182 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
sharing equal rights with the English, and fixed the boundary of 
his province along the Tamar. That is to say, and in my former 
address I adduced various arguments in support of the contention, 
the action of iE^elstan made Devon wholly Saxon, and left none 
of the free Keltic race east of the Tamar, save that perchance here 
and there in the remoter recesses of the uplands a stray family, or 
even a petty settlement, escaped observation. 
What I wish, so far as possible, to do now is to link on this 
Prehistoric Past, of which I have already spoken in rapid outline, 
to our Historic Present, and especially to give you, as completely as 
I am able, a sketch of this immediate locality during the Saxon 
period. 
We may divide the history of Saxon Devon into three epochs : — 
First, the stage of individual colonization by small bodies of 
men, who planted themselves on Dunmonian soil, either by force 
or peaceably, gradually encroaching upon the scattered Keltic 
population, until Exeter itself became so thoroughly Saxonised that 
towards the close of the seventh century it had a Saxon school, in 
which Winfred, of Saxon Crediton, the famous Boniface, was 
trained. 
Second, the era of subjugation, dating from the conquest of the 
Kelts under Cynewulf to their expulsion by iE^elstan. (926.) 
Third, the time of undivided Saxon sway, from the Keltic ex- 
pulsion by zE'Selstan to the Norman Conquest. (1066.) 
The whole period assignable to Saxon intercourse and rule in 
Devon would thus extend over four- and -a-half centuries; for 
Winfred could not have been born in Crediton and educated in 
Adescancastre, if there had not been a large and fairly concentrated 
Saxon population in the neighbourhood of Exeter towards the close 
of the seventh century. 
Roughly taken, each of these epochs covers a century and a half. 
Settlement must have commenced early in the seventh century, 
and 150 years from 625 brings us to the latter end of the reign of 
Cynewulf (775); another 150 carries us on to iE^elstan (926); 
and quite as many years elapsed ere the Conquest begun at Senlac 
was fully complete. 
I have no intention of repeating what has been already said 
concerning the early Saxon history of Devon. Still less shall I 
