Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/195

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CHAPTER XI.

THE JUTISH SETTLERS IN KENT.

THE settlers in Kent are of special interest from several points of view. Known as Jutes since the beginning of our history, they can, without much difficulty, be traced as regards their origin to more than one of the ancient nations or tribes of Northern Europe, and as they alone of all the early colonists in the South of England adopted as the name of their kingdom its name in the Romano-British period, Cantium or Kent, we may reasonably look among them for a survival of some people from the Roman time. The name Gutæ appears on an ancient tunic monument in Scandinavia, about 400 A.D. being assigned to it by Stephens,[1] and one of the historians of the Goths tells us that Gothi, Gatæ, and Guthi are names for the same people,[2] so there can be no doubt that Guthi, or Jutes, were of the same race as the Northern Goths. Under this name, as in the case of Angles and Saxons, other tribal people also probably settled in Kent. Bede wrote of them all under the Jutish name, and as the later chroniclers copied from him, the name Goths ceased to be used for the most part in England, but not wholly so. Asser, for example, tells us that King Alfred on his mother’s side was descended from the Goths and Jutes of the Isle of Wight. The Kentish Jutes are also

  1. Stephens, G., ‘Old Northern Runic Monuments,’ iii. 397.
  2. Magnus, J., ‘Hist. de omn. Goth. reg.,’ ed. 1554. p. 15.

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