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 ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS placed with the head to the west, but it does not account for the presence of" cinerary urns in cemeteries where the direction of the graves was fixed by pagan custom. It should be noticed in this connection that there is no mention of ordinary urns at Addington, Islip and Ecton, though some were discovered at Woodford. This may be due to accident or to defective observation, for all these localities were probably occupied by settlers of the same tribe. And it would be as idle to deny the presence of Angles in the upper Nene valley during the pagan period as to assign the graves at Ecton to the tenth century on the ground that coins of i^thelred were found during the excavations. The burials in this part of the county may be roughly attributed to an Anglian people of the century following the arrival of Christian missionaries in the midlands. It is however clear that even on the line of the Portway, where Saxon influence would be felt more than anywhere else in the county, there is a predominance of Anglian ornaments in the graves, and written history furnishes the clue to a rational explanation. The Angles are generally allowed to have been the most numerous among the Teutonic tribes that overran Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries, and the present name of the country testifies to the eventual recognition of the Anglians as the main factor in the population. This is not the place to discuss the boundaries of the Saxon dominion in the pagan period, but there can be little question that Wessex, to which we owe our ruling line, did not extend farther north than about a line drawn from Daventry to Warwick even in its palmiest days before the rise of Northumbria in the seventh century. It was not till about the year 650, when the Mercian dominion had been for a quarter of a century gradually spreading southwards under Penda, the champion of paganism, that the exertions of Oswiu resulted in the conversion of the midland peoples to the new faith. Penda may have penetrated into the district between Daventry and Brackley along the Watling Street, which afforded easy access from his probable headquarters at Tamworth, and although it is unnecessary to assume that any violent occupation of this territory occurred during that period, the growth of Mercia and contact estab- lished with the neighbouring tribes to the north would account for the occurrence of Anglian elements in purely pagan burials within Northamp- tonshire. It is possible that Penda's folk also advanced south-east from the centre of Middle Anglia at Leicester along the Roman road ' to the Nene valley ; but though his successor is traditionally said to have been a party to the foundation of Medeshamstede, there are reasons for supposing that the Anglians advanced from East Anglia as well as from the middle or western kingdom. The view taken in the Making of England is that Penda retained but a weak hold on the South Mercians, who may have been the same as the Middle Anglians ; and that ' the removal of Peada from his sovereignty over the Middle Anglians of Leicester shows that these too, probably with their neighbours the South 1 This highway crossed the county on its way to Godmanchester and Colchester, and is generally called the Via Devana ; but the term is not adopted here for reasons given above (p. 205). 249