As to the most substantial objection, which of course has continued to be a constantly recurring ingredient of this controversy, that the place of the synods must have been within the kingdom of Mercia, it seems a little oblique of the mark aimed at. They were royal councils, and these must be expected to have followed the presence of the king and his court, as was the case in much later times than those now under consideration. Most of the remaining records of these synods at Cloveshoe, and of the other national ones during the same period, show the king to have presided; and it is true that it is the Mercian King, who is so found, during both of the long reigns of Æthelbald and Offa; and throughout the time of the domination of the Mercians in Kent. The policy of the Mercian aggressors, during their long continued contention for empire, to grasp the great estuaries of the island, has already been referred to, and a glance at sheets I. and VI. of the Ordinance survey will show how desirable was this Chersonesus for the head quarters of a power, which made a chief point of the possession of the Thames, and its only less valuable and smaller sister, the Medway. The opposite coast of the East Saxons had already, for several reigns, been subjected to Mercia. A.D. 704, Suebræd, the regulus of the East Saxons, could not grant lands at Twickenham, then in Essex, but “in prouincia quæ nuncupatur middelseaxan,” to Waldhere, Bishop of London, except “cum licentia Æthelredi regis” of Mercia.[62] Kent, less fortunate, was still contended for by both Wessex and Mercia, as well as by Sussex, and by all three it was successively ravaged; and it even looks as if the three contending invaders maintained, as clients, rival pretenders, as kings of the parts of Kent at the time under their power. The division of Kent into Lathes may be a so-to-speak fossil, or rather an archaic autograph upon the surface of the county, of this state of it. It is, however, certain that Mercia ultimately made good a permanent domination of Kent; and the kings of Kent acknowledged that supremacy in their government, by merely counter-subscribing the acts of the kings of Mercia.[63]
The mass of chalk, of which the body of the Hoo consists, is said to pass under the Thames; and a small continuation of it reappears on the Essex side, directly opposite Cliffe and Higham and Chalk, at East Tilbury; and having continued four miles westward, behind the marsh marked by Tilbury Fort, dies out at Purfleet.[64] It forms an elevated promontory at East Tilbury, penetrating the levels on that side to the river. The present chief traject of the river is about three miles westward, from Gravesend to the fort: but the chalk promontory is the terminus of an ancient straight chain of roads, which, although in some places interrupted by later breaks and divergencies, indicates a traffic of ages, from this terminus on the river, in a north-western direction, striking the Iknield Street at Brentwood, and apparently afterwards still continuing the same line: probably to Watling Street; any rate to the heart of the Mercian dominions: say, to Hertford, if you like.
There are various other substantial evidences of great ancient intercourse of Essex with the Hoo of Kent, by a trajectus at this place, between East Tilbury and Higham; and Higham is only five miles from Rochester bridge, by which the Watling Street entered that city. Morant says, of the manor of Southall in East Tilbury, “This estate goes now to the repair of Rochester bridge: when and by whom given we do not find.”[65] He also mentions the “famous Higham Causeway” in connection with Tilbury.[66] Until the reign of Stephen, the church at Higham had belonged to the Abbot and Convents of St. John, Colchester.[67] The importance of this Essex traject to the kingdoms north of the Thames, when the domination of Mercia in Essex and Kent was beginning, may be inferred from the fact that one of the two colleges, or capitular churches, founded by Cedda, A.D. 653, in Essex, was at Tilbury.[68] There is a place called Chadwell by West Tilbury. Some years later, A.D. 676, when Æthelred of Mercia first devastated Kent, it is evident that he used this passage; for the destruction of Rochester, five miles south of Higham and Cliffe, is the only one of his exploits, on that expedition, specified by name.[69] So late as A.D. 1203, Giraldus Cambrensis passed from Kent to Essex by Tilbury. These incidents, connecting Tilbury and Higham, may qualify the surprise that has hitherto troubled church historians at finding that “Clofeshoch,” at so early a date as A.D. 673, was appointed, at “Herutford,” as the place for future councils, even if Herutford had been Hertford, as some say.
The conclusion that the line of approach, and of the first invasion of Kent by the Mercians, was by a passage from the Essex coast to Higham or Cliffe; and that the peninsula of Hoo, adjoining Rochester, had then and long after been the basis of their domination of that kingdom; had been already formed, from what has been already said. And it was at this point, that it was thought worth while to see what the chief county historians say about the two termini of the trajectus.
