ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS 



placed with the head to the west, but it does not account for the presence 

 of" cinerary urns in cemeteries where the direction of the graves was 

 fixed by pagan custom. It should be noticed in this connection that there 

 is no mention of ordinary urns at Addington, Islip and Ecton, though 

 some were discovered at Woodford. This may be due to accident or to 

 defective observation, for all these localities were probably occupied by 

 settlers of the same tribe. And it would be as idle to deny the presence 

 of Angles in the upper Nene valley during the pagan period as to assign 

 the graves at Ecton to the tenth century on the ground that coins of 

 i^thelred were found during the excavations. The burials in this part 

 of the county may be roughly attributed to an Anglian people of the 

 century following the arrival of Christian missionaries in the midlands. 



It is however clear that even on the line of the Portway, where 

 Saxon influence would be felt more than anywhere else in the county, 

 there is a predominance of Anglian ornaments in the graves, and written 

 history furnishes the clue to a rational explanation. The Angles are 

 generally allowed to have been the most numerous among the Teutonic 

 tribes that overran Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries, and the 

 present name of the country testifies to the eventual recognition of 

 the Anglians as the main factor in the population. This is not the 

 place to discuss the boundaries of the Saxon dominion in the pagan 

 period, but there can be little question that Wessex, to which we owe 

 our ruling line, did not extend farther north than about a line drawn 

 from Daventry to Warwick even in its palmiest days before the rise 

 of Northumbria in the seventh century. It was not till about the year 

 650, when the Mercian dominion had been for a quarter of a century 

 gradually spreading southwards under Penda, the champion of paganism, 

 that the exertions of Oswiu resulted in the conversion of the midland 

 peoples to the new faith. Penda may have penetrated into the district 

 between Daventry and Brackley along the Watling Street, which afforded 

 easy access from his probable headquarters at Tamworth, and although it 

 is unnecessary to assume that any violent occupation of this territory 

 occurred during that period, the growth of Mercia and contact estab- 

 lished with the neighbouring tribes to the north would account for the 

 occurrence of Anglian elements in purely pagan burials within Northamp- 

 tonshire. It is possible that Penda's folk also advanced south-east from 

 the centre of Middle Anglia at Leicester along the Roman road ' to 

 the Nene valley ; but though his successor is traditionally said to have 

 been a party to the foundation of Medeshamstede, there are reasons for 

 supposing that the Anglians advanced from East Anglia as well as from 

 the middle or western kingdom. The view taken in the Making of 

 England is that Penda retained but a weak hold on the South Mercians, 

 who may have been the same as the Middle Anglians ; and that ' the 

 removal of Peada from his sovereignty over the Middle Anglians of 

 Leicester shows that these too, probably with their neighbours the South 



1 This highway crossed the county on its way to Godmanchester and Colchester, and is generally 

 called the Via Devana ; but the term is not adopted here for reasons given above (p. 205). 



249 



