Vortimer (Old Welsh Guorthemir, ), also known as Saint Vortimer (, "Vortimer the Blessed"), is a figure in British tradition, a son of the 5th-century Britonnic ruler Vortigern. He is remembered for his fierce opposition to his father's Saxon allies. In Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, he overthrows his father and reigns as King of Britain for a brief period before his death restores Vortigern to power. Accounts Vortimer first appears in the 9th-century work known as the Historia Brittonum. According to the Historia, Vortigern allows Saxons under Hengest and Horsa to settle on the Isle of Thanet, and offers them provisions in exchange for their service as mercenaries. Vortigern soon proves to be an "ignorant king", and the wily Hengest manipulates him into ceding over more land and allowing more settlers to come from Germania. After a dire period of Saxon encroachment, exacerbated by even more disgraceful behavior on Vortigern's part, Vortimer finally rises up against the Saxons. He pushes them back to Thanet, and meets them in four battles. At the third battle Horsa and Vortimer's brother Catigern are slain; at the fourth the Saxons are pushed back to the sea. Shortly thereafter, however, Vortimer dies. He asks his followers to bury him at the place where the Saxons first landed in Britain as a totem against further invasion. However, his followers fail to heed his warning and the Saxons return. Another manuscript of the Historia Brittonum (Chronica Minora, Berlin, 1892) follows this with: "if they had kept his command, there is no doubt that they would have obtained whatever they wished through the prayers of St Germanus.” According to the Welsh Triads his bones were buried "in the Chief Ports of this Island". Three of Vortimer's battle sites are named: the first was on the Darent "super flumen Derguentid" the second "at the ford called Episford in their language, Rhyd yr Afael in ours super vadum quod dicitur in lingua eorum Episford, in nostra autem lingua Rithergabail"; the third was "by the inscribed stone on the shore of the Gallic Sea in campo juxta Lapidem tituli, qui est super ripam Gallici maris". These battles appear to have some correspondence with battles in Kent appearing in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in 455 and 465. The Chronicle does not name Vortimer, and in fact credit Vortigern as the British leader in one of the battles. The legendary material in