598 EXCAVATIONS IN AN ANCIENT 



record similar ' finds ' from some thirteen English counties, to wit, 

 Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Northamptonshire, 

 Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Norfolk, Suf- 

 folk, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and the Isle of Wight. The 

 ' Horae Ferales,' p. 329, enable us to add a fourteenth county, 

 Sussex, to this list. An urn in the possession of the authorities 

 of Queen's College, Oxford, and which a short note in the 

 catalogue existing in their magnificent library may be taken 

 as localising with some probability to Faversham, in Kent, 

 gives us this county^ — in which cremation, like the paganism 

 with which it was correlated, was earlier superseded than else- 

 where by Christianity — as a fifteenth in which Anglo-Saxons 

 established themselves whilst still heathens. Berkshire makes the 

 tale up to sixteen. When we consider how distinctively Christi- 

 anity opposed 2 itself to the practice of cremation, every fresh dis- 

 covery of these distinctively Anglo-Saxon urns shows us how 

 thoroughly overrun our England was by the *" heathen of the 

 Northern sea ^ ' in the period which elapsed between the landings 



* For the rarity of the discovery of cremation urns, at least in an unbroken, un- 

 disturbed condition, in Kent, see ' Inventorium Sepulchrale,' xv, xlvi. 184, 1 86 ; 'British 

 Assoc. Keport/ 1855, p. 146; and Mr. Wylie, loc. cit. The Queen's College urn is 

 indubitably of Anglo-Saxon origin. The evidence for its coming from Kent amounts 

 only to probability, and stands thus : in Queen's College Library there is a ' List of 

 the Collection of Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek, Roman, British, and other antiquities, 

 formed by the late Rev. Robert Mason, D.D., from the collections of Messrs. Belzoni 

 Salt, Burton, Millingen, and others, 1822 to 1839.* In this Catalogue there is the 

 following entry: 'Sepulchral urns, a large and small, 2.' On the smaller of these 

 two urns, which, however, is of Roman manufacture, there is a ticket, ' Found at 

 Faversham, Kent.' The exteriors of the two urns have much the same colouration or 

 discolouration, which makes it seem likely that they came from the same excavation, 

 and they were, consequently, as we now find them, catalogued and placed together. 



* For the opposition of the Christians to the practice of cremation, see Neander's 

 ' Life of Julian,' English translation, p. 108 ; Ibid. ' Minucius Felix,' cit. p. 45 ; 'Acta 

 Martyrum,' Baron, ii. p. 290 ; Martyrdom of S. Tharacus ; TertuUian, cit, Grimm, 

 Berlin Abhand. 1849, P- 207 ; *Ep. Ecc. Vienn. et Lugundi,' fin. Euseb. H. E. v. i, 

 cit. Pusey, ' Minor Prophets,' Amos vi. 10 ; Charlemagne, ' Capit. ad. Saxon.' 789 A.D., 

 cit. Fleury, ' Ecc. Hist.' i. 44, 45 ; Gruber, ' Origines Livoniae,' cit. Wylie, ' Archaeo- 

 logia,' xxxvii. 467 ; Kemble, ' Horae Ferales,' p. 95 ; Schaaffhausen, ' Germanische 

 Grabstatten am Rheine,' p. 90; 'Jahrbuch des Vereines von Alterthums-freunden im 

 Rheinlande,* Bonn, 1868. 



^ Literary evidence for the numbers of the Saxons is furnished by such expressions 

 as those which Claudian puts into the mouth of a personified Britannia, 

 * Ne litore toto 

 Prospicerem dubiis venientem Saxona ventis.' — Lam Stilichonis, xxii. 254. 

 Evidence for the sudden and continual vexations to which Britain and other regions 



