A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



the zealous excavators of the mounds. So far this accords with the 

 division already recognized on other grounds between the Teutonic 

 settlers north and south of the Stour valley, for the East Anglian 

 cemeteries generally yield cremated remains in coarse urns of pot- 

 tery, which are very exceptional in Kent and not positively known 

 in Essex. 



The condition of the remains taken up by the monks may be 

 explained on the supposition that the grave mound, which must in those 

 early days have been a conspicuous object, had probably been rifled 

 before the twelfth century, the bones being disturbed in the process. 

 Perhaps the treasure-seekers, who may have had profitable experiences 

 in Kent, were here disappointed ; and after finding nothing of value 

 with the first burial considered it useless to examine the others. It is 

 from these latter that a deduction as to the date of burial is possible. 

 The chronicle of Roger mentions that all the skeletons were not laid in 

 the same direction, some being apparently at right angles to the rest, 

 as was actually found to be the case at Saffron Walden 1 in Essex, thirty 

 miles from the site in question. 



In Anglo-Saxon cemeteries the bodies are generally found in one 

 of two positions, either with the head between south and south-west or 

 else due west. Variations between these points may in some cases be 

 due to the time of year when a particular burial took place, as the bear- 

 ings were taken no doubt by sunrise or sunset. 2 A generally accepted 

 view is that the east-and-west burials were due to Christian influences, 

 which gradually, perhaps in a century, reformed the funeral customs of 

 the Anglo-Saxon tribes. It is thus permissible to refer the Redbourn 

 interments to a time when that reform was still in progress ; and pre- 

 suming that the monks would have been scandalized to find St. Amphi- 

 balus buried with any but the Christian orientation, we may infer that 

 the bodies lying crossways were those of earlier inhabitants who had 

 not been thoroughly Christianized. 



The presumed interments at Redbourn therefore seem to be contem- 

 poraneous with the Wheathampstead burial, all belonging to the middle 

 of the seventh century. At any rate it is unlikely that the ewer was 

 deposited in a grave much later, for Wulfhere, who ascended the throne 

 of Mercia in 659, was shortly afterwards sovereign not only north of 

 the Thames but even in Sussex. Unlike his great predecessor Penda he 

 was a Christian king, and probably took as much interest in his newly- 

 won territories as Offa, who occupied the same throne during the second 

 half of the eighth century and founded the abbey of St. Albans just 

 before his death in 796. 



Half a century of missionary effort had not abolished the pagan 

 practice of burying ornaments and weapons with the dead ; but the 

 later we place the Wheathampstead burial the more difficult it becomes 



1 Essex Archaeological Society, Transactions, new ser. ii. 284. 



* An instructive table of compass-bearings is given by the late Gen. Pitt-Rivers in his account of 

 an Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Winkelbury, Wilts (Excavations in Cranborne Chase, ii. 261). 



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