Journals of a Time Traveller

By en:User:Fresheneesz - en:Image:The Low Countries.png, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link with modification to include East Anglia in the mini-map for illustration.

Locations of my mother's recorded ancestors in East Anglia.

I've posted on this subject a few times before, by looking at the 16th/17th Century Norwich Strangers at Immigration into East Anglia and more recently at some of my families personal DNA ancestral analysis at Are the South East English actually Belgian?  However, as I continue to see comparisons between our DNA and DNA from samples of Iron Age / Romano-Britons, Anglo-Saxons, Modern Dutch, Modern Belgian, so my interest in links between the Low Countries, and the region of South East Britain known as East Anglia increases.

Here is the latest K36 Oracle map for a member of my family:

I have recently been investigating a link on my mother's ancestry.  One ancestral line of hers that lived in East Norfolk, carried the surname Tammas.  I can only trace it back to a 4th great grandfather, born around 1774.  However, I recently became aware that the surname Tammes can be found in the Low Countries, possibly originating in Friesland.  More evidence perhaps, of post-medieval migration into East Anglia.  I have other surnames on my mother's eastern Norfolk side, that are also found not only in Norfolk, but also in the Netherlands, France and Northern Germany.  For example, Fen, Rosier, Moll, Mollet/Mallett, and Wymer.  The Wymer surname is of interest because in 1881, the UK distribution was still very centered on Norfolk.  Wymer, Weimer, and other variants are found in Northern Germany, and in the Netherlands, including in Frisia.  So there are a few hints of the Low Countries in my recorded genealogy - just there maybe - but do they echo a much older, and wider period?  Just how close are the East Anglians to Frisians, Walloons, Flemish, etc?

The Norfolk coast is as close to the Netherlands, just 113 miles, as it is to London and in medieval times it only took a day to sail to Amsterdam, but four days to travel to London. At that time Norfolk was isolated by muddy marshland and dense forest so we have always looked to the Continent

Source: Visit Norfolk website

The people that carried the Bell Beaker cultural artifacts into Britain at the close of the Neolithic period, most likely (based on genetic and ceramic evidence) did so by crossing from the Lower Rhine Valley (now the Low Countries) on the Continent, to south eastern Britain.  The connection was always there - and most likely, had already existed throughout late prehistory.  The fact is that the Low Countries and north east France are very close to us in sea distance.  It's a fact often understated in discussions around the origins of British people.

Move on to the Iron Age.  That metal work and art style, that is so associated with "Celtic" culture, the La Tène, most likely arrived in a similar fashion.  It could have shifted along the West of the Irish and British Isles along the Atlantic - but it perhaps more likely, shifted here with trade and exchange - perhaps accompanied by people, from what is now north-east France / Belgium.

Towards the close of the Iron Age, Roman historians claimed that parts of south east Britannia had recently experienced an immigration event of Belgic people - from again, the area that we now regard as the Low Countries.  Could it be that all they were witnessing, was the result of long term exchange and contact with that region, perhaps with the additional pressure of Roman expansion - both in terms of war, and in trade.  The Romans even suggested that in the Belgic homeland, they were some sort of blend between Gallic and Germanic.  Rather like the blend of French and Germanic languages in the Low Countries today?

Then we arrive with the Anglo-Saxon period.  We know that there was a major immigration event from the Continent during the 5th Century / early 6th Century AD.  Continental tribes ascribed to the event included not only Angles (from the modern Northern German border with Denmark), but also Frisians and Saxons.  Both Frisians and Saxons were also active in the Northern Low Countries.  Indeed, Old Frisian is regarded as being the closest known language to Old English - from which English as we know it evolved.  Frisian and English belong to the same language group.  For a long time, an East Anglian would most likely have been easily able to understand and communicate with a Frisian fisherman, selling fish at Yarmouth.

