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.