This is Hasted’s statement:—
“Plautius, the Roman General under the Emperor Claudius, in the year of Christ, 43, is said to have passed the river Thames from Essex into Kent, near the mouth of it, with his army, in pursuit of the flying Britons who being acquainted with the firm and fordable places of it passed it easily. (Dion. Cass., lib. lx.) The place of this passage is, by many, supposed to have been from East Tilbury, in Essex, across the river to Higham. (By Dr. Thorpe, Dr. Plott, and others.) Between these places there was a ferry on the river for many ages after, the usual method of intercourse between the two counties of Kent and Essex for all these parts, and it continued so till the dissolution of the abbey here; before which time Higham was likewise the place for shipping and unshipping corn and goods in great quantities from this part of the country, to and from London and elsewhere. The probability of this having been a frequented ford or passage in the time of the Romans, is strengthened by the visible remains of a raised causeway or road, near 30 feet wide, leading from the Thames side through the marshes by Higham southward to this Ridgway above mentioned, and thence across the London highroad on Gads-hill to Shorne-ridgway, about half-a-mile beyond which adjoins the Roman Watling-street road near the entrance into Cobham-park. In the pleas of the crown in the 21st year of K. Edward I., the Prioress of the nunnery of Higham was found liable to maintain a bridge and causeway that led from Higham down to the river Thames, in order to give the better and easier passage to such as would ferry from thence into Essex.”[70]
It may be added that the Hoo peninsula has other marks of having been, at much earlier times, a district of great transit. There is, perhaps, no other part of England, of so small an extent, which has so many and clustered examples of “Street” in names of secluded spots—including the almost ubiquitous “Silver Street”[71]—quite disengaged from those that follow the line itself of Watling-street. Yet Mr. Johnson of Cranbrook goes on to say, “As Cliffe in Hoo was never a place of note itself, so it lies, and ever did lie, out of the road to any place of note.” It is believed that he has greatly under-rated the substantial results of such a dynastic change as we are now considering; followed, for a thousand years, by its sequential changes on the material surface of the earth.
At all events, this was, evidently, the earliest line of approach, by which Mercia, with its contingents, the other Anglian nations and the East Saxons, whom it had either subdued or otherwise allied, invaded Kent; and this continued to be its chief or only access for some years. A single glance, at the geography of the Hoo, will show the value of such an advanced peninsula, as the basis of such an incursion upon the centre of Kent; and as the stronghold from which the subjection of that kingdom could be maintained. We have other means of knowing that it was probably, at least, thirty years before a second or optional approach was secured by way of the east of Kent. This second access must have been a much coveted one, and when it came into hand must have been of great value; particularly in regard to the occasional, or at least frequent, royal residence already established at the Hoo. The Watling Street, the greatest and most frequented of all the highways then existing, led from the very heart of Mercia, in a direct line through Middlesex, to the very isthmus of the peninsula itself. Although Kent had been already invaded, A.D. 676, yet so late as A.D. 695,[72] London remained subject to Essex; but, as we have already seen, only nine years afterwards Twickenham, in the province called “Middelseaxan,” had become subject to Mercia.
Some of our most learned historians describe the “Middle Saxons” as a very small people, forming a part of the East Saxons; but they are obliged to confess that they find very little to say about them. It is believed that there never was a separate people called Middle Saxons. They have been created out of a snatched analogy, of the mere name “Middlesex,” with “Essex,” “Sussex,” and “Wessex.” There can be little doubt that Middlesex represents the original civitas, or territory, of the local government, of its urbs or burgh of London, the capital of the kingdom of Essex. Like other great commercial seaports or staples, this already great mart had maintained much of the condition of a free city; and, in passing, along with its territory from Essex to the ascendant power of Mercia, it may not have been by conquest, but by a voluntary exercise of that instinct, to unite in the fortunes of an advancing supremacy, which is often associated with, and perhaps closely allied to, commercial habits. At all events, it is at this time that the name, Middlesex, first comes to light;[73] and it is believed that instead of being, like the names of the Saxon nations, formed by the addition of an adjective; the “middle” of this newer name is a preposition, and that it means, that Anglian acquisition which had now thrust itself between the East Saxons and the South and West Saxons. The Anglo-Saxon Dictionaries produce an example, from one of the glossaries of Ælfric, of “Middel-gesculdru” = the space between the shoulders.