of a Goth. If this interpretation is the correct one, Swæfes heale points to Saxons settled in East Berkshire, with Scandians, Wends, and Goths as their neighbours.
In this part of the country we also find the significant name of Cookham, mentioned in an Anglo-Saxon charter[1] as Coccham, in Domesday Book as Cocheham. As already pointed out, a similar name—Ceokan-ege—occurs in an early charter relating to Battersea. There are many examples which show that the sounds g and k were interchangeable in names of the Anglo-Saxon period. Higher up the valley we find similar names—viz., Cuxham, Coxwell, and others. These apparently have a common source, in the tribal name of the Chaucians, the Frisian tribe near the mouth of the Elbe. The Chaucians, as previously mentioned, were also called Hocings, and both forms of their name are probably met with in place-names in the Thames valley. Hocheston, now part of London, is the Domesday name for Hoxton, and may denote the settlement of a Chaucian. In the eastern part of Berkshire we find separate hundreds mentioned in the Hundred Rolls for Sonning, Bray, Cogham or Cookham, and Windsor. This Cogham hundred of the thirteenth century may be a survival of a more ancient separate local administration, as the hundreds of Bray, Sunninges, and Windsor may be, of the original settlers at these places. Another entry under the name Cocheham occurs in Domesday Book in Burnham hundred in Buckinghamshire, not far from the Berkshire place of this name, so that some of this family or kindred appear to have lived on both sides of the river.
In the north of Berkshire there is a river called the Ock, written in Anglo-Saxon charters in the inflected forms Eoccen and Eoccene, the nominative form being Eocce. Close to the west of Oxford there was a ford which is called Eoccen-ford in part of an early charter of Ceadwalla which has been preserved in a later one. There
- ↑ Cart. Sax., i. 405.
