of Hengist and the custom of the expulsion of a number of the young people of his country may have reasonably prevailed in Friesland. Whether they settled in England under the names Angles and Jutes, or under tribal names of their own, it is certain that large numbers of Frisians must have become English colonists under the Saxon name. The old chroniclers are, indeed, at a loss whether to make Hengist a Frisian or a Saxon. One of them says:
‘Ein hiet Engistus een Vriese een Sas
Die vten lande verdruen was.’[1]
[One was named Engist a Frisian or a Saxon, who was drivenaway out of his land]
There is direct evidence of early communication between ancient Frisia and England in the discovery in Friesland and Holland of movable objects with inscriptions on them in early tunic characters peculiar to England. At Harlingen, in Friesland, a bracteate was found which has on it large clear runes, the type of the A ( ᚪ ) being provincial English, which Stephens assigns to the fifth century. He says it was doubtless struck in England, or by an English workman in Scandinavia.[2] In Holland an English runic coin has also been found.[3]
The establishment of Frisian colonies on the north-eastern coasts of England and the south-east of Scotland during the early centuries of our era, before the end of the Roman rule in Britain, is supported by circumstantial evidence so strong that it cannot be doubted. It will be summarised in the chapters on Northnmbria. With the early Frisian colonists there must have been others of Anglian descent, among whom a knowledge of runic writing was known, as proved by inscriptions still existing.
In all countries of which early records exist we find
6
