Allen, Grant, 1848-1899 / 2008-09-26 00:00:00


East Anglia, as its name imports, was likewise colonised by an English
horde, divided, like the men of Kent, into two minor bodies, the North
Folk and the South Folk, whose names survive in the modern counties of
Norfolk and Suffolk. But in East Anglia, as in Yorkshire, we shall see
reason hereafter to conclude that the lower orders of Welsh were largely
spared, and that their descendants still form in part the labouring
classes of the two counties. Here, too, the English settlers probably
clustered thickest along the coast, like the Danes in later days; and
the great swampy expanse of the Fens, then a mere waste of marshland
tenanted by beavers and wild fowl, formed the inland boundary or mark of
their almost insular kingdom.
The southern half of the coast was peopled by Englishmen of the Saxon
and Jutish tribes. First came the country of the East Saxons, or Essex,
the flat land stretching from the borders of East Anglia to the estuary
of the Thames. This had been one of the most thickly-populated Roman
regions, containing the important stations of Camalodunum, London, and
Verulam. But we know nothing, even by report, of its conquest. Beyond
it, and separated by the fenland of the Lea, lay the outlying little
principality of Middlesex. The upper reaches of the Thames were still
in the hands of the Welsh natives, for the great merchant city of London
blocked the way for the pirates to the head-waters of the river.
Read more


Parts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13