Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race/Chapter 21

by Thomas William Shore

CHAPTER XXI.

SETTLEMENTS IN MERCIA.

IN some of the counties which were comprised within the kingdom of Mercia we meet with remarkable traces of old tribal customs. There is a charter relating to the borough of Leicester granted by Simon de Montfort, and dated October 25, 1255. In this document he ordered, apparently as Earl of Leicester, that the burgage tenements of the people of that town which by custom descended to the youngest son should thereafter follow the course of common law and go to the eldest. This charter never received the King’s ratification, but its validity does not seem to have been questioned.^[1] By similar arbitrary measures changes were probably made in other places. Junior right is known to have existed in Derby, Nottingham. Stamford. and Stafford, in addition to a considerable number of rural manors in the Midland counties. It could not have been spontaneously developed in these towns, not at the other more numerous places in which traces of it can be found, and was probably brought in by the early settlers.

Partible inheritance, more or less resembling the gavelkind custom in Kent, as well as junior right, can be traced unmistakably in the counties of Leicester and Nottingham. To what extent they prevailed originally it is not possible to say, for in some places customs may have been changed and all traces of them lost, either by the later settlements of Danes or by compulsory orders like that made at Leicester. In Leicestershire, partible inheritance is known to have been the rule in the soke of Rothley.

This place is situated in the north of the county, and at the time of Domesday Survey included twenty-one members or subordinate manors, among which were Allexton, Baresbi, Segrave, Markfield, Halstead, Frisby, Saxelby, Bagrave, and Gaddesby.^[2] It comprised at that time 204 sokemen, 157 villeins, and 94 bordiers, who together formed an administrative district apart from the hundreds of the county. In this liberty the lands held by a sokeman, and presumably also by the other tenants, were on the death of the holder parted between his sons, or in the absence of sons, among his daughters. If he left only one son and one daughter, the son took the whole. If he left a widow, she held the land for her life, provided she remained single, but if she married again she kept only a third as her dower, and the rest passed to the heirs.

There is much similarity between this custom and that of Kent. There can thus be little doubt that Leicestershire received among its Anglian colonists some settlers who migrated from Kent or came from Gothland and Frisia. It should be noted that Frisby and Gaddesby are among the names of ancient places which were included within the Soke of Rothley. The early Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of Leicestershire were known as the Middle Angles, but the laws of the Angles of the Continent were especially marked by preference for male inheritance in the time of Charlemagne. If we may assume that this was an earlier custom characteristic of the race, as it was among the Continental Saxons, it would not be likely that the Angles of Leicestershire brought in a custom which recognised daughters such as prevailed at Rothley. To account for it we must conclude that there must have settled among these Middle Angles people who had a custom of female inheritance—at least, in default of sons. As the burgesses of Leicester had another custom—that of junior inheritance—which was different altogether from what prevailed generally among the Saxons or Angles, we are led to the conclusion that the original settlers at Leicester must have come from some other part of the Continent where this custom prevailed; and there is reason to believe it did prevail among the Burgundians of the Baltic or people of Slavic or mixed Slavic descent. Such tribes may have been allies of the Danes who settled in Leicester, Nottingham, and other towns before the end of the ninth century.^[3]

The evidence that the five Danish towns of Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, Stamford, and Derby, were permanently occupied by Northmen of some kind during the earlier Danish conquests, in or before the time of Alfred, appears conclusive from the reference to these places in the Saxon Chronicle in the year 941. This was the time when Eadmund succeeded Æthelstan, and his various territories are stated. We are told that he subdued Mercia and the five towns ‘that were ere while Danish under the Northmen.’ This statement places the antiquity of the Danish settlement in these towns beyond doubt, and the custom of junior right which is known to have prevailed in four of them, but not in Lincoln, is significant, as pointing to people who had different tribal usages having probably settled in them, although all called Danes. There is, indeed, some evidence that under the pressure of population which urged them to the west, Slavs ‘established themselves in parts of the southern isles of Denmark, Laaland, Falster, and Langeland, where their traditions and place-names bear witness to their settlements.’^[4] If this migration took place at an early date, as is probable, some of these Danes of Wendish descent may well have come into England with other Danes during their earlier as well as their later incursions.

