What was the earlier political condition of Wiccia before it fell under the dominion of Mercia: whether it was ever for any time an integral part of the kingdom of Wessex, or a distinct subregulate of it, is uncertain. Two of the earlier pagan West-Saxon inroads (A.D. 577-584) were of this region, and happened long before that race had penetrated Somerset. It is not to be believed that any part of later Somerset, south of Avon, was included in either of these two pagan conquests of Ceawlin; nor even the south-west angle of Gloucestershire itself, that forms the separate elevated limestone ridges between the Bristol Frome and the Severn. There are some other reasons for believing that these heights immediately west of Bristol--say, Clifton, Henbury, and northward along the Ridgeway to about Tortworth--remained, both Welsh and Christian, for nearly a century afterwards; and that they were only reduced to Teutonic rule along with the subjection of Saxon Wiccia itself to Anglian Mercia. The record in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of the conquest of A.D. 577 plainly indicates the course of it, by the names of the places concerned--Bath, Dyrham, Cirencester, and Gloucester. It was not any river that was the instrument of advance; but, flanked and supported by the ancient Foss-way, the continuous elevated table-land of the southern limb of the Cotswolds, still abounding with remains of military occupations of yet earlier peoples. This is separated from the more western height by a broad belt of low land, then a weald or forest, since known as Kingswood; which, the line of the places named in the annal of the conquest, plainly indicates to have been purposely avoided: the district west of it, therefore still continued British. As to Ceawlin’s second expedition, A.D. 584, it most probably extended from Gloucester to the country between Severn and Wye, as far as Hereford,[3] and into the now Saxon-speaking Worcestershire. But that Ceawlin followed the Severn, and penetrated Cheshire to an unimportant place called “Faddiley,” is not only unlikely, but rests entirely on a single philological argument, concerning that name, too refined and unpractical for the burden laid upon it[4], and inconsistent with the later associations of the name itself.