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THE STORY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE BATTLE OF EDINGTON. 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027953276 
 
THE STORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 BATTLE OF EDINGTON 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. WILLIAM H. P. GRESWELL, 
 
 M.A., F.R.G.S. 
 
 'QDautttoii: 
 
 BARNICOTT & PEARCE, THE WESSEX PRESS. 
 
 igio 
 
 /n 
 
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 I 
 
 K-L^%'^Z,\ 
 
 BARNICOTT AND PEAKCE 
 PRINIEKS 
 
 ^•^^, 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE following account in detail of the 
 Somerset Danish Campaigns which cul- 
 minated in the Battle of Edington and the 
 famous Peace of Wedmore in a.d. 878 is 
 founded chiefly on previous notes contributed 
 by myself to the 'Proceedings of the Somerset 
 Archffiological Society, vol. xlvi (1900), under 
 the heading of "The Quantocks and their 
 Place-Names " ; on my " Land of Quantock," 
 published in 1903 ; and on "The Sequel to 
 the Battle of Edington," an article contained 
 in the 'Proceedings of the Somerset Archaso- 
 logical Society of 1907, etc. In company with 
 other Somerset archaeologists I owe a debt, 
 also, to the original suggestions of Dr. Clifford 
 as to the site of the Battlefield of Edington 
 and the surroundings of Athelney. It is a 
 matter of regret that English, and especially 
 Oxford students of the Anglo-Saxon Period, 
 have not treated the Alfred campaigns in the 
 thorough and comprehensive spirit displayed 
 by Dr. Reinhold Paiili and Dr. J. M. 
 Lappenberg, or mastered the ancient geo- 
 graphy of England with the care of the more 
 modern Dr. W. Reinhard, of Leipzig. Must 
 we trust to German research for light upon 
 the dark periods of our Island History ? 
 
 William H. P. Greswell. 
 
AUTHORITIES. 
 
 1 . 'The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. 
 
 2. Asser's Life of ¥^ng Alfred, by W. H. 
 
 Stevenson, Oxford, the Clarendon 
 Press, 1904. 
 
 3. Life of Alfred the Great, by Sir John 
 
 Spelman, 1 678. 
 
 4. Old Ballads, by T, Evans, 1784. 
 
 5. Proceedings of the Somersetshire Archaeo- 
 
 logical Society, Vols, i — Liv, Taunton. 
 
 6. The Works of ^ng Alfred the Great, Vols, 
 
 I — II, Jubilee Edition, 1858. 
 
 7. Life and Times of I^ng Alfred the Great, 
 
 by the Rev. J. A. Giles, D.C.L., 
 Oxford, 1854. 
 
 8. The History of Somersetshire, by the Rev. 
 
 J. CoUinson, 1791. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1. The Parret Mouth and Brent Knoll 2i 
 
 2. The River Parret and the Polden Ridge ... 53 
 
 3. Downend and the River Parret 55 
 
 4. Glastonbury Tor from the North- West ... 58 
 
 MAPS. 
 
 1. King Alfred's Campaign, A.D, 878 
 
 2. Downend, Vikings Pill and Parret Mouth 
 
 3. Part of Asser's Episcopal Jurisdiction 
 
 4. Royal Forests and Demesne in Somerset 
 
 Temp. King Alfred 
 
 PAGE 
 
 6 
 
 34 
 38 
 
 44 
 
The Story 
 
 of 
 
 The Battle of Edington. 
 
 A.D. 878. 
 
 NE of the most distracting " Will- 
 o'-the- Wisps " about the Battle 
 of Edington was that flashed 
 by William Camden, the great 
 Elizabethan antiquary, (1551- 
 1623) who, without any real 
 proof, gave it out as a certain and well-assured 
 fact that the Battle of Edington was fought 
 in Wiltshire, an idolon specus — a preconceived 
 fancy of his own. For the greater bewilder- 
 ment of posterity does not the figure of a huge 
 white horse adorn the flank of Bratton Castle, 
 not far from the little village of Edington ? 
 The good folk of Wiltshire have wasted a great 
 deal of sentiment over this white horse or 
 " white mare's nest," for, in the first place, it 
 is stated by Francis Wise in his " Further 
 observations upon the White Horse " that the 
 animal had been carved within the memory 
 of people then living. It was certainly " new 
 modelled" in 1778 by Mr. Gee, a surveyor, 
 and another restoration took place in 1853. 
 Nor, indeed, is the white horse of Bratton 
 Castle the only horse in Wessex, as another is 
 said to have been carved in Berkshire to com- 
 
2 The Story of 
 
 memorate the victory of iEscesdun or Ash- 
 down. This, Camden said, was carved by 
 King Alfred himself — another idolon specus. 
 
 We would not wish to say anything that 
 would derogate too much from the authority 
 of " the learned Camden," as he has been most 
 justly called, but we do venture to question his 
 place-names and his topography. The truth 
 is philology as we understand it was rather at 
 a discount in Camden's time and men who 
 were considered scholars and historians on 
 most points " ran amok " when they came to 
 the derivation of words. Brightstowe, i.e, 
 Bristol, Camden said was the " Bright " or 
 Famous Town : the Cangi, a race of men 
 called up and located surely in his own lively 
 imagination, lived atCannington and Kainesham 
 (Keynsham) in Somerset and so bequeathed 
 their name to these places ! He thinks 
 " Summer " may be at the root of Somerset, 
 and he makes a very bad shot at the derivation 
 of Dumnonia when he derives it from " Dun " 
 a hill and " Moina " a mine. In the county 
 of Somerset he certainly confuses Nether 
 Stowey on the Quantocks with a Stowey on 
 the Mendips. This is of course a trifling slip, 
 as no great campaign hinges on the exact 
 locality of the Stoweys, but we must be a little 
 more assured about Edington and the fort, 
 whither the Danes fled after their defeat. 
 What is Camden's authority ? Is the Wilt- 
 shire site acceptable simply because it is near 
 Chippenham the Danish base ? The exigencies 
 of the Athelney struggle are against this. Or 
 
The Battle of Edington. 3 
 
 is the Wiltshire Edington acceptable simply 
 because it was a Royal Manor and given to 
 Romsey Abbey ? This is immaterial to the 
 whole case. 
 
 Another " Will-o'-the-Wisp " of a particu- 
 larly coruscating and attractive kind started by 
 Camden again is that the " arx Cynuit " or 
 Kenwith Castle, the scene of that notable fight 
 which took place a few weeks before the Battle 
 of Edington itself, was situated in North 
 Devon and somewhere near Bideford. Anti- 
 quaries have taken up this scent very hotly, 
 and there is near Bideford a gruesome place 
 called " Bloody Corner " identified by Mr. 
 Vidal in the Archceologia (vol. xv, p. 198) 
 with the Danish fight. Indeed a place-name, 
 " Whibbelstone " has been dragged in to do 
 good service and is identified with Habbaston 
 or Hubbaston, the burying place of the great 
 chief Hubba, who fell " ante arcem Cynuit." 
 To add to this picturesque confusion, Charles 
 Kingsley, in his most popular novel " West- 
 ward Ho ! " has introduced Kenwith Castle and 
 Hubbaston on the North Devon site, following 
 the conjecture of Camden. 
 
 The only possible appeal to those who still 
 trust to Camden and place the Battle of 
 Edington in Wiltshire, and the fight before the 
 Arx Cynuit in North Devon, is to ask them to 
 study more minutely the natural terrain of that 
 most momentous campaign in a.d. 878, and 
 to set the evidence, especially that which bears 
 upon the smaller geographical details, once 
 more before their impartial judgment as students. 
 
4 The Story of 
 
 The subject itself is a most fascinating one 
 when we consider that after, perhaps, "The 
 Battle of Senlac" and the victory of the 
 Normans, the " Battle of Edington " comes 
 next in national importance. It was an epoch- 
 making event followed by the " Peace of 
 Wedmore " which finally divided the Kingdom 
 of Alfred from that of Guthrum, and presently 
 led to the union and amalgamation of England. 
 Athelstan, grandson to King Alfred, was able 
 to inscribe on his coins "Rex totius Brittanniae" 
 instead of simply Rex Angul-Saxonum. More- 
 over the way was paved for King Alfred's 
 great administrative and legal reforms for 
 which up to A.D. 878 he had little leisure. 
 Finally the victory of Edington meant the 
 triumph of the Cross against Paganism. When 
 at the Castle of Cynuit the Danish Raven, 
 woven by the three sisters of Hubba, drooped 
 and fell, the fiat went forth that Paganism and 
 Pagan emblems should finally disappear. The 
 font at Aller meant really a new birth. 
 
 If no other excuse may be found for reviving 
 the old-world controversy of the Site of 
 iEthandune (and no apology is really needed) 
 still much may be made of the recent publica- 
 tion of old MSS. and Charters, hitherto con- 
 cealed from public view. It is more than 
 probable that neither Camden nor his successors 
 ever read the original Charters of Athelney or 
 of Muchelney, or, indeed, the piled up treasures 
 of Wells Cathedral. But these have thrown 
 unexpected light upon place-names in the very 
 neighbourhood of King Alfred's last retreat. 
 
The Battle of Edington. 5 
 
 We may be reading a Charter which, at first 
 sight, seems to be uninteresting, but presently 
 we light upon an old boundary such as 
 " Toteyate " close to King Alfred's fort. 
 What is this but the Saxon " outlook Island " 
 and just that very place where the King looked 
 forth anxiously time after time when fighting 
 for his very existence in the marshes of the 
 Parret. Toteyate is now Borough Mump. 
 
 Again in the old gift of Long Sutton,* made 
 by King Alfred to Athelney, we chance across 
 no less than four notices of a " Herepath " or 
 Warpath in the original Saxon MS., leading 
 from Athelney to what must have been strategic 
 points in that narrowing field of action. In 
 another Charter (Stoke-Courcy, a.d. iioo- 
 1200) there is a Quantock Herepath running 
 down to the river Parret, which from its very 
 course must simply have been a Herepath 
 linked with the centre of North Petherton 
 Park and Forest. Not only this — but if we 
 examine carefully the manors and properties 
 left by King Alfred to his son Edward the 
 Elder, we shall find a cluster of them round 
 and in the vicinity of Petherton, Somerton, and 
 Athelney. This throws light upon the phrase 
 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that the King 
 had the aid till then of only " that part of 
 the men of Somerset which was nearest to 
 Athelney" and of those, as Ethelwerd adds, 
 " who were his servants and made use of the 
 King's pastures." 
 
 * See CoUinson's " Somersetshire," vol. iii, 197, also Athelney 
 Register. 
 
6 The Story of 
 
 An old Ballad, again, in which the praises 
 of King Alfred are sung and a dramatic version 
 is given to the well-known story of the Cakes, 
 actually mentions a place-name, " Newton 
 Court," the very scene of the adventure."* 
 This place-name is most valuable, because it 
 points to the precise locality of the King's 
 " latebrae " and, moreover, it appears as the 
 administrative centre of the Forest and Park of 
 Somerton and also of all the five Royal 
 Forests of Somerset. Newton-Forestariorum, 
 with a history most clearly traceable for 
 centuries, is Newton Plecy or North Newton 
 in the forest of Petherton. Sometimes the 
 park of Petherton has been called Newton 
 Park, and it was here that in 1673, King 
 Alfred's jewel was discovered. •f- The late 
 Professor Earle, although apparently he had 
 never read this popular Ballad, conjectured in 
 his Monograph on the Jewel that it was at this 
 very place King Alfred led his precarious life, 
 and cites a " North Newton " Charter granted 
 by the King. We have just an insight there- 
 fore into the resources of King Alfred when 
 still ranging the Petherton Forests and the 
 adjoining marshes. There was fish and fowl 
 and abundance of game, in the Royal Forest 
 of North Petherton and North Curry, and 
 what was still better, the stalwart band of 
 West Country Foresters with those " men of 
 the King's pastures " who stood by him un- 
 
 • See Appendix D, Thomas Evans' " Old Ballads " Vol. i, 1784. 
 
 t See "Forests and Deer Parks of Somerset" by Rev. W. 
 H. P. Greswell. 
 
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The Battle of Edington. 7 
 
 flinchingly at the end. Lastly the rummaging 
 of old papers and charters certainly brings to 
 light Cynuit Castle and gives us in King 
 Alfred's immediate neighbourhood a place 
 spelt Cynyz and now called Comwich, a key 
 to the whole situation ; and it has also given 
 us Wykyngs pulle on the Parret, close to Cynuit 
 Castle, and a most salient feature in the last 
 Danish attacks. 
 
 Further, it must be remembered that neither 
 Camden nor his immediate successors had the 
 advantage of studying the Alfred Campaign of 
 A.D. 878 with the aid of a proper ordnance 
 survey map drawn according to scale. Other- 
 wise it would have been impossible for them as 
 students of strategy to place Cynuit Castle at 
 Bideford, or the Battle of Edington in Wilt- 
 shire. Either place is fifty or sixty miles 
 distant from Athelney, and this in a straight 
 line. Considering the rough nature of the 
 ground over Dartmoor, Exmoor and the 
 Brendons, the descent of Ubba at Bideford, if 
 looked upon as a flank attack upon the fast- 
 nesses of King Alfred in North Petherton 
 must have been absolutely purposeless. The 
 distance was too great, the country too im- 
 practicable. Regarded as an isolated foray 
 upon North Devon, not a particularly rich 
 country then as contrasted with other portions, 
 it was ridiculous. But surely the language of 
 the A.S. Chronicle points to a concerted move- 
 ment made upon King Alfred from all quarters. 
 Lappenberg thinks that the Danes in 877 and 
 878 did combine forces and unite their efforts 
 
8 The Story of 
 
 to crush the King, and their plans were laid 
 accordingly to hem him in. 
 
 This blockade was successful for, as we learn 
 from the Chroniclers, King Alfred could only 
 make daily excursions from his base. He was 
 very straitly beleaguered. Yet, according to 
 Camden ^and, we suppose, others, King Alfred, 
 when he posed as a harper or as a "joculator" 
 went almost alone and unattended to Bratton 
 Castle or Chippenham to find out what his 
 foes were plotting at their base, sixty miles 
 distant. The journey itself would be far too 
 long for the immediate purpose in view, which 
 was to relieve the pressing blockade round 
 Athelney and Glastonbury, not to attack his 
 enemy's base far off. 
 
 Bratton Castle, too, as the refuge of the 
 Danes after a battle fought at the Wiltshire 
 Edington is absolutely inexplicable. It is 
 again too far off Athelney and too near 
 Chippenham, and the high ground is really on 
 the direct line of King Alfred's advance from 
 Selwood, if he ever did advance that way. It 
 was a strange refuge for the Danes to take in 
 face of defeat. Why did they not order their 
 retreat to Chippenham their base, which was 
 within sight ? It would have been the natural 
 and most obvious thing to do. Further, if 
 King Alfred really won in Wiltshire why did 
 he not make peace at Chippenham, the Danish 
 headquarters, instead of at Wedmore, in the 
 Somerset marshes } Everything points to a 
 battle near his own straitly invested base at 
 Athelney. 
 
The Battle of Edington. 9 
 
 Lastly, there is the substantiating voice of 
 local tradition which is heard more especially 
 in the fen country round Petherton — legends 
 and stories clustering round Newton Court as in 
 the old Ballad. Mr. W. H. Stevenson in his 
 edition of Asser underrates surely the value of 
 local tradition. No doubt he was right in 
 criticising sharply the myths that arose from 
 Camden's theory of the site of Cynuit Castle 
 at Appledore and in this desire to sift these 
 identifications to the very utmost, we are at 
 one with him. But the local traditions round 
 Petherton and Athelney owing nothing to 
 Camden and his successors are a different 
 matter altogether. Athelney is the natural 
 centre of action and also of tradition. As a 
 boy, the writer of this paper has skated 
 for miles over the frozen moorlands near 
 Athelney : he has seen the land flooded again 
 and again, and, quite recently, he has made a 
 study of the bounds and metes of the Forest 
 and Park of North Petherton — the Frx- 
 Norman Saxon Forest linked with Somerton as 
 a hunting centre. He has been brought into 
 contact time after time with the old people of 
 the place, and heard what they have had to 
 say. One old man named William Woodland, 
 who was born near Athelney and died there in 
 his hundredth year, spoke of King Alfred as if 
 he had seen and known about him yesterday. 
 To see the old man " buffing withies," i.e. 
 peeling them for baskets from the withy beds, 
 and to hear his stories of the countless quanti- 
 ties of fish and fowl that once haunted these 
 
lo The Story of 
 
 meres, was like listening to some ancient "Son 
 of the Marshes" speaking truly from the misty 
 past. 
 
