By N. Story Maskdyne, Esq., M.P. 189 



between Barbury and Hakpen. Thus, then, Barbury Castle stands 

 out as one of the great bastions in a line of hill-forts, guarding the 

 meeting-points of important roads. But of the part that Barbury has 

 played in history we know no more than that it gave its name to a 

 great battle which opened to the Saxon hero, Ceawlin, a large part of 

 the wide plain that the eye ranges over from Hakpen hill, and brought 

 him in contact with, and far across, the boundaries of what was 

 subsequently Mercia on the north-east; while, to north-west and west, 

 the British line of possession and defence was driven back till it rested 

 on Cirencester and the line of the Cotswolds in the directum of Bath. 



It may be relevant to ask of what material, and in what numbers, 

 the Saxon army would have been composed? We know little 

 of the size of these armies. Henry of Huntingdon states that 

 for the attack on Searo-hyrig Cynric collected forces from bis allies 

 Ceawlin, who at this battle comes to the front as heir to his old 

 father Cynric's leadership, and was soon afterwards recognised as 

 Bretwalda of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, would certainly have mustered 

 some of them as allies in addition to his West Saxon soldiers. The 

 armies must have been large enough for the defeat of one of them 

 to be a crushing conquest of a people. It was so with both parties 

 after Badon Hill, 1 where the Britons appear, from lamentations ot 

 Gildas, to have been only less crushed than the foe they overcame. 

 It was so after the battle of Barbury, and a few years later Deorham 

 was in every sense decisive of the fate of the people whose army was 

 beaten The Briton host before Barbury must therefore have been 

 drawn from every quarter of that great expanse of field and forest 

 that the eye looked over then, as we look over it now, from the 

 crest of Hakpen. Immediately to the north of the escarpment of 

 the Marlborough Downs stretches the fertile chalk marl region, of 

 which the edge is seen from the vale of the Thames as one looks 

 south. It is co nspicuous with its picturesq neha ngers of wood and 

 1 1 do not venture to connect this decisive battle wi^hlh^Tt Saxon congests 

 and decidrX for the Dorset Badbury Kings as the Mom -B«/~ * 

 Ipounded by Dr. Guest and accepted by Green, or for the view of Mr Skene 

 S Mr. C 7 Elton accepted, that it was the Bonden Hill near Lmhthgow 

 Zgh on the whole I consider the preponderance of the evidence to be » favour 

 of the northern site. 



