ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS the natural riches of the river-bottoms, where the alluvial soil responded even to the most primitive methods of husbandry. The neighbourhood of the Severn however was exposed to forays by the Welsh, who were not thrown back far beyond the river even by the victorious OfFa, if the famous earthwork may really be assigned to him. In any case the Avon valley would prove more inviting to the early settlers than the woodland beyond the Severn known as Malvern Chase, which occupied the whole of the south-west portion of the county. Above this lay the forest of Wyre, which was the western continuation of Feckenham and of the greater Arden which stretched across Warwick- shire. From the county town eastward to the border ran the southern limit of Feckenham Forest, and Upton Snodsbury thus marks perhaps the most northern settlement of the Hwiccans in the sixth and seventh centuries. Between this and the two remaining sites, Bredon's Norton and Little Hampton in the south-eastern angle of the county, we may thus look for the chief and perhaps the only relics of the tribe within the present county borders. Other traces of their occupation may no doubt be detected in place names and traditions ; and though local etymology has its pitfalls, it is hard to abstain from connecting some names with that of the tribe which bestowed them. Thus there appears to be no warrant in philology for the historian's conception ^ of the county town in a literal sense as the ' stronghold of the Hwiccans,' the name occurring in charters under the forms of Wigernaceaster, Wigar- ceaster, Wigraceaster, and in Latin, Wigornia. But an instance that seems to carry conviction with it is Wychwood Forest in Oxfordshire, which appears in a charter dated 841 as Hwiccewudu.^ Though included in the neighbouring county, this woodland may well have served as a neutral zone between the West Saxons proper of the upper Thames valley and their kinsmen on the Severn. According to a perambulation ^ made in 1300 the forest stretched as far west as Tainton, which is virtually on the present border of Gloucestershire, in the neighbourhood of Burford ; and possibly included Daylesford, which is still in an outlying portion of Worcestershire between Stow-on-the-Wold and Chipping Norton. If the year 577 be accepted as the earliest date for West Saxon burials in Worcestershire and other Hwiccan districts, it may be allow- able to use the same authority for the subsequent period and to put a limit of date to West Saxon dominion in these parts. It is possible to see in the treaty of Cirencester the formal acknowledgment by Cynegils and Cwichelm of Penda's sovereignty;* and it was either at that time or in 645, when Cenwealh was driven out for repudiating his Mercian wife, that Hwiccia ceased to belong to Wessex and became a province of the midland kingdom. A change of rulers would not necessarily imply any modification of 1 Dr. Stubbs in Dictionary of Christian Biography, iii. i8l-z.
- Prof. Earle, Journal of Archaohgical Institute, xix. 52.
- A map and details are given in Archaokgia, xxxvii. 425.
- J. R. Green, Making of England {li^j), ii. 19 ; Freeman, Norman Conquest, i. 37.
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