Brut
Brut, or Brutus ,legendary founder of the British race. Geoffrey of Monmouth states that Walter , archdeacon of Oxford, gave him an ancient book in the British tongue containing an account of the kings of Brita in from Brutus to Cadwallader . This Brutus was son of Sylvius , grandson of Ascanius and great-grandson of Aeneas . Having had the misfortune to kill his father, he collected a remnant of the Trojan race and brought them to England (uninhabited at the time ‘except by a few giants’), landing at Totnes. He founded Troynovant or New Troy (later known as London) and was the progenitor of a line of British kings including Bladud, Gorboduc , Ferrex and Porrex, Lud , Cymbeline , Coel , Vortigern , and Arthur . The name ‘Troynovant’ is a back-formation from ‘Trinovantes’, the name of the powerful British tribe that lived north and east of London. Drayton , in his Poly-Olbion (i. 312), relates the legend, and...
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