Note 24 — I The Settlement of the South-and East-Saxons

“It is probable that all the primitive villages in whose name the patronymic ing occurs were originally colonized by communities united either really by blood or by the belief in a common descent (see Kemble)”—Stubbs (Const. Hist). “Harling abode by Harling and Billing by Billing, and each ‘wick’ and ‘ham’ and ‘stead’ and ‘tun’ took its name from the kinsmen who dwelt together in it. In this way the house or ham of the Billings was Billingham, and the township of the Harlings was Harlington”—Green (‘Making of England,’ p. 188). “Many family names appear in different parts of England.... Thus we find the Bassingas at Bassingbourn.... 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.... Speaking generally these clan names are thickest along the original English coast, etc.”—Grant Allen (Anglo-Saxon Britain,’ p. 43).