Beddoe tells us that as a result of his observations on the people of Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, compared with those of Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, he found a considerably higher percentage of dark hair and eyes in the two former counties than in the two latter. From observations on 540 persons in Leicestershire and 300 in Northamptonshire, he found the index of nigrescence to be 20·8 in the county of Leicester and 31·2 in that of Northampton; while of 500 persons observed in Lincolnshire, it was only 12·3; and of 700 observed in Nottinghamshire, it was 14·1. Regarding Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, he says: ‘There is, if I may judge by the colour of the hair and eyes, a strong non-Teutonic element.’^[5] In order to account for this darker character of the people we must assume either a survival of people of a darker British race, or that a considerable proportion of brown or dark people settled in these counties with the fairer Angles and Scandinavians. It has already been shown in reference to similar observations in Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire that there are Continental areas within the parts from which Anglo-Saxon settlers came where people of a darker complexion still live, and apparently have from time immemorial.

The original Mercians formed a comparatively small State, which absorbed the Gyrwas, or Fen people of Lincolnshire, Northampton, and Huntingdon; the Lindisware of north Lincolnshire ; the South Humbrians, or Ambrones, in the north of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and part of Lincoln; the Middle Angles of Leicester; and the Pecsetena of Derby. The Mercians acquired the southern part of their territory around Bedford and westward from the West Saxons. The Hwiccii of Gloucestershire and part of Worcestershire were also originally under Wessex. The Hecanas of Herefordshire, the Mægasetas of west Gloucestershire and part of Hereford, the Wrocensetnas and other tribes of Shropshire, were probably always Mercian. The Derbyshire people appear to have been annexed from Northumbria, as later on were the Lancashire people south of the Ribble. Under the year 941, as already mentioned, the Saxon Chronicle describes the Mercian boundaries as extending from Dore to Whitwell’s Gate and the Humber—i.e., from Dore Valley, in Herefordshire, to near Whitwell, north-east of Clitheroe, in Lancashire, and thence south and east to the Humber. The ancient Diocese of Lichfield, which also extended to the Ribble, appears to confirm this identification of the north-west extension of Mercia.

The river Trent was apparently a boundary between people of different tribes at the time of the settlement, and even at the present time a fairer population is found in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire than in Leicestershire. The most probable view of the settlement of these parts is that the British people in the country north of this river—as far westward, at least, as Staffordshire, the Derbyshire mountains, and Cannock Chase—were expelled or enslaved by an extension of the settlers from what is now Yorkshire, or an extension up the Trent valley of the Gainas and Lindiswaras from North Lincolnshire. In this way it is probable that a compact Anglian State, which was at first dependent on Deira, was formed.^[6] In any case, anthropological research has shown that both Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire have a population at the present time which is distinctly fairer than that of Leicestershire. Beddoe says of Derbyshire: ‘The type of the population is certainly Anglian. My own observations, the military statistics, and those of the Anthropometric Committee, all agree in representing the Derbyshire people as having lighter hair than all but very few English counties. East Staffordshire is also very Anglian, but no wise Danish.’^[7] It is in Staffordshire and the parts of other counties adjoining it on the west and south, of all the counties in England, that traces of any Danish or Norse settlements are the least.

