CHAPTER XXXVIII.

HISTORICAL.

B

"Heir of all the ages."

Locksley Hall.

EFORE any one can form a proper estimate of the collected

Folk-lore of a given district, or can deduce correct conclusions from it, he must, it appears to me, make himself acquainted with the history of that district, and learn by what races it has been peopled, to what external influences it has been subjected, and under what conditions its people have lived and died, married and given in marriage, bought and sold and got gain, from generation to generation. It is equally important that he should know something of the physical configuration of the country, that he may judge what influence that has had on the minds and habits of the inhabitants. I have already several times referred to the physical features of Shropshire, especially at page 63, and shall presently recur to them again, but I wish first to give a brief summary of the history of the county, compiled from every shred and scrap of evidence which I could accumulate, and which I hope some day to give in detail in a paper addressed to the local readers to whom it will be chiefly interesting. I write with special reference to the relations between Shropshire and Wales, as to which I find there is much misapprehension.

First of all, modern Shropshire, the present county of Salop, is a purely modern and arbitrary division of country, the boundaries of which, as we see them now on our maps of England, were fixed so lately as the time of Henry VIII. North Shropshire formed part

of the kingdom of Mercia, South Shropshire part of the sub-kingdom of the Magesætas or West Hecanas, and part of the extreme west of the county was included in the much later political division of the Welsh Marches.

To begin with North Shropshire. The first irruption of the 'English kin' into the lands north of the Severn is fixed by Dr. Guest (Origines Celtica) in A.d. 584. Seven years previously, in 577, Ceawlin, king of the West Saxons, fought with the Welsh at Dyrham (in Gloucestershire), and made himself master of Bath, Gloucester, and Cirencester. Thence pursuing his way up the valley of the Severn, in 584 he fought another battle at Fethanleah, which Dr. Guest identifies with Faddiley in Cheshire, describing as if he had been an eye-witness the march of the invaders through the tangled and almost impassable thickets of Wyre Forest (which must then have extended all across South-east Shropshire and the adjoining parts of Staffordshire), their swoop down upon Uriconium,'the White Town in the valley, the White Town between Tren and Traval,' i. e. the Tern and the Roden,-the firing of Pengwern, the death of Cynddylan of Powis, and his burial beneath the shadow of the churches of Ba-s,' as recounted in the poems of Llywarch Hen. The frequent marks of fire, and the small number of skeletons found at Uriconium in modern days (and in particular the touching group of two women and an old man with a casket of coins, found in a hypocaust, where they had evidently crept for shelter, and had either been stifled or buried by the falling ruins), remain to tell us how the city was sacked and burnt, the inhabitants

1 I. e. Baschurch. Mr. Eyton (Antiquities of Shropshire, x. 130) objects here that Bassa is an Anglo-Saxon name,' and that the Welsh elegy from which Dr. Guest takes these details cannot be a contemporary document if it represents the Prince as having his burial beside the churches of Bassa, at a time when the Saxons were yet heathens. Dr. Guest replies that though Bass (not Bassa) was the name of a 'mass-priest' to whom King Egbert gave the church of Reculver, we have no reason to assume that Baschurch in Shropshire was named after him or his namesakes, any more than the many Basfords and Baslows of the Midland counties, names which he refers to some Celtic word cognate with the Irish bais, water. (Baschurch is on the Perry, a tributary of the Severn.) He considers that the churches of Bassa were a group of little churches, like Glendalough, in the Celtic fashion, and long afterwards succeeded by the undoubtedly Saxon foundation of Baschurch, the mother parish of an extensive district.

saving themselves by flight, all save a small remnant who were. ruthlessly put to death.1 Thence Ceawlin advanced to Fethanleah (Faddiley), where, says the Chronicle, his brother Cutha was slain, and Ceawlin in anger returned to his own country with many vills and much booty.'

Dr. Guest appears to take it for granted that this expedition resulted in the conquest and settlement of the left bank of the Severn; but Mr. Green, I observe, is, with me, of a contrary opinion, arguing from the fact that the dialect of the district is of a Northern character, whereas in the shires south of Wyre Forest it is distinctively Southern. To which I would add that the distinct statement of the Chronicle, that at Fethanleah Cutha was slain, and Ceawlin in anger returned to his own country,' is borne out by the inherent improbability that he could hold such a long narrow tract in the midst of an enemy's country, and by the utter absence of any mention of West Saxons there afterwards. The most natural result of the expedition would be. to leave the country wasted and depopulated, and at the mercy of

other foes.

