The Matter of England Part III

I'm returning now to the question of the early decades of Saxon rule in England. 

It’s a paradox in anything that requires evidence from human beings, that the less accounts vary, the more they are doubted. If there are three separate accounts of the same events that tally exactly, we get very suspicious and suspect either that two are copying from one or all three are copying from a fourth; they don’t corroborate each other.

If, on the other hand, there are small differences between them, there is more reason to trust them. This is the situation I find myself in when considering early events in Saxon England. It’s the work of a proper scholar to explain precisely what the exact relationships between all the accounts might be; all I’m doing here is explaining why I don’t reject them completely.

 

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So, taking a mildly deconstructuralist approach, I am inclined to accept the broad outlines of what tradition says about the founding of the kingdom of Kent.