But a more substantial evidence, of a long continuance of Mercian influence beyond the Tamar, is not wanting: and even of its great extension farther westward, down to the time of King Alfred. A large hoard of coins and gold and silver ornaments was found near St. Austell in 1774; and a description and tabulation was lately published, by Mr. Rashleigh of Menabilly, of 114 coins that were rescued from the scramble.[21] Of these, no less than 60 were of Mercian Kings (A.D. 757-874), whilst only seventeen belong to the then dominant West-Saxon sole monarchs (A.D. 800 to Alfred), and one to Northumbria.
Add to these notes of the Anglian—and not Saxon—kinship of the English population of north-east Cornwall, the recurrence in that county of what, to uncritical ears, has a great likeness to the song or musical cadence already mentioned as met with in Mercia proper. West Saxons who had seen the first production of the comedy of “John Bull,” used to tell us with much relish, how this peculiarity was imitated upon the stage: and, in spite of the friction of an active scholastic career, it is still occasionally discernible in cathedral pulpits. It has even maintained, to recent times, a feeling among the West Saxons of Devon that a Cornishman is, in some degree, a foreigner. What again about the “Cornish hug” in wrestling?[22] so strongly contrasted with the hold-off grip of the collar or shoulders, and the “fair back-fall” which is the pride of the Devonshire champion. It has nothing to do with the erudite difference of Celt and Teuton. The men of Devon—such as Drake and Raleigh[23]—have nearly as much Celtic blood as those of Cornwall. Cornishmen are fond of saying that their English speech is more correct than that of Devon: by which they mean, that their dialect is nearer to the one that has had the luck to run into printed books. Perhaps it is more Anglian and less Saxon. After a neighbourship of nearly twelve hundred years, let them now shake hands and be Anglo-Saxons: or Englishmen, if they prefer it, and wish to include the super-critics in their greeting.
Five out of the six extraneous dedications of St. Werburgh have now been referred to the active presence of Æthelbald, at the places where they are found, especially in connection with his exploits as they are obscurely recorded in the two Anglo-Saxon Annals of the years 741 and 743. The sixth, and last, of them remains, in like manner, to be brought into contact with him, and with the other recited Annal of the intermediate year, 742. We left three of the dedications as sentinels of their founder’s conquest of his southern frontier of Wiccia. Two more were at the more distant duty, of keeping guard over his strategic settlement, on the western rear of Wessex. The one yet to be dealt with is that of a church still known by the name of that saint, yet more distant from her Mercian home; in the extreme south-eastern county of Kent: and it only remains to enquire what business it has had; not only so far away from its midland cradle, but also from the abiding places of its fellow wanderers.
Perhaps this would have been a much shorter task than either of the others, but that, at this part of the enquiry, our path is crossed by a controversy that began nearly three centuries ago, and has been ever since maintained with more or less warmth; and with so much learning, and variety of opinion, that the only point of approach, to unanimity among the contenders seems to be an acknowledgment that they have each left it unsettled. Yet this includes the question before us; whether or not the Annal 742 of the Chronicle really concerns that part of the island wherein the last of our outlying series of St. Werburghs has come to our hands. It is, indeed, believed that the newly-imported fact itself, of our finding this dedication where it is, may be a weighty contribution to the settlement of the question; yet the controversy has been so long carried on, and has involved so great an array of authoritative and orthodox scholarship; that we can only presume to pass it, by carefully and respectfully over-climbing it, and not by a contemptuous Remusian leap.