A study based in the Cambridge area, based on the DNA and archaeology of a number of human remains from local cemeteries, including of some remains assessed to be recent Anglo-Saxon immigrants, suggested that the modern English are likely to have had 10% to 40% ancestry from Anglo Saxon immigrants - the remainder appearing to be largely inherited from the people that already lived in Britain previous to the Anglo-Saxon immigration event.  They also suggested, that the modern DNA population that most resembled the DNA of their Anglo Saxon remains in Cambridgeshire, were the Dutch and Danish.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10408

Does the relationship between East Anglia and the Low Countries end there though?  No.

Medieval manorial records in eastern Norfolk, report the employment of Flemish immigrants following the 1348 Black Death.  During the 1350s - 1370s, there are numerous reports of Flemings being paid (albeit at a lower rate of pay) for harvesting, ploughing, and threshing.  There's even a riot in Yarmouth when the locals turned onto the houses of the Flemish workers.

http://paulbrooker.posthaven.com/notes-on-medieval-flegg-and-broadland-in-norfolk-east-anglia

Throughout the Later Medieval, there are a number of references to Dutchmen, Frenchmen and other Aliens living, working, or travelling through the East Anglian countryside and market-towns.

http://paulbrooker.posthaven.com/immigration-into-east-anglia

Then we reach the late 16th Century, and a well documented immigration event to East Anglia and south east England from the Low Countries:

‘The Strangers’. Norfolk doesn’t have squares, it has plains. The word is from the Dutch ‘plein’ – a reminder that the language was spoken in the streets of Norwich for many years by ‘Strangers’, the flood of religious refugees and traders who fled persecution by the Spanish duke of Alva in the still-to-be-independent Low Countries in the 1560s and 1570s. Historians still debate the exact impact of the Strangers on the city’s key industry of weaving, but there is no doubting the numbers: by 1582 there were 4,679 of them in the city – more than a third of its population. There was still an annual church service in Dutch in their church – the chancel of Blackfriars in Norwich - until 1921.

Source: EDP

More than a third of the population in Norwich, the urban centre for Norfolk, were Dutch, or French-speaking from the Low Countries!  And there were indications that they were also dotted across the East Anglian countryside.

The Huguenots were to follow, with a community in Norwich.

But aside from these population events - there are mentions in the background.  Frisians selling fish at East Anglian sea ports.  north east French fishermen frequently sheltering on Norfolk and Suffolk beaches from bad weather.  The occasional merchant, and artisan, selling their wares in England.  The French and Dutch prisoners of War in the Fens.

And was all of this one direction?  How many East Anglians (for example, puritans and royalists), ended up sailing to the Spanish Low Countries?

An old relationship.

The above image illustrates of some of my ancestral locations, as according to documented genealogy.  As can be seen.  I have quite a lot of East Anglian ancestry.  What might also be observed, is the location of East Anglia, and of South East England, in relation to Belgium, the Netherlands, and North East France.

I'm an East Anglian.  Much of my family tree is East Anglian.  Before documented genealogy picks up my family trail, who were the East Anglians, what were their origins?  The traditional answer would be that they were the descendants of the Angles.  An early 5th Century AD tribe, that relocated from Angeln, now in Schleswig Holstein, on the North Germany, South Denmark border.  Them, and maybe a few Saxons, Jutes, Suevvi, etc.  All pretty much from what is now North Germany and Denmark.  See the map below:

Archaeology sort of backs this up ... but also offers some slight alternatives.  At first, British Archaeology supported the Historians - that there was a near genocidal event during the 5th and 6th centuries, where the Anglo Saxon tribes arrived and displaced the Romano-Britons that had until then, lived in South East Britannia.  There certainly is plenty, even, overwhelming evidence, of Anglo-Saxon culture if not settlement in East Anglia at this time.  Below are the locations of a few of the many Anglo-Saxon cemeteries found in East Anglia - and their closest artifact correlations on the Continent - in Northern Germany:

It's all adding up.  However, then, a new trend appears in British Archaeology that plays down the Anglo-Saxon invasion hypothesis. From the 1980's onward, some British archaeologists started to argue that they saw patterns of land use continuity between the Romano-British and Pagan Saxon periods.  They argued there was no archaeology of genocide.  No battle sites.  No mass graves.  Instead they proposed that only limited numbers of Anglo Saxons arrived - and that their culture was largely adopted by the Romano-Britons that already lived here.  Some even suggested that no Anglo Saxons came here - it was merely a cultural import.