One of the most interesting of the old frontiers in England is that between Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire. The former county was within the later Danelaw, the latter was not. The Danish territory, as settled between Alfred and Guthrum, had Watling Street for its boundary north of Stony Stratford. As extended a century later, it included the counties of Northampton, Buckingham, Middlesex, and Hertford. There must have been a reason for this extension of Danish law over the parts of Northampton and Buckingham which are west of Watling Street, and this probably was the settlement of Danish subjects in these counties between the time of Alfred and the end of the Danish rule in England. They were forest counties, and Danes were probably given settlements in them. The old place-names in the south parts of Northamptonshire bear witness to this. We find Aynho, Farthingho or Faringho, Furtho, Grimsbury, Overthorp, Astrop, Warkworth, Thorpe, Byfield, Abthorp, Wicken, Badby, Barby, Farendone, Ravensthorp, Kingsthorp, Catesby, Kilsby, and other characteristic Scandian names. On the Oxfordshire side of this frontier names of this kind are scarcely met with. The names ending in -o may be compared with those still in use in Norway, where they are very numerous. This Scandian settlement in the south-west of Northamptonshire was probably a late one. This extension of the Danelaw frontier is significant of a change in the general population, as is also the circumstance that as late as the time of the Domesday Survey payments to the royal revenue from this county were made in Danish money, twenty silver pennies being reckoned to the ora. The survival of the custom of inheritance by the eldest daughter in the absence of sons at Middleton Cheney,^[8] in the south-west of the county, is confirmatory evidence of Norse colonists.

In Northamptonshire we find also a trace of the Frisians, under the Northern name Hocings, in the name of the Domesday hundred Hocheslau.

There are reasons for believing that Northamptonshire was partly occupied by immigrants into it from the north-east, as well as others from the south-west. Sternberg, who wrote many years ago on its dialect and folk-lore, says that two distinct and opposite modes of speech may be observed among the rurul population of the two extremities of the county.^[9] This immigration from two directions would probably be up the river valleys from the Wash, and along the Roman roads from the south and west. Among its immigrants, earlier or later, some Wends must have been included. It has already been pointed out that in the old place-names Wendlingbury, or Wendlesberie and Wansford, also called Wandlesworth,^[10] in the Nen valley, we have traces of Wendish settlers, and these people have also apparently left other traces in the folk-lore. The most remarkable instance is that of the May-trees, which at the present time are such a characteristic custom in Russia. In Northamptonshire a young tree ten or twelve feet high used to be planted in some villages before every house on May Day, so as to appear as if growing.^[11] This custom does not apparently prevail except in Slavonic counties, and where old Wendish settlements were made.

Another example of Northamptonshire folk-lore which points to Wendish influence is that concerning Bogie. This name in reference to a ghost is common, but in this county the word was used in a somewhat more personal sense. ‘He caps Bogie’ was a proverbial expression, often amplified to ‘He caps Bogie, Bogie caps Redcap, and Redcap caps Nick.’^[12] Boge is the Wendish equivalent for a god, and the word is common in Slavonic languages for a deity. Northamptonshire being within the later Danelaw, the old dialect, in common with that of the East Midland counties, points to a Danish influence. In these counties the Southern expressions ‘I be,’ ‘we be,’ etc., are not heard; but ‘I are’ for ‘I am,’ analogous to the Danish jeg er, is not uncommon. Sternberg says that ‘he are’ for ‘he is,’ analogous to the Danish han er, was used in north and east Northamptonshire.^[13] When Sternberg wrote, the legend of the Wild Hunt had not quite died out in this county. In Pomerania and Mecklenburg, Wode (Woden) is said to be out hunting^[14] when stormy winds blow through the woods, and formerly the wild huntsman was heard along the gloomy avenues of Whittlebury Forest.^[15]

As mentioned in a previous chapter, the county of Buckingham shows traces of settlements by Northmen, Danes, and their allies, including Wends, in various parts of it. One of the historical facts bearing on this settlement is the Wendish connection of Cnut.^[16] He was King of Vindland, as well as of Denmark, and Vindland was the name of Mecklenburg and Pomerania in the Old Norræna language. In the early part of the eleventh century, consequently, when England had a King who was also King of the Wends, it is certain that a considerable immigration of Danes and Wends into England took place. The formation by Cnut of the body of huscarls, many of whom were Wendish exiles from their native land, is historical. In the north of Buckinghamshire the name Wendover, which still survives, is suggestive of some Wendish connection with that part of the county, and Domesday Book contains other similar names, among which are Weneslai, now Winslow, and Wandene. The same record tells us that in the time of King Edward the manors of Senelai, Achecote, Stanes, Hamescle, Haiscote, and Lauendene, had all been held by huscarls of King Edward, who had continued the body of men Cnut had established. The land they occupied appears to have been held by huscarl service, for in one instance Domesday Book tells us it was held by one described as son of a huscarl. It is worth noting also that the name Lauendene, now Lavendon, closely resembles the Wendish name of Lauenberg, and that Lauendene was held by a huscarl in King Edward’s time.

