Jutes

Jutes. Bede's account of the Jutes is highly specific—that they were a Germanic people who inhabited a region north of the Angles and that their settlements in England had been in Kent, the Isle of Wight, and on the mainland just north of the Solent. Their leaders had been Hengist and Horsa. Modern research has modified these suggestions, holding that the differences between Angles, Saxons, and Jutes was smaller than assumed and that the Jutes are less likely to have come from south Schleswig than from Frisia or even the mouth of the Rhine. The pattern of settlement has also been queried. There is evidence from burial practices and place-names of a variety of cultures in Kent, including strong Romano-British survival, and the settlements in the west are seen as secondary migrations rather than direct from the continent. The Jutish territories around the present city of Southampton were seized by Cædwalla, king of Wessex, c.686, presumably to acquire excellent harbours and access to the sea. Nevertheless, as late as 1100 Florence of Worcester could write that the New Forest was known in the English tongue as ‘Ytene’ (Jutes). Kent retained many distinctive characteristics, including the practice of partible inheritance or gavelkind, which made for a more equal society. The kingdom of Kent, prominent in the early 7th cent., found it hard to cope with powerful neighbours and during the 8th cent. was taken over by Mercia and in the 9th by Wessex.

J. A. Cannon