The present chapter will examine the extent to which certain Germanic populations mentioned by Beda and other writers as having taken part in the Anglo-Saxon invasions of Great Britain actually did so; it will also inquire whether certain other populations not so mentioned may not, nevertheless, have joined in those invasions, although their share in them has been unrecorded.
The Jutes.—Did Jutes, rather than Angles or any other allied population, effect the conquest and occupancy of parts of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight as they are said to have done?
Let us suppose the case of an American archæologist, in the absence of any authentic history, reasoning about the origin of the three populations of Plymouth, New Jersey, and Portsmouth, three populations lying within no great distance of each other. He knows that, as a general rule, they are to be deduced from England; and he studies the map of England accordingly. On[233] the south-coast he finds a Jersey, which he reasonably infers is the Old Jersey, the mother-country of the Americans of the New. He also finds a Plymouth, from which he draws the same equally reasonable inference. Lastly, he sees a town named Portsmouth—and here he repeats his reasoning—reasoning which is eminently logical, cogent, and apparently conclusive. It passes without challenge or objection, and the origin of the three populations gradually loses its inferential character, and assumes that of a fact founded upon evidence. A writer who adopts his views, perhaps the very writer himself, more or less unconsciously, next believes that his doctrine has an historical rather than a logical basis, and it passes for a fact founded upon records, or at least on tradition. In such a case a sentence like the following might easily be written—"they" (viz., the populations of New Jersey, Plymouth, and Portsmouth) "came from three of the more powerful populations of England, i.e., those of Jersey, Plymouth, and Portsmouth. From those of Jersey came the men of New Jersey, from those of Plymouth the men of Plymouth, and from those of Portsmouth the men of the parts so-called." I say that such a sentence might be written, might pass as a fact, and whether fact or not, would contain an argument so legitimate as to stand against nine hundred[234] and ninety-nine objections out of a thousand. Yet the thousandth might set it aside, since certain facts might have been overlooked.
What if the name of an original Indian tribe had been Jersey (or some name like it), or Portsmouth, or Plymouth? The chances, I admit, are against such an occurrence. But what if it really happened? It cannot be denied that it would materially shake the inference. Nay more, however much that inference took the guise of a tradition or record, it would shake the statement of the author who made it, however unexceptionable.
Still the doctrine might be correct, and not only correct, but capable of having its correctness demonstrated. Let the name in question be the one last mentioned—New Jersey. Let the Old Jersey people of England be like those of Plymouth, but different from them in some definite characteristics. Let those characteristics re-appear in the New Jersey men of America. In such a case, the exceptions taken to the statement from the present existence of an aboriginal Indian population called Nujersi (for such we will suppose the name to be) would fall to the ground.
But what if no ethnological acuteness, no etymological sagacity, no minute analysis of names, traditions, or dialect had ever succeeded in detecting[235] such differentiæ, so that, despite of the endeavours of learned antiquarians, the men of New Jersey could not be shewn to differ from those of Plymouth and Portsmouth, whilst all the while the Old Jersey men did so differ. In such a case the objection that was originally taken from the previous name of the Indian tribe would stand valid.
Mutatis mutandis, this applies to Beda's statement concerning the Jutes—the statement being as follows:—"Advenerant autem de tribus Germaniæ populis fortioribus, id est Saxonibus, Anglis, Jutis. De Jutarum origine sunt Cantuarii et Vectuarii, hoc est ea gens, quæ Vectam tenet insulam, et ea, quæ usque hodie in provincia Occidentalium Saxonum Jutarum natio nominatur, posita contra ipsam insulam Vectam. De Saxonibus, id est ea regione, quæ nunc antiquorum Saxonum cognominatur, venere Orientales Saxones, Meridiani Saxones, Occidui Saxones. Porro de Anglis, hoc est de illa patria, quæ Angulus dicitur et ab eo tempore usque hodie manere desertus inter provincias Jutarum et Saxonum perhibetur, Orientales Angli, Mediterranei Angli, Mercii, tota Nordhumbrorum progenies, id est illarum gentium, quæ ad boream Humbri fluminis inhabitant, ceterique Anglorum populi sunt orti."—Beda 1, 15.
Angles, Saxons, and Jutes occurred within[236] comparatively narrow limits in Great Britain, and, within equally narrow limits, Angles, Saxons, and Jutes occurred in Northern Germany and Denmark.
The Angles of England undoubtedly came from Germany; so did the Saxons.
But did the Jutes? Let us look to the different forms their name took; and also to those of that of the Jutes of Jutland; and, when we have seen that occasionally they both took the same, let us ask whether the objection which has just been suggested against the supposed American speculations do not apply to the real English one.