Vestiges of the supremacy of Mercia in the South of England, during the eighth century / by Thomas Kerslake.

  • Thomas Kerslake
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vestiges of the supremacy of Mercia in the South of England, during the eighth century / by Thomas Kerslake. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    to be Wanborongh, a remarkable elevation within the fork of two great Homan ways a few miles south of Swindon. But our business is with three later entries in the Chronicle, for the three successive years 741, 742, and 743 ; of which the first for a.d. 741, will be first here submitted as the record of the final sub- jection of Wiccia, and the establishment of the Bristol Avon as the permanent southern frontier of Mercia. The other two Annals will then be otherwise disposed of. These are the words of the Chronicle : — A.d. 741. Now Cuthred succeeded to the West-Saxon king- dom, and held it sixteen years, and he contended hardly with iEthelbald, King of the Mercians. A.d. 742. Now was a great Synod gathered at Cloveshou, and yEthelbald, King of the Mercians was there, and Cutbert, Archbishop [of Canterbury], and many other wise men. A.d. 743. NowiEthelbald, King of the Mercians, and Cuthred, King of the West-Saxons fought with the Welsh. We have in these three Annals a specimen of that condensed form and style, that is common to this ancient text and still more venerable primseval records; and which invites and justifies attempts to interpret them by the help of any existing external monuments. There are still known in England thirteen dedications of churches or chapels in the name of St. Werburgh, although, perhaps, not more than half of them are any longer above ground.1 Seven, however, out of the thirteen are within the counties of Stafford, Chester, Shropshire, and Derbyshire : that is, they are within the original kingdom of Mercia, wherein, as the posthumous renown of the saint never extended beyond a nation, or rather a dynasty, that long since has been extinct and forgotten, we might 1 One of the obsolete ones was brought to mind by a paper read by Mr. C. E. Davis, at Bath, in 1857 : another is printed from the Register of Worcester Cathedral in Thomas’s Survey, kindly pointed out by Mr. John Taylor ; so that others, unreckoned, may possibly be brought to light. There is one, in addition to all those above mentioned, at Dublin ; but, as the dedications in Strongbow’s Dublin are no more than a post-Norman colonisation of those at Bristol, it does not enter into our reckoning.
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