At Cambridge itself, in the heart of the true English country, the charter of the thegn's guild, a late document, mentions a special distinction of penalties for killing a Welshman, "if the slain be a ceorl, 2 ores, if he be a Welshman, one ore." "The large Romanised towns," says Professor Rolleston, "no doubt made terms with the Saxons, who abhorred city life, and would probably be content to leave the unwarlike burghers in a condition of heavily-taxed submissiveness." Thus, even in the east it is admitted that a Celtic element probably entered into the population in three ways,--by sparing the women, by making rural slaves of the men, and by preserving some, at least, of the inhabitants of cities.

The skulls of these Anglicised Welshmen are found in ancient interments; their descendants are still to be recognised by their physical type in modern England.

"It is quite possible," says Mr.
Freeman, "that even at the end of the sixth century there may have been within the English frontier inaccessible points where detached bodies of Welshmen still retained a precarious independence." Sir F.Palgrave has collected passages tending to show that parties of independent Welshmen held out in the Fens till a very late period; and this conclusion is admitted by Mr.Freeman to be probably correct.

But more important is the general survival of scattered Britons within the English communities themselves.

Traces of this we find even in Anglo-Saxon documents.