In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Buckingham is written Buccinga-ham, a name clearly referring to a kindred called Buccings. A pagus of a similar name is also known, that of the Bucki in Saxony, mentioned in the time of Charlemagne.^[17] This or another pagus of the same name is mentioned as the ‘Bucki, pagus Angariorum’ in the eighth century.^[18] The Angarians of the Carlovingian period are the same as the Angrivarii mentioned by Tacitus, who pressed upon and well-nigh exterminated the Boructarii in the Engern district, which lies between Westphalia and Hanover—i.e., the country anciently known as Ostphalia.^[19] By looking at a map of Germany, we shall see that this ‘Bucki, pagus Angariorum’ must have been located not far from Brunswick, and near the western border of the more extended Saxony of the eighth century. Tacitus says the Angrivarii were an intrusive people, and as the advance in his time was from the east, they probably came from that direction, as their name still lingers in the old Wendish parts of Germany. The places whose names begin with the word Buk- are almost all, as far as Germany is concerned, found in its eastern or ancient Slavic parts.^[20] Some are also found in the Slavic parts of Austria. West of the Elbe, Buchau is the name of a suburb of Magdeburg in Prussian Saxony, a district which was close to, or within, the ancient Slav frontier. It must therefore be allowed that the evidence, both ancient and modern, which connects the name of the people known as the Bucki with the old country of the Wends in Eastern Germany is by no means slight.

The traces of people of different tribes which the Domesday names in Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire exhibit are of interest. Danais and Daneslai, in Hertfordshire, point in all probability to Danish settlements, while Wenriga and Wenrige probably denote Wendish people.

The fact already mentioned that there is in Buckinghamshire a higher percentage of brunettes at the present time shows that there was some unusual element among the people.

In Bedfordshire there were at the time of the Survey two hundreds which had the significant names Weneslai and Wilga. It is difficult to see how they could have arisen except from settlements of people with Wendish names. The name Wilga seems to denote a community of the Wilte or Wiltzi, the largest known tribe of the Wends.

Among the old Mercian shires, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire are remarkable for the various kinds of land tenure which prevailed in them at the close of the Saxon period. In the former there were land-holders who could let their land to whom they pleased, others who could sell their land, others who could both let and sell, and others who could neither let nor sell without license from the superior lord. Some tenants in these counties were very differently circumstanced in other respects in regard to the land they held, the privileges they enjoyed, or the obligations they were under, and these facts point to differences in tribal custom extending back to an early period.

The Anglo-Saxon names Huntandune and Huntedune,^[21] for Huntingdon, like that of Buckingham, were probably given to it from the name of the head or chief of its original family community. There was a pagus of the Huntanga known in Frisia in the eighth century.^[22] The eastern part of Gröningen in Holland appears to have been its western boundary, and the river Hunte, a branch of the Weser, to be a survival of this tribal name. As the evidence of the settlement of Frisians in England is unshakable, and the Huntanga were a Frisian tribe, the old name Huntandun may reasonably be connected with it, as derived from a settler of that tribe with his family or kindred.

