The greater part of this country was inhabited by the Cornavii and Ordovices, the first of which occupied the eastern side of the Severn, whose capital was Uriconium, now Wroxeter, and the latter were confined to the western side of the Severn. Though the troops of the Cornavii were registered in the declension of the empire, it is supposed that they submitted to the Roman yoke upon easier terms than their neighbours, who held out some time ere their liberty was wrested from them. The Romans allotted one side of the Severn, eastward, to Britannia Prima, and the western side to Britannia Secunda. The Saxons made Watling street, that runs through the middle of the county, the boundary between them and the Danes, but when the compact with the Danes was broken, it returned to the former division of England and Wales. After the Romans had abandoned the Island, part of Shropshire was included in the kingdom of Powis, which comprised portions of the counties of Chester, Flint, Denbigh, Radnor, and Brecon, and the whole of Montgomeryshire, of which Pengwern (Shrewsbury) was the capital. For near two centuries this section of Powisland was the theatre of frequent and sanguinary contests between the Britons and the Saxons; it was finally subdued and incorporated with Mercia, the most powerful of the seven kingdoms forming the Saxon Heptarchy. When the Danes invaded this island, and, by their formidable incursions, seemed to threaten its total subjection, this part of the kingdom of Mercia, though it suffered less than others, came in for a share of the general calamity, and its chief city, Uriconium, was destroyed. About the year 777, the seat of the Prince of Powis was removed from Pengwern to Mantraval, in Montgomeryshire. The Britons, who had made incursions into Mercia, were forced not only to abandon all their conquests there, but also that part of their country which lay between the Severn and OFFA’S DYKE, which that King threw up as a new boundary between them and Mercia, instead of Severn, their former boundary. The Britons had made their incursions into Offa’s territories, while he was employed in subduing the Saxon kings, and having no opposition, they were very successful, till at length Offa, being obliged to conclude a peace with the English, that he might dispossess them of their new acquisitions, in which he proved so successful as to force their retreat, and to prevent their ever returning, threw up the before-mentioned ditch. This ditch extended from the river Wye along the counties of Hereford and Radnor, to Montgomeryshire, and thence near the road between Bishop’s Castle and Newtown. It then passed by Mellington Hall, where there is an encampment, and on to Leighton Hall, not far from which it is lost for upwards of five miles, the channel of the Severn probably serving for that space, as a continuation of the boundary. It is again seen at Llandysilio and Llanymynech, from whence it runs to