not only by a truce in the meantime, but also by stipulations for united and perhaps additional and compulsory labour in the thinly-peopled districts through which the Dyke was to be traced. The Mercians, as compared with other Anglo-Saxon nations, had but lately emerged from Paganism, under which they had been accustomed to regard the Mark with peculiar sanctity, and to consecrate its limitation with the most solemn rites. That they did not omit to confer upon this, their greatest and most important boundary line, the highest sanction which their newly-adopted religion would permit, may be concluded from the legend preserved by the biographer of Offa.[1] But "long opposition to the introduction of Christianity had been punished by the absence of the arts and knowledge attending civilisation, as well as of institutions conducive to that object. Mercia has left us neither the name of an author, nor even a meagre chronicle."[2] The records of the treaty under which, and of the extraordinary means by which, Offa's Dyke was constructed, have long since perished.
The construction of the Dyke was immediately followed by the occupation of the Mercian March. "Offa drove the Welch beyond the Dee and Wye, and filled with Saxons the plain and more level regions lying between those rivers and the Severn."[3] The accounts of the gradual occupation of the land on the eastern side of the Dyke and the river Wye by the English, shew that the same policy was continued by the rulers of Mercia, and subsequently of England.[4]
The boundary line of Mercia and Wales, thus established with due solemnity by the authority of both nations, was constantly recognised as such during the Anglo-Saxon age.[5] Cenwulf, the immediate successor of Offa, vindicated it on the north by his famous victory at Rhyddlan.[6] Early in the ninth century Egbert, King of Wessex, added Mercia to his dominions, and adopted its western limit. "Punishments of the most frightful character are denounced against him who violates" the Mark of the primitive settlement.[7] "By Egbert the monarch was a law made, that it should be present death for the Welch to pass over Offa's Ditch, as John Bever, the monk of Westminster, reporteth."[8] "The southern portion of the Dyke accompanies, and sometimes appears to coincide with, the lower course of the Wye.[9] Æthelstan, in summoning the Welch Princes to Hereford as to a
- ↑ Matth. Par. Vit. Offæ II. 975.
- ↑ Lappenberg, Anglo-Sax. Hist. i. 221.
- ↑ Langhorne's Chronicon, p. 292.
- ↑ H. Lhuyd, Brit. Descr. pp. 41, 47.
- ↑ Anc. L. and I. of Wales, i. 183.
- ↑ Lappenberg, Anglo-Sax. Hist. i. 240.
- ↑ Kemble's Sax. in Eng. i. 47.
- ↑ Speed's Theatre of Gt. Britain, Radnorshire; Bever's Hist. is not printed.
- ↑ Necham, according to Camden (Monmouthshire), says, "Inde vagos Vaga Cambrenses, hinc respicit Anglos"
