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THE
SAXONS IN ENGLAND.

A HISTORY OF

THE ENGLISH COMMONWEALTH

TILL THE PERIOD OF

THE NORMAN CONQUEST.

BY

JOHN MITCHELL KEMBLE, M.A., F.C.P.S.,

MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AT MUNICH, AND OF THE ROYAL

ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AT BERLIN,

FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF HISTORY IN STOCKHOLM, AND OF THE

ROYAL SOCIETY OF HISTORY IN COPENHAGEN,

ETC. ETC. ETC.

“Nobilis et strenua, iuxtaque dotem naturae sagacissima gens Saxonum, ab antiquis etiam scriptoribus memorata.”

A NEW EDITION, REVISED BY

WALTER DE GRAY BIRCH, F.R.S.L.,

Senior Assistant of the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, Honorary Librarian of the Royal Society of Literature, Honorary Secretary of the British Archæological Association, etc.

VOLUME I.

LONDON:

BERNARD QUARITCH, 15 PICCADILLY.

1876.

PRINTED BY TAYLOR AND FRANCIS,
RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET.

TO

THE QUEEN’S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY,

THIS HISTORY

OF THE PRINCIPLES WHICH HAVE GIVEN HER EMPIRE

ITS PREEMINENCE

AMONG THE NATIONS OF EUROPE,

IS,

WITH HER GRACIOUS PERMISSION,

INSCRIBED BY

THE MOST HUMBLE AND DEVOTED

OF HER SERVANTS.

PREFACE.

The following pages contain an account of the principles upon which the public and political life of our Anglosaxon forefathers was based, and of the institutions in which those principles were most clearly manifested. The subject is a grave and solemn one: it is the history of the childhood of our own age,—the explanation of its manhood.

On every side of us thrones totter, and the deep foundations of society are convulsed. Shot and shell sweep the streets of capitals which have long been pointed out as the chosen abodes of order: cavalry and bayonets cannot control populations whose loyalty has become a proverb here, whose peace has been made a reproach to our own miscalled disquiet. Yet the exalted Lady who wields the sceptre of these realms, sits safe upon her throne, and fearless in the holy circle of her domestic happiness, secure in the affections of a people whose institutions have given to them all the blessings of an equal law.

Those institutions they have inherited from a period so distant as to excite our admiration, and have preserved amidst all vicissitudes with an enlightened will that must command our gratitude. And with the blessing of the Almighty, they will long continue to preserve them; for our customs are founded upon right and justice, and are maintained in a subjection to His will who hath the hearts of nations as well as of kings in His rule and governance.

It cannot be without advantage for us to learn how a State so favoured as our own has set about the great work of constitution, and solved the problem, of uniting the completest obedience to the law with the greatest amount of individual freedom. But in the long and chequered history of our State, there are many distinguishable periods: some more and some less well known to us. Among those with which we are least familiar is the oldest period. It seems therefore the duty of those whose studies have given them a mastery over its details, to place them as clearly as they can before the eyes of their fellow-citizens.

There have never been wanting men who enjoyed a distinct insight into the value of our earliest constitutional history. From the days of Spelman, and Selden and Twisden, even to our own, this country has seen an unbroken succession of laborious thinkers, who, careless of self-sacrifice, have devoted themselves to record the facts which were to be recovered from the darkness of the past, and to connect them with the progress of our political and municipal laws. But peculiar advantages over these men, to whom this country owes a large debt of gratitude, are now enjoyed by ourselves. It is only within eight years that the “Ancient Laws and Ecclesiastical Institutes” of the Anglosaxons have been made fully accessible to us[^[1]]: within nine years only, upwards of fourteen hundred documents containing the grants of kings and bishops, the settlements of private persons, the conventions of landlords and tenants, the technical forms of judicial proceedings, have been placed in our hands[^[2]]; and to this last quarter of a century has it been given to attain a mastery never before attained over the language which our Anglosaxon ancestors spoke. To us therefore it more particularly belongs to perform the duty of illustrating that period, whose records are furnished to us so much more abundantly than they were to our predecessors; and it seemed to me that this duty was especially imposed upon him whom circumstances had made most familiar with the charters of the Anglosaxons.

The history of our earliest institutions has come down to us in a fragmentary form: in a similar way has it here been treated,—in chapters, or rather essays, devoted to each particular principle or group of facts. But throughout these fragments a system is distinctly discernible: accordingly the chapters will be found also to follow a systematic plan.

It is my intention, at a future period, to lay before my countrymen the continuation of this History, embracing the laws of descent and purchase, the law of contracts, the forms of judicial process, the family relations, and the social condition of the Saxons as to agriculture, commerce, art, science and literature. I believe these things to be worthy of investigation, from their bearing upon the times in which we live, much more than from any antiquarian value they may be supposed to possess. We have a share in the past, and the past yet works in us; nor can a patriotic citizen better serve his country than by devoting his energies and his time to record that which is great and glorious in her history, for the admiration and instruction of her neighbours.

J. M. K.

London, December 2nd, 1848.

PREFACE
TO THE NEW EDITION.

The original edition of this monumental work having for a long time been out of print and of enhanced value, a great demand has arisen for the issue of a new edition; and the welcome opportunity of amending a number of oversights and typographical errors, and of verifying a large number of references, has not been neglected. The book itself is of so standard a character, and was so well digested in the first place, that no apology is needed for its re-publication now—more than a quarter of a century after its first appearance.

The principles laid down, the deductions gathered from the array of recorded facts and examples, are as true and incontrovertible to-day as they ever were. The work, therefore, does not labour under the disadvantage of becoming obsolete, inasmuch as the researches which have since been made in this branch of literary and historical enquiry have not tended to weaken or destroy, but rather to support and strengthen, the arguments applied by the author to the gradual unfolding of his theories of the growth and consolidation of the Anglosaxon Commonwealth, and the Royal Authority in England.

It is worthy of remembrance that one of the chief authorities for the views advanced in this History is the celebrated Codex Diplomaticus, the printing of which occupied nine years of the author’s life. The re-editing of that great work, under new arrangement, with collations, and incorporation of a large quantity of newly found material, has now so clearly become a necessity, that steps should be taken to re-publish the enormous collection of documents relating to Anglosaxon times and Anglosaxon history.

No one can read the summary of Kemble’s investigations, which is contained in the concluding chapter to the First Volume, without feeling bound to acknowledge that its pages contain the heartfelt convictions of one who has spared no pains to mature his own knowledge of the inner springs which actuated the conduct of our forefathers’ lives and advanced their culture, nor failed in his endeavour to impart to his readers a correct view of these important elements of our own manners and customs;—in Kemble’s own words, “the history of our childhood, the explanation of our manhood.”

W. de G. B.

London,

September 11th, 1876.

CONTENTS.

VOL. I.

BOOK I.

THE ORIGINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE ANGLOSAXON COMMONWEALTH.

Appendix.

THE

SAXONS IN ENGLAND.

BOOK I.
THE ORIGINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE ANGLO-SAXON COMMONWEALTH.

CHAPTER I.
SAXON AND WELSH TRADITIONS.

Eleven centuries ago, an industrious and conscientious historian, desiring to give a record of the establishment of his forefathers in this island, could find no fuller or better account than this: “About the year of Grace 445-446, the British inhabitants of England, deserted by the Roman masters who had enervated while they protected them, and exposed to the ravages of Picts and Scots from the extreme and barbarous portions of the island, called in the assistance of heathen Saxons from the continent of Europe. The strangers faithfully performed their task, and chastised the Northern invaders; then, in scorn of the weakness of their employers, subjected them in turn to the yoke, and after various vicissitudes of fortune, established their own power upon the ruins of Roman and British civilization.” The few details which had reached the historian taught that the strangers were under the guidance of two brothers, Hengest and Hors: that their armament was conveyed in three ships or keels: that it consisted of Jutes, Saxons and Angles: that their successes stimulated similar adventurers among their countrymen: and that in process of time their continued migrations were so large and numerous, as to have reduced Anglia, their original home, to a desert[^[3]].

Such was the tale of the victorious Saxons in the eighth century: at a later period, the vanquished Britons found a melancholy satisfaction in adding details which might brand the career of their conquerors with the stain of disloyalty. According to these hostile authorities, treachery and fraud prepared and consolidated the Saxon triumph. The wiles of Hengest’s beautiful daughter[^[4]] subdued the mind of the British ruler; a murderous violation of the rights of hospitality, which cut off the chieftains of the Britons at the very table of their hosts, delivered over the defenceless land to the barbarous invader[^[5]]; and the miraculous intervention of Germanus, the spells of Merlin and the prowess of Arthur, or the victorious career of Aurelius Ambrosius, although they delayed and in part avenged, yet could not prevent the downfall[downfall] of their people[^[6]]. Meagre indeed are the accounts which thus satisfied the most enquiring of our forefathers; yet such as they are, they were received as the undoubted truth, and appealed to in later periods as the earliest authentic record of our race. The acuter criticism of an age less prone to believe, more skilful in the appreciation of evidence, and familiar with the fleeting forms of mythical and epical thought, sees in them only a confused mass of traditions borrowed from the most heterogeneous sources, compacted rudely and with little ingenuity, and in which the smallest possible amount of historical truth is involved in a great deal of fable. Yet the truth which such traditions do nevertheless contain, yields to the alchemy of our days a golden harvest: if we cannot undoubtingly accept the details of such legends, they still point out to us at least the course we must pursue to discover the elements of fact upon which the Mythus and Epos rest, and guide us to the period and the locality where these took root and flourished.

From times beyond the records of history, it is certain that continual changes were taking place in the position and condition of the various tribes that peopled the northern districts of Europe. Into this great basin the successive waves of Keltic, Teutonic and Slavonic migrations were poured, and here, through hundreds of years, were probably reproduced convulsions, terminated only by the great outbreak which the Germans call the wandering of the nations. For successive generations, the tribes, or even portions of tribes, may have moved from place to place, as the necessities of their circumstances demanded; names may have appeared, and vanished altogether from the scene; wars, seditions, conquests, the rise and fall of states, the solemn formation or dissolution of confederacies, may have filled the ages which intervened between the first settlement of the Teutons in Germany, and their appearance in history as dangerous to the quiet of Rome. The heroic lays[^[7]] may possibly preserve some shadowy traces of these events; but of all the changes in detail we know nothing: we argue only that nations possessing in so preeminent a degree as the Germans, the principles, the arts and institutions of civilization, must have passed through a long apprenticeship of action and suffering, and have learnt in the rough school of practice the wisdom they embodied in their lives.

Possessing no written annals, and trusting to the poet the task of the historian, our forefathers have left but scanty records of their early condition[^[8]]. Nor did the supercilious or unsuspecting ignorance of Italy care to enquire into the mode of life and habits of the barbarians until their strong arms threatened the civilization and the very existence of the empire itself. Then first, dimly through the twilight in which the sun of Rome was to set for ever, loomed the Colossus of the German race, gigantic, terrible, inexplicable; and the vague attempt to define its awful features came too late to be fully successful. In Tacitus, the city possessed indeed a thinker worthy of the exalted theme; but his sketch, though vigorous beyond expectation, is incomplete in many of the most material points: yet this is the most detailed and fullest account which we possess, and nearly the only certain source of information till we arrive at the moment when the invading tribes in every portion of the empire entered upon their great task of reconstructing society from its foundations. Slowly, from point to point, and from time to time, traces are recognized of powerful struggles, of national movements, of destructive revolutions: but the definite facts which emerge from the darkness of the first three centuries are rare and fragmentary.

Let us confine our attention to that portion of the race which settled on our own shores.

The testimony of contemporaneous history assures us that about the middle of the fifth century, a considerable movement took place among the tribes that inhabited the western coasts of Germany and the islands of the Baltic sea. Pressed at home by the incursions of restless neighbours, and the urgency of increasing population, or yielding to the universal spirit of adventure, Angles, Saxons and Frisians crossed a little-known and dangerous ocean to seek new settlements in adjacent lands. Familiar as we are with daring deeds of maritime enterprise, who have seen our flag float over every sea, and flutter in every breeze that sweeps over the surface of the earth, we cannot contemplate without astonishment and admiration, these hardy sailors, swarming on every point, traversing every ocean, sweeping every æstuary and bay, and landing on every shore which promised plunder or a temporary rest from their fatigues. The wealth of Gaul had already attracted fearful visitations, and the spoils of Roman cultivation had been displayed before the wondering borderers of the Elbe and Eyder, the prize of past, and incentive to future activity. Britain, fertile and defenceless, abounding in the accumulations of a long career of peace, deserted by its ancient lords, unaccustomed to arms[^[9]], and accustomed to the yoke, at once invited attack and held out the prospect of a rich reward: and it is certain that at that period, there took place some extensive migration of Germans to the shores of England[^[10]]. The expeditions known to tradition as those of Hengest, Ælli, Cissa, Cerdic and Port, may therefore have some foundation in fact; and around this meagre nucleus of truth were grouped the legends which afterwards served to conceal the poverty and eke out the scanty stock of early history. But I do not think it at all probable that this was the earliest period at which the Germans formed settlements in England.

It is natural to believe that for many centuries a considerable and active intercourse had prevailed between the southern and eastern shores of this island, and the western districts of Gaul. The first landing of Julius Caesar was caused or justified by the assurance that his Gallic enemies recruited their armies and repaired their losses, by the aid of their British kinsmen and allies[^[11]]; and the merchants of the coast, who found a market in Britain, reluctantly furnished him with the information upon which the plan of his invasion was founded[^[12]]. When the fortune and the arms of Rome had prevailed over her ill-disciplined antagonists, and both continent and island were subject to the same all-embracing rule, it is highly probable that the ancient bonds were renewed, and that the most familiar intercourse continued to prevail. In the time of Strabo the products of the island, corn, cattle, gold, silver and iron, skins, slaves, and a large description of dog, were exported by the natives, no doubt principally to the neighbouring coasts, and their commerce with these was sufficient to justify the imposition of an export and import duty[^[13]]. As early as the time of Nero, London, though not a colony, was remarkable as a mercantile station[^[14]], and in all human probability was the great mart of the Gauls. There cannot be the least doubt that an active communication was maintained throughout by the Keltic nations on the different sides of the channel; and similarly, as German tribes gradually advanced along the lines of the Elbe, the Weser, the Maes and the Rhine, occupying the countries which lie upon the banks of those rivers, and between them and the sea, it is reasonable to suppose that some offsets of their great migrations reached the opposite shores of England[^[15]]. As early as the second century, Chauci are mentioned among the inhabitants of the south-east of Ireland[^[16]], and although we have only the name whereby to identify them with the great Saxon tribe, yet this deserves consideration when compared with the indisputably Keltic names of the surrounding races. The Coritavi, who occupied the present counties of Lincoln, Leicester, Rutland, Northampton, Nottingham and Derby, were Germans, according to the Welsh tradition itself[^[17]], and the next following name Κατυευχλανοι, though not certainly German, bears a strong resemblance to many German formations[^[18]].

Without, however, laying more stress upon these facts than they will fairly warrant, let us proceed to other considerations which render it probable that a large admixture of German tribes was found in England long previous to the middle of the fifth century. It appears to me that the presence of Roman emperors recruiting the forces with which the throne of the world was to be disputed, from among the hardiest populations of the continent, must not only have led to the settlement of Teutonic families in this island, but also to the maintenance, on their part, of a steady intercourse with their kinsmen who remained behind. The military colony, moreover, which claimed to be settled upon good arable land, formed the easiest and most advantageous mode of pensioning the emeriti; and many a successful Caesar may have felt that his own safety was better secured by portioning his German veterans in the fruitful valleys of England, than by settling them as doubtful garrisons in Lombardy or Campania.