We next find the Northumbrians advancing on our country from the opposite direction. In 617 Ethelfrith of Northumbria overthrew Chester, leaving it to remain a waste chester' for three centuries afterwards, and massacred two thousand monks from Bangor Iscoed in Maelor Saesnaeg,' that detached Part of Flint' which in the eleventh century was reckoned to belong to Shropshire. Thence his successor Eadwine must have advanced southward through North Shropshire (crossing the upper Severn at Ford), for

1 Let me point out that these events are ascribed to 584 solely on the ground` of the etymological identity of Faddiley and Fethanleah: because if the West Saxons from Gloucestershire advanced into Cheshire, they must have passed Uriconium and its adjacent citadel on the Wrekin on their way. There is nothing in Llywarch Hen's lament for Cynddylan to show whether the foes who destroyed Uriconium were West Saxons ascending the Severn Valley or Mercians advancing westward along Watling Street, of which the traditional massacre of Christians which named Lichfield must have given them the command. And it will not affect the identification of Uriconium with the White Town in the Valley' if some other site-such as, for instance, the old Hundred of Cutestorne (Cutha's Thorn?) in Herefordshire-should eventually be fixed upon for the battle of Fethanleah.

the Welsh Triads describe him as attacking their stronghold1 on Digoll or the Long Mountain. And twenty-five years later we find 'Maserfeld' near Oswestry (see p. 424) the battle-ground between Northumbria and the younger kingdom of the Mercians or 'Marchmen' of the Angle race, the gradual progress of whose frontier realm is unrecorded in chronicles, but may be traced by the earthworks raised to check their progress from Marchington on the Dove, t':rough Staffordshire, up the valleys of the Trent and its tributary the Mees; and finally at Bury Walls (see p. 22) and Marchamley, on the only important range of rising ground in North Shropshire. Having cleared their territory of the Britons, they were ready to turn their arms against those of their own race who obstructed their onward progress. With the reign of Penda of Mercia begins the period of internecine war.

I have already sufficiently dilated (p. 424) on the battle of Maserfeld in 642, in which Oswald of Northumbria was overthrown and killed by Penda. The statement of Bede, that Oswald died 'pro patria dimicans,' is explained by the fact, just mentioned, of the p evious victories of Northumbrian kings in this north-weste:n plain; and Oswald's overthrow here accounts for the otherwise inexplicable fact that the whole of this region as far as the Ribble was included in the diocese of the Bishops of the Mercians from its beginning 3 until the foundation of the modern see of Chester by Henry VIII.

Having thus seen how North Shropshire came under Mercian rule during the seventh century, we will now turn to South Shropshire, and recur to the conquests of the West Saxons in 577 and 584, which put them in possession of the present counties of Gloucester and Worcester, then called the territory of the Hwiccas, and coinciding in extent with the ancient diocese of Worcester.* We may be certain that the conquerors of Worcester, situated as it is at the confluence of the two rivers, would not be long in crossing

1 Now called the Beacon Ring (see p. 55).

2 RHYS, Celtic Britain, p. 129.

3 I need not stay to point out that in these early times the kingdom and the bishopric were always conterminous.

4

The name is still preserved in the signature of the Bishop, [N. or M.] Wigorn.

the Severn and making their way up the valley of the Teme and the ancient name of the manor of Temsett or Tempsitur in the Honour of Clun, a long strip of land on the north bank of the river, accordingly testifies to the presence of the Teme-sætas, or settlers by the Teme, at a very early period. To reach this point they must pass the sites of Ludlow, where the Teme receives the Corve, and of Leintwardine, where Watling Street crosses the Teme, and the hill-fortress of Brandon Camp is all that remains to indicate the position of the Roman fortress of Bravinium. This would give them access to Corve Dale and Stretton Dale, the two principal valleys of South Shropshire. That those who settled in this region were of Saxon not Angle race, may further be argued from the fact that the dialect spoken there is to this day of a Southern character, while that of North-east Shropshire is Northern.1 But South Shropshire and Herefordshire must shortly afterwards have passed under Mercian rule, for in 626 Penda fought with Cynegils of Wessex at Cirencester, and made agreement there,' which agreement, as historians are united in thinking, involved the cession of the Hwiccas (Worcestershire and Gloucestershire) to Mercia. And we cannot doubt that the sovereignty over the Magesætas, or settlers beside the Vaga or Wye, together with the subsidiary tribes of the South Shropshire valleys, passed to Mercia at the same time. We cannot suppose that they continued as a detached portion of Wessex, with no access to the mother country except through an enemy's territories.

1 To speak with more precision, Mr. A. J. Ellis's phonological researches lead him to draw the boundary-line between Mid'and' and 'Western' dialects diagonally through Shropshire, from Ellesmere, and west of Wem, to the Severn, and thence to Bridgnorth. North and east of this line Mid'and dialects prevail ; south and west of it, Western ones. This is in complete agreement with the grammatical and other evidence contained in Miss Jackson's Word-Book. This dialectic boundary coincides very fairly with the diocesan boundaries, and almost exactly with the boundary of customs described (ante, pp. 461, 462) and set forth in the map which accompanies this volume; yearly engagements being entered into north and east of it at Christmas, and south and west of it in May. Thus two independent lines of research, philological and folk-loric, combine to support the historic evidence I endeavour to set forth in the text, to the effect that Shropshire was invaded from two opposite quarters; that, in fact, Northeast Shropshire was peopled by Mercians, and South and West Shropshire by West Saxons.