96 



kingdom : that the great political body of tlie West-Saxons had 

 progressed westward so far, and occupied in their march all the 

 country, to their right and left, from sea to sea, or nearly so. 

 But from what is here being laid before the reader, it will be 

 seen that the frontier of Dorset, that was contingent to Devon 

 still maintained its British nationality ; whilst, failing the Devon- 

 Bampton Annal above disposed of, there is no record whatever 

 of any approach from Somerset. The Annal of 682, of Cent- 

 wine's having driven the Britons to the sea, cannot apply to this > 

 as there is no sea in the path ; and William of Malmsbury calls 

 them the " North Welsh." The earliest recorded dynastic 

 movement, farther west than our Somerset, is that of Egbert, A.D. 

 813, when he harried " West Wales from eastward to westward." 

 " West Wales" here includes all Devon, and not Cornwall only as 

 generally supposed : thus there is some importance in the words 

 "from eastward to westward," which they would otherwise seem 

 to want. " Harrying " does not seem to be an operation suit- 

 able to his own subjects, even if they had been in rebellion. 



Much intercourse of the two nations had already existed, 

 independently of .the compulsion of the two races into one 

 political body under advancing kings. The frequent examples 

 of fugitive Anglian and Saxon exiles, from wrongs of their 

 compatriots, to the protection of the Britons, prove that the 

 wars were rather political or dynastic than tribal. The Annals 

 are indeed mostly of the acts of the kings or leaders, and the 

 events they record are not always conflicts with one nation, but 

 subjugations of both to one sovereignity. Two independent and 

 indisputable facts the birth of St. Winfred=Boniface, and the 

 family of St. Sidwell shew that, as early as A.D. 680-700, 

 settled Saxon families were already living around Exeter; so 

 that no doubt a considerable colony of them, or a sort of Littus 

 Saxonicum, had existed about the estuary of the Exe, and per- 

 haps at other points along the country between the sea and the 

 highlands, more than a century earlier than any inland dynastic 

 subjugation. And in this view we are not entirely forsaken by 

 our old allies, the church dedications, along the mountainous 



