By N. Story Uashelyne, Esq., M.P. 187 



entirely fashioned by Anglo-Saxon hands, for such fortresses exist 

 where Saxon feet never trod : indeed the Saxon Bnrh was in general 

 characterised by a monnd raised within a previously-extant en- 

 trenchment, and sometimes on it, while the very names these hill- 

 forts still bear are often undisguisedly Celtic and prove they were 

 iu existence before the advent of the Saxons. Where a primeval 

 or very early defensive work has been modified or strengthened m 

 later times, a ditch once internal, as at Kingsbury, may have been 

 deepened to form a bank internal to it, and a double cireumvallation 

 then constructed ; and on further investigation it may turn out, as 

 I have hinted, that the oldest work, that of the early neolithic men, 

 took the former shape, that of the later men the latter and more 

 defensive form. 



In order to realise the situation of our West Saxon ancestors after 

 the taking of Old Sarum, we must go back in time a little, and 

 picture to ourselves their bands under Cynric who, in 552, was an 

 Led man. He had landed a youth with the first of the West Saxon 

 Marauders, from five ships in 495, at the head of Southampton 

 Water. New swarms had subsequently joined the first adventurers 

 from their distant hive, and they had grown into an invading host, 

 and from invaders into settlers. Now, fifty-seven years after their 

 first landing, they are masters of a rich and important part of England. 

 Checked on the west by forest country teeming with their Bryt foes, 

 they push northward and the commanding position of Sarum has 

 become theirs. Before them, as they look still to the north, lies 

 the plain of Salisbury, and, beyond, the rich vale of Pewsey, flanked 

 and fronted by the forest barrier (then much more extensive han 

 to-day) of Savernake-a name for which Dr. Guest thought he 

 had found a derivation, in common with that of the river Severn, 

 from an Erse word S«5W-a boundary. It took Ceawlm four- 

 years to conquer and to consolidate the tenure of that intervening 

 country and to pass the belt of forest (continuous then with Saver- 

 nake) that divided, as its residue of wood still divides, the north of 

 Pewsey Vale from the Marlborough Downs. The "Chronicle 

 maintains its grim silence over the horrors that those four years no 

 doubt added to the accumulated cruelties of the invaders. Evidently 



