west of the county. The traditions relating to these names for Kentish people are apparently as old as the time of the settlement. The inhabitants of the eastern part of the county were certainly called ‘Men of Kent,’ and those in the western part ‘Kentish Men.’ In one of the early charters the words ‘provincia orientalis Cantiæ,’ or province of East Kent, occur.[1] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us, under the year 858, that the Danes fought with the Men of Kent (mid Cantwarum). Under the year 865, it states that they made peace with the Men of Kent. Under the year 902, we read of the Danes and the Cantwara, or Men of Kent. Similarly, in the same Chronicle we have some references to the West Kentish people. Under the year 999, we read of the Danish army going along the Medway to Rochester, and of the ‘Centisce fyrd,’ or Kentish military array, which is also mentioned as the ‘weast Centingas,’ or West Kentish men. Under the year 1009, the same Chronicle mentions the East Centingas, or people of East Kent. There appears, consequently, to be no doubt that the provinces of East and West Kent were well known in Saxon time, and little doubt that these corresponded with the diocesan divisions, or Dioceses of Canterbury and Rochester. As the runic monuments, which must be assigned to the Goths, have only been found in East Kent, it is possible that the two ancient divisions of Kent were ethnological divisions, and mainly, perhaps, between Goths in the east and Frisians in the west.
If further evidence were wanted to prove the settlement of Goths in Kent, it could be found in the earliest money that was used. Sceatts and scillings are mentioned in the Kentish laws, the sceatt being a small silver coin of a value somewhat equivalent to the later penny. In a fragment of Mercian law which has survived sceatts are also mentioned.[2] In the early Northumbrian metrical translation of the Book of Genesis, which is ascribed to
