witness to their settlements.’[1] If this migration took place at an early date, as is probable, some of these Danes of Wendish descent may well have come into England with other Danes during their earlier as well as their later incursions.
Beddoe tells us that as a result of his observations on the people of Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, compared with those of Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, he found a considerably higher percentage of dark hair and eyes in the two former counties than in the two latter. From observations on 540 persons in Leicestershire and 300 in Northamptonshire, he found the index of nigrescence to be 20·8 in the county of Leicester and 31·2 in that of Northampton; while of 500 persons observed in Lincolnshire, it was only 12·3; and of 700 observed in Nottinghamshire, it was 14·1. Regarding Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, he says: ‘There is, if I may judge by the colour of the hair and eyes, a strong non-Teutonic element.’[2] In order to account for this darker character of the people we must assume either a survival of people of a darker British race, or that a considerable proportion of brown or dark people settled in these counties with the fairer Angles and Scandinavians. It has already been shown in reference to similar observations in Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire that there are Continental areas within the parts from which Anglo-Saxon settlers came where people of a darker complexion still live, and apparently have from time immemorial.
The original Mercians formed a comparatively small State, which absorbed the Gyrwas, or Fen people of Lincolnshire, Northampton, and Huntingdon; the Lindisware of north Lincolnshire ; the South Humbrians, or Ambrones, in the north of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire,