This remaining sixth St. Werburgh is situated within that small peninsula of the north shore of Kent, which is insulated by the mouths of the Thames and Medway. In fact, it is not unlike a tongue in a mouth, of which Essex and the Isle of Sheppey are as the teeth or gums. A line from Rochester bridge to Gravesend would separate more than the entire district from the mainland: indeed it is all of the county of Kent that is north of Rochester. It consists of an elevated chalk promontory, about ten or twelve miles from east to west, and four from north to south, inclosing several small fertile valleys: added to which, on the north or Thames front, is a broad alluvial level or marsh, within the estuary of that river, of several miles in width. Camden says of this peninsula, “HO enim vocatur ilia quasi Chersonessus.” It is, accordingly, a large specimen of that sort of configuration of a tract of land in its relation to water, of which the name is often found to contain the descriptive syllable, “-holm,” “-ham,” or “-hoe.” Whether or not these three are dialectic varieties of one word, need not here be considered: it is certain, however, that the names of such peninsular tracts are very often found to be marked with “-hoe;” and “Hoo”[24] is the name of the hundred which still constitutes the largest and most prominent portion of this peninsula. So it was already called, even before the early time with which we shall find our own concern with it; for in a charter, dated A.D. 738,[25] it is already mentioned as “regio quæ vocatur Hohg.” In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 902, it is mentioned as “Holme.” In Domesday,[26] the hundred which constitutes the peninsular portion, is called “HOV;” the isthmus portion having already, however, become a separate hundred, then called “Essamele,” now “Shamwell.” The towns in the district have their proper names added to “Hoo,” as “Hoo-St.-Mary,” and “Hoo-St.-Werburgh:” and this last has the church above referred to. This is situated on the southern or Medway shore of the Hoo; but on the cliff of the northern side of the elevated core of the peninsula, and over-looking the great reach of the estuary of the Thames, and the broad alluvial level embraced by it, is the town of “Cliffe;” of which the church has the dedication St. Helen. The two churches are just four miles apart. There are several other churches now in the peninsula, but the others have been attributed to these two, of St. Werburgh and St. Helen, as their mother churches, of which the other parishes are ancient offshoots or chapelries.
Among the most famous names of places in England, during the long aggressive reigns of Æthelbald and Offa, when, for the largest part of the eighth century, the other kingdoms were more or less threatened with the supremacy of Mercia, was that of a place called Cloveshoe or Clovesham.[27] Its celebrity has been, no doubt, much enhanced by its intimate connection with the Church History of that period; but it has shared, with many of the names of the localities of the most important events of the history of those times, in a great deal of uncertainty and controversy as to the actual place.
Few monuments of those ages are preserved to us in such multitude as names of places, and in such apparent entireness; but few are of such uncertain and doubtful appropriation. Although we are living in the midst of the scenes of the greatest events of our early history; yet one of the most surprising circumstances is, that of the number of the names of the places that have remained almost unaltered, during the interval of twelve centuries, so few of them can, with any degree of certainty, be identified: so that, although a Gazetteer or Index Locorum of those times would be a most valuable help it would be the most difficult to compile; and, judging from past attempts at contributions to it, impossible to be done with any reasonable approach to trustworthiness. The visible monuments have almost entirely been swept from off the face of the earth. Towns, then of importance and even magnitude, if not now entirely subject to the plough, are only represented by the merest villages; and religious institutions have had their identity drowned by the importation of later monastic orders; and generally by more catholic, but less national or local, dedications. The names of the places, in some few cases identified by immemorial traditions, are often the only indications of the whereabouts of some of the greatest events; but even the names themselves are obscured by the different methods, used in that age and in ours, of distinguishing them from other similar names; and the traditions, which should have preserved them, are interrupted by the long interval, between the events themselves, and the time at which the names first come again into our sight.
But this Clovesho = Clofeshoum = or Clobesham[28] had necessarily retained its hold upon the public memory of the ages from the eighth to the sixteenth centuries, from the importance to the Church of the great acts of councils, both royal and pontifical, there held; and the memory or tradition of the National Church, was, of all others, the most vivid and tenacious of any, during that long period—perhaps the only one which may be said to have bridged it, unbroken by interruptions, such as dynastic revolutions. When the tradition of the actual whereabouts of this famous place comes first into our view, we find it attached to the “Hoo” of Kent above described, and to the place called “Cliffe” there situated. The name now current is “Cliffe-at-Hoo,” and this appears to have been the form in which it came to Camden’s knowledge: at any rate, in the earlier editions of Britannia (1587), he mentions this place as “Cliues at Ho Bedæ dictum.”