Transcriber’s Note: Minor errors of punctuation and printing have been
repaired, but the transcriber does not fancy she knows the writer’s
meaning better than he knows it himself, and has left the rest alone.
VESTIGES OF
THE SUPREMACY OF MERCIA
IN THE SOUTH OF ENGLAND
DURING THE EIGHTH CENTURY
_With T. Kerslake’s Compliments,
Bristol, 1879._
CONTENTS.
PAGES
1-8-9, &c. ST. WERBURGH.
2-14, &c. BRISTOL.
3-5. WICCIA.
6-7. ANGLO-SAXON.
10. FEMALE NATIONAL SAINTS.
11, &c. ÆTHELBALD. OFFA.
11-12. 50. ST. BONIFACE.
13. AVON FRONTIER.
14. 56. BATH. HENBURY.
15-17. NORTH DEVON.
18. 22. CORNWALL.
19-21. ST. CUTHBERT.
23. 25. 36, &c. KENTISH HOO.
26-39, &c. CLOVESHOE.
28-29, &c. CLIFFE AT HOO.
40. HIGHAM FERRY.
41-42. MIDDLESEX.
43. CEALCHYTHE.
44-45. ACLEAH.
46. PARISHES.
47. WERBURGHWICK.
49-51. HAETHFELTH. HERUTFORD. &C.
53-58. ST. HELEN. OFFA.
56-58. HASTINGS. SUSSEX.
59. LONDON.
60-63. DEDICATIONS.
61. HOLY ROOD.
62. ST. ETHELBERT. MARDEN. ST. MARY.
ERRORS.
Pages 24, 25 in Notes; _for_ p. 119-121, 125 _read_ 15-17, 22.
” 27. Note _for_ 1565 _read_ 1863.
” 7, line 3, _for_ “knut--” _read_ “Knut--”.
” 11, 12, 34, _for_ Bonifatius _prefer_ Bonifacius.
” 47, _for_ appanage _read_ apanage.
Various others, including some introduced after the proofs had been
finally revised by the writer, by some one who fancied he knew the
writer’s meaning better than he knows it himself.
VESTIGES OF THE
SUPREMACY OF MERCIA
IN THE SOUTH OF ENGLAND
DURING THE EIGHTH CENTURY.
(_Reprinted from the Transactions of the
Bristol and Gloucestershire
Archæological Society_).
_Bristol_, 1879.
VESTIGES OF THE SUPREMACY OF MERCIA IN THE SOUTH OF ENGLAND, DURING THE
EIGHTH CENTURY.
By THOMAS KERSLAKE.
“… residual phenomena …, the small concentrated residues
of great operations in the arts are almost sure to be the
lurking-places of new chemical ingredients.… It was a happy
thought of Glauber to examine what everybody else threw
away.”--SIR J. F. W. HERSCHELL.
Having sometimes said that the date of the original foundation of the
lately-demolished church of St. Werburgh, in the centre of the ancient
walled town of Bristol, was the year 741, and that a building so called
has, from that early date, always stood on that spot, I have been asked
how I know it. I have answered; by the same evidence--and the best
class of it--as the most important events of our national history, of
the three centuries in which that date occurs, are known. That is,
by necessary inference from the very scanty records of those times,
confirmed by such topical monumental evidence as may have survived. But
this fact in itself is, also, of considerable importance to our own
local history; because, if it should be realized, it would be the very
earliest solid date that has yet been attached to the place that we
now call Bristol. We are accustomed to speak, with a certain amount of
popular pride, of “Old Bristol,” and in like manner of “Old England,”
but without considering which is the oldest of the two. The position
here attempted would give that precedence to Bristol.
* * * * *
It need scarcely be mentioned that what we now call England is no other
than an enlargement of the ancient kingdom of the West Saxons, by the
subjugation and annexation of the other kingdoms of the southern part
of the island. A subjugation of which the result is that our now
ruling sovereign is the successor, as well as descendant, of the Saxon
Kings of Wessex, and of the supremacy which they ultimately achieved.
Of course this was only the final effect of a long series of political
revolutions. It was preceded by others that had promised a different
upshot: one of which was the long-threatened supremacy of the Anglian
kingdom of Mercia; by Penda, a Pagan king, and afterwards, during the
long reigns of Æthelbald and Offa, his Christian successors in his
kingdom and aggressive policy.
One of two fates awaits a supplanted dynasty: to be traduced, or to be
forgotten. Although this milder one has been the lot of the Mercian
Empire, yet it is believed that distinct, and even extensive, traces
can still be discerned, beyond the original seat of its own kingdom, of
its former supremacy over the other kingdoms of England. In fact, this
name itself of “England,” still co-extensive with this former Anglian
supremacy over the Saxons, is a glorious monumental legacy of that
supremacy, which their later Saxon over-rulers never renounced, and
which has become their password to the uttermost parts of the earth.
But it is with the encroachments of Æthelbald upon Wessex that we are
in the first instance concerned. South of Mercia proper was another
nation called Huiccia, extending over the present counties of Worcester
and Gloucester, with part of Warwickshire and Herefordshire, and having
the Bristol river Avon for its southern boundary. It is barely possible
that it may have included a narrow margin between that river and the
Wansdyke, which runs along the south of that river, at a parallel of
from two to three miles from it; but of this no distinct evidence
has been found. Some land, between the river and Wansdyke, did in
fact belong to the Abbey of Bath, which is itself on the north of the
river, but that this is said to have been bought--“mercati sumus digno
praetio”--from Kenulf, King of the West Saxons[1], makes it likely that
it was the river that had been the tribal boundary.
