81 



they had taken Sarum. So that until A.D. 658, when they first* 

 entered Somersetshire, by piercing the other chain of hills to 

 our right, this vale must have been at their command. 



Among the short and compressed notes, of which the earlier 

 pages are made up, of that unique national record the Anglo- 

 Saxon Chronicle, these two occur under the years 552 and 658, 

 as almost all the history of England for those two years. 



"An. DLII. Now Kynric fought with the Britons at the place 

 that is called Searobyrig [Salisbury] and made them fly." 



"An. DCLVIII. Now Kenwalch fought set Peonnum [at 

 Pointington, north of Sherborne,] with the Welsh and made 

 them fly as far as the Parret." 



Although above a hundred years apart, the relation of these 

 two annals to each other is almost self-evident : and that during 

 the century which intervened, from the year when the Britons 

 fled to the Parret, a stage farther westward, from the chain of 

 hills to our left, that constitutes the natural division of Dorset and 

 Somerset, the extensive plain which lies before us was occupied 

 by their "West-Saxon invaders. This would be the case at what- 

 ever point of the western hill frontier they may have penetrated 

 Somerset. Some have said this was by way of Penselwood. It 

 has however been shown f that they must have entered the hill- 

 frontier from Gillingham, about where the South-Western Kail- 

 way now enters ; and, having fought the Britons on Pointington 

 Down, drove them along the valley of the Camel and the Yeo, 

 until this river joins the Parret at Langport. During the same 

 interval, as shown by intermediate annals of the Chronicle, they 

 made other great advances north of Sarum ; but our present con- 

 cern is with this on the west. It is now intended to shew that, 

 when they passed on to the conquest of Somerset, they left that 

 southern hill district unsubdued : and there is reason to believe 



* That this was the first occupation of any part of Somerset by the 

 invaders, has already been shown in " A Primaeval British Metropolis," 

 (Bristol, 1877, pp. 45-57). But as the assertion, that the conquest of the 

 Gloucestershire Cotswolds, A.D. 577, included the north part of Somerset, 

 is still persisted in ; a particular examination of Dr. G-uest's topographical 

 suggestions, by which it has been said to be demonstrated, is intended on a 

 future occasion. 



t Ibid., pp.,45, etseq. 



