A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE 



brooch with human remains cremated in the Anglian manner at Marton/ 

 where the Fosse Way crosses the Leam. 



' It is hard to believe, however,' says a recent writer,^ ' that the title 

 of Hwiccans did not mark some slight difference beside that of place 

 between them and their brethren to the south of them. At all events, 

 separated politically if not ethnologically from the other West Saxons, it 

 was but right that they should possess a bishop for themselves, and his 

 title proves him to have been a tribal bishop, with his see in the chief 

 town of the tribe.' 



Allusions to British interference in West Saxon politics have already 

 been noticed, but perhaps safer indications are afforded by the geography 

 of the district concerned. Hwiccia was a buffer state between Saxons 

 and Welsh, and it is possible that within its borders the two races may 

 have effected a compromise to their mutual advantage. Such an under- 

 standing with the indigenous population would not be unparalleled in 

 Anglo-Saxon history, for Penda joined Csdwalla of the north against 

 Oswald of Northumbria ; and the vitality of the Hwiccan kingdom may 

 have been due in part to a judicious blending of native and foreign 

 elements. 



It might be expected that the dwellers on the Severn would be more 

 ' Celtic ' than, for example, their contemporaries on the eastern coast ; 

 and in accordance with this principle traces of Romano-British civiliza- 

 tion would be more plentiful in south Worcestershire than in a locality 

 like Frilford, Berks,^ that lay nearly in the centre of Wessex, 



With regard to the affinities of the population in the Avon and 

 lower Severn valleys at the period now under discussion, Dr. Beddoe has 

 some interesting remarks.* The Saxon dialect prevails in east Worcester- 

 shire, though the county became Mercian very early. It has a lower 

 index of nigrescence than the district further to the east ; that is, the 

 Hwiccans of Worcestershire exhibit black eyes and hair with dark 

 complexion more frequently than the purer Saxons of the Thames and 

 Cherwell valleys. They are perhaps a mixture of Saxon and Iberian, 

 these races being very similar from the physical point of view except as 

 to colour ; and the dark strain in Worcestershire may be accounted for 

 by the fact that the native Britons of Wales were always in a majority 

 in the hills west of the Severn. 



An interesting relic of the later Anglo-Saxon period has been 

 variously described and poorly figured in the Gentleman's Magazine.^ 

 From comparison with a similar though later object in the British 

 Museum and another recently found at Canterbury, it may be concluded 

 that this subject of many curious speculations in the eighteenth century 

 was the upper part of a censer. It is a four-sided cover of bronze 4 inches 



1 Associated Architectural Societies (1850-1), Northants, p. 231. 



2 Rev. GeofFry Hill, The English Dioceses, p. 127. 



3 For Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon remains here see Archteolo^a, xlii. 417. 



* Races of Britain, p. 255. 



* 1779, p. 536 (figured); 1780, pp. 75, 128. The passages are collected in Gomme's Gentleman's 

 Magazine Library, Archaology, part 2, pp. 246-7. 



232 



