If we take a map of England and contrast it with a map of the
United States, perhaps one of the first things we shall notice is
the dissimilarity of the arbitrary divisions of land of which the
countries are composed. In America the rigidly straight boundaries
and rectangular shape of the majority of the States strike the eye
at once; in England our wonder is rather how the boundaries have
come to be so tortuous and complicated--to such a degree, indeed,
that until recently many counties had outlying islands, as it were,
within their neighbours' territory. We naturally infer that the
conditions under which the divisions arose cannot have been the same,
and that while in America these formal square blocks of land, like vast
allotment gardens, were probably the creation of a central authority,
and portioned off much about the same time, the divisions we find in
England have no such simple origin. Such, in fact, is more or less
the case. The formation of the English counties in many instances was
(and is--for they have altered up to to-day) an affair of slow growth,
and their origin was--as their names tell us--of very diverse nature.
Let us turn once more to our map of England. Collectively, we call all
our divisions counties, but not every one of them is accurately thus
described. Some have names complete in themselves, such as Kent and
Sussex, and we find these to be old English kingdoms with but little
alteration either in their boundaries or their names. To others the
terminal shire is appended, which tells us that they were shorn from
a larger domain--shares of Mercia or Northumbria or some other of
the great English kingdoms.
The division of England into counties or shires has often been
attributed to King Alfred (A.D. 871-901), but the shire of Berks
is mentioned as early as the time of Ethelbert (A.D. 860-866), and
Berkshire very probably existed as a county from the days of Egbert
(died 836).
The words county and shire mean practically the same thing, but the
former is derived from the Latin comitatus through the French comté,
the dominion of a comes, or Count, and the latter from the Saxon scir
(from sciran to divide). The termination "shire" is generally used for
Berkshire and four of the neighbouring counties, viz. Buckinghamshire,
Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, and Wiltshire. The next neighbouring
county is usually called Hampshire, but in Acts of Parliament and
official papers it is called the county of Southampton. For the
remaining county, Surrey, the termination shire is not used: its
name--Suthrege--tells us that it was "the South Kingdom."
The boundary of the county follows in great part the river Thames
or its tributaries but in many places it is not distinguished from
the neighbouring counties by any natural features. On the west the
chalk downs run from Wiltshire into Berkshire with no change at the
boundary of the county, and on the south there is little distinction
between the forest and moorland of Berkshire and of the adjoining
tracts of Hampshire and Surrey.
Berkshire has thus existed as a county for about 1100 years;
previously it was part of the Saxon kingdom of Wessex, which also
comprised Hampshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Dorset, Devon, and part
of Cornwall. The Saxons were called in by the Britons to assist them
against the Picts and Scots (A.D. 429-449). This was a short time after
the departure of the Romans, A.D. 418, or nearly fifteen hundred years
ago. The Roman rule in our district may be taken as from A.D. 40 to
418, a period of 378 years. We shall realise the length of their rule
if we remember that 378 years ago Henry VIII was reigning in England.
When the Romans came to the district they found it occupied by a tribe
of Britons named the Atrebates; and Silchester, just over our county
boundary in Hampshire, was their chief town or settlement.
The written history of the district does not go further back than the
Atrebates, but we find many relics of man of a much earlier date. There
are in our museums human bones found in old graves, but it is not
possible to give them a date or to name the tribe or tribes to which
they belonged. There are also early gold coins without any inscription,
but bearing a rude figure of a horse not unlike the celebrated white
horse cut in the chalk hill above Uffington. These coins take us back
to about B.C. 200. There are also various weapons and implements of
iron, bronze, and stone, found in graves or barrows or in the beds of
our rivers, about which we shall say more in a subsequent chapter. All
these remains belong to a period when the surface of the county,
though no doubt covered to a great extent with forest, was not very
different from what it is to-day. The streams and rivers followed to
some extent the same courses and flowed at much the same level as now.
But there are remains of man which carry us back to a very much earlier
date. In what is known as the Palaeolithic Period our rivers flowed
at much higher levels than now; possibly the land has risen since
that time, but however that may be, there are beds of gravel of the
river Thames as much as 114 feet above the present river, and these
gravels contain implements made by man. These, which are at least
as old as the gravel in which we find them, are nearly all of flint,
and often beautifully made. A large collection from Berkshire is in
the Reading Museum.
Several animals now extinct were living at that time. The mammoth,
the woolly rhinoceros, and the Irish elk roamed through the forest
of Berkshire, and in all probability were hunted by Palaeolithic man.