 Sir John Spelman says of the marsh level in 
 his day " apud nos inclaruit " like Minturn^ 
 amongst the Romans which sheltered the flying 
 Marius. ^ 
 
 Another old man, John Chillcott by name, 
 who died in his ninetieth year, lived under the 
 most suggestive hill of the Quantock ridge 
 called Danesborough. He spoke of " the 
 Denes " (not Danes, thus preserving the old 
 pronunciation as in the Foresta de Dene) 
 and described them as " hurd headed (red 
 headed) men who beat ours in the war," and 
 he used always to add in a somewhat low and 
 oracular fashion " But the women-voak paid 
 'em out," an incident in the Danish campaign 
 the writer has never quite solved, although 
 there is room for a theory. Neither of these 
 old men could read or write and they were 
 genuine sons of the soil, their forefathers 
 having been born and bred in the country for 
 generations. A talk with rustics of this kind, 
 led on gradually by those who know their 
 ways and the manner of their expressions, must 
 end in the conviction that they are not invent- 
 ing. With the old generation the sanctity of 
 the spoken word was great — far different from 
 what it is now since the days of popular 
 education, and what they said they believed. 
 Mr. Cecil Sharp in collecting his store of 
 Folk Songs from Somerset was surprised himself 
 at their number, and at the fidelity with which 
 
The Battle of Edington. n 
 
 they were reproduced. It may be noticed that 
 Danesborough on the Quantocks, the scene of 
 Wordsworth's " Danish Boy," was always the 
 place of legends. Under the heather-clad hill 
 sounds of music were often heard, " as of a 
 full band ; " beneath its summit was a buried 
 treasure or money field where marauders or 
 invaders may have hidden their spoil. But more 
 specifically not far from Danesborough was a 
 tragic field, still called " Dead Men," where it 
 is said a Danish fight took place and the blood 
 flowed in torrents " to, the first shuttle of the 
 gate." This was in Over Stowey parish. 
 
 In Somerset, this trait of truthful relation 
 has always been marked, and William of 
 Malmesbury, himself a Somerset man, (cogno- 
 mento Somersetus), who described Athelney 
 Island evidently at first hand, writes thus of 
 King Alfred, " The very places are yet pointed 
 out by the inhabitants where he felt the 
 vicissitudes of good and evil fortune." If this 
 was so in the Thirteenth Century it continued 
 to be the case many hundreds of years after- 
 wards. Historic events evoked the spirit of 
 the old minstrels, and so when Macaulay came 
 to quarter the ground round Sedgemoor and 
 heard what the people had to say about the 
 battle of 1685, he too expressed himself as 
 struck both by the number and weight of the 
 stories and songs handed down from father to 
 son. The Danish legends " stuck," as we na- 
 turally would expect, and in the oral traditions 
 by " Philantiquarius Britannicus " in Stuart 
 times and reproduced for all who wish to read 
 
12 The Story of 
 
 them in Peter Langtoft's Chronicle (Thomas 
 Hearne 1727), we have yet another proof of 
 this vitality. It is neither fair nor reasonable 
 for the historian of dark periods to reject them. 
 
 From the written evidence at hand both in 
 Asser and the Chroniclers it must be clear 
 therefore^ that, towards the end, the campaign 
 waged between King Alfred and the Danes, 
 was confined to narrow limits. His means of 
 offence got gradually less and less until it may 
 be roughly said that all the Kingdom of 
 Wessex over which he was master early in 878 
 was scarcely 40 miles long and 12 miles broad. 
 From such a point as " King's Hill " on the 
 South of the Quantock ridges, (a hill in Saxon 
 times part of the Royal Quantock Demesne) 
 the whole of his narrowed sovereignty can be 
 seen in one coup d'oeil. 
 
 To understand how this came about, our 
 glance must be directed towards the larger 
 map of the country and to preceding events. 
 Not to go further back than a.d. 875 we shall 
 find that one part of the Danish invading host 
 had, under Healfdene, over-run and mastered 
 the whole region of the Northumbrians, and 
 had even extended their ravages to the country 
 of the Picts and to the Strathclyde. Another 
 portion of the heathens under Gothrun, Osscytil 
 (Osketellus) and Auvind (Amund) had come 
 to Cambridge and had wintered there. King 
 Alfred this year was not brought into contact 
 with the Danes, apparently, excepting by sea, 
 when, in some trifling naval engagement, he 
 fights six of the enemy's ships, capturing one. 
 
The Battle of Edington. 13 
 
 and putting the others to flight. It is not 
 stated where this naval engagement took place 
 but it is important so far as it proves that King 
 Alfred had realised that the best plan was to 
 trust to the wooden walls to keep out the 
 invaders. This policy we know that he elab- 
 orated afterwards, and Sir John Spelman gives 
 us a good idea as to how the King's " naves 
 longae " were constructed in order to fight with 
 advantage against the Danes. The only way 
 to keep England safe was to be able to sweep 
 the seas outside as the great Blake afterwards 
 taught his countrymen, when, instead of the 
 pirate Danes, England had to deal with the 
 Algerine corsairs who used to raid even the 
 Severn Sea and anchor off the Holmes, the 
 Danish perch centuries ago. 
 
 Suddenly in a.d. 876 " the oft mentioned 
 army of the pagans leaving Cambridge by 
 night entered the fortified place called Wer- 
 ham" (Asser), but we are not told how they 
 reached this Dorset stronghold from Cambridge. 
 We may assume that they intended, more suo, 
 to keep their operations secret and make a 
 surprise visit. Up to this date it does not 
 appear as if Wessex had suffered very grievously 
 from Danish invasions. The terror had hung 
 over the land for nearly a hundred years, and 
 according to the " Chronicon Fani Sancti 
 Neoti " three ships " Normannorum " had for 
 the first time touched at the Island of Portland 
 in A.D. 789, But the terrible piratical out- 
 rages that gave occasion for that Church Synod 
 held at London in a.d. 833, "pro consilio 
 
14 The Story of 
 
 capiendo contra Danicos piratas litora Angliae 
 assidue infestantes " were mostly those which 
 affected the Eastern shores and, no doubt, 
 London itself. 
 
 From a stray note in the A.S. Chronicle 
 (a.d. 845) we discover that the Danes had 
 found tljeir way round Cornwall and up the 
 Severn Sea. They made the mouth of the 
 Parret their objective, probably knowing that 
 by this route they could reach by far the richest 
 and oldest shrine of Christianity in the king- 
 dom, i.e., the Sacred Island of " Ynys Witrin " 
 or Glastonbury. In this project they were 
 foiled by the united efforts of iElstan, Bishop 
 of Sherborne, Eanwulf Ealdorman of Somerset 
 and Osric the Alderman of Dorset. This 
 invasion took place before the birth of King 
 Alfred and whilst his father Ethelwulf was still 
 on the throne. 
 
 However this may be, it may be taken for 
 granted that, whatever the fortunes of the 
 neighbouring Kingdom of Mercia up to a.d, 
 876, the Kingdom of Wessex remained pretty 
 free from formidable Danish inroads. Forays 
 there may have been, but nothing in the shape 
 of a prolonged occupation. If the Danes had 
 really ever had their grip upon Wessex they 
 would have sacked Glastonbury just as they 
 sacked Croyland of which Ingulph gives us 
 such a pitiable account. But Glastonbury, to 
 use the phrase of Glastonbury's historian, 
 William of Malmesbury, " splenduit usque ad 
 Alfredi tempus " but then being destroyed by 
 the Danes " desideravit notos incolas." 
 
The Battle of Edington. 15 
 
 We can assign the date of the ruin and 
 destruction of Glastonbury fairly well by 
 inference to a.d. 877-878. For what does 
 King Alfred do when he learned that the 
 Danes were quartered at Wareham in a.d. 876, 
 a spot lying " in paga quae dicitur Britannice 
 Durnqueir, Saxonice autem Thornsaeta tutis- 
 simo terrarum situ " and also the abode of a 
 Monasterium ? He at once hurries to the 
 place, invests it and forces the Danes to sur- 
 render, give hostages and swear that they would 
 depart from Wessex. This looks as if King 
 Alfred was lord and master of his own kingdom 
 so far that he was able to dictate terms. Yet 
 the Danes must have been securely ensconced 
 at Wareham. 
 
 Sir John Spelman in his " Vita Alfredi 
 Magni " observes that the usual plan of the 
 Danes was to seize upon a strong position not 
 far from their landing-place either " munitum 
 vel munitioni idoneum," i.e. either fortified or 
 suitable for fortification. In the case of Ware- 
 ham they had evidently surprised a place that 
 was a ready-made fortress. But in case they 
 could not get this the Danes occupied a port 
 that was precipitous " fluvioque vicin um " which 
 they immediately strengthened with a vallum. 
 Their encampments, Spelman observes, were 
 always round, like ancient Cissbury (Chichester) 
 and were provided with one gate which 
 generally faced the river or estuary which they 
 had invaded. 
 
 Such places were exactly suited to their 
 tactics of pillage and plunder, and when they 
 
1 6 The Story of 
 
 had sufficiently devastated (expilaverant) a 
 region, they decamped and went elsewhere. 
 How some places suffered we may gather from 
 a post-Alfred and Domesday account of Farn- 
 ham, a Domesday manor in Hants which, in 
 the time of Edward the Confessor, only paid 
 tax on twenty instead of thirty Hides. " Sed 
 Rex Edwardus ita donavit, causa Wickingarum, 
 quia super mare est." Those who know Poole 
 Harbour and the Isle of Purbeck will realise at 
 once how admirably suited Wareham was for 
 the " saspe memoratus paganorum exercitus " 
 which had come thither from Cambridge. 
 Yet, in spite of their strong position, both by 
 sea and land, they were forced to surrender on 
 conditions by King Alfred. Clearly the King 
 was able to control and still govern with un- 
 questioned sway Dorset and Somerset. The 
 monks of Glastonbury might have trembled 
 when they heard of the fate of the Wareham 
 monasteries, but, so far, the Fosse-way was safe 
 and they could sleep securely in their beds. 
 Moreover, what was done in Mercia was up to 
 this point inconsiderable, and the Severn Sea 
 was safe. 
 
 We next come, in a.d. 876, to the invasion 
 of Exanceastre or Exeter which was even more 
 serious than that of Wareham. On a certain 
 night, breaking their treaty and disregarding 
 their oaths the Danes slew King Alfred's horse- 
 men and from Wareham made their way 
 " versus 'Domnaniam " i.e. to Devonshire. Asser 
 indicates in his version the British and Saxon 
 character of the population of Exeter when 
 
The Battle of Edington. i? 
 
 he gives its alternative name in British of 
 " Cairuuisc " i.e. the town on the Eastern Bank 
 of the Uuisce or Exe River. In spite of this 
 treachery King Alfred rode after them (for 
 some of these Danes seem to have ridden 
 through Dorchester to Exeter) but, unfortun- 
 ately, he w^as unable to catch them up and his 
 enemy there, as at Wareham, managed to reach 
 the fortress and enter it. 
 
 The thought that just strikes one is whether 
 the Kingdom of Wessex was altogether sound 
 in its allegiance to the Saxon King, and 
 whether amongst " The Waelas " of Exeter 
 there were some, anyhow, who inheriting a 
 rooted aversion to the Saxon Conquerors saw 
 in the Danes an avenging hand wherewith to 
 wipe out historic defeats and a thousand in- 
 dignities. The Dumnonians at Exeter may 
 have been divided in their allegiance to the 
 " House of Cerdic." Exeter, as Mr. Freeman 
 long ago remarked, was a town of two separate 
 nationalities and one section of them, anyhow, 
 may have swerved at a critical time. For the 
 " Wealcynne," as King Alfred describes them 
 in his Will, may still have felt that social and 
 political ostracism that is the invariable se- 
 quence of national defeat. Thoughts of 
 Geraint and of Arthur fighting their desperate 
 battles with the Saxon may still have been 
 present with a section of the Wealcynne. 
 
 However this may be. King Alfred was 
 evidently strong enough to here again com- 
 mand the situation. The Danes " then de- 
 livered to him hostages as many as they 
 
1 8 The Story of 
 
 would and swore many oaths and observed the 
 peace well." In the chronology of events 
 given by Sir John Spelman the Danes promised 
 to evacuate West Saxony, and returning to 
 Mercia they divided the Province of Mercia 
 between them " in mense Augusto " (a.d. 877). 
 How the Danes found their way round to 
 Mercia from Exeter we are not told but it 
 must have been by the coasts of Cornwall and 
 up the Severn Sea as they erected their huts at 
 Gloucester. The Danes it may be observed 
 had suffered severely this year from a storm at 
 sea which had destroyed 1 20 of their ships off 
 Swanage on their way along the South Coast 
 from Wareham to Exeter. Although King 
 Alfred had skirmished with the Danes by sea, 
 it does not appear as if he had thought seriously 
 of the defence of the Severn Sea, which, as 
 the sequel shows, was the most vital part of 
 Wessex. 
 
 The winter of a.d. 877 brings about a most 
 surprising change in the fortunes of King 
 Alfred. From his dominating position as 
 King of Wessex he becomes a hunted fugitive 
 accompanied by certain soldiers and vassals 
 (militibus et fassellis) leading a restless and 
 uneasy life in great tribulation amidst the 
 woody and marsh fens of the district of 
 Somerton. (Summurtunensis pagse. Asser). 
 All that he had to exist upon was what he 
 could snatch openly or secretly from the pagans 
 themselves or from the Christians who had 
 bowed the neck to the Pagans. There were 
 frequent forays (irruptiones) on his part and 
 
The Battle of Edington. 19 
 
 many retreats, but none of the latter could 
 have been conceived in the spirit and with the 
 desire pour mieux sauter. These were the 
 retreats of almost absolute despair. How can 
 we account for this diminution of his power ? 
 
 In the first place what happened in Mercia 
 must have grievously affected him. The 
 Danes there had set up a puppet of their own 
 to reign, Ceolwulph, whom all the authorities 
 combine in decrying as a worthless being. 
 
 Asser writes thus : 
 
 " By a most miserable arrangement the 
 pagans gave Mercia into the custody of a 
 certain foolish man, named Ceolwulf, one of 
 the King's ministers, on condition that he 
 should restore it to them, whenever they should 
 wish to have it again : and to guarantee this 
 agreement, he gave them hostages and swore 
 that he would not oppose their will, but be 
 obedient to them in every respect." 
 
 The influence of this titular King was all, 
 therefore, on the side of the Danes. As 
 Mercia with its fringe of the Severn Sea gave 
 the Danes acting from Gloucester access to the 
 heart of King Alfred's kingdom there is surely 
 more in the defection of Mercia than appears 
 at first sight. The Danes proceed inland 
 either by way of Gloucester or Caer Brit 
 (Bristol) and lay their hands upon the " Regia 
 villa " of Chippenham. 
 
 Secondly, there is every reason to suppose 
 that in their wider plans which covered the 
 permanent occupation of Mercia, like North- 
 umberland, the Danes were assisted by new 
 
20 The Story of 
 
 levies — Asser alludes in one passage to the 
 overwhelming numbers of these northern in- 
 vaders, for if you slew^ thousands of them, 
 thousands would still appear. In the vision of 
 St. Neot in Alfred's darkest day, and just before 
 the battle of Edington, he is told not to 
 despair '.' propter multitudinem eorum." The 
 Chronicler Huntington (ii 00-1150) puts the 
 general position of affairs thus : — 
 
 " In the seventh year of King Alfred when 
 now the Danes were in possession of all the 
 Kingdoms on the Northern side of the 
 Thames and King Halfdene was reigning in 
 Northumberland — and the brother of Half- 
 dene was in East Anglia, and the three Kings, 
 God run, Osketin and Anwerd, were with 
 Ceolwulf in Mercia — it seemed a disgrace to 
 the Danes that King Alfred should still hold 
 the land West of the Thames. The three 
 Kings therefore came to Chippenham with a 
 wonderful multitude of men who had lately 
 come from Denmark covering the earth like 
 locusts." 
 
 Apparently, after the occupation of Chippen- 
 ham there was nothing to stop the Danish 
 arms ever rushing and advancing Westwards 
 both by sea and land in the Autumn and 
 Winter of a.d. 877. To this period must 
 belong the sacking and pillage of that sea- 
 monastery Glastonbury ; the occupation of 
 Bristol and Bath and the conquest of the great 
 Roman Fossway which led from Bath to 
 Ilchester, — that old Roman town close to 
 Somerton. There are, of course, plentiful 
 
The Battle of Edington. 21 
 
 rumours of the visits of the Danes to Bath 
 and Bristol, and Camden says that these 
 heathen destroyed two churches at Bath, but 
 there is clearer evidence altogether of a notable 
 struggle which must have happened about this 
 particular time for the command of the Parret 
 mouth. Just here the eye will fall upon the 
 commanding position of Brent Knoll, 500 feet 
 high, which dominates the whole country and 
 still bears frequent marks of ancient escarp- 
 ments. Below is the famous site of Battle- 
 borough, anciently spelt Batelberga in the old 
 Glastonbury papers, and here was fought no 
 doubt on a Glastonbury Manor the great fight 
 that decided the fate of Glastonbury itself. In 
 this fight, King Alfred would be defending 
 Burnham, part of the old Saxon ancient 
 Demesne.* 
 
 There are abundance of rumours also of 
 Danish inroads, evidently belonging to this 
 date, in the vicinity of the Axe and the lower 
 end of Mendip where, at Uphill, the range 
 descends to the ancient port of Uxella. The 
 old inhabitants of this district handed down 
 in Stuart times a story of how the Danes 
 rushed up the tidal river Axe and anchoring 
 near Bleadon drove all the inhabitants before 
 them. All fled except one aged woman who 
 through her infirmities was unable to run and 
 could only crouch for shelter in a hiding-place. -f- 
 
 * See Collinson's " History of Somerset," also Peter Langtoft's 
 Chronicle, vol. ii, p. 466, (Thomas Heame, 1725), in which allusion 
 is made to local traditions in Stuart times. 
 
 t Peter Langtoft's Chronicle, vol. ii, p. 476. 
 
