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Rh Jutes, Angles, and Saxons were in contact in the Danish peninsula and the adjoining part of North Germany, and also in contact in England. Under these circumstances it was a logical inference that the Angles came from Anglen and the Jutes from Jutland, but this is probably only true in part. Jutland may have been a Jutish colony like Kent and the Isle of Wight, and probably an earlier one, seeing that it is so much nearer to the original homeland of the Gothic race in Scandinavia, but that would not necessarily imply that all the Jutes came from Jutland.

Whatever may have been the origin of their name, it is probable that they were, like the modern Danes, men of more than average stature. It has been commonly assumed that during the inroads into the countries that were provinces of the Roman Empire, and the settlement of people who gave rise to new nations therein, only Britain was attacked by bands of Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. We do not read of conquests by these nations elsewhere. Some of the Saxons are, indeed, said to have accompanied their neighbours, the Lombards, in their great Southern expedition and invasion of Italy, but little is known of this alliance.

Apart from the statement of Bede, whose list of tribes from which the Old English of his time were known to have descended, is not repeated by the later chroniclers, it would seem improbable that, in the general rush for new territory, two or three German tribes or nations should have had left to them the island of Britain as a kind of exclusive territory for conquest and settlement. Bede, the earliest Anglo-Saxon historian, wrote, no doubt, according to the best information current in his day, and his statement concerning the many German tribes from which the English were descended is supported by modern research. Tradition cannot be altogether neglected. In all old countries there comes a time when history dawns, but men lived and died before 4—2