The Auldest Tung

Saxon Waves

Within a generation of arrival or emergence depending on which version of the story is believed Saxons, of some sort or another, were not only settled in Wessex, as they had been from 495 AD, but on the move elsewhere. They seem at some point in the first half of the 6^th Century to have planted themselves on the north bank of the Thames estuary, now the south coast of, unsurprisingly, Essex. There the shore was up to four miles further north than it is today and along it from Tilbury in the west to the River Crouch slightly to the north-east there is literally a chain of points and places where the clue is in the name, Ockendon, Horndon, Dunton, Laindon, Basildon, Nevendon, Ashingdon and Canewdon, notably recording in some cases not hills but little more that mounds and from where the people who founded them then seemed to have pushed northwards through Latchingdon, Mundon, Maldon, perhaps Kelvedon and finally, to Ballingdon on the Suffolk border, and, indeed, slightly beyond.

It was a process that took, again at the Danish rate, perhaps thirty-five years and seems to have produced control not just of the county north to south, to the east to Colchester and the coast and west to include Chelmsford, but also in time south-east to north west. From Laindon on the Thames estuary via Kelvedon Hatch and Hoddesdon to Bovingdon at the eastern foot of the Chilterns is perhaps forty-five years and to Dunstable another ten, and it is those estimates that possibly produce a date, a question, an answer and a perhaps even an explanation.

The date is one of first Saxon settlement not of Hampshire but the south Essex coast. Given the Battle of Wibbendun, Whipsnade or other, in 565 AD, it is on countback about 510 AD so just post-Wessex but exactly at the time of pre-Badon confusion and therefore perfect for the opportunistic. The question is, would not a better explanation of Wibbendun be not Kent against Wessex but rather East Saxon, with Kentish support, on West Saxon? Or more precisely, could not the battle have been fought not because of a perceived threat on Essex from Wessex but exactly the other way round. Might not an expansive Essex, a Greater Essex i.e. including much of today’s Hertfordshire, have been felt to be moving too close, threatening territory, which Wessex regarded as its own with the “duns” and “downs” of the Chilterns from Harewood Down and Quarrendon above the valley of the River Colne to the Sundons and Stondons in the north overlooking the Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire plains not West- but actually East-Saxon in origin? It would certainly better fit the subsequent preference of Essex for Kent.

It might even provide an explanation of Wessex’s strange peregrination after the battle from Chilterns to Cotswolds, seemingly retaking towns to the west of the former on the way, although quite from whom is not clear. Having had their victory, if perhaps not a very decisive one, the West Saxons felt they had made enough of a mark and decided their future, like their past, lay elsewhere, not to the east but the west. It would even give a reason why Wessex and Essex did not, given their shared origins, combine as could have been expected. Saxons they both were but certainly philosophically and possibly tribally different ones, with perhaps, for example, one group from south of the Elbe, the other from north, and old disagreements brought from the homeland.

And it might even suggest why Middlesex, to all appearances a Germanic but minority Saxon hotchpotch, was absorbed by Essex rather than becoming like Sussex a client state of Wessex. Gradually encircled from the east and north from the Lea and Brimsdown to the east via Hendon to Hillingdon in the west it still preferred when independence was finally relinquished coming to a local arrangement. But then there is the Thames, on free access to which it depended. Perhaps it was better to have a helpful master on the northern shore and Kent as an ally on the southern than a distant, South Coast alternative.

However, back to Wessex itself. From almost its inception it seems to have been overtly and westerly, shall we say, expansive. A mile to the west of its mid-Meon base is Shepherds Down. Two mile further on there is Stephen’s Castle Down, then Blackdown after another two miles with, within three more miles or six years in total, Winchester already overlooked. Yet, whilst not only was it shirted from the east by three downs, the River Itchen was clearly crossed at South Down and via Compton and Tog Downs that skirting extended, the town was neither taken or apparently even attacked. Instead a salient that also controlled the route to the sea thrust itself out still westward via Standon, Mount Down and Furzedown, from where a chain again seems to have been formed northwards and now overlooking the next major river, the Test.

