POLITICAL HISTORY 



the highest levels in the county.^ As regards physical conditions there is 

 thus no reason why Dorset should not have been one of the most thickly 

 wooded of the southern counties. The theory of the main inhabited tracts, 

 before the Saxon conquest, being the ' natural clearings ' of the chalk 

 outcrop ' receives confirmation from the fact that Celtic village-remains follow 

 to a large extent the lines of ungravelled down/ Geography makes reasonable, 

 on this supposition, the West Saxon advance from the north. The very 

 places said to have been chosen for incursion upon the forest area are the 

 intrusions of the chalk upon the surrounding clay, that is, of the natural 

 clearings, upon the woodland. And it is that southern shore, supposed so 

 long to have defied the Saxons, which exhibits a clay outcrop along the 

 greater part of its margin, and which has a heavier rainfall and a higher 

 mean temperature than the north of the county. To this day landing-places 

 between Weymouth and Lulworth, and Lulworth and Swanage, are few and 

 difficult ; the chalk cliffs come in many places sheer down to the sea, and the 

 shore is fringed with reefs and ledges. Such an inhospitable coast-line, 

 flanked by a range of hills all but continuous and averaging 500 ft. in height, 

 was unlikely to tempt, till earlier conquests had been exhausted. 



Whether the generally accepted story is correct or not, of the main 

 issues there can be no doubt. The Saxon conquest took place at a suffi- 

 ciently late period, when either Christianity, or the satiation of the need of 

 land and of plunder, or both forces acting together, prevented the exter- 

 mination or expulsion of the earlier inhabitants. Proofs of this are 

 both direct and inferential. No such close analysis of the Dorset dialect 

 has been undertaken as would reveal the percentage of pre-Saxon words 

 yet in use.* But the laws of Ine make it plain that an appreciable 

 British population remained side by side with the later Saxon settlers.' The 

 ' Ordinance Respecting the Dun-Saetas ' is conclusive, and could only have 

 been necessitated by the presence of such a population in large numbers in 

 Dorset.' How large a proportion that was, is shown by anthropological 

 evidence. The Welsh physical type is, and it would seem has always been, 

 dark and tall.'' Giraldus contrasts his countrymen, in their ' brunetness,' 

 with the fair-complexioned Saxons.* The relative brunetness of Dorset 

 ( I o per cent, excess brunet over blond) is even now greater than that of Somerset 

 and Wiltshire (5 per cent, brunet excess), and much greater than that of 

 Hampshire. It is in fact as high as Cornwall,' and this in spite of the 

 fact that in elevated districts some factor tends to increase blondness.^" The 

 average Dorset stature is the same as that of Devon, whereas the averages 



' Hutchins, Hist. Dorset (ed. 3), i, Ixxxvi ; Mansel-Pleydell, Botany of Dorset ; H. Rider Haggard, 

 Rural Engl. 1,257 and map. 



'J. R. Green, op. cit. 8-9. 



' Warne, Map of Anct. Dorset ; Pitt-Rivers, Excavations in Cranborne Chase, etc. 1887-98. 



* Prior, 'Introduction to a Som. Glossary' {Som. Arch. Soc. Proc. xviii). 



'Thorpe, Laws and Institutes (Rec. Com.), 45, 51, 53, 57, 60; see also Seebohm, Tribal Custom in 

 Jngl.-Sax. Law, 402-4 ; W. H. Stevenson, Life of Asser, 36, 37, 249 ; and Proc. Dors. Field Club, iii, 

 80, sqq., for a further philological argument, and for the argument from church invocations. A theory put 

 forward by Sir H. Howarth {Engl. Hist. Rev. 1898, p. 670) was answered ibid. 1899, p. 32, sqq. 



'Thorpe, op. cit. I 50 ; see also T. Kerslaice, op. cit. ; Lappenberg, Engl, under the Angl.-Sax. Kings, \, 1 20. 



'J. Loth, V Emigration bretonne en Armorijue, xix ; Reclus, Geographie universelle, II, viii, 612, is 

 here incorrect. 



'Giraldus Cambrensis, Opera (Rolls Ser.), vi, 193. 



» W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, 318. '° Ibid. 7 5 . 