The fertile fields which long before had merited the praises of the first Roman victor, must have offered attractions enough to induce wandering Saxons and Angles to desert the marshes and islands of the Elbe, and to call Frisian adventurers over from the sands and salt-pools of their home. If in the middle of the fifth century Saxons had established regular settlements at Bayeux[^[19]]; if even before this time the country about Grannona bore the name of Littus Saxonicum[^[20]], we may easily believe that at still earlier periods other Saxons had found over the intervening ocean a way less dangerous and tedious than a march through the territories of jealous or hostile neighbours, or even than a coasting voyage along barbarous shores defended by a yet more barbarous population. A north-east wind would, almost without effort of their own, have carried their ships from Hêlgoland and the islands of the Elbe, or from Silt and Romsey[^[21]], to the Wash and the coast of Norfolk. There seems then every probability that bodies more or less numerous, of coast-Germans, perhaps actually of Saxons and Angles, had colonized the eastern shores of England long before the time generally assumed for their advent[^[22]]. The very exigencies of military service had rendered this island familiar to the nations of the continent: Batavi, under their own national chieftains, had earned a share of the Roman glory, and why not of the Roman land, in Britain[^[23]]? The policy of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus, at the successful close of the Marcomannic war, had transplanted to Britain multitudes of Germans, to serve at once as instruments of Roman power and as hostages for their countrymen on the frontier of the empire[^[24]]. The remnants of this once powerful confederation cannot but have left long and lasting traces of their settlement among us; nor can it be considered at all improbable that Carausius, when in the year 287, he raised the standard of revolt in Britain, calculated upon the assistance of the Germans in this country, as well as that of their allies and brethren on the continent[^[25]]. Nineteen years later the death of Constantius delivered the dignity of Caesar to his son Constantine: he was solemnly elected to that dignity in Britain, and among his supporters was Crocus, or as some read Erocus, an Alamannic king who had accompanied his father from Germany[^[26]]. Still later, under Valentinian, we find an auxiliary force of Alamanni serving with the Roman legions here.

By chronological steps we have now approached the period at which was compiled the celebrated document entitled ‘Notitia utriusque imperii’[^[27]]. Even if we place this at the latest admissible date, it is still at least half a century earlier than the earliest date assigned to Hengest. Among the important officers of state mentioned therein as administering the affairs of this island, is the Comes Littoris Saxonici per Britannias; and his government, which extended from near the present site of Portsmouth to Wells in Norfolk[^[28]], was supported by various civil and military establishments, dispersed along the whole sea-board. The term Littus Saxonicum has been explained to mean rather the coast visited by, or exposed to the ravages of, the Saxons, than the coast occupied by them: but against this loose system of philological and historical interpretation I beg emphatically to protest: it seems to have arisen merely from the uncritical spirit in which the Saxon and Welsh traditions have been adopted as ascertained facts, and from the impossibility of reconciling the account of Beda with the natural sense of the entry in the Notitia: but there seems no reason whatever for adopting an exceptional rendering in this case, and as the Littus Saxonicum on the mainland was that district in which members of the Saxon confederacy were settled, the Littus Saxonicum per Britannias unquestionably obtained its name from a similar circumstance[^[29]].

Thus far the object of this rapid sketch has been to show the improbability of our earliest records being anything more than ill-understood and confused traditions, accepted without criticism by our first annalists, and to refute the opinion long entertained by our chroniclers, that the Germanic settlements in England really date from the middle of the fifth century. The results at which we have arrived are far from unimportant; indeed they seem to form the only possible basis upon which we can ground a consistent and intelligible account of the manner of the settlements themselves. And, be it remembered, that the evidence brought forward upon this point are the assertions of indifferent and impartial witnesses; statesmen, soldiers, men of letters and philosophers, who merely recorded events of which they had full means of becoming cognizant, with no object in general save that of stating facts appertaining to the history of their empire. Moreover, the accounts they give are probable in themselves and perfectly consistent with other well-ascertained facts of Roman history. Can the same praise be awarded to our own meagre national traditions, or to the fuller, detailed, but palpably uncritical assertions of our conquered neighbours? I confess that the more I examine this question, the more completely I am convinced that the received accounts of our migrations, our subsequent fortunes, and ultimate settlement, are devoid of historical truth in every detail.

It strikes the enquirer at once with suspicion when he finds the tales supposed peculiar to his own race and to this island, shared by the Germanic populations of other lands, and with slight changes of locality, or trifling variations of detail, recorded as authentic parts of their history. The readiest belief in fortuitous resemblances and coincidences gives way before a number of instances whose agreement defies all the calculation of chances. Thus, when we find Hengest and Hors approaching the coasts of Kent in three keels, and Ælli effecting a landing in Sussex with the same number, we are reminded of the Gothic tradition which carries a migration of Ostrogoths, Visigoths and Gepidae, also in three vessels, to the mouths of the Vistula, certainly a spot where we do not readily look for that recurrence to a trinal calculation, which so peculiarly characterizes the modes of thought of the Cymri. The murder of the British chieftains by Hengest is told totidem verbis by Widukind and others, of the Oldsaxons in Thuringia[^[30]]. Geoffry of Monmouth relates also how Hengest obtained from the Britons as much land as could be enclosed by an ox-hide; then, cutting the hide into thongs, enclosed a much larger space than the grantors intended, on which he erected Thong castle[^[31]]—a tale too familiar to need illustration, and which runs throughout the mythus of many nations. Among the Oldsaxons the tradition is in reality the same, though recorded with a slight variety of detail. In their story, a lapful of earth is purchased at a dear rate from a Thuringian; the companions of the Saxon jeer him for his imprudent bargain; but he sows the purchased earth over a large space of ground, which he claims and, by the aid of his comrades, ultimately wrests from the Thuringians[^[32]].

To the traditional history of the tribes peculiarly belong the genealogies of their kings, to which it will be necessary to refer hereafter in a mythological point of view. For the present it is enough that I call attention to the extraordinary tale of Offa, who occurs at an early stage of the Mercian table, among the progenitors of the Mercian kings. This story, as we find it in Matthew Paris’s detailed account[^[33]], coincides in the minutest particulars with a tale told by Saxo Grammaticus of a Danish prince bearing the same name[^[34]].

The form itself in which details, which profess to be authentic, have been preserved, ought to secure us from falling into error. They are romantic, not historical; and the romance has salient and characteristic points, not very reconcilable with the variety which marks the authentic records of fact. For example, the details of a long and doubtful struggle between the Saxons and the Britons are obviously based upon no solid foundation; the dates and the events are alike traditional,—the usual and melancholy consolation of the vanquished. In proportion as we desert the older and apply to later sources of information, do we meet with successful wars, triumphant British chieftains, vanquished Saxons, heroes endowed with supernatural powers and blessed with supernatural luck. Gildas, Nennius and Beda mention but a few contests, and even these of a doubtful and suspicious character; Geoffry of Monmouth and gossipers of his class, on the contrary, are full of wondrous incidents by flood and field, of details calculated to flatter the pride or console the sorrows of Keltic auditors: the successes which those who lived in or near the times described either pass over in modest silence or vaguely insinuate under sweeping generalities, are impudently related by this fabler and his copyists with every richness of narration. According to him the invaders are defeated in every part of the island, nay even expelled from it; army after army is destroyed, chieftain after chieftain slain; till he winds up his enormous tissue of fabrications with the defeat, the capture and execution of a hero whose very existence becomes problematical when tested by the severe principles of historical criticism, and who, according to the strict theory of our times, can hardly be otherwise than enrolled among the gods, through a godlike or half-godlike form[^[35]].

It is no doubt probable that the whole land was not subdued without some pains in different quarters; that here and there a courageous leader or a favourable position may have enabled the aborigines to obtain even temporary successes over the invaders: the new immigrants were not likely to find land vacant for their occupation among their kinsmen who had long been settled here, though well-assured of their co-operation in any attempt to wrest new settlements from the British. But no authentic record remains of the slow and gradual progress that would have attended the conquest of a brave and united people, nor is any such consistent with the accounts the British authors have left of the disorganized and disarmed condition of the population. A skirmish, carried on by very small numbers on either side, seems generally to have decided the fate of a campaign. Steadily from east to west, from south to north, the sharp axes and long swords of the Teutons hewed their way: wherever opposition was offered, it ended in the retreat of the aborigines to the mountains,—fortresses whence it was impossible to dislodge them, and from which they sometimes descended to attempt a hopeless effort for the liberty of their country or revenge upon their oppressors. The ruder or more generous of their number may have preferred exile and the chances of emigration to subjection at home[^[36]]; but the mass of the people, accustomed to Roman rule or the oppression of native princes[^[37]], probably suffered little by a change of masters, and did little to avoid it. At even a later period an indignant bard could pour out his patriotic reproaches upon the Loegrians who had condescended to become Saxons. We learn that at first the condition of the British under the German rule was fair and easy, and only rendered harsher in punishment of their unsuccessful attempts at rebellion[^[38]]; and the laws of Ini, a Westsaxon king, show that in the territories subject to his rule, and bordering upon the yet British lands, the Welshman occupied the place of a perioecian rather than a helot[^[39]]. Nothing in fact is more common, or less true, than the exaggerated account of total exterminations and miserable oppressions, in the traditional literature of conquered nations; and we may very safely appeal even to the personal appearance of the peasantry in many parts of England, as evidence how much Keltic blood was permitted to subsist and even to mingle with that of the ruling Germans; while the signatures to very early charters supply us with names assuredly not Teutonic, and therefore probably borne by persons of Keltic race, occupying positions of dignity at the courts of Anglosaxon kings[^[40]].

From what has preceded it will be inferred that I look upon the genuine details of the German conquests in England as irrevocably lost to us. So extraordinary a success as the conquest of this island by bands of bold adventurers from the continent, whose cognate tribes had already come into fatal collision with not only the Gallic provincials, but even the levies of the city itself[^[41]], could hardly have passed unnoticed by the historians of the empire: we have seen however that only Prosper Tyro and Procopius notice this great event, and that too in terms which by no means necessarily imply a state of things consistent with the received accounts. The former only says indefinitely, that about 441, Britain was finally reduced under the Saxon power; while Procopius clearly shows how very imperfect, indeed fabulous, an account he had received[^[42]]. Could we trust the accuracy and critical spirit of this writer, whom no less a man than Gibbon has condescended to call the gravest historian of his time, we might indeed imagine that we had recovered one fact of our earliest history, which brought with it all the attractions of romance. An Angle princess had been betrothed to Radigér, prince of the Varni, a Teutonic tribe whose seats are subsequently described to have been about the shores of the Northern Ocean and upon the Rhine, by which alone they were separated from the Franks[^[43]]. Tempted however partly by motives of policy, partly perhaps by maxims of heathendom, he deserted his promised bride and offered his hand to Theodechild, the widow of his father, and sister of the Austrasian Theodberht[^[44]]. Like the epic heroine Brynhildr, the deserted lady was not disposed to pass over the affront thus offered to her charms. With an immense armament she sailed for the mouth of the Rhine. A victory placed the faithless bridegroom a prisoner in her power. But desire of revenge gave place to softer emotions, and the triumphant princess was content to dismiss her rival and compel her repentant suitor to perform his engagement.

To deny all historical foundation to this tale would perhaps be carrying scepticism to an unreasonable extent. Yet the most superficial examination proves that in all its details, at least, it is devoid of accuracy. The period during which the events described must be placed[^[45]], is between the years 534 and 547; and it is very certain that the Varni were not settled at that time where Procopius has placed them[^[46]]: on that locality we can only look for Saxons. It is hardly necessary to say that a fleet of four hundred ships, and an army of one hundred thousand Angles, led by a woman, are not data upon which we could implicitly rely in calculating either the political or military power of any English principality at the commencement of the sixth century; or that ships capable of carrying two hundred and fifty men each, had hardly been launched at that time from any port in England. Still I am not altogether disposed to deny the possibility of predatory expeditions from the more settled parts of the island, adjoining the eastern coasts. Gregory of Tours tells us that about the same time as that assigned to this Angle expedition, Theodoric the Frank, assisted by Sueves, Saxons and even Bavarians, cruelly devastated the territory of the Thuringians; and although it would be far more natural to seek these Saxons in their old settlements upon the continent, we have the authority of Rudolf or Meginhart, that they were in fact inhabitants of this island[^[47]].

But if such difficulties exist in dealing with the events of periods which are within the ascertained limits of our chronological system, and which have received the illustration of contemporary history, what shall we say of those whereof the time, nay even the locality is unknown? What account shall we render of those occurrences, which exist for us only in the confused forms given to them by successive ages; some, mischievously determined to reduce the abnormal to rule, the extraordinary to order, as measured by their narrow scheme of analogy? Is it not obvious that to seek for historic truth in such traditions, is to be guilty of violating every principle of historic logic? Such was the course pursued by our early chroniclers, but it is not one that we can be justified in repeating. In their view no doubt, the annals of the several Saxon kingdoms did supply points of definite information; but we are now able to take the measure of their credulity, and to apply severer canons of criticism to the facts themselves which they believed and recorded. If it was the tendency and duty of their age to deliver to us the history that they found, it is the tendency and duty of ours to enquire upon what foundation that history rests, and what amount of authority it may justly claim.

The little that Beda could collect at the beginning of the eighth century, formed the basis of all the subsequent reports. Though not entirely free from the prejudices of his time, and yielding ready faith to tales which his frame of mind disposed him willingly to credit, he seems to have bestowed some pains upon the investigation and critical appreciation of the materials he collected. But the limits of the object he had proposed to himself, viz. the ecclesiastical history of the island, not only imposed upon him the necessity of commencing his detailed narrative at a comparatively late period[^[48]], but led him to reject much that may have been well known to him, of our secular history. The deeds of pagan and barbarous chieftains offered little to attract his attention or command his sympathies; indeed were little likely to be objects of interest to those from whom his own information was generally derived. Beda’s account, copied and recopied both at home and abroad, was swelled by a few vague data from the regnal annals of the kings; these were probably increased by a few traditions, ill understood and ill applied, which belonged exclusively to the epical or mythological cycles of our own several tribes and races, and the cognate families of the continent; and finally the whole was elaborated into a mass of inconsistent fables, on the admission of Cymric or Armorican tales by Norman writers, who for the most part felt as little interest in the fate of the Briton as the Saxon, and were as little able to appreciate the genuine history of the one as of the other race. Thus Wóden, Bældæg, Geát, Scyld, Sceáf and Beówa gradually found their way into the royal genealogies; one by one, Brutus, Aurelius Ambrosius, Uther Pendragon and Arthur, Hengest, Hors and Vortigern, all became numbered among historical personages; and from heroes of respective epic poems sunk down into kings and warriors, who lived and fought and died upon the soil of England.

We are ignorant what fasti or mode even of reckoning the revolutions of seasons prevailed in England, previous to the introduction of Christianity. We know not how any event before the year 600 was recorded, or to what period the memory of man extended. There may have been rare annals: there may have been poems: if such there were they have perished, and have left no trace behind, unless we are to attribute to them such scanty notices as the Saxon chronicle adds to Beda’s account. From such sources however little could have been gained of accurate information either as to the real internal state, the domestic progress, or development of a people. The dry, bare entries of the chronicles in historical periods may supply the means of judging what sort of annals were likely to exist before the general introduction of the Roman alphabet and parchment, while, in all probability, runes supplied the place of letters, and stones, or the beech-wood from which their name is derived, of books. Again, the traditions embodied in the epic, are preeminently those of kings and princes: they are heroical, devoted to celebrate the divine or half-divine founders of a race, the fortunes of their warlike descendants, the manners and mode of life of military adventurers, not the obscure progress, household peace and orderly habits of the humble husbandman. They are full of feasts and fighting, shining arms and golden goblets: the gods mingle among men almost their equals, share in the same pursuits, are animated by the same passions of love, and jealousy and hatred; or, blending the divine with the mortal nature, become the founders of races, kingly because derived from divinity itself. But one race knows little of another or its traditions, and cares as little for them. Alliances or wars alone bring them in contact with one another; and the terms of intercourse between the races will for the most part determine the character under which foreign heroes shall be admitted into the national epos, or whether they shall be admitted at all. All history then, which is founded in any degree upon epical tradition (and national history is usually more or less so founded) must be to that extent imperfect, if not inaccurate; only when corrected by the written references of contemporaneous authors, can we assign any certainty to its records[^[49]].

