Northmen. The only record of any political connection between Kent and Herefordshire occurs in the seventh century, when Merewald, viceroy of the Hecanas, or tribal people of that county, and brother of Wulfhere, King of Mercia, married Eormenbeorh, a princess of Kent. She was a granddaughter of King Æthelbert, and a cousin of Eormengild, who married King Wulfhere. Between the royal houses of Kent and Mercia there was by these marriages a double alliance. Merewald was also called ealdorman of the West Angles. In the eighth century we read of Arcencale as apparently part of Mercia, and by that time it had perhaps already received its Kentish or Gothic settlement, of which Goderich became the administrative centre. It is probable also that before the time of Ethelred II., King of Wessex, there had been a further settlement of Danes or Northmen along this Welsh border, seeing that officials with old Danish titles were appointed to explain the laws to the Dunsetas.
One of the proofs of Scandinavian settlements in the border counties is the hope place-names. Among the names on the coasts of Scotland and in the parts occupied by Scandinavians in that country are a large number of hope names. There were sea-shelters so named by them, such as Long Hope, Kirk Hope, Pan Hope, and St. Margaret’s Hope, in the Firth of Forth, another in the Orkneys, and Gray Hope in Aberdeen Bay. The Norse settlers in the south of Scotland also gave the name hope to inland places which were shelters between hills. There are sixty hopes in the counties of Peebles and Selkirk alone, and many more in Roxburghshire and the Cheviot country.[1] The derivation from hóp, Icelandic, an inlet of water, is clear for the sea hopes, and in the sense of land havens in exposed hilly regions for the inland places so named. The termination -hope is
- ↑ Christison, D., ‘Place-Names in Scotland,’ Proceedings Soc. Antiq. Scot., xxvii. 269.
