ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS THOUGH poor in relics of the earliest Teutonic settlers, the county of Worcester has yet a history that can be traced in outline throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, for there are notices that throw some light upon the early pagan times which in so many districts are a blank or else are filled with fabulous events. To raise the veil that still obscures the county's past before the era of St. Augustine, discoveries in three localities would not in any case suffice, and that is perhaps the total number recorded in Worcestershire. Even these excavations were prosecuted with insufficient care and not recorded in enough detail to give them more than average importance ; but on the other hand the scarcity of finds is itself a factor in deter- mining the probable course of events before written history begins, and Bede in his Ecclesiastical History ^ has given us historic facts with which to co-ordinate the results of archaeology. A people called the Hwiccii or Hwiccans are known to have occupied a region in the west of England which included the vales of Berkeley and Evesham, and appear to have maintained their boundaries as a political unit for the space of two and a half centuries, while greater states around them rose and fell in turn. The old pre-Reformation diocese of Worcester roughly marks the bounds of their dominion, of which the county town was throughout the recognized metropolis.^ It was about the year 679 that Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, conse- crated Bosel the first English bishop of the Hwiccans ; and it may be reasonably inferred, from the extent of the diocese, that the kingdom or sub-kingdom comprised the whole of Worcestershire with the exception of the north-west corner beyond the Abberley Hills, all Gloucestershire east of the Severn, the township of Bristol and the southern half of Warwickshire. At some period it seems to have further included part of the lower Severn valley west of the river, and the township of Bath. These limits were not fortuitous, but were set by nature and by conquest in such a way that the part played by each can be suggested with some degree of probability. The first mention of events in this part of the country is in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the year 577, when 'Cuthwine and Ceawlin 1 Bk. ii. chap. 2 ; bk. iv. chaps. 13, 23. ^ Kerable, Codex Diplomatkus, No. xci. 223
