ANGLO-SAXON 

 REMAINS 



ALL that is derived from the usual sources of early Anglo-Saxon 

 history about the region known to-day as Surrey might be 

 expressed in a single paragraph, which would mainly rest on 

 scraps of negative evidence, or on conjectures that are now 

 for the most part incapable of proof or refutation, and would fail in 

 any case to provide a genuine history of Surrey's beginnings in the post- 

 Roman period. The proximity of London, which explains much in the 

 later history of the county, only deepens the darkness in which its pagan 

 days are hidden ; for it must be borne in mind that in the early time 

 the influence of the city was mainly confined to the north bank of the 

 Thames and even there to a limited area. For the present purpose 

 therefore Surrey must be treated apart from the capital, and its early 

 connexions traced if possible along other channels. 



The advance of primary education and the spread of railways are 

 every day reducing the scientific value of dialectical varieties, and this 

 involves the abolition of one of the few means of grouping or identify- 

 ing the various tribes or bands of settlers that planted themselves in 

 different parts of the country as soon as the Roman power declined. 

 Greater facilities of communication have, to a lesser degree perhaps, 

 impaired the utility of anthropological research just at a time when the 

 value of that branch of science has been brought to recognition. Though 

 physical types are more permanent than peculiarities of language, there 

 is little hope of recovering by this means the characteristics and affinities 

 of the earliest Teutonic occupants of the county after a lapse of four- 

 teen centuries. While it is vain to look for fresh evidence from the 

 early chronicles, which have been for the most part edited in a 

 thoroughly critical manner, and while the physical and dialectical tests 

 are rapidly failing us, there is yet some hope that excavation may in 

 course of time provide further and unexceptionable evidence, the value 

 of which depends, not on the date of its discovery so much as on the 

 skill and accuracy of the investigator. Not to claim too much import- 

 ance for archaeological inquiry it must be confessed that its sphere is 

 limited, and of history in the wider sense the contents of graves can 

 afford but little ; but at least there is a prospect of amplifying and 

 perhaps correcting thereby the meagre records that precede the Domes- 

 day Survey. 



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