Vestiges of the supremacy of Mercia in the south of England during the eighth century

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.

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.

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.