Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race/Chapter 13

by Thomas William Shore

CHAPTER XIII.

THE GEWISSAS AND OTHER SETTLERS IN WESSEX.

THE settlement of people of more than one race in Hampshire under the name of Gewissas is historical. The evidence rests partly on the statement of Bede, who wrote within two hundred years of the probable date of the invasion of this part of Britain. His information was derived from Daniel, Bishop of Winchester, and the Bishop no doubt obtained it from people of more than one race distinctly surviving in Wessex in his time. The chief point in this historical evidence cannot be doubted—viz., that there were people settled in the Isle of Wight and the southern part of the county who were of different descent from those in other parts of the early kingdom of Wessex. The original kingdom was no doubt at first what is now called Hampshire, or the county of Southampton, but the small state soon grew in extent, so that before the end of the sixth century it comprised parts at least of what is now Dorset, Wiltshire, and Berkshire. The settlement of Hampshire, therefore, cannot be fully considered without reference to that of the counties which adjoin it on the west and north. According to the genealogy of the Kings of Wessex, Cedric was a great-grandson of Gewis,^[1] but this genea1ogy is legendary, not historical. It may be accepted, however, as evidence of the antiquity of the tribal name Gewissæ, which long survived in this kingdom. In A.D. 766 Cynewlf, King of Wessex, gave a charter to the monastery of Wells, and in it he styles himself ‘Cynewlphus Gewissorum rex.’^[2] This is evidence of the survival of the name more than two centuries after the arrival of the Gewissas in Hampshire. The West Saxon Kings must have been proud of it to have retained it. Still later, in the year 825, Egbert used the same title ‘rex Gewissorum’^[3] in a charter in which he gave land at Alton to the Monastery of SS. Peter and Paul at Winchester. Eadred also, in the year 946, in a grant of land to the thegn Ethelgeard, describes the situation of this land as being at Brightwell, in the district of the Gewissi—i.e., Brightwell, near Wallingford, in Berkshire, so described, probably, to distinguish it from another Brightwell in Oxfordshire.^[4]

Even after the Norman Conquest, Ordericus Vitalis, writing in the twelfth century, mentions the district round Winchester as the country of the Gewissæ. The name evidently had great vitality, and must have been a common one to have been used by a chronicler at so late a date. When we consider its probable origin, we have first to note the occurrence of the name Gewis in the genealogy of the West Saxon Kings,^[5] and, secondly, its probable meaning. Gewis would naturally arise at the time when the Anglo-Saxon genealogies were drawn up, from the tribal name Gewissæ or Gewissas being in common use. This name of the mythological ancestor of the royal house is certainly more likely to have been derived from the name of the tribe than that the tribal name should have had its origin from a mythological one.

Its meaning has recently been discussed by Stevenson,^[6] who has stated the opinions of various writers. The most probable derivation appears to be that of Müllenhoff, who connects it with the Gothic ga-wiss—junction—and Gewissas are thus explained as confederates.

In the traditionary accounts of the occupation of Kent and Sussex, we read of invaders coming in three ships in each case. In the account relating to Wessex we read that they came in five, and this may have some reference to tribal expeditions of confederates. That the settlers who occupied Hampshire consisted of people of more than one race admits of no doubt. As will be shown, there is evidence within the limits of ancient Wessex of settlements by Goths or Jutes, Saxons, Frisians, and Wends. There is evidence also of later considerable settlements of Northmen. The interpretation of the name Gewissas as confederates is certainly confirmed by what can be discovered concerning the West Saxon people. Indeed, confederacies played such an important part in the settlement of England generally that it can be no matter for surprise to find sufficient evidence, even apart from the historical, to show that Wessex was colonized by people of various races. There were small confederacies as well as large ones among the ancient tribes of Germany, and it is possible that such names as Gewiesen, Gewissenruhe, and Gewissowice, which still exist in North-East Germany,^[7] may have had their origin in clan confederacies of people of different tribes or kindreds.

As regards the Gothic connection of the word, it is of interest to note the occurrence of gewiss, used in the sense of ‘assured’ or ‘certain,’ in an inscription on one of the capitals of a column which still remains at Ravenna, and which commemorates the rule of Theodoric, the great Gothic King at that place. He, the greatest of the Goth rulers, was King over people of the same descent as the Northern Goths or Jutes, many of whom, without doubt, made for themselves English homes in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, as members of a confederacy known as that of the Gewissas. These were apparently sworn or assured allies.

