the population is certainly Anglian. My own observations, the military statistics, and those of the Anthropometric Committee, all agree in representing the Derbyshire people as having lighter hair than all but very few English counties. East Staffordshire is also very Anglian, but no wise Danish.’[1] It is in Staffordshire and the parts of other counties adjoining it on the west and south, of all the counties in England, that traces of any Danish or Norse settlements are the least.
One of the most interesting of the old frontiers in England is that between Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire. The former county was within the later Danelaw, the latter was not. The Danish territory, as settled between Alfred and Guthrum, had Watling Street for its boundary north of Stony Stratford. As extended a century later, it included the counties of Northampton, Buckingham, Middlesex, and Hertford. There must have been a reason for this extension of Danish law over the parts of Northampton and Buckingham which are west of Watling Street, and this probably was the settlement of Danish subjects in these counties between the time of Alfred and the end of the Danish rule in England. They were forest counties, and Danes were probably given settlements in them. The old place-names in the south parts of Northamptonshire bear witness to this. We find Aynho, Farthingho or Faringho, Furtho, Grimsbury, Overthorp, Astrop, Warkworth, Thorpe, Byfield, Abthorp, Wicken, Badby, Barby, Farendone, Ravensthorp, Kingsthorp, Catesby, Kilsby, and other characteristic Scandian names. On the Oxfordshire side of this frontier names of this kind are scarcely met with. The names ending in -o may be compared with those still in use in Norway, where they are very numerous. This Scandian settlement in the south-west of Northamptonshire was probably a late one. This extension of the Danelaw frontier is significant of a change in the general population, as is also
- ↑ Beddoe, J., loc. cit., p. 253.