Let us apply these observations to the early events of Saxon history: of Kent indeed we have the vague and uncertain notices which I have mentioned: even more vague and uncertain are those of Sussex and Wessex. Of the former, we learn that in the year 477, Ælli, with three sons, Cymen, Wlencing and Cissa, landed in Sussex; that in the year 485 they defeated the Welsh, and that in 491 they destroyed the population of Anderida[^[50]]. Not another word is there about Sussex, before the arrival of Augustine, except a late assertion of the military preeminence of Ælli among the Saxon chieftains. The events of Wessex are somewhat better detailed; we learn that in 495 two nobles, Cerdic and Cyneríc, came to England, and landed at Cerdices ora, where on the same day they fought a battle: that in 501 they were followed by a noble named Port, who with his two sons Bieda and Mægla made a forcible landing at Portsmouth: and that in 508 they gained a great battle over a British king, whom they slew together with five thousand of his people. In 514 Stuff and Wihtgár, their nephews, brought them a reinforcement of three ships; in 519 they again defeated the Britons, and established the kingdom of Wessex. In 527 a new victory is recorded: in 530, the Isle of Wight was subdued and given to Wihtgár; and in 534, Cerdic died, and was succeeded by Cyneríc, who reigned twenty-six years[^[51]]. In 544 Wihtgár died. A victory of Cyneríc in 552 and 556, and Ceawlin’s accession to the throne of Wessex are next recorded. Wars of the Westsaxon kings are noted in 568, 571, 577, 584. From 590 to 595 a king of that race named Ceól is mentioned: in 591 we learn the expulsion of Ceawlin from power: in 593 the deaths of Ceawlin, Cwichelm and Crida are mentioned, and in 597, the year of Augustine’s arrival, we learn that Ceólwulf ascended the throne of Wessex.

Meagre as these details are, they far exceed what is related of Northumberland, Essex or Eastanglia. In 547 we are told that Ida began to reign in the first of these kingdoms; and that he was succeeded in 560 by Ælli: that after a reign of thirty years[^[52]], he died in 588 and was succeeded by Æðelríc, who again in 593 was succeeded by Æðelfrið. This is all we learn of Northumbria; of Mercia, Essex, Eastanglia, and the innumerable kingdoms that must have been comprised under these general appellations, we hear not a single word.

If this be all that we can now recover of events, a great number of which must have fallen within the lives of those to whom Augustine preached, what credit shall we give to the inconsistent accounts of earlier actions? How shall we supply the almost total want of information respecting the first settlements? What explanation have we to give of the alliance between Jutes, Angles and Saxons which preceded the invasions of England? What knowledge will these records supply of the real number and quality of the chieftains, the language and blood of the populations who gradually spread themselves from the Atlantic to the Frith of Forth; of the remains of Roman cultivation, or the amount of British power with which they had to contend? of the vicissitudes of good and evil fortune which visited the independent principalities, before they were swallowed up in the kingdoms of the heptarchy, or the extent of the influence which they retained after that event? On all these several points we are left entirely in the dark; and yet these are facts which it most imports us to know, if we would comprehend the growth of a society which endured for at least seven hundred years in England, and formed the foundation of that in which we live.

Lappenberg has devoted several pages of his elaborate history[^[53]] to an investigation of the Kentish legends, with a view to demonstrate their traditional, that is unhistorical, character. He has shown that the best authorities are inconsistent with one another and with themselves, in assigning the period of Hengest’s arrival in England. Carefully comparing the dates of the leading events, as given from the soundest sources, he has proved beyond a doubt, that all these periods are calculated upon a mythical number 8, whose multiples recur in every year assigned. Thus the periods of twenty-four, sixteen, eight and particularly forty years meet us at every turn; and a somewhat similar tendency may, I think, be observed in the earlier dates of Westsaxon history cited in a preceding page. It is also very probable that the early genealogies of the various Anglosaxon kings were arranged in series of eight names, including always the great name of Wóden[^[54]].

The result of all these enquiries is, to guard against plausible details which can only mislead us. If we endeavour to destroy the credit of traditions which have long existed, it is only to put something in their place, inconsistent with them, but of more value: to reduce them to what they really are, lest their authority should render the truth more obscure, and its pursuit more difficult than is necessary; but to use them wherever they seem capable of guiding our researches, and are not irreconcilable with our other conclusions.

Far less in the fabulous records adopted by historians, than in the divisions of the land itself, according to the populations that occupied it, and the rank of their several members, must the truth be sought. The names of the tribes and families have survived in the localities where they settled, while their peculiar forms of customary law have become as it were melted together into one general system; and the national legends which each of them most probably possessed, have either perished altogether, or are now to be traced only in proper names which fill up the genealogies of the royal families[^[55]]. To these local names I shall return hereafter; they will furnish a strong confirmation of what has been advanced in this chapter as to the probability of an early and wide dispersion of Teutonic settlers in Britain.

[1]. Ancient Laws and Institutes of England; comprising Laws enacted under the Anglosaxon Kings from Æðelbirht to Cnut, with an English translation of the Saxon: the Laws called Edward the Confessor’s; the Laws of William the Conqueror, and those ascribed to Henry the First; also Monumenta Ecclesiastica Anglicana, from the seventh to the tenth century: and the ancient Latin version of the Anglosaxon Laws. With a copious Glossary, etc. (By B. Thorpe, Esq.). Printed by command of his late Majesty, King William the Fourth, under the direction of the Commissioners on the Public Records of the Kingdom. MDCCCXL.

[2]. Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici. Opera J. M. Kemble, M.A., vol. i. London, 1839; vol. ii. 1840; vol. iii. 1845; vol. iv. 1846; vol. v. 1847; vol. vi. 1848. Published by authority of the Historical Society of England.

[3]. Beda, Hist. Eccl. i. 14, 15. Gildas, Hist. § 14. Nennius, Hist. § 38.

[4]. It is uncertain from the MSS. whether this lady is to be called Rouwen or Ronwen. The usual English tradition gives her name as Rowena; if this be accurate, I presume our pagan forefathers knew something of a divine personage—Hróðwén—possibly a dialectical form of the great and glorious goddess Hréðe; for whom refer to Chapter X. of this Book.

[5]. The story of the treacherous murder perpetrated upon the Welsh chieftains does not claim an English origin. It is related of the Oldsaxons upon the continent, in connexion with the conquest of the Thuringians. See Widukind.

[6]. Conf. Nennius, Hist. 37 seq., 46 seq. Beda, Hist. Ecc. i. 14, 15. Gildas, Hist. § 25.

[7]. The Anglosaxon Traveller’s Song contains a multitude of names which cannot be found elsewhere. Paulus Diaconus and Jornandes have evidently used ancient poems as the foundation of their histories. The lays of the various Germanic cycles still furnish details respecting Hermanaric, Otachar, Theodoric, Hiltibrant and other heroes of this troubled period. But the reader who would judge of the fragmentary and unsatisfactory result of all that the ancient world has recorded of the new, had better consult that most remarkable work of Zeuss, Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme. Munich, 1837. He will there see how the profoundest science halts after the reality of ancient ages, and strives in vain to reduce their manifold falsehood to a truth.

[8]. “Celebrant carminibus antiquis, quod unum apud illos memoriae et annalium genus est.” Tac. Mor. Germ. cap. ii.

[9]. This is asserted both by Gildas and Nennius, and it is not in itself improbable. The Romans did sometimes attempt to disarm the nations they subdued: thus Probus with the Alamanni. Vopisc. cap. 14. Malmsbury’s account of the defenceless state of Britain was probably not exaggerated. He says: “Ita cum tyranni nullum in agris praeter semibarbaros, nullum in urbibus praeter ventri deditos reliquissent, Britannia omni patrocinio iuvenilis vigoris viduata, omni exercitio artium exinanita, conterminarum gentium inhiationi diu obnoxia fuit.” Gest. Reg. lib. i. § 2.

[10]. Prosper Tyro, a.d. 441, says, “Theodosii xviii. Britanniae usque ad hoc tempus variis cladibus eventibusque latae [? laceratae] in ditionem Saxonum rediguntur.” See also Procop. Bel. Got. iv. 20. The former of these passages might however be understood without the assumption of an immigration, which the movements of Attila render probable.

[11]. Bell. Gal. iii. 8. 9; iv. 20.

[12]. Especially the Veneti: hέτοιμοι γὰρ ἦσαν κωλύειν τὸν εἰς τὴν βρεττανικὴν πλοῦν, χρώμενοι τῷ ἐμπορίῳ. Strabo, bk. iv. p. 271. Conf. Bell. Gall. iv. 20.

[13]. Book iv. p. 278.

[14]. Tacit. Ann. xiv. 33.

[15]. Caesar notices the migrations of continental tribes to Britain: he says, “Britanniae pars interior ab iis incolitur, quos natos in insula ipsa memoria proditum dicunt; maritima pars ab iis qui praedae ac belli inferendi causa ex Belgis transierant; qui omnes fere iis nominibus civitatum adpellantur, quibus orti ex civitatibus eo pervenerunt, et bello inlato ibi remanserunt, atque agros colere coeperunt.” Bell. Gall. v. 12.

[16]. Ptolemy, bk. ii. c. 2. It is true that Ptolemy calls them Καύκοι, but this mode of spelling is not unexampled, and is found in even so correct a writer as Strabo. The proper form is Καύχοι. Latin authors occasionally write Cauci for Chauci, and sometimes even Cauchi: see Zeuss, Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme, p. 138. It is right to add that Zeuss, whose opinion on such a point is entitled to the highest consideration, hesitates to include these Καυκοι among Germanic tribes (p. 199). The Μανάπιοι, placed also by Ptolemy in Ireland, can hardly be Germans.

[17]. Ptolemy, bk. ii. c. 3. μεθ’ οὗς Κοριταυοὶ, ἐν οἷς πόλεις, λίνδον, ῥάγε· εἶτα, Κατυευχλανοὶ, ἐν οἷς πόλεις, σαλῆναι[al. σαλιοῦαι], οὐρολάνιον. Others have preferred the form Κοριτανοὶ, but the authority of the best manuscripts, not less than the analogy of the names Ingaevones, Iscaevones, Chamavi, Batavi, confirms the earlier reading. According to the Triads, these Coritavi (Coriniaidd) had migrated from a Teutonic marshland. Thorpe’s Lappenberg, i. 15. The word is thus in all probability derived from Hor, lutum, Horiht, lutosus; equivalent to the “aquosa Fresonum arva.” Vit. Sci. Sturm. Pertz. ii. 372. “Saxones, gentem oceani, in littoribus et paludibus inviis sitam.” Oros. vii. 32.

[18]. Chatuarii, Heaðobeardan, Heaðoræmes. However Catu is a genuine British prefix.

[19]. Saxones Baiocassini. Greg. Turon. v. 27; x. 9.

[20]. Grannona in littore Saxonico. Notit. Imp. Occid. c. 86. Du Chesne Hist. i. p. 3. The Tótingas, who have left their name to Tooting in Surrey, are recorded also at Tótingahám in the county of Boulogne. Leo, Rectitudines singularum personarum, p. 26.

[21]. Ptolemy calls the islands at the mouth of the Elbe, Σαξόνων νῆσοι τρεῖς. Zeuss considers these to be Föhr, Silt and Nordstrand. Die Deutschen, p. 150. Lappenberg sees in them, North Friesland, Eiderstedt, Nordstrand, Wickingharde and Böcingharde. Thorpe, Lap. i. 87. It seems hardly conceivable that Frisians, who occupied the coast as early as the time of Caesar, should not have found their way by sea to Britain, especially when pressed by Roman power: see Tac. Ann. xiii. 54.

[22]. Hengest defeated the Picts and Scots at Stamford in Lincolnshire, not far from the Nene, the Witham and the Welland, upon whose banks it is nearly certain that there were German settlements. Widukind’s story of an embassy from the Britons to the Saxons, to entreat aid, is thus rendered not altogether improbable: but then it must be understood of Saxons already established in England, and on the very line of march of the Northern invaders, whom they thus took most effectually in flank. Compare Geoffry’s story of Vortigern giving Hengest lands in Lincolnshire, etc.

[23]. Tac. Hist. iv. 12, about A.D. 69. “Diu Germanicis bellis exerciti; mox aucta per Britanniam gloria, transmissis illuc cohortibus, quas vetere instituto, nobilissimi popularium regebant.”

[24]. Dio. Cas. lxxi. lxxii. Gibbon, Dec. cap. ix. At a later period, Probus settled Vandals and Burgundians here: Zosimus tells us (Hist. Nov. i. 68): ὅσους δὲ ζῶντας οἷος τε γέγονεν ἑλεῖν, εἰς Βρεττανίαν παρέπεμψεν· ὃι τὴν νῆσον οἰκήσαντες, ἐπαναστάντος μετὰ ταῦτα τινος, γεγόνασι βασιλεῖ χρήσιμοι. Procopius even goes so far as to make Belisarius talk of Goths in Britain, but the context itself proves that this deserves very little notice. Bell. Got. ii. 6.

[25]. Carausius was a Menapian: but in the third century the inhabitants of the Menapian territory were certainly Teutonic. Aurelius Victor calls him a Batavian: see Gibbon, Dec. cap. xiii. Carausius, and after him Allectus, maintained a German force here: “Omnes enim illos, ut audio, campos atque colles non nisi teterrimorum hostium corpora fusa texerunt. Illa barbara aut imitatione barbariae olim cultu vestis, et prolixo crine rutilantia, tunc vero pulvere et cruore foedata, et in diversos situs tracta, sicuti dolorem vulnerum fuerant secuta, iacuerunt.... Enimvero, Caesar invicte, tanto deorum immortalium tibi est addicta consensu omnium quidem quos adortus fueris hostium, sed praecipue internecio Francorum, ut illi quoque milites vestri, qui per errorem nebulosi, ut paullo ante dixi, maris abiuncti ad oppidum Londiniense pervenerunt, quidquid ex mercenaria illa multitudine barbarorum praelio superfuerat, cum direpta civitate, fugam capessere cogitarent, passim tota urbe confecerint.” Eumen. Paneg. Const. cap. 18, 19.

[26]. Aurel. Vict. cap. 41. Lappenberg, referring to this fact (Thorpe, i. 47), asks, “May not the name Erocus be a corruption of Ertocus, a Latinization of the old-Saxon Heritogo, dux?” I think not; for an Alaman would have been called by a high and not low German name, Herizohho, not Heritogo. I think it much more likely that his name was Chrohho or Hrôca, a rook.

[27]. Pancirolus would date this important record in A.D. 438. Gibbon, however, refutes him and places it between 395 and 407. Dec. cap. xvii. I am inclined to think even this date inaccurate, and that the Romans did not maintain any such great establishment in Britain, as that herein described, at so late a period. For even Ammianus tells us in 364, “Hoc tempore Picti, Saxonesque et Scotti et Attacotti Britannos aerumnis vexavere continuis,” (Hist. xxvi. 4), which is hardly consistent with a flourishing state of the Roman civil and military rule. The actual document we possess may possibly date from 390 or 400, but it refers to the arrangements of an earlier time, and to an organization of Roman power in more palmy days of their dominion.

[28]. The document itself may be consulted in Graevius, vol. vii. The “littus Saxonicum per Britannias” extended at least from the Portus Adurni to Branodunum, that is, from the neighbourhood of Portsmouth to Branchester on the Wash. In both these places there were civil or military officers under the orders of the Comes littoris Saxonici.

