The chronology of the Saxon conquest of Britain is notoriously obscure. Among its most controversial aspects is the date of the adventus Saxonum, the appearance of the Saxons as an independent force in Britain. Only two sets of literary sources throw light on the question. A single contemporary, the anonymous Gallic Chronicler of 452, briefly noted under the year XVIII of Theodosius II (equated by Mommsen to A.D. 441–2) that ‘The British provinces, which up to this time had suffered various disasters and misfortunes, were reduced to Saxon rule’. Bede, writing in the eighth century, and basing his calculations on Gildas’ sketchy sixth-century account, supplied two somewhat later dates for the coming of the English to Britain: the first, A.D. 446–7, and the second ‘in the reign of Marcian and Valentinian’, that is, between 449 and 455. Bede's dates were generally accepted in the first part of this century, and the testimony of the Chronicler of 452, which records the end, and not the beginning, of a Saxon conquest, was dismissed as unreliable. In the last few years, there has been a tendency among scholars to consider Bede's dates mistaken, and to base the chronology of the adventus on the entry in the Chronicle of 452. Bede has not lacked defenders, however. Recently, Dr Molly Miller suggested not only that the date of 441-2 for the adventus was a figment of Mommsen's edition of the Gallic Chronicle, but also that the Chronicle itself could not be considered as a fifth-century source because it had been edited and interpolated at a later date. Miller's article raises serious questions about the value of the Chronicle of 452. Can it be used as a contemporary account of fifth-century events? Or must it be treated as a compilation contaminated by Carolingian editors?