or the subjugation of the whole British population within them. Beddoe’s researches have shown that a population much fairer than that in the interior exists along the Devonshire coast.[1]
At Exeter the custom of partible inheritance prevailed, the estate of the father being divided among both sons and daughters. This might well have been brought there by a colony of Goths and Frisians, as the custom can be traced among both these ancient races. This could not have been a British survival, for in Wales daughters had no share in the paternal estate.
There are in Cornwall traces of Norwegian settlements in the survival on some manors of the custom by which in default of sons the eldest daughter succeeded to the whole estate. In Cornwall, also, the ancient divisions were called shires instead of hundreds, corresponding to the names used in those parts of the northern counties where Scandinavians settled, and to the names of ancient divisions in Norway itself, which were also called shires.
The settlements that were formed on the south-western coasts of England resembled on the one hand those early colonies of Teutonic people on the southern and eastern coasts in the earliest Anglo-Saxon period, and on the other the later settlements of maritime people, including Danes and Northmen, on the coasts of Wales. The existence of colonies of Saxons on the eastern coasts before the end of the Roman rule can scarcely be open to doubt, from the historical mention of the Saxon shore and the ethnological evidence afforded by the people of the maritime parts of north-eastern France at the present time, the coast of which had a similar name. Similarly, some of the coast settlements of the south-western parts of England were probably of the nature of migrations from Kent and Sussex, in association with people of the same racial descent from Northern Europe. It must be remembered that the maritime skill of the
- ↑ Beddoe, J., loc. cit., p. 258.
