their own; these again may be lost in the extending circuit of Wessex or of Mercia, till a yet greater obliteration of the Marks having been produced through increasing population, internal conquest, or the ravages of foreign invaders, the great kingdom of England at length arises, having wood and desolate moorland and mountain as its Mark against Scots, Cumbrians, and Britons, and the eternal sea itself as a bulwark against Frankish and Frisian pirates."[1]
From this view of the Mark may be derived a clear distinction between Mark and limit, as applied to the territory of this island in early Anglo-Saxon times; both express the idea of boundary, but the former is boundary land, the latter a boundary line. The common boundary of adjoining communities, fully understood, is the common limit of their adjoining Marks.
The limits of the Marks of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms toward each other were doubtless early ascertained with sufficient accuracy, and recognised in their mutual public transactions. The kingdom of Mercia, emphatically the Mark country, chiefly formed out of the original Mark against the Britons, and always, and at length exclusively, bordering upon them, falls under peculiar considerations. Down to the reign of Offa its western limit seems to have been left undefined, and in fact was perpetually advancing as the Britons receded; while, on the other hand, the Britons were ever withdrawing their settlements to some distance within their line of defence, leaving the intervening space as a protection against their encroaching enemies. And thus the Mark of Mercia toward the Britons ever adjoined a district corresponding in its main features, namely, the Mark of the Britons toward Mercia.
In proportion as the social and political institutions of an infant state become more firmly established, arises the necessity of defining the territorial limits of its authority, and of enforcing their due recognition. Mercia had, under Offa, attained great power and prosperity, and it may well be supposed that this necessity had not escaped his attention. The state of the western border of his kingdom was such as to require a definition of this kind to be made without delay.
The Mark of the primitive settlement, in which no one had an exclusive property, and which remained unimproved, uncivilised, and imperfectly subject to public authority, is described as "unsafe, full of danger; death lurks in its shades, and awaits the incautious or hostile visitant."[2] It presents the germ of those evils which attained their full development in the Marches of Mercia and Wales. The district being of great extent, and partly of inaccessible character, and little controlled by the governments which claimed authority over it, early became the receptacle of lawless and predatory bands, which perpetually disturbed, plundered,
