A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



period (628-34) the Wonsheim burial and by inference the deposit of 

 the ewer and tumbler in the mound at Wheathampstead. 



The most interesting find in Hertfordshire may therefore be said 

 to point rather to Kent than to any other district on this side of the 

 Channel, and certain remains from Essex may be provisionally inter- 

 preted in a similar sense. The dissemination of Kentish types in both 

 counties may be referred to the period when Kent was in her ascendency, 

 though objects of the same kind discovered in the more immediate 

 vicinity of the Thames might belong to a later date when the Kentish 

 supremacy had given place to East Anglia under Raedwald. According 

 to Mr. Green, 1 that bretwalda did not control the country south of the 

 Stour ; and it is equally possible that Hertfordshire, in which no dis- 

 tinctive Anglian remains have as yet been discovered, was likewise 

 independent of East Anglia. 



Some signs of transition from pagan to Christian rites of burial 

 have been presumably noticed in the county, and it might be supposed 

 that this region, being so near Kent and under the Bishop of Lon- 

 don, would at an early date have heard the teaching of the Gospel. 

 On the other hand it must be remembered that ' in no part of England 

 was there so much tenacity of heathenism as in London and the East 

 Saxon realm generally.' * Even St. Cedd, whose Celtic mission succeeded 

 where the Roman Mellitus had failed half a century before, did not 

 apparently gain access to London, as his two seats were on the Essex 

 coast. 8 Thirteen years later however, in 666, the see of London was 

 again occupied, for Wini bought it of Wulf here ; and it may be assumed 

 that the Mercian bishop Jaruman, who had been commissioned by his 

 sovereign, had in the interval won over London to the Church. The 

 country bordering the Watling Street cannot have remained much longer 

 without missionaries, and it may be mentioned in this connection that 

 the first council of ecclesiastics was held in 673 at a place that is 

 generally identified as Hertford. Though the place of meeting was no 

 doubt chosen as being fairly accessible from the Akeman, Ermine and 

 Watling Streets, it may be inferred that the neighbourhood was not 

 infested at that time by obstinate pagans. Indeed if it had been there 

 would probably have already come to light some obviously heathen 

 burial, exhibiting perhaps Anglian characteristics ; for by that date the 

 Mercian, whose conversion was quite recent and perhaps still incomplete, 

 was paramount in this region, Wulfhere extending his dominion even 

 as far as Sussex between 659 and 675. 



Another discovery of Anglo-Saxon relics is supposed to have 

 occurred as early as 1 178 at Redbourn, a village on the Watling Street 

 beyond St. Albans. The story goes that the first British martyr himself 

 led the way to two mounds called the ' Hills of the Banners,' where 

 the people were accustomed to assemble, and pointed out one as the 

 sepulchre of St. Amphibalus. Excavations were forthwith undertaken 



1 Making of England, i. 269 (1897). * Canon Bright, English Chunk History, p. 88. 



8 Rev. Geoffiy Hill, The English Dioceset, p. 53. 



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