A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE exhibiting the circular brooches which predominate in the cemeteries of the southern midlands, and the latter some of the ordinary types of brooches to be met with in the Anglian districts. Speculation as to this apparent blending of two races in so restricted an area may lead to a better understanding of early English history, but more ample material from other parts of the kingdom is necessary before any final conclusions can be drawn from the contents and situation of pagan burials. A working hypothesis may however do something by way of stimulating research and indicating the essential points to be noticed in any future investigations of the kind. The results of the Marston find are summarized by Sir Henry Dryden in his list of relics. It appears that about two-thirds of the total number of beads found in the graves were of amber, mostly in the rough state. The description of the horse's bit, supplemented as it is by a careful drawing to scale, is interesting, as a similar specimen not so well preserved was discovered with two spearheads at Hardingstone in the year i860 and is now at Northampton. A bronze clasp, one of a pair found in grave No. 3 on the arms of a female skeleton, closely resembles some from Sleaford, Lines, and a similar clasp was recently found with some cruciform brooches of a recognized Anglian type at Holdenby (see below, p. 246). The discovery of these clasps in position is important as defining their use, and that they were originally attached by rivets to broad leather straps is demonstrated by the discovery of some imbedded in that material at Sleaford.' The brooches are generally the most numerous class of objects recovered, and warrant the attribution of the burials to a tribe or group of tribes who occupied particular parts of the country in the early Teutonic period. In this cemetery were found in all ten pairs of brooches, and a single large specimen of copper partially gilt which closely resembles one in the British Museum from Hornton in the northern angle of Oxfordshire, five miles north-west of Banbury, and only about nine miles west of the Marston cemetery. This coincidence may have been due to the operations of commerce or the fortunes of war ; and considered alone might indicate the occupation of both localities by a Saxon or an Anglian tribe. However near the two sites are to each other, it is to be noticed that a border which is no doubt older than the county crosses about half-way between them, and it is a just conclusion that at the date of the burials no hard and fast line was maintained be- tween the inhabitants on either side. It is possible therefore that the Romanized Britons had by that time retired from the south-west of what is now Northamptonshire before the advancing wave of Saxon immi- gration. Two brooches of the same form have been found on or near the borders of what seems to have been the home of the West Saxons ; one at Linton Heath, Cambs,^ to the east, and the other at Fairford, Gloucestershire,' to the west. The latter is of much ruder work than 1 Archaolopa, vol. 50, p. 387. * Pagan Saxondom, pi. xxxvii. 3 Wylie, Fairford Graves, pi. iii. fig. 2 ; Archcrolo^a, vol. xxxiv. pi. x. fig. 2. 230
