many newer villages and hamlets. The old list shows which places in the district were probably settled first. The custom of partible inheritance in Oswaldbeck was limited to males,[1] whereas that of Rothley in Leicestershire provided for the inheritance to be divided among daughters in default of sons.[2] This latter custom points to Goths and Frisians, while that of Oswaldbeck points to Angles or Saxons, among whom male inheritance was the rule. The country of the South Humbrians, or Ambrones, a tribe of Old Saxons, may have included Oswaldbeck.
In reference to the missionary works of Paulinus or one of his contemporaries among these people, Nennius tells us that he was engaged for forty days in baptising the Ambrones.[3] As they were in all probability a tribe of Old Saxons, the statement must refer to some of them who had settled in England, and had brought their tribal name from the borderland of Frisia and Old Saxony. The old name for the river Ems, as already mentioned, was Emmer or Ambra; the country near the Humber was Ymbraland, and an old Continental tribe called the Ymbre is mentioned in the ‘Traveller's Song.’[4] Under the year 697, there is a reference in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to the South Humbrians, and there are traditions of Paulinus baptising in the river Trent. In Derbyshire there is, or was, a river named the Amber, from which Ambergate takes its name.[5] The thirteenth-century records show also that there was a place named Ambresbur’ in Derbyshire, and another of the same name in Nottinghamshire.[6] These old names and the circumstances mentioned appear to denote that the settlements of the tribe called Ambrones extended to some parts of these counties.
In the borough of Nottingham two ancient customs of
