The words "ond westseaxna wiotan" "and the West Saxon counselors" (lit. "and (the) counselors of (the) West Saxons") have been "extraposed" from (moved out of) the compound subject they belong in, in a way that would be impossible in modern English. In Old English, case inflection preserves the meaning: the verb "beniman" "to deprive" (appearing in this sentence in the form "benam", " deprived") needs a word in the genitive case to show what someone or something is deprived of, which in this sentence is "rīces" "of kingdom" (nominative "rīce", "kingdom"), whereas "wiotan" "counselors" is in the nominative case and therefore serves a different role entirely (the genitive of it would be "wiotana", "of counselors"); for this reason the interpretation that Cynewulf deprived Sigebryht of the West Saxon counselors was not possible for speakers of Old English. The Old English sentence still isn't in theory perfectly unambiguous, as it contains one more word in the genitive: "westseaxna" ("of West Saxons", nominative "westseaxan" "West Saxons"), and the form "wiotan" "counselors" may also represent the accusative case in addition to the nominative, thus for example creating the grammatical possibility of the interpretation that Cynewulf also took the West Saxons away from the counselors, but this would have been difficult to conceive.