Perhaps this would have been a much shorter task than either of the others, but that, at this part of the enquiry, our path is crossed by a controversy that began nearly three centuries ago, and has been ever since maintained with more or less warmth; and with so much learning, and variety of opinion, that the only point of approach, to unanimity among the contenders seems to be an acknowledgment that they have each left it unsettled. Yet this includes the question before us; whether or not the Annal 742 of the Chronicle really concerns that part of the island wherein the last of our outlying series of St. Werburghs has come to our hands. It is, indeed, believed that the newly-imported fact itself, of our finding this dedication where it is, may be a weighty contribution to the settlement of the question; yet the controversy has been so long carried on, and has involved so great an array of authoritative and orthodox scholarship; that we can only presume to pass it, by carefully and respectfully over-climbing it, and not by a contemptuous Remusian leap. This remaining sixth St. Werburgh is situated within that small peninsula of the north shore of Kent, which is insulated by the mouths of the Thames and Medway. In fact, it is not unlike a tongue in a mouth, of which Essex and the Isle of Sheppey are as the teeth or gums. A line from Rochester bridge to Gravesend would separate more than the entire district from the mainland: indeed it is all of the county of Kent that is north of Rochester. It consists of an elevated chalk promontory, about ten or twelve miles from east to west, and four from north to south, inclosing several small fertile valleys: added to which, on the north or Thames front, is a broad alluvial level or marsh, within the estuary of that river, of several miles in width. Camden says of this peninsula, “HO enim vocatur ilia quasi Chersonessus.” It is, accordingly, a large specimen of that sort of configuration of a tract of land in its relation to water, of which the name is often found to contain the descriptive syllable, “-holm,” “-ham,” or “-hoe.” Whether or not these three are dialectic varieties of one word, need not here be considered: it is certain, however, that the names of such peninsular tracts are very often found to be marked with “-hoe;” and “Hoo”[24] is the name of the hundred which still constitutes the largest and most prominent portion of this peninsula. So it was already called, even before the early time with which we shall find our own concern with it; for in a charter, dated A.D. 738,[25] it is already mentioned as “regio quæ vocatur Hohg.” In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 902, it is mentioned as “Holme.” In Domesday,[26] the hundred which constitutes the peninsular portion, is called “_HOV_;” the isthmus portion having already, however, become a separate hundred, then called “Essamele,” now “Shamwell.” The towns in the district have their proper names added to “Hoo,” as “Hoo-St.-Mary,”