That at Bath, however, has a special claim to our attention; having been in that same suburb outside the north gate, where also was found the St. Werburgh, within the fork of the Foss-way and that now called Via Julia. Here then, as already in the Hoo of Kent, we once more find a St. Werburgh and a St. Helen in immediate companionship. The seal of Æthelbald endorsed by that of Offa, the inheritor of his policy.[98] But what is the significance of these emblems of Mercian territory, being both found outside the Roman walled town on the north side? Did this suburb become specially a Mercian quarter? The monastery, of which Offa was a reputed founder or re-founder about this very time, must have been a chief occupant of the area within the walls; and its possessions extended, in the opposite direction, beyond the river, on the Wessex side. We have already seen[99] signs of Æthelbald’s further south-west progress along the Foss-way as far as into East Devon.
Besides this line of St. Helens, along the frontier, which was the result of the campaign recorded in the Chronicle, under A.D. 777; there are still three outlying southward, along the south coast: the extreme natural limit of the Saxon nations. Although not recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, an earlier excursion of Offa is mentioned by others. A.D. 771, Simeon of Durham[100] says “His diebus Offa, rex Merciorum, Hestingorum gentem armis subegerat.” Dr. Lappenberg, in relating this feat of Offa’s, calls “the Hestingas, a people whose locality, like that of so many others among the Saxons, is not known with certainty. They have been sought for about Hastings in Sussex, and most probably inhabited the district around that town to which they gave their name.”[101] Roger of Wendover, however, reads “Anglorum gentem.”[102] Upon this, Sir F. Palgrave had already noted: “It is not easy to ascertain what people are meant. The name has inclined many writers to suppose that they were the inhabitants of Hastings, but they could scarcely be of sufficient importance. Perhaps we should read _East Anglorum_.”[103] Other recent historians, with or without hesitation, adopt the present town of Hastings as the scene of the conquest.