Middlesex

MIDDLESEX is the metropolitan county of the British empire, mostly in the diocese of London and the province of Canterbury: it was anciently occupied by the Iberians and Britons and afterwards by the Belgic tribe of the Catuvellauni, who were subdued by the Romans, who placed here one of their chief settlements in Britain. The county was one of the earliest conquests of the English, and obtained its present name of Middlesex, or the county of the Middle Saxons, from being between the kingdoms of the East and South Saxons and possibly of the North Saxons, and it was settled by the same clans as Surrey and the neighbouring counties: it seems to have been a distinct commonwealth, occasionally in subjection to the kings of the East Saxons, South Saxons and Mid-English.

Middlesex is an inland shire, but having many of the advantages of a sea province and of a port by its communication with the North Sea, through the broad channel of the Thames, the tides of which flow up to it: it is the smallest county in England, excepting Rutland: it is 19 miles in its greatest length from east to west, from Tottenham Mills to the Buckinghamshire boundary, and from north to south it varies, being in its eastern half, from South Mimms to the boundary of the County of London, 11 miles, and in the western portion, from Rickmansworth to Weybridge, 18 miles from the northern boundary to the Thames.