Until divided from Gloucester by King Henry VIII., the Bishopric
of Worcester substantially continued the territory, and the present
name of Worcester = Wigorceaster = Wigorniæ civitas (A.D. 789), no
doubt transmits, although obscurely, the name of Huiccia; and the
church there contained (A.D. 774) “pontificalis Cathedra Huicciorum.”
The name may even remain in “Warwick,” and especially in “Wickwar” =
Huiccanwaru; but such instances must not be too much trusted, as there
are other fruitful sources of “wick,” in names. In Worcestershire
names, however, “-wick” and “-wich” as testimonials are abundant.
Droitwich = “Uuiccium emptorium” (A.D. 715), almost certainly is so
derived, in spite of its ambiguous contact with the great etymological
puzzle of the “Saltwiches.”[2]
At all events, within a hundred years from Ceawlin’s first subjugation
of it, Saxon Wiccia had become entirely subject to Anglian Mercia. But
there can be no doubt that its earliest Teutonic settlers were West
Saxons. Even now, any one of us West Saxons, who should wander through
Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, would recognise his own dialect.
He would, perhaps, say they “speak finer” up here, but he would feel
that his ears are still at home. If he should, however, advance into
Derbyshire, or Staffordshire, or Eastern Shropshire, he would encounter
a musical cadence, or song, which, though far from being unpleasant
from an agreeable voice, would be very strange to him. He would, in
fact, have passed out of Wiccia into Mercia proper: from a West-Saxon
population into one of original Anglian substratum.
What was the earlier political condition of Wiccia before it fell under
the dominion of Mercia: whether it was ever for any time an integral
part of the kingdom of Wessex, or a distinct subregulate of it, is
uncertain. Two of the earlier pagan West-Saxon inroads (A.D. 577-584)
were of this region, and happened long before that race had penetrated
Somerset. It is not to be believed that any part of later Somerset,
south of Avon, was included in either of these two pagan conquests
of Ceawlin; nor even the south-west angle of Gloucestershire itself,
that forms the separate elevated limestone ridges between the Bristol
Frome and the Severn. There are some other reasons for believing that
these heights immediately west of Bristol--say, Clifton, Henbury, and
northward along the Ridgeway to about Tortworth--remained, both Welsh
and Christian, for nearly a century afterwards; and that they were only
reduced to Teutonic rule along with the subjection of Saxon Wiccia
itself to Anglian Mercia. The record in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
of the conquest of A.D. 577 plainly indicates the course of it, by
the names of the places concerned--Bath, Dyrham, Cirencester, and
Gloucester. It was not any river that was the instrument of advance;
but, flanked and supported by the ancient Foss-way, the continuous
elevated table-land of the southern limb of the Cotswolds, still
abounding with remains of military occupations of yet earlier peoples.
This is separated from the more western height by a broad belt of low
land, then a weald or forest, since known as Kingswood; which, the line
of the places named in the annal of the conquest, plainly indicates
to have been purposely avoided: the district west of it, therefore
still continued British. As to Ceawlin’s second expedition, A.D. 584,
it most probably extended from Gloucester to the country between
Severn and Wye, as far as Hereford,[3] and into the now Saxon-speaking
Worcestershire. But that Ceawlin followed the Severn, and penetrated
Cheshire to an unimportant place called “Faddiley,” is not only
unlikely, but rests entirely on a single philological argument,
concerning that name, too refined and unpractical for the burden laid
upon it[4], and inconsistent with the later associations of the name
itself.
But if Wiccia became West-Saxon in 577-584, it did not long remain
undisturbed by its Anglian northern neighbour. About fifty years later
(A.D. 628), it is recorded in the Chronicle, that the rulers of Wessex
and Mercia, fought at Cirencester, “and then compromised.” This shews
that hitherto, for fifty years, all Wiccia had been ruled by Wessex:
also that, except what reduction of territory may be represented by
a Mercian inroad as far as Cirencester, it still continued under
Wessex. But although this exception itself did not last many years
longer, this is enough to account for our finding a Saxon people under
Anglian government. In another fifty years, Wiccia is found to have
become a subregulate, governed by Mercian sub-kings, and constituted a
separate Bishopric, an offshoot from Mercian Lichfield; and from that
time the kings of Mercia and their sub-reguli are found dealing with
lands in various parts of Wiccia, even to the southern frontier, as
at Malmesbury and Bath; and by a charter of Æthelred, King of Mercia,
dated by Dr. Hickes, A.D. 692, the newly instituted cathedral in the
city of Weogorna, is endowed with land at a place well-known to us by
what was, even then said to be an “ancient name,” Henbury (“vetusto
vocabulo nuncupatur heanburg.”[5])
Much needless demur, if not excitement, has of late years been stirred
up by some of the learned,[6] at the name “Anglo-Saxon,” for the oldest
condition of English. They allege that this designation is “a most
unlucky one,” and that in the first half of this century it was the
cause of a “crass ignorance” of the true relations of continuity in
this nation before and after the Norman conquest. Those who remember
that time, well know that this imputed ignorance did not prevail: that
if the most ordinary schoolboy, had then been asked, why William was
called “the Conqueror,” he would have at once, rightly or wrongly,
answered “because he conquered us,” and that he was only less detested
than “Buonaparte,” because he was at that time farther away. They have
now lived to be astonished to find that, by their own confession, the
higher scholars of this later age are terrified by a fear of confusion
in this rudimentary piece of learning. So these learned men put
themselves into the most ludicrous passions, and--let us try to humour
them--King “knut”-like scoldings at the tide, and Dame Partingtonian
mop-twirlings, to cure us of such a dangerous old heresy. For old
it is, and deeply rooted. Those “Anglo-Saxon” kings who assumed the
supreme rule of the kingdoms of both races, so called themselves:
and the entire “Anglo-Saxon” literature has been only so known in
modern Europe, for the last three centuries; not only at home, but in
Germany, Denmark, France, and wherever it has ever appeared in print.