Among these Gewissas or confederates, Saxons and Frisians were probably the greatest in number. From what is known of their descendants on the Continent, they were people of a blonde complexion, so that the prevailing ethnological character of the people of Wessex agrees with that of the present inhabitants of Friesland and North Germany.

At the time Bede wrote contemporary evidence existed of the two chief tribes, who, under the name Gewissas, made up the West Saxon State. At that time the Isle of Wight was under its own chiefs or Kings, subordinate only to the Kings of Wessex; and there are some references which point to a government of the Meon country, or south-east part of Hampshire, at one time by Princes, apart from the direct rule of the Wessex Sovereigns. The Jutes of the Isle of Wight certainly, and those of the south-east part of Hampshire possibly, were under their own local administration at the time when Daniel, Bishop of Winchester, informed the Venerable Bede of the political condition of his diocese. There is no room for doubt concerning the accuracy of Bede’s statement, for it has been proved by archæological and anthropological researches. The remains of the Saxon period which have been brought to light by the spade in the Isle of Wight, and much more recently in the Meon valley, are all of the Kentish type, and, like them, exhibit a distinct resemblance to similar relics which have been found in Northern countries from which the Jutes or Goths migrated—i.e., Gothland and some of the Danish isles, as well as Jutland.

One of the Danish isles at the present time is named Mön, or Moen, and as the Danish ö or oe is in sound like the French eu,^[8] it is practically the same in sound as the Hampshire Meon, in the valley of which people from Moen were probably among the Jutish settlers. That the identity of the Jutes and the Goths, or the very close affinity between them, was known locally in Wessex as late as the end of the ninth century is proved by a statement made by Asser,^[9] that King Alfred’s mother was Osburga, daughter of Oslac, a Goth by nation, descended from the Goths or Jutes of the Isle of Wight. The name of Gutæ, as already mentioned, is found in very early Gothic runes in Scandinavia, and Stephens places their date as early as A.D. 400. The evidence of the connection of the Goths with the Isle of Wight is also supported by the discovery of a runic inscription within it. This is on the inner side of the scabbard mount of an iron sword found at Chessell Down about the middle of the nineteenth century, and is in the British Museum, where, many years after its discovery, it was taken to pieces to be cleaned. During this process the staves of the runes, which could not previously be observed, were seen to have been clearly, but not deeply, incised by a sharp instrument on the elegant silver mount. The words ‘Æco Sœri,’ which are clearly visible in runic characters, Stephens places between A.D. 500-600 in date, and interprets as an imprecation against the foe with whom the sword might come into contact.^[10]

The Jutes of Hampshire are probably referred to in the old name Ytene, for the district which is now the New Forest. This word is apparently a later form of the Anglo-Saxon Ytena, genitive plural of Yte, a form of the word Jutæ used by Bede. This part of the county was known as Jutish for centuries. Florence of Worcester, writing at the end of the eleventh century, mentions the ‘provincia Jutarum,’ in which the New Forest was formed. The Goths occupied the south parts of the county east and west of Southampton Water, as well as the Isle of Wight.

We can have no doubt that Saxons of some tribe or tribes were largely included among the settlers of a district afterwards known to its neighbours as Wessex, or the kingdom of the West Saxons. Among these, in a country with good harbours, there can be little doubt that Frisians, who were the people among the so-called Saxons most given to maritime pursuits, were represented. Such names as Emsworth and the river Ems in the south-east of the county remind us of Emden and the river Ems, close to Eastern Friesland. It is among the present Frisians that traditions of Hengist survive, and it is only in connection with the Jutes and Frisians that this name occurs. It is of interest, therefore, to note that the name is mentioned in the West Saxon charters—Hengestes-geat in Hants,^[11] and Hengestesrig^[12] in Dorset.

The harbours of these counties were their ports of debarkation, and it was up the river valleys and along the old Roman highways that the country was settled. The valleys of the Itchen, Test, Avon, Stour, and others, afforded a passage into the interior and higher parts of the country, and there is evidence to show, more especially in Dorsetshire, that settlements by people of the same tribe were made in the same or in adjacent valleys. In Berkshire the lines of colonization appear to have been varied. The natural way into that county is not by Southampton Water, but up the valley of the Thames. Berkshire did not come under the rule of the Gewissas at such an early period as Hampshire, part of Dorset, and the south part of Wiltshire. It was separated from early Wessex by a wide forest, of which traces still remain in the nomenclature of the district. Many of the settlers in Berkshire probably came by way of the Thames, but after the extension of the West Saxon State they appear to have been known as Gewissas equally with the people of the original settlement.

