Workmen digging or ploughing on the hillside up towards Coombe Warren have, at various times in the past, discovered the foundations of Roman villas, with gold, silver, and bronze coins of the fourth century, and numerous household goods, and in one place a cemetery full of funeral urns. But it was not till Saxon times that Kingston came to the heyday of its existence. Then it was a place of the greatest possible importance, for here England was united into one country under one King. Prior to the union England was divided off into a number of states, which found amusement in fighting each other when they were not fighting the ancient Britons in their western fastnesses. These states were Northumbria, in the north; Mercia in the Midlands; Wessex in the south-west; and, in addition, the smaller areas of East Anglia, Essex, and Kent. When any one chieftain or king was sufficiently strong to defeat the others, and make them do his will, he became for the time being the “bretwalda,” or overlord; but it was a very precarious honour. The kings in turn won the distinction, but the greater ones emerged from the struggle, and in the end Egbert, king of Wessex, by subduing the Mercians, became so powerful that all the other kings submitted to him. Thus Egbert became the first king or overlord of all the English (827), and picked on Kingston as the place for his great council or witenagemot. Then followed the terrible years of the Danish invasions, and England was once more split up into sections; but the trouble passed, and Edward the Elder, elected and crowned king of Wessex at Kingston, eventually became the real King of England, the first to be addressed in those terms by the Pope of Rome. Thence onward Kingston was the recognized place of coronation for the English Kings, till Edward the Confessor allotted that distinction to his new Abbey at Westminster. In addition, it was one of the royal residences and the home of the Bishops of Winchester, whose palace was situated where now a narrow street, called Bishop’s Hall, runs down from Thames Street to the River. So that Kingston’s position as one of the chief towns of Wessex was acknowledged.