Yet another most learned and acute and sober Professor has been lately
tempted to join the “unlucky” cry: saying that “It is like calling
Greek, Attico-Ionian.”[7] Why “Greek?” Why not “Hellenic?” Is not
“Greek” an exotic, and as barbarous as “Attico-Ionian” or “Anglo-Saxon?”
But in our concern with the Wiccians we are exempt from this newly
raised dispute. Here we have a great colony of a Saxon people who very
soon fell under the dominion of Anglian kings, and so remained until a
later revolution, the final supremacy of Wessex, made them once more
Saxon subjects. The Wiccians, at any rate however, had become literally
Anglo-Saxon: a Saxon people under Anglian rule. Shakespear was a
Wiccian, born and bred--if one, who has taught us so much more than any
breeding could have taught him, can be said to have been bred amongst
us--at any rate he was born a Wiccian, and thereby an Anglo-Saxon, in
the natural and indisputable sense: a sense earlier, stricter, and
more real than that which afterwards extended the phrase to the entire
kingdom. Wiccia was no doubt colonized by the Saxons, while the Saxons
were yet pagan; and afterwards christianized by their Anglian Mercian
subjugators. Not so the Saxons of Somerset, who were already Christians
when they first penetrated that province.[8]
Subsequent annals of the Chronicle shew that Wessex long remained
impatient of the loss of Wiccia. In A.D. 715, a battle is shortly
mentioned at a place, usually, and not impossibly, said to be
Wanborough, a remarkable elevation within the fork of two great Roman
ways a few miles south of Swindon. But our business is with three later
entries in the Chronicle, for the three successive years 741, 742, and
743; of which the first for A.D. 741, will be first here submitted as
the record of the final subjection of Wiccia, and the establishment
of the Bristol Avon as the permanent southern frontier of Mercia. The
other two Annals will then be otherwise disposed of.
These are the words of the Chronicle:--
A.D. 741. Now Cuthred succeeded to the West-Saxon kingdom, and
held it sixteen years, and he contended hardly with Æthelbald,
King of the Mercians.
A.D. 742. Now was a great Synod gathered at Cloveshou, and
Æthelbald, King of the Mercians was there, and Cutbert,
Archbishop [of Canterbury], and many other wise men.
A.D. 743. Now Æthelbald, King of the Mercians, and Cuthred,
King of the West-Saxons fought with the Welsh.
We have in these three Annals a specimen of that condensed form and
style, that is common to this ancient text and still more venerable
primæval records; and which invites and justifies attempts to interpret
them by the help of any existing external monuments.
There are still known in England thirteen dedications of churches or
chapels in the name of St. Werburgh, although, perhaps, not more than
half of them are any longer above ground.[9] Seven, however, out of the
thirteen are within the counties of Stafford, Chester, Shropshire, and
Derbyshire: that is, they are within the original kingdom of Mercia,
wherein, as the posthumous renown of the saint never extended beyond
a nation, or rather a dynasty, that long since has been extinct and
forgotten, we might have expected to have found them all. But the
other six are extraneous, and three of them great stragglers. These
must have owed their origin to political and military extensions of
the influence of that kingdom, and these, it is intended to show, are
found in places where Æthelbald, one of the three Mercian aspirants
for English empire, has made good a conquest. This dedication may,
therefore, be believed to have been his usual method of making his mark
of possession.
St. Werburgh was the daughter of Wulfhere, the second Christian King
of Mercia, who was the son of Penda, the last pagan King. Æthelbald
was the grandson of Eawa, a brother of Penda, probably the Eoba, who,
in the Annales Cambriæ, A.D. 644, is himself called “rex Merciorum;”
so that Æthelbald and Werburgh were what we should call second
cousins.[10] Wulfhere, A.D. 675, was succeeded by his brother Æthelred,
who placed his niece Werburgh at the head of three great convents of
women, with a sort of general spiritual charge of the female portion
of the newly christianised kingdom. She is said to have died about
A.D. 700, for it is noted that on opening her coffin in the year 708,
her body, after eight years, was found unaltered, and her vestments
undefiled; and from this time, sealed by this reputed miracle, the
renown of her sanctity soon grew to beatification; and when, eight
years afterwards, her kinsman Æthelbald began his reign, she had
achieved the reputation and precedence of the latest national saint.
