But if Wiccia became West-Saxon in 577-584, it did not long remain undisturbed by its Anglian northern neighbour. About fifty years later (A.D. 628), it is recorded in the Chronicle, that the rulers of Wessex and Mercia, fought at Cirencester, “and then compromised.” This shews that hitherto, for fifty years, all Wiccia had been ruled by Wessex: also that, except what reduction of territory may be represented by a Mercian inroad as far as Cirencester, it still continued under Wessex. But although this exception itself did not last many years longer, this is enough to account for our finding a Saxon people under Anglian government. In another fifty years, Wiccia is found to have become a subregulate, governed by Mercian sub-kings, and constituted a separate Bishopric, an offshoot from Mercian Lichfield; and from that time the kings of Mercia and their sub-reguli are found dealing with lands in various parts of Wiccia, even to the southern frontier, as at Malmesbury and Bath; and by a charter of Æthelred, King of Mercia, dated by Dr. Hickes, A.D. 692, the newly instituted cathedral in the city of Weogorna, is endowed with land at a place well-known to us by what was, even then said to be an “ancient name,” Henbury (“vetusto vocabulo nuncupatur heanburg.”[5]) Much needless demur, if not excitement, has of late years been stirred up by some of the learned,[6] at the name “Anglo-Saxon,” for the oldest condition of English. They allege that this designation is “a most unlucky one,” and that in the first half of this century it was the cause of a “crass ignorance” of the true relations of continuity in this nation before and after the Norman conquest. Those who remember that time, well know that this imputed ignorance did not prevail: that if the most ordinary schoolboy, had then been asked, why William was called “the Conqueror,” he would have at once, rightly or wrongly, answered “because he conquered us,” and that he was only less detested than “Buonaparte,” because he was at that time farther away. They have now lived to be astonished to find that, by their own confession, the higher scholars of this later age are terrified by a fear of confusion in this rudimentary piece of learning. So these learned men put themselves into the most ludicrous passions, and--let us try to humour them--King “knut”-like scoldings at the tide, and Dame Partingtonian mop-twirlings, to cure us of such a dangerous old heresy. For old it is, and deeply rooted. Those “Anglo-Saxon” kings who assumed the supreme rule of the kingdoms of both races, so called themselves: and the entire “Anglo-Saxon” literature has been only so known in modern Europe, for the last three centuries; not only at home, but in Germany, Denmark, France, and wherever it has ever appeared in print. Yet another most learned and acute and sober Professor has been lately tempted to join the “unlucky” cry: saying that “It is like calling Greek, Attico-Ionian.”[7] Why “Greek?” Why not “Hellenic?” Is not