The name is absent

82

THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.

[book i.

The entries respecting Mercia, Eastanglia and
Wessex could hardly belong to any period anterior
to that of Ælfred. For Mercia previous to the
Danish wars must certainly have contained more
than 30,000 hides: while Eastanglia cannot have
reached so large a sum till settled by Gu‰rm^,s
Danes: nor is it easy to believe that Wessex, apart
from Kent and Sussex, should have numbered
one hundred thousand in the counties of Surrey,
Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, with parts of Berk-
shire, Somerset and Devon, much before the time
of ÆSelstan². A remarkable variation is found
between the amounts stated in this list and
those given by Beda, as respects some of the en-
tries : thus Mercia, here valued at 30,000 hides, is
reckoned in the Ecclesiastical History at 12,000

‘ The total sum thus reckoned is 243,600 hides.

’ About the year 647, Wessex numbered only 9000 hides.

only¹ : Hwiccas are reckoned at 300 : they con-
tained 600 hides; Wight, reckoned at 600, con-
tained 1200. On the other hand Kent and Sussex
are retained at the ancient valuation.

It is nevertheless impossible to doubt that the
greater number of the names recorded in this list
are genuine, and of the highest antiquity. A few
of them can be recognized in the pages of very
early writers: thus Gyrwa, Elmet, Lindisfaran,
Wihtgare, and Hwiccas, are mentioned by Beda in
the eighth century. Some we are still able to iden-
tify with modern districts.

Mercia I imagine to be that portion of Burgrcd’s
kingdom, which upon its division by the victorious
Danes in 874, they committed as a tributary royalty
to Ceolwulf; which subsequently came into the
hands of Ælfred, by the treaty of Wedmor in 878,
and was by him erected into a duchy under his
daughter Æüelflæd, and her husband. Wokensetna
may possibly be the Ga of the Wrocensetan, the
people about the Wrekin or hill-country of Somer-
set, Dorset and Devon. The Pecsetan appear to be
the inhabitants of the Peakland, OrDerbyshire: the
Elmedsetan, those of Elmet, the ancient British
Loidis, an independent district in Yorkshire: Lin-
disfaran are the people of Lindisse, a portion of
Lincolnshire : North and South Gyrwa were pro-
bably in the Mark between Eastanglia and Mercia :

ɪ The tweh e thousand hides counted by Beda (Hist. Eccl. iii. 24) to
the South and North Mercians may howet er be exclusif e of the West-
eogles and other parts of the great Mercian kingdom.

ɑ 2

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