“I shall also pass over the bygone times of our cruel tyrants, whose notoriety was spread over to far distant countries; so that Porphyry, that dog who in the east was always so fierce against the church, in his mad and vain style added this also, that "Britain is a land fertile in tyrants."”

— Gildas , De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae

Et tacens vetustos immanium tyrannorum annos, qui in aliis longe positis regionibus vulgati sunt, it ut Porphyrius rabidus orientalis adversus ecclesiam canis dementiae suae ac vanitatis stilo hoc etiam adnecteret: "Britannia", inquiens, "fertilis provincia tyrannorum".
Section 4.
Gildas's quotation is in fact from St. Jerome's Epistula 133.9.
De Excidio Britanniae (On the Ruin of Britain)

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Do you have more details about the quote "I shall also pass over the bygone times of our cruel tyrants, whose notoriety was spread over to far distant countries;…" by Gildas?

Gildas 6

British monk, historian and saint 500–570

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in such a way that the despot does not realize that he is aiding his Lord and avenging the blood of the oppressed upon those who had tormented them. This is apparent today, and in some stations it is being implemented. Know for a certainty that the Lord of the world without any doubt knows the tyrant from the good monarch. Rather, everything he does is for the sake of some wisdom, and he knows more about the final outcome of such matters.
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“Neither Britain, a province fertile in tyrants, nor the people of Ireland, knew Moses and the prophets.”

Jerome (345–420) Catholic saint and Doctor of the Church

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“It is also in the interests of a tyrant to make his subjects poor, so that he may be able to afford the cost of his bodyguard, while the people are so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for plotting.”

Aristotle book Politics

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“"Magna Carta is the Law: Let the King look out."
So it has always been with tyrants among our own people: when the King was tyrant, let him look out. And it has always been the same, and will be the same, whether the tyrant be the Barons, whether the tyrant be the Church, whether he be demagogue or dictator — let them look out.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

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“Again to the battle, Achaians!
Our hearts bid the tyrants defiance!
Our land, the first garden of Liberty's tree,
It has been, and shall yet be, the land of the free.”

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“One who liberates his country by killing a tyrant is to be praised and rewarded.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Trans. J.G. Dawson (Oxford, 1959), 44, 2 in O’Donovan, pp. 329-30
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“God only, however, selects a tyrant for a people that deserves to be oppressed. At that time, the Lord of the world establishes over them a tyrant who will avenge those who had been oppressed and brutalized. Such have been some among the temporal rulers. At that time, the Lord of the world places over such a people a tyrant. so that they might avenge those wronged. — in such a way that the despot does not realize that he is aiding his Lord and avenging the blood of the oppressed upon those who had tormented them. This is apparent today, and in some stations it is being implemented. Know for a certainty that the Lord of the world without any doubt knows the tyrant from the good monarch. Rather, everything he does is for the sake of some wisdom, and he knows more about the final outcome of such matters.”

Subh-i-Azal (1831–1912) Persian religious leader

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“And in that place the cruel tyrant, Love,
Who treacherously every promise breaks,
Who bides his time and watches every move,
And every chance to thwart true lovers takes.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Quivi il crudo tiranno Amor, che sempre
D'ogni promessa sua fu disleale,
E sempre guarda come involva e stempre
Ogni nostro disegno razionale.
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“The official style is at once humble, polite, curt and disagreeable: it derives partly from that used in Byzantine times by the eunuch slave-secretariat, writing stiffly in the name of His Sacred Majesty, whose confidence they enjoyed, to their fellow-slaves outside the palace precincts — for the Emperor had summary power over everyone; and partly from the style used by the cleric-bureaucracy of the Middle Ages, writing stiffly in the name of the feudal lords to their serfs and, though cautious of offending their employers, protected from injury by being servants of the Church, not of the Crown, and so subject to canon, not feudal, law. The official style of civil servants, so far as it recalls its Byzantine derivation, is written by slaves to fellow-slaves of a fictitious tyrant; and, so far as it recalls its mediaeval derivation, is written by members of a quasi-ecclesiastical body, on behalf of quasi-feudal ministers (who, being politicians, come under a different code of behaviour from theirs) to a serflike public.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

Source: The Reader Over Your Shoulder (1943), Ch. 4: "The Use and Abuse of Official English".

“This to a tyrant master sold
His native land for cursed gold.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book VI, p. 215

“I shall also pass over the bygone times of our cruel tyrants, whose notoriety was spread over to far distant countries; so that Porphyry, that dog who in the east was always so fierce against the church, in his mad and vain style added this also, that "Britain is a land fertile in tyrants."”

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Gildas 6

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