She was, however, one of a family of whom many of the women have
transmitted their names, from immediately after their deaths to our
own times, attached to religious foundations. Among these, that of her
aunt, St. Audry, still lives in Ely Cathedral: and this example may
serve as a crutch to those who find it hard to realise the unbroken
duration of churches, with these names, direct from the very ages in
which the persons who bore them lived; for the continuity of this
name at Ely is a matter of open and undisputed history, unaided by
mere inference, such as our less conspicuous case requires. There are
some, also, who stumble at finding all the female saints of particular
provinces to have been members of one royal family. But of this we
have an analogy pervading the entire area of our own every-day life,
in the active assistance in all benevolent purposes, received by the
clergyman of nearly every parish, from the leisured daughters of the
more wealthy families. In those missionary days, the kingdoms of the
newly-converted rulers were the only parishes, and the king and his
family were as the squire and his family are now; and the greater
lustre, which then shone out around the name of each, was as that of a
little candle, in their wider world, compared with what would be its
effect in a general illumination now. The earlier British churches
have presented us with the same phenomenon. The numerous progeny, of
children and grand-children, of Brychan of Brecknock, have nearly all
left their names in many churches in South Wales, and even in the
opposite promontory of Cornwall and Devon.
The historical facts of the name and local fame of this royal personage
are all that we are concerned with. Otherwise, in some later times, it
has been adorned with the usual amount of miraculous fable. The most
notable of the miracles credited to her is, that one of her corn-fields
being continually ravaged by flocks of geese, at her mere command
they went into voluntary exile. As this is said to have happened near
Chester, it is easy to refer the story to the monks there, who alone
were interested in gilding her shrine with it; and her relics were not
translated there till nearly two hundred years after her death. At any
rate, the citizens of Bristol are living witnesses that her name is no
safeguard of her heritage against the devastations of wasteful bipeds,
who are not only unwise, but also unfledged. This imputed miracle is
more transparent than is always the case with such embellishments of
the lives of those who were the first to accept the new faith, and to
promote it with active earnestness. In it may, at once, be discerned an
ordinary incident of her pastoral or predial economy, exaggerated to a
miracle in an age which preferred supernatural to natural causes.
The career of Æthelbald is, of course, more widely known, holding,
as it does, a prominent place in the general history of the times.
His reign extended from A.D. 716 to 755, and was chiefly employed in
extending his sovereignty by the subjugation of neighbouring kingdoms,
and by his munificent patronage of the church. In the first year of
his reign, he at once showed a disposition to commemorate his own
friends, by dedicating churches in their names, by using this method of
perpetuating, at Croyland, the recent memory of Guthlac, his kinsman
and protector in exile. It seems, however, that the pagan manners of
the northern mythology are not purged for several generations after
conversion: but, as appears from another example, of the practical
paganism of the Dukes of Normandy, down to our William the Mamzer,
unless attended with more than the average cruelty and injustice of the
times, meet with only a qualified reproach, until they are in conflict
with church discipline and law. The celebrated severe, but friendly and
respectful epistolary rebuke from Bonifatius,[11] Archbishop of Mainz,
contains a heavy indictment against both Æthelbald and his predecessor
Coelred, and their courts, while it acknowledges his prosperity,
munificence to the church, and his just administration.
* * * * *
Having these specially national or tribal circumstances in view, it
is thought that the six dedications of St. Werburgh that are found
beyond the original Mercia must have had special causes, which it is
believed can be found in the transactions that are recorded in the
three successive Annals of the Chronicle above recited; and that the
dedications and the Annals will therefore be found to mutually account
for each other. The seven churches within Mercia, without any doubt
each has its own history, mostly connected with Æthelbald: perhaps
all except the present Chester Cathedral, which arose out of the
translation, nearly two hundred years later, of her relics to that
place, from her original shrine in one of her three convents. But these
home dedications do not fall within our purview, which is limited to
the wanderers.
When the Chronicle, A.D. 741, says that Cuthred of Wessex contended
with Æthelbald of Mercia, it can only mean that he attempted a reprisal
of some portion of Wiccia: but it appears from the Annal of 743, that
in the two years the combatants had become allies. The frontier between
Mercia and Wessex had been finally determined; and there we find the
name of Æthelbald’s recently beatified kinswoman, thrice repeated,
along his own north bank of the Avon--at Bath, at Bristol, and at
Henbury. It should be noticed that otherwise than these three, thus
placed with an obvious purpose, none whatever are found throughout the
whole length and breadth of Wiccia, the other seven being scattered
within Mercia proper.[12] It is hence inferred that these three
dedications are contemporary with each other, and the immediate result
of the transaction of A.D. 741. It may also be worth noting that one
of the still surviving dedications of St. Werburgh within Mercia, at
Warburton, is similarly situated within the northern frontier, the
river Mersey; and probably records a similar result of Æthelbald’s
inroad of Northumbria, entered in the Chronicle at the earlier date of
737: also, according to Bæda, A.D. 740.[13]
The St. Werburgh at Bath is no longer in existence, but its site is
still on record. It was less than a quarter of a mile north of the
Roman town, and about a quarter of a mile from the departure of the
western Roman road, now called Via Julia, from the Foss Way, and
between them, and very near to both.[14]
What was the condition of the spot now occupied by Bristol, in the
centre of which, until yesterday, for nearly eleven hundred and fifty
years, the church with this name has stood, when it was first planted
there, this is not the place to discuss. A century-and-a-half earlier
(A.D. 577), Bath, as we have seen, had been occupied by the West
Saxons, and had no doubt so continued, until this advance southward
of Æthelbald’s frontier also absorbed that city, or certainly its
northern suburb, into Mercia. A great highway, of much earlier date
than the times here being considered, skirted the southern edge of
the weald that we only know as Kingswood; and at least approached the
neck of the peninsula--projecting into a land-locked tidal lagoon,
not a swamp, flooded by the confluence, at the crest of the tide, of
Frome and Avon--upon which stands Bristol, and which has been hitherto
crowned with Æthelbald’s usual symbol of Mercian dominion. As long ago
as ships frequented the estuary of the Severn--ages before the times
we are considering--it is inconceivable that the uncommon advantages
of this haven could have been unknown. A British city had, no doubt,
already existed for unknown ages on the neighbouring heights west
of the lagoon; and there is a reason, too long to set forth here,
to believe that the sheltered Bristol peninsula itself was used,
by the West-Saxons of Ceawlin’s settlement at Bath, as an advanced
frontier towards the Welsh of West Gloucestershire, long before it
was appropriated by Mercia. It was, perhaps, already a town before
Æthelbald planted upon it one of his limitary sanctuaries, having,
_more Saxonico_, a fortress on the isthmus, upon which the great
square Norman tower of Robert the Consul was afterwards raised.