There are traces of Frisians to be found in Hertfordshire and the valley of the Lea. Such names as Broccesborne (now Broxbourne), Brockhall, and Brockmans, an ancient manor connected with North Mimms,^[23] suggest the settlement of Frisian Brockmen; and those of Cockernoe, Cochehamsted, an old part of Braughing, and Hockeril, close to Bishop’s Stortford, suggest similar settlements of Chaucians or Hocings; while Honesdon, or Hunsdon, is suggestive of a settler of the Hunni tribe. The parish of St. Margaret, near Ware, was formerly known as Theele,^[24] which, like Mimms and others, are manorial names suggestive of Frisian origin. Like the custom on the Theellands in part of Frisia, that of inheritance by the youngest son has survived until modern time at Much Hadham and at Cheshunt in this county.^[25]

Although we cannot trace the survival of junior inheritance over any considerable districts in the Midlands, as we can in Sussex, and some counties on the eastern or south-western coasts, yet examples of its existence have been found in a few manors of nearly all the old Mercian shires. It may have existed among copyholders in other manors only known locally. Elton says that although in the Midland counties it is comparatively rare, yet it has been found at the rate of about two or three manors to a county.^[26] From its survival on a comparatively large scale in some of the maritime counties and on numerous manors around London, and its rarity in the Midlands, we appear justified in drawing the conclusion that this custom, as it existed in England, was brought by maritime settlers, and that, as some of their descendants migrated farther inland, they carried it with them. In Huntingdonshire borough-English was the customary law of inheritance at Gumecester, or Godmanchester,^[27] and at Eynesbury.^[28] The name Gumecester, or Gumycester, may be traced to the Gothic guma (a man), so that the settlement of northern Goths at Godmanchester, close to Huntingdon, appears to be shown by both its ancient and modern names. Some of their allies who settled there with them may have brought in the junior right.

In the custom that prevailed at Godmanchester we appear to have an example of the blending of those of two races—viz.: (1) That in favour of the youngest son, which was not Anglian; (2) that in favour of males in preference to females, which was Anglian. By the laws of the Continental Anglians, males were preferred to females as far as the fifth generation. The custom of Godmanchester provided ‘that if a man have two sons by his wife, and one of these have an heir masculine and the other an heir feminine, and if after these sons do depart and die, the father of them being alive, and after it chances the father of them do die, then the same heir masculine shall be the heir, and not the heir feminine, though she be of the younger son.’^[29]

In the manor of Liddington-cum-Caldecot, in Rutland, the junior inheritance custom that prevailed was that the land descended to the youngest son, and if no son, to the daughters in parcenary.^[30]

At Kimbolton the custom in regard to succession was division among the sons, the whole estate being kept together under one, as the nominal head. This was a family or tribal arrangement, the parage or parcenery tenure. The Domesday account tells us that the manor was held by six socmen—Alwold and his five brothers^[31]—and the entry probably points to descendants of Northmen of some tribe who had retained a custom of their forefathers. Two of the hamlets at Kimbolton bore the names of Wormedik and Akermanni, as shown by the Hundred Rolls, both apparently of northern origin.

The chief districts in the midland counties where partible inheritance prevailed were the soke of Rothley in Leicestershire, and the soke of Oswaldbeck^[32] in Nottinghamshire. The continuance of the custom to modern time shows that it must have been of immemorial usage to have satisfied the courts of the twelfth century, when primogeniture had become the general law. Oswaldbeck soke comprised the area of country in the north-east of Nottingham between the river Idle and the Trent. The soke was a separate administration, and apparently was bounded on the south by places now called East and West Markham. It comprised the old Domesday manors of Sutton, Lound, Madressi, Crophill, Laneham, Ascham, Bolun, Bertun, Waterlege, Leverton, North Muskham, and Scrobi. Most of these old manors can still be identified, but the district contains at the present time many newer villages and hamlets. The old list shows which places in the district were probably settled first. The custom of partible inheritance in Oswaldbeck was limited to males,^[33] whereas that of Rothley in Leicestershire provided for the inheritance to be divided among daughters in default of sons.^[34] This latter custom points to Goths and Frisians, while that of Oswaldbeck points to Angles or Saxons, among whom male inheritance was the rule. The country of the South Humbrians, or Ambrones, a tribe of Old Saxons, may have included Oswaldbeck.

