94 



the English and a Council of the Welsh, settled among the 

 "Dunssete." Lambarde, the first editor, appears to have used a 

 manuscript no longer known ; perhaps lost in the Cottonian fire. 

 His printed edition is consequently the only authority for the 

 Anglo-Saxon rubrics, including the general title of the Code 

 and the titles of the nine sections or clauses. In the chief title 

 he prints the word or name of the people concerned, with an 

 interpolated letter e\ " D0un-ssetas," for which reading this rubric 

 is the only authority ; and although the name re-occurs three times 

 in the body of the Code, in all three he prints it without the 

 added letter. Besides this, in his translation of this rubric 

 itself he renders it, as if it had been a word and not a name ; 

 " Dunseete " = " Monticolae " or Mountain Dwellers, disregard- 

 ing the surplus letter, which therefore, if in his MS. at all, was 

 only in the rubric. 



Yet it was upon this one various reading that Sir F. Palgrave 

 raised his theory that it was what he was justified in quoting as 

 the " Devonian Compact ;" that it was in fact a treaty between 

 the West-Saxons and the Dumnonian Britons, locally neighbours 

 in Devon. Perhaps, as he considered, an actual example of 

 the social condition which William of Malmesbury describes as 

 being what Athelstan found, and brought to an end, at Exeter. 

 As, until quite recent times u and v have been identical letters, 

 or used indifferently by ancient scribes one for the other, Sir F. 

 Palgrave adopts it as an authority for an ancient form "De^nsaete, " 

 and for saying.* "The Anglo-Saxon or English settlers" in 

 Devon " acquired the name of Defensaettas." And by this name he 

 continually calls them ; and this arbitrary and erroneous innova- 

 tion, founded solely upon this doubtful authority has already 

 taken root and been adopted into the most current modern 

 histories of those times. Mr. Freeman often writes of "the 

 Defnsaetas and Sumorsaetas," and continually uses the former, 

 as the matter of course ancient name of Devonshire men. 

 Although, with that constant regard for facts that are even 

 exceptional to his own foregone judgment, which a seeker of the 



*Proofs cclxiii. 



