The name Sherborne survives in various parts of England. In Dorset the territorial district or diocese of the Saxon Bishop of Sherborne was called Selwoodshire.[1]
The districts of Northumberland, Yorkshire, and Lancashire which were in ancient time called shires, and in some cases still are locally so called, correspond to the hundreds or wapentakes of other counties. Wessex in the early period of its history comprised Hants, Wilts, Dorset, and Berks, and as time passed on, Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall were added to it. Mercia, however, if we are to judge by the number of its later shires, had more primitive states than Wessex. There is no more reason to suppose that when the shires of Mercia were first recognised as counties these territories were thus all arranged for the first time than there is to suppose that the states, called later on Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset, did not exist before they were called shires. In Mercia we read of ealdormen of the Hecanas before we read of Herefordshire, and of the Hwicci before we read of Worcestershire. Every early state which later on became a county had its viceroy. Mercia, having so many more states, would be likely to have more ealdormen or viceroys than Wessex on great occasions to witness the charters of the Mercian Kings. This is what we generally find by a comparison of the number of witnesses who sign as dux or comes in the charters respectively of the Kings of Mercia and Wessex. When the Kings of Mercia were overlords of Kent and Surrey the number of their viceroys would be increased, and later on, when the Kings of Wessex had acquired this supremacy, the number of their viceroys would be increased. In a charter by the Mercian King Kenulf in 814 relating to land at Chart in Kent,[2] there are sixteen witnesses who sign as dux or ealdorman. In Kenulf’s charter relating to the establishment of the abbey at Winchcombe in 811 there are eleven witnesses similarly described.[3] The