22 The Story of 
 
 Presently as the marauding bands of Vikings 
 disappeared, she had the courage to peep out 
 and as she saw no one near she went to the boats 
 and with an axe she found at hand, cut the 
 ropes and cables and let the boats drift down 
 the river seaward with the tide. The inhabi- 
 tants seeing what had happened from a distance 
 rallied, and awaiting the Vikings as they re- 
 turned engaged them in battle and inflicted a 
 terrible slaughter upon them. Still the Danes 
 were paramount in this region and are supposed 
 to have destroyed a monastery near Blaedon- 
 Hythe not far from Axbridge, mentioned in 
 old Charters and dedicated to St. Martin.* 
 The fate of Glastonbury must have been 
 decided by this time or, perhaps, it was 
 trembling in the balance. 
 
 The question may be asked whether it is 
 really at all possible from available historical 
 evidence to fix with any degree of certainty 
 the dates of these Danish attacks upon Glaston- 
 bury and upon the North Coast of Somerset 
 and the mouth of the Parret. The answer is 
 fairly obvious. In 845, the Danes did attack 
 the mouth of the Parret but, as the A.S. 
 Chronicle says, were repulsed by the Bishop of 
 Sherborne and his allies. In the beginning of 
 King Alfred's reign, a.d. 872, the Danes could 
 scarcely have made a formidable raid upon the 
 North Coast of Somerset and upon Glaston- 
 bury, as it is quite clear that King Alfred was 
 strong enough from what has been said above 
 
 t Kemble's Charters, no. Ixiii, c. a.d. 712. 
 
The Battle of Edington. 23 
 
 to drive them both from Wareham and 
 Exeter. After the Peace of Wedmore in 
 878 all these Danish inroads ceased to be 
 really formidable. There is scarcely a 
 Danish place-name ending in by, thorpe, 
 etc., in Somerset and in Domesday " John 
 the Dane " is mentioned thus as the holder 
 of Yatton. Another family appears as 
 Dacus or Deneis surviving in Sok-Dennis, but 
 the Danes were conspicuous by their absence. 
 Asser notes that there was a Danish monk at 
 Athelney the only one of that race, but practi- 
 cally the Northmen were cleared out. At any 
 rate they were so scarce that wherever. one of 
 them was found as a settler his nationality was 
 given. 
 
 From John of Glastonbury we may infer 
 that the Danes in Canute's time were very 
 different from those in King Alfred's time, 
 more than 220 years previously. Of course, 
 after Ethelred's treachery the Danes swarmed 
 over England as avenging foes {Angliam 
 hostiliter pervagabantur). A party of them 
 came to the gate of Glastonbury Abbey, known 
 as the Hawete {qua Hawete vacatur). This, 
 we know, was the well known fence that ran 
 round the Abbey, probably restored under 
 S. Dunstan. Some of the Danes having heard 
 of the sanctity of the place retreated lest they 
 should provoke the wrath of the " Mother of 
 Pity " and the other Saints whose bodies lay 
 there. In King Alfred's time no such com- 
 punction would have occurred to Hubba's or 
 Guthrum's men. However, even in Canute's 
 
24 The Story of 
 
 time there were found some who derided 
 the sanctity of Glastonbury {subsannantes) and 
 entered the sacred precincts. These were 
 immediately struck with blindness by the 
 Virgin but, because they repented, were soon 
 restored to sight. Such was the gratitude of 
 these Dapes that, desiring to make a suitable 
 offering, they collected money amongst them- 
 selves and presented a cross of gold and silver, 
 adorned with precious stones, to the old Church 
 — '■' veteri ecclesice" — meaning the Chapel of 
 S. Joseph. King Canute himself visited 
 Glastonbury afterwards and as patron of the 
 Abbey granted great privileges (a.d. 1017) and 
 confirmed all the old charters dating back to 
 Centwine, Ina and the " incomparable Edgar." 
 In the account of John of Glastonbury there 
 is nothing to induce us to believe that then 
 the Danes appeared in the guise of marauding 
 Vikings, sweeping up the Parret in their ships. 
 They probably reached Glastonbury from 
 Bath. Canute himself passed through Bath. 
 
 In post-Alfred days Severn defence was well 
 organised against casual forays by Edward the 
 Elder, who was ready to meet the Danish 
 Rhoald in a.d. 915. 
 
 Florence, of Worcester, writes : — 
 " So the King posted different portions of 
 his army in suitable places on the South side 
 of the river Severn from Cornwall to the 
 mouth of the river Avon " (where Bristol 
 would be threatened). "But leaving their 
 ships on the strand they plundered stealthily 
 by night to the east of Weced (Watchet) and 
 
The Battle of Edington. 25 
 
 again at a place called Portlocan, but on each 
 occasion all were slain by the King's Army 
 except such as fled like cowards to their ships. 
 Overpowered by their defeat they retired to an 
 island called Reoric {i.e. the Flat Holm) where 
 they remained until a number of them died of 
 starvation. So driven by necessity they sailed 
 first to Diomed (the country of the Dimetians) 
 and afterwards, in the Autumn, to Ireland." 
 
 To this period belongs, in all probability, 
 the exploits of Aelle the Governor of Bristol 
 (c. 920) celebrated by Thomas Rowlls, a Car- 
 melite friar and father Confessor to William 
 Cannynge, founder of S. Mary Redcliffe Church, 
 written in 1468. 
 
 " O Thou (or what remains of thee) 
 
 Aelle, the darlynge of futuritye, 
 Lette thys mie song bold as thy courage bee 
 
 As everlastynge to posteritye. 
 Whanne Dacya's sons, with hair of bloodred hue 
 Like Kyngge — coppes brastynge with the mornynge 
 
 dewe." 
 
 " Arraunged in drear arraye 
 
 Upon the lethale daye 
 Spredde, farr and wyde, on Watchet's shore 
 
 Thenne dydst thou brondeous stande 
 
 And with thie burlye hande 
 Bespryngedde all the mees wythe gore." 
 
 " Drawn by thine anlace fell 
 Down to the depths of hell 
 Thousands of Dacyans went : 
 Brystowans, menne of myghte 
 Ydar'd the blodie fyghte 
 And acted deeds full quent." 
 
 etc., etc. Evans' Old Ballads. 
 
 Quite Chaucerian, in some of the forms and 
 words used we exclaim, and no wonder that on 
 
26 The Story of 
 
 the place of carnage were raised three great 
 mounds near Watchet called Grabburrowes. 
 
 The fact seems to be that King Alfred had 
 in 878 left the Severn Sea unguarded by a fleet,* 
 and we now come to a most potent cause of 
 his discomfiture which, combined with other 
 reasons such as the defection of Mercia and the 
 overwhelming numbers of the Danes, seems 
 enough to account for his forlorn state in the 
 marshes of North Petherton. Hubba, the 
 brother of Inguar and Guthrum, had conceived 
 the idea of invading South Wales and of 
 wintering there. The strategy of this is most 
 clear. Quartered comfortably during the 
 winter of a.d. 877, in the notable " Foresta de 
 Dene" (known as the T)anica sylva in old 
 maps) where his ships could be easily refitted 
 and his store of iron for weapons could be re- 
 plenished from the forges of the forest itself — 
 celebrated since the days of the Romans — 
 Hubba must have kept King Alfred in the 
 utmost alarm and uncertainty. From the Usk 
 he could strike at North Somerset by short 
 forays even in winter. At the same time he 
 was in easy communication with Gloucester 
 
 * From the Chronica Majora of Matthew Paris it may be 
 inferred that King Alfred did not seriously organise his fleet till 
 A.D. 897, at which time he made " longas naves guas cyulas 
 sive galeias af Reliant . . . in quibus armaiis imfositis jussit 
 maris semitas observari." Sir John Spelman, in his life of King 
 Alfred described the ships as " rowed with 50 oars apiece and as 
 long again and as high again and more steady in sail than the best 
 of the enemy's ships . . . they had a plain level deck above the 
 place where the rowers sat and from thence had great odds of 
 advantage. They were like the traditionary ships of the Veneti with 
 which Caesar fought and were very high in the poops . . . but the 
 ships of the Veneti went with sails of leather, King Alfred's 
 chiefly with oars. 
 
The Battle of Edington. 27 
 
 and Chippenham, the latter place being only 
 20 miles from Bristol. It is quite possible that 
 the Battle of Brent Knoll and the skirmishes 
 round the entrenched portions above Watchet 
 took place in the winter of a.d. 877. " Danes 
 Castle," near Watchet, may have been occupied 
 at that time ; also Daneknap above Nettle- 
 combe. (See Bow^en's map). 
 
 The Forest of Dene is called by Giraldus 
 Cambrensis, temp. Henry II., " Nobilis Danu- 
 biae sylva " and this is rendered by David 
 Powell, his learned Welsh commentator, 
 (c. 1580), as the 'Danica sylva lying at the 
 extreme corner of the confluence of the Wye 
 and Severn so called from the Danes, called 
 also Dacians, who occupied it in the time of 
 King Alfred and so gave it its distinctive name. 
 In the " Theatrum orbis Terrarum " of 1 574 it 
 appears here. In his " Breviary of Britayne " 
 (p. 42) Humfrey Lloyd writes thus : " In the 
 very corner between the Severn and the Wye, 
 not far from the Town of Rosse, is that 
 renowned wood which of the Danes is 
 called the * Forest of Dene.' " Mr. Stevenson 
 [Athenaum, Sep. 15th, 1906) says that the deri- 
 vation of Dene Forest from the Danes is " a 
 strange idea." If so it has authority, and the 
 " strangeness" lies in the fact that Mr. Stevenson 
 is unaware apparently of this authority. 
 
 But with the spring of a.d. 878 the time had 
 come for a more decisive blow than any yet 
 given. The mouth of the Parret had already 
 been gained and the right or Eastern bank lay 
 in the hands of the Danes. Here for a time the 
 
2 8 The Story of 
 
 invaders were held in check. On the Western 
 side the shores of still unconquered Dumnonia 
 extended, for the best authorities are agreed 
 that in former days the river Pedret or Parret 
 constituted an ethnical and tribal boundary and 
 that as far as geographical nomenclature went 
 then Dumnonia really included the North 
 littoral of Somerset as apart from the " Sum- 
 mertunensis Paga" or region round Somerton. 
 (See Appendix A.) More than thirty years 
 previously, as above hinted, the Danish ships 
 had gathered at the mouth of the Parret [at 
 Pedridan mutham) where in a.d. 8^ 5 " "Dux 
 Ernulphus cum Sumerscetensibus and Dux 
 Osricus cum Dorsetensibus et Alstano Scire- 
 burnensis Episcopo " had defeated them with 
 great slaughter. The spot was well known to 
 them and now at last they seemed to have 
 gained the upper hand. The mouth of the 
 Parret was forced and Glastonbury had fallen. 
 For the moment the Danish leader neglected 
 to attack the Quantocks and the high lands to 
 the North of Athelney but together with 
 Inguar he made a bold dash at Somerton itself 
 With the mouth of the Parret in his possession 
 this dash was a fairly easy matter to accomplish, 
 especially about March, when, at the time of 
 the equinox, the spring tides rise highest and 
 the tidal Bore up the Parret is exceptionally 
 strong. The days also were rapidly lengthen- 
 ing and there was every reason for renewed 
 activity. From a remark made by Sir John 
 Spelman, Hubba was noted for his impetuous 
 valour, Inguar on the other hand for his more 
 
The Battle of Edington. 29 
 
 calculating daring, but the union of dash and 
 caution in both must have made them formid- 
 able combatants. Wessex was at their mercy, 
 the Severn Sea was open to them, and up every 
 creek and channel where there was a tidal bore 
 their ships could float up on their devastating 
 errand unassisted by oar or sail. 
 
 To understand better the valley of the 
 Parret and the terrain on which and around 
 which the last phases of this campaign were 
 enacted, it may be well to recall some of the 
 general features of the somewhat winding and 
 perplexing river itself. There is no doubt that 
 at many points the Parret, once largely spread 
 over acres of ooze, and a primitive muddy 
 wilderness, has materially shifted its course. 
 This may be proved by the fact that portions 
 of parishes, formerly divided clearly enough by 
 the old channels, have been changed and are 
 found in certain detached portions, now east 
 and now west of the old beds. In one spot, 
 near Downend and Puriton, where the river 
 used to make a notable loop or curve towards 
 the South, the hand of man has intervened 
 within fairly recent times (1677) and has 
 transferred one portion of the parish of Chilton 
 Trinity from the north to the south of the 
 
 nver.* 
 
 Here and there, where the wear of ages has 
 been incessant and the action of tides and 
 
 *See Proceedings of Son. Arch. Society, Vol. Llll, p. 174, 
 Article by Rev. W. H. P. Greswell. See also The Royal Geo- 
 graphical journal. May, 1910, for a description of changes in 
 the course of the River Trent, a parallel instance. 
 
3° The Story of 
 
 floods has been unremitting, whole sections of 
 half reclaimed marshes have been obliterated, 
 for which indeed the rector or vicar claims an 
 original tithe, much to the farmer's con- 
 sternation. In the parish of Pawlet the 
 Abbey lands of S. Augustines, Bristol, included 
 358 acres and we are informed in a note in the 
 tithe map that "adjoining these lands are 150 
 acres or thereabouts which have accumulated 
 and been gained in consequence of the river 
 Parret, which bounds this parish on the west, 
 having gradually shifted its bed and receded 
 westwards." The parish of Pawlet has grown 
 therefore at the expense of Chilton Trinity 
 across the river. 
 
 But there is one constant and unvarying 
 feature about the Parret and that is the 
 phenomenon known as " The Bore " or tidal 
 wave. Twice a day with a greater or less 
 velocity according to the state of the tides them- 
 selves the bore rushes up the channel of the 
 Parret, occasionally rising to a height of twenty 
 feet at Bridgwater, which is no less than four- 
 teen miles from the mouth at Burnham. An 
 easterly or north easterly wind blowing strongly 
 down the Bristol Channel tends to lower the 
 level of the waters : a southerly or westerly 
 wind (perhaps the most common in these lati- 
 tudes) to raise them still higher by banking up 
 the water in Bridgwater Bay. At the same 
 time a heavy downpour of rain or a melting of 
 spring snow will often aggravate the evil of 
 the waters if they occur simultaneously with 
 the period of high equinoctial tides. Some 
 
The Battle of Edington. 3^ 
 
 miles above Bridgwater the Parret is reinforced 
 at Borough Bridge (King Alfred's Toteyate) 
 by the waters of the Tone which rises on the 
 Brendon hills and gives its name to Taunton 
 (Toneton or Tanton.) 
 
 According to a modern Parliamentary 
 Report on "The Floods of Somerset" (1873) 
 the area of the Parret watershed is 565 square 
 miles, that of the river Gary that rises close to 
 Cadbury camp 79 square miles, that of the 
 Brue which flows from Glastonbury and finds 
 its exit near the mouth of the Parret 207 
 square miles ; that of the Axe, which of course 
 has a separate basin to the east, but close to 
 Glastonbury, 98 square miles. Added together 
 these give us a total of 949 square miles of 
 which in modern times, notwithstanding the 
 efforts of generations of commissioners of 
 sewers and drainage boards, no less than 107 
 square miles are still liable to floods. Speaking 
 more particularly of the Parret the area liable 
 to floods in the upper part of it and beyond 
 Langport, the old port of Somerton, is still 
 24,137 acres, that in the lower Parret 15,135 
 acres. In King Alfred's time we must pro- 
 bably treble or quadruple the flooded areas and 
 even supposing that there were " walls " and 
 retaining banks in those days it would have 
 been King Alfred's policy to break them down 
 and flood the country for self-protection. A very 
 large portion of this country lies ten or fifteen 
 feet below the level of spring tides, as a glance 
 at the levels given in the ordnance maps will 
 prove. 
 
32 The Story of 
 
 The force of the tidal bore does not exhaust 
 itself at Bridgwater but rushes up as far as 
 Langport on strong spring tides, a distance of 
 25 miles, and as far as Borough Bridge and the 
 junction of the Tone, close to Athelney, on 
 neap tides. The pace of the bore varies from 
 three to four miles an hour, slow along broad 
 reaches and swifter round sharp curves and a 
 narrowing bed. Of Lamport, or Langport, old 
 Gerard wrote c. 1630, "For that it hath 
 been a port is probable enough. The very 
 name shews that it was anciently a port or 
 inland haven, the river being large enough noe 
 doubt to bring up vessels of some burthen as it 
 does barges this day." It is still possible to 
 reach Langport, the old port of Somerton, from 
 the Parret mouth and the Severn Sea. 
 
 It is not at all likely that the Danes, having 
 command of the Parret mouth, and presumably 
 its flooded banks, should have neglected such 
 an unique opportunity for an • inland raid as 
 that provided by the channel of the river Parret, 
 especially when it led them right up to the 
 town of Somerton and the heart of the " Sum- 
 murtunensis pagas." Fortunately the follow- 
 ing notice of Somerton preserved in the 
 Cotton MS. (Julius F. VI. Folio 404) throws a 
 welcome light upon the Parret episodes of this 
 Danish war. " The shire Towne of Somersett- 
 shire ab antiquo : of grett capacyte, walled in the 
 Saxon's time, overrowne by the Danes — chefFely 
 by Hynguar and Hubba." 
 
