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As time went on, however, the isolation of Sussex became less complete. AEthelwealh had got himself into complications with Wessex by accepting the sovereignty of the Isle of Wight and the Meonwaras about Southhampton from the hands of a Mercian conqueror. Perhaps AEthelwealh then repaired the old Roman roads which led from his own ham at Chichester to Portsmouth in Wessex, and broke down the mark, so as to connect his old and his new dominions with one another. At any rate, shortly after, Caedwalla, the West Saxon, an aetheling at large on the look-out for a kingdom, attacked him suddenly with his host of thegns from this unexpected quarter, killed the King himself, and harried the South Saxons from marsh to marsh. Two South Saxons thegns expelled him for a time, and made themselves masters of the country. But afterwards, Caedwalla, becoming King of the West Saxons, recovered Sussex once more, and handed it on to his successor, Ini. Hence the South Saxons had no bishopric of their own during this period, but were included in the see of the West Saxons at Winchester.

During the hundred years of the Mercian Supremacy, coincident, roughly speaking, with the eighth century, we hear little of Sussex; but it seems to have shaken off the yoke of Wessex, and to have been in subjection to the great Mercian over-lords alone. It had its own under-kings and its own bishops. Early in the ninth century, however, when Ecgberht the West Saxon succeeding in throwing off the Mercian yoke, the other Saxon States of South Britain willingly joined him against the Anglian oppressors. ‘The men of Kent and Surrey, Sussex and Essex, gladly submitted to King Ecgberht.’ When the royal house of the South Saxons died out, Sussex still retained a sort of separate existence within the West Saxon State, as Wales does in the England of our own day. AEthelwulf made his son under-king of Kent, Essex, Surrey, and Sussex; and so, during the troublous times of the Danish invasion, when all southern England became one in its resistance to the heathen, those old principalities gradually sank into the position of provinces or shires.

From the period of union with the general West Saxon Kingdom (which grew slowly into the Kingdom of England under Eadgar and Cnut), the markland of the Weald seems to have been gradually encroached upon from the south. Most of the names in that district are distinctly ‘Anglo-Saxon’ in type; by which I mean that they were imposed before the Norman Conquest, and belong to the stage of the language then in use. Even during the Roman period, settlements for iron-mining existed in the Weald, and these clearings would of course be occupied by the English colonists at a comparatively early time. Just at the foot of the Downs, too, on the north side, we find a few clan settlements on the edge of the Weald, which must date from the first period of English colonisation. Such are Poynings, Didling, Ditchling, Chillington, and Chiltington. Farther in, however, the clan names grow rarer; and where we find them they are not hams or tuns, regular communities of Saxon settlers, but they show, by their forestine terminations of hurst, ley, den, and field, that they were mere outlying shelters of hunters or swineherds in the trackless forest. Such are Billinghurst, Warminghurst, Itchingfield, and Ardingley. On the Cuckmere river, the villages in the combes bear names like Jevington and Lullington; but in the upper valley of the little stream, where it flows through the Weald, we find instead Chiddingley and Hellingley. Most of the Weald villages, however, bear still more woodland titles–Midhurst, Farnhurst, Nuthurst, Maplehurst, and Lamberhurst; Cuckfield, Mayfield, Rotherfield, Hartfield, Heathfield, and Wivelsfield; Crawley, Cowfold, Loxwood, Linchmere, and Marden. Hams and tuns, the sure signs of early English colonisation, are almost wholly lacking; in their place we get abundance of such names as Coneyhurst Common, Water Down Forest, Hayward’s Heath, Milland Marsh, and Bell’s Oak Green. To this day even, the greater part of the Weald is down in park, copse, heath, forest, common, or marshland. Throughout the whole expanse of the woodland region in Sussex, with the outlying portions in Kent, Surrey, and Hants, Mr. Isaac Taylor has collected no fewer than 299 local names with the significant forest terminations in hurst, den, ley, holt, and field. These facts show that, during the later ‘Anglo-Saxon’ period, the Weald was being slowly colonised in a few favourable spots. Its use as a mark was now gone, and it might be safely employed for the peaceful purposes of the archer and the swineherd. Names referring to pasture and the wild beasts are therefore common.