What was the condition of the spot now occupied by Bristol, in the centre of which, until yesterday, for nearly eleven hundred and fifty years, the church with this name has stood, when it was first planted there, this is not the place to discuss. A century-and-a-half earlier (A.D. 577), Bath, as we have seen, had been occupied by the West Saxons, and had no doubt so continued, until this advance southward of Æthelbald’s frontier also absorbed that city, or certainly its northern suburb, into Mercia. A great highway, of much earlier date than the times here being considered, skirted the southern edge of the weald that we only know as Kingswood; and at least approached the neck of the peninsula--projecting into a land-locked tidal lagoon, not a swamp, flooded by the confluence, at the crest of the tide, of Frome and Avon--upon which stands Bristol, and which has been hitherto crowned with Æthelbald’s usual symbol of Mercian dominion. As long ago as ships frequented the estuary of the Severn--ages before the times we are considering--it is inconceivable that the uncommon advantages of this haven could have been unknown. A British city had, no doubt, already existed for unknown ages on the neighbouring heights west of the lagoon; and there is a reason, too long to set forth here, to believe that the sheltered Bristol peninsula itself was used, by the West-Saxons of Ceawlin’s settlement at Bath, as an advanced frontier towards the Welsh of West Gloucestershire, long before it was appropriated by Mercia. It was, perhaps, already a town before Æthelbald planted upon it one of his limitary sanctuaries, having, _more Saxonico_, a fortress on the isthmus, upon which the great square Norman tower of Robert the Consul was afterwards raised. All that is known of the sanctuary at Henbury is, that it was one of the chapels to Westbury, confirmed to Worcester Cathedral by Bp. Simon (A.D. 1125-50), and is described in his charter as “capella sancte Wereburge super montem Hembirie sita.”[15] This is in that south-western limb of Gloucestershire, bounded by the Frome, Avon, and Severn, and separated by Kingswood Forest, which it has already been suggested was never Saxon, but remained Welsh until subdued by Mercia. So that as the only examples of this dedication to be found south of Staffordshire and Derbyshire, are the three which line the north shore of the Avon, the new frontier of Wessex and Mercia; the entire district of Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and all the intervening country, from east to west, being totally without them; these three are manifestly arrayed in one line for a special purpose. The record, of the contest of Wessex and Mercia, contained in the Annal of A.D. 741, is thus accounted for in this monument of its result. Three more distant St. Werburghs remain, of which two will now be appropriated to that of A.D. 743. The one for A.D. 742, passed over for the present, will afterwards be shewn to involve the remaining sixth.