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 A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE period (628-34) the Wonsheim burial and by inference the deposit of the ewer and tumbler in the mound at Wheathampstead. The most interesting find in Hertfordshire may therefore be said to point rather to Kent than to any other district on this side of the Channel, and certain remains from Essex may be provisionally inter- preted in a similar sense. The dissemination of Kentish types in both counties may be referred to the period when Kent was in her ascendency, though objects of the same kind discovered in the more immediate vicinity of the Thames might belong to a later date when the Kentish supremacy had given place to East Anglia under Raedwald. According to Mr. Green, 1 that bretwalda did not control the country south of the Stour ; and it is equally possible that Hertfordshire, in which no dis- tinctive Anglian remains have as yet been discovered, was likewise independent of East Anglia. Some signs of transition from pagan to Christian rites of burial have been presumably noticed in the county, and it might be supposed that this region, being so near Kent and under the Bishop of Lon- don, would at an early date have heard the teaching of the Gospel. On the other hand it must be remembered that ' in no part of England was there so much tenacity of heathenism as in London and the East Saxon realm generally.' * Even St. Cedd, whose Celtic mission succeeded where the Roman Mellitus had failed half a century before, did not apparently gain access to London, as his two seats were on the Essex coast. 8 Thirteen years later however, in 666, the see of London was again occupied, for Wini bought it of Wulf here ; and it may be assumed that the Mercian bishop Jaruman, who had been commissioned by his sovereign, had in the interval won over London to the Church. The country bordering the Watling Street cannot have remained much longer without missionaries, and it may be mentioned in this connection that the first council of ecclesiastics was held in 673 at a place that is generally identified as Hertford. Though the place of meeting was no doubt chosen as being fairly accessible from the Akeman, Ermine and Watling Streets, it may be inferred that the neighbourhood was not infested at that time by obstinate pagans. Indeed if it had been there would probably have already come to light some obviously heathen burial, exhibiting perhaps Anglian characteristics ; for by that date the Mercian, whose conversion was quite recent and perhaps still incomplete, was paramount in this region, Wulfhere extending his dominion even as far as Sussex between 659 and 675. Another discovery of Anglo-Saxon relics is supposed to have occurred as early as 1 178 at Redbourn, a village on the Watling Street beyond St. Albans. The story goes that the first British martyr himself led the way to two mounds called the ' Hills of the Banners,' where the people were accustomed to assemble, and pointed out one as the sepulchre of St. Amphibalus. Excavations were forthwith undertaken 1 Making of England, i. 269 (1897). * Canon Bright, English Chunk History, p. 88. 8 Rev. Geoffiy Hill, The English Dioceset, p. 53. 256