Then Genetics stepped in.  Most notably with POBI (Peopling of the British Isles) 2015, but also with a number of other studies, often comparing the DNA from excavated remains to modern populations.  They proposed a new middle house consensus.  No there was no genocide.  The modern English have more old British ancestry than Anglo-Saxon.  However, there was a significant Anglo Saxon immigration event.  But they mixed, intermarried.  Anglo-Saxon culture was adopted, but Anglo Saxons had not displaced the Britons.  They had married them.  The modern English it seems have around 10% to 40% Anglo Saxon ancestry, and 60% to 90% British.  Sort of watered down Celts.

The assumption that we have made, is that rural populations on the front-line immigration - such as East Anglians, were the most watered down, with highest percentages of Anglo-Saxon ancestry.  Why not.  The archaeology would support that.  The East Anglian landscape is littered with Anglo-Saxon, and Anglo-Danish place-names.  It is the most Anglo-Saxon landscape, and later, was firmly within the Dane-Law.

My Ancestry

It's all over this blog.  However, in summary, I am an East Anglian.  Born at Norwich, with all four grandparents of Norfolk birth.  I have been researching my family tree using genealogy, for thirty years, on and off.  I have accumulated the recorded names of 490 direct ancestors.  Around 80% or more of this ancestry lived here in East Anglia.  At Generation 6 (3rd great grandparent), my ancestry was 97% South East English, and 3% Swiss.  This is demonstrated in this fan chart of my recorded ancestry:

If that's not East Anglian enough - look at the right hand side of that fan chart, my mother's side.  My mother has 225 of her direct ancestors recorded, and everyone lived firmly in East Anglia.

I have documents, likenesses in family photos, and family stories to back my narrative ancestry; but I am also gradually building biological evidence through the use of DNA matches to other testers, that share a common ancestry with me, that correlates well with the shared DNA:

That the vast majority of our ancestry is very rural, and poor agricultural working class, would suggest that we have had ancestry here in East Anglia for a very, very, long time.  I have traced some lines back to early parish records in the 16th Century.  I would expect that many of our ancestors belonged to peasant families in Medieval Norfolk and Suffolk.  These, I'd expect were the descendants of Anglo Saxons, Romano-Britons, and Danes.

Here comes the paradox.

Population Genetics and the DNA

Documentary evidence confirms that I'm an East Anglian, and English.  But when I tested with the commercial DNA-for-ancestry vendors, such as 23andme or FT-DNA, my results, although seeing me as pretty firmly, a North West European, doesn't really see me as particularly British.  23andme suggested only 32% British.  They instead suggest that my ancestry is rather Continental.  High levels of "West European" or "French & German".  I at first assumed that this was ancient or early medieval ancestry, my Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Danish East Anglian roots showing through.

But is that the case?  Analysis using some of the latest calculators challenge that.  Here are the PCA locations of myself and my mother, on one such calculator.  This one (By David Wesolowski) includes many modern references grouped on language family, but also includes some references from actual ancient DNA in Northern Europe, including some extracted from Anglo Saxon remains in Cambridgeshire, close to East Anglia:

You see the red squares represent the Anglo Saxons in Cambridgeshire?  Mine and even my very rural East Anglian mother's place well to the right of them, closer to modern day Irish speakers, overlapping with modern day French speakers.  More Celtic it seems than Anglo Saxon.

