is a parish, borough, and considerable market town, locally situated in the hundred to which it gives name, seventeen miles and a half N.W. from Shrewsbury, and 179 miles N.W. from London. The name of Oswestry is connected with some of our earliest historical recollections. On this spot, on August 5th, 652, was fought the battle between the Christian Oswald, king of the Northumbrians, and the Pagan Penda, king of the Mercians. Oswald was defeated, and lost his life. The battle began about four hundred yards west of the church. The assailant appears to have driven Penda’s forces to a field near the town, called Cae Nef, where Oswald fell, and Penda, with a savage barbarity, caused the breathless body to be cut to pieces, and stuck on poles as so many trophies of his victory. Oswald’s strict virtue, and zeal for the religion he had embraced, gained him the esteem of his subjects, and his character was so much revered by the monks, that a short time after his death he was canonized. The importance of the situation, which rendered it one of the keys to the principality of Wales, soon attracted the attention of the political monarch, whose prowess annexed that territory to his dominion. This place was called by the ancient Britons Tre’r-cadeirian, literally the town of chairs or seats commanding an extensive view. Notwithstanding the place was Welsh, and continued so above a century after the death of King Oswald, yet it has since gone under his name, and for some time was famed for the miracles wrought there through his intercession. An ancient poet in noticing Oswald and the fate of Penda says: “Three gibbets raised, at Penda’s dire commands, Bore Oswald’s royal head and mangled hands; The tenor of the fact, and Oswald’s fate, Were things of moment to the Mercian state. Vain policy! for what the victor got Proved to the vanquished king the happier lot; For now the martyred saint in glory views, How Oswy with success the war renews; And Penda scarcely can maintain his own, Whilst Oswald wears a never fading crown.”