ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS Fig. 2. — Bronze Brooch, Tower Street (A) The other object referred to is a bronze brooch (fig, 2) of cruciform type, that seems to have been evolved in this country from the ' long ' brooch of Scandinavia, that had three knobs attached to an oblong headplate, and a long tapering foot ending in a horse's head. The present specimen was found in Tower Street, 1868, and has an expanding foot like that seen on many from the South Baltic (Prussian type) as well as from English cemeteries. A very similar brooch, with imper- fect foot, was found in Long Wittenham,^ already referred to in connexion with scroll-engraving on bronze. This analogy justifies the attribution of the Tower Street brooch to the fifth or early sixth century, and its presence in London near the Thames may perhaps be explained by some attack on or by a body of West Saxons from Schleswig-Holstein * passing up the river to their early headquarters in the upper valley. The West Saxons, whose victories in the middle of the sixth century made them masters of the southern midlands, had not as yet appropriated London ; but the East Saxons, who may be presumed to have been of the same stock, were in possession when ^Ethelbert, their overlord and the uncle of their King Sebert, sent them Mellitus as their first Christian bishop, with a see in what Bede a century later calls their metropolis. It was soon after, according to the same historian, that ^Ethelbert built the church of St. Paul ; and though the city was no doubt becoming once more the resort of merchants who trafficked by sea and land,^ it is significant that the church was placed at the western extremity of the Roman city, where land was available in plenty and there were apparently fewer habitations. It must be remembered in this connexion that the name of Middlesex does not imply an original occupation of what is now the county by the Middle Saxons. There is indeed nothing illogical or even improbable in the name, as the Middle English of the midlands are named in history, but it is practically certain that the term only arose when the counties were constituted in late Anglo-Saxon times, and London, in the earliest English period, belonged to the East Saxons and formed part of Essex, as indeed its dialect testifies to the present day. Incidentally, the name Middlesex is an additional argument in favour of the view that Wessex, of the pagan period, lay mainly north of the Thames, and balanced Essex on the other side of the forest of Middlesex. Allusion has been already made to the occurrence of similar types of relics in London and at Long Wittenham, a village just two miles from Dorchester- on-Thames, the seat of the first West Saxon bishopric. It is on the other hand remarkable that no Kentish remains have yet been identified in London, Westminster, or Southwark, and when it is remembered that up till 597, when Augustine arrived, the Cantwara were burying with their dead large quantities of jewellery, arms, and utensils, the conclusion seems inevitable that the Kentish control of London did not extend much further back, or, at least, that ' r^.C.H. Berks, i, 232 (fig. to left).
- Haakon Schetelig, Cruciform Brooches of Norway, 91.
' Bede, Eccl. Hist, ii, 3. 149
