tion around Harrow, possibly a migration of some of the men of Kent, and we find close to Harrow a place still called Kenton.
Harrow was a great domain that belonged to the See of Canterbury from a very early date. The Archbishop’s lands, apart from the monastic at Canterbury, were only separated in the time of Lanfranc,[1] just before the Norman Survey, and Domesday Book tells us that Harrow was held by the Archbishop. It was a great estate, and possessed privileges which placed it outside the jurisdiction of the county. What we are concerned with is the probability of the district around Harrow having been settled by Kentish people of Gothic extraction. We cannot trace the custom of partible inheritance, such as prevails in Kent, as having survived at Harrow, but we can point to a time when the Archbishop was permitted to change his estates, or some of them, from gavelkind tenure into knight’s fees. This was in the reign of John, when a license was granted to Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury, to that effect.[2] The non-survival of the custom of partible inheritance on the ancient estates of the Archbishop of Canterbury in Middlesex, that were apparently settled by Kentish or Gothic people, can thus be accounted for. The settlement around Harrow was probably an early one, before the invaders had become Christian; for the most ancient name of the place—Hearge, or Hearh (genitive, Hearges)—denotes a heathen temple, and we cannot think that after their conversion to Christianity any settlers would have given the place this name. Harrow was clearly a sacred heathen site, and there was probably a significance in the early grant of this estate to the Archbishop, and in the subsequent erection on the highest site in Harrow of a church by the Anglo-Saxon prelate.
The other estate of the early Archbishops of Canterbury in Middlesex was Yeading, or, as the manor was called
