within the limits of the Gwent, but in 552 their capture of the hill-fort
of Old Sarum threw open the reaches of the Wiltshire downs, and a march
of King Cuthwulf on the Thames in 571 made them masters of the districts
which now form Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Pushing along the upper
valley of Avon to a new battle at Barbury Hill they swooped at last from
their uplands on the rich prey that lay along the Severn. Gloucester,
Cirencester, and Bath, cities which had leagued under their British kings
to resist this onset, became in 577 the spoil of an English victory at
Deorham, and the line of the great western river lay open to the arms of
the conquerors. Once the West-Saxons penetrated to the borders of
Chester, and Uriconium, a town beside the Wrekin which has been recently
brought again to light, went up in flames. The raid ended in a crushing
defeat which broke the West-Saxon strength, but a British poet in verses
still left to us sings piteously the death-song of Uriconium, "the white
town in the valley," the town of white stone gleaming among the green
woodlands. The torch of the foe had left it a heap of blackened ruins
where the singer wandered through halls he had known in happier days, the
halls of its chief Kyndylan, "without fire, without light, without song,"
their stillness broken only by the eagle's scream, the eagle who "has
swallowed fresh drink, heart's blood of Kyndylan the fair."





CHAPTER II
THE ENGLISH KINGDOMS
577-796