 The time of the raid was in the spring of 
 A.D. 878 and it must have been made before 
 
The Battle of Edington. 33 
 
 the battle at Arx Cynuit, where Hubba was 
 slain. Moreover the very fact that Hubba 
 and Inguar are mentioned together in this old 
 MS. notice proves that there was concerted 
 action. Hinguar would have marched on 
 Somerton by the Fossway, leading a land con- 
 tingent from Chippenham. Hubba would 
 have rushed up the Parret with his ships. 
 Lappenberg, in his History of England under 
 the Anglo-Saxon Kings, evidently thinks that 
 " it might have been in consequence of an 
 agreement between the Vikings at Gloucester 
 and Hubba that an attack was made on all 
 sides on Wessex." Mr. W. H. Stevenson 
 (Athenasum, Oct. 5th, 1907) maintains that 
 Danish co-operation in this campaign is simply 
 imaginary, but, surely, there is every historical 
 reason in favour of it. From the base of 
 Chippenham the Danish attacks would make 
 themselves felt in ever widening circles. The 
 net was being woven to enclose King Alfred 
 in his last fastness. 
 
 It may be asked whether on the lower 
 Parret itself there was any likely place where 
 the Danes could make their rendezvous both 
 by river and by land. Here again old charters 
 and MSS. come to our help and assist 
 materially to elucidate the local features of this 
 campaign.* 
 
 In the deeds belonging to the Augustinian 
 monks of Gaunt's Hospital, Bristol, is a long 
 
 * Placita coram Domino Rege apud West monasterium de 
 Termino S. Michjelis 4 Plenry IV. Thesaurus Chartarum et 
 aliorum Munimentorum Domus S. Marie de Billeswik. 
 
34 The Story of 
 
 description of the lands belonging to them at 
 Paulet or Poulet in the lower reaches of the 
 river Parret. Mention is there made of a 
 " Via alta et regalis " also of a well-known 
 " communis semita equitibus et militibus " 
 from " Comwich passage " to " Vikingspill " i.e. 
 the Pill or landing place of the Vikings. The 
 Placename occurs several times and was well 
 known in the reign of Henry IV, at the time 
 when the Placita or Pleas were written. As 
 we have shown that the Danes never succeeded 
 in making a lodgement (as opposed to a 
 desultory raid) in the valley of the Parret at 
 any time excepting at this particular crisis, the 
 Placename " of Vikingspill " must clearly be 
 dated back to a.d. 877, or a.d. 878. 
 
 This Vikings Pill, from the local description 
 given in the Charter, can most clearly be identi- 
 fied with a place known better in after 
 centuries as Downend Pill — or perhaps Walpole 
 close by — at the foot of the Polden Hills. 
 Downend, which is marked in Speed's maps, 
 was formerly an important manor in the great 
 Barony of Nether Stowey and was held, 
 together with the Domesday Peritone or 
 Peretun i.e. the ton on the river Parret. Here 
 was also a borough called often in the Somerset 
 Pleas "Burgh de Capite Montis" with a 
 Burgriht (Pipe Rolls). The borough still sur- 
 vives in Burrow mead just opposite. Some- 
 times the place here was called Chedesmunt in 
 the Placita. In Saxton's map a curious 
 place-name here is " Chieschettle of y mount." 
 In Saxon times it was far more important than 
 
The Battle of Edington. 35 
 
 the neighbouring Burgh of Bridgwater, i.e. the 
 Burgh de Walter (de Dowai) the Domesday 
 tenant. It was by Downend Pill and Puriton 
 that the pilgrims from South Wales would 
 naturally find their way to Glastonbury. Local 
 tradition still has it that this was the earliest 
 route thither, ascending gradually the slopes of 
 the Polden Hill, and winding round to the old 
 Abbey by way of Street or making a shorter 
 cut across the Moors by a log or corduroy 
 causeway. One of the Saxon Kings had given 
 Puriton to the Church of St. Peter at Rome 
 and Puriton Church was one of the very few 
 that belonged to the " Episcopus " as he is 
 called (not Pope) of Rome.* 
 
 When Hildebrand died c. 1086, about the 
 time of the great Domesday Survey, Puriton 
 and Downend fell into the King's hands and 
 were never given back to Rome, perhaps 
 because King William considered all such 
 endowments as really his own. However this 
 may be, " La Donende," or Downend, with the 
 adjacent Domesday Manor of Cruca, i.e. the 
 creek (still living in the place-name of Crook) 
 on the Parret was a most important point as 
 the spot where boats anchored and all 
 passengers landed for the Polden ridge. The 
 Danes saw at once the advantage of such a 
 spot, where in Saxon times, presumably, arose 
 the strong " Burgh de Capite Montis," and 
 here at Vikingspill they landed and effected 
 a lodgment. This place will figure, as we shall 
 
 * See Exon Domesday. 
 
36 The Story of 
 
 see, in the course of the campaign as their 
 dep6t and finally their last stronghold on the 
 Parret. 
 
 A few miles below Vikings Pill is the well- 
 known Cumwich Passage, called the " Hed of 
 Cumwich " in old Bridgwater documents, 
 signifying the head of navigation in later times 
 for larger ships. Just here the river Parret 
 from time immemorial has been crossed by a 
 " hard " or ledge of blue lias rocks uncovered 
 more or less at low water. In some respects 
 it resembles the rough and ready drifts of 
 flooded South African rivers and, indeed, up to 
 comparatively modern times, was crossed by 
 waggons. In 1799, the Rev. Richard Warner, 
 the Bath historian and well known tourist in 
 the West of England, who has written 
 " Warner's Walks," ferried here on his journey 
 from Brent to Stoke Courcy. Far back in 
 British days a regular traffic was carried on 
 across this — the only available ford of the river 
 Parret. The road that connected it on one 
 side with Brent knoll and on the other with 
 Cannington Knoll (an old fortified place) is 
 clear enough. Indeed, up to the present day, 
 as aproof of its great antiquity, it furnishes the 
 distinctive boundaries of many parishes both 
 sides of the Parret. It is a " trunk " road with 
 numerous lateral feeders or side tracks well 
 deserving the old description of" alta et regalis 
 Via." It passes a notable old oak called Kit 
 Cot Oak, on the west, now almost gone, but 
 said to be 1,000 years old. 
 
 Without any reasonable doubt Cannington 
 
The Battle of Edington. 37 
 
 knoll, standing within a mile or so of the west 
 bank of the Parret and dominating the ancient 
 highway that ran past, was the same as " Com- 
 wich Castle," Comwich lying within Canning- 
 ton parish. The word "Castle" still belongs 
 to it, and is found in the parish tithe 
 commutation schedule. In West Somerset 
 (as elsewhere) the word " Castle " is often 
 applied, not to a Norman fortress or to any 
 building of feudal times, but to a strongly 
 entrenched or fortified place. Such a place 
 was Comwich Castle. At present it lies in a 
 block of high and rather stony land extending 
 over an area of 150 acres. A large wall of 
 loosely compacted stones runs round part of it 
 — the only " walls " in this neighbourhood 
 where earth banks and fences are the rule and 
 resembling the walls which are very common 
 in Wales. Bishop Asser very appropriately 
 says, speaking as a Welshman, and from 
 personal knowledge, that Cynuit i.e. Cumwich 
 Castle, was fortified " more nostro," perhaps 
 like Worleborough Camp, near Weston-super- 
 Mare. Further, he points out that Cumwich 
 Castle had no spring of water within it 
 and such indeed is now the case. The 
 whole mass consists of an isolated outcrop 
 of carboniferous limestone with very 
 shallow soil. The place has never been 
 cultivated and lies now, in all probability, 
 exactly as Bishop Asser saw it, a rough scrubby 
 natural fortress, easily made defensible on all 
 sides except towards the east. To this day the 
 casual explorer may pick up flint arrow-heads 
 
38 The Story of 
 
 and bits of old British pottery, especially 
 where rabbits have endeavoured to burrow in 
 the scanty soil, thus proving ancient British 
 occupation of a stronghold so eminently 
 desirable for the command of the Parret mouth 
 and the adjacent moors and marshes. It would 
 have been a natural route for Bishop Asser to 
 know whenever he crossed over from South 
 Wales and journeyed from Caerwent (Venta 
 Silurum) or Caerleon to Somerset. The Bishop 
 was locally interested in the Somerset Monas- 
 teries of Banwell and Congresbury, almost 
 within sight. Communication by water 
 between all the ports of the Severn Sea was 
 far better known and more common than it is 
 now. The Sailor Saints of the Severn Sea led 
 the way for generations. 
 
 Against the identification of " Cumwich 
 Castle " by Bishop Clifford with the Arx 
 Cynuit or Cynwyt or Cymwith certain 
 authorities such as Mr. W. H. Stevenson, the 
 well known editor of Asser's works, have 
 raised serious objections. Indeed, Mr. Steven- 
 son, usually so careful and painstaking in his 
 textual criticism of old documents, goes so far 
 as to say that " Bishop Clifford's attempt to 
 prove that Cynuit was Cannington Park, 
 Somerset, is one of the wildest freaks in his 
 astounding paper. In the Proceedings of the 
 Somerset Archseological Society for 1876 he 
 alters the corrupt late form Cynwith into 
 Cynwich and identifies it with Combwich." 
 In this case a great deal depends upon a 
 name and we would draw Mr. Stevenson's 
 
J 
 
 
 < 
 
 
 0- 
 
 
 o 
 
 
 o 
 
 
 en 
 
 
 
 
 0. 
 
 z 
 
 QJ 
 
 o 
 
 CO 
 
 p s 
 
 cx: 
 
 O o 
 
 u 
 
 Q ^ 
 
 V) 
 
 CO -t: 
 
 
 S ^ 
 
 
 =) 
 
 u. 
 
 
 o 
 
 
 f- 
 
 
 cc 
 
 
 < 
 
 
 D- 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 ■^ 
 
 a: 
 
The Battle of Edington. 39 
 
 attention to the fact that old documents again 
 and again have been very useful to establish 
 Bishop Clifford's theory and have given us 
 very similar forms to Cynuit as the alternative 
 names of Cumw^ich. The modern spelling of 
 Combwich is obviously wrong, as there is no 
 semblance of a " Combe " in this flat region. 
 The modern Combwich or Combwitch, a 
 strange perversion, is represented by Comwiz 
 in the Pipe Rolls of 24, Henry II (1178), by 
 Comwys and Cunyz, in the Placita of 27, 
 Henry III, by Comyz in 9 of Ed. I. (Wells 
 MSS.), by Comwyzand Cumwyz in the same ; 
 by Cunyz or Comwyz in the Placita of 
 Edward III. Now Mr. Stevenson must admit 
 that the difference between such a form as 
 Cunyz and Asser's Cynuit is not great. More- 
 over, Roger, of Hoveden, writes Cynwith; 
 Simeon, of Durham, Cymwith, which is 
 closely allied to Cumwich. As in Ipswich 
 (Domesday) the final wich is interchangeable 
 with wiz. The Domesday equivalent of 
 Combwich is Comich, Commiz or Commit. 
 
 Apart from etymology and correct spelling 
 according to laws of philology, to which we 
 think that Mr. W. H. Stevenson assigns too 
 much importance, especially if he is in the 
 habit of handling old documents and of com- 
 paring the degenerate and diversified forms of 
 the same place-name, we have in Cumwich or 
 Cunyz Castle exactly the place we are in search 
 of in the immediate neighbourhood of Athelney 
 during the final stages of this Danish campaign. 
 After the Sack of Somerton, the next 
 
40 The Story of 
 
 vulnerable point was " Cumwich Passage," 
 with the command of the road which led 
 straight from that point up the ridges of the 
 Quantock Hills to the immediate rear of the 
 Athelney fortress. It was at Comwich, there- 
 fore, that the next encounter took place, and 
 here again ' the Danes were victorious and 
 drove the defending force under Odda, the 
 Alderman of Devon, in?b the shelter of the 
 adjacent Arx Cynuit. There is every reason to 
 suppose that here Hubba was acting in concert 
 with the Danes, whose base was at Vikings Pill, 
 just below the Polden Ridge. Hubba's ships 
 would of course be available as transports from 
 the east to the west of the river. 
 
 Hubba, thinking that he held the defeated 
 troops of Odda, the Alderman of Devon, in 
 the hollow of his hand, as they would presently 
 be forced to surrender owing to lack of water 
 and of supplies, seems to have acted carelessly 
 or foolishly. To use Asser's words "the 
 Christians before reduced to such hardships 
 and acting from Divine instigation thought it 
 far better to risk death or victory in the open 
 field and at the very dawn of day make a 
 vigorous attack upon their enemies and slay 
 them, allowing only a few to escape to their 
 ships by flight, and so Hubba, together with 
 1,200 men, was cut down with a sorry ending 
 acting foolishly {perperam agens) before the 
 Arx Cynuit. Matthew Paris says that Inguar 
 was also slain and so both Hubba and Inguar 
 atoned for the blood " Beati regis et martyris 
 Edmundi ante arcem Cynwit." 
 
The Battle of Edington. 41 
 
 Bishop Clifford thinks that the forces of 
 Hubba and Inguar were separated by the river 
 Parret and that those of the Danes, who were 
 on the east side, could almost see their com- 
 rades fighting on the west but were powerless 
 to help. The ships of the attacking party 
 would naturally have been anchored on the 
 west side, and the Parret itself at low water, 
 when the tide is ebbing, is very wide just here 
 and very difficult for troops to cross. The 
 current would be strong and the mud im- 
 passable. The ford or drift, it must be re- 
 membered, was never available for horse and 
 foot excepting for a very short time at the 
 lowest ebb and when the tides were slack. 
 Probably Odda saw the right moment for 
 attack, and the Dumnonian contingent recruited 
 from the ranks of the hardy west-countrymen 
 struck home. After the battle the Danes were 
 apparently able to bury their dead, as they 
 buried Hubba, and so this explains one version 
 of the fight that although conquered they 
 remained masters of the field of battle. As 
 Bishop Clifford surmises, the rest of the Danes 
 may have been able to cross the Parret when 
 the ford was ready for them and so have 
 succoured their friends, the Dumnonian con- 
 tingent retiring westwards upon the Quantocks 
 after this unparalleled success. 
 
 How the ambuscade took place and when 
 the sally was made will never be known. The 
 Danes were caught napping for once and, 
 according to one account in Sharon Turner, 
 Odda (Odunus), the Dumnonian leader, 
 
42 The Story of 
 
 penetrated straight to the tent of Hubba and 
 slew him. As mute witnesses of the severity 
 of this battle men's bones are constantly being 
 exhumed in a quarry now being worked on the 
 eastern side, where in all probability the brunt 
 of the fighting took place. In an old Chronicle 
 cited by Hearne [Archeologia, Vol. vii., p. 134) 
 it is said " and when the Danes found Hinguar 
 and Hubba ded thei bare them to a mountayn 
 there beside and made upon hym a logge and 
 lete call it Hubba lugh." The Danish word 
 would be " loge," The spot selected is said to 
 have been in Devonshire, i.e. Dumnonia, the 
 country west of the Parret, and is still an 
 archasological puzzle, (Appendix A). Geoffrey 
 Gaimar places the scene of Hubba's death in 
 the " Bois de Pene," apparently an equivalent 
 for " Penselwood," the scene of King Alfred's 
 muster before Edington, As " Selwoodshire " 
 was a large district and loosely so called, the 
 confusion of places and events may easily have 
 been made by a rhyming historian like Gaimar. 
 The moral effect of this surprise victory was 
 enormous. Was not that famous Raven flag, 
 woven of white silk in one night by the three 
 sisters of Hubba, captured by the Saxons? 
 This flag had always been a talisman with the 
 Danes. When victory was assured a Raven, - 
 the emblem of Odin (figuring on the coins of 
 Anlaf the Danish King of Northumbria) would 
 appear as if woven into it, endowed with life 
 and flapping its wings. On the other hand, it 
 disaster for the Danes impended, the flag hung 
 low and flapped idly without sign of bird life. 
 
The Battle of Edington. 43 
 
 The effect upon Guthrum, whether at Chippen- 
 ham or elsewhere, must have been one of 
 the utmost panic and alarm. On both sides 
 eiforts were redoubled to bring matters to a 
 crisis. 
 
 For a moment it will be necessary to revert 
 to King Alfred at the particular crisis of 
 the morning sally from the Arx Cynuit, It 
 does not appear for certain whether he was 
 present at the struggle for Comwich Passage 
 or not. Sir John Spelman does not think he 
 was there. At any rate if he was, he must, 
 like the rest, have been compelled to retreat, and 
 instead of shutting himself up with Odda at 
 Cynwich Castle, to retire by way of the Quan- 
 tock ridges and the " great Staw Herepath " 
 to his retreat at Athelney. In old MSS. there 
 is an Alferode or Alfred's road along this line, 
 a most suggestive place-name. Asser simply 
 says of the sequel : 
 
 " The same year after Passover King Alfred 
 with a few helpers made a fort in a place 
 which is called Aethelingseg and from that fort 
 renewed the war with zest against the Pagans 
 {indefatigabiliter rebel lavit) in conjunction with 
 the subjects of Somerton [cum fassellis Sum- 
 murtunensis pagce") In the A.S. Chronicle 
 he is said to be fighting "from time to 
 time " and " with that part of the men 
 of Somerset which was nearest to it," His 
 field of action being limited to Athelney 
 Guthrum was trying to close in upon him 
 along the Parret. 
 
