864 THE president's address. 



permitted to settle in tlie valleys, and establish their tuns and 

 stohs beside the rivers. How this was brought about we know not, 

 but it is remarkable that so early as 700 there existed a Saxon 

 school in Exeter, at which Winifreth could be educated, and his 

 parents, both Saxons, were living at Crediton. 



We can hardly doubt that the malevolence with which, when 

 in Germany, he pursued the Celtic missionaries, and ejected 

 them from their churches, was due to prejudices imbibed from 

 his parents when a boy at Crediton, living within a stockade, 

 and looking on the Welsh around as dangerous neighbours, and 

 on their Christianity as schismatical. This antipathy was 

 mutual, and Aldhelm complained of the national British clergy, 

 that "they shrink with abhorrence from communion with us. 

 So much so that they will not condescend to join us in divine 

 worship, nor will they sit by us in friendly fellowship at table. 

 They even cast away the fragments of their food, and the broken 

 meat from their tables to be devoured by dogs and swine." 



The Saxons settled in Dyfnaint called themselves Defenas, 

 and there can be no doubt that they increased in numbers, and 

 steadily and surely wrested from the West Welsh the secular 

 authority in the first place, and then took from them their 

 churches. In 813, Egbert "harried the West Welsh from 

 eastward to westward." 



In 823 a desperate fight took place between the Britons and 

 the Saxons in Devon at Gavulford. This locality was clearly on 

 the high-road leading from Exeter to the west. Such a spot is 

 Galf ord, where the hills on each side close in upon the road, and 

 above Coombow (Cwm-bodd) in Bridestow parish, powerful 

 earthworks command the way to Launceston on one hand and to 

 Lydford on the other. Galford is from Omul, a hold fast, and 

 fordd, a way. 



I do not think that the Saxon settlers in Devon formed more 

 than a noble class. They retained natives in serfdom, although 

 the invasion was not one of military conquest. They suffered 

 the free to hold their land as before, perhaps no longer as alodial 

 estates, and did not force them to adopt English law. William 

 of Malmesbury expressly asserts that up to 926, in Exeter, Welsh 

 and Saxons lived side by side, and that the former enjoyed equal 

 rights with the latter. 



