It is not meant that these three name-marks are not to be found in other parts of England: on the contrary, we shall hereafter see Mercian operations in other counties sufficient to account for a very wide sprinkling of them. What is here dwelt upon is the unexampled crowding of them, showing simultaneous colonisation upon a great scale. Another, but smaller, group of “-worthy” and “-cot,” occurs on the Severn coast of Somerset, about Minehead, indicating another naval descent of Mercia. In fact, although the great swarm above described occurs between the Torridge and the Tamar, two distinct trains flow from it: one, as before said, over the west foot of Dartmoor to the south sea: another along the Severn coast, eastward, ending with the Minehead or Selworthy group; and does not crop up again until in Gloucestershire it is found in its home midland form of Sheepwardine, and Miserden.
Another example of this sort of connection of Mercia with Cornwall and south-west England may be briefly cited. Among the few--not more than six or eight--non-Celtic, but national or non-Catholic, dedications in Cornwall, is one of St. Cuthbert; a name that is also continued in “Cubert,” the secular name of the town. It is situated in one of the promontories that so boldly project into the sea on the north coast of Cornwall, but farther westward than the English footsteps above noted. A very learned and acute writer[16] could not make out how “St. Cuthbert has made his way from Lindisfarn to Wells;” and says, perhaps truly, that it “does not imply a Northumbrian settlement in Somerset.” But St. Cuthbert at Wells, might reasonably be left to the cross-examination of historians, or neighbours, of that place; and if judiciously and reverently questioned, by the help of what is here said, would possibly give a good account of himself.
It is quite true, as might have been expected, that St. Cuthbert is much more often found at his home in Northumbria than in the south-west of England. In the south-eastern counties he has not been found at all: but over the midland counties, and all down through the western ones he is thinly sprinkled all the way. Between Humber and Mersey, and Tweed and Solway, forty-three can be named if required, and Bishop Forbes adds many from his side of the border. Derbyshire has one at Doveridge, near the Mercian royal castle of Tutbury; Warwickshire one at Shustoke, eight miles south of another villa regia at Tamworth; Leicestershire, Notts, Beds, have each one; Lincoln and Norfolk two each; Worcestershire perhaps one in the name “Cudbergelawe;”[17] Gloucestershire, one at Siston by Pucklechurch, and probably a second in the name “Cuberley;” Herefordshire two, or three? Somerset one at Wells; Dorset one, or two? Devon one, Cornwall one.