571) with respect to the countries of the Middle and East Saxons, that the name of the West Saxons was given to this colony. The tract north of the Thames was soon lost; but on the south of that river and of the Severn, the successors of Cerdic, Kings of Wessex, continued to extend their dominions. The Hampshire Avon, which retains its old Celtic name, signifying 'the Water,' seems at first to have been their boundary. Beyond this river, the British princes of Damnonia retained their power; and it was long before the country as far as the Exe became a Saxon March-land, or border. About the time that the Saxons under Cerdic and Cynric were successfully warring against the Britons, another colony was seen to establish itself in the territory or kingdom which, from its geographical position, obtained the name of East Saxony; but whereof the district of the Middle Saxons, now Middlesex, formed a part. London, as you well know, is locally included in Middle Saxony; and the Kings of Essex, and the other sovereigns who afterwards acquired the country, certainly possessed many extensive rights of sovereignty in the city. Yet, I doubt much whether London was ever incorporated in any Anglo-Saxon kingdom; and I think we must view it as a weak, tributary, vassal state, not very well able to resist the usurpations of the supreme Lord or Suzerain, Æscwin, or Ercenwine, who was the first King of the East Saxons (A. D. 527). His son Sleda was married to Ricola, daughter to Ethelbert of Kent, who afterwards appears as the superior, or sovereign of the country; and though Sleda was King, yet Ethelbert joined in all important acts of government. This was the fate of Essex--it is styled a kingdom, but it never enjoyed any political independence, being always subject to the adjoining kings." _F. Palgrave, History of the Anglo Saxons, chapter 2._ "The descents of [the West Saxons], Cerdic and Cynric, in 495 at the mouth of the Itchen, and a fresh descent on Portchester in 501, can have been little more than plunder raids; and though in 508 a far more serious conflict ended in the fall of 5,000 Britons and their chief, it was not till 514 that the tribe whose older name seems to have been that of the Gewissas, but who were to be more widely known as the West Saxons, actually landed with a view to definite conquest." _J. R. Green, The Making of England, chapter 3._