"_Hengist_, qui circum annum 450 Britanniam insulam cum suis Frisonibus et Saxonibus occupat." And further: "Weede nomen adhunc retinere videtur a _Woden_, qui fuit avus avi _Hengesti_, sicut _Hengestschoten_, nune prædium dominorum Oestbroek, ab _Hengisto_ nominatur."
Henschoten was ceded to the abbey of Oestbroek in 1130, and sold at the breaking up of the monasteries; and is now the property of Mr. Van Asch van Wyck. Since, therefore, the above extract must have been written before the Reformation, the belief that our forefathers proceeded from this country is by no means new; and the evidence in its support is, I think, stronger than that adduced by Turner and Lappenberg in favour of an immigration from Sleswig; indeed it seems not improbable that the first settlers, with _Hengist_ at their head, sailed from the mouth of the Eem. I have more to add in a future Number, if "NOTES AND QUERIES" can afford me space.
_Villenage._--Can any of your readers inform me at what period villenage became extinct in this kingdom? I have now before me a grant of a manor from the Crown, in the third and fourth year of the reigns of King Philip and Queen Mary, conveying, amongst other goods and chattels, the bondmen, bondwomen, and villeins, with their sequels,--"Nativos, nativas, e villanos cum eoz sequelis." According to Blackstone, the children of villeins were in the same state of bondage with their parents; whence they were called, in Latin, "nativi," which gave rise to the female appellation of a villein, who was called a _neife_. What I wish to learn is, whether the old wording of Crown grants had survived the { 328} existence of villenage; or whether bondage was a reality in the reign of Philip and Mary; and if so, at what it became extinct?
[Our correspondent's Query is an interesting one; but he does not seem to be aware that in our First Vol., p. 139., Mr. E. SMIRKE had given the names of three "bondmen of bloude" living near Brighton in 1617.]
_Roman Roads near London._--In the most ancient maps of Middlesex that I have seen, there are no roads marked out. In a folio coloured map of Middlesex, published by Bowen (the date of which is, I think, 1709, although the same map has various dates, like those of Speed, where the date only is altered several times), the roads are introduced. A Roman road appears from the corner of the Tottenham Court Road, where the Hampstead Road and the New Road now meet, running through what must now be the Regent's Park, until it reaches Edgeware, and thence to Brockley Hills, called Sulloniacæ, an ancient city in Antonine's _Itinerary_. The lanes marking this road are so different from the other roads, as to show at once what is intended; and yet, either in this same map or in another with the same route, Watling Street is printed upon the highway that leads to Tyburn Turnpike, in a manner to show the whole of that distance is meant. The Roman road from Tottenham Court, after making its appearance in a variety of other maps up to a certain date, about 1780, is nowhere to be found since, in any of the Middlesex maps. Can any of your readers show by what authority this was first introduced, and why discontinued; and if the Watling Street branched off, upon its approach to London, where did the part crossing Oxford Street at Tyburn lead to?