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.