That some of the Berkshire settlers followed the same route from the south as the West Saxon armies is shown by the ethnological evidence and by the dialects. Beddoe,^[13] referring to the south of Hampshire, says: ‘The Saxon and Frisian types undoubtedly spread from this centre far to the north and west, predominating in a great part of Berkshire and central Oxfordshire, and occupying in force the valleys which radiate from Salisbury among the Wiltshire Downs.’ Referring more especially to the people of Wilts, he also says: ‘I do not mean that the Wiltshire people are anything like pure Saxons or Frisians; I should be quite satisfied if it were granted that they were at least half Saxon.’^[14] The prevalence of the blonde type in parts of Hants, Wilts, and Dorset is one of the chief points in the present physical characters of the inhabitants of these counties. Beddoe says: ‘Hampshire bears witness that it was a starting-point of Saxon colonization by the blonde character of the population.’ He also speaks of the ‘blonde, smooth-featured Saxons about Wilton,’ and tells us that ‘the blonde types are common from Wareham to Yeovil.’^[15]

In Hampshire, however, we do not meet with a general blonde type. Of the New Forest district Mackintosh says: ‘The New Forest is inhabited by a mixture of races which almost defy classification, the complexion in general being dark;’^[16] and this prevalence of dark-complexioned people among the inhabitants of the New Forest district is still apparent, as it is in parts of Wiltshire and Dorset.

The same ethnological observer, Mackintosh,^[17] also says: ‘In the middle and north of Hampshire the people in general belong to a dark-complexioned race. I have heard the opinion expressed that they are Wends, or a Belgic tribe of Wendish extraction.’ The present writer is not able to regard the dark-complexioned type as being quite so general, but in the central and north parts of the county it may still be found, although perhaps less strongly marked now than half a century ago. The darker complexion among some of the Hampshire people, as among those of Wiltshire and Dorset, may be due in part to their descent from people of darker hues, who were among the original Gewissas. The Goths were of a fair type, as has been already described in the chapter on Kent. The inhabitants of the Isle of Wight, although now a very mixed population, still show occasional conformities to the original Jutish type, and this may be observed in the face of the monumental effigy of one of the D’Orseys, an old Isle of Wight family, in the church at Newport. It may be seen among the people of the Meon district, and may be noticed among people who may be met in the streets of Winchester at the present time.

From what has already been said, it will be seen that the Kentish custom of partible inheritance can be traced to a primitive Gothic source, and the custom of junior right to a primitive Wendish or Slavonic source. As Hampshire was settled by colonists of various races, united under the common name of Gewissas, the people of the various tribes may be expected to have brought into this county some of their peculiar customs, as Goths did into Kent, and tribal Frisians and Wends probably did into Sussex. It will be desirable, therefore, to consider in some detail the various primitive customs of succession and land tenure which actually prevailed in Hampshire. No instance of exactly the same custom of partible inheritance that prevailed in Kent can be cited in this county, but a large number of cases can be quoted of land being held by parage or parcenary tenure, a custom in its nature very like gavelkind. The survival of this parage or parcenary custom was mainly in the old Jutish parts of the county—viz., in the Isle of Wight and the New Forest district. The manors in which this custom prevailed were each considered as one manor for the purpose of taxation, but were held jointly by more than one tenant, one of them being responsible for the payments. In some cases these co-parceners were brothers, and are so described in Domesday Book. The custom of gavelkind in Kent was very similar to this, the land being, indeed, actually divided, but taxed collectively. In Hampshire it was taxed as a whole, and held by parceners as a whole, without apparently being actually divided. Except in preventing minute subdivision, there was in practice very little difference.