[29]. Professor Leo, of Halle, has called attention to a remarkable resemblance between the names of certain places in Kent, and settlements of the Alamanni upon the Neckar. A few of these, it must be admitted, are striking, but the majority are only such as might be expected to arise from similarities of surface and natural features in any two countries settled by cognate populations, having nearly the same language, religious rites and civil institutions. Even if the fact be admitted in the fullest extent, it is still unnecessary to adopt Dr. Leo’s hypothesis, that the coincidence is due to a double migration from the shores of the Elbe. Rectitud. sing. person. pp. 100-104. It has been already stated that Constantius was accompanied to Britain by an Alamannic king; and I cannot doubt that under Valentinian, a force of Alamanni served in this country. Ammianus says: “Valentinianus ... in Macriani locum, Bucinobantibus, quae contra Moguntiacum gens est Alamanna, regem Fraomarium ordinavit: quem paullo postea, quoniam recens excursus eundem penitus vastaverat pagum, in Britannos translatum potestate tribuni, Alamannorum praefecerat numero, multitudine, viribusque ea tempestate florenti.” Hist. xxix. c. 4. The context renders it impossible that this “numerus Alamannorum” should have been anything but genuine Germans.

[30]. Widukind in Leibnitz, Rer. Brunsw. i. 73, 74; Repgow, Sachsensp. iii. 44, § 2. It is amusing enough to see how the number of ships increases as people began to feel the absurdity of bringing over conquering armies in such very small flotillas.

[31]. Galf. Monum. H. Brit., vi. 11. Thong castle probably gave a turn to the story here which the Oldsaxon legend had not. The classical tale of Dido and Byrsa is well known to every schoolboy. Ragnor Lodbrog adopted the same artifice, Rag. Lodb. Saga, cap. 19, 20. Nay the Hindoos declare that we obtained possession of Calcutta by similar means.

[32]. Widuk. in loc. citat., also Grimm’s Deutsche Sagen, No. 547, 369, and Deutsche Rechtsalt. p. 90, where several valuable examples are cited: it is remarkable how many of these are Thuringian.

[33]. Vit. Offae Primi, edited by Wats.

[34]. Saxo Gramm. bk. iv. p. 59 seq.

[35]. Woden in the gentile form of a horse, Hengest, equus admissarius, the brother of Hors, and father of a line in which names of horses form a distinguishing part of the royal appellatives. It is hardly necessary to remind the classical reader of Poseidon in his favourite shape, the shape in which he contended with Athene and mingled with Ceres. In these remarks on Geoffry and his sources, I do not mean to deny the obligation under which the reader of romance has been laid by him; only to reject everything like historical authority. It is from the countrymen of Geoffry that we have also gained the marvellous superstructure of imagination which has supplied the tales of that time, “when Charlemagne with all his peerage fell by Fontarabia,” and which is recognised by history in the very short entry, “In quo proelio Eggihardus regiae mensae praepositus, Anselmus comes palatii, et Hruodlandus Brittanici limitis praefectus, cum aliis compluribus interficiuntur.” Einhardi Vita Karoli, § 9. Pertz, ii. 448. Let us be grateful for the Orlando Innamorato and Furioso, but not make history of them.

[36]. Many beyond a doubt found a refuge in Brittany among their brethren and co-religionists who had long been settled there. Conf. Ermold. Nigel. bk. iii. v. 11. in Pertz, ii. 490. The Cumbrians and Welsh had probably been as little subdued by the Romans as they were by the Saxons.

[37]. Gildas does not spare the native princes: see Epist. querul. passim; and when every excuse has been made for the exaggerations of an honest zeal, we must believe the condition of the people to have been bad in the extreme.

[38]. “Quorum illi qui Northwallos, id est Aquilonales Britones dicebantur, parti Westsaxonum regum obvenerant. Illi quondam consuetis servitiis seduli, diu nil asperum retulere, sed tunc rebellionem meditantes, Kentuuinus rex tam anxia caede perdomuit, ut nihil ulterius sperarent. Quare et ultima malorum accessit captivis tributaria functio; ut qui antea nec solam umbram palpabant libertatis, nunc iugum subiectionis palam ingemiscerent.” W. Malmsb. Vit. Aldhelmi, Ang. Sac. ii. 14.

[39]. Leg. Ini, § 32, 33.

[40]. See a tract of the author’s in the Proceedings of the Archaeological Institute, 1845, on Anglosaxon names. From some very interesting papers read by the Rev. R. Garnett before the Philological Society in 1843, 1844, we learn that a considerable proportion of the words which denote the daily processes of agriculture, domestic life, and generally indoor and outdoor service, are borrowed by us from the Keltic. Philolog. Trans, i. 171 seq. The amount of Keltic words yet current in English may of course he accounted for in part, without the hypothesis of an actual incorporation; but many have unquestionably been borrowed, and serve to show that a strong Keltic element was permitted to remain and influence the Saxon. That it did so especially in local names is not of much importance, as it may be doubted whether conquest ever succeeded in changing these entirely, in any country.

[41]. I borrow from Hermann Müller’s instructive work, Der Lex Salica und der Lex Angliorum et Werinorum Alter und Heimat, p. 269, the following chronological notices of the Franks in their relations to the Roman empire:—

A.D. 250. Franks, the inhabitants of marshes, become known by their predatory excursions.

• 280. Franks, transplanted to Asia, return.
• 287. Franks occupy Batavia; are expelled.
• 291. Franks in the Gallic provinces.
• 306. Constantine chastises the Franks. They enjoy consideration in the service of Rome.
• 340. Wars and treaties with the Franks.
• 356. Julian treats with the Franks on the lower Rhine.
• 358. He treats with Franks in Toxandria.
• 359. Salic Franks in Batavia.
• 395. Stilicho treats with the Franks.
• 408. The Vandals invading Gaul are defeated by the Franks.
• 414. War with the Franks.
• 416. The Franks possess the Rhine-land.
• 437. Chlojo bursts into Gaul and takes Cambray.

[42]. Procop. Bel. Got. iv. 20.

[43]. Ουαρνοι μεν ὑπερ Ιστρον ποταμον ἱδρυνται· διηκουσι δε αχρι τε ες Ωκεανον τον αρκτωον, και ποταμον Ῥηνον· ὁσπερ αυτους τε διοριζει, και Φραγγους και ταλλα εθνη, ἁ ταυτη ἱδρυνται. ὁυτοι απαντες, ὁσοι τοπαλαιον αμφι Ῥηνον ἑκατερωθεν ποταμον ωκηντο, ιδιου μεν τινος ονοματος ἑκαστοι μετελαγχανον ... επικοινης δε Γερμανοι εκαλουντο ἁπαντες.... Ουαρνοι δε και Φραγγοι τουτι μονον του Ῥηνου το ὑδωρ μεταξυ εχουσιν. Bel. Got. iv. 20.

[44]. Procopius tells us that this was done by the dying father’s advice, and in consonance with the law of the people. Ῥαδίγερ δὲ ὁ παῖς ξυνοικιζέσθω τῇ μητρυιᾷ τολοιπὸν τῇ αὐτου, καθάπερ ὁ πάτριος ἡμῖν ἐφίησι νόμος. Ibid. Conf. Bed. Hist. Eccl. ii. 5.

[45]. The years 534 and 547 are the extreme terms of Theodberht’s reign. See Gib. Dec. bk. 38.

[46]. This fact, which has escaped the accurate, and generally merciless, criticism of Gibbon, is very clearly proved by Zeuss, Die Deutschen, etc. pp. 361, 362.

[47]. The passage is sufficiently important to deserve transcription at length. “Saxonum gens, sicut tradit antiquitas, ab Anglis Britanniae incolis egressa, per Oceanum navigans Germaniae litoribus studio et necessitate quaerendarum sedium appulsa est, in loco qui vocatur Haduloha, eo tempore quo Thiotricus rex Francorum contra Irminfridum generum suum, ducem Thuringorum, dimicans, terram eorum ferro vastavit et igni. Et cum iam duobus proeliis ancipiti pugna incertaque victoria miserabili suorum cede decertassent, Thiotricus spe vincendi frustratus, misit legatos ad Saxones, quorum dux erat Hadugoto. Audivit enim causam adventus eorum, promissisque pro victoria habitandi sedibus, conduxit eos in adiutorium; quibus secum quasi iam pro libertate et patria fortiter dimicantibus, superavit adversarios, vastatisque indigenis et ad internitionem pene deletis, terram eorum iuxta pollicitationem suam victoribus delegavit. Qui eam sorte dividentes, cum multi ex eis in bello cecidissent, et pro raritate eorum tota ab eis occupari non potuit, partem illius, et eam quam maxime quae respicit orientem, colonis tradebant, singuli pro sorte sua, sub tributo exercendam. Caetera vero loca ipsi possiderunt.” Transl. Sci. Alexandri, Pertz, ii. 674. This was written about 863. Possibly some ancient and now lost epic had recorded the wars of the Saxon Heaðogeát.

[48]. Beda attempts to give some account of the early state of Britain previous to the arrival of Augustine; a few quotations from Solinus, Gildas, and a legendary life of St. Germanus, comprise however nearly the whole of his collections. Either he could find no more information, or he did not think it worthy of belief. He even speaks doubtfully of the tale of Hengest. Hist. Eccl. i. 15.

[49]. The Homeric poems and those of the Edda are obvious examples: but nothing can be more instructive than the history which Livy and Saxo Grammaticus have woven out of similar materials.

[50]. Sax. Chron. under the respective dates.

[51]. Cerdic and Cyneríc landed in 495, after forty years Cerdic dies, and Cyneríc reigns twenty-six more!

[52]. The chronology is inconsistent throughout, and it is inconceivable that it should have been otherwise. Beda himself assigns different dates to the arrival of the Saxons, though it is the æra from which he frequently reckons.

[53]. Thorpe’s Lappenb. i. 78 seq.

[54]. Beówulf, ii. Postscript to the Preface, xxvii.

[55]. Geát, the eponymus of a race, Geátas, is found in the common genealogy previous to Wóden; his legend is alluded to in the Codex Exoniensis, pp. 377, 378, together with those of Ðeódríc, Wéland and Eormanríc. Witta in the Kentish line is found in the Traveller’s Song, l. 43. Offa in the Mercian genealogy occurs in the same poem, l. 69, in the fine epos of Beówulf, and in Saxo Grammaticus. Fin the son of Folcwalda is one of the heroes of Beówulf. Scyld, Sceáf and Beówa are found in the same poem, etc. These facts render it probable that many other, if not all the names in the genealogies were equally derived from the peculiar national or gentile legends, although the epic poems in which they were celebrated being now lost, we are unable to point to them as we have done to others.

CHAPTER II.
THE MARK.

All that we learn of the original principle of settlement, prevalent either in England or on the continent of Europe, among the nations of Germanic blood, rests upon two main foundations; first, the possession of land; second, the distinction of rank; and the public law of every Teutonic tribe implies the dependence of one upon the other principle, to a greater or less extent. Even as he who is not free can, at first, hold no land within the limits of the community, so is he who holds no land therein, not fully free, whatever his personal rank or character may be. Thus far the Teutonic settler differs but little from the ancient Spartiate or the comrade of Romulus.

The particular considerations which arise from the contemplation of these principles in their progressive development, will find their place in the several chapters of this Book: it deals with land held in community, and severalty; with the nature and accidents of tenure; with the distinction and privileges of the various classes of citizens, the free, the noble and the serf; and with the institutions by which a mutual guarantee of life, honour and peaceful possession was attempted to be secured among the Anglosaxons. These are the incunabula, first principles and rudiments of the English law[^[56]]; and in these it approaches, and assimilates to, the system which the German conquerors introduced into every state which they founded upon the ruins of the Roman power.

As land may be held by many men in common, or by several households, under settled conditions it is expedient to examine separately the nature and character of these tenures: and first to enquire into the forms of possession in common; for upon this depends the political being of the state, its constitutional law, and its relative position towards other states. Among the Anglosaxons land so held in common was designated by the names Mark, and Gâ or Shire.

The smallest and simplest of these common divisions is that which we technically call a Mark or March (mearc); a word less frequent in the Anglosaxon than the German muniments, only because the system founded upon what it represents yielded in England earlier than in Germany to extraneous influences. This is the first general division, the next in order to the private estates or alods of the Markmen: as its name denotes, it is something marked out or defined, having settled boundaries; something serving as a sign to others, and distinguished by signs. It is the plot of land on which a greater or lesser number of free men have settled for purposes of cultivation, and for the sake of mutual profit and protection; and it comprises a portion both of arable land and pasture, in proportion to the numbers that enjoy its produce[^[57]].

However far we may pursue our researches into the early records of our forefathers, we cannot discover a period at which this organization was unknown. Whatever may have been the original condition of the German tribes, tradition and history alike represent them to us as living partly by agriculture, partly by the pasturing of cattle[^[58]]. They had long emerged from the state of wandering herdsmen, hunters or fishers, when they first attracted the notice, and disputed or repelled the power, of Rome. The peculiar tendencies of various tribes may have introduced peculiar modes of placing or constructing their habitations; but of no German population is it stated, that they dwelt in tents like the Arab, in waggons like the Scythian, or in earth-dug caverns like the troglodytes of Wallachia: the same authority that tells of some who lived alone as the hill-side or the fresh spring pleased them[^[59]], notices the villages, the houses and even the fortresses, of others.

Without commerce, means of extended communication, or peaceful neighbours, the Germans cannot have cultivated their fields for the service of strangers: they must have been consumers, as they certainly were raisers, of bread-corn; early documents of the Anglosaxons prove that considerable quantities of wheat were devoted to this purpose. Even the serfs and domestic servants were entitled to an allowance of bread, in addition to the supply of flesh[^[60]]; and the large quantities of ale and beer which we find enumerated among the dues payable from the land, or in gifts to religious establishments, presume a very copious supply of cereals for the purpose of malting[^[61]]. But it is also certain that our forefathers depended very materially for subsistence upon the herds of oxen, sheep, and especially swine, which they could feed upon the unenclosed meadows, or in the wealds of oak and beech which covered a large proportion of the land. From the moment, in short, when we first learn anything of their domestic condition, all the German tribes appear to be settled upon arable land, surrounded with forest pastures, and having some kind of property in both.

Caesar, it is true, denies that agriculture was much cultivated among the Germans, or that property in the arable land was permitted to be permanent[^[62]]: and, although it seems impolitic to limit the efforts of industry, by diminishing its reward, it is yet conceivable that, under peculiar circumstances, a warlike confederation might overlook this obvious truth in their dread of the enervating influences of property and a settled life. There may have been difficulty in making a new yearly division of land, which to our prejudices seems almost impossible; yet the Arab of Oran claims only the produce of the seed he has sown[^[63]]; the proprietor in the Jaghire district of Madras changes his lands from year to year[^[64]]: the tribes of the Afghans submit to a new distribution even after a ten years’ possession has endeared the field to the cultivator[^[65]]; Diodorus tells us that the Vaccaeans changed their lands yearly and divided the produce[^[66]]; and Strabo attributed a similar custom to one tribe at least of the Illyrian Dalmatians, after a period of seven[^[67]].

But so deeply does the possession of land enter into the principle of all the Teutonic institutions, that I cannot bring myself to believe in the accuracy of Caesar’s statement. Like his previous rash and most unfounded assertion respecting the German gods, this may rest only upon the incorrect information of Gallic provincials: at the utmost it can be applied only to the Suevi and their warlike allies[^[68]], if it be not even intended to be confined to the predatory bands of Ariovistus, encamped among the defeated yet hostile Sequani[^[69]]. The equally well-known passage of Tacitus,—“arva per annos mutant, et superest ager[^[70]],”—may be most safely rendered as applying to the common mode of culture; “they change the arable from year to year, and there is land to spare;” that is, for commons and pasture: but it does not amount to a proof that settled property in land was not a part of the Teutonic scheme; it implies no more than this, that within the Mark which was the property of all, what was this year one man’s corn-land, might the next be another man’s fallow; a process very intelligible to those who know anything of the system of cultivation yet prevalent in parts of Germany, or have ever had any interest in what we call Lammas Meadows.

