garded as broken up. The Anglo-Danes, as they are now to be called, it is true, professed allegiance to Alfred and his successors, but seem never to have yielded it unless to princes who were able to enforce the claim, and they were ruled by chiefs whose coins provė them to have assumed the style of independent kings". They received constant accessions to their numbers in consequence of the attempts made by the kings of Norway early in the tenth century to render themselves absolute monarchs, many of the chiefs preferring voluntary exile to submission, and they thus speedily became in some districts, what the Normans afterwards were in the whole country, a fierce military aristocracy governing without mercy or discretion a herd of serfs, it being recorded as a glorious achievement of Edmund I. that he freed the English inhabitants of certain districts who had dwelt long in captive chains to heathen meni." They also extended themselves over Mercia, and as that state as well as their own district had its peculiar laws, the country was rather three separate kingdoms, of which Wessex was occasionally able to assume a supremacy over the others, than one united monarchy, as it is usually represented. It appears, too, from the names

h In 1840 a hoard of about 7,000 silver coins (beside many silver ornaments) was discovered at Cuerdale, near Preston, in Lancashire, 3,000 of which bore such inscriptions as "Cnut Rex," "Alfden Rex," "Sitric Comes," and they are by the best informed numismatists considered indisputably to belong to the chiefs of the Danish invaders in the ninth century, and their immediate successors. i See p. 109.

England is recognised as divided into the three states of Wessex, Mercia, and the province of the Danes, in the laws of Henry I.; the latter province, sometimes styled the Danelagh, appears to have comprised the whole tract north and east of the Watling Street.

of the witnesses to contemporary documents, that the Anglo-Danes soon became possessed of important posts both in the Church and at the court of the AngloSaxon kings, and the divisions thus introduced into its councils, and the help they constantly gave to their invading countrymen, reduced the country to a state of weakness which left it a comparatively easy prey, first to Canute, and next to William the Norman.

A.D. 879. Guthrum and his forces withdraw to Cirencester, and remain there during the year.

A fresh body of Northmen take up their quarters on the Thames at Fulham.

A.D. 880. Guthrum and his forces settle in East Anglia. The Northmen leave the Thames, and besiege Ghent.

A.D. 881. The Northmen penetrate into France. The Northmen land in Scotland, and defeat and kill Constantine II. at Crail, in Fifeshire.

A.p. 882. Alfred goes to sea, and captures four vessels of the enemy.

A.D. 883. The Northmen ascend the Scheldt, and besiege Condé.

Alfred sends alms to Rome, and also to India, "which he had vowed to send, when they sat down against the army at London."

A.D. 884. The Northmen besiege Amiens.

A.D. 885. The Northmen again land in England, and besiege Rochester. Alfred relieves the city, and drives the besiegers beyond sea.

This year the army in East Anglia broke the peace with King Alfred."

Alfred sends a fleet against them, which captures sixteen of their ships. Alfred's fleet is defeated on its return.

A.D. 886. "King Alfred repaired London, and all the English submitted to him, except those who were under the bondage of the Danishmen; and then he committed the town to the keeping of Ethelred, the ealdorman."

The Northmen besiege Paris.

England now seems to have had peace for a while, for the Saxon Chronicle for the next seven years only records offerings sent to Rome, which became so customary that it is thought worthy of special remark, that in 889 "there was no journey to Rome, except that King Alfred sent two couriers with letters."

A bishop's see1 re-founded at Dorchester, in Oxfordshire. A.D. 887. The Northmen pass the bridge at Paris,

and ravage the interior of France.

Alfred founds the monasteries of Shaftesbury and Athelney.

A.D. 888. Athelswith (Alfred's sister, and relict of Burgred of Mercia) dies on her way to Rome, and is buried at Pavía.

A.D. 890. Guthrum dies.

The Northmen in France defeated by the Bretons. A.D. 891. The Northmen defeated in the east of France, near Louvaine, Sept. 1.

A.D. 893. The Northmen, having crossed France, embark at Boulogne, and land at Limenemouth (Lymne, in Kent). "They came over, horses and all, at one

The bishop's see founded here in 635 by Birinus (see p. 63), was removed to Winchester in 676.

passage, with 250 ships." They fortify themselves at Appledorem.

Hasting enters the Thames, and builds a fort at Middleton (Milton, on the East Swale of the Medway). The Northumbrians and East Angles favour the invaders.

A.D. 894. Alfred places himself between the two armies of Northmen.

The Northmen leave their forts for the purpose of passing into Essex, but are defeated at Farnham; they reach the Colne, and are besieged there.

The Northumbrians and East Angles attack Devonshire.

The Northmen defeated at Bemfleet, their shipping destroyed, and the wife and sons of Hasting captured. The Northmen re-assemble at Shoebury, are joined by the Northumbrians and East Angles, and pass up the Thames to the Severn. They are besieged at Buttington, in Shropshire, and obliged to surrender, "after having eaten a great part of their horses."

The fugitives reach Essex, and assemble another army. They commit "their wives, and their ships, and their wealth" to the East Angles, and cross England to Chester, where they are besieged.

The nature of their ordinary fortifications appears from a cotemporary notice in the Annals of Fulda. "The Northmen, baving made their fortification with hedges according to their custom, securely encamped;" whilst the annalist of Metz points out an improved mode of proceeding, "The Northmen protected themselves according to custom with wood and a heap of earth;" and such we may conclude was their fashion fifty years later, from a passage in the Saxon Chronicle relating to the battle of Brunanburg"The board-wall they clove, they hewed the war-lindens."

A.D. 895 (circa). The Northmen establish themselves in the Orkneys and Hebrides.

The Northmen from Chester ravage North Wales, and then return to Northumbria and East Anglia.

Sussex ravaged by the Northumbrians and East Angles.

The Northmen reassemble in Mersey island, and thence proceed up the Thames and the Lea.

A.D. 896. The Northmen build a fort on the Lea, probably near Ware, which is unsuccessfully attacked by the Londoners.

Alfred encamps in the neighbourhood, and by cutting fresh channels leaves the ships aground.

The Northmen retire to Shropshire, and pass the winter there.

A.D. 897. The Northmen break up their army. 'Some went for East Anglia, some for Northumbria; and they who were moneyless procured themselves ships there, and went southwards over sea to the Seine. Thanks be to God, the army had not utterly broken down the English nation; but during the three years it was much more broken down by the mortality among cattle, and among men, and most of all by this, that many of the most eminent king's thanes in the land died during the three years."

The south coast of England harassed by plundering parties. Alfred builds ships of a new model to contend with them.

Some of the pirate vessels are captured, and their crews put to death. Twenty more are wrecked on the south coast.