From this legend we learn, that the Danes, conquerors of Northumberland, blended peaceably with the natives, under the patronage of St. Cuthbert the tutelary saint of the North, and that both nations, after the death of Guthred, the king of their common choice, submitted to the arms of Alfred, when he had recovered all the south of England from the slavery to which it had been subject. But we are anticipating the order of events, and must now return to that division of the Danish army which we left quartered at Cambridge in 875, under its three leaders, Guthrum, Osketel, and Amund.

CHAP. XIII.

WESSEX THE ONLY SAXON KINGDOM REMAINING-PARTIAL BENEFIT OF THE DANISH INVASIONS-ROLLO BAFFLED IN HIS ATTEMPTS ON ENGLAND-ALFRED TAKES ONE SHIP IN A NAVAL BATTLE WITH THE DANES-SECOND INVASION OF WESSEX IN 876-THE DANES TAKE WAREHAM-MAKE A TREATY WITH ALFRED-BREAK THE TREATY AND SURPRISE EXETER-DESTRUCTION OF THE DANISH FLEET AT SWANAGE-THE DANES MAKE A SECOND TREATY AT EXETER, AND, LEAVING WESSEX, RETIRE TO MERCIA IN 877.

Of all the Saxon Heptarchy, Wessex alone was now able to oppose any longer the invasions of the Danes: yet even Wessex, though still unsubdued, and ever found to present the most effectual resistance to those plunderers, was almost exhausted by continual combats, and was in the end compelled to bend for a time to the storm, which it could no longer withstand. The East-Anglian, Northumbrian, and Mercian kingdoms ceased to exist as members of the Anglo-Saxon confederacy: they were either depopulated, or in absolute subjection to the enemy, who every where abounded, and, unawed by any force or combination of the Saxons, vented their tyranny upon the natives to the utmost many of them began now to settle and inhabit for a permanence those lands which they had formerly looked upon as hunting-grounds, or as a field for rapine and plunder. This change, however, brought with it one species of consolation to the rustic. The enemies who forage for momentary booty, slay the herdsman, and carry off his cattle; but those

who conquer in order to become colonists and settlers, reserve alive both the cow and her keeper; the former, it is true, to provide the lordly victor with milk and other luxuries; but a portion of what she yields is necessarily bestowed upon the abject attendant, whose services are indispensable to the prosperity of the farms, which yield their yearly subsistence alike to the master and to his slave. The Danes must soon have discerned by experience, that wherever, in the excess of their fury, they had destroyed the people upon whose labours they had lived before, they must of a necessity in the end sit down and learn to labour for themselves.

In several towns of Mercia, the evil done by the Danes was not wholly without its alloy of good in a political point of view. A new vigour was infused into the municipalities where they became permanently settled, and several of the towns long continued to enjoy peculiar privileges, exempting them, no doubt, from burdens which pressed heavily on other communities. Such were the Danish Burghs, as they were called, or Boroughs; these were termed the Five Burghs, and originally consisted of Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby or Deora-by,-the name given by the Danes to the Saxon Northweorthig ",-Leicester, and Stamford. To these were sometimes added York and Chester, in which case the community passed under the name of the Seven Burghs. They had a court of

"Streoneshealh also received from the Danes its present name of Whitby; and, in general, all the districts in England occupied by them are distinguished by places bearing names ending in 'by,' i. e. city, town." THORPE'S LAPPENBERG, vol. i. p. 48. On the subject of the Danish burghs, see Laws of Ethelred III. Palgrave, vol. ii. p. ccxcv.

justice, and institutions in common, arising from their relationship in blood, which, in the midst of a country but recently subdued, bound them together by common necessities, if not by common fears.

Whilst the events which we have related were passing in the North, and during the year 875-6, which Guthrum, Osketel, and Amund passed at Cambridge, we hear little of Alfred and his West-Saxons, but they were no doubt fully occupied in repelling the smaller bodies of invaders, who roamed about the northern seas, landing on every coast, and carrying off whatever booty could be extorted from the neglect or weakness of the natives. One of the adventurers who landed in Wessex in 875, was the famous Rollo, who afterwards gained for his northern followers their settle

Brompton, Asser. Asserii Annales, Chron. Mailros all seem to agree in placing Rollo's invasion of England in 875. But the Chronicle of Tours says that it happened in the first year of Charles le Gros, i. e. in 877-8.

Spelman seems to have overlooked the passage in Brompton concerning the defeat of Rollo's men in England: his account of it is this: "The departure of Rollo argues not only the hard and busy time that Alfred now had with the Danes, but the abundant surcharge of them at this time within the land, and the misery that the natives the whilst endured. For howsoever Rollo's departure hence is fathered on a dream, whereby he is said to be called into France, yet questionless the great and secret motive was, the infinite numbers of his countrymen here in the land, and the universal waste he saw in every part thereof committed by them, whereby he might well reckon, he should have but a slender booty among such a multitude of sharers. And not unlikely he might judge (and that with great reason) that in some new place, less obvious to the visitation of those rovers, he should find the first and unbroken bulk of plenty more weakly guarded than here the bottoms of their rifled coffers were." LIFE OF ALFRED, p. 51.

In the time of King Ethelstan, Rollo made a second expedition into England, being called in by that king to assist him [Tho. Walsingham's Hypodigma Neustriæ, sub initium] against some rebels.

ments in France. Though almost all accounts of these affairs have perished, yet that the star of this able captain and freebooter was eclipsed by that of his more illustrious contemporary, is a fact which has found its way to the light through all the surrounding darkness. Rollo passed the winter in England, and plundered the country; but when they met the Anglo-Saxon army, his troops were broken, and many of them were slain; the rest escaped to France, where better fortune awaited them, and they laid the foundation of the Norman power, afterwards so celebrated throughout Europe.

About the same time that Rollo was repulsed from our shores, king Alfred, entering upon a new career, put to sea, and meeting with a small fleet consisting of seven Danish ships, captured one of them; the rest saved themselves by flight. We are not told on what part of the coast this sea-fight took place; but it is a fact of some importance, because it seems to shew, that the king already began to turn his attention to the formation of a navy, as the only safeguard to the liberties of a kingdom surrounded on all sides by the sea.

If, however, we should assert that this attack on the Danish fleet was looked upon as a breach of the treaty into which Alfred had formerly entered, and led to the second invasion of Wessex, which was now about to take place, such assertion, however seemingly just, if we look only to the short interval between the provocation and its supposed consequences, must however be made with diffidence; for it is hard to say whether the Danes quartered at Cambridge were the same as those who had formerly left Wessex when they made an armistice with the king. Neither is it certain whether the attack alluded to was made upon the fleet