THE PROVINCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
XVIII.-HAMPSHIRE AND TILE ISLE OF WIGHT.-THE ANGLO- SAXON OCCUPATION.
THE Saxon Chronicle copies from Bede his account of the nations by whom Britain was conquered, translating the Latin into Anglo-Saxon, with the fortunate exception of the won " Germanite," which is left as if on purpose to tell us which of the two is the original : " Of Jotun comon Cantware and Wihtware" is the rendering of the Saxon translator, who also renders Vecta by Wiht, and Jutarum natio by Jutmacyn. King Alfred of the West Saxons translating the same passage of Bede into Saxon, renders Jutarum by Geatum, and Vectuarii by Wihtsaetan. He omits the reference to the fulcrum natio still existing in Bede's time in the south of Hampshire. Asser, the biographer of Alfred, tells us that his mother " was named Osburg, a pious woman in truth, noble in mind and noble in race ; who was the daughter of Oslac, which Oslac was a Goth (Gothus) in nation, for he was sprung from the Gothes and Jutes, of the seed, namely, of Stuf and Wihtgar, who having ob- tained the government of the Island Vectis, slew the few Britons inhabitants of the same island, whom they had been able to light upon, in the place which is called Gwitigaraburgh, for the other inhabitants of the same island had been previously slain, or had fled into exile." This last name is evidently nothing more than another form of Wild-ware-burgh, " the burgh of the dwellers in Wight," and is now represented by the name Caris-brooke. The Saxon Chronicle gives another account of the same occurrence,— " A.D. 530.—This year Cerdic and Cymric conquered the island Wihte, and slew many men at Wiht-garas-byrg." The dates assigned to the invasions of the West Saxons are various in the Saxon Chronicle. The first is 495, in which it is said " that there came to Britain two aldermen, Cerdic and Cymric his son, with five ships, at the place which is called Cerdicesora (Charford ?) and on the same day fought against the Wealas." The next date is 514, in which year it is said "came the West Saxons to Britain with three ships, at the place which is called Cerdicesora ; and Stuf and Wihtgar fought against the Britons, and put them to flight." According to one entry, in the year 508 Cerdic and Cymric slew a British king whose name was Natan-leod, and five thousand men with him ; after that the land was named Natanlea as far as Cerdicesford (Charford). According to another entry, in the year 519 Cerdic and Cymric assumed the kingdom of the West Saxons, and in the same year they fought against the Britons where it is now named Cerdicesford, and since the offspring of the West Saxons has reigned from that day. Again, we are told under the year 527 that Cerdic and Cymric fought against the Britons at the place which is called Cerdices-leag. To com- plete this confusion of dates, under the year 534 we read that Cerdic, the first King of the West Saxons, died, and
Cymric, his son, succeeded to the kingdom, and reigned on for twenty-six winters ; and they gave all the island of Wiht to their two nephews, Stuf and Wihtg,ar ; and ander the year 544 it is said Wihtgar died, and they buried him at Wihtgarsburh. Another invasion is noticed under the year 501. "In this
year came Port to Britain, and his two sons Bieda and Megla.
with two ships, at the place which is called Portesmutha. (Portsmouth), and forthwith landed, and there slew a very noble young British man." Probably after perusing this jumble of records the reader will not be disposed to estimate very highly the accu- racy of these early accounts of the invasions of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Such names as Port and Wiht-gar betray their origin at once as mere geographical inferences from the names Portsmouth and Wight. It is clear also that we are at liberty to date the first Jute-Saxon invasions in whatever year we like between 495 and 530. There appear to be only three distinct events alluded to—the capture of Caris- brooke and the battle at Charford, both attributed variously to Cerdic and Cymric, and to Stuf and Wihtgar, and the landing at Portsmouth, attributed to Port, the last also being clearly mythical, and probably merely a reproduction of the battle of Charford, where Natan-leod, the " very noble young British. man," fell. Asser seems to allude to a previous struggle in the Isle of Wight, in which the main body of the Britons were slain or expelled. It will be observed that Stuf and Wihtgar are made Goths by Asser, while one entry in the Chronicle calls them West Saxons, and another the nephews of Cerdic and Cymric (elsewhere represented as father and son). On the other hand, Wiht-gar seems to stand in the same relation to Wiht that Vecta does to Vecta or Vectis, the island in Bede's account ; and this Vecta is made the great-grandfather of Hengist and Horse, who are expressly called the leaders of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes' alike.
