the southern
coast, and presently seized Winchester within whose broken walls they
established themselves. In the year 519, according to the "Saxon
Chronicle," "Cerdic and Cymric obtained the kingdom of the West Saxons;
and the same year they fought against the Britons where it is now named
Cerdicsford. And from that time forth the royal offspring of the West
Saxons reigned." That is all we know about it, and it is not enough
upon which to build an historical narrative or from which to draw any
clear idea even of what befell. All we can say with any sort of
certainty is that the Saxons, through long years of probably spasmodic
fighting, very gradually established themselves in southern England,
and out of it carved a dominion, the kingdom of Wessex, whose capital
was Winchester. Until the year 635 this kingdom, such as it was, was
pagan. In that year St Birinus converted the West Saxons and their King
Kynegils to Christianity. Though Kynegils seems immediately
to have begun to build a church in Winchester in which he
established monks and endowed it with the whole of the land
for a space of seven miles round the city, Winchester did
not become an episcopal See until the year 662. Till then,
Dorchester in the Thames Valley had been the seat of the Bishop
of Wessex, but in that year Kynewalch, the son and successor of
Kynegils, completed the church of Winchester, in which he had been
crowned, and his father buried, as for the most part were their
successors, and there he established a bishop.

It was now that Winchester began her great career. She rose with the
fortunes of the Wessex kingdom until, in the time of Egbert, she
appears as the capital of the new kingdom of England which is so named,
and for the first time in her witan.

The com kyng Egbryth
Ant wyth batyle ant fyht
Made al Englond yhol
Falle to ys oune dol;
Ant sethe he reignede her
Ahte ant tuenti folle yer:
At Wynchestre lyggeth ys bon,
Buried in a marble-ston.

Egbert triumphed and established England none too soon. As early as
the year 787, according to the "Saxon Chronicle," "ships of the
Northmen" had reached our southern coasts, and Egbert had scarcely
named his new kingdom when they imperilled it. His son, Ethelwulf, who
came to his throne in 836, was to see Winchester itself stormed before
the invaders were beaten off; but beaten off they were, and it was in
Winchester that Alfr