1. _Saxones Bajocassini_ or the _Saxons of Bayeux_ are mentioned under that name by Gregory of Tours (§. 27. 10. 9); and in a charter of Charles the Bald there is the notice of a _pagus_ in the same district called _Ot linguæ_. Zeuss reasonably suggests, as an emended reading, _Otlinga_; in which case we have one of the numerous equivalents of those local names which, in the modern English, end in -_ing_, and in the Anglo-Saxon, in -_ingas_--Palling, Notting, Horbling, Billing--Æsclingas, Gillingas, &c., &c. Who were these? When we hear of Bayeux again, _i.e._, in the tenth century, it is alluded to as the most _Scandinavian_ or _Norse_ town of Normandy, the only one indeed where the Norse language and customs were decidedly retained. These Saxons, then, may have been Norsemen. But they may equally easily have been Angles, or Frisians; since a Norse conquest in the tenth is perfectly compatible with a German in the fifth century; and, in Britain, such was actually the case. 2. The _Littus Saxonicum_ is a term in the _Notitia Dignitatum_, which appears in three places. In chapter xxxvi, where we have the details of the sea-coast of Gaul, under the denomination of the _Tractus Armoricanus_, the first officer-- [§. 1.] Sub dispositione viri spectabilis Ducis Tractus Armoricani et Nervicani-- Is-- [A] [1.] Tribunus Cohortis Primæ Novæ Armoricæ Grannona in Littore Saxonico. _b._ CAP. xxxvii. [§. 1.] Sub Dispositione viri spectabilis Ducis Belgicæ Secundæ-- [1.] Equites Dalmatæ Marcis in Littore Saxonico. _c._ These but give us a _Littus Saxonicum_ in Gaul. The 25th chapter supplies one for Britain, and that with considerable detail-- [§. 1.] Sub dispositione viri spectabilis comitis Littoris Saxonici per Britanniam: [1.] Præpositus Numeri Fortensium Othonæ. [2.] Præpositus Militum Tungricanorum Dubris, &c. It is not necessary to go through the detail. It is sufficient to say that we find stations at the following undoubted localities--Brancaster, Yarmouth, Reculvers, Richborough, Dover, Lymne, and the mouth of the Adur. Putting this together it is safe to say that the whole line of coast from the Wash to the Southampton water was, in the reign of Honorius, if not earlier, a _Littus Saxonicum_--whatever may have been the import of that term. Looking over the preceding details we find how hazardous it would be to predicate concerning the several populations designated as _Saxons_ any single statement beyond that of their having been pirates from the north-German sea-board. Some may have been Angle, some Frisian, some Platt-Deutsch, some Scandinavian. Nay, the name _Adovacrius_=_Odoacer_=_Ottocar_, may have belonged to a Slavonian captain, whatever may have been the country of the crew. FOOTNOTES: [20] The compound is of the same kind with the English words Dor-_set_, and Somer-_set_, _i.e._, from the Anglo-Saxon _sætan_=_settlers_. [21] This is so mixed up with Danish as scarcely to be Frisian. CHAPTER X.