Zeuss, whose admirable work[^[71]] is indispensable to the student of Teutonic antiquity, brings together various passages to show that at some early period, the account given by Caesar may have conveyed a just description of the mode of life in Germany[^[72]]. He represents its inhabitants to himself as something between a settled and an unsettled people. What they may have been in periods previous to the dawn of authentic history, it is impossible to say; but all that we really know of them not only implies a much more advanced state of civilization, but the long continuance and tradition of such a state. We cannot admit the validity of Zeuss’ reasoning, or escape from the conviction that it mainly results from a desire to establish his etymology of the names borne by the several confederations, and which requires the hypothesis of wandering and unsettled tribes[^[73]].

The word Mark has a legal as well as a territorial meaning: it is not only a space of land, such as has been described, but a member of a state also; in which last sense it represents those who dwell upon the land, in relation to their privileges and rights, both as respects themselves and others. But the word, as applied even to the territory, has a twofold meaning: it is, properly speaking, employed to denote not only the whole district occupied by one small community[^[74]]; but more especially those forests and wastes by which the arable is enclosed, and which separate the possessions of one tribe from those of another[^[75]]. The Mark or boundary pasture-land, and the cultivated space which it surrounds, and which is portioned out to the several members of the community, are inseparable; however different the nature of the property which can be had in them, they are in fact one whole; taken together, they make up the whole territorial possession of the original cognatio, kin or tribe. The ploughed lands and meadows are guarded by the Mark; and the cultivator ekes out a subsistence which could hardly be wrung from the small plot he calls his own, by the flesh and other produce of beasts, which his sons, his dependents or his serfs mast for him in the outlying forests.

Let us first take into consideration the Mark in its restricted and proper sense of a boundary. Its most general characteristic is, that it should not be distributed in arable, but remain in heath, forest, fen and pasture. In it the Markmen—called in Germany Markgenossen, and perhaps by the Anglosaxons Mearcgeneátas—had commonable rights; but there could be no private estate in it, no híd or hlot, no κλῆρος, or haeredium. Even if under peculiar circumstances, any markman obtained a right to essart or clear a portion of the forest, the portion so subjected to the immediate law of property ceased to be mark. It was undoubtedly under the protection of the gods; and it is probable that within its woods were those sacred shades especially consecrated to the habitation and service of the deity[^[76]].

If the nature of an early Teutonic settlement, which has nothing in common with a city, be duly considered, there will appear an obvious necessity for the existence of a mark, and for its being maintained inviolate. Every community, not sheltered by walls, or the still firmer defences of public law, must have one, to separate it from neighbours and protect it from rivals: it is like the outer pulp that surrounds and defends the kernel. No matter how small or how large the community,—it may be only a village, even a single household, or a whole state,—it will still have a Mark, a space or boundary by which its own rights of jurisdiction are limited, and the encroachments of others are kept off[^[77]]. The more extensive the community which is interested in the Mark, the more solemn and sacred the formalities by which it is consecrated and defended; but even the boundary of the private man’s estate is under the protection of the gods and of the law. “Accursed,” in all ages and all legislations, “is he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark.” Even the owner of a private estate is not allowed to build or cultivate to the extremity of his own possession, but must leave a space for eaves[^[78]]. Nor is the general rule abrogated by changes in the original compass of the communities; as smaller districts coalesce and become, as it were, compressed into one body, the smaller and original Marks may become obliterated and converted merely into commons, but the public mark will have been increased upon the new and extended frontier. Villages tenanted by Heardingas or Módingas may cease to be separated, but the larger divisions which have grown up by their union, Meanwaras, Mægsetan or Hwiccas[^[79]] will still have a boundary of their own; these again may be lost in the extending circuit of Wessex or Mercia; till a yet greater obliteration of the Marks having been produced through increasing population, internal conquest, or the ravages of foreign invaders, the great kingdom of England at length arises, having wood and desolate moorland and mountain as its mark against Scots, Cumbrians and Britons, and the eternal sea itself as a bulwark against Frankish and Frisian pirates[^[80]].

But although the Mark is waste, it is yet the property of the community: it belongs to the freemen as a whole, not as a partible possession: it may as little be profaned by the stranger, as the arable land itself which it defends[^[81]]. It is under the safeguard of the public law, long after it has ceased to be under the immediate protection of the gods: it is unsafe, full of danger; death lurks in its shades and awaits the incautious or hostile visitant:

punishments of the most frightful character are denounced against him who violates it[^[83]]; and though, in historical times, these can only be looked upon as comminatory and symbolical, it is very possible that they may be the records of savage sacrifices believed due, and even offered, to the gods of the violated sanctuary. I can well believe that we too had once our Diana Taurica. The Marks are called accursed; that is accursed to man, accursed to him that does not respect their sanctity: but they are sacred, for on their maintenance depend the safety of the community, and the service of the deities whom that community honours[^[84]]. And even when the gods have abdicated their ancient power, even to the very last, the terrors of superstition come in aid of the enactments of law: the deep forests and marshes are the abodes of monsters and dragons; wood-spirits bewilder and decoy the wanderer to destruction: the Nicors house by the side of lakes and marshes[^[85]]: Grendel, the man-eater, is a “mighty stepper over the mark[^[86]]”: the chosen home of the firedrake is a fen[^[87]].

The natural tendency, however, of this state of isolation is to give way; population is an ever-active element of social well-being: and when once the surface of a country has become thickly studded with communities settled between the Marks, and daily finding the several clearings grow less and less sufficient for their support[^[88]], the next step is the destruction of the Marks themselves, and the union of the settlers in larger bodies, and under altered circumstances. Take two villages, placed on such clearings in the bosom of the forest, each having an ill-defined boundary in the wood that separates them, each extending its circuit woodward as population increases and presses upon the land, and each attempting to drive its Mark further into the waste, as the arable gradually encroaches upon this. On the first meeting of the herdsmen, one of three courses appears unavoidable: the communities must enter into a federal union; one must attack and subjugate the other; or the two must coalesce into one on friendly and equal terms[^[89]]. The last-named result is not improbable, if the gods of the one tribe are common to the other: then perhaps the temples only may shift their places a little. But in any case the intervening forest will cease to be Mark, because it will now lie in the centre, and not on the borders of the new community. It will be converted into common pasture, to be enjoyed by all on fixed conditions; or it may even be gradually rooted out, ploughed, planted and rendered subject to the ordinary accidents of arable land: it will become folcland, public land, applicable to the general uses of the enlarged state, nay even divisible into private estates, upon the established principles of public law. And this process will be repeated and continue until the family becomes a tribe, and the tribe a kingdom; when the intervening boundary lands, cleared, drained and divided, will have been clothed with golden harvests, or portioned out in meadows and common pastures, appurtenant to villages; and the only marks remaining will be the barren mountain and moor of the frontiers, the deep unforded rivers, and the great ocean that washes the shores of the continent.

Christianity, which destroys or diminishes the holiness of the forests, necessarily confines the guarantee of the Mark to the public law of the state. Hence when these districts become included within the limits of Christian communities, there is no difficulty in the process which has been described: the state deals with them as with any other part of its territory, by its own sovereign power, according to the prevalent ideas of agricultural or political œconomy; and the once inviolate land may at once be converted to public uses, widely different from its original destination, if the public advantage require it. No longer necessary as a boundary, from the moment when the smaller community has become swallowed up and confounded in the larger, it may remain in commons, be taken possession of by the state as folcland, or become the source of even private estates, and to all these purposes we find it gradually applied. In process of time it seems even to have become partible and appurtenant to private estates in a certain proportion to the arable[^[90]]: towards the close of the tenth century I find the grant of a mill and millstead, “and thereto as much of the markland as belongeth to three hydes”[^[91]].

The general advantage which requires the maintenance of the Mark as public property, does not however preclude the possibility of using it for public purposes, as long as the great condition of indivisibility is observed. Although it may not be cleared and ploughed, it may be depastured, and all the herds of the Markmen may be fed and masted upon its wilds and within its shades. While it still comprises only a belt of forest, lying between small settlements, those who live contiguous to it, are most exposed to the sudden incursions of an enemy, and perhaps specially entrusted with the measures for public defence, may have peculiar privileges, extending in certain cases even to the right of clearing or essarting portions of it. In the case of the wide tracts which separate kingdoms, we know that a comprehensive military organization prevailed, with castles, garrisons, and governors or Margraves, as in Austria, Brandenburg and Baden, Spoleto and Ancona, Northumberland and the Marches of Wales. But where clearings have been made in the forest, the holders are bound to see that they are maintained, and that the fresh arable land be not encroached upon; if forest-trees spring there by neglect of the occupant, the essart again becomes forest, and, as such, subject to all the common rights of the Markmen, whether in pasture, chase or estovers[^[92]].

The sanctity of the Mark is the condition and guarantee of its indivisibility, without which it cannot long be proof against the avarice or ambition of individuals: and its indivisibility is, in turn, the condition of the service which it is to render as a bulwark, and of its utility as a pasture. I therefore hold it certain that some solemn religious ceremonies at first accompanied and consecrated its limitation[^[93]]. What these may have consisted in, among the heathen Anglosaxons, we cannot now discover, but many circumstances render it probable that Wóden, who in this function also resembles Ἑρμῆς, was the tutelary god[^[94]]: though not absolutely to the exclusion of other deities, Tiw and Frea appearing to have some claim to a similar distinction[^[95]]. But however its limit was originally drawn or driven, it was, as its name denotes, distinguished by marks or signs. Trees of peculiar size and beauty, and carved with the figures of birds and beasts, perhaps even with Runic characters, served the purpose of limitation and definition[^[96]]: striking natural features, a hill, a brook, a morass, a rock, or the artificial mound of an ancient warrior, warned the intruder to abstain from dangerous ground, or taught the herdsman how far he might advance with impunity. In water or in marshy land, poles were set up, which it was as impious to remove, as it would have been to cut or burn down a mark-tree in the forest.

In the second and more important sense of the word, the Mark is a community of families or households, settled on such plots of land and forest as have been described. This is the original basis upon which all Teutonic society rests, and must be assumed to have been at first amply competent to all the demands of society in a simple and early stage of development: for example, to have been a union for the purpose of administering justice, or supplying a mutual guarantee of peace, security and freedom for the inhabitants of the district. In this organization, the use of the land, the woods and the waters was made dependent upon the general will of the settlers, and could only be enjoyed under general regulations made by all for the benefit of all. The Mark was a voluntary association of free men, who laid down for themselves, and strictly maintained, a system of cultivation by which the produce of the land on which they settled might be fairly and equally secured for their service and support; and from participation in which they jealously excluded all who were not born, or adopted, into the association. Circumstances dependent upon the peculiar local conformation of the district, or even on the relations of the original parties to the contract, may have caused a great variety in the customs of different Marks; and these appear occasionally anomalous, when we meet with them still subsisting in a different order of social existence[^[97]]; but with the custom of one Mark, another had nothing to do, and the Markmen, within their own limit, were independent, sufficient to their own support and defence, and seised of full power and authority to regulate their own affairs, as seemed most conducive to their own advantage. The Court of the Markmen, as it may be justly called, must have had supreme jurisdiction, at first, over all the causes which could in any way affect the interests of the whole body or the individuals composing it: and suit and service to such court was not less the duty, than the high privilege, of the free settlers. On the continent of Germany the divisions of the Marks and the extent of their jurisdiction can be ascertained with considerable precision; from these it maybe inferred that in very many cases the later courts of the great landowners had been in fact at first Markcourts, in which, even long after the downfall of the primæval freedom, the Lord, himself had been only the first Markman, the patron or defender of the simple freemen, either by inheritance or their election[^[98]]. In this country, the want of materials precludes the attainment of similar certainty, but there can be no reason to doubt that the same process took place, and that originally Markcourts existed among ourselves with the same objects and powers. In a charter of the year 971, Cod. Dipl. No. 568, we find the word mearcmót, which can there mean only the place where such a court, mót or meeting was held: while the mearcbeorh, which is not at all of rare occurrence, appears to denote the hill or mound which was the site of the court, and the place where the free settlers met at stated periods to do right between man and man[^[99]].

It is not at all necessary that these communities should have been very small; on the contrary, some of the Marks were probably of considerable extent, and capable of bringing a respectable force into the field upon emergency: others, no doubt, were less populous, and extensive: but a hundred heads of houses, which is not at all an extravagant supposition, protected by trackless forests, in a district not well known to the invader, constitute a body very well able to defend its rights and privileges.

Although the Mark seems originally to have been defined by the nature of the district, the hills, streams and forests, still its individual, peculiar and, as it were, private character depended in some degree also upon long-subsisting relations of the Markmen, both among themselves, and with regard to others. I represent them to myself as great family unions, comprising households of various degrees of wealth, rank and authority: some, in direct descent from the common ancestors, or from the hero of the particular tribe: others, more distantly connected, through the natural result of increasing population, which multiplies indeed the members of the family, but removes them at every step further from the original stock: some, admitted into communion by marriage, others by adoption; others even by emancipation; but all recognizing a brotherhood, a kinsmanship or sibsceaft[^[100]]; all standing together as one unit in respect of other, similar communities; all governed by the same judges and led by the same captains; all sharing in the same religious rites, and all known to themselves and to their neighbours by one general name.

The original significance of these names is now perhaps matter of curious, rather than of useful enquiry. Could we securely determine it, we should, beyond doubt, obtain an insight into the antiquities of the Germanic races, far transcending the actual extent of our historical knowledge; this it is hopeless now to expect: ages of continual struggles, of violent convulsions, of conquests and revolutions, lie between us and our forefathers: the traces of their steps have been effaced by the inexorable march of a different civilization. This alone is certain, that the distinction must have lain deeply rooted in the national religion, and supplied abundant materials for the national epos. Much has been irrecoverably lost, yet in what remains we recognize fragments which bear the impress of former wealth and grandeur. Beówulf, the Traveller’s Song, and the multifarious poems and traditions of Scandinavia, not less than the scattered names which meet us here and there in early German history, offer hints which can only serve to excite regret for the mass which has perished. The kingdoms and empires which have exercised the profoundest influence upon the course of modern civilization, have sprung out of obscure communities whose very names are only known to us through the traditions of the poet, or the local denominations which record the sites of their early settlements.

Many hypotheses may be formed to account for these ancient aggregations, especially on the continent of Europe. Perhaps not the least plausible is that of a single family, itself claiming descent, through some hero, from the gods, and gathering other scattered families around itself; thus retaining the administration of the family rites of religion, and giving its own name to all the rest of the community. Once established, such distinctive appellations must wander with the migrations of the communities themselves, or such portions of them as want of land and means, and excess of population at home, compelled to seek new settlements. In the midst of restless movements, so general and extensive as those of our progenitors, it cannot surprise us, when we find the gentile names of Germany, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, reproduced upon our own shores. Even where a few adventurers—one only—bearing a celebrated name, took possession of a new home, comrades would readily be found, glad to constitute themselves around him under an appellation long recognized as heroic: or a leader, distinguished for his skill, his valour and success, his power or superior wealth, may have found little difficulty in imposing the name of his own race upon all who shared in his adventures. Thus Harlings and Wælsings, names most intimately connected with the great epos of the Germanic and Scandinavian races, are reproduced in several localities in England: Billing, the noble progenitor of the royal race of Saxony, has more than one enduring record: and similarly, I believe all the local denominations of the early settlements to have arisen and been perpetuated[^[101]]. So much light appears derivable from a proper investigation of these names, that I have collected them in an Appendix ([A].) at the end of this volume, to the contents of which the reader’s attention is invited[^[102]].