In the adjoining county of Dorset partible inheritance of the Kentish type survived at the time of the Domesday Survey and long afterwards at Wareham and in Portland Island. In Hampshire at the time of the Survey the partible custom, which may have prevailed at an earlier period among the descendants of the Northern Goths or Jutish settlers, had apparently given place to a modified tenure, so that parceners inherited their shares in an undivided estate. Under the general law of the kingdom, apart from recognised local customs, none but females were able to hold an estate together.^[18] By the custom of gavelkind this was different, for by it males might hold lands in parcenary, the descent being to all males equally.^[19] Parceners took their estates by descent, and their very title or name accrued only by descent.^[20] The parceners in the Jutish parts of Hampshire who are mentioned by name in Domesday Book are all males. Parceners do not take by survivorship, but lands descend to their issue as in gavelkind.^[21] From these considerations there can be no doubt that we may see in the parcenary tenure which prevailed so largely in the Isle of Wight and the New Forest district, which are known to have been settled by Jutes, traces of inhabitants of the same race as that of the people of Kent, among whom gavelkind was, and is, such a strongly-marked characteristic custom. In this parage custom we may also see the survival of family influence in the ownership of land, as opposed to the manorial. The family tenure was the older, and had come down from the tribal era; the newer manorial system gradually supplanted it. The Domesday record of Hampshire thus affords examples of both the older and the later systems.

In addition to the earlier immigration of people of several races, there is in Hampshire evidence of later settlements of Danes and Northmen. Even as late as the Domesday Survey the tenants on the manors of Ringwood and Winston, and of Arreton in the Isle of Wight, paid their dues or rents by Danish reckoning, the ora being the coin for their computation. The prevalence of allodial tenure along the western border of the county is recorded in Domesday Book, and here Danish place-names such as Thruxton (Thorkelston) and Wallop, with the characteristic Norwegian termination -op, survive. Odal or allodial tenure was a family tenure, in which one of the family held the land, and is specially characteristic of Norway, although not in ancient time confined to it. The same custom survived until modern time in the old Norse islands of Orkney and Shetland. The odaller or udaller was a free tenant, and had certain rights which he transmitted to his descendants. If through poverty he was obliged to sell his land, his kindred had the right of pre-emption, or of redeeming it when able to do so.^[22] This udal or allodial custom prevailed along almost the whole of the western border of Hampshire at the time of the Domesday Survey. It existed also on some manors in the Isle of Wight and elsewhere in the county. Its prevalence is another link in the chain of evidence connecting the settlers of early Wessex with Jutes or other people of a Northern race. Allodial tenure is recorded in Hampshire in the hundreds of Andover, Brocton or Thorngate, Fordingbridge and Christchurch, on forty-seven manors extending from Tidworth in the north to Sopley and Winkton in the south. This custom is only recorded in Domesday Book in the southern counties of Hampshire, Sussex, Surrey, Kent, and Berkshire, but it may have prevailed on manors elsewhere without being specially mentioned. It is referred to in the tribal laws of the Franks and of the Angles and Warings.^[23] Its existence at the present time in Norway and its survival in the Norse islands of the Orkneys and Shetlands may afford a clue as to whence the Scandinavians, whether the earlier Goths or the later tribal settlers in England, came. The Danish conquerors of Wessex were probably to some extent supplied with lands within that State itself, and it is not improbable that depopulated Saxon manors and lands or forest clearings were given to them. We can scarcely think that Cnut, King of Denmark and King of Wendland, whose name is so much connected with Wessex, and who when in England chiefly resided within it, would fail to provide his followers with lands near the seat of his government at Winchester. The thorpe place-names in the old parts of Wessex, of which there are a considerable number, support this view. Other Norse names, such as Hurstbourn, formerly known as Up Husbond and Down Husbond, are clearly Scandinavian. The forest land around Up Husband or Hurstbourn Tarrant was called Wikingelega Forest,^[24] or later Wytingley Forest, a name derived from Wikings.

These considerations open up the still larger question, What was the relationship of the Goths at the time the Gewissas settled in Hampshire to the people known as Northmen? The term Northmen had certainly a wider significance than its limitation to the Norse or people of Norway. All the four chief Northern nations of antiquity, Goths, Danes, Norse, and Swedes, spoke the old Norrena dialects or language,^[25] of which the best-written example that exists is the Icelandic, the later representative of the language carried to Iceland by the colony of Northmen who settled there. The custom of partible inheritance among all the sons equally not only prevailed among the ancient Goths, but also among the ancient Northmen. It survives both in Gothland and in Norway to the present day. The system of udal or odal right is the foundation of the whole social system of Norway, and to it the people have tenaciously clung for long centuries, during all the political changes through which Norway has passed, or the political crises to which it has been subjected. One of the incidents of this odal right at the present time is that one of the sons has by custom the right to pay the others their share of the estate if they all agree. This one is also by custom the eldest.

