Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/272

258 Gothic influence in the junior right custom in England, by which dower for the widow is secured and succession by daughters provided for in the absence of sons. The growth of such provisions would be easy to understand on the supposition of a fusion of Goths with a Vandal tribe which had junior inheritance. The result would be a compromise, as may possibly have been the case in Kent, where, on the supposition that Wends, or some Frisian clans which had the same custom, were among the Kentish settlers, we find partible inheritance, not on the strict lines of the Gothic, but with daughters coming after sons, and the youngest son having the homestead.

The territory south of London and Middlesex, which afterwards became known as Suthereye, appears, from the custom which survived in it and its ancient topographical names, to have received as settlers Goths and Frisians, Norwegians and Wends. Some reference has already been made to them. Junior inheritance survived until modern time on many manors in Surrey, as mentioned in the chapter on Sussex. This points either to colonization from Sussex, where the same custom has survived more widely than elsewhere in England, or to the settlement of people of the same racial descent as those in the Rape of Lewes. It is not difficult to believe that colonists crossed the forest land of the Weald and settled on the lands which form the slopes of the chalk downs of Dorking and Reigate. This country of the North Downs must at an early period of the Saxon settlement, as now, have been more free from wood than the forest land of the Weald. As this same custom also prevailed at Wandsworth, Battersea, Lambeth, Walworth, Vauxhall, Peckham Rye, Barnes, Richmond, and Petersham, all of which are on or near the river, it is probable that Surrey was colonised, in part at least, by settlers who arrived by water. We may thus, perhaps, reasonably conclude from these survivals that the country was settled partly overland from Sussex and partly by other colonists who came