What we know today as the West Country - Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset - was once covered by a vast sub-Roman kingdom called Dumnonia. The name derives from the Celtic Iron Age & Roman-British tribe of the Dumnonii who lived in the two latter counties and the western part of Somerset. The name is retained today in Devon, the Saxon modern version derived from Defnas (the men of Devon) via the late-Celtic form, Dyfneint. 

However, it is Cornwall, in the far west, which is usually thought of as the heartland of Celtic survival in this region. It appears to have been an area of semi-independence at times and, in later centuries, was certainly the last remnant of Dumnonia to be overrun by Saxon invaders. It is interesting to speculate about the name itself.   Cornwall may derive from the Celtic tribe of the Cornovii. A people of this name are known, from Roman sources, to have lived in the Outer Powys to Shropshire area of the later Wales and England. John Morris suggests a contingent was sent to the West Country in order to rule the land there and keep out the invading A similar situation occurred in North Wales. However, there is no evidence for this move west, and Cornish placenames of a similar age indicate that there was an independent tribe of Cornovii in the West Country. Corn is a common element in British place-name etymology, literally meaning Horn, but in this context a horn-shaped peninsula. It is the ideal description for Cornwall. The original name was Cerniw. The suffix is the same as the Saxon word Welsh, meaning foreign.

The Kings of Dumnonia, like their Saxon successors, were, no doubt, constantly on the move.  One of their main Royal residences, perhaps a "Capital" of sorts,Cadbury Castle in Somerset,  Somerset, probably named after the sixth century King Cado. Other important centres included Dunster and Tintagel. The status of these places may have changed over time. The latter, for instance, being very exposed, was probably a Summer residence only, perhaps sometimes left in the care of governors or duces like the legendary, Gorlois. At other times, it may have been the capital of the sub-kingdom of Cornwall. 
There were a number of other such kingdoms extant at various times in Dumnonia, though details are often obscure. Sub-division of the Kingdom followed the traditional split between sons. This was certainly the case with Cornwall and, possibly, the legendary Lyonesse, centred on the Scilly Isles. Other regions were taken over by exiled Royalty from elsewhere, seeking a new power-base, forcibly or otherwise  A little known kingdom, centred on the Hayle estuary, on the Penwith peninsula thus came under the control of King Tewdwr Mawr of Brittany; whilst a dynasty from Staffordshire established the sub-Kingdom of Glastening around Glastonbury in Somerset. Other regions on the eastern borders may have been completely independent of Dumnonia. Like the Kings of Caer-Baddan (Bath), the last of whom fell at the Battle of Dyrham in AD 577, or the otherwise unknown lords who have left ogham inscribed memorials at Wareham in Dorset.

In reprinting this story for a new edition I am reminded that it was in the chapters of "Far From the Madding Crowd," as they appeared month by month in a popular magazine, that I first ventured to adopt the word "Wessex" from the pages of early English history, and give it a fictitious significance as the existing name of the district once
included in that extinct kingdom. The series of novels I projected being mainly of the kind called local, they seemed to require a territorial definition of some sort to lend unity to their scene.
--- from Hardy's Preface to the novel, 1895-1902 

The extinct kingdom to which Hardy refers, of course, is that ancient kingdom of the West Saxons known as Wessex. From the sixth to the tenth centuries the boundaries of Wessex expanded and contracted as wars went favorably or otherwise, but theheart of the kingdom, with its capitals first in Chard and then at Winchester, always lay in southwest England, and in large part approximated the area indicated by the map displayed above.
King Alfred the Great of Wessex, who styled himself King of the English, ruled from 871-899, and did much to consolidate the kingdom and advance the development of what was to become the English monarchy. 

The Battle of Hastings in 1066 sounded the death knell of the Saxon monarchy. When William the Conqueror claimed the English throne he quickly put down all resistance, and the Saxon nobility were largely destroyed and almost entirely dispossessed.

The bones of many of the kings of Wessex repose in mortuary chests within Winchester Cathedral. That city was the royal and ecclesiastical centre of Wessex, and the site of a minster church since the year 648.

Hardy's concept of Wessex, as we know it today, did not spring full-blown from his mind at an early stage. Rather, it evolved over the years in both size and exactitude as his imagination formulated a unifying geographic canvas for his novels and poems.

In 1895-96, Hardy painstakingly revised his novels for the Osgood, McIlvaine collected editions soon to be published. He systematically changed place names and topography to conform consistently with the fictitious Wessex he had formulated. 

For example, actual place names were used in The Trumpet-Major when originally published in 1880; now Dorchester became Casterbridge, Weymouth became Budmouth, and so on. In other cases distances and directions were changed to conform to the actual landscape of the region. In Far From the Madding Crowd, for example, when driving the funeral cart from Casterbridge to Weatherbury, Joseph Poorgrass originally went up a hill, looked left to the sea, and saw high hills; this was modified to down a hill, looked right to the sea, and saw long ridges. 

The new wording more accurately describes what one would actually experience in traveling that route from west to east. Further revisions were made in later years for later editions, until finally Hardy's vast works conformed to the region that he envisioned and called Wessex. But as Thomas Hardy himself always maintained, "This is an imaginative Wessex only".

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