A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE If analogy counts for anything, the Chilternsaetna would in the ordinary course of events have given their name to a county in later Anglo-Saxon times, and Chilternset would have survived along with Dorset and Somerset. Though the Chiltern Hundreds still mark their district, the settlers of Chiltern, like those in Elmet, the Peak of Derbyshire and elsewhere, were absorbed into more important or more convenient political divisions. Many names with the suffix saeta or saetna occur in the early records ; and though few can be located with any certainty, there is nothing in the form of their names inconsistent with the British origin of these peoples, who may have coalesced with their foreign conquerors. The Somersaetna and Dorsaetna certainly retained their independence till the middle of the seventh century, while the Magasaeta of Herefordshire and the Wilsaeta of Wiltshire were both on the British border. There may be some significance too in the story that before Caed walla won the throne of Wessex in 685 he was a fugitive in the forests of Andred and Cilton, the latter being in all probability an erroneous form of the original Ciltern. His thoroughly British name warrants the conjecture that in these isolated tracts Caed- walla found not only a refuge from his Saxon enemies, but help and encouragement from the native element that must still have been strong in his day, and probably survived to a much later date in some localities. Whatever the proportion of British blood in their veins, there is no doubt that the inhabitants of this part of the country spoke Anglo- Saxon at an early date. According to Dr. A. J. Ellis, 1 south Hertford- shire belongs to the south-eastern district, which also comprises all Middlesex, south-east Buckinghamshire and south-west Essex. Through- out the district however there is a substratum of the mid-eastern dialect, which is detected in the northern parts of Hertfordshire and in nearly the whole of Essex, also in Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire and mid- Northamptonshire. With the exception therefore of the Anglian districts of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, it may be said that all east of the Chilterns and the Northamptonshire uplands is connected by community of dialect, which no doubt took its rise in community of race among the earliest Teutonic settlers of the district, and this has been gradually modified by the speech of London during fourteen centuries. The grouping of dialects in this part of the country would thus unite Hertfordshire with Essex, and lead us to expect from archaeology some indication of Saxon rather than of Anglian influence in the county. The few results already obtained in Hertfordshire certainly show a marked absence of Anglian characteristics, but many discoveries must be made before the peculiarities of East Saxon remains can be demonstrated. To the west of the Chilterns enough has been recovered from the graves to show that the settlers in the upper Thames valley, presumably the Saxons of the west, were homogeneous and distinguishable from their neighbours ; but at present nothing has been found to link them with 1 English Dialects : their Sounds and Homes, pp. 51, 57. 252
