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Cemetery at Brighthampton. 91 an attentive study of the laws and institutions of the Anglo-Saxons also leads to a different conclusion. The comparative rarity of swords is in reality referable to the fact that it was not the ordinary weapon of a man under the rank of a thane. This is clearly apparent in Canute's Law of Heriots. Of the 750 graves explored by Brian Faussett, in the county of Kent, only 15 yielded swords. At Little Wilbraham, in Cambridgeshire, 4 swords only were obtained from 188 graves. Not one example of this weapon was found in upwards of GO graves at Harnham, in South "Wiltshire. Now at Brighthampton we have 4 swords (including the one found there twenty years ago, ) in less than 60 graves. "With such evidence we may conclude that a Saxon family settled here, and that in the name of the village we probably have, though in a corrupt form, that of the Saxon chief or head of such family, Brighthelm, the number of swords indicating the number of males above the rank of ceorl. The occurrence of three spindle-whirls, two of them formed of crystal and the third of glass, are significant proofs of the sex of the occupants of graves 22, 47, and 49, if other indications were wanting." On this subject the following note, addressed to A. W. Franks, Esq., Director S.A., and read before the Society in the last Session, 29 April, 1858, may not be inappropriate here. Mr BEAU SIR, It will be in the recollection of yourself and others who take an interest in our Anglo- Saxon Antiquities, that in the Session 1854 I communicated to the .Society an account of my researches in an ancient cemetery at Wingham, Kent. (Archaeologia, Vol. XXXVI. p. 17(1.) Among the few relics then discovered was the object afterwards figured in my " Remains of Pagan Saxondom." (Plate xxxvi. fig. 5.) This object I have in that work erroneously described as a vorticellum or spindle-whirl. It was discovered lying near the left arm of a female skeleton, an iron rod lying within it, and imparting a ferruginous tinge to the portion on which it rested. The slight form of this rod led me into the error, which it is the purpose of this note to correct; and I am still at a loss to account for its being formed of iron instead of wood, for it is plainly a portion of the distaff' itself, and not any part of the spindle, as I had supposed. The object to which I have now to direct your attention will be readily recognised by comparison with the distaff now exhibited, used at this day in Italy, for which I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Arthur Ashpitel From this it will at once be seen that the ring found at Wingham forms the bridge that supports the cradle. An object in all respects identical was found at Little Wilbraham; and is figured in Saxon Obsequies." (Plate xxiii. fig. 102.) The inner diameter of the latter ring, however, is apparently formed to receive a staff of wood and not of iron, the aperture being too wide to receive a staff of that metal. It will be remembered, that at Ozingel in Kent, and in the Isle of Wight, there were discovered in thi graves of women objects apparently originally sword-blades, but with the tops at some inches from the point hammered into a round form, as if intended to be inserted into some object which had perished. Could these have been the handles of distaves? Their flat form would fit them for insertion in the girdle, but in other respects they must have been ponderous and inconvenient. In the present state of our knowledge this must be a matter of conjecture ; but the fact that the Anglo-Saxon woman was buried with her distaff N2