The allodial tenure that existed at the time of the Domesday Survey on the manors along the western border of Hampshire and other parts of that county was apparently of the same nature as the odal right still in operation in Norway. It may have been introduced into Hampshire at the time of the settlement of the confederated invaders, the Gewissas, or by a later settlement after one or other of the Danish inroads. That this tenure existed in some parts of the county and not in others is not surprising when we consider that the original settlers were not all of the same race, but Gewissas, confederates, or assured allies of several tribes or nations. Wallop, close to the western border of the county, presents a good example of the equal right of sons to share their father’s estate. A manor there was at the time of the Norman Survey held ‘by four Englishmen, whose father held the land in allodium.’ This appears to be a case exactly parallel to the custom of Kent, the father’s land being divided equally between his sons, but yet the whole, land taxed collectively. We must also remember that parage or parcenary tenure, by which one tenant was responsible, but others shared with him, was not the same as allodial. The land was in both cases family land, held collectively in the former case, and by one of the family in the latter. This is clearly seen in the manors and tenures of the Isle of Wight, mentioned in Domesday Book, where twenty-one tenures in parage are named and thirty in allodium. Under this odal or udal tenure in Norway at the present time all the kindred of the udalman in possession are what is called odelsbaarn to his land, and have in the order of consanguinity a certain interest in it, called odelsbaarn ret.^[26] Hence, if the udalman in possession should sell or alienate his land, the next of kin is entitled to redeem it on repaying the purchase-money, and should he decline to do so, it is in the power of the one next to him to claim his right and recover the property to the family or kindred. The effect of this custom is evidently, to a certain degree, to entail the land upon the kindred of the udalman. It affords us a glimpse of the probable operation of the early Anglo-Saxon mægth, which did not as a collective body of kindred own land, but everyone in the mægth or kindred had obligations to the others in the same mægth, with certain reversionary rights.

From the consideration of the historical evidence relating to the settlers of Hampshire, the survival for centuries of the term Gewissas as their original collective name, and the various customs and tenures which existed in so marked a way at the time of the Domesday Survey, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Goths or Jutes must have had much in common with those afterwards known by the general name of Northmen, and from the evidence of the runes it is certain that there was a close connection between the Goths and Angles on the one hand and the Norse on the other.

The darker-complexioned people among the invaders and colonists of England during the Anglo-Saxon period were probably some of the Wendish or Northern Serbian race who were at that time in alliance with other Northern tribes. The ancient Vandals have left permanent traces of their extensive conquests more or less in alliance with the Goths. Their settlements extended from North Africa and Spain to the present Slav states of Eastern Europe, and thence northwards to the Baltic. Along this extended line of ancient Vandal occupation we find historical evidence or other traces of their allies, the Goths. If they were allies, at times, in other parts of Europe, there cannot be much room for doubt that they may also have been allies in England. The evidence of the settlement of some Wends among the Gewissas of Hampshire is derived partly from the county itself, and partly from traces of them in Wiltshire and Dorset. There are nine manors in Hampshire on which borough-English has been traced. The historical statement of Bede that Rugians were among the ancestors of the people of England living in his time cannot be explained away. In Bede’s time there must have been a common knowledge that part of the English people were descended from Rugians, and these were Wends, the Isle of Rügen being the chief seat of Vandal worship in the North of Europe.

In the parts of South Hampshire which were occupied by the Goths we find the early names Ruwanoringa^[27] in a Saxon charter and Ruenore^[28] in Domesday Book for a place now called Rowner. The equivalence of the old g sound in such names as Rügen to that of the later w is proved by the oldest records of both Germany and England. These names of the Saxon period certainly appear to indicate a settlement of Rugians—i.e., Wends or Vandals. Attention has already been drawn to the various names by which ancient tribes were known. The name Rugians is, perhaps, a native name, and used as their own designation by these people themselves. They were certainly called Wends by the ancient Germans, including Saxons and Frisians. By the Northern nations, including the Northern Goths, the Vandals were called Vindr or Vinthr, whence probably our tribal or personal name Winthr or Winter. In English localities with settlements of Goths and others speaking the same language, which had here and there also settlements of Vandals, these latter would naturally be known to their neighbours as those of the Winthr, and the bearing of this on English place-names will be fully discussed in the next chapter. In other localities where Frisians, Saxons, and others speaking German dialects had here and there similar Vandal settlements among them, these neighbours would be designated Wends or Wendeles. In other districts it is reasonable to suppose that Vandals may have retained their tribal names, such as Rugians or Wilte, and the latter appears in the early Saxon name of the Wilsæte or Wiltshire settlers. It is not suggested that all the people of Wiltshire were descendants of the Wilte, but the name Wilsætas may have arisen owing to an original settlement of these people in the south of the county.