All that is known of the sanctuary at Henbury is, that it was one
of the chapels to Westbury, confirmed to Worcester Cathedral by Bp.
Simon (A.D. 1125-50), and is described in his charter as “capella
sancte Wereburge super montem Hembirie sita.”[15] This is in that
south-western limb of Gloucestershire, bounded by the Frome, Avon, and
Severn, and separated by Kingswood Forest, which it has already been
suggested was never Saxon, but remained Welsh until subdued by Mercia.
So that as the only examples of this dedication to be found south
of Staffordshire and Derbyshire, are the three which line the north
shore of the Avon, the new frontier of Wessex and Mercia; the entire
district of Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and all the intervening
country, from east to west, being totally without them; these three
are manifestly arrayed in one line for a special purpose. The record,
of the contest of Wessex and Mercia, contained in the Annal of A.D.
741, is thus accounted for in this monument of its result. Three more
distant St. Werburghs remain, of which two will now be appropriated to
that of A.D. 743. The one for A.D. 742, passed over for the present,
will afterwards be shewn to involve the remaining sixth.
* * * * *
It will be remembered that, in the year 743, the Chronicle shews
Æthelbald and Cuthred, who two years earlier had been fighting each
other, now united, by perhaps an analogue of a Russo-Turkish alliance,
against an enemy who, while Cuthred had been engaged with his Teutonic
rival, had become troublesome in his rear, and dangerous to both.
Under this year, 743, it says “Now Æthelbald King of the Mercians and
Cuthred King of the West Saxons fought with the Welsh.” It does not
say which of the then surviving three great bodies of the Welsh, who
had been pressed into the great western limbs of the island, that are
geographically divided from each other by the estuary of the Severn
and the great bay of Lancashire; but none can be meant but the
Damnonian or Cornish Britons--the “Welsh” of the West Saxon Cuthred.
No more of Devon could then have been held by the West Saxons than the
fruitful southern lowlands, easily accessible from Somerset and Dorset,
and from the south-coast. Most or all of Cornwall, and the highlands of
Dartmoor and Exmoor, extending into north-west Somerset, still remained
British or Welsh; as for the most part in blood, though not in speech,
they do to this day.
Written history is silent as to the parts separately taken by the
allies in this contest; but other tokens of that of the Mercian are
extant; and the two dedications of St. Werburgh that will next engage
us are among the most significant. A glance at Mercia and the extent of
the provinces annexed thereto by conquest, betrays a ruling political
aim at obtaining access to the great seaports. Besides the Humber with
Trent, and the Mersey, and, as we shall see below, the Medway, and the
Thames itself; what is more to our purpose, we have found it already in
possession of Bristol, added to Gloucester and the mouth of the Wye.
An aggressive kingdom, with this policy, needs no chronicle to tell
us that ships were abundant; and that at least it must have been able
to command the transport service of a large mercantile fleet. It will
readily be understood that one of Æthelbald’s strategies, in aid of his
ally against his Damnonian insurgents, would be, to outflank the ally
himself; and establish a cordon across his rear. This was effected by
transporting, from his Wiccian ports on the Severn, to the north coast
of Devon, a large migration of his own people; who not only occupied
the district between the Dartmoor highlands and the north coast, not
yet Teutonized by Wessex; but possessed themselves of the entire line
across the western promontory, between Dartmoor and the Tamar, as far
as the south sea near Plymouth.
Of this strategic movement several strong indications remain upon the
face of the district; which it is thought, mutually derive increased
force from their accumulation. One of them is the existence, at
the outposts of this expedition, of two of Æthelbald’s favourite
dedications of his kinswoman. One, at Warbstow, stands at the western
extremity of an incroachment of about eight miles beyond the Tamar,
near Launceston, into Cornwall--still visible in our county maps,
in the abstraction of an entire parish from the western side of the
otherwise frontier river, by an abnormal projection beyond it. The
other is at Wembury, where the church is finely situated on the
sea-cliff of the eastern lip of Plymouth Sound. These two examples of
the dedication, which was the favourite stamp of the conqueror’s heel,
mark therefore the western and southern extremities of the assumed
invasion.
