POLITICAL HISTORY Ethelbald the Mercian supremacy was extended over all England south of the Humber." A fruit of the Mercian ascendancy was the translation of Cuthbert bishop of Hereford to the see of Canterbury " about 740. The Welsh expedition of Ethelbald in 742 or 743, in which he was supported by his vassal Cuthred, king of the West Saxons, must have affected the districts of the Hecanas. The defeat of Ethelbald by Cuthred at Burford about 75 i destroyed the Mercian hegemony, which, however, was regained by Offa in 779 by his victory over Cynewulf at Bensington. This king then directed his efforts against the Welsh. So early as 760 there had been fighting between the Britons and Saxons in the neighbourhood of Hereford." The establishment of Offa's Dyke from the mouth of the Wye to the mouth of the Dee fixed the modern limits of Wales." The dyke entered the modern county of Hereford near Knighton, joined the Wye near Bridge Sellers, and thence followed the left bank. It thus included the greater part of the shire within the English frontier. Traces of the work survive at Moor- hampton, near Lyonshall, and on Harrock Hill.^^ In 794 the East Saxon king, Ethelbert, was slain by Offa.^' According to later accounts he was buried in the city of Hereford, where afterwards he became the patron saint of the cathedral church. Legend has made Sutton Walls the place of his death.'" For a considerable period the history of Herefordshire is obscure, though, owing to its proximity to Wales, it can hardly have been peaceable. By 880 the limits of English occupation had been extended into Radnorshire.^ In the tenth century the incursions of the Danes had reached this quarter of England. In 915 under two jarls, Ottar and Hraold, they rounded Land's End, entered the Severn and captured Cyfeiliawg, bishop of Llandaff. They were defeated by the men of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire in Archen- field with the loss of Hraold and driven from the country. '^ Western Mercia was at this time under the rule of Ethelflaed, daughter of Alfred and widow of Ethelred the ealdorman of the Mercians, but on her death in 9 19 the administration was taken over by her brother Edward the Elder. Previously, in May, 918, he had ordered a burh to be built at ' Wigingamere,' which has been identified with Wigmore. But as this fortification as well as a similar one at Towcester was erected to check the raids from Danish Mercia and East Anglia,^' the place referred to can hardly be Wigmore in Herefordshire, the future seat of the great house of Mortimer. It v/as more probably Waymere Castle near Bishop's Stortford.'* In the reign of Athelstan the Welsh princes were compelled to do homage at Hereford,^' and the Wye was fixed as the western boundary of Mercia, thus re-estabUshing the limits of Offa. " Bede, V. 23. " Flor. Wore. Chnn. (ed. Thorpe), i. 54 ; Simeon of Durham, Opera (Rolls Ser.), ii, 32, 38. " Annales Cambriae (Rolls Ser.), 10 ; Brut y Tywysogion (Rolls Ser.), 7. " Asser, Life of Alfred (ed. Stevenson, 1904), 12,204 ; Giraldus Cambrensis, Opera (Rolls Ser.), vi, 217 ; Bruty Tytoysoglon (Rolls Ser.), 8 ; Polychronkon Ranulphi Higden (Rolls Ser.), ii, 34; cf. Rhys andBrynmor- Jones, ff^elsh People, 141 ; Arch. Cambr. (Ser. 2), ii, 1-23, 151-4 ; Hartshorne, ^alopia Antiqua (1841). " Cont. of Duncumb's Hist, of Heref. by W. H. Cook, Hundred of Grimsworth (1886), 27. " Flor. Wore. Chron. (ed. Thorpe), i, 62-3. '" Giraldus Cambrensis, Opera (Rolls Ser.), iii, 407-8, 421-4 ; see also Did. Nat. Biog. s. v. Ethelbert " Kemble, Cod. Dipl. (Engl. Hist. Soc), No. 3 1 1. " Angl.-Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 188-9 ; Fl°r. Wore. Chron. (ed. Thorpe), i, 123. " Angl.-Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 194. " Ramsay, Foundations of Engl, i, 274. « William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum (Rolls Ser.), i, 148 ; Liber de Hyda (Rolls Ser.), 124. 349