Who, then, we may now ask, were these " Jutes," who are thus mixed up with the Saxons and Angles in the accounts of the inva- sions of England? The answer which used to be given to this question was that they came from Jutland. Antiquaries and philologers, however, now incline to a different conclusion, and on the whole the probability seems to be against this derivation. It would be strange, to begin with, that a population from the south. of Denmark should have selected two such points as Kent and the- Isle of Wight, with the opposite coast of Hampshire, for their disembarkations, rather than the north-eastern shores of Britain.. Then there is no trace whatever of Danish elements distinct from Saxon in either of these districts. Spoken language is to some extent an unsafe guide in determining the race from which the speakers spring, since a language may be adopted by a race to whom it was originally foreign ; but a priori, as far as it goes, the absence of any traces of a certain language is a corro- borative argument against the derivation of a nation from quarter which is identified with that language. The names of places afford a more secure basis for argument, and we accord- ingly find that, while on the eastern coast and in the midland districts of England the recurrence of such Danish terminations- as by, instead of the Saxon burgh or ton, bears corroborative testimony to the settlements which we know were made by the Danes in those parts of the island, the complete absence of this. peculiarity from Kent, Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight, is am argument against the derivation of the inhabitants of those dis- tricts from the Danish Jutland. The account given by Bede of the derivation of the Angles from a tract Angulus, supposed to be- identical with the district in South Jutland called " Angel," is open to equally strong objections. Mr. Worsae has summed up. the arguments on this point in a recent paper in the Journal of the. Archteological institute. " It is," he observes, " in the first place. extremely improbable that a district proportionally so small as the- so-called Angel, between the Flensborgfjord and the Slie (about 300 square miles English) could have sent forth those numerous hosts of Angles who peopled such large tracts of the northern and eastern parts of England, and from whom even the whole country, was named England (Anglia), rather than from the powerful Saxons. who occupied the south of the country. In the second place, we are actually without any reliable and contemporary historical testi- mony to the effect that the Angles who settled in England had come from Angel, in South Jutland." Supposing this to have been Bede's meaning, he may have been "misled by an acci- dental similarity of name, for the name "Angel," which originally meant a corner, was by no means uncommon. We know more especially that a people called Angles lived during the first cen- turies of the Christian era, and even at a later date, in certain districts bordering on the Elbe, near the home of the ancient. Saxons in North Germany, to which we may apply Bede's words, between the countries of the Jates and the Saxons,' with just as much probability as to Angel in South Jutland." " His allegation that, on account of the emigration to England Angel was said to be lying waste until this day, would, if true, at any rate be inapplicable to Angel in South Jutland, because it would imply that the Danes had not yet settled so far south as the Slie and the Danevirke at the time of Bede, that is, in the eighth century, an assumption which would be altogether incredible." So the Angles of England were undoubtedly Germanic, while " we find not the slightest vestige of any German in those remote times in A gel in South Jutland." No distinction can be made out in language, customs, &c., between the Angles and Saxons of England, " all the old Anglian names of persons and places, which are older than the ninth century," being " in every respect like those occurring in the Saxon parts of England." Antiquarian researches point to the same conclusion. " Numerous investigations in all parts of England have proved that the Anglo-Saxon tombs of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries, which generally form large cemeteries, mostly contain unburnt skeletons (in opposition to the Roman- British graves with burnt remains), buried in coffins rather deep in the ground, sometimes covered by small round tumuli ; and that they present a marked uniformity all over the country, both in form and in contents, whether the districts in which they are situated were inhabited by Saxons or by Angles, or, as is supposed in some cases, by Jutes. English authors, therefore, frequently comprise them all under the