A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE case at Beddington near Croydon, Surrey. 1 At the western end of a passage in a villa at Woolstone, a hamlet close under White Horse Hill, was found a perfect skeleton, presumably of a man, an iron knife being the only object accompanying the burial ; while at the east end of the same passage two other bodies were found, also within a foot or so of the surface. Several interments, apparently of the Anglo-Saxon period, are mentioned in another account,' but only iron knives were found with the bodies ; and several tessellated floors, of which one is now pre- served at Oxford, were disclosed by the plough. Berkshire has yielded many, and will yet yield more, relics of its inhabitants from the time when Britain was left to its own resources by the imperial authority of Rome till the days when the Anglo-Saxon settler was himself contending for the mastery with kindred invaders from Scandinavia ; and the exploration of cemeteries in this county has shown more clearly than anywhere else, except perhaps in Kent, the transition from Romanized Britain to Christian England. An interesting relic of another description may here be mentioned in conclusion. During the rebuilding of St. Mary's Church, Stratfield Mortimer, in 1866, it was found that the site had been occupied long before the old parish church was built, and some idea of its early history may be obtained from the discovery, under the floor of the tower, of the stone cover of a Saxon tomb now fixed in the east end of the church. It was broken in two, measured 6| feet in length, 20 inches in width at the top, and lay face downwards. Round the edge could be deciphered an inscription, in letters i| inches high, which began on the left hand of the top of the stone, and was carried along the right margin, the narrow foot and the left margin. It ran as follows : + VIII KL' OCTB | FVIT POSITVS XEGELpARDVS FILIVS KYPPINGVS IN ISTO LOG | O BEATV | S SIT OMO QVI ORAT PRO ANIMA EIVS + TOKI ME SCRIPSIT | The characters are well formed Latin capitals, interspersed with a few Anglo-Saxon letters. Without entering into epigraphic details, for which Professor Westwood's paper ' may be referred to, it will suffice to mention that the tomb was that of ^gelward son of Kypping, who died on 24 September. A blessing is invoked on all who pray for his soul ; and the name of the sculptor, or the person who ordered the tombstone, was Toki. Supposing the ' G ' to be a mistake for the ' TH ' character, the person commemorated may be the alderman of Hampshire mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the year 994, who was a most distinguished individual, being himself an historian and the person to whom jElfric, Archbishop of Canterbury (994-1005), dedicated his Homilies and his translation of Genesis. 4 He seems to have died soon 1 V.C.H. Surr. i. 263.
- Antiquary, i. 36, 1 8 1.
s Society of Antiquaries, Proceedings, xi. 224. 4 Rev. C. L. Cameron in Beiki, Bucks and Oxoa Arch. Jour*, vii. 71. 2 4 8