Here's another PCA showing our positions (red myself, orange, my mother), this one by Lukasz, but based on the Eurogenes K36 calculator:

It puts me closer to Flemish then Walloon, followed by SE English.  Finally a third PCA, from Eurogenes K15: 

We consistently position between SE England and North France, Belgium, and the Netherlands; rather than between SE England and Northern Germany and Denmark.  It appears that we relate closer to Normans, Belgians, Walloons, Flemish, and Dutch - than we do to modern day North Germans or Danes.  Here is our K36 Oracle maps by Lukasz:

My mother has a slight more pull from Denmark and Schleswig Holstein.  Perhaps this is from early medieval Angle/Danish settler in East Anglia?  However, we both pull strongest outside of England, from the Low Countries.  Flemish, Dutch, and Walloon come up as closest Continental matches.  I'm not surprised.  I've noticed for some time, that the big vendors appear to give some testers of Normandy, Hauts-de-France, Belgium, and the Netherlands ancestry, very similar results to my own.

If our results were at all representative of East Anglians of local ancestry, then the modern East Anglian is perhaps as much, or more of a Belgian than he or she is a Dane or Angle.  So I've added a secondary circle to the map that I used above, to illustrate what are popularly beleved to be the origins of the East Anglians.  The new blue circle, represents not what history or archaeology suggests, but what my family's DNA currently suggests:

Note that I have included South East Britain in there - because clearly, there was no displacement.  The Romano-Britons were among our ancestors.

The Language Connection.

It has long been noted, that the very closest dialect or language to English, is West Frisian.  Old Frisian and Old English (or Anglo Saxon) were close.  Linguists group them together as "Anglo-Frisian".  Why is this?  If we all descend from Angles and Danes?

When did our "Belgian" ancestors arrive in Britain?

By Belgian, I'm referring to ancestors that we share not only with Belgians of local ancestry, but also the North French, and the Dutch.  Answer.  I don't know.  All that I am pointing out, is that the DNA of my East Anglian family appears to be more like that of people that today live in that part of the Continent, than in Denmark, Norway, or even North Germany.  However, here are a few ideas:

1. The Bell Beaker.  During the Late Neolithic.  We believe that the British Bell Beaker people largely crossed over from the Lower Rhine Valley.
2. The Belgae.  I'm not quite so sure about this one, but let's just go with it.  Roman historians recorded a late Iron Age migration from the Belgium area, into South East Britain.  They described them as using a Celtic language and culture, but being closer related to Germanic tribes to the east.
3. An unrecorded migration from Northern France to Southern Britain during Late Prehistory.  This one was suggested by POBI 2015, that claimed to detect a relationship between the Southern British and Northern France, that they claimed was most likely Late Prehistoric.
4. Roman Britain.  Britannia was often administered along with Gaul.
5. Saxo Frisia.  Saxons didn't only Southern Britain, they also settled the Low Countries, where they took the name of the earlier tribe there - the Frisians.  Did many Anglo-Saxon settlers actually crossed over from Frisia?
6. Norman.  1066 and all that.  A whole new elite arrived, often bringing artisans and supporters with them.
7. Angevin and Medieval French.  For a time, large regions of France were ruled along with England.  French artisans, merchants, monks, priests, etc.
8. The Elizabethan Strangers.  Protestant refugees were invited from the Low Countries, both Dutch and Walloons.  They particularly settled towns in South East England such as Norwich, and Colchester during the 16th and 17th centuries.
9. The Huguenots.  French Protestant refugees that arrived during the 17th and 18th centuries.
10. Background migration.  My favourite.  In addition to all of the aforementioned proposed migration events, the slow, gradual contact between South East England and the Low Countries / Northern France, that has always been there.  The drip-drip in the background.  That the North sea and Dover Strait separating the two areas is so narrow.  Merchants, refugees, masons, artisans, weavers - the Dutchmen and Frenchmen recorded as Aliens in many post medieval surveys.  The fishermen from Haut-de-France that frequently beached on the Norfolk coast.  The dutch herring fishermen that traded herring at Yarmouth market.

Hear a sentence like "immigrants in Eastern England", and many people might think of the recent immigration from countries such as Poland, Lithuania, and Romania.  However, I'm interested in the longer picture, and how that has impacted the genetic genealogy of East Anglians.

