The peninsular situation of Pengwerne appeared to the Britons to afford them a secure retreat from their Saxon foes. The trees and shrubs which covered the more uncultivated parts of the county spread into forests, obstructed the course of streams, and thus caused stagnation and the formation of lakes and marshes. Amid the underwood, the thickets, and morasses the fugitives hid themselves. But they were soon disturbed. Pengwerne was not to be their eternal city, their everlasting habitation. They had founded a county hereafter to be famous in the history of England, to be the theatre of one great national tragedy and of several important dramas. Then they were followed with fire and sword by the Saxons from Uriconium, who spread destruction in their path, pillaged and devastated, and finally reduced the place to ashes. Llywarc makes the desolation of Pengwerne the subject of an elegy, and calls upon the maidens to “quit their dwellings, and behold the habitation of Cynddyllan,” the royal residence of their chieftain, wrapped in flames. A few years later we find Pengwerne inhabited by a King of Powis who elevated it to a position of some importance by selecting it as his capital. It then ranked as one of the principal of the twenty-eight cities of Britain—at present it is not easy to say what rank it holds. For two centuries—that is, to the close of the eighth century—it was torn asunder by internal feuds and sanguinary contests between native princes. Every man’s house was not then his castle. The few arts of civil life were neglected and forgotten. It is probable that the whole of Pengwerne Powis consisted of nothing more dignified than a few hovels, surrounded by a ditch or rampart of unhewn logs for the residence of the prince and the officers of religion, some wattled huts, with a fold or two for sheep and cattle. At the end of the eighth century, and during the reign of the Mercian King Offa, the Shrewsbury portion of Powis was surrendered by treaty to the Saxons. It was no longer a metropolis, but it retained, even in Alfred’s time, the distinguished name of Pengwerne. Scrobe, however, was substituted for Pengwerne in the reign of his successor, Edward the Elder, who held a mint here, and on one side of the coin was the inscription, _Edward Rex Angliæ_, and on the reverse, _Aelmer on Scrobe_.