THE PROVINCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Cxv.—THE WELal MARCH :—CHESHIRE.—EARLY HISTORY.
CHESHIRE certainly formed part of the territories of the Celtic tribe called by the Romans Connum or CORNAVII- and some antiquarians have derived this name from the long peninsula or promontory, now known as the hundred of Wirral (by the Saxons called TVir-hael), which separates the Dee front the Mersey ; and they accordingly give us as its British name, Keren-av—i. e., Horn of the Sea—and suppose this peninsula to have been the original seat of the CORNAYII. This derivation of the name is supported by the form of the counties of Cornwall and Caithness, the inhabitants of which were also called CORNAVII. How far this theory is correct we will not pretend to decide ; it must be modified, however, to some extent, if we accept the very plausible theories as to the changes which have taken place in the relations of land and water in this district even within historical times. "it is generally acknowledged," observes Dr. Ormerod, in his valuable history of Cheshire, " that at some distant period the tides have risen considerably higher on the western coast than at present, and this is borne out by the appearance of the banks of all the Lancashire as well as the Cheshire* rivers, even without acceding to the common opinion that the Ribble was once accessi- ble for ships as high as the Roman station of Ribchester. With reference to this several channels have been pointed out in the account of Wirral, by which the waters of the Mersey and the Dee would have been made to communi- cate between that hundred and Broxton," the hundred im- mediately to the south and east of Chester, "through a valley yet marked with shells and sea-sand, by a tide only a few feet higher than usual ; and the same stream would also be led through other valleys between West Kirkby and Wallesey and the rest of Wirral." The deep valley which separates the hundreds of Wirral and Broxton runs across the isthmus "in an irregular direction from the Mersey by Stoke, Croughton, Chorlton, Back- ford, and the two Mollingtons to the Dee." The "raised terrace formed by Wirral between the waters of the two estuaries," after being broken by this deep valley, "continues its course onwards in a south-east direction towards the foot of the Broxton hills, still retaining on its sides two deep and broad vales, each of which is a continuation of the line of the respective estuaries. The vale on the north-east is traversed during its whole length by the waters of the Gowy. The vale on the south-west forms in its upper part the bed of the Dee, which, however, instead of proceeding down the rest of the vale into the estuary in a straight line, is diverted to the walls of Chester by a deep channel" (believed to be, in a great measure, artificial, and stated in some ancient pleadings relating to the Dee Mills to have been made by Earl Hugh Lupus) "formed in the elevated line before mentioned, which carries the river past Chester in a direction nearly semicircular, till it joins the estuary and the line of the great vale again near Blacon Point." " A tide much lower than would suffice to cover these levels would fill the smaller valley between Wirral and Braxton, and render the former hundred a complete island, as the country traditions still maintain it to have been at a distant period." Other proofs are adduced to corroborate this insulation of Wirral,—as the name Ince (lnys, or island), of the township where the valley joins the Mersey; the claim of the Abbot of St. Werburgh, in the reign of Edward III., of the manorial right of " wrecum mans" in his manors three miles further from the sea than the termination of this valley in the Dee ; and the soil of the valley being, a yard below the surface, the same grey sea-sand as the ground which has been recovered from the Dee by embankments ; and the numerous sea-shells deposited in gravel on the sides of the valley. A consideration of other valleys in Wirral and of the long level plain at its extremity, now protected from the Irish Sea by a line of sand-hills, seems to lead to the conclu- sion that the Dee and the Mersey had once only one large mouth common to both rivers, out of which rose two rocky islands, the present parishes of West Kirkby and Kirkby in Walley or Wallesey. If this was the case in Ptolemy the Geographer's time, we have an explanation of the puzzle of his mentioning only two rivers between the mouths of the Dee (Seteia Portus) and the Ken (Moricambe), whereas at present (if we include the Mersey) there are three, Cheshire was included by the Romans within the province of Kayla Czsariensis. It was certainly traversed by several Roman roadways, some of which may have partly represented the line of older British roads or tracks ; but although there are still remains of these roadways here and there, they are not continuous or dis- tinct enough to enable antiquaries to come to any decided agree- ment as to their exact course. The Antonine " Itinerary " gives us a line of road from ERIOCONIUM to the station DEVA, which is usually identified with the site of the modern Chester. The exact line of this roadway must to a certain extent depend upon what we imagine to have been the state in the Roman period of the valley, which we have some reason to believe was once part of the estuary of the Dee. The station immediately preceding DEVA is the "Itinerary" is called Bovium (10 miles distant), and has been identified with the modern village of Bangor, on the border of Flintshire. The same itinerary gives us a continuation of this line of road beyond DEva, by a station called CONDATE (20 miles), to another called MAN OCUM (18 miles). The site of the former of these two stations is usually identified with a field called the Harbour Field, in the parish of Kinderton, in Cheshire, and that of the latter with the modern Manchester. The Antonine " Itin- erary " gives us another line of road from CONDATE to a station called MEDior,tazum (19 miles), which we have already identified with Chesterton in Staffordshire, whence a road led to ETOCETUM or IVall. Some of our readers may remember that there is a MEDIO- LANUM mentioned in the " Itinerary " as the next station before Bovium, on the line of road from Urioconium to DEVA. Anti- quaries usually make .these two distinct places. but the recurrence of the same name among the same set of stations without any distinctive epithet for either is rather puzzling, and looks as if we had not arrived yet at the real facts. We should remark that the station next beyond CONDATE on the line of road from ME DIOLANUM (Chesterton) is illaNcuaernar (18 miles), a variation of the name of the station at the modern Manchester. The Geographer of Ravenna gives us another name of a 'Zeman station—VERATINUM —placed by antiquaries on the Cheshire Letuk of the Mersey opposite to TVarrington. Besides a roadway con- necting DEVA with VERATINUM, another is believed at a some- what later time in the Roman period to have connected the latter station directly with CONDATE. We do not feel, however, that we are treading on secure ground in mentioning these last lines of road.
