Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/359

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Settlements in Mercia.
345

superior lord. Some tenants in these counties were very differently circumstanced in other respects in regard to the land they held, the privileges they enjoyed, or the obligations they were under, and these facts point to differences in tribal custom extending back to an early period.

The Anglo-Saxon names Huntandune and Huntedune,[1] for Huntingdon, like that of Buckingham, were probably given to it from the name of the head or chief of its original family community. There was a pagus of the Huntanga known in Frisia in the eighth century.[2] The eastern part of Gröningen in Holland appears to have been its western boundary, and the river Hunte, a branch of the Weser, to be a survival of this tribal name. As the evidence of the settlement of Frisians in England is unshakable, and the Huntanga were a Frisian tribe, the old name Huntandun may reasonably be connected with it, as derived from a settler of that tribe with his family or kindred.

There are traces of Frisians to be found in Hertfordshire and the valley of the Lea. Such names as Broccesborne (now Broxbourne), Brockhall, and Brockmans, an ancient manor connected with North Mimms,[3] suggest the settlement of Frisian Brockmen; and those of Cockernoe, Cochehamsted, an old part of Braughing, and Hockeril, close to Bishop’s Stortford, suggest similar settlements of Chaucians or Hocings; while Honesdon, or Hunsdon, is suggestive of a settler of the Hunni tribe. The parish of St. Margaret, near Ware, was formerly known as Theele,[4] which, like Mimms and others, are manorial names suggestive of Frisian origin. Like the custom on the Theellands in part of Frisia, that of inheritance by the youngest son has survived until modern time at Much Hadham and at Cheshunt in this county.[5]

Although we cannot trace the survival of junior in-

  1. Codex Dipl., 575, 579.
  2. Monumenta Germaniæ, Annales Weissem., A.D. 781.
  3. Chauncy, Sir H., ‘Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire,’ p. 530.
  4. Ibid., p. 284.
  5. Notes and Queries, Seventh Series, ix. 206.