Recent Wiltshire Books, Pamphlets, Articles, <&c. 513 



period and represent the actual boundaries of Cerdic's Wessex. Thus, 

 supposing that Cerdicesford was certainly Charford on the Avon, he 

 reads the true history of the battle of 519 in the conformation of the 

 Wiltshire boundary. In the Wiltshire promontory which projected 

 south until recently into Hampshire, he sees the evidence that the 

 battle was really a drawn one, that the Britons still held Whitsbury 

 Castle and the ridge behind it, though the Saxons acquired the land on 

 either side of the British advanced post. 



From 519 to 552 the Saxons were consolidating their conquest of 

 Hampshire and waiting until they were strong enough to advance into 

 Wiltshire. At the end of this period the conquest of Old Sarum gave 

 Cynric command of the Wylye Valley and the capital of the new 

 province of Wilts was fixed at Wilton. Bokerly Dyke he would assign 

 to this period as barring the Saxon advance into Dorset over Martin 

 Down and defending the Roman road running south-west behind it, 

 and he suggests that the Moot at Downton was the meeting place of 

 Wessex, whilst the conquest of S. Wilts was in progress. As regards 

 Grims Ditch, however, he allows that its name proves that the Saxons 

 found it already in existence and did not know who were its makers. 



So far as Wiltshire is concerned an important part of the book is 

 that in which the Wessex campaigns of 876 — 8 are treated (Book III., 

 pp. 137 — 207). The story of the A. S. Chronicle and of Asser is woven 

 into a connected thread in one column and in a parallel column such 

 details from other writers as seem to bear on the subject are given. 

 Mr. Major will not hear of the Wiltshire Edington being the true site 

 of Ethandune. The authorities, he says, who have settled this point 

 hitherto have been blindly misled by Camden, and the whole theory is 

 based on the fact that the Chronicle of Ethel werd appears to associate 

 Ethandune with Chippenham. Relying on the obvious difficulty which 

 defenders of the Wiltshire site have agreed to slur over, viz., that peace 

 was made at Wedmore and Aller, close to Athelney, and sixty miles 

 away from the supposed site of the battle at the Wiltshire Edington, 

 he contends that the fighting really took place on the ridge of the 

 Somerset Edington Hill, within sight of Athelney, on the edge of 

 Sedgemoor. He suggests that Alfred stole away by himself from 

 Athelney, and met the Wiltshire levies who had been warned to 

 assemble at Ecgbright's Stone, i.e., somewhere near Alfred's Tower at 

 Stourton— that they marched next day twenty-five miles to Butleigh, 

 near Glastonbury, which he suggests may be iEcglea (though he ex- 

 pressly says that the ancient Saxon name of it was " Budeclega.") 

 This would be only six or eight miles along the Poldens from Edington 

 Hill, where he suggests he attacked the Danes and drove them seaward 

 to the end of the hills, where at Downend a Norman fortress certainly 

 stood afterwards. This, he says, is the stronghold to which the Danes 

 retired. Here there was water, and a fornight's siege might well have 

 been endured, an impossibility at Bratton Camp, in Wiltshire. He 

 places the defeat of Hubba and his men at Cannington Park and iden- 

 tifies more than a thousand interments found there as those of the 

 slain in the battle. 



