ABSTRACT
'. . few questions in early English history are more obscure' (Stenton 1947: 72). Stenton's judgement on the English conquest of Devon and Cornwall is sufficient warning that any satisfactory account of the subject is not to be expected. The process by which Dumnonia fell under English domination has frequently been referred to as the 'expansion of Wessex', an unfortunate phrase as it suggests that the English advance was a steady progress towards an obvious goal. In fact, the assimilation of Devon and Cornwall with the English territories to the east took over three centuries and was achieved sporadically, the main episodes of advance being separated by long periods of inaction or consolidation, not necessarily entirely uneventful, but productive of nothing which seemed remarkable to the compilers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. There was no grand design, no great conqueror. The advance of English power was slow and it left large areas of the South West in British hands for long after they had been detached from Dumnonia. This was so in Dorset, for example in and around Wareham, where a remarkable group of memorial inscriptions record the survival of literate and presumably noble Britons in the seventh century and probably until shortly after 700. We may be sure that it was so in many parts of Devon until the eighth century or later, long after the last mention of Geraint of Dumnonia, the last-known ruler of the old kingdom.
