origin and the reasons for his elevation to the throne, but we may suspect the hand of Archbishop Wulfred in the background. For shortly afterwards we find Beornwulf making grants to Wulfred, and the abbess Cwenthryth, Coenwulf's daughter, compelled to resign Harrow to the see of Canterbury. The dispute about the succession between Ceolwulf and Beornwulf marks the beginning of evil days for Mercia. The unity and solidity, which had appeared so well established under Offa, disappears; the Mercian magnates fall a prey to faction, and almost as it were in the twinkling of an eve the supremacy of Mercia is wrecked for ever.
It is time now to turn again to the affairs of Wessex. When Beorhtric died in 802, poisoned, so the tale goes, by his wife, the West Saxon witan saluted as their king that Ecgbert whom Offa and Beorhtric had driven out of England. The choice was most happy for Ecgbert was a man of experience, who had spent some time in Frankland, and possibly witnessed Charlemagne's Saxon campaigns. He had returned to Wessex about 799, but not before he had marked how the great Frank administered his kingdom. His elevation to the throne clearly meant a less dependent Wessex and so was distasteful to the Mercians. At any rate on the very day of Ecgbert's election the men of the Hwicce took horse and crossed the Upper Thames at Kempsford near Cirencester led by Aethelmund, a Gloucestershire magnate whose estates lay at Deerhurst and Berkeley. They were met by a West Saxon alderman named Weoxtan with the levies of Wiltshire. In the fight which ensued both leaders were killed, but the Mercians had to retreat, after which Ecgbert had several years of peace for organising his kingdom. We know nothing of his acts as an administrator, but in 814 we find him imitating Coenwulf and engaged in expanding his borders westwards at the expense of the Welsh of Cornwall. As the Chronicle puts it, "he laid waste West Wales from eastward to westward," and thenceforth apparently held it as a ducatus or dukedom annexed to his regnum or kingdom of Wessex, but not wholly incorporated with it. Thus arose that Welsh-speaking duchy or earldom of Cornwall, which almost ever since has formed a quasi-royal appanage in the hands of Ecgbert's successors, and which maintained its distinct nationality to the eighteenth century. The exact stages of its reduction to submission cannot be followed. We only know that in 825 the West Welsh were once more in arms and that Ecgbert again put them down and, as a later document[1] phrases it, "disposed of their territory as it seemed fit to him, giving a tenth part of it to God." In other words he incorporated Cornwall ecclesiastically with the West Saxon diocese of Sherborne, and endowed Ealhstan, his fighting bishop, who took part in the campaign, with an extensive Cornish estate consisting of Callington and Lawhitton, both in the Tamar valley, and Pawton near Padstow. One is naturally
- ↑ Crawford Charters, No. VII.
