ADDRESS 
AT THE OPENING OF THE SESSION 1882-83. 
BY R. N. WORTH, F.G.S., 
President. 
Ladies and Gentlemen, — 
Placed by the favour of my brother members of the 
Plymouth Institution for a second time in this chair, I have thought 
it desirable to take, as the subject of my address this evening, some 
further inquiry into the earlier history of our county ; but chiefly 
into that of Plymouth and its immediate neighbourhood. Last year I 
endeavoured to sketch, as fully as time and the conditions of my 
subject allowed, the leading features of Prehistoric Devon, defining 
as prehistoric in this relation " all that is antecedent to the Saxon 
Conquest of the county." That conquest my friend Mr. J. B. 
Davidson had shown must have taken place between the year 710, 
in which King Ine fought the Welch king Gereint, and the year 
823, in which the Weala and the Defena — the men of West Wales 
( = Cornwall) and the men of Devon — fought a battle at Gafulford ; 
while further considerations narrowed its possible limits between 
the year 728, in which Ine abdicated, and 800, in which 
Ecgberht came to the throne. The only one of the Saxon kings 
of Wessex filling the interval to whom the conquest can reasonably 
be assigned is, as I have already said, that Cynewulf (755-784) 
who is recorded to have fought so many battles against the Western 
Welch — the " Brit-Wealas," the Keltic dwellers in Devon and in 
Cornwall. And while this is inferential, I may remind you of the 
direct statement of William of Malmesbury, that the first great 
military act of Ecgberht was the conquest of Cornwall {circa 813) ; 
and his equally direct assertion that in 936 iEftelstan drove the 
Britons out of Exeter, which up to that time they had inhabited, 
VOL. VIII. M 
