascribes it unto the nineteenth year of the reign of Verus the Emperour who reigned not so many years at all. Ado refers it unto the time of Commodus with some part of whose reign the Episcopacy of Eleutherius did indeed contemporate. 2. Geoffrey of Monmouth the chief promoter of this report, joyneth it with so many lyes and open fictions, as may well draw the Truth of the whole story into Question. So that divers would have us believe that some such thing was done at one time or other, but when they cannot tell. 3. Both the Epistle of Eleutherius, and the reporters of it, do suppose that Lucius to whom he wrote, was an Absolute Monarch in England, King over the whole Kingdom with Supreme Authority and Power, ruling his Subjects by the Advice of his Nobles, without being obnoxious unto or dependent in his Government on any others. But this Supposition is so openly repugnant to the whole story of the State of things in the Province of England in those dayes, so that it is beyond the wit of man to make any reconciliation between them: For besides that Caesar and Tacitus do both plainly affirm, that in the dayes of the Romans ance upon this Island, there was no such King or Monarch among the Brittans, but that they were all divided into several Toparchies, and ortal feuds and variance among themselves, de for the conquest of them all, it was now