e which stretched throughout the
whole of Middle England and right up to the Humber. The Conquest came,
the diocese was cut up just afterwards, and the seat of the bishop
finally removed from the village to Lincoln, and with the Conquest the
importance of Dorchester as a fortified position, an importance which
it had held for untold centuries, began to decline in favour of
Oxford.

The artificial chain of fortifications up the Thames Valley, which had
their origin under William the Conqueror, will call our attention to
many other spots besides Oxford as these pages proceed, but it is
interesting at this moment to consider Oxford in its early military
aspect, when it succeeded Dorchester, and came forward as the chief
stronghold of the upper Thames Valley above Wallingford.

The gravel bank north of the ford, by which what is presumed to have
been the drovers' road from south to north crossed the river, had
supported a very considerable population, and had attained a very
considerable civil importance, long before the Conquest. It is
difficult to believe that any new, especially that any extensive,
centres of population grew up in Anglo-Saxon Britain, upon sites
chosen by the barbarians. The Romans had colonised and densely
populated every suitable spot. The ships' crews of open pirate vessels
had no qualities suitable to the founding of a town; and when there is
no direct evidence it is always safer of the two conjectures in
English topography to believe that any spot which we find inhabited
and flourishing in the Anglo-Saxon period, even at its close, was not
a town developed during the Dark Ages but one which the pirates, when
they first entered the island, had found already inhabited and
flourishing, though sometimes perhaps more British than Roman. But
though this is always the more historical way of looking at the
probable origin of an English town it must be admitted that there is
no direct evidence of any town upon the site of Oxford before the
Danish invasions, and the first mention of the place by name is as
late as eleven years after Alfred's death, when it is recorded that
Edward, his son, "took possession of London and of Oxford and of all
lands in obedience thereunto."

This first mention, slight as it is, characterises Oxford as being the
town of the upper Thames Valley at the opening of the tenth century,
and we have what is usually a good basis for history--that is,
ecclesiastical tradition and a mon