The Scandinavian evidence already mentioned points to a later settlement between the Severn and the Wye, and also in the north of Monmouthshire. This country and that near the west of Herefordshire was part of the district of the Dunsetas, where English settlers of some kind lived side by side with the Wealas or Welsh. In Ethelred’s ordinance relating to the Dunsetas[1] provision is made for diffusing among them a knowledge of the laws they were required to obey, and it is expressly stated that twelve lahmen shall explain the law to both the Wealas and the English, of whom six shall be English and six Welsh. The significance of this ordinance is in the legal terms used[2] lahcop, Old Norse lögkaup, and witword, Old Norse vitorth. The term lahmen is also Danish, and is mentioned in Domesday Book in connection with the administration of the Danish towns, such as Stamford. The names lawrightmen and lawmen survived in Shetland until comparatively modern times.[3] There is also a reference to the twelve lahmen in the ‘Senatus consultum de Monticolis Walliæ,’[4] who were, apparently, the successors of those appointed for the Dunsetas a century earlier. If the English people among the Dunsetas had not been of Danish or Northern descent, Norrena or Danish names for legal officials and legal terms would not have been used in this ordinance. Sweden and Gothland in olden time were the land of lagmen or lahmen, for the whole territory was a confederation of commonwealths, each with its assembly of freemen, law-speaker and laws.[5]
From the evidence relating to Archenfeld there can be little doubt of an early settlement of Kentish colonists or Goths in that district, as there was, perhaps, in other parts of the same county, and a later settlement of
