CHAPTER XIV. HOW OSWALD FOUND WHAT HE SOUGHT, AND RODE HOMEWARD WITH
NONA THE PRINCESS.
CHAPTER XV. HOW ERPWALD SAW HIS FIRST FIGHT ON HIS WEDDING DAY.
CHAPTER XVI. OF MATTERS OF RANSOM, AND OF FORGIVENESS ASKED AND
GRANTED.
CHAPTER XVII. HOW OSWALD FOUND A HOME, AND OF THE LAST PERIL OF OWEN
THE PRINCE.
NOTES.
PREFACE.
A few words of preface may save footnotes to a story which deals
with the half-forgotten days when the power of a British prince had
yet to be reckoned with by the Wessex kings as they slowly and
steadily pushed their frontier westward.
The authority for the historical basis of the story is the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which gives A.D. 710 as the year of the
defeat of Gerent, king of the West Welsh, by Ina of Wessex and his
kinsman Nunna. This date is therefore approximately that of the
events of the tale.
With regard to the topography of the Wessex frontier involved,
although it practically explains itself in the course of the story,
it may be as well to remind a reader that West Wales was the last
British kingdom south of the Severn Sea, the name being, of course,
given by Wessex men to distinguish it from the Welsh principalities
in what we now call Wales, to their north. In the days of Ina it
comprised Cornwall and the present Devon and also the half of
Somerset westward of the north and south line of the river Parrett
and Quantock Hills.
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