We are now something like twelve years from the Saxon heartland so perhaps around 510 AD. The Battle of Netley had already taken place in 508 AD, whether at Netley itself or Netley Marsh matters not, because over the next five years incursions into the area that is now the New Forest from either and/or both, one by water, the other by land, had joined and appear to have ground to a halt. It meant that resources could, or if continuous Saxon expansion was the plan, needed to be directed elsewhere. Initially it was to Charford, ten to eleven years away, with its battle in 519 AD and where again there is a chain of downs overlooking the next valley, that of the Avon. Indeed Downton lies on the river itself.

However, it was once the Hampshire Avon had been crossed post-519 AD but perhaps as late at 530 AD as meanwhile attention had been switched to the subjugation of the Jutes that the wave pattern can be seen at its best. There are two north-west to get to Salisbury, not taken until 552 AD but with the Isle of Wight and stiffened Arthurian resistance slowing the advance in the interim, four perhaps five more waves to overlook Swindon to the north and Chippenham to the west, with two more to cross the Cotswolds, plus a multitude to the south-west over at least the next twenty years to Blandford but seemingly not beyond. There would be an apparent pause. The remainder of Dorset would not taken for another forty years or so and then annexed from the east rather than captured from the north, this before the ultimate push, still in notable, now westward waves into Somerset and Devon, started in about 660 AD and completed a half a century later in 710 AD, with the subjection of east Cornwall taking perhaps a further thirty-five years.

However, the apparent pause is intriguing. In the interim between the taking of Blandford in about 572 AD and the remainder of Dorset four decades later we know there had been activity elsewhere. Indeed attention might even have been deliberately switched from Dorset there, culminating in 590 AD in the perhaps absorption into Wessex, of what we now call Sussex. It took place on the face of it by political consent, except that re-examination through hill-waves tells what might be a slightly different story.

In the same way as to the west of Meonstoke to its east across the hills it is four years to the south-north line of downs above Clanfield, another three to the next above Compton and five or six more to a point above but well above Chichester with thus little or no overt pressure there on Aella. And even after his death in 510 AD under Cissa, his successor, that lack of pressure could continue for the best part of a decade even if the Saxon advance still in the hills continued until the valley of the Arun was overlooked from Great or Burton Down or both and a breath taken until about 540 AD and Cissa’s posited, actual death.

However, pressure must have begun to be felt by Cissa’s successor or successors, and perhaps quite rapidly, as the then wide river inlet was crossed and beyond Burpham there is a new “down” chain running not west-east from but from by Amberley in the north, almost to Ferring and the coast in the south and then Findon in the east with four to ten years between. At that point, sometime around perhaps 547 AD, the westernmost third of Sussex had by land quietly but effectively been cut off from the rest.

Then perhaps there was something of hiathus once more. West Saxon attention might well have been turned westwards once more, to territorial expansion Salisbury, and until 570 AD Swindon and Chippenham before returning. Ten years more of pressure would have carried the incursion across the River Adur to the beginning of the next chain at Cow Down. Five more would carry it along the chain itself until by 585 AD the north-eastern shore of the Ouse inlet could be overlooked from from Balmer Down and it was time again for consolidation. Three or so years later the mouth of the Ouse would be overlooked from Nore Down seven miles to the south and river traffic controlled. And the settlement of Lewes with its “lows” three miles eastward of Balmer could be quickly overcome and perhaps three years further on still be looked back on from a hill due east of the town known even today as Saxon Down.

Indeed it might have been that same Saxon Down, which acted as the cumulative trigger of final absorption. With the capital, Chichester, and now at least two, the first being Lancing and newly Lewes itself, of perhaps three of the regional centres effectively already within the West Saxon orbit the third region, from the Ouse to the Cuckmere with probably Alfriston at the head of the latter’s inlet as its centre, ceased on its own to be viable. Incorporation became inevitable and was in short time simply formalised.

So it was Sussex, overcome by waves of advancement and perhaps by fractured leadership post-Cissa, became effectively a province of Wessex, ruled from then on by a series of earls, known and unknown, with perhaps in 685 AD a single, final and failed attempt at independence. However, in the meantime some non-Saxons, Angles, Jutes and some Reuding and others, I suggest, chose to vote with the their feet, moving on, some to the west but, with prospects opening up northwards, mainly to join possible kinsmen in independent and consolidating East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria and quite possibly in the case of Old Frisians what had already been consolidated beyond.