Part 2

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.

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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.

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 “Hene_verdon_” 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.

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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.

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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.