No sooner had Offa been established, not less by the hearts of his subjects than by the acts of his power or the will of his predecessor, upon the throne of Mercia, than he applied himself to the duties of a barbaric sovereign, confirming his dominions and extending the limits of his territory. Brave and ambitious, endowed with personal vigour and mental abilities unequalled by any of his age and country, he gradually directed his powers against the neighbouring sovereigns. Circumstanced as the Saxon kingdoms in Britain were, nothing could be more easy than to find a pretext for offence; and whether we suppose, with the Monk of St. Alban’s, that Offa was instigated in his ambitious views by his wife Cynedritha, or believe that he simply acted on the defensive against the confederate monarchs of Deira, East-Anglia, Kent, Sussex, and Wessex, certain it is that his wars with these opponents terminated to his glory and their disgrace. At Feldhard in East-Anglia, the superiority of Offa’s forces was first made manifest. Within two years after this engagement he won the _spolia opima_ in the decisive conflict at Otteford, near Sevenoaks, with the troops of Kent. And not long subsequently, he routed the combined forces of his enemies under the command of Cynewulf--himself a celebrated warrior--at Bensington, or Benson, (about twelve miles on the London side of Oxford,) the Villa Regia of the West Saxons, and dismantled the fortifications which their monarch had in vain striven to preserve. After such specimens of prowess on the part of the Mercian king, it is no marvel that the kings of Deira and of Sussex should seek a distant and friendly land as the scene of their operations against the successful Offa. They sought refuge and assistance at the court of Marmodius, king of Wales; and against the Britons accordingly Offa next directed his arms. Aided by their native fastnesses these new opponents afforded protracted resistance on the western boundary of his kingdom, and with them and their Saxon allies he had many and severe engagements. Owing to the craft of Marmodius he met with some reverses in his first campaign, and on one occasion narrowly escaped with his life. Eventually, however, his good genius prevailed. He annexed to Mercia the east of Wales as far as the Wye, planted the subject territory with Anglo-Saxons, and built the wall known by the name of Offa’s Dyke,[5] about one hundred miles in extent, from the æstuary of the Dee to the mouth of the first-mentioned river.