194 Barbury Castle. 
Cornwall who, in after time, shrank into a small population in- 
habiting the latter country. 
I have spoken of fatal Wanborough. It was there—the Wod- 
nesbeorge of the Saxon Chronicle—that Ceawlin, the victor at 
Barbury, at Bedford, at Wimbledon, Uriconium, and Deorham, the 
second of the Bretwaldas, the greatest of the northmen conquerors 
down to the seventh century, fell from his high estate. In the fight 
at Faddily, in Cheshire, the Welshmen inflicted heavy loss on him. 
It was the first great blow; and a revolt that followed it under 
his nephew, Ceolric, brought the Saxon settlers from the Severn 
valley down on Wessex. Again the chalk rampart of the Wiltshire 
downs, with its roads and hill-forts, presented a barrier to the ad- 
vancing foe—now coming from the north-west. And Wanborough, 
at the salient point where the chalk hills end towards the north- 
west, and just where the two old roads meet, and behind which ran 
the Ridgeway and its subsidiary Ways, was the scene of the last 
battle of Ceawlin the Bretwalda in 591. History tells but little of 
the cause of the revolt and briefly says that Ceawlin was deposed 
and two years thereafter died. 
Wanborough was the scene of another battle in 717. One 
hundred and twenty-six years after the first, the Kingdom of Mercia, 
the consolidation of which had begun about the time of the defeat 
of Ceawlin, and which now included the northern part of Ceawlin’s 
conquests, had its frontier conterminous with that of Wessex along 
the banks of the Thames. ‘Then, as now, the royal river was the 
Mercian frontier, represented by the counties of Gloucester, Oxford, 
and Buckingham, and divided it from that Wessex district that now 
consists of the shires of Wilts, Berks, and Hants, and again in 
after times it was the frontier dividing Dane and English rule. Ine 
was King of Wessex when Ethelred’s son Ceolred invaded Wessex 
and penetrated as far as the junction of the two arms of the ancient 
Roman road that has been sometimes called the Ermine way at 
Wanborough. But this time the invader from the north was 
repelled, and Wessex remained for that time unconquered. 