One of the most remarkable boundary names which we meet with in Anglo-Saxon charters is that of crundel. The name survives as a village name in that of Crondall in the north-east of Hampshire, where the extensive ancient manor of this name formed the north-eastern boundary of the county. The name is now confined to the village and parish which still forms part of the county border, but in Saxon time Crundele was the name of the hundred or great manor which extended from Yateley in the north to Aldershot in the south, including both these places. It was this manor which King Alfred in his will bequeathed to Ethelm, his nephew. The name crundel, however, is met with frequently in Dorsetshire, Wiltshire, Hampshire, and Berkshire, in the boundaries mentioned in charters, and less frequently in Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, and Worcestershire. The name is not a common one, and is practically confined to these counties as far as the Saxon usage of it is concerned, and where it occurs in the charters it is always as a boundary name.

The word as a boundary name may have come into use among the Anglo-Saxons from those people who were called Gewissas, for it is only found in Saxon charters relating to the counties which were settled by the Gewissas or colonised by them. Hampshire, Dorsetshire, Wiltshire, and Berkshire were the earliest counties they occupied, and after the conquests of Ceawlin and other kings, West Saxon settlers occupied parts of Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Somersetshire. The Thames forms a dividing line north of which the name crundel as a boundary does not occur in the charters. In Wiltshire the name is mentioned eighteen times, in Dorsetshire eleven times, Hampshire nine times, Berkshire fourteen times, Somersetshire four times, Gloucestershire once, and Worcestershire four times. On the Continent similar words occur in both Scandian and Slavonic countries, of which Carlscrona in Sweden and Kronstadt are apparently examples. In Central Europe the place-names beginning with the word krain occur chiefly in those parts that are or were Slavonic.^[29] The occurrence of these crundel names in Wessex, and only in those counties in which Gewissas settled, appears to connect its use with these people.

As it existed at the time of the Domesday Survey, the extensive settlement of Crondall in the north-east corner of Hampshire was certainly Scandinavian, for among the customs of that great manor, which included Crondall, Yateley, Farnborough, and Aldershot, that of sole inheritance by the eldest daughter in default of sons prevailed,^[30] as over a large part of Cumberland, and this is a peculiarly Norse custom.

1. Grimm, J., ‘Teutonic Mythology,‘ edited by Stallybrass, vol. iv., p. 1711.
2. Cart. Sax., i. 283, 284.
3. Ibid., i. 543.
4. Ibid., ii. 595, 596.
5. Grimm, J., loc. cit., iv. 1717.
6. English Hist. Review, vol. xiv.
7. Rudolph, H., ‘Orts Lexikon von Deutschland.’
8. Warsaae, J. J., ‘Danes and Norwegians in England,’ Preface, v, vi.
9. Asset, ‘Life of Alfred.’
10. Stephens, G., ‘Old Northern Runic Monuments,’ iii. 460.
11. Codex Dipl., No. 648.
12. Ibid., No. 455.
13. Beddoe, J., ‘Races in Britain,’ 257.
14. Ibid., p. 259, note.
15. Ibid., 257.
16. Mackintosh, D., ‘Ethnological Observations,’ Trans. Ethn. Soc., ii. 217.
17. Ibid., ii. 214.
18. Reeve’s ‘History of English Law,’ edited by W. F. Finlason, ii. 587.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., ii. 589.
21. Lyttleton’s ‘Tenures,’ edited by Tomlins, ed. 1841, p. 326.
22. Tudor, J. E., ‘The Orkneys and Shetlands,’ pp. 18, 19.
23. Seebohm, F., ‘Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law,’ 151, 170, 226.
24. Red Book of the Exchequer, A.D. 1155-1156, part, ii., p. 663.
25. Cleasby and Vigfusson, ‘Icelandic Dictionary,’ Preface.
26. Laing, Samuel, ‘Journal of a Residence in Norway,’ ed. 1851, p. 137.
27. Codex Dipl., No. 1263.
28. Dom. Bk., 45, b.
29. Rudolph, H., ‘Orts Lexikon von Deutschland.’
30. Baigent, F. J., ‘Records and Documents relating to the Hundred and Manor of Crondall,’ 163.