Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/365

Rh vale of the Severn, and more particularly in the parts east of that river. The collected homestead system which now prevails over so large a part of Holstein is probably due to the survival of the Anglian type of village in one of the homelands of the Angles, and so many of the collected villages of the East Midland counties are probably survivals, in plan, of the Anglian immigrants.

As regards possible British survivals among the Anglo-Saxon people of the old Mercian shires, we must look for any traces of them, apart from the country along the Welsh border, in those districts which were chiefly characterized by forests and fens. In the fen district of Huntingdonshire we meet with traces of people of British descent as late as the beginning of the eleventh century, for the early historian of Ramsay alludes to ‘Britones latrones,’ or Welsh robbers, as still possible in that part of the country as late as the time of King Cnut. The Fen country was long a stronghold of Britons, as of Anglo-Saxons after them.

There are incidental traces showing that during the Anglo-Saxon period some Wilisc men—i.e., Welsh or British—lived in Mercia, as well as in Northumbria and Wessex. These were treated as strangers, and their wergeld was only half that of others of the same class. They were outside the kindred organization, so that in the case of crime being imputed to them they could only prove their innocence by the ordeal, the oaths of their family relations not being acceptable, as they were not accounted freemen.