Another trace of this great unwritten Mercian descent upon Damnonia,
may be discerned in the structure, as well as the constituents, of
the place-names that cover the invaded district. The country, between
the central highlands of Devon and the north-west coast of Devon and
north-east of Cornwall, is not only secluded into an angular area
bounded by the sea; but lies quite out of the course of the torrent of
West Saxon advance westward: which indeed had been evidently checked
by the Dartmoor heights. It might have been expected, therefore,
except for the explanation now offered, that this district would have
retained a strong tincture of its original Celtic condition, in that
lasting index of race-occupancy its place-names. In this respect it
might have presented the appearance of having been conquered, but
not of a complete replacement of population. On the contrary, at the
first glance of a full-named map, or in a passage through it, the
entire district is surprisingly English. Besides this, the place-names
have not only conspicuous peculiarities of structure, that at once
distinguish this district from that of the West Saxons south and
east of Dartmoor; but these recur with such uncommon frequency and
uniformity, stopped by almost arbitrary limits, as to be manifestly due
to a simultaneous descent of a very large population, at once spreading
themselves over the whole of an extensive region.
One of these notes of a great and simultaneous in-migration, is the
termination of names in “-worthy;” which literally swarms over the
entire tract of country between the Torridge and the Tamar. It is
continued with no less frequency into that abnormal loop of the Devon
frontier, which having crossed the Tamar stretches away towards
the St. Werburgh dedication at Warbstow, and may be assumed to have
been afterwards conceded to a condensed English speaking population
already in possession; when, two hundred years later, King Athelstan
determined that frontier. Others of these names are found scattered
down southwards, over the western foot of Dartmoor, towards the
southern St. Werburgh at Wembury, near Plymouth Sound. It is thought
that this Devonshire “-worthy” is a transplant of the “-wardine” or
“-uerdin” so frequent on the higher Severn and the Wye; changed during
the long weaning from its cradle. In Domesday Book the orthography
of the Devonshire “-worthys” and the “-wardines” of Worcestershire,
Herefordshire, and Shropshire, was still almost identical, and their
orthographical variations flit round one centre common to both. There
is a “Hene_verdon_” at Plympton, close to Wembury.
Another ending of names, also noticeable on the score of constant
repetition over this large though limited area, is “-stow,” found
annexed to the names of church-towns as the equivalent of the Cornish
prefix “Lan-” and the Welsh “Llan-.” Another very numerous termination
is “-cot.” But, with regard to these two, it should be mentioned, as
a remarkable difference from the case of “-worthy,” that “-worthy”
almost ceases abruptly with the Tamar boundary, except that it follows
the Devon encroachments above mentioned across that river; whilst the
“-stow” and “-cot” continue over the north-east angle of Cornwall
itself to the sea. Although this observation does not conflict with our
Mercian in-migration, it is not accounted for by it. It may indicate
successive expeditions or reinforcements, after Æthelbald’s; occurring
as they do beyond his Warbstow outpost. One incident of this disregard
of the frontier, occurs in a difference of the behaviour of “-stow”
on the two sides of it, and may be worth noting for its own sake. On
the Devon side of the Tamar is a “Virginstow,” with a dedication of
St. Bridget: on the Cornish side of the boundary is “Morwenstow,”
preserving “morwen,” understood to be the Cornish word for “virgin.” So
that this English “-stow” is found added to both the English and the
Cornish name, each derived from a pre-existent church, dedicated to a
female saint. The dedication of the present Morwenstow church appears
to be uncertain; but Dr. Borlase and Dr. Oliver have both found, in
Bishop Stafford’s Register, note of a former chapel of St. Mary in the
parish.
It is not meant that these three name-marks are not to be found in
other parts of England: on the contrary, we shall hereafter see Mercian
operations in other counties sufficient to account for a very wide
sprinkling of them. What is here dwelt upon is the unexampled crowding
of them, showing simultaneous colonisation upon a great scale. Another,
but smaller, group of “-worthy” and “-cot,” occurs on the Severn
coast of Somerset, about Minehead, indicating another naval descent
of Mercia. In fact, although the great swarm above described occurs
between the Torridge and the Tamar, two distinct trains flow from it:
one, as before said, over the west foot of Dartmoor to the south sea:
another along the Severn coast, eastward, ending with the Minehead or
Selworthy group; and does not crop up again until in Gloucestershire it
is found in its home midland form of Sheepwardine, and Miserden.
Another example of this sort of connection of Mercia with Cornwall and
south-west England may be briefly cited. Among the few--not more than
six or eight--non-Celtic, but national or non-Catholic, dedications
in Cornwall, is one of St. Cuthbert; a name that is also continued in
“Cubert,” the secular name of the town. It is situated in one of the
promontories that so boldly project into the sea on the north coast
of Cornwall, but farther westward than the English footsteps above
noted. A very learned and acute writer[16] could not make out how
“St. Cuthbert has made his way from Lindisfarn to Wells;” and says,
perhaps truly, that it “does not imply a Northumbrian settlement in
Somerset.” But St. Cuthbert at Wells, might reasonably be left to the
cross-examination of historians, or neighbours, of that place; and if
judiciously and reverently questioned, by the help of what is here
said, would possibly give a good account of himself.