 King Alfred's faithful followers were sorely 
 
The Battle of Edington. 45 
 
 certain messuage called Windenreid, within 
 the manor of Newton Forester in the Hundred 
 of North Petherton, and was held jointly with 
 the five forests in the county. With Newton- 
 Forester were closely connected not only the 
 King's Wastes (vasta) of North Curry and the 
 Hundreds of Andersfeld and North Petherton 
 but the forests on Cantucudu, i.e. Quantock 
 Wood and along the Quantock hills, where 
 Cannington (or Cantuctun) Hundred can still 
 be traced, and the Manor of Cantuc (Domes- 
 day) identified above Enmore Castle. The 
 call would go from Newton-Forester westward 
 to the herdsmen, shepherds, foresters and swine- 
 herds of distant Exmoor and to the wastes and 
 manors of Williton Hundred and of Carhamp- 
 ton Hundred, the latter, like Cannington, part 
 of the old Saxon ancient demesne and 
 mentioned in the King's Will as some of the 
 inheritance of Edward the Elder. 
 
 So, too, with King Alfred's manor of 
 Burnham at the mouth of the Parret and 
 Wedmore further inland on the east side of the 
 river, the King's Loyalists there would rush 
 back to the flag, such indeed as survived the 
 Danish attacks in that quarter and had escaped 
 their fury. So, too, with the men of the Royal 
 Burgh of Axbridge, and of the Royal Forest 
 of Cheddar, (mentioned in King Alfred's will) 
 such a favourite chase of the old Saxon Kings, 
 as we may learn from Axbridge documents. 
 Stout Dumnonians from the sea-coast, miners 
 from Mendip, sailors from Porlock or Watchet, 
 porcarii from Petherton, foresters from all the 
 
46 The Story of 
 
 Western wilds and woodlands, perhaps a 
 goodly sprinkling amongst them of " Wealas- 
 cynne" besides Saxons, were still at King 
 Alfred's service. And the Dumnonians under 
 Alderman Odda had done wondrous things at 
 the Castle of Cynuit for the example of others. 
 We may get an inkling therefore of the 
 character of" the force now left at King Alfred's 
 disposal. If Somerton Castle, the old Saxon 
 centre, had fallen, why should not another 
 fastness arise at Athelney ? So day and night 
 after Easter the work of hasty fortification 
 went on and King Alfred's two towers, 
 described by William of Malmesbury, and 
 built probably of wood, arose. There was no 
 access to Athelney itself, nisi cauticis, i.e. boats, 
 according to some, but raised causeways 
 according to others, (Du Cange's Glossary). 
 Along Stanmoor such a causeway, protected at 
 the two ends by King Alfred's two towers, 
 seems to have linked Athelney with Othery, 
 following the line of the existing road that 
 leads right up to Borough Mump. For here 
 in this retired and old-world region, especially 
 when the floods are out, it is possible still to 
 trace the plan of King Alfred's defences just as 
 they were made. No roads or buildings 
 obscure the broad original features of the moor- 
 land. Yonder is Athelney, here is the 
 " Toteyate," all round the glimmering marshes 
 barely saved from constant floods and still 
 echoing at twilight with the call of the wild 
 fowl. There is still the beat of that tidal Bore 
 throbbing past the islet as it throbbed centuries 
 
The Battle of Edington. 47 
 
 ago — still the pulse of waters past tinkling 
 reeds, osiers and alder groves, (Appendix C). It 
 is possible also that King Alfred still held as a 
 stronghold Leodgaresbury further west, the 
 site of which was afterwards occupied by the 
 Norman Castle of Montacute. It was in a 
 commanding position and was always King's 
 Demesne. Under the name of Biscopeston or 
 Bishopstown it was one of the most important 
 gifts of King Alfred to his abbey at Athelney. 
 The contest at last resolved itself into a 
 struggle round Somerton and Langport for the 
 valley of the Parret, from north to south, from 
 the sources of the river in south Somerset to 
 its mouth in the Severn Sea. This conflict 
 between opposing forces of Danes and Saxons 
 resembles the previous struggles between the 
 British and the Saxons. Not far off rose Cad- 
 bury, that "Tower of War" with its triple 
 rampart once guarded by King Arthur, and 
 close by, on the lowlands, Langport, the port of 
 Somerton. 
 
 " At Llangporth was Geraint slain, 
 The bold warrior of the woodlands of Dvyneint 
 Slaughtering the foe as he fell 
 At Llangporth was slain to Arthur, 
 Emperor and conductor of the toil of war. 
 Valorous men who with steel hewed down their foes." 
 
 Llywarch Hen. 
 
 In subsequent centuries we shall find that 
 the Parliamentary troops fought for Somerton, 
 that there was actually a Battle of Langport 
 and that Royalist troops under Goring were 
 stationed on Borough Mump. Petherton Park 
 was noted for skirmishes in the same Civil 
 
48 The Story of 
 
 War and the siege and fall of Bridgwater 
 Castle in 1645 "leant not simply the loss of 
 that town for the Royalists but the quelling of 
 Royalist hopes westward. Admiral Blake's 
 successful defence again, of Taunton Castle, 
 within five or six miles of Athelney, set the 
 seal of victory upon Cromwell's western cam- 
 paigns. Then, in 1688, once more the roar 
 of war was heard in " the King's pastures " of 
 King's Sedgmoor. In a house near Aller 
 Church, famed for Guthrum's baptism and four 
 miles distant from Somerton, the story goes 
 how Royalist fugitives, after the battle of 
 Allermore, crouched and hid beneath an oak 
 table fleeing from the stroke of war. History, 
 indeed, has repeated itself in this part of the 
 " Paga Summurtunensis " now lying so peaceful 
 in its solitude and wrapped in a rural repose. 
 Indeed, the grass-grown streets of Somerton 
 could tell many a tale and so could those of 
 Roman Ilch ester. Certain little detached forts 
 of this region and neighbourhood lying within 
 the narrowed terrain of the Alfred campaign 
 must attract our notice and cause us to wonder 
 whether they were of use in the everyday 
 strategy of that time. Not far up the river 
 that empties itself in the Parret at Cumwich 
 stood a British entrenchment at Nether Stowey. 
 At Domesday it was part of Count Harold's 
 domains, and, lying in the Hundred of 
 Cannington, must have been in King Alfred's 
 hands. Just above it is Danesborough, where 
 it is possible that the Danes encamped for a 
 brief time after the battle of Cynuit and before 
 
The Battle of Edington. 49 
 
 the battle of Edington. For strangely enough 
 the old hill has still locally two names, 
 " Dousbre " — so spelt 200 years ago, — and 
 " Danesborough," the first showing perhaps 
 one association and the second another. For 
 they do not appear to be equivalent forms. 
 Danish legends have lingered round the slopes 
 of Danesborough till modern times, and 
 William Wordsworth enshrined one of them 
 in " The Danish Boy " w^hen he was living 
 close by at Alfoxton (1797-8), as noted above. 
 
 Then there is the remoter fastness of 
 Roborough hidden deep in the Hundred of 
 Andersfeld — the Hundred of Lyng and Athel- 
 ney itself — and itself an outlying member of 
 the King's curia at Somerton. Here for 
 centuries after King Alfred's day was a Royal 
 Porcheria owing payment to Somerton, " when 
 Quantock was a forest " as the note goes in the 
 Hundred Rolls of Edward I. Roborough 
 strikes the visitor as an ideal forest refuge even 
 at the present day. Further west and in the 
 Royal preserves of Neroche Forest was the old 
 fort known in later years as Castle Neroche. 
 This place was linked with Athelney by a 
 Herepath like Roborough on the Quantocks, 
 one fort communicating with another along the 
 ridges and down through the uncertain cauticce 
 or droves of the quaking bogs and morasses. 
 
 In a campaign of this sort, hinging as it did 
 in the last resort upon lines of quick communi- 
 cation, it must be remembered that the Danes 
 were at some disadvantage in fighting with 
 King Alfred acting from interior lines and 
 
so The Story of 
 
 through a network of Herepaths known to 
 himself and his followers. The only road we 
 suppose that the Danes could absolutely com- 
 mand was the Roman Fossway running from 
 Bath southwards to Ilchester, These Roman 
 roads were in full use during Alfred's reign, as 
 " The Watling Street " was actually made the 
 limit bet\^een Alfred's domain and Guthrum's 
 kingdom in the east. The Fossway must 
 have been equally famous and the Danes must 
 have used a portion of it when they rode from 
 Wareham to Exeter. 
 
 During the seven weeks that elapsed 
 between Easter (March 23) and the Battle of 
 Edington King Alfred was strengthening his 
 position. To this period belongs surely, the 
 romantic incident of his penetration into the 
 camps of the Danes and possibly into the very 
 presence of Guthrum as a minstrel. The story 
 has stuck to the neighbourhood, and an old 
 Athelney inhabitant informed the writer that 
 King Alfred, who had received a " slap under 
 the ear " from the woman for neglecting the 
 historic cakes, then went out to the camp of 
 the Danes and " played music to them like a 
 boy." There is surely no reason to doubt the 
 old-world report that, anxious for accurate 
 information about his enemies at this particular 
 crisis, King Alfred did assume the garb of a 
 "joculator" and played music to them. But 
 where was the scene of this adventure ? Surely 
 not at Chippenham, in Wiltshire, fifty or sixty 
 miles away ! No, this minor act of a great 
 drama was rehearsed surely on the Poldens and 
 
The Battle of Edington. 51 
 
 not far from Vikings Pill, where the Danes 
 were encamped near Downend, the " Paganica 
 arx " of Asser and the " Geweorc " of the 
 Saxon Chronicle. 
 
 The King's intelligence being complete, the 
 last great rendezvous was summoned at 
 Egbright's Stone, near Kingsettle Hill — the 
 name itself gives a clue — and the men of 
 Somertunensis Paga recruited by those of 
 Wiltshire and Hants were massed on that early 
 May morning on the skirts of Selwood. It is 
 more than probable that a system of Fire 
 Beacons was used to rouse the country. There 
 is a hill called " Fire Beacon Hill " above 
 Crowcombe on the Quantocks, iiot far from 
 " Alferode," also Bacgan-Borough or Beacon- 
 Borough (Bagborough) itself whence signals 
 could be flashed westward to Dumnonia with- 
 out attracting the attention of the Danes 
 encamped in the valley of the Parret. The 
 first day's march took them to Eglea, which is 
 probably Eggarley — miscalled Edgarley by a 
 natural association with Glastonbury's great 
 King — near Glastonbury (for the fight was for 
 the sacred shrine of Christendom first and fore- 
 most) and then by another march to Edington 
 on the Polden ridge. This ridge was the 
 dominating factor of the great, and final fight 
 and the advance of King Alfred from the 
 south, thus taking the aggressive, must have 
 been a surprise to the Danes. There is one 
 passage in the Chronicle of John Wallingford 
 which exactly expresses the tactics of the 
 King, and it runs thus : — "The good King, 
 
52 The Story of 
 
 with due precaution for his followers, seized 
 the higher ground which would have just 
 suited his foes had they preoccupied it," mean- 
 ing that the King got above them on the 
 Poldens, a bit of local description that would 
 hardly fit in v^rith Bratton Castle and the 
 Wiltshire Edington. Eglea, part of the original 
 Glastonbury XII Hides, would have been a 
 fitting bivouac and starting place on that 
 fateful morning when not only the great 
 Abbey but the very Christianity for which it 
 stood lay at stake. 
 
 The village of Edington lies partly on the 
 moors and partly on the ridge of the Poldens ; 
 the battlefield of Edington is still pointed out 
 and old men unconsciously say " They of 
 Athelney fought there," and the Polden hills 
 exactly suit the description we have of the 
 fight in Symeon of Durham who says that the 
 "voces et coUisiones armorum per longa 
 terrarum spatia auditas sunt." The ridge being 
 sharp and narrow and not more than 200 feet 
 to 300 feet high the noise of a running fight 
 would have been heard easily on either side, 
 far better than from the somewhat more 
 inclosed country round the Wiltshire Eding- 
 ton. In the " Flores Historias " it is said that 
 Guthrum was compelled by flight " ingredi 
 arcem quandam qus prope erat." In the A.S. 
 Chronicle the victorious Saxons rode after 
 them to a " Geweorc." Asser says that the 
 fight was severe, beginning at dawn, and that 
 the tactics of a dense formation were adopted 
 by King Alfred " cum densa testudine atrociter 
 
The Battle of Edington. 53 
 
 belligerans, animoseque diu persistans divino 
 nutu tandem victoria potitus." Pursuing 
 them to the Arx he captured all the horses 
 and caught outside and slew the men off-hand 
 who could not escape. Then he besieged 
 them for fourteen days and at last procured the 
 surrender of Guthrum. If the Arx was really 
 Bratton Castle one wonders why a depot of 
 booty should have been kept so close the base 
 of Chippenham. 
 
 Bishop Clifford, whose local identifications 
 are not always sound although his theory of 
 the Edington strategy is good, perhaps better 
 than he knew, thought that the Geweorc or 
 Arx " Quam firmaverant Dani " was at Bridg- 
 water Castle. But there was no Castle at 
 Brugie (Domesday) in those days and, more- 
 over, the way thither was too long. The 
 trackways from Crandon Bridge must have 
 been almost impassable and, for centuries 
 afterwards, the Causeway across the moor was 
 always in a foundrous state. No, the arx or 
 Jirmitas was at Vikings Pill or Downend, a 
 comparatively short distance from the battle 
 field of Edington. The spring of water there, 
 as now, would have been sufficient to afford 
 drink to the Danes, but they were starved out 
 for want of food. Outside the fort was Done- 
 ham, that islanded place in the adjacent marsh, 
 giving pastures to their oxen and sheep that they 
 had captured, but this, as the account shows, fell 
 immediately into the hands of King Alfred. 
 
 It may be noted as a coincidence that when 
 King Kenwalch, the first great Saxon conqueror 
 
54 The Story of 
 
 of the Parret, defeated the Waelas or Britons 
 at Pen (Penselwood) in a.d. 650 (Ang. Sax. 
 Chronicle) he drove them down to the 
 Pedridan muth, or Parret mouth, much in the 
 same way as King Alfred drove the Danes 
 down the Polden ridge to Vikings Pill. Sharon 
 Turner, in his history of the Anglo-Saxons, 
 suggests that the Parret mouth is perhaps the 
 Aber Peryddan of Golyddan. 
 
 It is a pity that the original features of the 
 river Parret and of Doneham have been so 
 completely obscured by comparatively modern 
 alterations. As above hinted the curve of the 
 Parret has disappeared in a new cut and a new 
 " Floodway reach " has been formed artificially 
 by the work of man (1677). The island 
 called " Terra inter duas aquas " in Domesday, 
 and noted by Paul VinogradofF as a peculiar 
 territorial expression, is gone and nothing 
 appears now but an uninteresting flat. The 
 Great Western Railway runs through part of 
 the island just at Dunball Station near which 
 was Vikings Pill, and had it not been for old 
 documents no one would have suspected there 
 the existence of a Parret Pill, or landing- 
 place. Local folk spoke of the war and how 
 " they of Athelney fought here," but they were 
 disregarded. The railway navvies did in their 
 cutting unearth several bushels of men's bones 
 at Great Crooklands but no one quite realised 
 the possibility of a Danish fight. Lower down 
 ships still anchor and discharge their cargoes 
 at Dunball. The field-names keep such 
 expressions as "Salt Wharf" and "Borough 
 
The Battle of Edington. SS 
 
 Mead," " Inner and Outer Island," etc., and a 
 new road to Bristol, in the place of the old 
 Causeway higher up, still puzzles the antiquary, 
 whilst lime kilns deface the hill itself. Yet 
 here, we feel sure, was that historic " Geweorc" 
 where Guthrum and his followers finally sur- 
 rendered to King Alfred. 
 
 It may be of interest to recall the fact that 
 Knowle or Knoll hill on this part of the 
 Poldens was the residence and favourite haunt 
 of the great Admiral Blake. The old landing- 
 place of Vikings Pill and of Downend Pill 
 and the wide loop of the Parret must have 
 been very familiar sights to him. Downend is 
 still part of the Knowle property. May we 
 not associate with the Poldens, not only Eng- 
 land's greatest King, but also one of England's 
 greatest patriots and Admirals, a true Viking 
 of our rough annals ? 
 
