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are in what was formerly called the Marches of Wales, and as the history of the 
name is in this—as in so many other cases—the history of the thing, I must ask 
you in the first place to listen to a little etymological discussion. 
About the year 585 an Anglian Chief named Crida (who is thought to have 
left his name in Credenhill) crossed the Severn and subdued the Silurian tribes, 
which occupied the country between that river and the Wye. He erected the 
conquered country into a kingdom to which was given the name of Myrcna-ric 
(Latinised as Mercia), because it formed the frontier province between the Angles 
and the Welsh. The same name—Marcia—is borne by a province in Spain and 
for the same reason. In both cases it meant the district of the “‘march” or 
margin, the demarcation between two alien races. And we find the term entering 
into the composition of the names of similarly situated districts throughout 
Europe. Thus Denmark was the Danish frontier, Finmark and Luppmark the pro- 
vinces wrested by Scandinavian invaders from the Fins and Lapps, Steyermark (or 
Styria) the boundary between the Germans and the Croats. Single places also 
bore the name. Za Murche in the Vosges used to be one of the border towns of 
Alsace, but of course has now been annexed to Germany, and in England we have 
March in Cambridgeshire, situated on the division line between the Danish and 
Anglian settlements, and the same name applied to part of Herefordshire and 
Shropshire, and forming the title borne by the noble family of Mortimer. 
Our own Mercians or March people were a decidedly aggressive race, and 
by. the middle of the 8th century they had absorbed the territory of the Hwiccas 
(Worcestershire and Gloucestershire), the S. Angles and the M. Angles—in-fact, 
they had gained possession of all the central part of England. Of course with this 
extension of territory the original significance of the name was impaired, and when 
—two centuries later—Athelstan crushed both Britons and Danes, it was 
merged in the general term England. Not that it then finally disappeared, for the 
province of Mercia continued to exist, governed first by ealdormen and then by 
earls, until the great change which was brought about by the Norman Conquest. 
But the Marches—using that term in its more precise and earlier significa- 
tion—retained their former character even though their dimensions were curtailed. 
They were still a border district, the scene of incessant strife, harassed by alter- 
nate raids and reprisals, and suffering almost as much from the exactions of the 
feudal lords who claimed dominion over them as from the invasions of their hostile 
neighbours. Monmouthshire, it must be remembered, was not constituted a 
county, until the 12th century, thus at the date of Domesday Survey (1086) the 
town of Monmouth, the Castle of Caerleon, and the district of Archenfield, were 
included in Herefordshire, and the country about Llanvair and Portskewit was 
reckoned part of Gloucestershire. All west of the Usk was regarded as being in 
Wales, and the particular district in which we now stand was probably included 
in what was called Went or Gwent Wood, the word Gwent (meaning perhaps fair 
or bright) is preserved to usin Kentchurch. Where then were the Marches of 
Wales? We can give no precise answer to that question, but many say that they 
included all the country contiguous to the Welsh boundary. Under the Conqueror 