It is quite true, as might have been expected, that St. Cuthbert is
much more often found at his home in Northumbria than in the south-west
of England. In the south-eastern counties he has not been found at
all: but over the midland counties, and all down through the western
ones he is thinly sprinkled all the way. Between Humber and Mersey,
and Tweed and Solway, forty-three can be named if required, and Bishop
Forbes adds many from his side of the border. Derbyshire has one at
Doveridge, near the Mercian royal castle of Tutbury; Warwickshire one
at Shustoke, eight miles south of another villa regia at Tamworth;
Leicestershire, Notts, Beds, have each one; Lincoln and Norfolk two
each; Worcestershire perhaps one in the name “Cudbergelawe;”[17]
Gloucestershire, one at Siston by Pucklechurch, and probably a second
in the name “Cuberley;” Herefordshire two, or three? Somerset one at
Wells; Dorset one, or two? Devon one, Cornwall one.
This condensed statement of a series of facts, constitutes one of
the phenomena of our argument; and shall here be accounted for by an
observation, to which there will, further on, be occasion to revert.
Whatever may have been the causes, there was a more intimate earlier
intercourse between the Anglian kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia,
than between them and the more southern or Saxon kingdoms; so that,
in fact, the hagiology of Northumberland is found to have infiltrated
into that of Mercia. Sometimes the intercourse was hostile, and of
this St. Oswald’s prevalence in Cheshire, Shropshire, &c., is an
instance historically known. Another cause might be collected from
a study of any pedigree tables of the rulers of the two kingdoms.
A later action of this mutuality appears in the dedications of the
Northumbrian Alkmond, found in towns built by Æthelfled, who, Amazon
though she be reputed, confessed her womanhood in her _cultus_ of the
child-martyr, as at her town of Derby and Shrewsbury. When, therefore,
we find Northumbrian dedications in these unlikely southern regions, we
are not driven to “imply a Northumbrian settlement,” but a sprout of
Northumbrian hagiology, replanted along with a Mercian settlement.
Midway between Wells and Somerton is Glastonbury. The Chronicle
published by Hearne as John of Glastonbury, says that Æthelbald
“rex Merciorum,” A.D. 744, gave to Abbot Tumbert, and the Familia
at Glaston, lands at “Gassing and Bradelegh.”[18] Bradley is known
and plain enough, and adjoins the Foss Way, near Glastonbury and
Somerton; the other place is variously, and very corruptly written:
once “Seacescet.” But there is still better evidence that at this
time the supremacy of Æthelbald of Mercia was acknowledged in this
district of Wessex. A charter, also dated A.D. 744, of a gift of land
at “Baldheresberge et Scobbanuuirthe”--Baltonsburg and, as some say,
Shapwick--to Glastonbury, by a lady called Lulla, with the licence of
Æthelbald, “qui Britannicæ insulæ monarchiam dispensat.” The first
signature is Æthelbald’s, followed by Cuthred of Wessex “annuens;”
after which other witnesses, including Herewald, Bishop of Sherborne.
It is printed in the Monasticon[19] and by Mr. Kemble,[20] both from
the same manuscript, but with many slight variations in orthography
which seem to be arbitrary in either. Mr. Kemble prints “Hilla,” but
John of Glastonbury has “Lulla,” and so have both Dugdale and the
new Monasticon. Mr. Kemble puts his star stigma but, although not
of contemporary clerkships, it must transmit, in substance, a more
ancient deed, and is at least an accumulative ancient and written
confirmation of the external evidence already given of the supremacy
of Mercia in this part of Wessex, and the subordination of Cuthred,
even within the territory allotted to him at the contest of A.D. 741.
Observe, in passing, an example, in the name “Scobbanuuirthe,” of the
Mercian--“-uuerdin”--in a transition form towards the “-worthy” of
North Devon.
At all events, it is not to be wondered at that we should find a St.
Cuthbert on the north coast of Cornwall, among the other symptoms
that have been given of a Mercian settlement there. But one in Devon
deserves some particular notice; because it is found identified with
one of the examples of “-worthy” which is an outlier, and far away
from the crowd that has been so much dwelt upon. These two tests of
Mercian influence have indeed travelled far away from their fellows,
but travelled together. It is at Widworthy, in the eastern corner of
the county, between Honiton and Axminster, where the dedication and
the termination, although compatriots, are both strangers together.
No chronicle explains this, though no doubt it has a story never yet
written. But it seems cruel to forsake the St. Cuthbert at Wells to
account for itself, unhelped. After all that has been lately said, and
insisted upon, to the contrary, what if it should turn out that the
“Sumertun” of the Annal of A.D. 733, was Somerton in Somersetshire,
twelve miles south of Wells, as our deprecated obsolete schoolbooks
used to teach us? Another twenty-five miles reaches Widworthy. The then
existing Foss-Way, which, even in its grass-grown abandoned fragments,
is still a broad and practicable travelling road, passes within a very
few miles of Wells, Glastonbury, Somerton, and Widworthy.
* * * * *
But a more substantial evidence, of a long continuance of Mercian
influence beyond the Tamar, is not wanting: and even of its great
extension farther westward, down to the time of King Alfred. A large
hoard of coins and gold and silver ornaments was found near St. Austell
in 1774; and a description and tabulation was lately published, by
Mr. Rashleigh of Menabilly, of 114 coins that were rescued from the
scramble.[21] Of these, no less than 60 were of Mercian Kings (A.D.
757-874), whilst only seventeen belong to the then dominant West-Saxon
sole monarchs (A.D. 800 to Alfred), and one to Northumbria.
