Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/274

260 and Angles had none of it, for their customs were strongly marked by male inheritance. As mentioned elsewhere, there is only one old race to which it certainly can be traced, and that is the Norwegians. We may, consequently, conclude that Norse colonists, at some time or other, settled at these western parts of Surrey. This part of the county adjoins the north-east of Hampshire, where a similar custom prevailed, and in Surrey, on the east of Aldershot, the old place-name Normandy survives.

There is an early charter relating to the grant of land at Batrices-ege, or Battersea, to St. Peter’s, Westminster, dated A.D. 693, in which Wendles-wurthe and Ceokan-ege are mentioned in the boundaries. This mention of Wandsworth shows that the name is an early one, and shows also that it could not have originated from a settlement in the eleventh century during the time of Cnut, who introduced Wends from Jomberg into England as his huscarls. The settlement at Wendles-wurthe was probably one of the early settlements of Surrey, and as junior right survived there, the settlers appear to have brought it with them. The name Ceokan-ege may refer to a man who was a Chaucian, or a settler of that race. It appears to point in any case to the only tribe who had such a name, the Chauci, settled between the Weser and the Elbe.

In the Middlesex settlement the old name for the people who lived around Harrow was ‘Gumeninga hergae.’ This word gumeninga can be traced through the Anglo-Saxon to the Gothic word guma, denoting a man, and thus appears to have come into the Old English language from the Goths. The words, gumeninga hergae denote the children or descendants of the men of Harrow, and occur in a charter of Offa dated 767. This is important, as it points to an old settlement of people of Gothic