easy here to kill off the Welsh fighting population, to drive the remnants into the Fen Country or the Weald, to enslave the captives, the women, and the children, and to secure the Teutonic colony by a mark or border of woodland, swamp, or hill. On the other hand, Wessex, Northumbria, and Mercia, with a vague and illdefined internal border, had harder work to fight their way in against a united Welsh resistance; and it was only very slowly that they pushed across the central watershed, to dismember the unconquered remnant of the Britons at last into the three isolated bodies of Damnonia (Cornwall and Devon), Wales Proper, and Strathclyde. That is probably why the earliest settlements were made in these isolated coast regions, and why the inward progress of the other colonies was so relatively slow.

The South Saxons, then, at first occupied the three fertile bits of the county-the coast belt of Sussex Proper, the Valley of the Ouse, and the isolated Hastings district-because these were the best adapted for their strictly agricultural life. In spite of the legend of Elle, I do not suppose that they were all united from the first under a single principality. It seems far more probable that each little clan settlement was at first wholly independent; that afterwards three little chieftainships grew up in the three fertile strips-typified, perhaps, by the story of Elle's three sons-and that the whole finally coalesced into a single kingdom of the South Saxons, which is the state in which we find the county in Bada's time. As ever, its boundaries were marked out for it by nature, for the Weald remained as yet an almost unbroken forest; and the names of Selsea, Pevensey, Winchelsea, Romney, and many others, show by their common insular termination (found in all isles round the British coast, as in Sheppey, Walney, Bardsey, Anglesea, Fursey, Wallasey, and so forth) that the marshland was still wholly undrained, and that a few islands alone stood here and there as masses of dry land out of their desolate and watery expanse. The Hastings district, too, fell more naturally to Sussex than to Kent, because the marshes dividing it from the former were far less formidable than those which severed it from the latter. Most probably the South Saxons intenticnally aided nature in cutting off their territory from all other parts of Britain; for every English kingdom loved to surround itself with a distinct mark or border of waste, as a defence against invasion from outside. The Romans had brought Sussex within the great network of their road system; but the South Saxons no doubt took special pains to cut off those parts of the roads which led across their own frontier. At any rate, it is quite clear that Sussex did not largely

participate in the general life of the new England, and that intercourse with the rest of the world was extremely limited.

The South Saxon kings probably lived for the most part at Chichester, though no doubt they had hams, after the royal Teutonic fashion generally, in many other parts of their territory; and they moved about from one to the other, with their suite of thegns, eating up in each what food was provided by their serfs for their use, and then moving on to the next. The isolation of Sussex is strikingly shown by its long adherence to the primitive paganism. Missionaries from Rome, under the guidance of Augustine, converted Kent as early as 597. For Kent was the nearest kingdom to the continent; it contained the chief port of entry for continental travellers, Richborough-the Dover of those days-and its king, accustomed to continental connections, had married a Christian Frankish princess from Paris. Hence Kent was naturally the first Teutonic principality to receive the faith. Next came Northumbria, Lindsey, East Anglia, Wessex, and even inland Mercia. But Sussex still held out for Thor and Woden as late as 679, three-quarters of a century after the conversion of Kent, and twenty years after Mercia itself had given way to the new faith. Even when Sussex was finally converted, the manner in which the change took place was characteristic. It was not by missionaries from beyond the Weald in Kent or Surrey, nor from beyond the marsh in Wessex. An Irish monk, Bæda tells us, coming ashore on the open coast near Chichester, established a small monastery at Bosham-even then, no doubt, a royal ham, as we know it was under Harold-" a place," says the old historian significantly, "girt round by sea and forest." (It lies just on the mark between Wessex and the South Saxons.) Ethelwealh, the king-a curious name, for it means "noble Welshman" (perhaps he was of mixed blood)--had already been baptized in Mercia, and his wife was the daughter of a Christian ealdorman of the Worcestermen; but the rest of the principality was heathen. The Irish monk effected nothing; but shortly after Wilfrith, the fiery Bishop of York, on one of his usual flying visits to Rome, got shipwrecked off Selsea. With his accustomed vigour, he went ashore, and began a crusade in the heathen land. He was able at once to baptize the "leaders and soldiers "-that is to say, the free military English population; while his attendant priests-Eappa, Padda, Burghelm, and Oiddi (it is pleasant to preserve these little personal touches) -proceeded to baptize the "plebs"-that is to say, the servile Anglicised Ceit-Euskarian substratum-up and down the country villages.

It was to Wilfrith, too, that Sussex owed her first cathedral. Æthelwealh made him a present of Selsea, "a place surrounded by the sea on every side save one, where an isthmus about as broad as a stone's-throw connects it with the mainland," and there the ardent bishop founded a regular monastery, in which he himself remained for five years. On the soil were 250 serfs, whom Wilfrith at once set free. After the death of Aldhelm, the West Saxon bishop, in 709, Sussex was made a separate bishopric, with its seat at Selsea; and it was not till after the Norman Conquest that the cathedral was removed to Chichester. It may be noted that all these arrangements were in strict accordance with early English custom. The kings generally gave their bishops a seat near their own chief town, as Cuthbert had his see at Lindisfarne, close to the royal Northumbrian capital of Bamborough ; so that the proximity of Selsea to Chichester made it the most natural place for a bishopstool; and, again, it was usual to make over spots in the fens or marshes to the monks, who, by draining and cultivating them, performed a useful secular work, No traces now remain of old Selsea Cathedral, its site having long been swallowed up by incursions of the sea. Bæda has the ordinary number of miracles to record in connection with the monastery.

