people, or Jutes and Frisians, are the only races whose history and traditions tell us of Hengist, or among whom the personal name of the hero would be likely to survive. There was probably an early settlement at Crediton, as shown by the birth of Winfrith, the missionary Bishop of Germany, better known as Boniface, at that place in the seventh century.
That the early colonies of Teutonic people on the south Devon coast appear to have been either migrations from Kent or settlements of people of the same race as the Jutes—i.e., Goths and Frisians—is supported by the survival of the custom of gavelkind in Exeter and Totnes,[1] by the names of settlers in the district around Honiton, of the Hunni tribe of Frisians, mentioned by Bede as among the ancestors of the English race, and by the survival of the Kentish name in certain places along the Devon coast. As regards the custom of partible inheritance at Exeter, it was the Kentish custom, under which daughters divided the patrimony if there were no sons, and not the Welsh, under which they had no inheritance. This is a remarkable fact, and the prevalence of the gavelkind custom also at Totnes adds to its significance. The custom of the Goths and Frisians in respect to inheritance extended the shares to daughters as well as to sons, as previously mentioned.
In a grant by King Æthelstan in A.D. 938[2] to Earl Æthelstan of land at Lyme Regis, which is not far from Honiton, the name Huneford occurs as one of the boundaries. The Saxon names Hunespil, Honelanda, Honechercha, and Honessam, also, are met with in the Exon Domesday record. The Domesday name Hunitone for Honiton can scarcely have come from any other source than the head of a family named Huni, of the Hunni tribe, or from a kindred of Hunni or Frisian Hunsings. Another Domesday name in Devon is Frisehā, or Friseham, which appears to have been derived from the home of an original