Horseley had conjectured that the Romans first permanently established themselves at DEVA under Agricola, about the year 84. A more recent discovery brought to light brass tablets record- ing a grant of the freedom of the city of Rome to certain troops serv- ing in Britain in the reign of Trajan (A.D. 98-117), "a portion at least of which may be presumed to have been stationed near Bickley, where the tablets were found." The Chester inscriptions also are considered to establish that the 20th Legion was stationed there in the consulship of Commodus and Lateranus, A.D. 154, and as late as the joint reign of Diocletian and Maxitnian (A.D. 283-304). "Long time previous to this, a coin of the Emperor Geta (A.D. 210-212) recognizes the city as a colony of Rome."
Besides the Roman remains, there are three camps attributed to a British origin, but whether of the earlier or later period of their struggles with successive invaders it is not possible to determine. They are " Bucton Castle, on the edge of Yorkshire ; Maiden Castle, near Barnhill ; and Kellsborow, in the parish of Delamere ; aud to these may be added a strong but irregular work between the Dee and the Watling Street, near Eccleston."
"Of Roman traces on the map of Cheshire," writes Mr. Earle, in a communication printed in the Arclixological Journal, " may be quoted the following, which, though they have little of the Latin element in their composition, are yet monuments of the Roman occupation of the district : —Stamford Bridge, near Tarvin, Stretton, TValton are all vestiges of a line of Roman road. There is the stone-paved ford of the river ; the town on the old via strata or street ; and, thirdly, the town by the wall or embankment. But the leading Roman feature is the capital city, and the names whereby that city has been designated at different times and by different peoples. In our own day it is Chester, a softened modern form of the Saxoa Coaster, as this, again, was an alteration from the Latin Castrum. And not the Saxons only, but the Cambrians have taken this as the basis of their name for this city. The Welsh at the present day call it Caer-Leon-ar-Dwyfr-Dwy (Castrum Legionum ad Deccan), or Caer (i. c., Castrum)." "Upon the Saxon-Latin name of Chester one or two variations have been played. It was sometimes known as Lega-Ceaster, which is the Welsh Caer-Leon, the same as Castrum Legionum. Another variation given by Camden, but I know not if ever it had circula-
tion, is West-Chester." This supposed name Mr. Earle considers , to have arisen from a misreading of a passage in 'The Saxon Chronicles,' in which it is styled "a waste (westre) fortress ! (ceastre) in Wirrill, called Legaceastre. At this time, then," he !concludes, "its name and former celebrity had alike expired from living tradition, and the place was designated only by its present I character, 'a fortress' (ceastre), a deserted fortress (West- ! Chester), or a military fortress (Legaceastre), of which the Castrum and Civitas Legionum were a mediteval Latin translation. The true ' old Roman name had been DIVA (Antouinus) mid Coeozna. DI-Y-ANA (on a coin of Septimus Geta), and it was while these names were buried in forgetfulness, after the Roman evacuation, and during the presumed desertion of DIVA, that the modern name took its rise." This desertion of Diva. or DEVA has been generally attributed to the effects of Danish or Norse invasions, but Mr. Earle thinks the loss of the original name points to the desertion of the city as having its date from the overthrow of the Brito-Roman power by the earlier Teutonic invaders. If so, we mast reject altogether the Welsh traditions which give it an intermediate history, and the Saxon traditions which have been supposed to support this view, and must con- clude that DEva. had never been reinhabited down to the close of the year 894, when, as we read, the Norse invaders "marched day and night till they reached a waste fortress in Wirrall, called Legaceaster. The Saxon army could not overtake them before they were within and had possession of the fortress."
However this may have been, the surrounding country seems to have been for a long time independent, or under the dominion of the British princes of Gwynedd, though one tide of invasion after another Advanced and receded again over its frontiers. Ethelfrid, King of the Nortlitimbrian Bernicia, is sail, in the year 607, to have massacred the monks of Bangor, and then defeated the British King of Powys, but to have been himself defeated by some other British princes near Cheater; and the district was not again sub- jected to the Saxons till about the year 828, when Egbert is said to have conquered it. We doubt much, however, whether its final reduction under the Saxon power must not be referred to a consi.lerably later period.
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