As time went on, however, the isolation of Sussex became less complete. Æthelwealh had got himself into complications with Wessex by accepting the sovereignty of the Isle of Wight and the Meonwaras about Southampton from the hands of a Mercian conqueror. Perhaps Ethelwealh then repaired the old Roman roads which led from his own ham at Chichester to Portsmouth in Wessex, and broke down the mark, so as to connect his old and his new dominions with one another. At any rate, shortly after, Cadwalla, the West Saxon, an ætheling at large on the look-out for a kingdom, attacked him suddenly with his host of thegns from this unexpected quarter, killed the King himself, and harried the South Saxons from marsh to marsh. Two South Saxon thegns expelled him for a time, and made themselves masters of the country. But afterwards, Cædwalla, becoming King of the West Saxons, recovered Sussex once more, and handed it on to his successor, Ini. Hence the South Saxons had no bishopric of their own during this period, but were included in the see of the West Saxons at Winchester.

During the hundred years of the Mercian supremacy, coincident, roughly speaking, with the eighth century, we hear little of Sussex; but it seems to have shaken off the yoke of Wessex, and to have been in subjection to the great Mercian over-lords alone. It had its own under-kings and its own bishops. Early in the ninth century, VOL CCLII. NO. 1813.

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however, when Ecgberht the West Saxon succeeded in throwing off the Mercian yoke, the other Saxon States of South Britain willingly joined him against the Anglian oppressors. "The men of Kent and Surrey, Sussex and Essex, gladly submitted to King Ecgberht." When the royal house of the South Saxons died out, Sussex still retained a sort of separate existence within the West Saxon State, as Wales does in the England of our own day. Æthelwulf made his son under-king of Kent, Essex, Surrey, and Sussex; and so, during the troublous times of the Danish invasion, when all Southern England became one in its resistance to the heathen, those old principalities gradually sank into the position of provinces or shires.

From the period of union with the general West Saxon Kingdom (which grew slowly into the Kingdom of England under Eadgar and Cnut), the markland of the Weald seems to have been gradually encroached upon from the south. Most of the names in that district are distinctly" Anglo-Saxon" in type; by which I mean that they were imposed before the Norman Conquest, and belong to the stage of the language then in use. Even during the Roman period, settlements for iron-mining existed in the Weald, and these clearings would of course be occupied by the English colonists at a comparatively early time. Just at the foot of the Downs, too, on the north side, we find a few clan settlements on the edge of the Weald, which must date from the first period of English colonisation. Such are Poynings, Didling, Ditchling, Chillington, and Chiltington. Farther in, however, the clan names grow rarer; and where we find them they are not hams or tuns, regular communities of Saxon settlers, but they show, by their forestine terminations of hurst, ley, den, and field, that they were mere outlying shelters of hunters or swineherds in the trackless forest. Such are Billinghurst, Warminghurst, Itchingfield, and Ardingley. On the Cuckmere river, the villages in the combes bear names like Jevington and Lullington; but in the upper valley of the little stream, where it flows through the Weald, we find instead Chiddingley and Hellingley. Most of the Weald villages, however, bear still more woodland titles-Midhurst, Farnhurst, Nuthurst, Maplehurst, and Lamberhurst; Cuckfield, Mayfield, Rotherfield, Hartfield, Heathfield, and Wivelsfield; Crawley, Cowfold, Loxwood, Linchmere, and Marden. Hams and tons, the sure signs of early English colonisation, are almost wholly lacking; in their place we get abundance of such names as Coneyhurst Common, Water Down Forest, Hayward's Heath, Milland Marsh, and Bell's Oak Green. To this day even, the greater part of the Weald is down in park, copse, heath, forest, common, or marshland. Throughout the whole

expanse of the woodland region in Sussex, with the outlying portions in Kent, Surrey, and Hants, Mr. Isaac Taylor has collected no fewer than 299 local names with the significant forest terminations in hurst, den, ley, holt, and field. These facts show that, during the later "Anglo-Saxon" period, the Weald was being slowly colonised in a few favourable spots. Its use as a mark was now gone, and it might be safely employed for the peaceful purposes of the archer and the swineherd. Names referring to pasture and the wild beasts are therefore common.

To the same time must doubtless be assigned the exact delimitation of the Sussex frontiers. During the early periods, the Kentings, the Suthrige, and the West Saxons would all extend on their side as far as the Weald, which would be treated as a sort of neutral zone. But when the woodland itself began to be occupied, a demarcation would naturally be made between the neighbouring provinces. The boundary follows the most obvious course. It starts on the east from the old mouth of the Rother (now diverted to Rye New Harbour), known as the Kent Ditch, in what was then the central and most impassable part of the marshland. It runs along the Rother to its bifurcation, and then makes for the heaven-water-parting or dividing back of the Forest Ridge, beside two or three lesser streams. Then it passes along the crest of the ridge from Tunbridge Wells, past East Grinstead and Crawley, till it strikes the Hampshire border. There it follows the line between the two watersheds to the sea, which it reaches at Emsworth. There is, however, one long insulated spur of Hampshire running down from Haslemere to Graff ham (in apparent defiance of geographical features), whose origin and meaning I do not understand.

With the Norman Conquest, the history of Sussex, and of England generally, for the most part ceases abruptly; all the rest is mere personal gossip about Prince Edward and the battle of Lewes, or about George IV. and the Brighton Pavilion. Not, of course, that there is not real national history here as elsewhere; but it is hard to disentangle from the puerile personalities of historians generally. Nevertheless, some brief attempt to reconstruct the main facts in the subsequent history of Sussex must still be undertaken. The part which Sussex bore passively in the actual Conquest is itself typical of the new relations. England was getting drawn into the general run of European civilisation, and the old isolation of Sussex was beginning to be broken down. Lying so near the Continent, Sussex was naturally the landing-place for an army coming from Normandy or Ponthieu. William's fleet came ashore on the low coast at Pevensey.