A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



of the dead, and there were also found coins of Constantine and Flavia 

 perforated for use as pendent ornaments. The site is half a mile from 

 Welton church, and the historian of Northamptonshire states' that many 

 skeletons have probably been found there, though of such there is no 

 detailed account. The occurrence of coins of the first half of the fourth 

 century does not fix the date of the interment, for they were in common 

 use among the Romanized Britons during the fifth and sixth centuries, 

 if not till a later date, and the excellent condition of some gold speci- 

 mens so mounted is not surprising, as it is unnecessary to assume that 

 these were in constant circulation. No mention is made of the direction 

 in which the bodies had been laid, but in view of the close corre- 

 spondence of the three sites, the conjecture is allowable that here, as at 

 Newnham and Norton, the Christian orientation was not observed. 

 The few particulars of the find point to contact with Mercia or East 

 Anglia rather than with Wessex, but the sites west of Watling Street are 

 here grouped together as contrasting with the mixed burials further to 

 the east and north-east. 



The discovery of a large number of skeletons at Passenham on the 

 same Roman road, but on the southern boundary of the county, must be 

 passed over, as the account ^ gives only a slight presumption that they 

 were of the Saxon period. The third locality in which the position of 

 the graves is not specified is on the banks of the Nene much lower 

 down, and in all probability belongs to a group including Ecton, Islip 

 and Desborough, in which the east-and-west position was adopted. It 

 will be noticed that the last three sites are about twelve miles from one 

 another and form a triangle near the centre of the county, where urn- 

 burial seems to have been prevalent till the advent of Christianity. It 

 was about the year 655 that the new faith was officially recognized in 

 this part of the country, but a century was probably needed to render it 

 universal among the common people. To this century of compromise 

 then may be attributed the burials in which Christian orientation had 

 become the rule, though certain pagan rites connected with burial had 

 still to be suppressed. 



In the gardens of Ecton House, about 200 yards north-east of the 

 church, workmen were levelling some ground in 1762 when they dis- 

 covered several bones and skulls lying in order from west to east.' 

 Among them were found two silver Saxon coins, which are described 

 as of the size of a silver threepenny piece, but the full-size wood-cut 

 which accompanies the original account shows them to have been rather 

 of the size of a shilling ; and there is no difficulty in identifying them 

 as silver pennies of ^Ethelred II., king of England from 978 to 10 16. 

 This discovery, however, does not prove the burials to be of that period, 

 for stray coins of the earlier and later Saxon periods have been found in 

 several places in the county remote from any interment. 



• Baker, History, vo\. i. p. 466; cf. Archaologia, vol. xlviii. p. 337; Akerman, Pagan Saxondom, p. xxviii. 

 The objects are in Northampton Museum. 



^ Whellan's Gazetteer o/Northants (1874), V- 573- 



' John Cole, History and jintijuities of Ecton (1825), pp. 42, 43. 



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