common appellation of ' Saxon graves.' Some small variations, with regard to the ornaments and other objects deposited in the graves, have, indeed, been observed in different localities. Thus, for instance, the beautiful brooches with inlaid work found in Kent are peculiar to that county, and denote at any rate that there must have been greater wealth there than elsewhere. But these differences are too insignificant to be looked upon as indications of ancient differences of races, or indeed of anything more than local peculiarities of taste, caused perhaps in some cases by the different conditions of life of the population in different parts ; nor do they render the uniformity prevailing in all essential points less striking. If, now, we compare these English tombs with those of the same period found in other countries, we find, on the one hand, that in France, in Switzer- land; and in Germany (particularly in the Rhine countries and in South Germany) a great number of the tombs of the Franks, Thirgundi, Alemanni, Saxons, and other German tribes allied to the Angles and Saxons have been discovered, which in all essential points connected with the form of the graves, the deposition of the corpses, the character of the accompanying arms, ornaments, and implements, present the most striking resemblance to the English tombs of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries." The area occupied by this class of tombs in Europe excludes " Holland, the whole north, east, and great districts of the middle part of Germany, as well as the Scandinavian countries," and the boundary line "towards the east is drawn from the river Ems to the sources of the Inn and the Ister, whilst towards the south it is formed by the Alps, and in France by the river Loire." This extension between the mouths of the Rhine and the Loire corre- sponds, to it may be observed, exactly to the " Saxon shore " or " border" in Gaul, in the latter days of Roman domination. " On the other hand, we find that these English graves differ most pointedly from the contemporaneous remains in the peninsula of Jutland, and in those parts of North Germany which were then inhabited by Vendic tribes. For whilst cremation was so rare in the settlements of Angles and so-called Jutes in Kent, that Mr. Charles Roach Smith deduces the following result from the investigations of the Rev. Bryan Faussett, that the Kentish cemeteries do not present one single instance of an original deposit containing an urn with burnt bones in or about the graves, this custom was, on the contrary, all but universal both in the old Vendic parts of North Germany (including Holstein), and in the southern part of the peninsula of Jutland, at least that part which lies between the Eider and the town of Veile, comprising the supposed home of the Angles, and in which not one cemetery, nay, not one single grave like the Anglo-Saxon, Frankish, and other ancient German tombs of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries has ever been discovered." So with the ornaments and implements found in the tombs. Though all the Scandinavian and German tribes agree to a certain extent in the general character of their ornaments, derived alike from contact with Roman civilization, they also present remark- able peculiarities. Each of these tribes imitated their Roman models in their own peculiar manner, and in this way " the dif- ferences of race and country found an expression in their orna- ments, arms, and implements. We may thus, for instance, observe that the ornaments with inlaid work which have been found in Frankish tombs certainly present a striking resemblance to those from Sent ; but they differ at the same time by their much less refined workmanship, proving that they have not proceeded from the same manufacture. The same also holds good with regard to the ornaments from South Germany, though these are perhaps still more like the English." The brooches found in Kent, and said by Mr. Worsae to be peculiar to that county, have also, it should be observed, been discovered in several graves in the Isle of Wight. Brooches have also been found in Scandinavia, but although " by no means nnfrequent in other parts of Denmark, only a very few have been met with in South Jutland, partly of gold, ornamented with paste and filigree work, partly of silver, with ornaments of niello, and fantastic representations of human and animal heads; and even these few have mostly been found near the frontier of North Jutland, not one having as ytt been discovered in Angel. Certain types of brooches which are peculiar to the ancient Anglian districts in the northern and middle part of England are hitherto entirely unrepresented in the collections not only from Angel, but from Denmark