by Grant Allen
Even the neolithic inhabitants of Sussex, who have left us their polished flint implements at Cissbury Hill, near Worthing, must have formed, one would suppose, a single united tribe. Their boundaries must almost necessarily have been determined for them by the Downs and the Weald in the rear, and by the marshy tracts about Chichester and Romney at either end. At any rate, those were the limits of the Celtic Regni at the Roman conquest; and their villages must have been confined to the coastwise slope between Chichester and Brighton, and to the rich little valley of the Ouse about Lewes. So completely isolated was this strip of shore, south of the Weald, that the Romans allowed the native chief to rule over his ancestral dominions, and thus left Sussex pretty much to its original independence. When the English pirates began to attack Britain, Sussex was one of their earliest settlements. Its isolation made it easy to conquer, just as the isolation of East Anglia, cut off from the rest of England by the then impassable fens, made it, too, one of the first vanquished regions. The story of the conquest, told us in the myths of the English Chronicle, has yet a certain verisimilitude of its own which gains confidence in spite of critical doubts. Four Saxon chieftains landed from their keels at Keynor in the Bill of Selsea — just one of those peninsular spots (enclosed between Chichester and Pagham harbours) such as the sea-robbers always used for their first attacks — and thence they proceeded to storm and capture the Roman fortress of Regnum, on the site of Chichester. “Some of the Welsh they slew,” says the Chronicle, “and the rest they drave into the wood hight Andredeslea.” For seven years after their coming they kept to the western half of the county, probably to the immediate neighbourhood of their new capital, Chichester; but in the eighth year they again fought the Welsh, and took the coast-line, apparently, as far as Brighton and Lewes. Still the Roman fort of Anderida, or Pevensey, held out in the east, guarding the lowlands; till at last, fourteen years after the first landing, “Ælla and Cissa beset Anderida, and offslew all that were therein, nor was there after even one Briton left.” From that time forth, in all probability, the whole of Sussex became united under a single overlordship; and the overlords had their chief seat at Chichester.
So much the legend tells us: but the facts themselves, as enshrined in local nomenclature and in the blood of the people, tell us a great deal more. That the English invaders were Saxons, not Jutes or pure restricted English, is clear from the very name of Suth Seaxe, afterwards softened down into Suth Sexe and Sussex. Here, as elsewhere, too, the name is really the name of a people, not of a district. Suth Seaxe means “the South Saxons,” and Sussex is merely a corruption of that form. The name of the commonwealth is the name of the folk. That the Saxons settled pretty numerously in Sussex is quite clear from the large number of English clan-names preserved in the names of the modern towns or villages. The extreme eastern corner — practically an island, shut in by the sea, the Romney marshes, the Pevensey marshes, and the Weald — was settled by the Hastingas, whose chief seat is still known as Hastings. No doubt this was at first a separate little principality, only slowly absorbed by the lords of Chichester; and it remains to this day a separate rape. In the western slope, between the downs and the sea, English clan-names are very common. We get them at Worthing, Lancing, Patching, Angmering, Goring, Tarring, and Climping, in the simple form. The tuns of the Rustingas and the Fortingas survive in Rustington and Fortington: the hams of other clans in Beddingham, Etchingham, and Pallingham. Among the deans and hoes of the downs, we still find Rottingdean, Ovingdean, and Piddinghoe. In the Selsea district and around Chichester, the clans clustered thickly: we get their memorials at East and West Wittering, Oving, Donnington, Funtington, and many others. The fertile valley of the Ouse, whose capital at Lewes was always of great importance throughout the Middle Ages, formed another great centre for Teutonic colonisation. There we find Bletchington, Tarring, Beddingham, Malling, Chillington, and several more of like sort: while the little dale just below Beachy Head contains no fewer than ten village names of the English clan type. Beyond the downs, in the forest of the Weald, the English settled but sparingly; though even here we get a fair sprinkling of such names as Billinghurst, Itchingfield, and Fletching. Their terminations in field, hurst, ley, and den generally show that these outlying settlements were not regular colonies, hams or tuns, but mere clearings for swineherds and hunters in the great sheet of forest. Taken as a whole, however, Sussex is one of the most purely Teutonic counties in England: though many traces of Celtic blood still survive among the labouring classes, particularly in the Weald. It is usual to look upon the destruction of Anderida as typical of the fate which fell upon all the Britons of Teutonic England; but even in this, the most Saxon shire of Britain, the dolichocephalic skulls, the dark hair, and the brunette complexions of a few at least among the peasantry betoken the survival of some small remnant of the ancient race.
