332 Notes on the Border of Wilts and Hants. 



hope, therefore, that Hampshire may have its society to help in 

 keeping alive the love of old things. You have an admirable example 

 in the person of one very well known to you, your neighbour the 

 Earl of Carnarvon. He is at this moment the President of the 

 Society of Antiquaries, in London, and personally takes a most hearty 

 and active part in its proceedings. 



I ought, perhaps, to apologise for speaking of your county as 

 Hampshire. It is commonly so called, and abbreviated into Hants. 

 But the proper name is the county of Southampton, South, to dis- 

 tinguish it from the North -avaT^ion of the Midlands. The letter jo 

 has no business to be in the name; am being merely an oral 

 corruption of Afen or Avon : if the old topographers, Camden and 

 Lambarde, are correct in telling us that the Anglo-Saxon word was 

 North-afen-dun.' 



It is also a county, not a shire : a distinction on which provincial 

 vanity sometimes lays considerable stress. The case seems to be 

 that in very ancient times the whole country consisted of little 

 principalities : varying in size according to circumstances now im- 

 possible to explain. Under the Saxons these divisions continued, 

 becoming comities, or counties under a comes or count. When King 

 Alfred divided these into hundreds and tithings, he severed, or 

 sheared off, from some counties portions which became our shires. 

 Essex, Kent, Middlesex, Cornwall, Norfolk, Suffolk, and others, claim 

 the more dignified name of county, and scorn that of shire. There 

 was a time when you of Hants and we of "Wilts were common subjects 

 of the kingdom of Wessex. Then came a subdivision, and a line was 

 drawn to sever us from you. The line, as it appears on the plan, 

 appears a very irregular one, but the reason is simple, viz., that it 

 merely followed the outline of the various parishes and manors as 

 they had existed from time immemorial. There is no distinct 

 account of the time when this was done : but it is commonly be- 

 lieved to have been King Alfred who settled the present division of 

 England. It was certainly done before the reign of William I. 

 But this is only one of many arrangements that exist, of the origin 



' Buding, on Coins, ii., p. 173. 



