a 
2g0 
nental cities; none could boast of a longer unbroken 
existence nor was so directa link between the earliest and 
the latest days of the history of our island, None had in 
all ages more steadily kept the character of a local 
capital, ‘the undisputed head and centre of a great 
district. And none had come so near to being some- 
thing more than a loca] capital, none had had so fair 
a chance as Exeter of once becoming an independent 
commonwealth, the head of a confederation of smaller 
boroughs, perhaps the mistress of dependent towns and 
subject districts. 5 
form that he might congratulate the Institute on finding 
themselves at last within the walls of the great city of 
Western England. They had been to many other places, to 
York, Lincoln, and Chester, and if Exeter must yield to 
these in the wealth of actually surviving monuments, it 
assuredly did not yield to any of them in the historic 
interest of its long annals. 
interest of its own in which it stood alone amongst the 
cities of England ; she was among cities what Glastonbury 
was among churches, it was one of the few ties which 
directly bound the Englishman to the Roman and the 
Briton, It was the great trophy of that stage of English 
conquest when our forefathers, weaned from the fierce 
creed of Woden and Thunder, deemed it enough to 
conquer and no longer sought to destroy. 
Exeter, Isca, Caer Wisc was a city of the same class as 
Bourges and Chartres. Here was what was found commonly 
in Gaul but rarely in Britain—the Celtic hill-fort which had 
grown into the Roman city, which had lived on through 
‘Teutonic conquest, and which still, after all changes, kept 
its place as the undoubted head of its own district. In 
Wessex such a history was unique; in all Southern 
England London was the only—and that but an imperfect 
—parallel. The name carried on thesame lesson which was 
taught by the site. Caer Wisc had never lost its name, 
It had been Latinised into Isca, Teutonised into Exancester, 
and cut short into modern Exeter, but through all con- 
quests, through all changes of language, it had proclaimed 
In this respect the con- 
tinuity of its being had been more perfect than that of 
The name and the 
site of Exeter at once distinguished it from most of the 
itself as the city by the Exe, 
most of the cities of Northern Gaul. 
ordinary classes of English towns. . . . 
‘The first question which now suggests itself was one which 
he could not answer—when did the city first become a West 
Saxon possession? When did the British Caer-Wisca, 
the Roman Isca, pass into the English Exancaster? 
that he could find no date—no trustworthy mention. The 
first distinct and undoubted mention of the city he could 
find was in the days of Alfred, where it figured as an 
English fortress of great importance, more than once 
taken and retaken by the great king and his Danish 
enemies. He was as little able to fix the date of the 
English conquest of Isca as he was to fix that of its 
original foundation by the Britons. John Shillingford 
said that Exeter was a walled city before the incarnation 
of Christ, and though it was not likely to have been a 
walled city in any sense that would satisfy either a modern 
or Roman engineer, yet it was likely enough to have been 
already a fortified port before Czesar landed in Britain. 
At all events the first definite mention of it was in the 
time of the wars of Alfred. But though it was English 
by allegiance, it was not until two centuries later that it 
became wholly English in blood and speech. In Athel- 
stan’s day the city was still partly Welsh, partly English, 
each forming a city within a city. To this state of things 
Athelstan deemed it right to put a stop and to put the 
Supremacy in the chief city of the western peninsula 
beyond a doubt. Exeter was a port which needed to be 
“Strongly fortified, and to be in the hands of none but 
what were thoroughly trustworthy, The British inhabi- 
tants were driven out, and to the confusion of those who 
say Englishmen could not put stones and mortar together 
NATURE 
It was not then with mere words of 
It had, in truth, peculiar 
Of 
| Aug. 7, 1873 
until a hundred and forty years later, the city was 
encircled by a wall of square stones and strengthened by 
towers, marking a fourth stage in the history of English 
fortification. If anyone asked him where the wall of 
Ethelstan was now he could only say that a later visitor 
to Exeter took care that there should not be much of it 
left for them to see. Still there were some small frag- 
ments, but suppose not a stone was left, yet as he under- 
stood evidence, the fact that a thing was recorded to have 
been destroyed was one of the best proofs that it once 
existed. The distinguishing point in this stage of the 
history of Exeter was this, that it alone of the great cities 
of Britain did not fall into the hands of the English 
invaders till after the horrors of conquest had been 
softened by the influence of Christianity. When Caer 
Wisc became an English possession there was no fear 
that any West Saxon prince should deal with it as Ethel- 
frith had dealt by Deva. When Isca was taken the West 
Saxons had ceased to be destroyers, and deemed it 
enough to be conquerors, Thus it was that Exeter stood 
alone as the one great English city which had lived an 
ae ie life from pre-English and even from pre-Roman 
ays. 
Whatever was the exact date when it became 
an English possession, it was with the driving out of 
the Welsh inhabitants under Ethelstan that it became 
purely English, As such it filled during the whole 
of the tenth and eleventh centuries a prominent place 
among the cities of England and a place altogether 
without a rival among the cities of its own part of 
the country, Later in the century the fortress by the 
Exe was the chief bulwark of Western England during the 
renewed Danish invasions of the reign of Ethelred. It was 
a spirit-stirring tale to read how the second millennium 
of the Christian era was ushered in by the record which 
told how the heathen host sailed up the Exe and strove to 
break down the wall which guarded the city, how the 
burghers bore up against every onslaught, and how they 
withstood the invaders. Exeter was saved, but the 
unready King had no help or reward for the men who 
saved it, and the local force of Devon and Somerset had to 
strive how they could against the full might of the invader, 
and the devastation of the land around followed at once 
upon the successful defence of the city. In the next 
year Exeter became part of the “Morning gift” of the _ 
Norman Lady, and Hugh, “The French Churl,” as our 
chroniclers call him, was sent by his foreign mistress to 
command in an English city, and through his cowardice 
or treason Sweyn was able to break down and spoil the 
city. It was not clear whether all the walls were broken 
down then, but it was quite certain that sixty years after- 
wards, Exeter was strongly fortified according to the 
best military art, 
After the city’s capture by Sweyn nothing more 
was heard of it during the Danish wars, and the 
only further knowledge of it between the Danish and 
Norman invasions consisted of the foundation of the 
bishopric, and this was accompanied by several circum- 
stances which marked it as an event belonging to an age 
of transition. It was among the last instances of one set 
of tendencies, among the earliest instances of another. 
The reign of Edward the Confessor was the last time 
(excepting the reign of Edward the Sixth) when two 
English bishoprics were joined together without a new one 
being formed to keep up the number. It had happened 
more than once in earlier times ; it happened twice under 
Edward when the bishoprics of Devonshire and Corn- 
wall were united, and those of Dorset and Wiltshire. 
But this also was the first instance of a movement 
for bringing into England the continental rule that the 
bishopric should be placed in the greatest city of the 
diocese. 
The great ecclesiastical change of the eleventh cen- 
tury had carried him on beyond the*great time which 
