ANGLO-SAXON 

 REMAINS 



THOUGH poor in relics of the earliest Teutonic settlers, the 

 county of Worcester has yet a history that can be traced in 

 outline throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, for there are notices 

 that throw some light upon the early pagan times which in so 

 many districts are a blank or else are filled with fabulous events. To 

 raise the veil that still obscures the county's past before the era of 

 St. Augustine, discoveries in three localities would not in any case 

 suffice, and that is perhaps the total number recorded in Worcestershire. 

 Even these excavations were prosecuted with insufficient care and not 

 recorded in enough detail to give them more than average importance ; 

 but on the other hand the scarcity of finds is itself a factor in deter- 

 mining the probable course of events before written history begins, and 

 Bede in his Ecclesiastical History ^ has given us historic facts with which 

 to co-ordinate the results of archaeology. 



A people called the Hwiccii or Hwiccans are known to have 

 occupied a region in the west of England which included the vales of 

 Berkeley and Evesham, and appear to have maintained their boundaries 

 as a political unit for the space of two and a half centuries, while greater 

 states around them rose and fell in turn. The old pre-Reformation 

 diocese of Worcester roughly marks the bounds of their dominion, of 

 which the county town was throughout the recognized metropolis.^ It 

 was about the year 679 that Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, conse- 

 crated Bosel the first English bishop of the Hwiccans ; and it may be 

 reasonably inferred, from the extent of the diocese, that the kingdom or 

 sub-kingdom comprised the whole of Worcestershire with the exception 

 of the north-west corner beyond the Abberley Hills, all Gloucestershire 

 east of the Severn, the township of Bristol and the southern half of 

 Warwickshire. At some period it seems to have further included part 

 of the lower Severn valley west of the river, and the township of Bath. 

 These limits were not fortuitous, but were set by nature and by conquest 

 in such a way that the part played by each can be suggested with some 

 degree of probability. 



The first mention of events in this part of the country is in the 

 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the year 577, when 'Cuthwine and Ceawlin 



1 Bk. ii. chap. 2 ; bk. iv. chaps. 13, 23. ^ Kerable, Codex Diplomatkus, No. xci. 



223 