I have noticed, that my mother's 23andMe ancestral composition, is more similar to those of some Dutch testers, than most Irish, Scottish, or West British testers.  23andme has reported at least one small segment shared with a Dutch tester.  My mother on Ancestry Composition speculative mode, scored only 36% "British & Irish", followed by 13% "French & German", 4% "Scandinavian", 2% "South European", and 40% unassigned "Broadly NW European".

My first reaction was that the 23andme calculators and references were confused by relatively ancient admixture, specifically Early Medieval Immigration between the 5th and 11th centuries AD.  The Anglo-Saxon and Viking periods.

However, I'm beginning to review how I see the history of East Anglia.  I think that like many people, I've underplayed the contribution not only of earlier unrecorded immigration events, but also of ongoing later immigration from the European Continent, into East Anglia.

A shock historical suggestion, is that during the late 16th Century, almost a third of the population of the City of Norwich, belonged to an immigrant community of Dutch, Flemish, and Walloon protestants, that had recently settled there, as refugees from persecution on the Continent.  I don't know how many of these immigrants, into centres such as Norwich, Ipswich, kings Lynn, and Great Yarmouth, left descendants in East Anglia.  My parent's recorded Norfolk ancestry is very rural - outside of Norwich.  However, how much DNA did these more recent immigrants leave behind in Norfolk, and East Anglia as a whole?

The immigration events of the 5th to 11th centuries AD into East Anglia, were most likely the most significant.  However, I believe it is wrong to see them as the only immigration events.  The POBI Study found DNA evidence of an earlier, perhaps late prehistoric immigration from the Continent.  Caesar claimed that the people that he called the Belgae had recently immigrated to South East Britain, from the area that is now Belgium.

Neither were the Anglo-Saxon, Dane-Law, nor Norman immigration events the last to the region.  It continued as a background, with occasional known events, such as the Strangers from what is now Belgium and the Netherlands, to Norwich.  East Anglia has always had stronger connections to across the North Sea, than some other regions of Britain. Therefore it should be no suprise, that my mother, with her strong recorded East Norfolk ancestry, has an autosomal ancestry composition, that resembles the Dutch, more than the Welsh or Irish.

I visited the Bridewell Alley Museum today, for the first time for many years, and picked up a new book: Strangers.  A History of Norwich's Incomers by Frank Meeres 2012.  It's full of references to the history of immigration into Norwich.  I thought that it might be useful, to harvest some of the continental immigrant surnames mentioned in this book:

Medieval

• Addurge (French)
• Asger (Bruges, Belgium).
• de Norwege (Norway)
• Dutchman
• Glasier (French)
• Hensser  (Dutch)
• Isborne 
• Jevort (French)
• Johnson (Dutch)
• Kempe de Gaunt (Ghent)
• Kenneton (French)
• Mouner  (French)
• Oreng (French)
• Peterson (Dutch)
• Petirson (Dutch)
• Rijsel (Flemish)
• Tiphany (French)

In 1343, a boat capsized at Cantley.  It had passengers from Latvia and Sweden.

The Strangers 1560 - 1600 AD

In 1571, a return of the Strangers, recorded that there were 4,013 Strangers in Norwich.  This included 868 Dutchmen, and 203 Walloon men.

• Bateman
• Clarebote (Winnezele)
• Clapettia
• Clercke (Dutch)
• Baet
• Bake (Ypres)
• Bartingham (Dutch)
• Coene (Ypres)
• Dedecre (Dutch)
• De Linne
• De Mol
• De Turk (Flanders)
• Der Haghe
• Des Passett
• Faber (East Flanders)
• Goddarte
• Gruter (Antwerp)
• Herjtes (Flemish)
• Hodgeson (Dutch)
• Johnson (Dutch)
• Keerlinck (Ypres)
• Lewalle (Walloon)
• Moded (Antwerp)
• Navegeer
• Le Dente
• Poultier (Dieppe)
• Powells (Dutch)
• Steene (Dutch)
• Vamboute (St Jans-Kappel)
• Van Brugen (Dutch)
• Waells (Houtkerke)
• Wervekin (Ypres)

These are just the surnames of some of the Norwich Strangers, mentioned in the above book.  Just how much did they, and others, contribute though, to the genealogy of Norfolk and East Anglia.  Most belonged to aspiring classes of artisans and merchants.  Weavers, printers, hat makers, etc.  How much of their DNA might have seeped into the surrounding countryside?

