Chipping Sodbury and Chipping Norton. In London, we have Cheap-side and East Cheap. In Bath, we have Cheap street; and all who go to buy, with the laudable design of making a good bargain, are still so far Anglo-Saxon, that they do their best to cheapen" their purchases. The word "chepying" continued to be used for "market" long after the Saxon period. In the first English translation of the Bible, by Wycliffe, about 1330, the text in St. Matthew, (xi. 16), which is now translated "It is like unto children sitting in the market," is rendered "It is like unto children sitting in chepyng.”

"Ham," the last syllable, is also Saxon, signifying either a house, a farm, or a village. In the latter sense we still use it, in the diminutive, hamlet. Chepyng-ham, therefore, signifies neither more nor less than "market-village."

How it came by the name will be obvious, when you recollect what has been already said as to the early state of this neighbourhood; that it was chiefly open forest, cleared here and there, and peopled by degrees. As numbers increased, some place of course would be required for buying and selling; hence, judging from the name only, the origin of the town. But we have other information.

If the old British natives, spoken of above, had one amusement -hunting, the Saxon kings had two-hunting and fighting. When they were not doing the one, they were sure to be doing the other: and it is hard to say, to which of the two they were most addicted. The whole history, or nearly so, of the Saxon occupation of England, is a succession of wars, almost without ceasing. They fought for a long time to win the country, and Wiltshire still bears marks of those battles, in its earthworks, camps, barrows, and the like, as so many stripes of the Saxon scourge.

Having at length got possession, they established, not as it is commonly said, seven-but eight separate kingdoms. One of those was the kingdom of Wessex, or the West Saxons. It included Berkshire, Hampshire, part of Devonshire, Somersetshire, and Wiltshire. After many years of contest for supremacy, the Kings of Wessex became the masters of England; and the last

battle which made them so was fought at Wilton.

So long as

there were eight petty kings, each resided within his own province, and the King of Wessex being as fond of field sports as his predecessors, like them came to North Wilts for that purpose. He had several hunting seats, and one at Chippenham; for this is all that is meant by the Royal Palace which constant tradition has given to this place. It is not necessary to suppose that there was a Windsor Castle here. The Windsor Castle of the King of Wessex was at Winchester. Chippenham was his Balmoral, or his

Osborne.

But why did he fix upon Chippenham ? Simply, and without suggesting various reasons which your own partiality might approve, because it belonged to him. The Wessex crown had a very large property in this neighbourhood, including the whole parish, or, as it would then be called-Manor, of Chippenham; all Calne, Bromham, Melksham, Corsham, and Warminster. These Manors together formed one noble demesne, of which the king was landlord. Whatever villages or farms may have been within it, were held directly of the crown, without any intermediate lord. Of course, wherever kings take up their residence, were it even in a wilderness, there will presently spring up the needful establishment of followers and appurtenances; a church and chaplains, farmers, labourers, mechanics, and the other materials of society. The places just named, of whatever size they were in Saxon times, (probably humble enough), must have owed their origin and growth to their dependence upon the crown of Wessex.

Such, then, was the condition of this neighbourhood, when scourge the third suddenly fell upon England in the form of THE DANES.

These visitors also, like their predecessors, came from the northern coasts of Europe, Jutland and thereabouts, and made their first descent, A.D. 833.

Not long after this, King Alfred was born at Wantage, in Berkshire. He was properly, and by family descent, King of Wessex; but, by position, King of all England. His history, so well known, must only be alluded to so far as concerns the present subject.

In A.D. 866, (Alfred being seventeen years old, and not yet king), a swarm of these Danes settled on the east coast, under two leaders, Hungar and Hubba. They spent their winter where they landed; and in the spring went to York, took it, and then came to Nottingham, where they wintered again. Then they turned their steps westward, taking Reading in their line; where they fought a battle at a place called, in the Saxon chronicles, Englefield, since called (probably from one of these two Danish chiefs) Hunger-ford. "After that," says one of the Chroniclers, (and here is the first time that this town is named,) "they fought at Chippenham; and there was Hubba slain: and a great hepe of stones layed coppid up, where he was buried."

There are in the neighbourhood, two or three ancient mounds, or burial places, which had been piled up, no doubt in memory of some event of this kind. One, a hundred feet long, composed entirely of stones laid with the hand, is close to Badminton Park, on the side towards Alderton. Another stood, until lately, on the boundary of the parishes of Leigh Delamere and Castle Combe, but being made of earth, and not of stones, it had no claim to the distinction of containing the remains of Hubba.

