ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS orientated in the Christian manner, with the head laid at the west end with the idea of facing the eastern sky at the resurrection. It has been already observed that no such uniformity exists in the Kempston ceme- tery, and graves are found in various directions elsewhere in the county. Hence the conclusion seems inevitable that we have to do with a mixed population which used the same burial ground but buried their dead each according to his ancestral traditions. Brooches of West Saxon type found at Kempston, ShefFord and Leighton Buzzard are evidence either of settlements from Wessex on those sites or of ready intercourse with the occupants of the upper Thames valley. Buckinghamshire has yielded similar specimens from several localities, and the conquest of Bedford rests on the same authority as the capture and occupation of the four towns in 571. Discoveries in the soil to this extent confirm the record of the Chronicle ; but if a West Saxon advance was possible under the escarpment of the Chilterns, it was also possible for immigrants from the eastern coast to gain a footing in the district. In addition to the fifth century brooches already described from Kempston, there may also be mentioned as indicating an early settlement in this part of Britain the peculiar jug-shaped cinerary urn discovered in the neighbouring county of Northampton at Great Addington. 1 The late Mr. Grant Allen in a posthumous work 3 expressed his opinion that, though the West Saxons held what is now Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire for a considerable time after their victory at Bedcan- ford, they do not appear to have made any permanent settlement in Bed- fordshire itself. ' This flat and fenny district was first really occupied by the Middle English, a tribe of Teutonic colonists who effected their entry into Britain by the Wash, and advanced towards the interior by the marshy basins of the Nene and Ouse.' Where all is so problematical, it is idle to gainsay such a deduction from the county's natural features ; but the unmistakable West Saxon stamp of brooches found at ShefFord, Kempston and Leighton Buzzard might serve as a still stronger argument in favour of its partial occupa- tion by that tribe before the spread of Christianity among them, and archeology suggests that they entered the district from the west and south-west. As already mentioned the urn-burials at Sandy, Kempston, Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard point to an Anglian connection, either with the Mercians of the midlands or with the inhabitants of East Anglia ; and another link in the chain that binds Bedfordshire to the Fen district has been discovered at Farndish in the extreme north-west corner of the county, near Irchester, Northamptonshire. In the British Museum are a number of amber beads from this site found about 1828 with a skeleton in a bank which here forms the county boundary, and with them was a small bronze brooch of a peculiar type (see fig.) al- most identical with specimens from Soham, Cambs, and Kenninghall, Norfolk, 3 in the same collection. Though no further details of the Farn- 1 V.C.H. Nortbants, i. 242. 2 County and Town in England, p. S7. 3 Another coincidence in this cemetery has been already noticed on p. 7. 189
