98 



Wentssefce, belonged to the Dunssete, but [now] more rightly 

 they belong to the Westsexan." Here, two local tribes or septs 

 are evidently spoken of. Lainbarde and Wilkins, place their 

 Wentsaete in Dimetia, roughly now comprising the diocese of St. 

 David's. Mr. Thorpe suggests Athelstan's decreed frontier of 

 the Wye as the point of contact of the two nationalities con- 

 cerned in the Code. Although he does not mention G-went, 

 Monmouthshire, he seems to have been attracted by that name 

 as the probable equivalent of Wentsaete ; but " G-went " is com- 

 mon to this and many other British districts. He may also have 

 been slightly influenced by the neighbourhood of the 

 "Magesaete," about Herefordshire ; * the only example of the 

 suffix "-saete," besides Dorset, Somerset, and Wilset, 



The date of the Code is uncertain. Wilkins conjectures it in 

 "tempestate Ethelradi Regis;" but whatever may be its date, 

 it must have been far too late for the Cambrian Gwent to have 

 adjoined any people that could possibly have been called " West 

 Saxons." A " stream " is also mentioned in the Code, as if it 

 was the boundary of the rights of the two peoples. Sir F. 

 Palgrave had adopted the river Exe, in conformity with the theory 

 which he had raised out of the recorded joint occcupation of 

 Exeter, that the course of that river had divided the two races 

 of Saxons and Cornish- Welsh, east and west, in Devon ; but it 

 has been elsewhere shewn that in Exeter they were divided, 

 north and south ; and both, as far as that city is concerned, were 

 on the east side of the river. Mr. Thorpe adopts the Wye as 

 the stream suitable to his conjecture. But the nine sections of 

 the Code are evidently not only calculated for a particular and 

 limited locality, but the most important of them relate to strayed 

 or stolen cattle, " over a stream," from either people. It may 

 be a question whether both rivers, the Wye and the Exe, at the 

 parts required, are not too large for a " stream" requiring a 

 special legislation for stolen cattle. 



* This trace of a West-Saxon peculiarity seems to favour a belief, that 

 Herefordshire = "Ffery llwg" was the " Feathan leag" of the second 

 advance of Ceawlin A.D. 684, instead of the Severn Valley and Cheshire, as 

 proposed by Dr. Edwin Guest, 



