124 INTRODUCTION. 



purposes are only to be explained on the supposition that they 

 were made by a body of men advancing from the East, and 

 gradually entrenching themselves as they extended their progress 

 towards the West. If this view is correct, and the evidence of 

 these arrangements considered strategically is certainly strongly in 

 its favour, it appears to necessitate the occupation of the wolds by a 

 people who, coming oversea, had landed upon the adjoining coast. 

 A body so large as to have constructed the fortifications in question 

 cannot be supposed to have arrived there haphazard ; they must 

 have had some previous knowledge of the country, and there must 

 have been an intention of settling in it before the invaders left 

 their own shores. It may be said that we have such a body 

 arriving there in historic times, and that to them are to be 

 attributed the works now under consideration. As is well 

 known, the Angles, coming from the mouth of the Elbe, in the 

 exact parallel of latitude with Flamborough Head, and leaving 

 their ancient seats in the country which borders on that river 

 in the lower part of its course, landed in England in considerable 

 numbers, and gradually possessed themselves of South-eastern 

 Yorkshire amongst other districts. Are they then to be looked 

 upon as the invading people who threw up these large and strongly- 

 constructed series of mounds and ditches ? I cannot think that there 

 are any sufficient grounds for attributing such an origin to them, 

 but that, on the contrary, there are strong reasons which seem to 

 be inconsistent with it. It is scarcely to be looked for that an 

 invading people would practise any new mode of entrenchment 

 upon their first arrival, and therefore we would expect to find 

 in the country from which they came some arrangements for 

 defence similar to those in question. But in that part of 

 Europe from which it is known the Angles and other nearly- 

 connected tribes emigrated into this country, very few works 

 at all resembling these in question are to be found. It is true 

 that the great line of the Dannewerk runs across from sea to sea, 

 separating the northern part of the peninsula from the rest of the 

 continent ; but if in later times it was ever anything more 

 than a divisional or boundary work, it seems probable it repre- 

 sents a line of defence constructed at a time antecedent to the 

 Scandinavian occupation of Denmark. Besides the .Dannewerk, 

 there are still existing the remains of two defensive lines, 

 apparently to protect the land of the Angles against an attack 

 from the south ; namely, the Kograben, on the middle water- 



