ANGLO-SAXON 

 REMAINS 



IT is generally held that the limits of the East Saxon diocese show 

 Hertfordshire to have been originally connected with Essex and 

 Middlesex ; and though a distinction in later times between the 



shire of Hertford and the districts of the East and Middle Saxons 

 is suggested by the present names of these counties, there is nothing as 

 yet in archeology to disprove the above connection during the pagan 

 Anglo-Saxon period. The Thames was at that time bounded on the 

 north by marsh and mudflat as far as the river Lea, and thence to the 

 Chilterns by the forest of Middlesex, which may still be traced in the 

 county, but formerly covered almost the entire area between the Colne 

 and the Lea, no doubt extending in strips along the London clay of the 

 eastern and southern borders of Hertfordshire. Though the subsoil of 

 the rest of the county is chalk, which naturally produces bare and 

 open country, the clay area, bounded by a line from Bishops Stort- 

 ford through Ware, Hatfield, St. Albans and Rickmansworth, would 

 encourage the growth of timber and underwood ; and in addition, much 

 of the forest of Chiltern, which is still well wooded in parts, was con- 

 tained in the county. 



The diocese of London had its origin in the charge given to Mellitus 

 in 604 to preach the Gospel to the East Saxons ; and his seat was fixed 

 at London shortly afterwards, St. Paul's remaining to this day the 

 metropolitan church, though the diocesan limits have been altered from 

 time to time. The original boundary on the north-west l shows that 

 strips of country on the Chilterns were excluded from the diocese of the 

 East Saxons, though incorporated with that of St. Albans in the nine- 

 teenth century. And it is just possible that the earlier arrangement 

 may have been due to the presence of a different tribe in the hill coun- 

 try between the Colne and the Icknield Way, a British roadway running 

 from Berkshire into Cambridgeshire, below the chalk escarpment of the 

 Chilterns. The name at least of such an isolated people is not far to 

 seek. The Chilternsaetna are mentioned in a remarkable document 

 known as the Tribal Hidage, which has recently been assigned* on 

 very reasonable grounds to the reign of Edwin of Northumbria, that is, 

 to the first half of the seventh century. 



1 See maps in Rev. GeofFry Hill's English Dioceses, pp. 22, 85, 394. 



* W. J. Corbett in Transactions of Royal Historical Society, new ser. xiv. 191. 



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