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
By this time the Abingdon speculation had become strong enough to carry
double: to be able to be called in to the help of other theories, on
outside matters. The ingenious Welsh philologer, William Baxter,[47]
gets from it an offspring _ergo_. He makes Abingdon the “Caleva
Attrebatum,” _because_ it had been “Clovesho:” upon which, by a sort
of “To-my-love and from-my-love” formula, Dr. W. Thomas[48] completes
the symmetry of a logical circle, by citing “Calleva Attrebatum” as
evidence that Cloveshoe is near Henley-on-Thames, then thought to be
Calleva.
R. Gough, in Additions to Camden, leaves it at Abingdon on Bp. Gibson’s
argument: and, throughout the eighteenth century, Abingdon seems to
have been favoured; the writers being much given to copy each other.
Dr. Lingard, 1803, quoting Capt. Stevens’s translation of Bede, says
“probably Abingdon,” and so also puts it in his Anglo-Saxon map; but
Capt. Stevens had only quoted both views, without adopting either.
The later editors of the Saxon Chronicle, Dr. Ingram and Mr. Thorpe,
return to the tradition, contenting themselves with the simple gloss
“Cliff-at-Hoo, Kent,” “Cliff near Rochester.” Miss Gurney, however,
prudently says, “Cliff in Kent, or Abingdon.” Professor Earle gives
the valuable note and question about Dr. Heath, before mentioned, but
leaves the main question, of the place, open. On the other hand, the
Dictionaries, since Somner: Lye says “fortasse Abbingdon,” and Dr.
Bosworth follows with “perhaps Abingdon,” quoting both Somner and Lye.
But the nineteenth century took a fresh stride away from the start of
the seventeenth. Whilst accepting from the eighteenth the inheritance
of the doubt, it next renounced the claim itself for which the doubt
had been raised. It is no longer Abingdon, but wherever it may be
thought likely--Dr. Lappenberg[49] places it in Oxfordshire; Mr.
N.E.S.A. Hamilton[50] “co. Berks.” Mr. Kemble more boldly carries it
to “the hundred of Westminster, and county of Gloucester, perhaps near
Tewksbury.”[51] Next year,[52] he more firmly says “Doubts have been
lavished upon the situation of this place, which I do not share,” and
concludes that it was “not far from Deerhurst, Tewksbury, and Bishop’s
Cleeve; not at all improbably in Tewksbury itself, which may have been
called Clofeshoas, before the erection of a noble abbey at a later
period gave it the name it now bears.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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