 Most people are familiar with the story of 
 the vision of S. Cuthbert who encouraged 
 King Alfred and promised to go before his 
 standards and lead him to victory, but they 
 may not know so well the Prayer supposed to 
 have been uttered by King Alfred before the 
 Battle of Edington and handed down by 
 Nicholas Harpsfield (151 4-1 571). Sir John 
 Spelman, in his " Vita Alfredi Magni," alludes 
 to it, *' which though I find not in Asser 
 (which he cited for it), yet we may well 
 enough allow it to be his, as agreeable to his 
 piety." We may suppose, therefore, that it 
 was spoken on the hillside of Polden within 
 sight of S. Michael's Tor at Glastonbury, 
 
56 The Story of 
 
 where the pagans had already spent their usual 
 desolating fury and left those blackened ruins 
 till, as William of Malmesbury tells us, 
 S. Dunstan restored the glory of the old shrine. 
 King Alfred's eloquent oration, more inspiring 
 to us than any speech of Thucydides, runs thus 
 in Harpsfield : — rendered freely — 
 
 " To Thee, O great and glorious God we 
 render as soldiers our hearty thanks for that 
 Thou hast tried our faith and patience in so 
 many hardships and difficulties of war and 
 found them stayed on Thee. Thou hast 
 grievously exercised Thy servants and Thou 
 hast bent their strength to the uttermost but 
 their heart stands -firm and there is a remnant 
 left. Justly have they atoned and made satis- 
 faction for their misdeeds and such is Thy 
 merciful goodness O God, that Thou hast not 
 suffered them to be swallowed up in the multi- 
 tude of their offences. Thou hast chastised 
 them, O God, not with the scorpions of 
 tyrants, but with Thy judgment as a Heaven- 
 ly Father. Thou hast graciously received 
 them into Thy favour as children brought 
 back to penitence by Thine all-wise hand. 
 Verily our enemies have increased against us 
 and waxed great not by their own right arm 
 but by reason of our own misdeeds and now I 
 know, O God, that Thy terrors have come 
 upon them and Thy wrath hath weakened 
 them. We shall gather to ourselves good 
 courage in the day of battle, for it is Thou, 
 O God who art calling us and Thou who art 
 bidding us go with full courage against our 
 
The Battle of Edington. 57 
 
 enemies, for Thou wilt never fail those who 
 call upon Thee and put their trust in Thee. 
 We bear in remembrance, O God, who and of 
 what sort are those whom we. Thy servants, 
 armed with justice and good cause now meet 
 in the field of battle. Christians, we strive 
 against Heathen, righteous we fight against 
 unrighteous men. Our foes have laid waste 
 our heritage, and like thieves and robbers, 
 stolen our goods and done violence to Thy 
 servants sparing neither old nor young, babes 
 nor sucklings, child nor helpless woman. 
 They have broken their oaths, run from their 
 plighted word and held nothing sacred or holy 
 in their sight. Thy servants are fighting, 
 O Lord, on this Thy day not to despoil their 
 adversaries and to ravish their goods, but only 
 to recover their own of which they have been 
 unjustly deprived. They are fighting to redeem 
 their parents and their children from so great 
 and so ignoble a slavery and to save their 
 daughters and wives from the ruin of lust and 
 rapine and dishonour. Nay, they are fighting 
 not only for their hearths and homes wherein 
 they dwell but for all Thy holy sanctuaries 
 which they have laid waste, for the name of 
 Christ, the Author and Finisher of their 
 Faith." 
 
 Such was the noble prayer of the King and 
 we are not surprised that the soldiers acclaimed 
 it, venerating their leader and following him 
 with good courage to the battle. It was 
 indeed such a prayer as might come from the 
 Christian hero, who after the Danish defeat 
 
58 The Story of 
 
 took Guthrum to the holy font at AUer and 
 gave him a Christian name. 
 
 Nicholas Harpsfield quotes also Psalms 
 xxxvi and Ixvii, as echoing the spirit of the great 
 Conqueror, thus adding one more instance 
 to the many which illustrate " The Influence 
 of the P§alms on Human Life." That the 
 Danes should have been finally routed at 
 Edington, a manor belonging by ancient 
 endowment to the Abbey of Glastonbury 
 which they had destroyed, seems but a just and 
 fitting retribution. And the turn of the fight 
 must have led the combatants to spots where 
 the lofty Tor and the presiding Chapel or 
 Church of S. Michel could have been dis- 
 cerned in the distance. Here, indeed, was an 
 answer to the clause of the old Saxon Liturgy 
 "A furore Normannorum Eripe nos, Domine ! " 
 
 The joy that thrilled through Wessex 
 following upon the final overthrow and 
 slaughter of the Danes must have been over- 
 whelming, and may it not be possible to refer 
 to this epoch of jubilation, the origin of 
 " Hock day," an institution that, so far, seems 
 to have puzzled all antiquaries .? Sir Henry 
 Spelman and others are agreed that Hockday, 
 to begin with, commemorated some great 
 slaughter of the Danes, possibly that during 
 the reign of Ethclred which took place on 
 November 13th, a.d. 1002. Some have 
 associated it with the death of Hardi-Canute, 
 June 8th a.d. 1042, But the anniversary of 
 Hocktide was always " Quindena Pascha," i.e. 
 the fifteenth day after Easter. In 1259 
 
The Battle of Edington. 59 
 
 Matthew Paris speaks of a Parliament holden 
 " in quindena Paschje quae vulgariter Hochdaie 
 appellatur." So it is clear that neither the 
 June nor November date can possibly suit. 
 
 The popular celebrations at Hocktide were 
 spread over two days and were of a rough and 
 boisterous kind. Fosbrooke, in his antiquities, 
 says that on Monday the men " hocked " or 
 tripped up the women with ropes placed across 
 the road but that on Tuesday seemingly the 
 more important and sensational anniversary, 
 the women retaliated by tripping up the men. 
 "Hock Tuesday money " was paid to the 
 landlord " that his tenants and bondmen might 
 celebrate Hock Tuesday " (Bailey's Dictionary 
 1728). In the accounts of Magdalen College, 
 Oxford, there is mention of money paid " pro 
 mulieribus hockantibus." In the Book of the 
 Churchwardens' Accounts of Kingston-upon- 
 Thames there is this entry as late as 1577-8. 
 " Of the women upon Hock Tuesdays vii/ 
 & vs. lid." and so on. As we may imagine 
 there was also a special brewing of Hock-ale, 
 probably often consumed in the " Church 
 Houses " of the day which were often devoted 
 to such uses. 
 
 It is clear, however, that this Hock-day 
 celebration was not of a strictly Church or 
 ecclesiastical origin and so we are rather sur- 
 prised to read that at Glastonbury, of all places 
 in the Kingdom, a Sherift's Court was always 
 held at Hockday. If we run our eye through 
 the " Rentalia et Costumaria " of Glastonbury 
 and study Abbot Beere's Terrier, the half 
 
6o The Story of 
 
 yearly services and payments made and exacted 
 from tenants are on Hockday, not Lady-day, 
 as we might expect from S. Mary's great Bene- 
 dictine Church, and Michaelmas. 
 
 Under the accounts given in Dugdale of 
 Tewkesbury Abbey, which once held Puriton 
 and Downend and the historic Vikings Pill, 
 there is mention of the " Capitula de Hocke- 
 day." In Somerset, Cannington Priory marked 
 Hockday (and Cynwit Castle was in Canning- 
 ton) and in the history of Chard there was a 
 Hundred Court of Hockday, and a Hockday in 
 the Manor of Kilmersdon (a,d. 1253) and also 
 in the Manor of Taunton. 
 
 It is strange that the origin of a Court day, 
 putting aside its popular character as a season 
 of ovation, should have been lost. But may it 
 not here be suggested that the anniversary was 
 begun first of all in order to keep alive the 
 memory of the great slaughter of the Danes at 
 Cynuit Castle ? The date would apparently 
 suit very well as it was shortly after Easter 
 Day of A.D. 878 (March 23rd) that Alderman 
 Odda made that notable sally. The " Quin- 
 dena Paschs " would then have been April 8th. 
 
 As time went on, this Danish celebration 
 may have been again confused with the pay- 
 ment of " Plough-alms " within fifteen days of 
 the festival of Easter {i.e. the quindena Paschas) 
 a donation of one silver penny for every hide of 
 arable land exacted under the old Saxon appella- 
 tion of " sulh-slmesse, the word " sole " being 
 still used in Somerset for a portion of the plough. 
 
 To trace the history therefore, of Hockday, 
 
The Battle of Edington. 6i 
 
 the celebration might resolve itself into (i) a 
 rough pageant to commemorate the Danish 
 defeat, (2) a plough offering, (3) a Court day 
 and a pay day, and in course of time, the last 
 aspect of this " Quindena Paschee" might over- 
 shadow the others. In the payments of the 
 hospital of S. Margaret's, Taunton, there was 
 the item of " Ploughsylver " to wit, for every 
 tenant to pay for every plough by ancient due 
 xiu/^" and then at the same time there was 
 the " Turnus de Hockday " as opposed to the 
 Autumn "Turnus" held by the great manor of 
 Taunton Deane and a great law day. Far back 
 in history the victory of Arx Cynuit, coming 
 as it did as an epoch-making event and a 
 rescue from slavery to freedom, might have 
 prompted the whole chain. What better time 
 to pay " Sole alms " than from the day when 
 first of all ploughing and sowing could be 
 made peacefully ? What better time to mark 
 a half-yearly payment and to acknowledge a 
 peaceful transaction when peace and security 
 were possible in the land ? For, as Spelman 
 reminds us, the Danish fury had quelled every- 
 thing even the meeting of a Church Synod, if 
 this indeed always meant peace. 
 
 But what had the women folk to do with it 
 all ? And especially the womenfolk of Wessex 
 and of Somerset, for "Hockday" does not 
 seem to have been popular in East Anglia and 
 in the Danish portion of the land ? The 
 games themselves were rough and unseemly 
 and a Bishop of Worcester had, in 1450, to 
 denounce " ligationes et ludos inhonestos " on 
 
62 The Story of 
 
 Hockday (Lampson B. ii. p. 204). Somehow 
 or other there was a tradition that the women 
 folk did enter into a conspiracy to rid the 
 country of the " Lurdenes " or Lordains, i.e. 
 the Lord Danes, and King Harold was made 
 to speak thus to his soldiers just before the 
 battle of Hastings : — 
 
 " King Harrolde, turning to his liegemen spake 
 My merrie men be not cast down in mynde 
 You only lode for aye to mar or make 
 Before yonne Sonne has donde his welf you'll fynde 
 Your loving wife who erst dyd rid the londe 
 Of Lurdenes and the treasure that you have 
 Will fall into the Norman robber's hande 
 Unless with hande and harte you plaie the man." 
 
 Samuel Rowley. 
 
 The old rustic born beneath the slopes of 
 Danesborough who told the writer that the 
 Danes were red-headed men and beat ours, but 
 " the women voak paid 'em out " had heard 
 something too, we may take it for granted, 
 handed on from father to son, so many 
 hundreds of years ago. But how and in what 
 fashion did the women do it ? History is 
 silent and the old man seemed to know or at 
 any rate to have a theory how they hocked or 
 tripped the Danes up, but he would not tell. 
 
 Was the Arx Cynuit or Cumwich Castle the 
 scene of the great betrayal or the consummate 
 artifice? How were those 1200 slain.? And 
 how came it to pass that the spirit of a Danish 
 boy haunted for centuries the heather-clad 
 slopes of grey old Danesborough beneath 
 whose sides lurk still for the believing ear that 
 magic music as of a full band and where great 
 
The Battle of Edington. 63 
 
 giants thrust forth their hands and where in a 
 money plot lies still some ancient Treasure 
 Trove still to be exorcised if the delvers keep 
 silence. Could the " Danish Boy " have been 
 the subject of some forgotten romance ? And 
 amongst the w^omen-folk could there have 
 been found someone with the feelings of 
 Hypermnestra, daughter of King Danaus, who 
 by subtlety saved one she loved amongst the 
 crowd, being " splendide mendax " ? This 
 Danish Boy of Danesborough was of royal 
 blood and Wordsworth, catching the echoes of 
 the dying local legend, hands down in his 
 verses that he wore a royal vest of fur " in 
 colour like the Raven's wing." The mention 
 of the Raven's wing is suggestive and its use in 
 Wordsworth's hands and indeed in the mouths 
 of the old men who told the story was uncon- 
 scious. But possibly the Raven's wing may 
 recall the raven of Odin and the symbol of 
 Anlaf and that wing on the flag at Cumwich 
 Castle, embroidered by the sisters of Hubba, 
 that hung listless on that fateful day. But all 
 is peaceful on Danesborough now where, as 
 elsewhere in this part of the worlds, fact and 
 fiction, rumour and romance, are so curiously 
 blended together in a kind of shadow land, 
 where here at least the Danish Boy is the chief 
 figure moving like a spirit across the Quantock 
 dells and combes. Asser, the historian of King 
 Alfred, saw at the King's Abbey of Athelney, 
 under the tuition of John of old Saxony, that 
 Danish youth amongst the neophytes con- 
 verted to the Christian faith and by no means 
 
64 The Story of 
 
 the hindmost of the community. Could he 
 have been the royal youth of the Legend, 
 reserved like the chief Guthrum himself by 
 King Alfred for a better life ? At any rate 
 Wordsworth has handed down the Quantock 
 Legend of Danesborough and has told us how, 
 
 " The Danish Boy walks here alone : 
 The lovely dell is all his own. 
 
 A Spirit of noon-day is he ; 
 
 Yet seems a form of flesh and blood ; 
 
 Nor piping shepherd shall he be, 
 
 Nor herd boy of the wood. 
 
 A regal vest of fur he wears, 
 
 In colour like a raven's wing ; 
 
 It fears not rain, nor wind, nor dew ; 
 
 But in the storm 'tis fresh and blue 
 
 As budding pines in spring ; 
 
 His helmet has a vernal grace 
 
 Fresh as the bloom upon his face. 
 
 A harp is from his shoulder slung ; 
 Resting the harp upon his knee. 
 To words of a forgotten tongue 
 He suits its melody. 
 Of flocks upon the neighbouring hill 
 He is the darling and the joy ; 
 And often, when no cause appears. 
 The mountain ponies prick their ears, 
 They hear the Danish boy. 
 While in the dell he sings alone 
 Beside the tree and corner stone. 
 
 There sits he : in his face you spy 
 
 No trace of a ferocious air, 
 
 Nor ever was a cloudless sky 
 
 So steady or so fair. 
 
 The lovely Danish Boy is blest 
 
 And happy in his flowery cove ; 
 
 From bloody deeds his thoughts are far : 
 
 And yet he warbles songs of war. 
 
 That seem like songs of love, 
 
 For calm and gentle is his mien ; 
 
 Like a dead boy he is serene." 
 
The Battle of Edington. 65 
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 The Place-names Edington, Dimetia, Bumnonia, etc. 
 
 It may be worth while to examine here some of the arguments 
 for and against the place-name of Edington in Somerset as being 
 the Ethandun of the Saxon Chronicle. As above hinted, Camden 
 throws no real light upon the locality of the famous battle. Most 
 commentators have blindly followed Camden's lead, notwith- 
 standing his old-fashioned etymology and unscientific methods, 
 and amongst them is Mr. W. H. Stevenson, the most recent 
 editor of Asser's works. This gentleman boldly asserts that, as 
 he has proved Ethandune to be an early equivalent of the modem 
 Wiltshire Edington, this place can be philologically or otherwise 
 (and especially philologically) the only one to suit the text. 
 Mr. Stevenson rejects the Somerset Edington because he finds 
 that its Domesday (1086) equivalent is Eduuinetune or Edwine- 
 tona. Now, if, with Mr. Stevenson, we pin our faith on Domesday 
 orthography and the spelling of Domesday scribes we shall find 
 that Mr. Stevenson is "hoist with his own petard." For the 
 Wiltshire Ethandune does not appear as such in the Wiltshire 
 Domesday, but is spelt Edendone. Now in very early Glaston- 
 bury documents the Somerset Edington appears (A.D. 1 100-1200) 
 as Edindone also. The battle itself, in the twelfth century, may 
 always have been spoken of and spelt as the Battle of Edendone 
 or Edington (not Ethandune at all), as Henry of Huntingdon 
 gives Edendune as the site (a.d. i 150-1 200), and Geoffrey Gaim^r 
 gives Edenesdone in his " Estoire des Engles" {c. a.d. 1150). 
 There can, therefore, be no particular sanctity or permanence 
 about the Saxon form of " Ethandune." For all we know, the 
 Somerset Edington may have had a pre-existing form of Ethandon 
 or Ethandune. There is no philological objection against either if 
 the Wiltshire form has shown the change. The Wiltshire Ethan- 
 don, spelt also Edyndon and Edington in the Wiltshire Inquisition 
 (1242-1326), proves that it is only a chance survival varying from 
 the Domesday Edendone, which did not stereotype it. What is 
 the value, therefore, of the " contemporary ninth century Ethan- 
 dun " ? 
 
 In the Somerset Domesday there are the forms of Edwinetona 
 and of Eduuinetune for Edington. Can we offer any explanation 
 of these variations ? In the first place these forms constitute a 
 Domesday solecism. The history of the Glastonbury manor of 
 Edington on the Poldens is well known, and is easily traceable 
 for centuries in old Glastonbury documents, such as the " Rentalia 
 et Costumaria," but it is never once spelt Eduuinetune or Edwine- 
 tona. Some light may be thrown upon the diflBculty from the fact 
 that Glastonbury Abbey had two manors, Edindone or Edington, 
 
(>(> The Story of 
 
 so spelt in the twelfth century, and lying on the Poldens, where 
 it is well known ; and Edwyneston in Berkshire. A confusion, 
 therefore, may easily have arisen between these two place-names, 
 so similar in sound. Mr. Stevenson goes so far as to say that 
 ' ' the fact that the Somerset Edington is derived from Edwine(s}ton 
 removes the linch-pin of the argument for locating the battle of 
 Ethandun in Somerset." We cannot agree with him. Cam- 
 paigns are not settled by philological disquisitions of a laboured 
 kind, especially when the evidence of this single place-name is 
 uncertain. There are a great many other circumstances connected 
 with strategy to be considered, and strategy most certainly de- 
 mands that the final battle of the campaign of A.D. 878 should be 
 fought nearer King Alfred's base, as I have abundantly shown. 
 
