Page:VCH Kent 1.djvu/468

 A HISTORY OF KENT Rhine, are more frequently met with in Kent, but are rare in other EngHsh counties. The most primitive form occurred on Chatham Lines,' where two specimens with a diamond-shaped foot were also found"*; but others from Ozingell, Folkestone, Lyminge and Bifrons (two), together with one in Canterbury Museum, are of the usual form, with blunt terminals (fig. 13). A massive brooch from Bifrons with square head and circular bow' is hard to classify, but three silver specimens * of similar style but on a smaller scale (as pi. ii. fig. 2) appear to be a late form of the Jutish square-headed brooch (as pi. i. figs. 2, 3). The above represent only a small proportion of the rich harvest from Kent, and there can be no hesitation in attributing such types as the circular brooch with keystone and T garnets, the cell-work circular brooches and the small square-headed specimens with a cruciform or lozenge design on the foot, to Kentish craftsmen. One or two pieces of cell-work somewhat in the Kentish style are known on the Continent, and the Jutish square-headed brooch seems to have occurred in the Herpes cemetery ,vDcpt. Charente, but was no doubt made in England. It is clear that in the pagan period, at least, our Anglo-Saxon predeces- sors enjoyed a splendid isolation, though such objects as bronze bowls with openwork feet, spoons with perforated bowls and crystal spheres are common to both sides of the Channel. On the other hand, it would be hard to find an exact parallel anywhere to a jewelled brooch (pi. i. fig. 11), now in Canterbury Museum and probably found in the county. The cell-work seems to represent bees,° as in the tomb of Childeric, but the present specimen is later than 481, and is more likely of the sixth century. It might reasonably be expected that the exceptional number and richness of Kentish Anglo-Saxon burials would throw a new light on the racial affinities of its earliest Teutonic settlers ; but in truth the finds do little more than justify the Venerable Bede. Enough has been said to show that the grave-furniture of Kent and the Isle of Wight is different from that discovered elsewhere, and there can be no objection to explaining this phenomenon by Bede's assertion that both areas were inhabited by Jutes. Who the Jutes precisely were and whence they came are questions that will perhaps never be satisfactorily answered, but it is interesting to find some traces of the race in the physical characteristics of the present population. A peculiar cast ot features, illustrated more than once in works on the subject,'' has been regarded as Jutish, and noticed in the interior of Kent, especially near Tonbridge and Canterbury, in Wight and the Meon district of Hants.' In the 1 Nen, Brit. pi. vi. fig. 4. 2 Ibid. pi. iv. fig. 7 ; pi. xv. fig. 5 (Rhenish terminal). 3 Arch. Cant. .x. 313. = Mimoires des Antiquaires ie France, 1894, p. 137; Boulanger, Mobilier jiineraire, pi. xxv. fie. 2. » W. H. Stevenson, Engl. Hist. Review, 1899, p. 42. ' Beddoe, Races of Britain, pp. 40, 256; Ripley, Races of Europe, p. 332 and p. 316, Nos. 121, 122. « Mackintosh, Trans. Ethnol. Soc, new sei. i. 213; Harrison, Joiirn. Anthrof. Inst. xiii. 86. 380
 * Gilton or Richborough (see above), and Stodmarsh (British Museum).