The first native history of Britain, and the only contemporary source for the Anglo-Saxon conquest of these isles.

The editio princeps of Gildas' (fl. 450-570 AD) De Excidio Britanniae ('On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain'), a remarkable survival from the late fifth/early sixth century AD which is the only contemporary source we have for the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain following the withdrawal of the Roman legions in c.410, and the basis for all future histories of this period from Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum of the eighth century to the present day.

Although Gildas introduces his work as an 'epistola' he later refers to De Excidio as a 'historia', and the text falls somewhere between a providential history of the island and a lamentation that Britain's ruin has been caused by the moral failings of its people, occasioning God's rightful wrath in the form of the Saxon invaders.

De Excidio is traditionally dated to between AD 479 and 484 or 515 and 530, with Gildas' date of birth given as sometime in the middle of the fifth century. A terminus ante quem of c.545 has been proposed for the work's composition because Gildas does not mention the plague of Justinian recorded by Procopius. Gildas himself says that he was born forty-three years and one month before the Battle of Badon ('Mons Badonicus'), the last major victory of the Britons over the Anglo-Saxons which the advance of the English kingdoms westwards.

Scarce. ESTC records 17 copies in institutional collections worldwide, 14 in the British Isles (BL, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, St. John's College, Cambridge, 2 copies at Trinity College, Cambridge, 3 copies at Edinburgh University Library, NLS, Christ Church, Oxford, Exeter College, Oxford, Royal College of Physicians, London, and Westminster Abbey) and 3 in North America (Folger Shakespeare Library, Huntington Library, and William College, Chaplin Library).

First edition; 8vo (15 x 10.5 cm); variant with 'preter' in title-page, woodcut initials, light perimeter dampstaining; 19th-century calf-backed marbled paper boards, contrasting red morocco lettering-piece to spine, erroneous gilt lettering for 'Bale 1548' to lower compartment, extremities a little rubbed, very good; [88]pp; collation: A-E⁸ F⁴.

ESTC S105687; STC 11892; USTC 403749.