So that as the only examples of this dedication to be found south of Staffordshire and Derbyshire, are the three which line the north shore of the Avon, the new frontier of Wessex and Mercia; the entire district of Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and all the intervening country, from east to west, being totally without them; these three are manifestly arrayed in one line for a special purpose. The record, of the contest of Wessex and Mercia, contained in the Annal of A.D. 741, is thus accounted for in this monument of its result. Three more distant St. Werburghs remain, of which two will now be appropriated to that of A.D. 743. The one for A.D. 742, passed over for the present, will afterwards be shewn to involve the remaining sixth.
It will be remembered that, in the year 743, the Chronicle shews Æthelbald and Cuthred, who two years earlier had been fighting each other, now united, by perhaps an analogue of a Russo-Turkish alliance, against an enemy who, while Cuthred had been engaged with his Teutonic rival, had become troublesome in his rear, and dangerous to both. Under this year, 743, it says “Now Æthelbald King of the Mercians and Cuthred King of the West Saxons fought with the Welsh.” It does not say which of the then surviving three great bodies of the Welsh, who had been pressed into the great western limbs of the island, that are geographically divided from each other by the estuary of the Severn and the great bay of Lancashire; but none can be meant but the Damnonian or Cornish Britons--the “Welsh” of the West Saxon Cuthred. No more of Devon could then have been held by the West Saxons than the fruitful southern lowlands, easily accessible from Somerset and Dorset, and from the south-coast. Most or all of Cornwall, and the highlands of Dartmoor and Exmoor, extending into north-west Somerset, still remained British or Welsh; as for the most part in blood, though not in speech, they do to this day.
Written history is silent as to the parts separately taken by the allies in this contest; but other tokens of that of the Mercian are extant; and the two dedications of St. Werburgh that will next engage us are among the most significant. A glance at Mercia and the extent of the provinces annexed thereto by conquest, betrays a ruling political aim at obtaining access to the great seaports. Besides the Humber with Trent, and the Mersey, and, as we shall see below, the Medway, and the Thames itself; what is more to our purpose, we have found it already in possession of Bristol, added to Gloucester and the mouth of the Wye. An aggressive kingdom, with this policy, needs no chronicle to tell us that ships were abundant; and that at least it must have been able to command the transport service of a large mercantile fleet. It will readily be understood that one of Æthelbald’s strategies, in aid of his ally against his Damnonian insurgents, would be, to outflank the ally himself; and establish a cordon across his rear. This was effected by transporting, from his Wiccian ports on the Severn, to the north coast of Devon, a large migration of his own people; who not only occupied the district between the Dartmoor highlands and the north coast, not yet Teutonized by Wessex; but possessed themselves of the entire line across the western promontory, between Dartmoor and the Tamar, as far as the south sea near Plymouth.