Vestiges of the supremacy of Mercia in the south of England during the eighth century — John Shaqi
Vestiges of the supremacy of Mercia in the south of England during the eighth centuryKerslake, T. (Thomas)
History
Vestiges of the supremacy of Mercia in the south of England during the eighth century
Kerslake, T. (Thomas)
Great Britain -- Antiquities; Great Britain -- History -- Anglo-Saxon period, 449-1066; Mercia (Kingdom) -- History
As to Dr. Heath’s friend, the writer of the marginal notes, there can
be no doubt that he was Dr. Nicholas Wotton: one of the small knot
of revivers of Anglo-Saxon literature, and of those, named by Mr.
Earle,[31] as a few persons who then had the handling of Saxon MSS.
It is found that the long active and distinguished career, of each of
these two men, ran both in the same groove:--through the same period,
in the same rank and line of affairs, and locally together.[32] They
were both part authors of the well-known Institution of a Christian
Man, 1537. Wotton was the first Dean of Canterbury, and so continued
for more than twenty-five years: also Dean of York. During two
intervals he administered, by commission, the Province of Canterbury;
and was named, along with Parker, as successor to that Primacy.
These are the two men, who are first found in possession of the
historical tradition, that the famous place where the Mercian kings,
with the Archbishops, the Bishop of Rochester, and the Mercian and
other Bishops, held their councils; the acts of which must, in all
ages, have been most conspicuous to learned English Canonists, was
no other than this very Cliffe-at-Hoo; and it is evident, from the
directness of the marginal note, that they held it as an unquestioned
fact. So, about fifty years afterwards, when he published Britannia,
it was as we have seen, also without reserve, accepted by Camden.[33]
Up to this time the tradition--not among men who accept Geoffrey
of Monmouth’s stories and the like, but among the learned--was yet
undisturbed. But twenty years later we find Camden wavering; influenced
only by speculations on the nature of the district, and a then
prevalent distorted perspective of the remote historical circumstances
of the time concerned. In the edition of Britannia, which received
his latest revision,[34] he qualifies his former statement, by saying
that he no longer dares to affirm, as others do, whether or not the
Cliffe in the little country called Ho, may be the “Cliues at Ho,” so
celebrated in the infancy of the Anglican Church; because the place
seems not to be a convenient one for holding the Synod; and that the
actual place seems to have been within the kingdom of Mercia, rather
than Kent. From that time to this present day the place, indicated by
this name, has ranked among the most disputed and unsettled questions
of early English topography.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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