The Inaugural Address. 



9 



spot identified with Badbury in Dorsetshire, by that eminent 

 authority the late Dr. Guest ; a victory which you recollect is com- 

 memorated in the well-known lines of the Poet Laureate in " Elaine/' 

 where he introduces Launcelot celebrating" the sucessive victories of 

 his King. " The border line of Hampshire to the west/' says 

 Mr. J. R. Green in his recent work, "The Making of England/' " still 

 marks the point at which the Gewissas or West Saxons, were 

 arrested by this overthrow." It was not till 552 A.D. that the great 

 British entrenchment at Old Sarum was taken, and then the in- 

 vaders became masters of the whole course of the South Wiltshire 

 Avon, of Salisbury Plain, of the course of the Wily, and the 

 land up to Mere, the name of which is itself the monument of the 

 limits for a considerable period of their conquests to the West. 

 Then the tide turned to the North. Verlucio and Cunetio fell, and 

 the possession of the North Wiltshire Downs became the object of 

 the straggle. The great earthworks which crown the Marlborough 

 * Downs and look over the Vales of Pewsey and the White Horse are 

 the monuments of those struggles. The probability is that the 

 summits of the hills in that neighbourhood were a vast British 

 camp of refuge, something like the Turkoman camp of Geok Tepe, 

 captured the other day by the Russians. Men, women and children, 

 and cattle and household goods, would all alike have been collected 

 there for safety in a time of danger. The last defence was 

 probably desperate, the line of retreat being cut off ; for the Saxon 

 attack was most likely delivered from both sides at once, from the 

 Vale of Pewsey and from the Vale of White Horse. This supposi- 

 tion, too, would go far to account for what is the most remarkable 

 fact in the English conquest of this island, viz., the disappearance 

 in a great measure of the British population. I imagine the 

 slaughter upon those hills was immense, considering what the total 

 population of the country could have been at the time. " In 491, 

 iElle and Cissa beset Anderida " — the modern Pevensey — says the old 

 chronicler, " and slew all that were therein, nor was there afterwards 

 one Briton left." If the old chronicler had known the facts, he 

 would probably have had to u^rite an almost equally grim epitaph on 

 the defenders of the old hill forts at Badbury, And here it may be 



