Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 29.djvu/267

 POKTIOX OF ENGLAND. 217 to Mr. StUcirt Macnagliten, and are attached to his resi- dence. The river An or Anton rises near Andover in the upper part of the count3% and passes (b}' the Test) into what is now called the Soutliampton AVater, close to the Claiiscntnm of the llomans. At what period Ilantone was changed into Southampton, and Hants into Hampshire, is a question which local authorities may be able to decide ; in the .Saxon Chronicle it is first named, and afterwards mentioned in Domesday Book as Hanton Scliyre, and the tow^n called Hantone. It is not improbable that the county was converted into Hampshire, and the town into Southampton, when Henry VIH. made Southampton a count}' itself, independent of Hampshire. South Hampton is supposed by some to have been so called to distinguish it from Northam, when the Saxons, abandoning Clausentum, moved further soutli, to the point of land upon which the town now stands. It suffered severely from the invasion of the Danes, especially in 833 ; and once Sweyn, the Dane, passed a winter there, holding the town for its ransom of .£10,000, which Ethelred the Unready had pro- mised to pay. The memory of Canute's stay here, and his rebuke to his courtiers, may well be recalled before we quit this early period of its history. During the Norman period it reached its greatest prosperity. Henry I. made it a burgh ; King Jolin gave it the first charter, and had a palace in it ; and merchants flocked here from all parts of the East. Hence sailed the Meet of Cujur de Lion for Palestine, and here the armies embarked that were to be victorious at Crecy and Agincourt. Here also Philip of Spain, attended b}'^ the Spanish and Flemish squadrons, landed to meet Queen Mar}' at Winchester. But in these embarkations, and the pageants which accompanied them, we must not forget the peaceful but all-important departure from Southampton of Wintretl, a native of Crediton, in Devon, educated at the Benedictine monastery of Xurseling, who went forth with a bnnd of mis- sionaries to preach the gospel to the savage tribes of North Germany. He is better known to us by the name of St. Boniface, the Apostle of Germany, Archbishop of ^la^'cnce, and martyr. Leland gives a good description of this town, as it was in his time, with " its eight bar gates, its great double dyke full of water, and the four towers on its walls. The East Gate is strong, but nothing so large as the ]3ar VOL. XXIX. 11 II