In reference to the missionary works of Paulinus or one of his contemporaries among these people, Nennius tells us that he was engaged for forty days in baptising the Ambrones.^[35] As they were in all probability a tribe of Old Saxons, the statement must refer to some of them who had settled in England, and had brought their tribal name from the borderland of Frisia and Old Saxony. The old name for the river Ems, as already mentioned, was Emmer or Ambra; the country near the Humber was Ymbraland, and an old Continental tribe called the Ymbre is mentioned in the ‘Traveller's Song.’^[36] Under the year 697, there is a reference in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to the South Humbrians, and there are traditions of Paulinus baptising in the river Trent. In Derbyshire there is, or was, a river named the Amber, from which Ambergate takes its name.^[37] The thirteenth-century records show also that there was a place named Ambresbur’ in Derbyshire, and another of the same name in Nottinghamshire.^[38] These old names and the circumstances mentioned appear to denote that the settlements of the tribe called Ambrones extended to some parts of these counties.

In the borough of Nottingham two ancient customs of succession at one time prevailed, those connected with its English and French inhabitants, respectively called by the Norman-French names Burgh Engloyes and Burgh Frauncoyes. The borough-English custom by which the youngest son succeeded also prevailed at Southwell,^[39] which was a soke having twelve berewicks, or subordinate manors, belonging to the Archbishop of York, at the time of the Domesday Survey. Its connection with that See was very ancient, going back to the early days of Christianity in York. Here it should be noted that the custom at Southwell was different from that of Oswaldbeck, the Archbishop’s extensive district in the north of the county. It also differed from the general custom which prevailed on that prelate’s Yorkshire land. It could not, therefore, have been owing to uniformity of tenure on those lands that junior right prevailed and survived at Southwell. The custom was continued probably because it was the custom of the early settlers at that place, and if so, it points to people of a different race or tribe to those in the soke of Oswaldbeck—to some tribal allies of the early Angles or later Danes.

In Leicestershire the Domesday place-name Brochesbi may refer to the by or settlement whose chief was one Broche, so named from being either a Frisian of the Brocman tribe, or possibly a Boructer of the tribe of the Boructware, from whom, Bede tells us, some of the English of his time were known to have descended. In Leicestershire, also, the Domesday place Frisebi must have been the settlement of a Frisian, as Hunecote probably was of a Hunsing named Hune; Osgodtorp was the thorp of Osgod—i.e., an Eastern Goth; Suevesbi that of one of the Suevi, and Saxebi that of a Saxon, the early settlers from whom the places originally derived their names being probably so named in each case after the name of their tribe or nation. The Domesday name Cuchenai, in Nottinghamshire, points to one or more settlers of the Chaucian tribe, and may be compared with that of Cuxhaven at the mouth of the Elbe, which has come down to us in the old Chaucian country itself.

Such old place-names as these in parts of the old kingdom of Mercia show that among the so-called Angles that settled in the Mercian States there must have been people of other tribes. The Angles of these States may have been more Germanic than those of Northumbria. That there were differences is certain from the large number of runic inscriptions on monuments in the northern counties, while only two appear to have been discovered in the Mercian shires—viz., at Bakewell in Derbyshire,^[40] and at Cleobury Mortimer in Shropshire.^[41]

The old Mercian counties present a remarkable contrast in the manner in which the original homesteads of the settlers were arranged. In the east midland counties villages of collected homesteads must have very largely prevailed, for this is the common type of village met with in these counties. The old villages with the homesteads more or less collected always was the system in these shires since the coming of the Anglo-Saxon people. They are especially noticeable in Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, and Buckinghamshire, and they may be commonly seen to have roads leading to them from various directions, originally the ways from the villages to the common fields that lay around them. At the beginning of the nineteenth century 130,000 acres in Huntingdonshire, out of a total of 240,000, were open commonable lands,^[42] chiefly pasture. On the other hand, in the west midland counties, such as Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Shropshire, the old Celtic arrangement of isolated homesteads has survived much more largely, especially in the vale of the Severn, and more particularly in the parts east of that river. The collected homestead system which now prevails over so large a part of Holstein is probably due to the survival of the Anglian type of village in one of the homelands of the Angles, and so many of the collected villages of the East Midland counties are probably survivals, in plan, of the Anglian immigrants.

