the conquerors, "and slew all that were therein, nor was there afterward
one Briton left."

But Hengist and Ælle'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 landed under Cerdic and
Cynric on the shores of the Southampton Water, and pushed in 495 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 farther advance into the island.

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 London to St. David's Head,