CHAPTER XVI.
SETTLEMENTS IN THE THAMES VALLEY.
AS we proceed up the Thames from Middlesex, we meet with evidence of settlements by people of different races. This is apparent in the eastern part of Berkshire and the adjoining part of Buckinghamshire. The name Windsor, anciently Wendlesore,[1] is similar to that of Wendleswurthe, and can scarcely have been derived from any other source than the settlement of a Wend and his family, or a community of these people. When we consider that there are Wendish place-names in the south of Essex, it is not surprising to find them higher up the Thames. Wendlesore and Wændlescumb, also in Berkshire, are examples. The old place-name Wendlebury, a few miles north-east of Oxford, may have had its origin in the settlement of a family or kindred of Wends. Isaac Taylor, in reminding us of the statement by Zosimus of Vandals settled in Britain by the Emperor Probus, mentions this Wendlebury, near Bicester, in Oxfordshire, as a place that was likely to have been a Vandal settlements.[2] It may, of course, have got its name from an early settlement in the time of the Roman Empire, or a later one in the time of the Anglo-Saxon settlement, such as that of the Rugians, who were Wends, and whom Bede tells us were
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