 It is quite evident from his letters to the "Athenaeum" [g.v.) 
 that Mr. Stevenson has never quartered his ground in Somerset, 
 or considered his Somerset terrain ; also that he is ignorant of 
 ancient geography and the real meaning of ancient geographical 
 terms. As I shall point out he does not know his Exon : Domes- 
 day references. With regard to the question of exact spelling 
 Mr. Stevenson must know, if he traces Domesday manors down 
 the centuries, that there is often a bewildering variety. Indeed, 
 there are nearly twenty ways of spelling Athelney, King Alfred's 
 refuge. Cannington, in which Cynuit or Cymwich Castle lies, 
 is spelt Cantucdun, Candeton, Cantoctona, the "ton" and the 
 " dun " being interchanged. 
 
 DiMETIA. 
 
 With regard to another point in the early geography of this 
 period Mr. Stevenson is very particular in limiting the geographi- 
 cal expression " Demetica regio" to Pembroke and the extreme 
 west of Wales, in order to make the idea of Danish co operation 
 improbable. Now, in the first place, it may be pointed out that 
 " Demetica regio " may be regarded as a wider geographical 
 expression than "Dimetia." But there seems to be no doubt 
 that Dimetia was used very often as an equivalent expression for 
 all South Wales. In Nicholas Trivet (see Spelman's " Concilia," 
 p. 112, ed. 1639), there is mention of "Margaducus Rex Dimetise," 
 or " Australis Wallise." In a note appended to a Genealogical 
 Roll (Ashmolean MSS. Bodleian) in Edwardian days, King Egbert 
 is said to have been the first to exact submission of both the West 
 Saxons and Dimetae (Dimetis subditis). This would mean more 
 than ' ' Pembroke and part of Carmarthen.' ' Giraldus Cambrensis, 
 who lived in the twelfth century, and was himself a native of 
 Pembroke, wrote, in his " Liber Primus Cambriae descriptionis " : 
 " Divisa est antiquitus Wallia in tres partes . . . Venedotiam, 
 scilicet quse nunc est Nord Wallia id est Borealis Wallia dicitur: 
 Demetiam, vel Sud Walliam, id est Australem Walliam quae 
 Britannici Deheubarth id est dextralis pars dicitur fsee also Asser 
 for Deheubarth) ; Powisiam quasi mediam et orientalem." In 
 Chapter iv of the same work Giraldus says that the " curia 
 principalis" of South Wales was "antiquitus apud urbem 
 Legionis," I'e. at Caer Leon in Monmouth, but, later on, at 
 Dinevor, i.e. Dinas Vawr, the great palace. In the annotations 
 
The Battle of Edington. 67 
 
 on Chapter iv, by that learned Welshman, David Powell (1804), 
 we read: Post autem eversionem imperii Britannici regia sedes 
 regni Dimetici ab urbe Legionum Maridunum translata est, ubi 
 mansit usque ad ingressum Normannorum in insulam." The 
 capital was transferred to Carmarthen, i.e. Maridunum. 
 
 According therefore to Giraldus and his Welsh annotator, 
 David Powell, and, it might be added such authorities as Hum- 
 frey Lloyd and Sir John Doddridge (1714), and others, it might 
 well be maintained that the " Demetica regio," whence the Danes 
 issued in A.D. 878 upon their well-known attack, included much 
 more than Mr. Stevenson's " Pembrokeshire and part of Car- 
 marthenshire." The " regio" was in fact opposite the coasts of 
 North Somerset and in easy touch with the upper Severn waters. 
 Dean Milman, in his "History of Latin Christianity" (vol. iii, 
 p. 273), adopts the view that King Alfred was in his youth 
 anointed or crowned " King of Demetia " by Pope Leo IV, what- 
 ever this function meant, during his father's lifetime. Would this 
 mean only ' ' Pembrokeshire and part of Carmarthenshire " ? The 
 title and honour would be meaningless unless they covered South 
 Wales firom Caer Leon and Monmouth westwards. Again, was 
 the " Demetian Code " confined to Pembroke and Carmarthen 
 only ? And was not Morgan, the " Demetize regulus," a chieftain 
 of Glamorgan ? Yet Mr. Stevenson says ("Athenseum," June 13, 
 1908), " Monmouth was never part of it," i.e. of Demetia. The 
 fact is these geographical expressions were never the result of 
 exact survey or of long and well-defined use, in those remote 
 times. It is more than probable that the reguli oi Gwent were 
 described as chiefs of Dimetia. 
 
 DUMNONIA {DUFFNEINT OR DEUNON). 
 
 In the same way Dumnonia seems to have extended not only 
 over what we mean by Devonshire proper, but also over North 
 Somerset as far as the mouth of the river Parret, if not to the Axe 
 and the adjacent moors. We can agree with Prebendary Earle 
 when in his monograph on King Alfred's Jewel (p. 109) he says : 
 " Pedrida was regarded as a natural limit, like the sea itself, 
 dividing nations." Florence of Worcester in his Chronicle has 
 the foUowmg passage showing that he understood Watchet, i.e. 
 the old Saxon Wecet, once a town of importance, and boasting a 
 mint in Saxon days, as lying in Devonshire. The entry runs thus : 
 
 "A.D. 997. The Danish army, which had remained in England, 
 sailed round West Saxony, entered the mouth of the river Severn 
 and ravaged sometimes North Wales, sometimes Cornwall and 
 then Watchet in Devonshire, burning many vills and slaying a 
 multitude of men." 
 
 " The Sumurtunensis paga " used by Asser meant the region 
 and distnct of Somerton, first colonised and ruled by the Saxons 
 coming from the south coast, and Somerton was the royal centre 
 of the first "Sea-moor-settlers." The present North Somerset 
 and the littoral strip adjoining the Severn sea was still regarded 
 as the land, of the sea-faring Dumnonii, and consisted of a 
 mountamous and hilly enclave. At what time the present boun- 
 dary between North Somerset and North Devon was fixed is not 
 
68 The Story of 
 
 altogether clear. But judging from the Exmoor perambulations 
 (see Greswell's " Forests and Deer Parks of Somerset") the line 
 seems to have been determined by some old forest associations. 
 It could never have been a clear ethnical or race frontier. No, 
 the Parret seems to have been the real frontier and the Castle of 
 Cynuit (Comwich) lay just within it. It was, therefore, with good 
 reason that " Odda, Dux provincise Defenum " commanded at 
 Cynuit. All this agrees with the statement of Claudius Ptolemaeus 
 (a.d. 150) who calls Uxella a town of the Dumnonii. This Uxella 
 is Axbridge (Miiller's Ed. of Ptolemy) and Ptolemy would there- 
 fore extend Dumnonia even a little further eastward to the site of 
 the present Weston-super-Mare, including the old Dumnonian 
 fortress of Worlebury Camp. 
 
 In former days there existed a very ancient " Bedelleria East of 
 Parret" and a " Bedelleria West of Parret," lasting as a kind of 
 nominal ofBce handed on from father to son under the Crown up 
 to Tudor days and having its origin in some military arrangement. 
 It is difBcult to account for as it appears to have existed before 
 the Hundreds and to have been independent of them and the 
 sheriffs. In A.D. 894 King Alfred collected troops from every 
 town " east of the Parret as well as west of Selwood," and in- 
 flicted a defeat upon the Danes at Buttington, on the banks of 
 the Severn, proving the recognized limit of the East of Parret in 
 his day (A. S. Chronicle). In the Rotuli Hundredorum, Ed. I, 
 Will, le Bret, a Mohun sub-tenant, is the " Ballivus de W. de 
 Peret." Ibidem, a Joh. de la Lynde and a Walter de la Lynde 
 have the " Bedeleriam de West de Peret by gift of tlie King." 
 In the Calendar of Patent Rolls, May i, 13 11, there is an allusion 
 to the Bailiwick and Seijeanty of east side of Parret. In 22 Ed. 
 Ill Philip de Welleslegh held "the Seijeanty of the Bailiwick of 
 East Peret," and this was also held in 12 Ed. IV by Cecilia, wife 
 of Thomas Keryel (Calendarium Inq. p.m.), and in 13 Henry VI 
 by John Hill or Hull (Collinson's "History of Somerset," iii, 
 p. 405). Indeed, the river seems to have originally marked the 
 ancient limits of the Archdeaconry of Taunton. In an Eton 
 College charter there is a confirmation by Robert, Bishop of Bath, 
 of grants to S. Andrew's Church, Stoke-Courcy, and amongst the 
 witnesses appears "Hugh de Tournay, Archdeacon of beyond 
 Parret" (c. 1150). By a curious act of inadvertence, which may 
 possibly have arisen from some idea that the boundaries of 
 North Somerset and North Devon were further east than they 
 really are, Sir William Dugdale describes Stoke-Courcy's alien 
 Priory as lying in Devonshire (Epitome of the Monasticon, 1693). 
 To this day many people will speak of Exmoor as in Devon. As 
 late as the reign of Charles I, Endymion Porter, the favourite of 
 that king, asked for Simonsbath, in the Forest of Exmoor, as a 
 perquisite for himself, and describes it as being "within Devon," 
 I.e. Celtic Dumnonia. Sir Henry Spelman in his Catalogue of 
 Royal Forests, c. 1670, places Exmoor in Devon (see his Glossary 
 " Forestae.") One enthusiastic writer in the " Archseologia Cam- 
 brensis " (vol. x, fourth series, p. 259), claims for the Celtic or 
 Waelas allies of King Alfi-ed a large share in his victories, and 
 perhaps truly so. In Warrington's " History of Wales " (vol. i, 
 p. 215), we read: " King Alfred engaged in his service many 
 
The Battle of Edington. 69 
 
 Welshmen acquainted with the art of ship-building, whom he 
 appointed superintendents of his dockyards and afterwards em- 
 ployed in honourable positions in his fleet." This is an early 
 •notice of the prowess of the sailors of Devon, who were no doubt 
 recruited from the North as well as from the South Coast. 
 
 If we study carefully the Somerset Domesday we shall find that 
 the very first place mentioned under "Terra Regis " is Summer- 
 tone, the capital of course of the Sea-moor-settlers. This and the 
 Forest of Cheddar, t.e. Mendip, appear closely together. Then 
 North and South Petherton are linked in a forest arrangement 
 with Summerton. Then comes the entry : " Rex tenet Willetone 
 et Candetone et Carentone. Nunquam geldaverant nee sciturquot 
 Hidae ibi sint." The grouping of these three Hundreds stretching 
 from the mouth of the Parret to Exmoor is remarkable. Here is 
 a separate block of littoral. Again, it is a significant fact that 
 there was only one sheriff for Dorset and 'Somerset for centuries 
 after Domesday, i.e. up to 1566, giving us the impression of an 
 early grouping of South Somerset with Dorset, t.e. Summerton 
 with Dorchester. In itself this is a confusion of shires for ad- 
 ministrative purposes. We must remember also that Ethelwerd, 
 the Chronicler, speaks of the Bishopric of Aldhelm as "Provincia 
 quae vulgo Seluudscire (Selwoodshire) dicitur." 
 
 From the above remarks it may be reasonably inferred that 
 this section of "ancient Dumnonia" was really a somewhat 
 separate and distinctive portion apart from the first settlements 
 of the Sea-moor-saetas round Somerton. It is contained practi- 
 cally in three large Hundreds, viz. : Cannington, Williton, and 
 Carhampton, all Royal Hundreds and part of the " Vetus Domini- 
 cura" of the Saxon princes. At Domesday these Hundreds 
 contained many "vasta" or wastes. The name Williton is 
 conjectured to mean the ton of the "Waelas," and there are 
 other places like it, such as Willsnek, i.e. Waelas nek on the 
 Quantocks (a derivation endorsed by E. A. Freeman), Willet, 
 Willscombe, etc. King Alfred ruled here amongst the " Waelas- 
 cynne," as he calls them in his will. The old border fortresses 
 seem to have been Hamdon, Montacute or Logdaresburg (some 
 of it given to Athelney by King Alfred), Castle Neroche, and then 
 Taunton. When the Dunster barony (also a great Honor) was 
 erected after the Conquest, the Mohuns were given wreckage 
 and shore-rights from the borders of Exmoor to a point near 
 the mouth of the Parret. Indeed, William Mohun with his "jura 
 regalia " at the time of the Conquest and Dunster Castle as his 
 fortress, seemed to be lord paramount over West Somerset, and 
 ruler of a small county Palatine (see Rawle's "Exmoor,"' and 
 " Dunster and its Lords," by Sir H. Maxwell Lyte) distinct in 
 itself. 
 
 Not only were these three western Hundreds distinctive as far 
 as maritime territory was concerned, but they were wider, larger, 
 and showing proofs of subsequent addition. They are somewhat 
 unlike the smaller Hundreds, as they were distributed round 
 Somerton. The sea alone differentiated them and brought a new 
 influence. Curiously enough the Mohun shore rights still exist 
 and belong now to the Luttrells of Dunster Castle. It might be 
 added also that the Church dedications from Culbone (S. Colum- 
 
70 The Story of 
 
 banus), Porlock (S. Dubricius), Carhampton (S. Carantacus), 
 St. Decumans, the mother Church of Watchet, all betray a special 
 Celtic origin, linking North Somerset in its sea history rather with 
 the opposite coast of Wales and Devon than with South and Mid 
 Somerset. To this day the inhabitants of the Brendon Hills, 
 Croydon Hills, and Exmoor, all betray certain peculiarities of 
 dialect and race, differing from the lowlands and the marsh 
 country. Everything points to the fact that North Somerset up 
 to the River Parret was, ethnically, a prolongation of ancient 
 Dumnonia. 
 
 It must be remembered, also, that the earliest charter of Ynys 
 Witrin, ot the sea monastery of Glastonbury, was given by a Rex 
 Dumnoniae, who may well have been a maritime prince supreme 
 along the estuaries of the Parret, Brue, and Axe. Mr. W. H. 
 Stevenson doubts the authenticity of this charter, and criticises 
 ' Dr. Guest, and calls the expression "Ynys Witrin" ridiculous. 
 But is there anything ridiculous in calling an island " Vitrea," 
 from its colour (see " Forcellinus.") Vitrum means "woad" as 
 well as "glass," and the green uplifted mound of Glastonbury 
 seen through the mists, often conveys the notion of a light-green 
 colour. But is there no evidence of Glastonbury manors lying in 
 Dumnonia or Devonshire ? Mr. W. H. Stevenson (" Athenaeum," 
 Oct. 5, 1907), states that there is no written proof that Devonshire 
 extended to the Parret, still less that it went eastwards of it. 
 I maintained otherwise. Mr. Stevenson quotes Domesday, and 
 so do I. And may I refer him to the Exeter Domesday, and turn 
 his attention to the heading (p. 148), " Terra Abbatis Glast. in 
 Devenesira." Amongst the manors there enumerated he will find 
 such Polden manors as Shapwick, Cossinton, Sowi (Middlezoy 
 and West Zoyland), Chilton, and Edington itself. Mr. Stevenson 
 -will notice that the above manors enumerated in this Exeter 
 Domesday as lying "in Devenesira," are all east of the River 
 Parret. Now, I should be glad if Mr. Stevenson will explain this 
 fact. Is the Exon. Domesday heading erroneous ? In a letter to 
 the "Athenaeum," dated 18 April, 1908, I questioned whether 
 " shires " were immutably fixed in King Alfred's time as they 
 stood now, and said, " I fancy not," giving as one illustration the 
 mention of " Triconshire " in King Alfred's will, which, of course, 
 does not mean " Cornwall" as we now understand it. I might also 
 have given " Selwoodshire " as another instance. Mr. Stevenson 
 thought fit to sneer at my " fancy," but this is not argument. 
 Possibly my "fancy" may be nearer the truth than some of his 
 laboured philological deductions. We have had enough philology 
 and to spare : now let us have some geography. The study of 
 military campaigns requires this. 
 
 For the discussion of the whole campaign of A.D. 878 the reader 
 is referred to the "Athenaeum" for August 18, 1906 ; for Septem- 
 ber 15, 1906 ; for June 22, 1907 ; for August 10, 1907 ; for 
 September 7, 1907 ; for April 18, 1908 ; for June 13, 1908 ; 
 for October 24, 1908. Perhaps the best thing, failing Oxford re- 
 search, is to call in a German Professor. We want a Pauli or a 
 Lappenberg to fix the strategy of this Alfred campaign once and 
 for all. It seems we cannot look to Oxford ! We must go to 
 Germany, I suppose ! 
 
The Battle of Edington. 71 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 ^thelney (Mhey. 
 