As regards possible British survivals among the Anglo-Saxon people of the old Mercian shires, we must look for any traces of them, apart from the country along the Welsh border, in those districts which were chiefly characterized by forests and fens. In the fen district of Huntingdonshire we meet with traces of people of British descent as late as the beginning of the eleventh century, for the early historian of Ramsay alludes to ‘Britones latrones,’ or Welsh robbers, as still possible in that part of the country as late as the time of King Cnut.^[43] The Fen country was long a stronghold of Britons, as of Anglo-Saxons after them.

There are incidental traces showing that during the Anglo-Saxon period some Wilisc men—i.e., Welsh or British—lived in Mercia, as well as in Northumbria and Wessex. These were treated as strangers, and their wergeld was only half that of others of the same class. They were outside the kindred organization, so that in the case of crime being imputed to them they could only prove their innocence by the ordeal, the oaths of their family relations not being acceptable, as they were not accounted freemen.^[44]

1. Elton, C. I., ‘Robinson on Gavelkind,’ p. 66.
2. Domesday Book, and Maitland, F. W., ‘Domesday Book and Beyond,’ 114.
3. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 941.
4. Réclus, E., ‘Nouvelle Géographie Universelle,’ v. 25, quoting Schiern, ‘Om Slaviscke Stednavne.’
5. Beddoe, J., ‘Races of Britain,’ p. 24.
6. Beddoe, J., loc. cit., p. 66.
7. Beddoe, J., loc. cit., p. 253.
8. Elton and Mackay, ‘Law of Copyholds,’ 134.
9. Sternberg, T., ‘Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire, ix.
10. Camden, W., ‘Britannia,’ 1722,, Ed. by Gibson, 192.
11. Frazer, J. G., ‘The Golden Bough,’ 1890 Ed., i. 75.
12. Sternberg, T., loc. cit., 128.
13. Bonaparte, Prince Louis L., ‘English Dialects,’ Philol. Soc. Transactions, 1875-1876, p. 573.
14. Wagner, W., ‘Asgard and the Gods,’ 71, 72.
15. Sternberg, T., loc. cit., 131.
16. Seebohm, F., ‘Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law,’ 34.
17. Monumenta Germaniæ, Scriptores i. 155.
18. Ibid., 154, 155.
19. Latham, R. G., ‘Handbook of the English Language,'’24-26.
20. Rudolph, H., ‘Orts Lexicon von Deutschland.’
21. Codex Dipl., 575, 579.
22. Monumenta Germaniæ, Annales Weissem., A.D. 781.
23. Chauncy, Sir H., ‘Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire,’ p. 530.
24. Ibid., p. 284.
25. Notes and Queries, Seventh Series, ix. 206.
26. Elton, C. I., ‘Origins of English History,’ p. 184.
27. Fox, R., ‘History of Godmanchester,’ p. 92.
28. Hundred Rolls, ii. 669.
29. Fox, R., loc. cit., p. 94.
30. Elton, C. I., ‘The Law of Copyholds,’ 130.
31. Domesday Book, i. 206.
32. Elton, C. I., ‘Gavelkind,’ 32.
33. Elton, C. I., ‘Gavelkind,’ 32.
34. Archæologia, xlvii. 97.
35. Nennius, ‘Historia Britomim,’ i. 117.
36. Latham, R. G., ‘Germania of Tacitus,’ Epil. cix.
37. Derbyshire Archæol. and Nat. Hist. Soc., ii. 33.
38. Placita de quo warranto, pp. 154, 659, Calendar.
39. Elton, C. I., ‘Gavelkind.’
40. Stephens, G., ‘Old Northern Runic Monuments,’ i. 373.
41. Ibid., iii. 160.
42. Maine, Sir H., ‘Village Communities,’ 88, 89.
43. Freeman, E. A., ‘Norman Conquest,’ i. 477, note.
44. Seebohm, F., loc. cit., 403, 499.