The consolidation of the Hastingas with the Chichester tribes is quite prehistoric. When first we hear of Sussex we hear of it as an independent and united kingdom. Separated as it was from the rest of Britain, it was the last of the English principalities to receive Christianity, nearly a hundred years after the conversion of Kent. And even when it was finally evangelised, the preachers came, not from the neighbouring Christian kingdoms of Kent or Wessex which hemmed it in on either side, but from over sea. The mark with which every English kingdom was accustomed to protect itself was, in the case of forest-girt and marsh-encircled Sussex, so effectual that the earliest missionaries came from Ireland, and established their monastery at Bosham, near Chichester. As usual, the king and queen were the first converts. Afterwards, Wilfred of York, wrecked upon the Bill of Selsea, completed the conversion of the people — or at least brought them into orthodox communion with Rome; and he placed the first Sussex cathedral at Selsea itself, now covered by the encroachment of the sea. After the Norman Conquest it was removed to Chichester, the capital town, in accordance with the Norman habit of combining the centres of ecclesiastical and political organisation. Sussex remained an independent principality till its conquest by Wessex; and even then it continued to have under-kings of its own, until its royal line became extinct. When the kingly House of Wessex raised itself to complete supremacy by its resistance to the Danes, it was still the custom for these smaller kingdoms to be bestowed as titular monarchies upon West Saxon princes, who governed them as vicegerents of the King at Winchester — just as the eldest son of our modern Sovereigns bears the title of Prince of Wales, and is actually Duke of Cornwall. So Sussex dropped gradually from the rank of a kingdom to that of a shire, and came to be amalgamated with the rest of England. Still, all through the Middle Ages the strip of coast was largely cut off from the inland districts and the capital by the barrier of the Weald; and it was not till the reign of Elizabeth that that dividing belt began to be largely cleared for the iron-smelting. Thus it is quite clear why Sussex is a separate county, and why its boundaries should be what they are. It may be accepted as the best typical instance of the English shire, as the modern representative of an old independent Teutonic commonwealth, still possessing a certain local independence and integrity of its own.
KENT AND SURREY
The right of Kent to rank as a county is quite as clear as that of Sussex. Indeed, in some respects Kent has almost a higher claim. By common tradition it is the oldest Teutonic settlement in England. It consists not merely of an old kingdom, but of two old kingdoms united into one; and it contains the chief metropolitan see of all England — Canterbury. It differs from Sussex in one respect, however, that it is not so naturally demarcated in its physical features, so that its position is rather historical and artificial than essentially dependent upon its very form. Kent (like its sister county) consists of a great rudely-central chalk mass, the North Downs, a spur of the main lump which makes up Salisbury Plain; with a slope to seaward on one side, and a dip into the Weald valley on the other. But the seaward slope descends to the estuary of the Thames; and this, with the fan-shaped expansion of the
chalk from Margate to Dover, makes up the greater part of the historical shire. The wild forest tract, from Tunbridge Wells to Cranbrooke and the Dungeness marshes, forming the old mark against Sussex, has never been thickly peopled, nor entered largely into the life of the county. Indeed, the very name of Kent is the Celtic Caint, the lowlands, and refers originally only to the open stretch of land along the river from Sheppey to London. The submerged bank off Sheerness is still known to sailors as the Cant. This riverside belt alone was the district of the old Cantii, whose name now survives in that of the first Teutonic shire in England.
In the extreme east of the county the high chalk mass which culminates in the North Foreland is cut off from the rest of the range by the dip of Minster Level, through which the Stour runs lazily in an obstructed channel to the sea. But in older times the Level was a broad arm of the estuary, known as the Wansum, cutting off the Isle of Thanet (which the Celts called Ruim) from the mainland. In spots like these the Northern pirates always loved to land; and we know that long after, during the Danish invasions, the “heathen men first sat over winter on Thanet,” and then on Sheppey. Hence there is nothing improbable in the legend which makes the very mythical Hengest and Horsa land on this island, near Ruim’s-gate, the passage or opening through the cliffs into Ruim, at the place which we latter-day English now call Ramsgate. The story goes that the English were invited over as allies by a Romano-British Prince, and were first settled in Thanet. But, getting dissatisfied with their pay, they suddenly crossed to the mainland and drove the Welsh army over the Medway. In some such way, no doubt, the kingdom of East Kent was founded, with its capital at the old Roman station on the Stour, now renamed by the English as Cant-wara-byrig or Kent-men’s-bury, which we to-day call Canterbury. This earliest principality extended probably only from Rochester to Sandwich, between the river and the Downs; and it was some years before the Roman coast fortresses of Dover and Lymne made terms with the heathen invaders. According to the legend, West Kent must date a little later. Two years after the battle of Aylesford, which gave the English the eastern half of the shire, another horde of pirate Eotes or Jutes crossed the Medway, and drove the Welsh over the Cray. “The Britons then forlet Kentland,” says the English Chronicle, “and with mickle awe fled to Lunden-bury.” That is to say, they gave up the lowland strip along the river, and took refuge in the walled Roman city on the Thames. But many of them must still have held out in the woodlands; while others became slaves of the English conquerors. It is significant that the Jutes who settled in this part of England never took their own name of Jute-kin, but adopted the title of the conquered race and became Kent-men. Their capital was the Kent-men’s bury; and their descendants yet possess many traces in their personal appearance of mixed Celtic blood. Nor must we forget that they received Christianity before any other English tribe, and that Augustine on his arrival found their King married to a Christian Frankish Princess, whose Bishop and chaplain performed service in the old Roman church of St. Martin at Canterbury. All these facts seem to show that the heathen English did not entirely kill out the native Christian Britons, as so many of our historians, with not wholly convincing force of reiteration, contend.
