The West-Saxon Element. 161 



to the Conqueror, who Hvecl amongst them ; whilst the North- 

 men across the Humber bid him defiance. Every one must 

 to this day notice the extreme deference, almost amounting to 

 a painful obsequiousness, of the lower classes in the southern, 

 compared with their independent manner in the northern, parts 

 of England. We find, too, mingled, however, with characteristics 

 from other sources, the West- Saxon element not only in the 

 appearance of the long-limbed Forest peasantry, with their 

 narrow head and shoulders, and loose, shambling gait, but also 

 in their slowness of perception. They betray, too, to this hour 

 that worst Teutonic trait of fatalism, observable in all their 

 epitaphs, and in their daily expression, " It was not to be," 

 applied to anything which does not take place. Notwith- 

 standing, too, their apparent servility, an amount of cunning- 

 ness and craft peeps out, which in a different .age compelled 

 the Conqueror to make ^^ecial laws against assassination.* 



Much must be set against these drawbacks. Enslaved to 

 an extent which no modern historian has dared to reveal, and 

 can only be fully conceived by the dreadful story of The Chronicle, 

 — treated as beasts rather than even slaves, — the West-Saxons 



* Of the extreme difficulty of classification of race in the New Forest 

 I am well aware. I have, however, taken such tj^iical families as Purkis 

 Peckham, Watton, &c., whose names are to be met in every part of the 

 Forest, as my guide. Often, too, certain Forest villages, as Burley and 

 Minestead, though far apart, have a strong connection with each other, and 

 a family relationship may be traced in all the cottages. A good paper 

 was read, touching upon the elements of the New Forest population, by 

 ]\Ir. D. Mackintosh, before the Ethnological Society', April 3rd, 18G1. Of 

 the Jute element, which we might have expected from Bede's account of 

 the large Jute settlement in the Isle of AVight, and Florence of Worcester's 

 language (as before, ed. Thorpe, vol. i p. 276), few traces are to be found. 

 See, however, on this point, what Latham says in his Ethnology of the 

 British Isles, pp. 233, 239. 



Y 161 



