A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



exhibiting the circular brooches which predominate in the cemeteries of 

 the southern midlands, and the latter some of the ordinary types of 

 brooches to be met with in the Anglian districts. 



Speculation as to this apparent blending of two races in so restricted 

 an area may lead to a better understanding of early English history, but 

 more ample material from other parts of the kingdom is necessary before 

 any final conclusions can be drawn from the contents and situation 

 of pagan burials. A working hypothesis may however do something by 

 way of stimulating research and indicating the essential points to be 

 noticed in any future investigations of the kind. 



The results of the Marston find are summarized by Sir Henry 

 Dryden in his list of relics. It appears that about two-thirds of the 

 total number of beads found in the graves were of amber, mostly in the 

 rough state. The description of the horse's bit, supplemented as it is 

 by a careful drawing to scale, is interesting, as a similar specimen not 

 so well preserved was discovered with two spearheads at Hardingstone in 

 the year i860 and is now at Northampton. A bronze clasp, one of a 

 pair found in grave No. 3 on the arms of a female skeleton, closely 

 resembles some from Sleaford, Lines, and a similar clasp was recently 

 found with some cruciform brooches of a recognized Anglian type 

 at Holdenby (see below, p. 246). The discovery of these clasps in 

 position is important as defining their use, and that they were originally 

 attached by rivets to broad leather straps is demonstrated by the discovery 

 of some imbedded in that material at Sleaford.' 



The brooches are generally the most numerous class of objects 

 recovered, and warrant the attribution of the burials to a tribe or group 

 of tribes who occupied particular parts of the country in the early 

 Teutonic period. In this cemetery were found in all ten pairs of 

 brooches, and a single large specimen of copper partially gilt which 

 closely resembles one in the British Museum from Hornton in the northern 

 angle of Oxfordshire, five miles north-west of Banbury, and only about 

 nine miles west of the Marston cemetery. This coincidence may have 

 been due to the operations of commerce or the fortunes of war ; and 

 considered alone might indicate the occupation of both localities by a 

 Saxon or an Anglian tribe. However near the two sites are to each 

 other, it is to be noticed that a border which is no doubt older than the 

 county crosses about half-way between them, and it is a just conclusion 

 that at the date of the burials no hard and fast line was maintained be- 

 tween the inhabitants on either side. It is possible therefore that the 

 Romanized Britons had by that time retired from the south-west of what 

 is now Northamptonshire before the advancing wave of Saxon immi- 

 gration. Two brooches of the same form have been found on or near 

 the borders of what seems to have been the home of the West Saxons ; 

 one at Linton Heath, Cambs,^ to the east, and the other at Fairford, 

 Gloucestershire,' to the west. The latter is of much ruder work than 



1 Archaolopa, vol. 50, p. 387. * Pagan Saxondom, pi. xxxvii. 



3 Wylie, Fairford Graves, pi. iii. fig. 2 ; Archcrolo^a, vol. xxxiv. pi. x. fig. 2. 



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