"Totonesium litus"—"the sea-coast of Totnes".
Brutus is explicitly the grandson, rather than son, of Ascanius; his father is Ascanius' son Silvius.
The magician who predicts great things for the unborn Brutus also foretells he will kill both his parents.
He does so, in the same manner described in the Historia Britonum, and is banished.
Travelling to Greece, he discovers a group of Trojans enslaved there. He becomes their leader, and after a series of battles they defeat the Greek king Pandrasus by attacking his camp at night after capturing the guards.
He takes him hostage and forces him to let his people go. He is given Pandrasus's daughter Ignoge in marriage, and ships and provisions for the voyage, and sets sail.
The Trojans land on a deserted island and discover an abandoned temple to Diana.
After performing the appropriate ritual, Brutus falls asleep in front of the goddess's statue and is given a vision of the land where he is destined to settle, an island in the western ocean inhabited only by a few giants.
After some adventures in north Africa and a close encounter with the Sirens, Brutus discovers another group of exiled Trojans living on the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea, led by the prodigious warrior Corineus.
In Gaul, Corineus provokes a war with Goffarius Pictus, king of Aquitaine, after hunting in the king's forests without permission. Brutus's nephew Turonus dies in the fighting, and the city of Tours is founded where he is buried.
The Trojans win most of their battles but are conscious that the Gauls have the advantage of numbers, so go back to their ships and sail for Britain, then called Albion.
They land on "Totonesium litus the sea-coast of Totnes. They meet the giant descendants of Albion and defeat them.
Brutus renames the island after himself and becomes its first king. Corineus becomes ruler of Cornwall, which is named after him.
They are harassed by the giants during a festival, but kill all of them but their leader, the largest giant Goemagot, who is saved for a wrestling match against Corineus. Corineus throws him over a cliff to his death. Brutus then founds a city on the banks of the River Thames, which he calls Troia Nova, or New Troy.
The name is in time corrupted to Trinovantum, and the city is later called London.
He creates laws for his people and rules for twenty-four years. After his death he is buried in Trinovantum, and the island is divided between his three sons, Locrinus (England), Albanactus (Scotland) and Kamber (Wales).
CHAPTER XXVIII,
TOTNES.
Totnes is the first link in the legendary history of England. Brutus, the Trojan, according to early Welsh and Breton tradition, landed ‘ on the coast of Totnes;’ and in the pages of Geoffrey of Monmouth one may read the full-blown myth, ending in the destruction of the last of the aboriginal giants , Goemagot , by Corinaeus , afterwards Duke of Cornwall. There was a time when all this was deemed purely historical. Totnes, claiming to be the landing-place of Brutus, has yet a traditional Brutus Stone/ on which the Trojan hero is said to have stepped when he landed— a boulder of no great dimensions, well up the main street. Plymouth cherished the belief that the combat between Corinaeus and Goemagot took place upon her Hoe; and so far back as the fifteenth century there were graven in the sward of that eminence two huge figures, popularly supposed to represent the combatants, renewed as need was, and of unknown antiquity. It is quite possible, indeed, that both the Brutus Stone’ of Totnes and the ‘ Gogmagog’ of Plymouth originated with the Gog and Magog of myth speaks of the ‘coast’ of Totnes, and the ‘shore’ of Totnes, and the ‘ port ’ of Totnes, and always with some such qualification. The inference, therefore, is that the name was used by ancient writers as that of a district. It was evidently so employed by Higden in his ‘ Poly- chronicon,’ in quoting the length of Britain as 800 miles, a ‘ Totonesio litore,’ rendered by Trevisa ‘ from the clyf of Totonesse,’ which is really only another name for the Land’s End. Totnes thus seems to be in truth the ancient name for the south-western promontory of England, perhaps a name for Britain itself, in which case we can understand somewhat if the motive that led early etymologists derive Britain from Brute, or Brutus . The myth may be true that an elder name was supplanted, and that it lingered longest in the western promontory. Whether the modern Totnes is nominally the successor of the ancient title, the narrow area into which this vestige of far antiquity has shrunk, may be doubtful, for the word is as capable of a Teutonic derivation as of a Keltic. The last syllable may be the Northern ness, but it may as well be the Keltic , enys= island.’ And so while Tot may be an ‘ enclosure,’ it may equally be the Dod which still exists on the west coast in the name of the Dodman headland — the ‘prominent rock’ (man = maen, a stone). Totnes, therefore, can be read ‘ the projecting or prominent island.’ The speculation may be pardoned in dealing with a point of such singular interest. In any case, it seems probable that this story of Brutus the Trojan is not absolute fable, but the traditionary record of the earliest invasion of the land.
additional couplet:
* Here I stand, and here I rest, And this place shall be called Totnes.’But the ' authorities' flip this head are very sceptical here concerning the extent of the French education which Brutus had received when—‘ The Frenche of Parys was to alle unknowne.’This same line of argument disposes also of the idea that Vespasian landed at Totnes town instead of simply on the ‘ Totnes shore ,which again has led to Exeter being mistakenly identified as Caer Pensauelcoit, as in Geoffrey’s gloss,| quae Exonia vocatur’ Mr. T. Kerslake has pointed out that in all probability the oldest name for the place at which Vespasian landed is Talnas, as given in the ‘ Brut Tysilio'. This, he argues would resolve itself 't-Aln-as, and suggests that the landing really took place in Ptolemy’s estuary of the Alaunas, or Christchurch Haven; and that Pensauelcpit is to be found at Penselwood, in the Somerset, Dorset, and Wilts border-land, in which, indeed, the old name is still visibly extant. Totnes has been c airned as a Roman station, but without adequate authority. An ancient paved way leading towards Berry Pomeroy may mark the line of a Roman road, but all that can definitely be said is that the town does stand on the line of one of the ancient British trackways. The idea that it was connected with the Fosseway is corrected elsewhere.Totnes was an Anglo-Saxon mint, and continued to issue coins for some time after the Conquest; but only twenty-six varieties of pennies are known to have been struck here, and the probability is that the number was