[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. 13, etc.] [Footnote 192: _Ammiani Marcellini Historiae_, lib. xxviii. c. 1. The poet Claudian, perhaps with the full liberty of a poet, sings of Theodosius' forces in this war having pursued the Saxons to the very Orkneys:-- ----maduerunt Saxone fuso Orcades.] [Footnote 193: _Inquiry into the History of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 116. See also Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, chap. xxv.] [Footnote 194: _Histor. Eccles._, lib. i. c. 1, Sec. 8.] [Footnote 195: Bede's _Hist. Eccles._, lib. ii. cap. v. (Oisc, a quo reges Cantuariorum solent Oiscingas cognominare.)] [Footnote 196: _Ibid._, lib. ii. cap. xv.] [Footnote 197: _The Saxons in England_, vol. i. p. 341.]