In looking over this list we are immediately struck with a remarkable repetition of various names, some of which are found at once in several counties; and most striking are those which, like the examples already alluded to, give a habitation upon our own shores to the races celebrated in the poetical or historical records of other ages and other lands. There are indeed hardly any enquiries of deeper interest, than those whose tendency is to link the present with the past in the bonds of a mythical tradition; or which presents results of greater importance to him who has studied the modes of thought and action of populations at an early stage of their career. The intimate relations of mythology, law and social institutions, which later ages are too apt scornfully to despise, or superstitiously to imitate, are for them, living springs of action: they are believed in, not played with, as in the majority of revivals, from the days of Anytus and Melitus to our own; and they form the broad foundation upon which the whole social polity is established. The people who believe in heroes, originally gods and always god-born, preserve a remembrance of their ancient deities in the gentile names by which themselves are distinguished, long after the rites they once paid to their divinities have fallen into disuse; and it is this record of beings once hallowed, and a cult once offered, which they have bequeathed to us in many of the now unintelligible names of the Marks. Taking these facts into account, I have no hesitation in affirming that the names of places found in the Anglosaxon charters, and yet extant in England, supply no trifling links in the chain of evidence by which we demonstrate the existence among ourselves of a heathendom nearly allied to that of Scandinavia.

The Wælsings, the Völsungar of the Edda, and Volsungen of the German Heldensage, have already been noticed in a cursory manner: they are the family whose hero is Siegfried or Sigurdr[^[103]], the centre round which the Nibelungen epos circles. Another of their princes, Fitela, the Norse Sinfiötli, is recorded in the poem of Beówulf[^[104]], and from him appear to have been derived the Fitelingas, whose name survives in Fitling.

The Herelingas or Harlings have also been noticed; they are connected with the same great cycle, and are mentioned in the Traveller’s Song, l. 224. As Harlingen in Friesland retains a record of the same name, it is possible that it may have wandered to the coast of Norfolk with the Batavian auxiliaries, numerus Batavorum, who served under their own chiefs in Britain. The Swǽfas, a border tribe of the Angles[^[105]], reappear at Swaffham. The Brentings[^[106]] are found again in Brentingby. The Scyldings and Scylfings[^[107]], perhaps the most celebrated of the Northern races, give their names to Skelding and Shilvington. The Ardings, whose memorial is retained in Ardingley, Ardington and Ardingworth, are the Azdingi[^[108]], the royal race of the Visigoths and Vandals: a name which confirms the tradition of a settlement of Vandals in England. With these we probably should not confound the Heardingas, who have left their name to Hardingham in Norfolk[^[109]]. The Banings, over whom Becca ruled[^[110]], are recognized in Banningham; the Hælsings[^[111]] in Helsington, and in the Swedish Helsingland[^[112]]: the Myrgings[^[113]], perhaps in Merring, and Merrington: the Hundings[^[114]], perhaps in Hunningham and Hunnington: the Hócings[^[115]], in Hucking: the Seringas[^[116]] meet us again in Sharington, Sherington and Sheringham. The Ðyringas[^[117]], in Thorington and Thorrington, are likely to be offshoots of the great Hermunduric race, the Thyringi or Thoringi, now Thuringians, always neighbours of the Saxons. The Bleccingas, a race who probably gave name to Bleckingen in Sweden, are found in Bletchington, and Bletchingley. In the Gytingas, known to us from Guiting, we can yet trace the Alamannic tribe of the Juthungi, or Jutungi. Perhaps in the Scytingas or Scydingas, we may find another Alamannic tribe, the Scudingi[^[118]], and in the Dylingas, an Alpine or Highdutch name, the Tulingi[^[119]]. The Wæringas are probably the Norman Vǽringjar, whom we call Varangians. The Wylfingas[^[120]], another celebrated race, well known in Norse tradition, are recorded in Beówulf[^[121]] and the Traveller’s Song[^[122]].

These are unquestionably no trivial coincidences; they assure us that there lies at the root of our land-divisions an element of the highest antiquity; one too, by which our kinsmanship with the North-german races is placed beyond dispute. But their analogy leads us to a wider induction: when we examine the list of names contained in the [Appendix], we see at once how very few of these are identified with the names recorded in Beówulf and other poems: all that are so recorded, had probably belonged to portions of the epic cycle; but there is nothing in the names themselves to distinguish them from the rest; nothing at least but the happy accident of those poems, which were dedicated to their praise, having survived. In the lapse of years, how many similar records may have perished! And may we not justly conclude that a far greater number of races might have been identified, had the Ages spared the songs in which they were sung?

“Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona

Multi; sed omnes inlachrymabiles

Urgentur, ignotique longa

Nocte, carent quia vate sacro!”

Whatever periods we assume for the division of the land into Marks, or to what cause soever we attribute the names adopted by the several communities, the method and manner of their dispersion remains a question of some interest. The [Appendix] shows a most surprising distribution of some particular names over several counties[^[123]]: but this seems conceivable only in two ways; first, that the inhabitants of a Mark, finding themselves pressed for room at home, migrated to other seats, and established a new community under the old designation; or, secondly, that in the division of the newly conquered soil, men who had belonged to one community upon the continent, found themselves thrown into a state of separation here, either by the caprice of the lots, supposing their immigration simultaneous, or by the natural course of events, supposing one body to have preceded the other. Perhaps too we must admit the possibility of a dispersion arising from the dissolution of ancient confederacies, produced by internal war. On the whole I am disposed to look upon the second hypothesis as applicable to the majority of cases; without presuming altogether to exclude the action of the first and third causes. It is no doubt difficult to imagine that a small troop of wandering strangers should be allowed to traverse a settled country in search of new habitations. Yet, at first, there must have been abundance of land, which conduct and courage might wring from its Keltic owners. Again, how natural on the other hand is it, that in the confusion of conquest, or the dilatory course of gradual occupation, men once united should find their lot cast apart, and themselves divided into distant communities! Nor in this can we recognize anything resembling the solemn planting of a Grecian, far less of a Roman, colony; or suppose that any notion of a common origin survived to nourish feelings of friendship between bodies of men, so established in different lands. Even had such traditions originally prevailed, they must soon have perished, when the Marks coalesced into the Gá or Shire, and several of the latter became included in one kingdom. New interests and duties must then have readily superseded maxims which belonged to an almost obsolete organization.

But in truth, to this question of dispersion and relationship, considered in its widest generality, there is no limit either of place or time: it derives, indeed, some of its charm from the very vagueness which seems to defy the efforts of the historian: and even the conviction that a positive and scientific result is unattainable, does not suffice to repress the anxiety with which we strive to lift the veil of our Isis. The question of every settlement, large or small, ultimately resolves itself into that of the original migrations of mankind. Unless we can bring ourselves to adopt the hypothesis of autochthonous populations,—an hypothesis whose vagueness is not less than attaches to a system of gradual, but untraced, advances,—we must fall back from point to point, until we reach one starting-place and one origin. Every family that squats upon the waste, assumes the existence of two families from which it sprang: every household, comprising a man and woman, if it is to be fruitful and continue, presupposes two such households; each of these continues to represent two more, in a geometrical progression, whose enormous sum and final result are lost in the night of ages. The solitary who wanders away into the uncultivated waste, and there by degrees rears a family, a tribe and a state, takes with him the traditions, the dispositions, the knowledge and the ideas, which he had derived from others, in turn equally indebted to their predecessors. This state of society, if society it can be called, is rarely exhibited to our observation. The backwoodsman in America, or the settler in an Australian bush, may furnish some means of judging such a form of civilization; and the traditions of Norway and Iceland dimly record a similar process: but the solitary labourer, whose constant warfare with an exulting and exuberant nature does little more than assure him an independent existence, has no time to describe the course and the result of his toils: and the progress of the modern settler is recorded less by himself, than by a civilized society, whose offset he is; which watches his fortunes with interest and judges them with intelligence; which finds in his career the solution of problems that distract itself, and never forgets that he yet shares in the cultivation he has left behind him.

Still the manner in which such solitary households gradually spread over and occupy a country, must be nearly the same in all places, where they exist at all. The family increases in number; the arable is extended to provide food; the pasture is pushed further and further as the cattle multiply, or as the grasslands become less productive. Along the banks of the river which may have attracted the feelings or the avarice of the wanderer, which may have guided his steps in the untracked wilderness, or supplied the road by which he journeyed, the footsteps of civilization move upward: till, reaching the rising ground from which the streams descend on either side, the vanguards of two parties meet, and the watershed becomes their boundary, and the place of meeting for religious or political purposes. Meantime, the ford, the mill, the bridge have become the nucleus of a village, and the blessings of mutual intercourse and family bonds have converted the squatters’ settlement into a centre of wealth and happiness. And in like manner is it, where a clearing in the forest, near a spring or well[^[124]],—divine, for its uses to man,—has been made; and where, by slow degrees, the separated families discover each other, and find that it is not good for man to be alone.

This description, however, will not strictly apply to numerous or extensive cases of settlement, although some analogy may be found, if we substitute a tribe for the family. Continental Germany has no tradition of such a process; and we may not unjustly believe the records of such in Scandinavia to have arisen from the wanderings of unquiet spirits, impatient of control or rivalry, of criminals shrinking from the consequences of their guilt, or of descendants dreading the blood-feud inherited from ruder progenitors. But although systematic and religious colonization, like that of Greece, cannot be assumed to have prevailed, we may safely assert that it was carried on far more regularly, and upon more strict principles than are compatible with capricious and individual settlement[^[125]]. Tradition here and there throws light upon the causes by which bodies of men were impelled to leave their ancient habitations, and seek new seats in more fruitful or peaceful districts. The emigration represented by Hengest has been attributed to a famine at home, and even the grave authority of history has countenanced the belief that his keels were driven into exile: thus far we may assume his adventure to have been made with the participation, if not by the authority, of the parent state.

In general we may admit the division of a conquered country, such as Britain was, to have been conducted upon settled principles, derived from the actual position of the conquerors. As an army they had obtained possession, and as an army they distributed the booty which rewarded their valour. That they nevertheless continued to occupy the land as families or cognationes, resulted from the method of their enrolment in the field itself, where each kindred was drawn up under an officer of its own lineage and appointment, and the several members of the family served together. But such a distribution of the land as should content the various small communities that made up the whole force, could only be ensured by the joint authority of the leaders, the concurrence of the families themselves, and the possession of a sufficient space for their extension, undisturbed by the claims of former occupants, and suited to the wants of its new masters. What difficulties, what jealousies preceded the adjustment of all claims among the conquerors, we cannot hope to learn, or by what means these were met and reconciled: but the divisions themselves, so many of whose names I have collected, prove that, in some way or other, the problem was successfully solved.

On the natural clearings in the forest, or on spots prepared by man for his own uses; in valleys, bounded by gentle acclivities which poured down fertilizing streams; or on plains which here and there rose, clothed with verdure, above surrounding marshes; slowly and step by step, the warlike colonists adopted the habits and developed the character of peaceful agriculturists. The towns which had been spared in the first rush of war, gradually became deserted, and slowly crumbled to the soil, beneath which their ruins are yet found from time to time, or upon which shapeless masses yet remain, to mark the sites of a civilization, whose bases were not laid deep enough for eternity. All over England there soon existed a network of communities, the principle of whose being was separation, as regarded each other: the most intimate union, as respected the individual members of each. Agricultural, not commercial, dispersed, not centralized, content within their own limits and little given to wandering, they relinquished in a great degree the habits and feelings which had united them as military adventurers; and the spirit which had achieved the conquest of an empire, was now satisfied with the care of maintaining inviolate a little peaceful plot, sufficient for the cultivation of a few simple households.

[56]. “Incunabula et rudimenta virtutis.” Cic. de Off.

[57]. “Agri, pro numero cultorum, ab universis per vices occupantur, quos mox inter se, secundum dignationem, partiuntur; facilitatem partiendi camporum spatia praestant.” Tac. Germ. 26.

[58]. “Sola terrae seges imperatur,” they raise corn, but not fruits or vegetables. Tac. Germ. 26. “>Frumenti modum dominus, aut pecoris, aut vestis, ut colono, iniungit; et servus hactenus paret.” Ibid. 25. Hordeum, and frumentum. Ibid. 23.

[59]. “Colunt discreti ac diversi, ut fons, ut campus, ut nemus placuit. Vicos locant, non in nostrum morem, connexis et cohaerentibus aedificiis; suam quisque domum spatio circumdat.” Tac. Germ. 16. When Tacitus speaks of caverns dug in the earth, it is as granaries (which may to this day be seen in Hungary) or as places of refuge from sudden invasion.

[60]. On xii mónðum ðú scealt sillan ðínum þeówan men vii hund hláfa ⁊ xx hláfa, bútan morgemettum ⁊ nónmettum: in the course of twelve months thou shalt give thy þeów or serf, seven hundred and twenty loaves, besides morning meals and noon meals. Sal. and Sat. p. 192. We should perhaps read seven hundred and thirty, which would give daily two loaves, probably of rye or barley. Compare the allowances mentioned in the Rectitudines Singularum Personarum. Anc. Laws. Thorpe, i. 432 seq.

[61]. So from the earliest times: “Potui humor ex hordeo aut frumento, in quandam similitudinem vini corruptus.” Tac. Germ. 23.

[62]. “Agriculturae non student: maiorque pars victus eorum in lacte, caseo, carne consistit: neque quisquam agri modum certum aut fines habet proprios; sed magistratus ac principes in annos singulos gentibus cognationibusque hominum, qui una coierint, quantum, et quo loco visum est, agri adtribuunt, atque anno post alio transire cogunt. Eius rei multas adferunt causas; ne, adsidua consuetudine capti, studium belli gerundi agricultura commutent;” etc. Bell. Gall. vi. 22.

[63]. The administration of Oran. Times newspaper, Aug. 24th, 1844.

[64]. Fifth Rep., Committee, 1810, p. 723, cited in Mill’s Brit. India, i. 315.

[65]. Elphinstone’s Caubul, ii. 17, 18, 19.

[66]. Diodorus, v. 34.

[67]. Strabo, bk. vii. p. 315.

[68]. Harudes, Marcomanni, Tribocci, Vangiones, Nemetes and Sedusii. Bell. Gall. i. 51.

[69]. Bell. Gall. i. 31.

[70]. Tac. Germ. 26.

[71]. Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme, von Kaspar Zeuss. München. 1837.

[72]. He cites the passage from Caesar which I have quoted, and also Bell. Gall. iv. 1, which still applies only to the Suevi. His next evidence is the assertion of Tacitus just noticed. His third is from Plutarch’s Aemil. Paul. c. 12, of the Bastarnae: ἄνδρες οὐ γεωργεῖν εἰδότες, οὐ πλεῖν, οὐκ ἀπὸ ποιμνίων ζῆν νέμοντες, ἀλλ’ ἓν ἕργον καὶ μίαν τέχνην μελετῶντες, ἁεὶ μάχεσθαι καὶ κρατεῖν τῶν ἀντιταττομένων. A people without agriculture or commerce, and who live only on fighting, may be left undisturbed in the realm of dreams with which philosophers are conversant. Zeuss proceeds to reason upon the analogy of examples derived from notices of Britons, Kelts and Wends, in Strabo, Polybius and Dio Cassius. See p. 52, etc.

[73]. Thus, according to his view, Suevi (Suáp, Swǽf) denotes the wanderers; Wandal also the wanderers. Assuredly if nations at large partook of such habits, single tribes could not have derived a name from the custom. How much more easy would it be, upon similar etymological grounds, to prove that the leading Teutonic nations were named from their weapons! Saxons from seax, the long knife; Angles from angol, a hook; Franks from franca, a javelin; Langobards and Heaðobards from barda, the axe or halberd; nay even the general name itself, Germans, from gárman (Old Germ. kérman) the javelin- or goad-man. Yet who would assert these to be satisfactory derivations? Zahn, whose services to Old German literature cannot be overrated, speaks wisely when he calls the similarity of proper names, a rock “on which uncritical heads are much in the habit of splitting.” Vorrede zu Ulphilas, p. 3.

