Here and there, among the woods and fens which still covered a large part of the country, their little separate communities rose in small fenced clearings or on low islets, now joined by drainage to the mainland; while in the wider valleys, tilled in Roman times, the wealthier chieftains formed their settlements and allotted lands to their Welsh tributaries.  Many family names appear in different parts of England, for a reason which will hereafter be explained.  Thus we find the Bassingas at Bassingbourn, in Cambridgeshire; at Bassingfield, in Notts; at Bassingham and Bassingthorpe, in Lincolnshire; and at Bassington, in Northumberland.  The Billings have left their stamp at Billing, in Northampton; Billingford, in Norfolk; Billingham, in Durham; Billingley, in Yorkshire; Billinghurst, in Sussex; and five other places in various other counties.  Birmingham, Nottingham, Wellington, Faringdon, Warrington, and Wallingford are well-known names formed on the same analogy.  How thickly these clan settlements lie scattered over Teutonic England may be judged from the number which occur in the London district alone—­Kensington, Paddington, Notting-hill, Billingsgate, Islington, Newington, Kennington, Wapping, and Teddington.  There are altogether 1,400 names of this type in England.  Their value as a test of Teutonic colonisation is shown by the fact that while 48 occur in Northumberland, 127 in Yorkshire, 76 in Lincolnshire, 153 in Norfolk and Suffolk, 48 in Essex, 60 in Kent, and 86 in Sussex and Surrey, only 2 are found in Cornwall, 6 in Cumberland, 24 in Devon, 13 in Worcester, 2 in Westmoreland, and none in Monmouth.  Speaking generally, these clan names are thickest along the original English coast, from Forth to Portland; they decrease rapidly as we move inland; and they die away altogether as we approach the purely Celtic west.

The English families, however, probably tilled the soil by the aid of Welsh slaves; indeed, in Anglo-Saxon, the word serf and Welshman are used almost interchangeably as equivalent synonyms.  But though many Welshmen were doubtless spared from the very first, nothing is more certain than the fact that they became thoroughly Anglicized.  A few new words from Welsh or Latin were introduced into the English tongue, but they were far too few sensibly to affect its vocabulary.  The language was and still is essentially Low German; and though it now contains numerous words of Latin or French origin, it does not and never did contain any but the very smallest Celtic element.  The slight number of additions made from the Welsh consisted chiefly of words connected with the higher Roman civilisation—­such as wall, street, and chester—­or the new methods of agriculture which the Teuton learnt from his more civilised serfs.  The Celt has always shown a great tendency to cast aside his native language in Gaul, in Spain, and in Ireland; and the isolation of the English townships must have had the effect of greatly accelerating the process.  Within a few generations the Celtic slave had forgotten his tongue, his origin, and his religion, and had developed into a pagan English serf.  Whatever else the Teutonic conquest did, it turned every man within the English pale into a thorough Englishman.