A History of Hampshire and the Isle of Wright. 3 B�e. Part 6 (Anglo Saxon Remains) und Part 8 (The Hampshire Domesday Introd. and Text; The Winchester Survey) und Part 10 u. 20 (Religious Houses and Early Christian Art and Inscriptions).

Gute Exemplare; tls. unaufgeschnitten. - Aus dem Nachlass von Michael Richter. Mit eh. Besitzvermerk. - 3 Teile zusammen. - ANYTHING that may be said with regard to the history of the district now known as Hampshire during the fifth and sixth centuries is subject to at least two qualifications. The first arises from the very limited information that can be gathered from the few local remains of the pagan Saxon period, and the other from a possibility that the early notices in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and other records, however suspicious in appearance, may preserve some genuine traditions that cannot lightly be set aside. Nor can much positive evidence on this matter be derived from the physical traits observable at the present time in the inhabitants of this part of the country. Though form and feature may in many cases reveal facts in the history of a people otherwise unrecorded, the accidents of about 1,500 years may well impair the accuracy of deductions from data of this kind. Some information can indeed be obtained from the survival of old place-names and the physical character of the district, and valuable evidence may sometimes be gathered from the distribution of relics in the soil ; but such arguments are always liable to be overthrown by fresh discoveries, and are in any case based on accident and hypothesis. It is not till the introduction of Christianity, early in the seventh century, that Anglo-Saxon history rests on literary records, which have been continually examined and manipulated. The present chapter deals more especially with the remains and characteristics of the people of Hampshire during the obscure period of paganism, and passes into the province of the historian only where the annals seem to come in contact with the ascertained facts or provisional deductions of archaeology. As other means of determining the character of the Teutonic settlement of Hampshire are lamentably meagre and inconsistent, special attention should be paid to the geography of this part of the country. A part, if not the whole, of the coast-line lay beyond the limits of the Saxon shore, the ' litus Saxonicum ' of the Notitia Imperil; and though military and naval stations existed in the neighbourhood of the Solent, Hampshire does not appear to have been so liable to piratical depredations as the south-eastern coasts of Britain. .