[74]. If a man be emancipated, his lord shall still retain the right to his mund and wergyld, sý ofer mearce ðǽr he wille, be he over the mark wherever he may be, be he out of the district where he may. Ll. Wihtr. § 8. Thorpe, i. 38.

[75]. Grimm is of opinion that the word Marc itself originally denoted forest, and that the modern sense is a secondary one, derived from the fact of forests being the signs or marks of communities. Deut. Gränzalterthümer; Berl. 1844. There can be no doubt that forests were so: in Old Norse the two ideas, and the words by which they are expressed, flow into one another: Mörk (f) is silva, Mark (n) is limes. In the Edda and Sögur, Myrkviðr is the common name for a wood: thus, sem þessi her kom saman, riða þeir á skóg þan er Myrkviðr heitir, hann skilr Húnaland ok Reiðgota land; they ride to the forest which is called Myrkviðr (mearcwidu in Anglosaxon) which separates Huna land from Reidgota land. Fornm. Sög. i. 496. Though given here as a proper name, it is unquestionably a general one. Conf. Edda, Völund. cv. 1.

meyjar flugu sunnan

myrkvið igögnum.

and so in many passages. The darkness of the forest gives rise also to the adjective murky.

[76]. Tacitus says of the Semnones: “Stato tempore in silvam, auguriis patrum et prisca formidine sacram, omnes eiusdem sanguinis populi legationibus coeunt, caesoque publice homine celebrant barbari ritus horrenda primordia. Est et alia luco reverentia. Nemo nisi vinculo ligatus ingreditur, ut minor, et potestatem numinis prae se ferens. Si forte prolapsus est, attolli et insurgere haud licitum, per humum evolvuntur: eoque omnis superstitio respicit, tanquam inde initia gentis, ibi regnator omnium deus, cetera subiecta atque parentia.” Germ. 39. Again: “Apud Naharvalos antiquae religionis lucus ostenditur.” Ibid. 43. Without asserting the existence of the Mark among the Greeks with all the peculiar German characteristics, we may borrow from them an illustration and definition of its nature. Between the territories of the Athenians and Megareans lay a tract of land, the cultivation of which by the latter formed the pretext or justification of the excommunication launched against them by “Olympian” Pericles, which ultimately led to the Peloponesian war, and the downfal of Athens. The Athenians, Thucydides tells us, refused to rescind their intemperate decree, ἐπικαλοῦντες ἐπεργασίαν Μεγαρεῦσι τῆς γῆς τῆς ἱερας καὶ τῆς ἀορίστου· (Lib. i. 139), where the Scholiast explains ἀορίστου by οὐ σπειρομένης. Sacred and not divided into plots for cultivation by the plough, is the exact definition of a Teutonic Mark. Compare χοίριος νάπη (silva porcina) between Laconia and Messenia. Paus. iv. 1. In the legend of St. Gúðlác, the saint is said to occupy the desert wilderness, mearclond, the mark (Codex Exoniensis, p. 112, l. 16), and this is accurately defined as ídel ⁊ ǽmen, éðelrihte feor, empty and uninhabited, in which there were no rights of property. Ibid. p. 115. l. 9.

[77]. Caesar appears to have understood this. He says: “Civitatibus maxima laus est, quam latissimas circum se vastatis finibus solitudines habere. Hoc proprium virtutis existimant, expulsos agris finitumos cedere, neque quemquam prope audere consistere: simul hoc se fore tutiores arbitrantur, repentinae incursionis timore sublato.” This is true, but in the case of most settlements the necessity of maintaining extensive pasture-grounds must have made itself felt at a very early period.

[78]. Efese. Goth. Ubiswa. The name for this custom was Yfesdrype, Eavesdrip. In a charter of the year 868 it is said: “And by the custom (folces folcriht) two feet space only need be left for eavesdrip on this land.” Cod. Dipl. No. 296. In Greece the distances were solemnly regulated by law: see Plut. Solon, cap. 23.

[79]. The people in the hundreds of East and West Meon, Hampshire; in Herefordshire; and in Worcester and Gloucester.

[80]. To a very late period, the most powerful of our nobles were the Lords Marchers or Lords of the Marches of Wales and Scotland. Harald was lord of the Marches against the Welsh. And so the hereditary Markgraves or Counts of the Mark, Marchiones, have become kings in Germany and Italy. Our only Markgraviats by land could be against the Welsh on the west, the Picts and Scots on the north. There were undoubtedly others among the Saxons while their kingdoms remained unsettled: but not when once the whole realm became united under Æðelstán. The consolidation of the English power has put down all but transmarine invaders; hence the sea is become our Mark, and the commanders of our ships, the Margraves. But, as Blackstone rather beautifully says, “water is a wandering and uncertain thing,” and our Margraves therefore establish no territorial authority. The reader is referred to Dönniges, Deutsches Staatsrecht, p. 297, seq., for a very good account of the Marches of the German Empire.

[81]. If a stranger come through the wood, he shall blow his horn and shout: this will be evidence that his intentions are just and peaceful. But if he attempt to slink through in secret, he may be slain, and shall lie unavenged. Leg. Ini. § 20, 21. Thorpe, i. 114, 116. If the deathblow under such circumstances be publicly avouched, his kindred or lord shall not even be allowed to prove that he was not a thief: otherwise, if the manslaughter be concealed. This raises a presumption in law against the slayer, and the dead man’s kindred shall be admitted to their oath that he was guiltless.

[82]. Cod. Vercel. And. l. 38.

[83]. Grimm has given examples of these, but they are too horrible for quotation. They may be read in his Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, pp. 518, 519, 520.

[84]. I am inclined to think that the cwealmstow or place of execution was properly in the mark; as it is indeed probable that all capital punishments among the Germans were originally in the nature of sacrifices to the gods. When Juliana is about to be put to death, she is taken to the border, londmearce neáh, nigh to the landmark. Cod. Exon. p. 280. Prometheus hung in the ἄβροτος ἐρημία: though perhaps there is another and deeper feeling here,—that the friend of man should suffer in the desert

“where no man comes,

Nor hath come, since the making of the world!”

[85]. Beów. l. 2822.

[86]. Beów. l. 2695. micle mearcstapan.

[87]. .sp 1

“Like to a lonely dragon, that his fen

Makes fear’d and talk’d of more than seen.”

Shaksp. Coriol. act iv. sc. 1.

[88]. “Facilitatem partiendi camporum spatia praestant.” Tac. Germ. 26. But as the space diminishes, so also diminishes the stability of a form of society founded upon its existence.

[89]. History supplies numerous illustrations of this process. Rome grew out of the union of the Rhamnes and Luceres with the Sabines: and generally speaking in Greece, the origin of the πόλις lies in what may be called the compression of the κώμαι. The ἀγορὰ is on the space of neutral ground where all may meet on equal terms, as the Russians and Chinese trade at Kiachta: but then when the πόλις has grown up, the ἀγορὰ is in its centre, not in its suburbs.

[90]. Most likely as commons are distributed now, under enclosure-bills; allotments being made in fee, as compensation for commonable rights.

[91]. And se mylenham ⁊ se myln ðǽrtó, ⁊ ðæs mearclandes swá mycel swá tó þrim hidon gebyrað. an. 982. Cod. Dipl. No. 633.

[92]. Estoveria. In this case, small wood necessary for household purposes, as Housebote, Hedgebote and Ploughbote, the materials for repairing house, hedge and plough. But timber trees are not included. See Stat. West. 2. cap. 25; and 20 Car. II. c. 3.

[93]. “Silvam auguriis patrum et prisca formidine sacram.” Tac. Germ. 39. See Möser, Osnabrückische Geschichte, i. 57, seq.

[94]. Ἑρμῆς, in this one sense Mercurius, is identical with Wóden. Both invented letters; both are the wandering god; both are Odysseus. The name of Wóden is preserved in many boundary places, or chains of hills, in every part of England. See chap. xii. of this Book. The Wónác (Cod. Dipl. No. 495), the Wónstoc (ibid. Nos. 287, 657), I have no hesitation in translating by Wóden’s oak, Wóden’s post. Scyldes treów (ibid. No. 436) may also refer to Wóden in the form of Scyld, as Hnices þorn (ibid. No. 268) may record the same god in his form of Hnicor, or Hnic.

[95]. Teowes þorn, Tiw’s thorn. Cod. Dipl. No. 174. Tiwes mére, Tiw’s lake. Ibid. No. 262. Frigedæges treów (ibid. No. 1221), the tree of Frigedæg, a name I hold equivalent to Frea or Fricge.

[96]. The boundaries of the Anglosaxon charters supply a profusion of evidence on this subject. The trees most frequently named are the oak, ash, beech, thorn, elder, lime and birch. The heathen burial-place or mound is singularly frequent. Cod. Dipl. Nos. 247, 335, 476. The charter No. 126 has these words: “Deinde vero ad alios monticulos, postea vero ad viam quae dicitur Fíf ác, recto itinere ad easdem fíf ác, proinde autem ad þreom gemǽran.” Here the boundaries of three several districts lay close to a place called Five Oaks. That the trees were sometimes marked is clear from the entries in the boundaries: thus, in the year 931, tó ðære gemearcodan ǽc æt Alerburnan, the marked oak. Cod. Dipl. No. 1102. ða gemearcodan æfse, the marked eaves or edge of the wood. Ibid. Also, on ða gemearcodan lindan. Ibid. No. 1317. Cyrstelmæl ác, or Christ cross oak. Ibid. No. 118. At Addlestone, near Chertsey, is an ancient and most venerable oak, called the Crouch (crux, crois), that is Cross oak, which tradition declares to have been a boundary of Windsor forest. The same thing is found in Circassia. See Bell, ii. 58. The mearcbeám, without further definition, is common: so the mearctreów. Cod. Dipl. No. 436. The mearcbróc. Ibid. No. 1102. Artificial or natural stone posts are implied by the constantly recurring háran stánas, grǽgan stánas, hoary or grey stones. Among Christians, crosses and obelisks have replaced these old heathen symbols, without altering the nature of the sanction, and the weichbild, or mark that defines the limits of a jurisdiction, can, in my opinion, mean only the sacred sign. On this point see Haltaus. Gloss. in voce, whose derivation from wíc, oppidum, is unsatisfactory. See too Eichhorn, Deutsche Staats- und Rechtsgeschichte, ii. 76. § 224 a. note c: with whose decision Grimm and I coincide.

[97]. For example in Manors, where the territorial jurisdiction of a lord has usurped the place of the old Markmoot, but not availed entirely to destroy the old Mark-rights in the various commons.

[98]. Numerous instances may be found in Grimm’s valuable work, Die Deutschen Weisthümer, 3 vols. 8vo. These are the presentments or verdicts of such courts, from a very early period, and in all parts of Germany. It is deeply to be lamented that the very early customs found in the copies of Court Rolls in England have not been collected and published. Such a step could not possibly affect the interests of Lords of Manors, or their Stewards; but the collection would furnish invaluable materials for law and history. We shall have to refer hereafter to the Advocatus or Vogt, the elected or hereditary patron of these and similar aggregations.

[99]. Mearcbeorh, the Mark-hill, seems too special a name to express some hill or other, which happened to lie in the boundary. A Kentish charter names the gemótbeorh (Cod. Dipl. No. 364. an. 934), but this is indefinite, and might apply to the Shiremoot.

[100]. Refer to Caesar’s expression cognatio, in a note to p. 39. It is remarkable that early MS. glossaries render the word fratrueles by gelondan, which can only be translated, “those settled upon the same land;” thus identifying the local with the family relations.

[101]. The Harlings, in Anglosaxon Herelingas (Trav. Song, l. 224); Harlunge, (W. Grimm, Deut. Heldensage, p. 280, etc.,) are found at Harling in Norfolk and Kent, and at Harlington (Herelingatún) in Bedfordshire and Middlesex. The Wælsings, in Old Norse Völsungar, the family of Sigurdr or Siegfried, reappear at Walsingham in Norfolk, Wolsingham in Northumberland, and Woolsingham in Durham. The Billings, at Billinge, Billingham, Billinghoe, Billinghurst, Billingden, Billington, and many other places. See [Appendix A].

[102]. These local denominations are for the most part irregular compositions, of which the former portion is a patronymic in -ing or -ling, declined in the genitive plural. The second portion is a mere definition of the locality, as -geat, -hyrst, -hám, -wíc, -tún, -stede, and the like. In a few cases the patronymic stands alone in the nominative plural, as Tótingas, Tooting, Surrey; Wócingas, Woking, Surrey; Meallingas, Malling, Kent; Weðeringas, Wittering, Sussex. In a still smaller number, the name of the eponymus replaces that of his descendants, as Finnes burh, Finsbury; Wælses hám, Walsham, in Norfolk; in which last name, as well as in Wælses eafora (Beówulf, l. 1787), we have a record of the progenitor of the Wælsings, who is alike unknown to the Scandinavian and the German legends of that noble race. In dealing, however, with these names, some amount of caution is necessary: it is by no means enough that a word should end in -ing, to convert it into a genuine patronymic. On the contrary it is a power of that termination to denote the genitive or possessive, which is also the generative, case: and in some local names we do find it so used: thus Æðelwulfing lond (Cod. Dipl. No. 179, a. 801) is exactly equivalent to Æðelwulfes lond, the estate of a duke Æðelwulf, not of a family called Æðelwulfings. So again, ðæt Folcwining lond (Cod. Dipl. No. 195, a. 811), ðæt Wynhearding lond (Cod. Dipl. No. 195, a. 811), imply the land of Folcwine, of Wynheard, not of marks or families called Folcwinings and Wynheardings. Woolbedington, Wool Lavington, Barlavington, are respectively Wulfbæding tún, Wulfláfing tún, Beórláfing tún, the tún or dwelling of Wulfláf, Wulfbæd and Beórláf. Between such words and genuine patronymics the line must carefully be drawn, a task which requires both skill and experience: the best security is, where we find the patronymic in the genitive plural: but one can very generally judge whether the name is such as to have arisen in the way described above, from a genitive singular. Changes for the sake of euphony must also be guarded against, as sources of error: thus Abingdon in Berks would impel us strongly to assume a family of Abingas; the Saxon name Æbban dún convinces us that it was named from an Æbba (m.) or Æbbe (f). Dunnington is not Duninga tún, but Dunnan, that is Dunna’s tún.

[103]. In Beówulf (l. 1743), Siegfried is replaced by Sígmund, his father. Here occurs his patronymical appellation of Wælsing (l. 1747), and Wælses eafora (l. 1787).

[104]. Lines 1752, 1772.

[105]. Trav. S. l. 121.

[106]. Béow. l. 5610.

[107]. Ibid. l. 60, 125, etc.

[108]. See Zeuss, p. 461 and pp. 73, 74; especially his note upon the Astingi, p. 461, where he brings forward a good deal of evidence in favour of the form Geardingas.

[109]. The Rune poem says that Ing was first known among the Eastdanes, and that he was so named by the Heardings. This may refer to Norfolk: or must we read heardingas, bellatores? See Anglos. Runes, Archæolog. xxviii. 327, seq.

[110]. Trav. S. l. 37.

[111]. Ibid. l. 44.

[112]. Zeuss, p. 544.

[113]. Trav. S. l. 45.

[114]. Ibid. l. 46

[115]. Ibid. l. 57, perhaps the Chauci.

[116]. Ibid. l. 150.

[117]. Ibid. l. 60.

[118]. Zeuss, p. 584.

[119]. Ibid. pp. 226, 227.

