l these regions
suggests the probability that Mercia, Middle England, and the Fen
Country were not by any means so densely colonised as the coast
districts; and independent Welsh communities long held out among the
isolated dry tracts of the fens as robbers and outlaws.

In the south, the advance of the West Saxons had been checked in 520,
according to the legend, by the prowess of Arthur, king of the
Devonshire Welsh. As Mr. Guest acutely notes, some special cause must
have been at work to make the Britons resist here so desperately as to
maintain for half a century a weak frontier within little more than
twenty miles of Winchester, the West Saxon capital. He suggests that the
great choir of Ambrosius at Amesbury was probably the chief Christian
monastery of Britain, and that the Welshman may here have been fighting
for all that was most sacred to him on earth. Moreover, just behind
stood the mysterious national monument of Stonehenge, the honoured tomb
of some Celtic or still earlier aboriginal chief. But in 552, the
English Chronicle tells us, Cynric, the West Saxon king, crossed the
downs behind Winchester, and descended upon the dale at Salisbury. The
Roman town occupied the square hill-fort of Old Sarum, and there Cynric
put the Welsh to flight and took the stronghold by storm.

The road was thus opened in the rear to the upper waters of the Thames
(impassable before because of the Roman population of London), as well
as towards the valley of the Bath Avon. Four years later Cynric and his
son Ceawlin once more advanced as far as Barbury hill-fort, probably on
a mere plundering raid. But in 571 Cuthwulf, brother of Ceawlin, again
marched northward, and "fought against the Welsh at Bedford, and took
four towns, Lenbury (or Leighton Buzzard), Aylesbury, Bensington (near
Dorchester in Oxfordshire), and Ensham." Thus the West Saxons overran
the whole upper valley of the Thames from Berkshire to above Oxford, and
formed a junction with the Middle Saxons to the north of London; while
eastward they spread as far as the northern boundaries of Essex. In 577
the same intruders made a still more important move. Crossing the
central watershed of England, near Chippenham, they descended upon the
broken valley of the Bath Avon, and found themselves the first
Englishmen who reached any of the basins which point westward towards
the Atlantic seaboard. At a doubtful place named Deorham (probably
Dyrham near Bath), "Cuthwine and Ce