Shrewsbury is supposed to have been built by the Britons, between the years 520 and 594, as a refuge from the Saxons, who levelled their ancient fortress of Wroxeter with the ground, and forced them to retreat beyond the Severn; which river then became the boundary of the kingdom of Mercia, the most considerable of all the kingdoms of the Heptarchy. On this subject, the celebrated historians of Shrewsbury, Messrs. Owen and Blakeway, observe: We conceive that our town was built after the Saxon invasion; but that it owed its foundation to the Britons. We cannot claim any pretensions to the dignity of a Roman station. No vestige of that imperial people has ever been discovered within its circuit. But a few miles lower down the river, at the present village of Wroxeter, was the flourishing town of _Uriconium_; and here, doubtless, after the Romans had finally withdrawn their forces from the island, the Britons continued to occupy the seats deserted by their ancient masters, until they were driven from them by superior force, to the time of which we may approximate within no very wide range of years. We are in possession of the valuable poems of Llywarc Hên,—valuable, notwithstanding their great obscurity, for the few rays of light which they scatter over the darkest period of our history. He was a prince of the Cambrian Britons; who, pressed by the Northumbrian Saxon, retired towards the end of the sixth century to his countrymen in Powis, among whom he is said to have protracted his life to the unusual extent of 145 years, deriving thence the epithet of _hen_ or the _old_. His writings contain several proofs of his acquaintance with the district now called Shropshire. Its streams, Severn, and Morlas, and Tern; its mountains, Digoll, Nescliff, and Digon; its towns, Baschurch, Ercall, Hodnet, all appear in his poems. And when he speaks also of _Pengwern_, and when it is known that this was the Welsh name for Shrewsbury, we need not doubt that he designed by that to mark our town, and consequently that it had then arisen.