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24 frontier town, and confining their subjects within the Wye, was merely confirming the great work of Offa. The passage of the Wye by the Welch was ever regarded as an invasion. In the eleventh century, "when the Britons had invaded and were devastating England, Duke Harald was sent by the most pious King Edward to expel them. With the edge of the sword he reduced the province to peace, and made a law that any Briton soever, who thenceforth should be found with a weapon on this side of the boundary line which he had laid down for them, namely, Offa's Dyke, should have his right-hand cut off by the officers of the kingdom."

Such was the recognised character of the Dyke at the time of the Norman Conquest of England. Neither then, nor ever during the period that Wales remained separate from England, was any other limit of the two countries laid down.

Subsequently to the Conquest the Marches of England and Wales, and, lastly, the remainder of Wales itself, fell under a peculiar system of occupation and government, which superseded this national boundary line, and almost effaced it from history. Offa's Dyke no longer obtained express mention, because no historical or political event turned on the common limit of the Marches, which came to be regarded as one district of uniform character, and to be called, by an obvious abridgment, the Marches of Wales. The practical distinction for legislative and administrative purposes was between the shires of Chester, Salop, Hereford, and Gloucester, according to their ancient bounds, on the one hand, and the Marches on the other; yet the ancient character of the Dyke continued to be recognised in matters of local description.

The system of occupation and government referred to is that under which the Crown of England and its Barons acquired and ruled Wales and the Marches as a vast aggregate of independent lordships. An explanation of this system involves the political relation of Wales to the Crown and Realm of England at successive periods.

The Mercian, and subsequently English, policy of planting settlements in the March of the kingdom toward Wales received a new and aggressive development in the reign of Edward the Confessor. Harald, to whom the government of this March had been committed, emboldened by a series of successes against the Welch, formed the design of occupying their March also, probably as a step to their ultimate conquest.