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 “Heneverdon” 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.