514 Recent Wiltshire Books, Pamphlets, Articles, &c. 



In the chapter in which he examines the place names of the campaign 

 he maintains, in spite of Mr. Stevenson's ridicule of Bishop Clifford, 

 that Cynuit was Combwich, or Cannington Park, close by, and after 

 holding up his hands in horror at Mr. Stevenson's identification of 

 iEcglea with Iley, in Warminster, as "an amazing piece of special 

 pleading," identifies it himself with Butleigh, near Glastonbury. Why 

 is it that etymological arguments almost invariably do tend to special 

 pleading, at least in the view of everyone but the arguer 1 In any case 

 it is clear that the Battle of Ethandune is still being fought and probably 

 will continue to be fought for generations yet to come, without any 

 decisive result. The book is well written and the author gives sensible 

 reasons for the conclusions at which he arrives, though of course for' 

 those ,who, with Sir Henry Howorth, have ceased to regard the A.S. 

 Chronicle as a dependable authority, the fact that the whole story of 

 the Saxon Conquest of Wessex is here founded upon the statements of 

 the Chronicle will largely discount its value. 



Woden's, Grim's, and Offa s Dykes. By Major P. T. 

 Godsal. With Map. Harrison & Sons, 45, Fall 

 Mall, S.W. 1913 



Pamphlet, 8vo., pp. including title 23. 



In this pamphlet Major Godsal brings his theory of the Saxon con- 

 quest of England, which he has elaborated Jin his recently published 

 Storming of London, to bear on the question of the origin of the Great 

 Dykes. Starting from the base of Gen. Pitt Rivers' excavations in 

 Bokerly and Wans Dyke, which proved certainly in the case of the 

 former, and probably in that of the latter, that their construction dates 

 either from the latest period of the Roman occupation or after they 

 had retired from Britain, he argues that no period of history fulfils 

 the necessary conditions for the making of great dykes such as Bokerly 

 and Wansdyke, the Devil's Dyke and Fleam Dyke near Newmarket, 

 the various Grims Dykes in Wiltshire and elsewhere, and Offa's Dyke 

 on the Welsh border, except that of the Saxon conquest. He contends 

 that this conquest was not the result of isolated raids by freebooting 

 chiefs and their bands, but that it was a conquest undertaken by a 

 people organised for migration, and that the various incursions were 

 all part of a coherent plan of invasion. He then argues that the great 

 dykes are " proof positive of some degree of military cohesion amongst i 

 their original constructors and defenders," and that the Britons though ' 

 they undoubtedly constructed great tribal hill fortresses, had not the 

 necessary cohesion and organisation to undertake the making of cross- 

 country dykes. " We are in fact driven to the conclusion that only I 

 during the process of the invasion of Britain by the English do we find 

 the conditions under which we can conceive the demarcation, con- 

 struction, maintenance, and defence of dykes to have been possible, ■ 

 because the greater dykes are evidently frontier lines, and would re- \ 

 quire united action to make them, and constant national cohesion to! 

 secure their defence. It is evident therefore that if they can be proved 