generally, whilst, strange to say, they reappear in the west and north of Norway, indicating that the intercourse between Norway and England in those days was more active than between Denmark and England. Nor is this the only fact which proves that during the first division of the later Iron Age, as well as during the early Iron Age, the intercourse of the ancient Danish provinces with Gaul, Germany, and Pannonia was more active than with Britain, though this was so much nearer. It is a remark- able fact that whilst Roman coin of the two centuries of the Empire as late as A.D. 230 is rather frequently met with in Den- mark and the Baltic provinces, the finds of West Roman coin of the two following centuries have been extremely few and far between. Now, it so happens that precisely about the year 230 the Romans began to withdraw from Germany and Pannonia, which countries, therefore, seem until then to have afforded the principal channel of communication between the Romans and the inhabi- tants of the North. And still more striking is the fact that no Anglo-Saxon coins for the first three or four centuries of the Anglo-Saxon rule in England have been found in the North. Surely, if the Angles had come to England from Angel in South Jutland, we must assume that there would have been an active inter- course between Denmark, or at least that province and England, both before and after that great event ; and we should certainly in that case expect to find both Roman coin brought from England, where the Romans ruled for two centuries after having withdrawn from their advanced posts in Germany, and also Anglo-Saxon coin from the earliest time of the newly founded commonwealth in England." So with the weapons. " The hilts of the Danish swords of this period resemble in shape those of the same age discovered in other parts of Europe, but we have as yet neither in South Jutland nor in other parts of Denmark found a single spear head of that peculiar kind in which the socket is not quite closed, and which is so well known from Anglo- Saxon, Frankish, and ancient German tombs."
The evidence thus adduced seems to us decisive against the Danish origin of either the Jutes or Angles of England. The Angles appear to be no other than the Saxons of England of a particular district,—probably called so in allusion to the corner shape of the Eastern Counties, in which they settled,—just as others of the same race, according to Bede, were called not Angles, but Northumbrians, from their geographical position relatively to the Humber. The latter name would be given them by their neighbours, the East Anglians, just as these probably received their name from their neighbours, the East Saxons, possibly from some remembrance of the Anglian or corner district near the Elbe, which lay to the north of their old homes on the Continent, and to which Mr. Worsae refers. The term Anglia—England—would in this case mean simply " the corner land "—an epithet corresponding exactly to the general descrip- tion of Britain always given in early writers. The epithet Saxon was evidently a general one among later Roman writers, for all the tribes of different origin from the Kelt along the German sea coast. It was a name given by others, not necessarily borne by the peoples themselves so designated. Similar was the case with the use of the word " Frank." But the particular tribes among those called Saxon who settled in England, and formed the Anglo-Saxon nation, seem to belong to the districts along the Gallic Saxon Shore, and their cognate races in Germany. Bent, which breaks the continuity of the so-called Saxon settlements, must have had a somewhat different history
from the rest, and as it is connected in early accounts with the Jutes, and these are also always connected with the Isle of Wight and south Hampshire, we are thrown back on the difficulty as to who these Jutes were. They may have been in no way distinct from the so-called Anglo-Saxons, and philology offers a plausible conjecture that the name Jutland (which appears as Vitland in one author) may have (in connection with the German pronun- ciation of the Roman name Vectis) suggested the whole story. But there is evidence that there were a people bearing the name of Eutti Saxonici in the parts of Gaul opposite to the Isle of Wight who were conquered by a Frank King in the reign of the Emperor Justinian, i.e., exactly at the period assigned to the Jute- Saxon invasions of the Isle of Wight and Hampshire ; and there is reason to believe that this name Jute or Butt was nothing more than a form of the word "Goth," the word Gothus being, as we have seen, the Latin translation of Jute, and the form Goat being used indiscriminately in reference to both.
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