The place hitherto supposed to be the one alluded to, and long called Hubba's Low, (Low being a corruption of hlaw, the Saxon word for a burial place), stands three miles north-west of Chippenham, by the side of the road leading to Marshfield, in Lanhill mead, the property of Mr. Neeld. It corresponds exactly with the description in the Chronicle, being a large pile of stones, now covered with bushes and moss. Part of it was taken away some years ago: what remains has been opened during the present meeting.

The Danish wars continued; Alfred becoming king in A.D. 871, defeated them in his first battle at Wilton; afterwards he was less fortunate. In the seventh year of his reign, A.D. 878, they had got possession of the whole kingdom north of the Thames; and even

1 The Scala Chronica, quoted by Leland, (Collect. II. p. 521). Another account says, that Hubba was killed on landing, at Appledore, on the north coast of Devon.

that, (says the Chronicle) they grudged him. In the winter of that year they advanced after Twelfth-night from the central part of England into Wessex, and took up their quarters at Chippenham. From this place, they over-ran the country, driving the people out; Alfred himself they forced to take refuge in the wild country (as it then was) about Athelney, below Glastonbury.

Now, as Chippenham, from the nature of the case, could not have been at that time a place of any size, what could induce the Danish army to come here? The answer seems very simple: they wished to catch the king at home. Here was his residence, in the middle of the royal demesne just described. That he did live here there is proof. His sister, Æthelswitha, was married at this place to the king of central England, then called Mercia; and, (says the Latin authority), the nuptials were celebrated with royal splendour, "in the villa regia, which is called Cippenham."

Some topographical writers upon Wiltshire, without duly considering the previous state of things, have been misled by these two words "villa regia," to describe Chippenham as having been at that time “a considerable city, one of the strongest and finest towns in England!" I cannot flatter your local vanity by confirming that statement. There is in this immediate neighbourhood, it is true, a highly respectable town, which, for some reason or other, assumes the privilege of bestowing upon its suburb the exalted title of "the City"; but Chippenham is more modest than Melksham and though, if any manor in England had a fair right to dignity of title, arising from connection with the Crown, this certainly had; still, looking at the plain circumstances of the case, though a royal residence, it is simply absurd to suppose it to have been what we usually understand by a royal city. In the remote days now alluded to, it was only a humble "Chepyng-ham," or market-village. But, being the king's own estate and residence, it would naturally be a point of chief attraction to a Danish army, whose first object would be, above all things, to pounce upon the crown itself. Further, as a military position, for winter

1 Leland Coll. III. 280. Ex Chronico Mariani Scotti.

E

quarters, it may not have been a bad one; for it stands, when you examine the situation, upon a kind of peninsula, the river winding round it in the form of a horse shoe. On the land side, towards the south-east, a line of earthwork would easily protect a temporary camp.

After a few months, Alfred came out of his Athelney retreat, and defeated the Danes, who broke up their quarters at Chippenham and retired to Cirencester, leaving him at liberty to re-occupy his villa regia in peace. He died in A.D. 901, and was buried at Winchester, leaving, by his will, his Chippenham manor to his youngest daughter, Alfritha, who married Baldwin, Count of Flanders. This, of course, was only a provision for life; as Chippenham continued to belong to the Crown for centuries afterwards. It is next mentioned in the reign of king Edward the Confessor, about A.D. 1042, when we have a partial description of its condition. The record states that there was a church; the rector was one bishop Osbern, and one hundred acres belonged to the church. King Edward had also given to his huntsman Ulviet, a small farm for his life; and three others are named, to whom small portions of land had been granted; but, with these exceptions, the whole manor was still in the king's own hand. It paid no tax or assessment of any kind; so that this must have been it's golden age. But iron days were drawing near the fourth scourge was ready, and Chippenham manor fell into the hands of

THE NORMANS.

One of the Conqueror's most celebrated acts, was the great survey of England, called Domesday Book. In making it, he had two objects in view; the first, to find out how much he was himself worth: the second, what every body else was worth, and how much taxing they would bear. He sent commissioners into every manor, (the word parish does not occur in Domesday Book1), who made inquiry so searching, that, as one person complains, the king knew of every cow and pig in the country, and even how many

1 Notices on the Domesday Book for Wiltshire, by H. Moody, "Memoirs of the Archæol. Inst. at Salisbury," p. 177.