Under Roman rule the prominence of agriculture was continued. Ammianus Marcellinus describes large exports of British corn to supply Roman legions on the Rhine. He speaks of the British tributarii in a way which suggests that this part of Britain under Roman rule had become subject to economic arrangements similar to those of the Belgic provinces of Gaul.
The sulungs and yokes of Kent.
The introduction, by invitation, of the Jutes into Kent and their settlement, in the first instance at all events, under a friendly agreement of payment of annonæ, may have given an exceptional character to the results of ultimate conquest. The permanent prominence of agriculture is perhaps shown by the fiscal assessment in ‘sulungs’ and ‘yokes’ instead of hides and virgates.
Early clerical influences.
The exceptional conditions of the Kentish district were continued by its being the earliest to come into close contact with the court of the Merovingian Franks, and with ecclesiastical influences from Rome. The mission of St. Augustine resulted in the codification of Kentish custom into written laws a century earlier than the date of the earliest laws of Wessex.
The peculiar character of Kentish custom may have been further maintained by the partial isolation of Kent. The kingdom of the Kentish kings, though lessened in Ethelbert’s time by the encroachment of Wessex, had maintained its independence of both the Northumbrian and Mercian supremacy or Bretwaldorship.
Apart from any original difference in custom between Jutish and other tribes this isolation naturally produced divergence in some respects from the customs of the rest of Anglo-Saxon England and may perhaps partly explain why the Laws of the Kentish Kings came to be included in only one of the early collections of Anglo-Saxon laws.
Further, when we approach the subject of Kentish wergelds we do so with the direct warning, already alluded to, of the writer of the so-called Laws of Henry I., that we shall find them differing greatly from those of Wessex.
Wergelds said to differ from those of Wessex and Mercia.
This we have said according to our law and custom, but the difference of wergeld is great in Kent, villanorum et baronum.