Dorset (England) -- Antiquities; Dorset (England) -- History
hills, many of which remain easily to be distinguished to this day.
Nowhere else in England in an equal area can so many Celtic earthworks
be found as in Dorset. The Romans came in due course, landing we know
not where, and established themselves in certain towns not far from the
coasts.
The Celts were not slain or driven out of their land, but lived on
together with the Romans, gradually advancing in civilisation under
Roman influence. They had already adopted the Christian religion: they
belonged to the old British Church, which lived on in the south-west
of England even through that period when the Teutonic invaders—Jutes,
Angles, Saxons—devastated the south-east, east, north, and central
parts of the island, and utterly drove westward before them the Celtic
Christians into Wales and the south-west of Scotland. Dorset remained
for some time untouched, for though the Romans had cleared some of the
forests before them, and had cut roads through others, establishing at
intervals along them military stations, and strengthening and occupying
many of the Celtic camps, yet the vast forest—“Selwood,” as the English
called it—defended Dorset from any attack of the West Saxons, who
had settled further to the east. Once, and once only, if we venture,
with Professor Freeman, to identify Badbury Rings, near Wimborne, on
the Roman Road, with the Mons Badonicus of Gildas, the Saxons, under
Cerdic, in 516, invaded the land of the Durotriges, coming along the
Roman Road which leads from Salisbury to Dorchester, through the gap
in the forest at Woodyates, but found that mighty triple ramparted
stronghold held by Celtic Arthur and his knights, round whom so much
that is legendary has gathered, but who probably were not altogether
mythical. In the fight that followed, the Christian Celt was
victorious, and the Saxon invader was driven in flight back to his own
territory beyond Selwood. Some place Mons Badonicus in the very north
of England, or even in Scotland, and say that the battle was fought
between the Northumbrians and the North Welsh: if this view is correct,
we may say that no serious attack was made on the Celts of Dorset from
the east. According to Mr. Wildman’s theory, as stated in his _Life of
St. Ealdhelm_—which theory has a great air of probability about it—the
Wessex folk, under Cenwealh, son of Cynegils, the first Christian King
of the West Saxons, won two victories: one at Bradford-on-Avon in
652, and one at the “Hills” in 658. Thus North Dorset was overcome,
and gradually the West Saxons passed on westward through Somerset,
until in 682 Centwine, according to the English Chronicle, drove the
Welsh into the sea. William of Malmesbury calls them “Norht Walæs,”
or North Welsh, but this is absurd: Mr. Wildman thinks “Norht” may be
a mistake for “Dorn,” or “Thorn,” and that the Celts of Dorset are
meant, and that the sea mentioned is the English Channel. From this
time the fate of the Durotriges was sealed: their land became part of
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