Add to these notes of the Anglian--and not Saxon--kinship of the
English population of north-east Cornwall, the recurrence in that
county of what, to uncritical ears, has a great likeness to the song or
musical cadence already mentioned as met with in Mercia proper. West
Saxons who had seen the first production of the comedy of “John Bull,”
used to tell us with much relish, how this peculiarity was imitated
upon the stage: and, in spite of the friction of an active scholastic
career, it is still occasionally discernible in cathedral pulpits. It
has even maintained, to recent times, a feeling among the West Saxons
of Devon that a Cornishman is, in some degree, a foreigner. What again
about the “Cornish hug” in wrestling?[22] so strongly contrasted with
the hold-off grip of the collar or shoulders, and the “fair back-fall”
which is the pride of the Devonshire champion. It has nothing to do
with the erudite difference of Celt and Teuton. The men of Devon--such
as Drake and Raleigh[23]--have nearly as much Celtic blood as those
of Cornwall. Cornishmen are fond of saying that their English speech
is more correct than that of Devon: by which they mean, that their
dialect is nearer to the one that has had the luck to run into printed
books. Perhaps it is more Anglian and less Saxon. After a neighbourship
of nearly twelve hundred years, let them now shake hands and be
Anglo-Saxons: or Englishmen, if they prefer it, and wish to include the
super-critics in their greeting.
* * * * *
Five out of the six extraneous dedications of St. Werburgh have now
been referred to the active presence of Æthelbald, at the places where
they are found, especially in connection with his exploits as they
are obscurely recorded in the two Anglo-Saxon Annals of the years 741
and 743. The sixth, and last, of them remains, in like manner, to be
brought into contact with him, and with the other recited Annal of the
intermediate year, 742. We left three of the dedications as sentinels
of their founder’s conquest of his southern frontier of Wiccia. Two
more were at the more distant duty, of keeping guard over his strategic
settlement, on the western rear of Wessex. The one yet to be dealt with
is that of a church still known by the name of that saint, yet more
distant from her Mercian home; in the extreme south-eastern county of
Kent: and it only remains to enquire what business it has had; not only
so far away from its midland cradle, but also from the abiding places
of its fellow wanderers.
Perhaps this would have been a much shorter task than either of the
others, but that, at this part of the enquiry, our path is crossed by
a controversy that began nearly three centuries ago, and has been ever
since maintained with more or less warmth; and with so much learning,
and variety of opinion, that the only point of approach, to unanimity
among the contenders seems to be an acknowledgment that they have each
left it unsettled. Yet this includes the question before us; whether
or not the Annal 742 of the Chronicle really concerns that part of the
island wherein the last of our outlying series of St. Werburghs has
come to our hands. It is, indeed, believed that the newly-imported fact
itself, of our finding this dedication where it is, may be a weighty
contribution to the settlement of the question; yet the controversy
has been so long carried on, and has involved so great an array of
authoritative and orthodox scholarship; that we can only presume to
pass it, by carefully and respectfully over-climbing it, and not by a
contemptuous Remusian leap.
This remaining sixth St. Werburgh is situated within that small
peninsula of the north shore of Kent, which is insulated by the mouths
of the Thames and Medway. In fact, it is not unlike a tongue in a
mouth, of which Essex and the Isle of Sheppey are as the teeth or
gums. A line from Rochester bridge to Gravesend would separate more
than the entire district from the mainland: indeed it is all of the
county of Kent that is north of Rochester. It consists of an elevated
chalk promontory, about ten or twelve miles from east to west, and
four from north to south, inclosing several small fertile valleys:
added to which, on the north or Thames front, is a broad alluvial
level or marsh, within the estuary of that river, of several miles
in width. Camden says of this peninsula, “HO enim vocatur ilia quasi
Chersonessus.” It is, accordingly, a large specimen of that sort of
configuration of a tract of land in its relation to water, of which
the name is often found to contain the descriptive syllable, “-holm,”
“-ham,” or “-hoe.” Whether or not these three are dialectic varieties
of one word, need not here be considered: it is certain, however,
that the names of such peninsular tracts are very often found to be
marked with “-hoe;” and “Hoo”[24] is the name of the hundred which
still constitutes the largest and most prominent portion of this
peninsula. So it was already called, even before the early time with
which we shall find our own concern with it; for in a charter, dated
A.D. 738,[25] it is already mentioned as “regio quæ vocatur Hohg.” In
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 902, it is mentioned as “Holme.” In
Domesday,[26] the hundred which constitutes the peninsular portion, is
called “_HOV_;” the isthmus portion having already, however, become a
separate hundred, then called “Essamele,” now “Shamwell.” The towns in
the district have their proper names added to “Hoo,” as “Hoo-St.-Mary,”
and “Hoo-St.-Werburgh:” and this last has the church above referred to.
This is situated on the southern or Medway shore of the Hoo; but on the
cliff of the northern side of the elevated core of the peninsula, and
over-looking the great reach of the estuary of the Thames, and the
broad alluvial level embraced by it, is the town of “Cliffe;” of which
the church has the dedication St. Helen. The two churches are just four
miles apart. There are several other churches now in the peninsula,
but the others have been attributed to these two, of St. Werburgh and
St. Helen, as their mother churches, of which the other parishes are
ancient offshoots or chapelries.
* * * * *