settlers of two races—viz., those in which the eldest daughter took the whole estate in the absence of sons, and those who held land called ‘molland,’ which was divided,[1] thus pointing, perhaps, to settlements there at two periods.
At Bray the original custom, which was probably inheritance by the eldest daughter in default of sons, appears to have been modified at some later time. In the thirteenth century Bracton tells us that the jurors of that place say the custom is that if a man have three or four daughters, and all marry out of the tenement of the father except one, she who remains in the father’s house succeeds to all his land.[2] This is clearly only a modification of the custom of Norway.
A considerable part of East Berkshire, stretching from the river to the border of what is now Surrey, was occupied in the seventh century by people known as the Sunninges.[3] Their name is mentioned in several Saxon charters—in the words Sunninga-wyl bróc,[4] and survives in that of Sonning on the river, Sunninghill and Sunningdale on the border of Surrey. Their district is mentioned as ‘the province that is called the Sunninges,’ so that it must have comprised a considerable area of country. The name is an interesting one, and may have been that given to these settlers by their neighbours about Wycombe and Bray, for the Sunninges were Southerners to the people near Wycombe; but there is no evidence to show of what race they were. In this district there was, however, a place called Swæfes heale, which is named as a boundary of the land at Waltham given to Abingdon Abbey in 940. As mentioned elsewhere, Swæfas is a Northern name denoting the Suevi, which is used as an equivalent for Saxons. Swæfes heale, therefore, may refer to a boundary which was the limit of the settlement of a Saxon, as Godan pearruc, mentioned in the same charter, was that
