Note 135 Cornwall was finally subdued by Athelstan (A.D. 927-941), who planted an English colony at Exeter, and confined the Britons beyond the river Tamar. See William of Malmesbury, 1. ii. in the Scriptores post Bedam, p. 50. The spirit of the Cornish knights was degraded by servitude: and it should seem, from the romance of Sir Tristram, that their cowardice was almost proverbial.

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The History Of The Decline and Fall Of The Roman Empire—Volume 1— Chapter 38