In Beda's _Ecclesiastical History_, Bk I, ch. 15, he says of the
Teutonic invaders: "Those who came over were of the three most
powerful nations of Germany--Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. From the Jutes
are descended the people of Kent, and of the Isle of Wight, and those
also in the province of the West-Saxons who are to this day called
Jutes, seated opposite to the Isle of Wight"; a remark which obviously
implies the southern part of Hampshire. This suggests that the speech
of Kent, from the very first, had peculiarities of its own. Dr Sweet,
in his _Second Anglo-Saxon Reader, Archaic and Dialectal_, gives five
very brief Kentish charters of the seventh and eighth centuries, but
the texts are in Latin, and only the names of persons and places
appear in Kentish forms. In the ninth century, however, there are
seven Kentish charters, of a fuller description, from the year 805 to
837. In one of these, dated 835, a few lines occur that may be quoted:
Ic bidde and bebeode sw{ae}lc monn se th{ae}t min lond hebbe th{ae}t
he {ae}lce gere agefe them higum {ae}t Folcanstane l.
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