awlin fought against the Welsh, and
slew three kings, Conmail, and Condidan, and Farinmail, and took three
towns from them, Gloucester, and Cirencester, and Bath." Thus the three
great Roman cities of the lower Severn valley fell into the hands of the
West Saxons, and the English for the first time stood face to face with
the western sea. Though the story of these conquests is of course
recorded from mere tradition at a much later date, it still has a ring
of truth, or at least of probability, about it, which is wholly wanting
to the earlier legends. If we are not certain as to the facts, we can at
least accept them as symbolical of the manner in which the West Saxon
power wormed its way over the upper basin of the Thames, and crept
gradually along the southern valley of the Severn.

The victory of Deorham has a deeper importance of its own, however, than
the mere capture of the three great Roman cities in the south-west of
Britain. By the conquest of Bath and Gloucester, the West Saxons cut off
the Welsh of Devon, Cornwall, and Somerset from their brethren in the
Midlands and in Wales. This isolation of the West Welsh, as the English
thenceforth called them, largely broke the power of the native
resistance. Step by step in the succeeding age the West Saxons advanced
by hard fighting, but with no serious difficulty, to the Axe, to the
Parret, to the Tone, to the Exe, to the Tamar, till at last the West
Welsh, confined to the peninsula of Cornwall, became known merely as the
Cornish men, and in the reign of AEthelstan were finally subjugated by
the English, though still retaining their own language and national
existence. But in all the western regions the Celtic population was
certainly spared to a far greater extent than in the east; and the
position of the English might rather be described as an occupation than
as a settlement in the strict sense of the word.

The westward progress of the Northumbrians is later and much more
historical. Theodoric, son of Ida, as we may perhaps infer from the old
Welsh ballads, fought long and not always successfully with Urien of
Strathclyde. But in 592, says Baeda, who lived himself but three-quarters
of a century later than the event he describes, "there reigned over the
kingdom of the Northumbrians a most brave and ambitious king,
AEthelfrith, who, more than all other nobles of the English, wasted the
race of the Britons; for no one of our kings, no one of our chieftains,
has rend