POLITICAL HISTORY 



THE main outlines of the political history of Bedfordshire have been 

 determined by its position ; it borders to the east on the fens of 

 Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire, while in the south it is 

 traversed by Watling Street, the great main road from London to 

 the north-west, and the Icknield Way, the route from the valley of the 

 Thames to East Anglia, which cross one another at Dunstable. The county 

 has thus been in constant touch with the movement of national life upon the 

 west and south, while its eastern parts have been less affected by the normal 

 conditions of peace or war, but more exposed to turmoil when despair or 

 revolt has taken refuge in the Fen country, as in the days of Morkere, 

 Geoffrey de Mandeville, or the 'disinherited' of the Barons' War. The open 

 chalk downs of the south, on which Dunstable Priory fed its sheep, contrast 

 with the belt of clay that lies north of them, and is crossed, in a curve sweeping 

 from Woburn along the course of the Ivel and as far as Potton, by a sandy 

 hill range that merges with the lower ground on either side and forms a more 

 fertile loam. Much of this part of the county is well wooded and has for 

 many centuries presented a succession of parks, especially along the banks of 

 the upper Ivel. The northern half of the county has a clay soil. Fertilized 

 east and west of Bedford by the Ouse, it rises northward to a plateau of un- 

 dulating clay which merges in Northamptonshire on the west and descends 

 to the wooded Kim Valley on the Huntingdonshire frontier. The northern 

 part is almost wholly arable, contains few villages, and shows the influence of 

 Northamptonshire by its church spires, which contrast with the towers of the 

 rest of the county. Till the beginning of the 19th century no made road 

 traversed the centre of this northern part, and it is now only accessible by 

 rail from Bedford by a tedious circuit. The precise line of the county 

 boundary, which has altered Uttle since the Domesday Survey, is described in 

 an Appendix, and it is here sufficient to say that while it has generally been 

 determined by physical convenience, its minor irregularities are probably due 

 to the inclusion or exclusion of particular manors. 



The story of the Roman occupation is told elsewhere. The history of 

 the district in the early part of the Anglo-Saxon settlement is very obscure, 

 but it was apparently within the territory of the Middle Angles or the South 

 Angles,^ who were already incorporated in Mercia as early as the 7th century. 

 The earliest record of the conquest of any part of it is in the year 571, 



' There is a lack of evidence on this point. Oundle, lo miles from the Beds, border, was within the 

 territory of the Middle Angles ; see Hist. Ch. York. (Rolls Ser.), i, 97 ; Beds. Hist. Eccl. iv, 21 ; v, 19. But 

 Hodgkin ?ol. Hist, of Engl, to 1066, p. 160, assigns Beds, to the South Angles. This term as a tribal name 

 does not appear to be clearly established ; in Birch, Cart. Sax. no. 154 (ann. 736) and Symeon of Durham, 

 Hist. (Rolls Ser.), i, 54, it is used generally for the Angles (or the English) south of the Humber. 



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