physical aspect of the country more utterly changed. A
vast sheet of scrub, woodland, and waste which then bore the name of the
Andredsweald stretched for more than a hundred miles from the borders of
Kent to the Hampshire Downs, extending northward almost to the Thames and
leaving only a thin strip of coast which now bears the name of Sussex
between its southern edge and the sea. This coast was guarded by a
fortress which occupied the spot now called Pevensey, the future
landing-place of the Norman Conqueror; and the fall of this fortress of
Anderida in 491 established the kingdom of the South-Saxons. "AElle and
Cissa beset Anderida," so ran the pitiless record of the conquerors, "and
slew all that were therein, nor was there henceforth one Briton left."
But Hengest and AElle's men had touched hardly more than the coast, and
the true conquest of Southern Britain was reserved for a fresh band of
Saxons, a tribe known as the Gewissas, who in 495 landed under Cerdic and
Cynric on the shores of the Southampton Water, and pushed to the great
downs or Gwent where Winchester offered so rich a prize. Nowhere was the
strife fiercer than here; and it was not till 519 that a decisive victory
at Charford ended the struggle for the "Gwent" and set the crown of the
West-Saxons on the head of Cerdic. But the forest-belt around it checked
any further advance; and only a year after Charford the Britons rallied
under a new leader, Arthur, and threw back the invaders as they pressed
westward through the Dorsetshire woodlands in a great overthrow at
Badbury or Mount Badon. The defeat was followed by a long pause in the
Saxon advance from the southern coast, but while the Gewissas rested a
series of victories whose history is lost was giving to men of the same
Saxon tribe the coast district north of the mouth of the Thames. It is
probable however that the strength of Camulodunum, the predecessor of our
modern Colchester, made the progress of these assailants a slow and
doubtful one; and even when its reduction enabled the East-Saxons to
occupy the territory to which they have given their name of Essex a line
of woodland which has left its traces in Epping and Hainault Forests
checked their further advance into the island.

[Sidenote: Conquests of the Eagle]

Though seventy years had passed since the victory of Aylesford only the
outskirts of Britain were won. The invaders were masters as yet but of
Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, and Essex. From