Page:VCH Hertfordshire 1.djvu/301

 ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS IT is generally held that the limits of the East Saxon diocese show Hertfordshire to have been originally connected with Essex and Middlesex ; and though a distinction in later times between the shire of Hertford and the districts of the East and Middle Saxons is suggested by the present names of these counties, there is nothing as yet in archeology to disprove the above connection during the pagan Anglo-Saxon period. The Thames was at that time bounded on the north by marsh and mudflat as far as the river Lea, and thence to the Chilterns by the forest of Middlesex, which may still be traced in the county, but formerly covered almost the entire area between the Colne and the Lea, no doubt extending in strips along the London clay of the eastern and southern borders of Hertfordshire. Though the subsoil of the rest of the county is chalk, which naturally produces bare and open country, the clay area, bounded by a line from Bishops Stort- ford through Ware, Hatfield, St. Albans and Rickmansworth, would encourage the growth of timber and underwood ; and in addition, much of the forest of Chiltern, which is still well wooded in parts, was con- tained in the county. The diocese of London had its origin in the charge given to Mellitus in 604 to preach the Gospel to the East Saxons ; and his seat was fixed at London shortly afterwards, St. Paul's remaining to this day the metropolitan church, though the diocesan limits have been altered from time to time. The original boundary on the north-west l shows that strips of country on the Chilterns were excluded from the diocese of the East Saxons, though incorporated with that of St. Albans in the nine- teenth century. And it is just possible that the earlier arrangement may have been due to the presence of a different tribe in the hill coun- try between the Colne and the Icknield Way, a British roadway running from Berkshire into Cambridgeshire, below the chalk escarpment of the Chilterns. The name at least of such an isolated people is not far to seek. The Chilternsaetna are mentioned in a remarkable document known as the Tribal Hidage, which has recently been assigned* on very reasonable grounds to the reign of Edwin of Northumbria, that is, to the first half of the seventh century. 1 See maps in Rev. GeofFry Hill's English Dioceses, pp. 22, 85, 394. 251
 * W. J. Corbett in Transactions of Royal Historical Society, new ser. xiv. 191.