ttle
principality of Middlesex. The upper reaches of the Thames were still
in the hands of the Welsh natives, for the great merchant city of London
blocked the way for the pirates to the head-waters of the river.

On the south side of the estuary lay the Jutish principalities of East
and West Kent, including the strong Roman posts of Rhutupiae, Dover,
Rochester, and Canterbury. The great forest of the Weald and the Romney
Marshes separated them from Sussex; and the insular positions of Thanet
and Sheppey had always special attractions for the northern pirates.

Beyond the marshes, again, the strip of southern shore, between the
downs and the sea, as far as Hayling Island, fell into the hands of the
South Saxons, whose boundary to the east was formed by Romney Marsh, and
to the west by the flats near Chichester, where the forest runs down to
the tidal swamp by the sea. The district north of the Weald, now known
as Surrey, was also peopled by Saxon freebooters, at a later date,
though doubtless far more sparsely.

Finally, along the wooded coast from Portsmouth to Poole Harbour, the
Gewissas, afterwards known as the West Saxons, established their power.
The Isle of Wight and the region about Southampton Water, however, were
occupied by the Meonwaras, a small intrusive colony of Jutes. Up the
rich valley overlooked by the great Roman city of Winchester (Venta
Belgarum), the West Saxons made their way, not without severe
opposition, as their own legends and traditions tell us; and in
Winchester they fixed their capital for awhile. The long chain of chalk
downs behind the city formed their weak northern mark or boundary,
while to the west they seem always to have carried on a desultory
warfare with the yet unsubdued Welsh, commanded by their great leader
Ambrosius, who has left his name to Ambres-byrig, or Amesbury.

We must not, however, suppose that each of these colonies had from the
first a united existence as a political community. We know that even the
eight or ten kingdoms into which England was divided at the dawn of the
historical period were each themselves produced by the consolidation of
several still smaller chieftainships. Even in the two petty Kentish
kingdoms there were under-kings, who had once been independent. Wight
was a distinct kingdom till the reign of Ceadwalla in Wessex. The later
province of Mercia was composed of minor divisions, known as the
Hwiccas, the Middle English, the West Hecan, and so f