F Bede is right, the Roman armies did not leave our shores till A.D. 452. Whether it was then, so near the end of the old Western Empire, or a little earlier, it must have been a dark hour for Dorset, which no doubt saw something of the embarkation; some considerable force, in that strict order which to the last the legions maintained, would no doubt march from Durnovaria to Clavinio (Weymouth) to take ship. The light of history falls faint over Dorset and Dorchester for many a year from that Roman exodus. But it is interesting to find that the “Saxons,” to use the familiar term, took a century and a half to master Dorset; our fathers must have made a stubborn fight against endless raids. It is at least possible that the victory of Badon Hill—in which, says the Arthurian legend, the Saxon hordes were ruinously beaten by the “Britons,” led perhaps by a Rome-trained chief—was won in Dorset; Badbury, near Wimborne, in the belief of Edwin Guest of Cambridge, was Badon. But Wessex in due time absorbed Dorset and Dorchester; and now our fields and woodlands were well sprinkled with royal manors, while our town, beyond a doubt, still kept much of its old dignity and culture; for the Saxons left the walled cities largely alone, after disarming their inhabitants. Durnovaria, with its name changed to Dorceastre, still stood fenced with its massive wall and still contained many a stately house, tessellated and frescoed. Kings of Wessex doubtless visited Dorset often, for the chase, and for sustenance on their manors, and to keep state at Dorceastre. Alfred, in all likelihood, was known by sight in the town. His grandson, Athelstan, allowed it the right of coinage—a sure testimony to its importance.
It suffered sorely from the Danes a century later. Sweyn, in 1002, taking awful revenge for the massacre wrought by Ethelred the “Unredy”—that is to say, the “Counsel-less”—marched from Devon to Wilts by Dorset, and left Dorchester a desolation. It is said that he tore down the walls, but this, almost for certain, was not so; they were too massive to be wrecked without long labour, which the rovers would not care to spend; and there is large evidence for their existence far into the seventeenth century. However, Danish fire and sword must have left the town black and blood-stained within its ramparts. Half a century later, under the Confessor, Dorchester counted 172 houses; the number is recorded in Domesday Book (1085-6) as large, in contrast to the eighty-eight at the date of the survey. Very likely the building of the Norman Castle (where now stands the Prison) had to do with the shrinkage; the castle was sure to be a centre of spoliation.
The restless John was in the town in 1201, and often later—hunting, no doubt, and taking his “one night’s firm,” the statutable sustenance due to the King and his men. Under Edward I., in 1295, we sent burgesses to the first English Parliament. Our last burgess sat from 1874 till 1885. Dorchester is now only the centre of an electoral division.
In that same reign appears the first mention of our town churches: Holy Trinity, St. Peter’s, and All Saints’. Not that the parishes are no older than that date; indeed, the porch of St. Peter’s contains a twelfth century fragment.
High Street, Dorchester.
The reign of Edward III. experienced the terror of the Great Plague, carried from China over Asia to Europe, where literally millions of people perished. It burst into England, alas! from a ship which put in at the Dorset shore, and no doubt our town owed to that awful scourge the low state of industry recorded a little later. Things had mended by the time of Henry VI., and from then, upon the whole, the place has been prosperous. In the seventeenth century it was busy with cloth-making and, as now, with the brewing of beer. In the old times of farming it was a great centre of grain commerce. Stories are told of Dorchester fair-days, when wheat-laden wagons stood ranged in long file from Cornhill, along South Street, and far out upon the Weymouth road.
The town had its troubles in “the great century.” In August, 1613, a fierce fire swept it almost clean away. The old churches of Trinity and All Saints vanished, with nearly every other building within the walls (and some outside their circuit, in Fordington), save only St. Peter’s and the houses near it—among which would be that now almost solitary relic of picturesque Old Dorchester, “Jeffreys’ lodgings.”
But the rebuilding must have been energetic, for in the Civil Wars we find Dorchester populous and active enough to be a troublesome focus of “malignity.” “A place more entirely disaffected to the King, England had not,” says Clarendon. One probable cause of this attitude lay in the commanding influence of John White, Rector of Holy Trinity from 1606 to 1648. White was an Oxonian, a man of culture and piety, and evidently of strong personal influence. Preachers to-day may envy, if they please, the pulpit privileges given him by the town. The borough records show, for example, that in 1630 one Nycholls was brought to justice for having “offered speeche concerning Mr. John White’s preaching.” White helped to plan the colony of Massachusetts, but he did not join the emigration. His power was felt at home, in the Westminster Assembly, and in the politics of Dorchester.