GEDmatch Kit M786040

 The above map of East Anglia, plots the ancestral events from my Gramps genealogical database, for my mother's ancestry alone.  All 100% of the events in her family history occur in East Anglia, with a significant concentration on the loam soils of East Norfolk, north of the River Yare, and shouldering up to the marshes of the Halvergate Triangle.  It includes events for the immediate families of 127 direct ancestors, stretching back to the 1680's in places.  Events include such things as births, baptisms, marriages, burials, deaths, census records, occupations, residence, etc.

Surnames include: Tovell, Tovil, Tammas, Tovell-Tammis, Lawn, Gorll, Gaul, Rowland, Dawes, Curtis, Key, Goffen, Goffin, Waters, Merrison, Morrison, Smith, Dove, Porter, Springall, Thacker, Daynes, Daines, Quantrill, Wymer, Rix, Hagon, Page, Nichols, Nicholes, Shepherd, Ransby, Briggs, Barker, Rose, Brooks, Larke, Dingle, Annison, Britiff, Symonds, Sales, Jacobs, Yallop, Moll, Hewitt, Osborne, Ginby, Ling, Briting, Hardyman, Hardiment, and Norton.  Surnames are all English or of Anglo-Danish origin.

Recorded religions are: Anglican Church of England, Baptist, Congregationalist (Presbyterian), Methodist, and Weslyan Methodist.  No Roman Catholicism, Islam, or Judaism.

The area has no significant immigration events in recent centuries, however, it has long held connections with the Dutch.  It is not near to the drained Fens (to the West of East Anglia), so would not have attracted any significant immigrant labour.  The City of Norwich has had communities of strangers, including medieval Jews, and more substantially, protestant refugees during the 16th century, from the Netherlands.   French Huguenots followed to Norwich.

The best known immigration to East Anglia, took place during the 4th to 11th centuries AD, from across the North Sea.  The elites of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, claimed descent from the Angles, from Angeln  in the Schleswig-Holstein region of Northern Germany, that borders Denmark.  The area is rich in Anglo-Danish place-names.  East Anglia fell deep into the Dane-law.

Generation 2 has 2 individuals. (100.00%)

Generation 3 has 4 individuals. (100.00%)

Generation 4 has 8 individuals. (100.00%)

Generation 5 has 15 individuals. (93.75%)

Generation 6 has 30 individuals. (93.75%)

Generation 7 has 28 individuals. (43.75%)

Generation 8 has 26 individuals. (21.88%)

Generation 9 has 10 individuals. (4.69%)

Generation 10 has 4 individuals. (0.78%)

Total direct ancestors in generations 2 to 10 is 127.

The above photograph is of the wedding of my mother's parents, at Limpenhoe, Norfolk, in 1932.  It includes four of my great grandparents, and a great great grandmother.

I like to present my mother's heritage as a good reference for an area of particular interest.  An area that saw substantial early medieval immigration and admixture, from across the North Sea.  23andMe reports our haplogroup as H6a1.  Uploading the raw data to James Lick's mthap analyser, and to WeGene, both give a best match of H6a1a8.

That so much of her recorded ancestry, is so deeply rooted into East Anglia over the past 330 years, and particularly that one part of Norfolk, would suggest that she has strong East Anglian ancestry stretching back at least to the early medieval, and perhaps earlier.  I have recorded marriage between third, and second cousins, within her East Norfolk direct ancestry.