A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 
open question, towards the solution of which the common bronze brooch 
and small crystal bead, found at the same time, contribute little. 
It will thus be seen that, apart from the discoveries at Kempston, 
there is as yet little material for a history of the district now known as 
Bedfordshire before the Chronicles become explicit and trustworthy. It 
is the province of archzology to supply the links that are-missing in the 
written records, and at the same time to test the remainder ; and enough 
has perhaps been recovered from its soil to show that before the county 
was constituted there were Anglo-Saxon settlers of at least two branches 
of the race, who may have approached their future homes from opposite 
directions. It may be safely laid down as a general rule that in this 
country cremation was an essentially Anglian rite, as it is almost con- 
fined to the districts known to have been occupied by the people to whom 
we owe the name of England. Not that unburnt burials are by any 
means unknown in those districts ; they are in fact very plentiful, and in 
some parts of Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire and East Anglia both 
rites were practised almost to the same extent. But in the centre and 
south of England cremation is certainly the exception, and is very rarely 
met with south of the Thames. The presumption is therefore that the 
Saxons of Essex, Sussex and Wessex, as well as the Jutes of Kent and 
south Hampshire, preferred to bury their dead in the extended position 
generally noticed in their districts. Where both methods of interment 
were adopted in the same cemetery, as at Kempston, the question arises 
whether the two classes of burials were contemporary, and if contem- 
porary whether they indicate difference of blood among the inhabitants 
at that time. 
Brief and spasmodic as are the early entries in the Chronicle, they 
do at any rate give some clue to the solution of the question. Authen- 
tic English history may be said to begin with the supremacy of Kent 
under Ethelbert in the closing years of the sixth century. Wessex was 
meanwhile extending her borders, and as the power of the A‘scings 
declined, Northumbria came to the front and was the leading kingdom 
among the Anglo-Saxons, till the Anglians of Mercia, under the redoubt- 
able Penda, threatened the northern frontier of the West Saxons in the 
second quarter of the seventh century. In spite of sundry reverses 
Mercia maintained her rdle as the great midland power through this 
and the following century, but it was not apparently till the year 779 
that Wessex ceased to hold territory north of the Thames, and it has yet 
to be determined how far her dominion extended along the Chilterns and 
the Cotswolds before expansion was checked by the advance of the Mer- 
cian southward from the Trent. 
It is possible that cinerary urns, which occur in some numbers even 
at Long Wittenham and Frilford in Berkshire, mark in Bedfordshire an 
Anglian element in the population, before the general acceptance of 
Christianity rendered uniform the burial customs throughout English 
territory. If on the other hand cremation had here been the universal 
heathen rite, it is to be expected that the reformed burials would all be 
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