duction, p. xxv., to the
Historical Society's edition of Bede's _Historia Ecclesiastica_; and
also Mr. Hardy in the Preface, p. 71, to the _Monumenta Historica
Britannica_.]

[Footnote 185: The great importance attached to genealogical descent
lasted much longer than the Saxon era itself. Thus the author of the
latest Life (1860) of Edward I., when speaking of the birth of that
monarch at London in 1239, observes (p. 8), "The kind of feeling which
was excited by the birth of an English prince in the English metropolis,
and by the king's evident desire to connect the young heir to the throne
with his Saxon ancestors, is shown in the _Worcester Chronicle_ of that
date. The fact is thus significantly described:--

'On the 14th day of the calends of July, Eleanor, Queen of England gave
birth to her eldest son Edward; whose father was Henry; whose father was
John; whose father was Henry; whose mother was Matilda the Empress;
whose mother was Matilda, Queen of England; whose mother was Margaret,
Queen of Scotland; whose father was Edward; whose father was Edmund
Ironside; who was the son of Ethelred; who was the son of Edgar; who was
the son of Edmund; who was the son of Edward the elder; who was the son
of Alfred.'"--(_The Greatest of the Plantagenets_, pp. 8 and 9.)

Here we have eleven genealogical ascents appealed to from Edward to
Alfred. The thirteen or fourteen ascents again from Alfred to Cerdic,
the first Anglo-Saxon king of Wessex, are as fixed and determined as the
eleven from Alfred to Edward. (See them quoted by Florence, Asser, etc.)
But the power of reckoning the lineage of Cerdic up through the
intervening nine alleged ascents to Woden, was indispensable to form and
to maintain Cerdic's claim to royalty, and was probably preserved with
as great, if not greater care when written records were so defective and
wanting.]

[Footnote 186: _The Saxons in England_, vol. i. p. 11.]

[Footnote 187: See the inscription, etc., in Whittaker's _Manchester_,
vol. i. p. 160.]

[Footnote 188: On these Frisian cohorts, and consequently also Frisian
colonists, in England, see the learned _Memoir on the Roman Garrison at
Manchester_, by my friend Dr. Black. (Manchester, 1849.)]

[Footnote 189: Buckman and Newmarch's work on _Ancient Corinium_, p.
114.]

[Footnote 190: Palgrave's _Anglo-Saxons_, p. 24.]

[Footnote 191: For fuller evidence on this point, see the remarks by Mr.
Kemble in his _Saxons in England_, vol. i. p