Excerpt from The Story of the Shire
The story of the English Shires begins with the Anglo-Saxon invasion; for the County, as we know it, is a peculiarly Teutonic institution. The Saxon Heptarchy is only a phrase; as a matter of historic fact the Norse invaders established more than seven kingdoms here.
The first was Kent, founded in 445 by two chiefs or ealdormen from Jutland, Hengist and Horsa, who came at the invitation of the civilized Britons to fight in alliance with them against the barbarous Piets of Scotland, and the equally troublesome Scots of Ireland.
The alliance was successful in its primary object, and the Jutes received the Isle of Thanet as their reward. Quarrels ensued between the new comers and their allies, who a few years later swarmed across the Wantsum, undertaking a war of conquest in which the original inhabitants were either slaughtered or dispossessed, the whilom rovers of the sea settling down on the land with their families and all their national institutions. This process, it may be noted, was repeated at each subsequent irruption.
Legend hath it that the Jutes also made a descent on the Isle of Wight, and that the mainland opposite fell into the hands of Hengist - Hengist-bury Head on the coast of Hants marks one of the natural "gateways of England" used by the early raiders, Teutonic and Danish.
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