40 A Contribution to the Anthropology of Wiltshire. 



previously ; but this was the first definite settlement. Some time 

 later, the colonists multiplying and being reinforced from the 

 continent, Ceawlin began his brilliant series of conquests, mastered 

 the whole valley of the Upper Thames, sacked and destroyed 

 Cirencester and Bath, and apparently colonised the parts of 

 Gloucestershire coterminous with Wilts. To this period we may, 

 I suppose, assign the occupation of Marlborough, Highworth, and 

 Swindon and Cricklade, and perhaps also of Corsham and Chippen- 

 ham. That of the Pewsey Valley may have been later ; but' that 

 of Mere (and Winkelbury) was probably now complete, though 

 the late Eowland Williams told me he thought his people at 

 Broad Chalke were Iberians. 



The problem of the Middle-Avon-Valley remains, and though 

 some additional light may be thrown upon it by my statistics, I 

 fear it cannot yet be solved. Dr. Guest and Bishop Browne think 

 that after the victories of Ceawlin the Britons still remained 

 masters of a wedge of territory stretching from Selwood Forest 

 down the Biss and along the Avon up to Malmesbury. Dr. Guest's 

 arguments, based on the situation and direction of the dykes, are 

 not perhaps so plausible as once they seemed ; but the Bishop has 

 reinforced them by another line of argument. Certainly the story 

 of Augustine becomes much more intelligible on his theory ; and 

 so does, I think, the remarkable gift of Athelstan to the Malmesbury 

 freemen, if they were the descendants of free Welshmen not 

 subdued by Ceawlin. For Ceawlin, being a heathen, would probably 

 not have spared them as freemen, but would have enslaved them 

 at the least. Moreover the defensive position of Malmesbury is 

 exceedingly strong. 



])Ut the " wedge of territory," already of a curious and somewhat 

 improbable form, would be grievously curtailed by the subtraction 

 therefrom of Coi'sham, Chippenham, and perhaps Lacock, which 

 localities come out very blond in my statistics, and moreover 

 strike my eye as very Saxon in facial aspect. That Chippenham 

 was, three centuries later, a great centre of Saxon freemen seems 

 probable from the fact that its seizure by the Danes, in Alfred's 

 day, struck the king and people of Wessex with such dismay 



