A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE under proper supervision have added much more to our scanty knowledge of the period. As it is there is nothing to indicate the direction in which the body had been laid, or to substantiate the local story that the ewer was full of coins. Of the objects known to have been associated with the bronze vessel, the glass cup belongs to a type frequently occurring in Kentish graves, but also represented in other parts of the country, as at Desborough, Northants ; Clacton, Essex ; Southampton and the Isle of Wight. The majority of these vessels are tumblers in the true sense of the word ; for being footless, with more or less pointed bases, they could not stand alone, but had to be emptied before being set down. This may account for their popularity among a race whose drinking habits were almost proverbial ; and the discovery of such a cup with the bronze ewer seems to show that the funeral observances of the Anglo-Saxons took a similar direction. With regard to the ewer, on the other hand, the Rhine district furnishes the only parallels known. Three from the Alemannic terri- tory have been figured and described, 1 and so far as one can judge from photographs the Wheathampstead specimen is superior to any hitherto published. Though all four clearly belong to one class, the clumsi- ness and ill-proportion complained of by Dr. Lindenschmit are not so noticeable in the Hertfordshire example. This however is probably a mere accident, and would certainly not justify the inference that bronze was better worked in Britain than abroad at that period. For instance, a bowl from Walluf, which happens to be figured on the same plate as the three ewers from Germany and is now preserved in our national collection, is quite as well made as the best of the kind from the graves of Kent, and shows at least a trade connection between the inhabitants of both localities. The Alemannic vessel most like that from Wheathampstead is about an inch less in height, and came from a woman's grave at Wonsheim in Rhenish Hesse, about thirty miles south of Mayence. With it was found a bronze bowl like the Walluf example just men- tioned, and a similar bowl was associated with a second ewer at Mtinzes- heim in Baden. The remaining ewer was found in a double grave at Pfahlheim near Ellwangen in eastern Wiirtemberg, with typical Ale- mannic relics, including a stirrup and spurs. The occurrence of a pair of spurs in this interment is of importance as approximately marking its date, as it has been ascertained that till the latter half of the seventh century, at least on the continent, only a single spur was worn, and that apparently on the left heel, so as to drive the horse to the right and thus present the shield arm to an enemy. A similar argument as to date has been drawn from the presence of a stirrup, which seems to have been adopted about the same time as the pair of spurs. These Alemannic examples are enough to prove that the inhabi- tants of Kent had dealings with the settlers on the middle Rhine during the seventh century, and at least suggest that the district now called 1 Lindenschmit, Alurthumer unserer heidnischen Vorzelt, vol. iv. pi. 58, figs, i, 2, 3.
