Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/264

250 made by people of the same races as the people of Kent—viz., Goths and Frisians, with probably some Wends. It is most improbable that the Anglo-Saxon people who conquered London could have been any other than those of the Kentish race.

It was not until the year 491, according to historical statements, that the second Saxon kingdom, Sussex, was founded. Whatever local settlements may have been formed on the Essex coast, there was certainly no kingdom of Essex until long after the Battle of Crayford; and when it does appear, it comes before us as a subordinate kingdom to that of Kent. History, therefore, if taken alone, points to Kent as the Anglo-Saxon State which first controlled London; but there is other evidence of a remarkable kind which leads to the same conclusion. There are the customs of inheritance which survived in the city for many centuries, and on the great manors that existed around London almost to our own time, which, with other customs, bear an unmistakable resemblance to those of Kent. It cannot be said that none of these have been found in Essex, but, as Essex was subordinate to Kent in the earliest period of its history, it is but reasonable to think that some settlers from Kent may have migrated across the Thames into it. The majority of the early people of Essex were probably of a different race from the Goths, the dominant race in Kent. The Essex people were called Saxons and those of Kent Jutes, and this distinction in names must have arisen through a difference in race. Some Wends, for example, can be traced as settlers in Essex more clearly than in Kent. The name Middlesex does not occur in Anglo-Saxon records until that district became a province of the East Saxon kingdom, and the distinctive name of Middle Saxons would be likely to have arisen from geographic considerations.

When we compare the condition of the people an customs of London and the manors around it with those of Kent, and still further with those that can be traced