desperate defence against the Norse pirates, especially if a settlement already existed there.

No remains of British or Roman times can be traced on the site of Oxford. The nearest Roman road ran some way to the eastward, from the junction of the Thame at Dorchester, due north, near Shotover, to Alchester and Bicester, as the Romans carried their roads along the high ground in order to secure the military command of the country and avoid the undrained valleys.

There was certainly then an English settlement on the site of Oxford even before 912 The entry in the Chronicle implies that the place was already a stronghold guarding the frontier of Mercia, and that it was the central city of a district.

And if the legendary story of St. Frideswide (whose death is assigned to the year 735) can be trusted, a nunnery may have already been founded here in the eighth century. The history of our early saints favours this view. Penda, the pagan king of Mercia, had welded Middle England into one kingdom. For a moment his defeat by Oswiu of Northumbria broke the Mercian power, but Wulfhere (657-675) soon restored it, got down to the western sea at Chester, beat the men of Wessex in 661, and ravaged all as far as Ashdown in Berkshire. Essex and London, Surrey and Sussex, submitted; and Kent, though still independent, lay helpless in the grasp of the Mercian king. Wini, bishop of Winchester, bought the bishopric of London from him. He had thus obtained the great outlets to both seas for the commerce of Middle England, and the readiest means of communication with the Continent.

All this facilitated Archbishop Theodore's reorganisation of the Church, and, according to Florence of Worcester, Dorchester, just south of Oxford, and on the same bank of the river, became a see of the South Angles in 679; which seems to imply that Oxfordshire was already Anglian-i.e. Mercian-and no longer adhered to Wessex. The progress of the new power is marked by the churches dedicated to the female saints of Mercia. Thus St. Werburh, Wulfhere's daughter by a Kentish princess, had churches at Chester and Bristol, and in Kent, and even at Warbstow in Cornwall. Several granddaughters of Penda were saints, including St. Mildred, who had churches in Oxford, London and Canterbury, and at Minster in the Isle of Thanet. There is no improbability therefore about a Mercian St. Frides wide founding a nunnery at Oxford. The people's gratitude for good deeds, or reverence for a holy life, has canonized and handed down names to us of which we have no further information.

The dedications of the churches are mostly of an early character, and two of them bear the names of Celtic saints, St. Aldate and St. Budoc; but we have no further help towards inferring any previous Celtic influence on the place. The Mercian kings were closely allied with the Celts. Mercia had been converted by Celtic missionaries, and Æthelbald even made several gifts to Glastonbury, the first Celtic church spared by the English conquerors, where many Celtic traditions survived. Budoc was a Breton saint, to whom churches were dedicated both in Cornwall and Devon. Moreover relics existed at Abingdon of other Breton saints, such as Winwolaus and Judocus and Samson, as well as of

St. Columba; and there is mention of Celts (Gallorum et Brittonum) living at Abingdon in a charter of 835, attributed to Egbert. Physiologists say that Oxfordshire and Berks still contain many of the dark-haired race which has been identified with part of the Celtic population.

The prosperity of Mercia increased during Æthelbald's reign of forty years (716-57), and to him is due the first genuine group of charters that has survived, one of them being probably the first charter in English.

The monastery of Abingdon, founded on the other side of the river by the kings of Wessex about 675, claimed to have a charter from him to confirm previous grants of its possessions. These formed a belt round Oxford on the southern and western sides, extending to the river itself, and were so large that Abingdon overshadowed all the little foundations, such as St. Frideswide's. The Mercian kings, when they were trying to secure the whole course of the river, with the passages over it that led into Wessex, may well have thought Oxford an important post to occupy as it lies in the gap which leads between the hills from the plain of Banbury northward to the plain of Didcot on the south, and a road (afterwards called the Port Street or Town Road) probably ran through the gap along the gravel ridge, and, skirting St. Frideswide's on its western side, caine down to the ford near Folly Bridge. The legend of St. Frideswide implies that the place was ruled by a Mercian underking of its own; and we might be inclined to assign the first settlements here to the reign of Wulfhere, or of Ethel

bald, who in 736 expressly calls himself 'King of the Mercians and the Southangles.'

Offa (757-96) became the greatest king of his day in England, beat the men of Wessex at Bensington, near Oxford, in 779, and took Abingdon. A coin was found, in digging the foundation of the Martyrs' Memorial at Oxford, which had on it Tenberht Arep. (of Canterbury), and on the reverse Offa rex. Of all the English kingdoms Mercia affords the greatest number of coins, and the most uninterrupted series. To it apparently belong the early sceattas with Runic inscriptions, and the large, thin silver penny dates from Offa; it shows designs corresponding to those in English illuminated manuscripts.

This supremacy of Mercia had lasting effects, and it was further strengthened by the Danish immigration. The modern English language is based on that of the East Midlands, and not on the literary language of Alfred's time, which was properly the dialect of Wessex. Mercian words have largely superseded the Saxon; thus we say plough, boy, girl, dog, where Alfred would have used sulh (still the word in Somerset), knave, maiden, hound. The midland I, She, They have replaced the southern Ich, Heo, Hi. In the system of measurement too the Mercian acre has superseded the Saxon longacre, which was half as large again. Even after Egbert's dynasty had given the supremacy to Wessex, Mercia under its earls retained an influence which Godwine and Harold were powerless to overthrow.

The importance of Oxford then consisted always in its being the frontier city of Mercia, and its growth

was in the natural course of things, arising from its command of the through route into the south by the ford and of the traffic along the river. The main road running from north to south was, later on, crossed at right angles by the line of the present High Street, which was probably continued over Shotover, and so connected Oxford with Thame and Uxbridge. Thus the four quarters of the city would gradually grow up as they are at present. The first parish church of which we have any clear account was St. Martin's, at the meeting of these cross-roads (afterwards called Carfax the four ways), at the highest point on the gravel bank; and it became the nucleus round which the other parishes were formed. It is still the city church; and there is evidence that the Portmannimot, or town council, was held in the churchyard. Justice. was, later on, administered by mayor and bailiffs, sitting beneath the low shed-the 'penniless bench' of later times-without its eastern wall. Its bell summoned the burghers to counsel or to arms.

But though the city was already important, yet 'if any man had stood in the days of Eadweard on the hill that was not yet Shotover, and had looked along the plain to the place where the grey spires of Oxford are clustered now, as it were in a purple cup of the low hills, he would have seen little but "the smoke floating up through the oak-wood and the coppice." The low hills were not yet cleared, nor the fens and the wolds trimmed and enclosed. Centuries later, when the early students came, they had to ride through the thick forest and across the moor to the East Gate of the city. In the midst of a country still wild, Oxford was already