(3) The addition in some cases—most often in Flanders and in England, which were both Roman [p358] provinces—of the suffix ham to the patronymic local name, although most probably a later addition, and possibly the result of conquest, at least reminds us of the possibility already noticed that even a villa or ham or manor, with a servile population upon it, might be the possession of a tribal household, who thus might be the lords of a manorial estate.
Offshoots from Suevic tribes who became Alamanni.
(4) Considering the geographical distribution of the patronymic termination, beginning in Thuringia and Grapfeld, but becoming most numerous in Rhætia and the 'Agri Decumates,' it is almost impossible to avoid the inference that it is in most cases connected with settlements in these Roman districts of offshoots from the old Suevic tribe of the Hermunduri—viz. Thuringi, Juthungi, and others who, settling in these districts during Roman rule, became afterwards lost in the later and greater group of the Alamanni.
Forced settlement of Alamanni in Belgic Gaul,
and possibly in England.
This inference might possibly be confirmed by the fact that the isolated clusters of names ending in 'ing' on the west of the Rhine, correspond in many instances with the districts into which we happen to know that forced colonies of families of these and other German tribes had been located after the termination of the Alamannic wars of Probus, Maximian, and Constantius Clorus. These colonies of læti were planted, as we have seen, in the valley of the Moselle, and the names of places ending in 'ing' are numerous there to this day. They were planted in the district of the Tricassi round Troyes and Langres, and here again there are numerous patronymic names. They were planted in the district of the Nervii round Amiens close to the cluster of names ending in 'ingahem,' so many of which in the ninth century are [p359] found to belong to the Abbey of St. Bertin. Lastly—and this is a point of special interest for the present inquiry—we know that similar deportations of tribesmen of the Alamannic group were repeatedly made into Britain, and thus the question arises whether the places ending in 'ing' in England may not also mark the sites of peaceable or forced settlements of Germans under Roman rule.
They lie, as we have seen, chiefly within the district of the Saxon shore, i.e. east of a line between the Wash and the Isle of Wight, just as was the case also with the survivals of the right of the youngest.
If evidence had happened to have come to hand of a similar deportation of Alamannic Germans into Frisia instead of Frisians into Gaul, the coincidence would be still more complete.
Such settlements naturally in tribal households without slaves.
The suggestion is very precarious. Still, it might be asked, where should clusters of tribal households of Germans resembling the Welsh Weles and Gavells be more likely to perpetuate their character and resist for a time manorial tendencies than in these cases of peaceable or forced emigration into Roman provinces? Who would be more likely to do so than troublesome septs (like that of the Cumberland 'Grames' in the days of James I.) deported bodily to a strange country, and settled, probably not on private estates, but on previously depopulated public land, without slaves, and without the possibility of acquiring them by making raids upon other tribes?