The East Kentings and the West Kentings are said to have formed separate communities till the days of Ethelbert, the first Christian English King, who united them into a single kingdom. In the eighth century, however, they broke up again into two principalities; and even during the earlier period the people of the several divisions must have considered themselves as distinct, since each had its separate bishopric, the one at Canterbury and the other at Rochester. Nay, within these petty principalities themselves we see traces of still earlier and smaller independent chieftainships, each no doubt representing the territory of an original colonising pirate-leader. About the end of the eighth century Kent became merged in Wessex; but it still retained its separate existence, and formed an appanage of the West Saxon kingdom, bestowed as a fief (to use the convenient terms of later feudalism) upon a son of the royal House of Winchester. Ealhmund, father of Egbert (so-called first king of all England) was thus under-king of Kent. For a time the principality passed beneath the Mercian supremacy, first under a native prince, and then under the Mercian Cynewulf himself; but when Egbert made himself overlord of all Southumbrian England, he bestowed the titular sovereignty and real ealdormanship of Kent upon his own son Ethelwulf. During the Danish troubles the petty kingdoms forgot their differences in their common resistance to the heathen; and when Ethelbert, last titular king of the Kentings, was chosen to the kingship of the West Saxons, Kent itself became in reality a mere shire of Wessex. Even during the Danish wars, however, we hear of the East and West Kentings as distinct communities. Of course, the peculiar position of Canterbury as the ecclesiastical metropolis of England is due merely to the accident of Augustine’s mission. Gregory the Great originally intended that England should be divided into two archiepiscopal provinces, with their sees at London and York; but the comparative failure of Augustine’s efforts — only Kent itself and Essex were converted during his lifetime — prevented the carrying out of this comprehensive scheme; so that Augustine was necessarily consecrated to the see of Canterbury alone, which has ever since remained the metropolis of the English Church.
The way in which Surrey came to rank as a shire is far more obscure. We know so little about its first settlement, and it passed so early under the dominion of other principalities, that we can only guess at the mode of its original organisation. A wild hilly tract, for the most part composed of high chalk downs, heathy Bagshot beds, or low Weald clay, it offered few inducements to the English settlers, who generally took up their abode in the rich alluvial lowland pastures and cornfields of the river valleys. Accordingly, the marks of Teutonic colonisation in Surrey are few and far between. While Sussex has sixty-eight village names of the English clan-type, and while Kent has sixty, Surrey has only eighteen. The hundreds tell us much the same tale. Each of these originally represented the land occupied by one hundred free English households: they were guilds of freeholders, for purposes of defence and mutual protection, numbering about one hundred members each. Now Sussex has 61 hundreds, and Kent has 62; but Surrey has only 13. The close coincidence of these two tests would seem to show that the English settled in Surrey but very sparsely. The few clan-villages are mostly in the immediate neighbourhood of London and the river — as at Newington and Kennington; while of those farther inland some bear the forest terminations ley and field. However, Surrey must have been originally an independent Teutonic principality, as its very name of Suthrige or Suthrege shows. Bede calls it Sudergeona terra; the Charters, Sudregona terra. Moreover, the name must have been given it with reference to the position of London, or at least of Middlesex, not to that of Sussex. Yet the folk, as a folk, have no name; it is not a community, but a district. We never hear distinctly of kings of Surrey; but it had subreguli, or ealdormen, in later times, one of whom signed the charter to Chertsey Abbey; and, if we may judge by the analogy of Kent and Sussex, these subreguli would be the successors of the native kings under a foreign overlordship. When we first hear of the shire, however, it was already ruled by Essex; and it passed at last, like all the rest of Southern England, under the sway of the West Saxon kings. Indeed, the silence about Surrey is always remarkable, as might be expected from its very wild and rough condition. It is only in quite modern times that proximity to London has made it one of the most populous and wealthy of English counties. As a whole, it still remains, so far as we can guess, an example of a shire having its origin in an early kingdom.
II. WESSEX