[120]. Cod. Dipl. No. 1135. Wylfinga ford.

[121]. Lines 916, 936.

[122]. Line 58. They are the Ylfingar of Norse tradition. Helg. Hund. l. 5.

[123]. Æscings in Essex, Somerset and Sussex: Alings in Kent, Dorset, Devonshire and Lincoln: Ardings in Sussex, Berks and Northamptonshire: Arlings in Devonshire, Gloucestershire and Sussex: Banings in Hertfordshire, Kent, Lincolnshire and Salop: Beadings in Norfolk, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex and the Isle of Wight: Berings in Kent, Devonshire, Herefordshire, Lincolnshire, Salop and Somerset: Billings in Bedfordshire, Durham, Kent, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Salop, Sussex and the Isle of Wight, etc.

[124]. Water seems the indispensable condition of a settlement in any part of the world: hence, in part, the worship paid to it. It is the very key to the history of the East.

[125]. The solemn apportionment of lands and dwellings is nowhere more obvious, or described in more instructive detail, than in Denmark. Norway and the Swedish borderlands may have offered more numerous instances of solitary settling. The manner of distributing the village land is called Sólskipt or Sólskipti: the provisions of this law are given by Grimm, Rechtsalt. p. 539. There is an interesting account of the formalities used upon the first colonization of Iceland, in Geijer, Hist. of Sweden, i. 159. (German translation of 1826.)

CHAPTER III.
THE GÁ OR SCÍR.

Next in order of constitution, if not of time, is the union of two, three or more Marks in a federal bond for purposes of a religious, judicial or even political character. The technical name for such a union is in Germany, a Gau or Bant[^[126]]; in England the ancient name Gá has been almost universally superseded by that of Scír or Shire. For the most part the natural divisions of the country are the divisions also of the Gá; and the size of this depends upon such accidental limits as well as upon the character and dispositions of the several collective bodies which we have called Marks.

The Gá is the second and final form of unsevered possession; for every larger aggregate is but the result of a gradual reduction of such districts, under a higher political or administrative unity, different only in degree and not in kind from what prevailed individually in each. The kingdom is only a larger Gá than ordinary; indeed the Gá itself was the original kingdom.

But the unsevered possession or property which we thus find in the Gá is by no means to be considered in the same light as that which has been described in the Mark. The inhabitants are settled as Markmen, not as Gá-men: the cultivated land which lies within the limits of the larger community is all distributed into the smaller ones.

As the Mark contained within itself the means of doing right between man and man, i. e., its Markmót; as it had its principal officer or judge, and beyond a doubt its priest and place of religious observances, so the County, Scír or Gá had all these on a larger and more imposing scale; and thus it was enabled to do right between Mark and Mark, as well as between man and man, and to decide those differences the arrangement of which transcended the powers of the smaller body. If the elders and leaders of the Mark could settle the mode of conducting the internal affairs of their district, so the elders and leaders of the Gá (the same leading markmen in a corporate capacity) could decide upon the weightier causes that affected the whole community; and thus the Scírgemót or Shiremoot was the completion of a system of which the Mearcmót was the foundation. Similarly, as the several smaller units had arrangements on a corresponding scale for divine service, so the greater and more important religious celebrations in which all the Marks took part, could only be performed under the auspices and by the authority of the Gá. Thus alone could due provision be made for sacrifices which would have been too onerous for a small and poor district, and an equalization of burthens be effected; while the machinery of government and efficient means of protection were secured.

At these great religious rites, accompanied as they ever were by the solemn Ðing, placitum or court, thrice in the year the markmen assembled unbidden: and here they transacted the ordinary and routine business required. On emergencies however, which did not brook delay, the leaders could issue their peremptory summons to a bidden Ðing, and in this were then decided the measures necessary for the maintenance and well-being of the community, and the mutual guarantee of life and honour. To the Gá then probably belonged, as an unsevered possession, the lands necessary for the site and maintenance of a temple, the supply of beasts for sacrifice, and the endowment of a priest or priests: perhaps also for the erection of a stockade or fortress, and some shelter for the assembled freemen in the Ðing. Moreover, if land existed which from any cause had not been included within the limits of some Mark, we may believe that it became the public property of the Gá, i. e., of all the Marks in their corporate capacity: this at least may be inferred from the rights exercised at a comparatively later period over waste lands, by the constituted authorities, the Duke, Count or King.

Accident must more or less have determined the seat of the Gá-jurisdiction: perhaps here and there some powerful leading Mark, already in the possession of a holy site, may have drawn the neighbouring settlers into its territory: but as the possession and guardianship of the seat of government could not but lead to the vindication of certain privileges and material advantages to its holders, it is not unreasonable to believe that where the Marks coalesced on equal terms, the temple-lands would be placed without the peculiar territorial possession of each, as they often were in Greece, upon the ἐσχατιὰ or boundary-land. On the summit of a range of hills, whose valleys sufficed for the cultivation of the markmen, on the watershed from which the fertilizing streams descended, at the point where the boundaries of two or three communities touched one another, was the proper place for the common periodical assemblages of the free men: and such sites, marked even to this day by a few venerable oaks, may be observed in various parts of England[^[127]].

The description which has been given might seem at first more properly to relate to an abstract political unity than to a real and territorial one: no doubt the most important quality of the Gá or Scír was its power of uniting distinct populations for public purposes: in this respect it resembled the shire, while the sheriff’s court was still of some importance; or even yet, where the judges coming on their circuit, under a commission, hold a shiremoot or court in each shire for gaol-delivery. Yet the Shire is a territorial division[^[128]] as well as an abstract and merely legal formulary, although all the land comprised within it is divided into parishes, hamlets, vills and liberties.

Strictly speaking, the Shire, apart from the units that make it up, possesses little more land than that which the town-hall, the gaol, or the hospital may cover. When for the two latter institutions we substitute the fortress of the king, and a cathedral, which was the people’s and not the bishop’s, we have as nearly as possible the Anglosaxon shire-property, and the identity of the two divisions seems proved. Just as the Gá (pagus) contains the Marks (vicos), and the territory of them all, taken together, makes up the territory of the Gá, so does the Shire contain hamlets, parishes and liberties, and its territorial expanse is distributed into them. As then the word Mark is used to denote two distinct things,—a territorial division and a corporate body,—so does the word Gá or Scír denote both a machinery for government and a district in which such machinery prevails. The number of Marks included in a single Gá must have varied partly with the variations of the land itself, its valleys, hills and meadows: to this cause may have been added others arising, to some extent, from the original military organization and distribution, from the personal character of a leader, or from the peculiar tenets and customs of a particular Mark. But proximity, and settlement upon the same land, with the accompanying participation in the advantages of wood and water, are ever the most active means of uniting men in religious and social communities; and it is therefore reasonable to believe that the influence most felt in the arrangement of the several Gás was in fact a territorial one, depending upon the natural conformation of the country.

Some of the modern shire-divisions of England in all probability have remained unchanged from the earliest times; so that here and there a now existent Shire may be identical in territory with an ancient Gá. But it may be doubted whether this observation can be very extensively applied: obscure as is the record of our old divisions, what little we know, favours the supposition that the original Gás were not only more numerous than our Shires, but that these were not always identical in their boundaries with those Gás whose locality can be determined.

The policy or pedantry of Norman chroniclers has led them to pass over in silence the names of the ancient divisions, which nevertheless were known to them[^[129]]. Wherever they have occasion to refer to our Shires, they do so by the names they still bear; thus Florence of Worcester and William of Malmesbury name, to the south of the Humber, Kent, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Dorset, Sussex, Southampton, Surrey, Somerset, Devonshire, Cornwall, Gloucester, Worcester, Warwick, Cheshire, Derby, Stafford, Shropshire, Hereford, Oxford, Buckingham, Hertford, Huntingdon, Bedford, Northampton, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, comprising with Middlesex thirty-two of the shires, out of forty into which England is now distributed.

Yet even these names and divisions are of great antiquity: Asser, in his life of Ælfred, mentions by name, Berkshire, Essex, Kent, Surrey, Somerset, Sussex, Lincoln, Dorset, Devon, Wiltshire and Southampton, being a third of the whole number: unfortunately, from his work being composed in Latin and his consequent use of paga, we cannot tell how many of these divisions were considered by him as Scír.

The Saxon Chronicles, during the period anterior to the reign of Ælfred, seem to know only the old general divisions: thus we have Cantwara land, Kent[^[130]]; Westseaxan, Súðseaxan, Eástseaxan, Middleseaxan, Wessex, Sussex, Essex, Middlesex: Eástengle, Eastanglia: Norðanhymbra land, Súðanhymbra land, Myrcna land, Northumberland, Southumberland, Mercia: Lindisware and Lindisse, Lincolnshire: Súðrige, Surrey; Wiht, the Isle of Wight; Hwiccas, the Hwiccii in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire[^[131]]; Merscware, the people of Romney Marsh: Wilsætan, Dornsætan and Sumorsætan, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire and Somersetshire[^[132]]. But after the time of Ælfred, the different manuscripts of the Chronicles usually adopt the word Scír, in the same places as we do, and with the same meaning. Thus we find, Bearrucscír, Bedanfordscír, Buccingahámscír, Defenascír, Deórabyscír, Eoforwícscír, Gleáwanceasterscír, Grantabrycgscír, Hámtúnscír (Southampton), Hámtúnscír (Northampton), Heortfordscír, Herefordscír, Huntandúnscír, Legeceasterscír, Lindicolnascír, Oxnafordscír, Scrobbesbyrigscír (but also Scrobsetan), Snotingahámscír, Stæffordscír, Wæringwícscír or Wæringscír, Wigraceasterscír, and Wiltunscír: Middelseaxe, Eástseaxe, Súðseaxe, Súðrige and Cent remain: Eástengle is not divided into Norfolk and Suffolk. Thus, out of the thirty-two shires south of the Humber, which Florence and William of Malmesbury mention, the Chronicles note twenty-six, of which twenty-one are distinguished as shires by the word scír.

In Beda nothing of the kind is to be found: the general scope of his Ecclesiastical History rendered it unnecessary for him to descend to minute details, and besides the names of races and kingdoms, he mentions few divisions of the land. Still he notices the Provincia Huicciorum: the Middelangli or Angli Mediterranei, a portion of the Mercians: the Mercii Australes and Aquilonales: the Regio Sudergeona or Surrey: the Regio Loidis or Elmet near York: the Provincia Meanwarorum, or Hundreds of East and West Meon in Southampton; the Regio Gyrwiorum in which Peterborough lies, and distinct from this, the Australes Gyrwii or South Gyrwians.

The Appendix to the Chronicles of Florence of Worcester supplies us with one or two names of small districts, not commonly found in other authors. One of these is the Mercian district of the Westangles or West Hecan, ruled over by Merewald; in whose country were the Mægsetan, or people of Hereford, who are sometimes reckoned to the Hwiccas, or inhabitants of Worcester and Gloucester[^[133]]. Another, the Middleangles, had its bishopric in Leicester: the Southangles, whose bishop sat at Dorchester in Oxfordshire, consequently comprised the counties down to the Thames. The Northangles or Mercians proper had their bishop in Lichfield. Lastly it has been recorded that Malmesbury in Wiltshire was in Provincia Septonia[^[134]].

But we are not altogether without the means of carrying this enquiry further. We have a record of the divisions which must have preceded the distribution of this country into shires: they are unfortunately not numerous, and the names are generally very difficult to explain: they have so long become obsolete, that it is now scarcely possible to identify them. Nor need this cause surprise, when we compare the oblivion into which they have fallen with the sturdy resistance offered by the names of the Marks, and their long continuance throughout all the changes which have befallen our race. The Gás, which were only political bodies, became readily swallowed up and lost in shires and kingdoms: the Marks, which had an individual being, and as it were personality of their own, passed easily from one system of aggregations to another, without losing anything of their peculiar character: and at a later period it will be seen that this individuality became perpetuated by the operation of our ecclesiastical institutions.

A very important document is printed by Sir Henry Spelman in his Glossary, under the head Hida. In its present condition it is comparatively modern, but many of the entries supply us with information obviously derived from the most remote antiquity, and these it becomes proper to take into consideration. The document seems to have been intended as a guide either to the taxation or the military force of the kingdom, and professes to give the number of hides of land contained in the various districts. It runs as follows[^[135]]:

The entries respecting Mercia, Eastanglia and Wessex could hardly belong to any period anterior to that of Ælfred. For Mercia previous to the Danish wars must certainly have contained more than 30,000 hides: while Eastanglia cannot have reached so large a sum till settled by Guðorm’s Danes: nor is it easy to believe that Wessex, apart from Kent and Sussex, should have numbered one hundred thousand in the counties of Surrey, Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, with parts of Berkshire, Somerset and Devon, much before the time of Æðelstán[^[137]]. A remarkable variation is found between the amounts stated in this list and those given by Beda, as respects some of the entries: thus Mercia, here valued at 30,000 hides, is reckoned in the Ecclesiastical History at 12,000 only[^[138]]: Hwiccas are reckoned at 300: they contained 600 hides; Wight, reckoned at 600, contained 1200. On the other hand Kent and Sussex are retained at the ancient valuation.

It is nevertheless impossible to doubt that the greater number of the names recorded in this list are genuine, and of the highest antiquity. A few of them can be recognized in the pages of very early writers: thus Gyrwa, Elmet, Lindisfaran, Wihtgare, and Hwiccas, are mentioned by Beda in the eighth century. Some we are still able to identify with modern districts.

Mercia I imagine to be that portion of Burgred’s kingdom, which upon its division by the victorious Danes in 874, they committed as a tributary royalty to Ceólwulf; which subsequently came into the hands of Ælfred, by the treaty of Wedmor in 878, and was by him erected into a duchy under his daughter Æðelflǽd, and her husband. Wokensetna may possibly be the Gá of the Wrocensetan, the people about the Wrekin or hill-country of Somerset, Dorset and Devon. The Pecsetan appear to be the inhabitants of the Peakland, or Derbyshire: the Elmedsetan, those of Elmet, the ancient British Loidis, an independent district in Yorkshire: Lindisfaran are the people of Lindisse, a portion of Lincolnshire: North and South Gyrwa were probably in the Mark between Eastanglia and Mercia: as Peterborough was in North Gyrwa land, this must have comprised a part of Northamptonshire: and Æðelðrýð derived her right to Ely from her first husband, a prince of the South Gyrwians; this district is therefore supposed to have extended over a part of Cambridgeshire and the isle of Ely. Spalda may be the tract stretching to the north-east of these, upon the river Welland, in which still lies Spalding. The Hwiccas occupied Worcestershire and Gloucestershire[^[139]], and perhaps extended into Herefordshire, to the west of the Severn. The Wihtgaras are the inhabitants of the Isle of Wight; and the Cilternsetan were the people who owned the hill and forest land about the Chilterns, verging towards Oxfordshire, and very probably in the Mark between Mercia and Wessex.

I fear that it will be impossible to identify any more of these names, and it does not appear probable that they supply us with anything like a complete catalogue of the English Gás. Setting aside the fact, that no notice seems to be taken of Northumberland, save the mention of the little principality of Elmet, and that the local divisions of Eastanglia, Kent, Essex, Sussex and Wessex are passed over in the general names of the kingdoms, we look in vain among them for names known to us from other sources, and which can hardly have been other than those of Gás. Thus we have no mention of the Tonsetan, whose district lay apparently upon the banks of the Severn[^[140]]; of the Meanware, or land of the Jutes, in Hampshire; of the Mægsetan, or West Hecan, in Herefordshire; of the Merscware in West Kent; or of the Gedingas, who occupied a tract in the province of Middlesex[^[141]]. Although it is possible that these divisions are included in some of the larger units mentioned in our list, they still furnish an argument that the names of the Gás were much more numerous than they would appear from the list itself, and that this marks only a period of transition.