and part of Lincoln; the Middle Angles of Leicester; and the Pecsetena of Derby. The Mercians acquired the southern part of their territory around Bedford and westward from the West Saxons. The Hwiccii of Gloucestershire and part of Worcestershire were also originally under Wessex. The Hecanas of Herefordshire, the Mægasetas of west Gloucestershire and part of Hereford, the Wrocensetnas and other tribes of Shropshire, were probably always Mercian. The Derbyshire people appear to have been annexed from Northumbria, as later on were the Lancashire people south of the Ribble. Under the year 941, as already mentioned, the Saxon Chronicle describes the Mercian boundaries as extending from Dore to Whitwell’s Gate and the Humber—i.e., from Dore Valley, in Herefordshire, to near Whitwell, north-east of Clitheroe, in Lancashire, and thence south and east to the Humber. The ancient Diocese of Lichfield, which also extended to the Ribble, appears to confirm this identification of the north-west extension of Mercia.
The river Trent was apparently a boundary between people of different tribes at the time of the settlement, and even at the present time a fairer population is found in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire than in Leicestershire. The most probable view of the settlement of these parts is that the British people in the country north of this river—as far westward, at least, as Staffordshire, the Derbyshire mountains, and Cannock Chase—were expelled or enslaved by an extension of the settlers from what is now Yorkshire, or an extension up the Trent valley of the Gainas and Lindiswaras from North Lincolnshire. In this way it is probable that a compact Anglian State, which was at first dependent on Deira, was formed.[1] In any case, anthropological research has shown that both Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire have a population at the present time which is distinctly fairer than that of Leicestershire. Beddoe says of Derbyshire: ‘The type of
- ↑ Beddoe, J., loc. cit., p. 66.