 The history of Athelney Abbey is given in Dugdale[s " Monasti- 
 con," in its own registers (Somerset Record Society), in the 
 Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological Society, vols, xxi 
 and xliii, and elsewhere, but a few notes on points not mentioned 
 or not sufBciently emphasized in connection with this great 
 memorial Abbey may be of interest here. The variations of the 
 place-name itself are numerous, viz. : Adeliggeney, Adheligeney, 
 Adheligney, Alegney, Aligney, Alingeneia, Alingeney, Alingney, 
 Atelnye, Atheleney, Athelnye, Athelneye, Athelyngney, Athel- 
 ingeia, Aethelingaeg, Aedlingeeg, Adelingi, and Adelingys, 
 Aliennia (Domesday), etc. It really seems to be derived from 
 two Saxon words, Aethelinga — igga, or eyot, i.e. the island of the 
 nobles, called also "clitonum insula." We first hear of it as 
 being the hermitage of S. Egelwine, or Athelwine, the son of 
 King Kynegilsus, and brother of King Kenwalch. Kenwalch 
 drove the Waelas or Britons to the mouth of the Parret after a 
 battle at Pen Selwood in a.d. 658 (A.S. Chronicle), and was 
 therefore the first conqueror of the Waelas here. Ethelwine was 
 a hermit in the early days of Christian evangelization, as this 
 region of Somerset could only have just been conquered by the 
 Saxons. 
 
 In "A Memorial of British Piety" (1761), S. Egelwin is 
 described as a Confessor {fidei), patron of the Abbey of Athelney, 
 and noted for many miracles. He was commemorated Novem- 
 ber 29, and was a saint " continually afflicted with sickness, but 
 this hindered him not from a fervent application of his soul to the 
 love and service of God. " The early dedication of Athelney was to 
 S. Saviour {salvaiort), S. Peter, S. Paul, and S. Athelwine. The 
 Feast of Dedication was first December 20, then August 30. At 
 the Dissolution, seven hundred years after the foundation of the 
 Abbey, one of the monks was called Athelwine. To King Alfred 
 the spot itself, apart from its safe seclusion and welcome solitudes, 
 may have recommended itself by these pious associations already 
 two hundred years old. Remote chapels and oratories appealed 
 to King Alfred, like the Cornish chapel of S. Guerir, where Asser 
 says he worshipped when hunting. Apparently, Athelney was 
 not a Benedictine Abbey to begin with. The first abbot was a 
 foreigner, John of Saxony, and a philosopher, " acerrimi ingenii." 
 It may be that King Alfred did not sympathise very much with 
 the Benedictines. Certainly he never was canonised by Rome, 
 
72 The Story of 
 
 a very significant fact to which Sir John Spelman draws our 
 attention. 
 
 With Glastonbury in utter ruins close by, it is a matter of sur- 
 prise that King Alfred did not restore it. But there is no recorded 
 gift made by the King to Glastonbury of any notable kind, no 
 land charter, no confirmation of privileges (see John of Glaston- 
 bury and Adam of Domerham). What he gave in this region he 
 bequeathed of his own demesne to Athelney. 
 
 Athelney, although honoured by King Canute as a "famossima 
 familia" in 1017, was never a very rich foundation. William of 
 Malmesbury (c. 1140), a Somerset monk, gives this account of it : 
 " Athelney is not an Island of the sea, but is so inaccessible on 
 account of bogs and the inundations of the lakes, that it cannot 
 be approached but by a boat. It has a very large wood of alders, 
 which harbours stags, wild goats (roebuck ?), and other beasts. 
 The firm land, which is only two acres in extent, contains a little 
 monastery and dwellings for monks. The founder was King 
 Alfred, who, being driven over the country by the Danes, spent 
 some time here in secure privacy. Here in a dream S. Cuthbert 
 appearing to him and giving him assurance of his restoration he 
 vowed that he would build a monastery to God ' ' (termeda monas- 
 teriolum in the charter). "Accordingly he erected a Church, 
 moderate indeed as to size, but as to construction singular and 
 novel. For four piers, driven into the ground, support the whole 
 fabric, four circular chancels being erected round it. The monks 
 are few in number and indigent, but they are sufficiently com- 
 pensated for their poverty by the tranquility of their lives and 
 their delight in solitude." The site of Athelney was much like 
 that of its neighbour, Muchelney Abbey, founded by Saxon 
 princes, some say by King Ina, King Alfired's ancestor, whose 
 name still lives in South Petherton, Taunton, and Wells. Sir 
 John Spelman, in his " Life of King Alfred," reminds us that the 
 King spent on Athelney and Shaftesbury one-eighth of his royal 
 income, which proves his partiality to these foundations. But 
 rich endowments never fell to Athelney in subsequent times, and 
 the neighbouring Abbey of Glastonbury, restored by the great 
 Benedictine monk, Dunstan, very soon overshadowed it. At 
 Athelney it was difficult to get stone, and the original church of 
 which Sir John Spelman suggests a plan, with the apsidal chapels 
 or " cancelli " round it (p. 131), was probably all of wood. Possi- 
 bly the piers were driven into a marshy spot, raising the primitive 
 structure above occasional floods. The wood of alders, especially 
 suited for foundations in a lagoon or moist place, may have been 
 used. In the exhumed Glastonbury Lake Village, alder fascines 
 were largely used for foundations, as, we believe, was the case in 
 early Venice. The site was certainly lonely. To the north-east 
 rose Borough Mump, King Alfred's Toteyate ; to the east the 
 AUer hills ; to the south, Stoke S. Gregory ; to the west. Ling, 
 about three-quarters of a mile distant ; to the north and north- 
 west the old Park and Forest of North Petherton. 
 
 In A.D. 1331 Bishop Drokensford made the following entry in 
 his Register, dated Kingsbury, 3 Kal. July : " The Bishop to his 
 officials, Archdeacons, Ceans, Rectors. The Conventual Church 
 of Athelney is ruinous ; no funds for repair ; allow the monks to 
 
The Battle of Edington. 73 
 
 plead their case in Church on Holy Days after Gospel, assuring 
 contributors (if contrite) of 30 days indulgence from enjoined 
 penances in addition to any other authorised indulgences." 
 
 The wooden structure of King Alfred was no doubt replaced 
 at some date by a stone-built Church and a more imposing Bene- 
 dictine aisle. But these early wooden Churches were doubtless 
 long in use. The " lignea basilica" of Glastonbury, i.e. S. 
 Joseph's Chapel, was standing in a.d. 1032, when King Canute 
 confirmed the charter of privileges there (Spelman's " Concilia," 
 p. 537). And, like Glastonbury's oldest Church, it may have 
 been more like a real " basilica." The Athelney Church is said 
 to have been on the north-east side of the island. Bishop God- 
 win, son of Bishop Godwin of Bath and Wells, writes thus, in his 
 well-known book, " De Prsesulibus " (c. 1610): "In the place 
 where this Denewulf (Bishop of Winchester) dwelt, King Alfred 
 built a monastery, the walls whereof are still standing." In a 
 letter written to J.Aubrey (/««ej W. Stoate, Burnham), Athelney 
 ruins were being dug down Oct. 5, 1674 : " They continue digging 
 up the foundation of that sometime famous Abbey." Some of the 
 stones and slabs were being fitted into the adjoining buildings, 
 probable the farm house. The owner at that date was "the un- 
 fortunate Captain Hucker," unfortunate we suppose because he 
 held Church property. 
 
 When Athelney was surrendered it fell into the possession of 
 Sir John Tuchett, Lord Audley, for £a,o (S.A.P., vol. xUii, p. 159). 
 Abbot Gasquet supposes this Lord Audley to have been the well- 
 known Chancellor, Thomas, Lord Audley, of Audley End, but 
 this is a mistake (see Greswell's "Land of Quantock," p. 182). 
 The John Tuchett, or Touchet, was the descendant of the well- 
 known family who held for centuries the barony of Nether Stowey 
 (see also Archbold's "Religious Houses.") The site of the 
 Abbey was granted to John Clayton, 17 Aug., 1544, who died 
 Nov. 3 of the same year. He alienated it to John T3mbury 
 (Brown's Wills). With regard to this property Thomas Hugo 
 quotes Archbishop Whitgift's saying to Queen Elizabeth that 
 " Church lands were like a moth fretting a garment," and brought 
 a curse with them. The old seal of the Abbey represents our 
 Saviour bearing on his left arm a mound, or plot, surmounted 
 with a staff and a cross, alluding to the Isle of Athelney itself as 
 the little ark of salvation, or perhaps Borough Mump, King 
 Alfred's Toteyate. 
 
 _ Amongst the early possessions of the Abbey, from its founda- 
 tion to the days of Edward the Confessor, was the manor of 
 Biscopeston, a large manor of nine hides, afterwards the site of 
 the famous castle of Montacute, the Norman administrative 
 centre of Somerset. The old name of Montacute was Leodgares- 
 burg, and here, according to one tradition, Joseph of Arimathea 
 was buried. Here, in Canute's time, was found that flint crucifix 
 together with such relics as a small cross, a bell, and a text of 
 the Gospels. This was the crucifix taken by the kine of Tofig, 
 the sheriff, to Waltham Holy Cross, in Essex, before which 
 Harold prayed the day before the fateful battle of Senlac. It was 
 this crucifix that gave Harold's men their war-cry. Leodgares- 
 burg, or Biscopeston (Bishopston), must have had sacred and 
 
74 The Story of 
 
 peculiar traditions in King Alfred's time, and perhaps the associa- 
 tions prompted the gift. The place must always have been a 
 stronghold at a very early date, and the chief's name appeared 
 on the well-known Glastonbury Pyramids. When the Earl of 
 Moretain was established at Montacute (a new name brought 
 from Normandy), he got the Athelney monks to take in exchange 
 for Biscopeston the manor of Purse-Candel, in Dorset, apparently 
 a very bad exchange for the Abbey. 
 
 There was one romantic little possession held by the monks of 
 Athelney in the remote combes of the Quantocks, and this was 
 Adscombe, in the parish of Over Stowey. This was given to them 
 by King Ethelred, who was lord of the Quantocks, then part of 
 the Saxon Royal Forest, and it contributed to the kitchen of the 
 monks. No doubt many Quantock red deer found their way to 
 the distant home of the monks. Adscombe is linked in the old 
 documents with Hamme, or Hamp, near Bridgwater, but the 
 reason is not very apparent, as the places are wide apart. The 
 monks had property on the Southern slopes of the Quantocks, viz. 
 at Oggesole, Clavelshey, or Classey, and not far from the old 
 Glastonbury property of West Monckton, described in Kentwine's 
 charter as " juxta famosam silvam Cantucudu " (A.D. 682). 
 
 In their immediate vicinity the Athelney monks fared well as 
 far as their sustenance went. There was plenty of salmon to be 
 caught in the Parret and the Tone of a most excellent kind : their 
 fishponds or "vivaria" were full of toothsome eels. The River 
 Parret was always noted for its wonderful migration of eelvers. 
 Old folk still talk of the " Blue Valsens," a kind of eel. The 
 moors in their vicinity were full of winged game. Indeed, few 
 places were more noted for the number and variety of waterfowl 
 that filled this district, even up to modern times. For firewood 
 they had eighty acres of alder wood [alneti) in Curry Moor, and 
 plenty of pasturage for their stock in the moors, meads, and 
 hams, and especially a meadow with the suggestive name of " la 
 Hoc mede," in Ling. Ling manor belonged to them, with its 
 court and two " laghdayes " every year. 
 
 The modern Island of Athelney has been thus described by 
 Thomas Hugo : " It is situated on the north side of Stanmoor, in 
 the Parish of East Lyng, and is about four miles south-west of 
 the town of Bridgwater. It lies on the north bank of the Tone, 
 about one mile above the confluence of that river with the Parret, 
 on the outside, therefore, and not, as frequently supposed, between 
 those streams. It consists of an island of two low eminences, 
 divided by a shallow depression which is, nevertheless, some feet 
 above the vast level that stretches round on every side. The 
 island is composed of red marl and is 24 acres in extent, i\\ 
 being the complement of the eastern and slightly higher eminence, 
 which was occupied by the monastery and \z\ that of its fellow. 
 It IS still not unfrequently an island in fact as well as in name, 
 though furnished with a high embankment between it and the 
 river, and has to be reached by boats during the months of usual 
 winters. On the eastern eminence is a pleasant farmhouse 
 erected about 80 years ago, generally backed by a goodly group 
 of hayricks and wheat mows. Above it is a white obelisk with an 
 inscription erected by Sir John Slade, a former owner (A.D. 1801). 
 
The Battle of Edington. 75 
 
 The river is crossed by a bridge of wood, similar to many that 
 still adorn the picturesque river which flows beneath. But the 
 eye looks in vain for any indications of the ancient glories of the 
 place. Luxuriant crops wave on the gently-swelling eminence, 
 but of the graceful structure which once crowned it not one stone 
 remains in situ to make us conscious of the treasure which we 
 have lost." 
 
 The place itself must have changed greatly in appearance 
 since William of Malmesbury's days, when the "terra firma" 
 covered only two acres. Can it be possible that these Somerset 
 levels are rising gradually, geologically, Uke the coasts of Scan- 
 dinavia, which in some places have risen seven feet in 150 years ? 
 When last there the writer saw a few worked stones lying about 
 the place, but the probability is that most of them have been 
 used to build the farmhouse and sheds, etc. In the Taunton 
 Museum are a few mosaic tiles and other relics. 
 
 Athelney Abbey was connected closely with the Cathedral 
 Church at Wells. In the charter of Savaric it was granted that, 
 with the assent of the Dean and Chapter, the Abbot Benedict of 
 Athelney and his successors should become Canons of Wells, 
 holding the Prebend of Sutton, and that they should hold the stall 
 next to the Sub-Dean. They were not bound to reside, but must 
 provide a Vicar with four marcs as stall wages (Wells MSS.) 
 
 The Church of S. Cuthbert at Wells may be a reminder of King 
 Alfred's reign. On the capitals of that Church is the sculptured 
 martyrdom of S. Edmund of East Anglia, slain by Inguar and 
 Ubba, in A.D. 870. This sculpture may be, as Canon Church 
 suggests in his " Chapters on Wells," a reproduction of the story 
 found carved on the early Saxon Church. If so, the remark of 
 Matthew Paris in his " Chronica Majora," that Inguar and Ubba 
 atoned for the blood, "beati regis et martyris Edmundi," before 
 the castle of Cumwich, may have a local significance. It was 
 about S. Cuthbert' s Feast Day, 20 March, that success came to 
 the king's forces there. 
 
 APPENDIX C. 
 
 Newton Court and Petherton Par\. 
 
 In the Parish of North Petherton there are two places called 
 Newton, viz.: (i) North Newton, known anciently as Newton- 
 Forestariorum, Newton-Regis, Newton-Plecy, and Newton- 
 Wrothe ; (2) West Newton, known as Newton-Comitis, Newton- 
 Hawys, and Newton- Ricardi. Both are recognizable to this day 
 as separate places in the same parish, but the chief history 
 attaches to North Newton, although there are very few signs now 
 remaining of its past importance, especially as a hunting and 
 administrative centre. The fact is that in early days North 
 Petherton was of all the Royal Forests and Parks in Somerset by 
 far the most important. This may be owing not simply to the 
 
76 The Story of 
 
 quantity of deer found there, but to its value as an oak forest, 
 more valuable than Exmoor, for instance, in this respect, and 
 also to the abundance of winged game found there. Here was 
 a Paradise for the hawker and fowler of old. 
 
 North Petherton Park and Forest were linked also very closely 
 with Somerton, the great Saxon centre. There was the " Home 
 Park," if we may so term it, of Somerton, but North Petherton 
 and the North Curry moors comprised the real sporting Forest of 
 Somerton. Mendip was, of course, a favourite hunting centre 
 with the Saxon princes, as we know from Axbridge documents, 
 but North Petherton was closer and more accessible. Naturally 
 the fowTing on Mendip, or even Neroche, would be inferior to that 
 on the lowlands. At the time ot the Norman Conquest a Robert 
 de Odborville holds (partly in succession to some existing Saxon 
 arrangement), a kind of Forest Barony. The " membra " of this 
 Barony were found on Exmoor, Cheddar, Holford on the Quan- 
 tocks, and, in due course, formed part of the hereditary Forester- 
 ship-in-Fee of Somerset, held by the great Mortimer family and 
 by the Chancers. This Barony or Forestership was attached 
 technically to a tenement in North Petherton (CoUinson, vol. iii), 
 and the headquarters of Robert de Odborville was in North 
 Petherton itself. The site of the old abode can still be traced. 
 
 When William the Conqueror held his famous Council at 
 " Pedreda," and when Lanfranc, the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 and the Bishops, Abbots, Earls, and chiefs of all England were 
 present, and the cause of Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, was 
 pleaded (Florence of Worcester), the meeting-place must have 
 been either at North or South Petherton. Probably the hunting 
 centre of North Petherton would have pleased King William best. 
 In the Church of North Petherton a "King's Gallery" is still 
 pointed out, used now for the tenants of North Petherton Park 
 farms. But tradition has always linked it with the presence of a 
 former king. In addition, Newton-Regis, or Newton-Forestario- 
 rum, always had a King's Chapel or a Free Chapel. These 
 historic links are interesting so far as they bring together Saxon 
 and Norman, King Alfred and King William on common hunting 
 ground. To this day the various outlying " membra " of the old 
 Forestership can be traced in the land taxes which are levied on 
 them, Newton Tything being the place where the old world pay- 
 ments are still made. For instance, there is a land tax of \']s. 
 payable from a place called Newhall, in Holford parish, to this 
 very day, "at fawning season." The " Balliva Forestse totius 
 Somerset," has been worked out in detail by myself in a " History 
 of the Forests and Deer Parks of Somerset " (Barnicott & Pearce, 
 Taunton, 1905). Mr. Eyton has suggested that the presence of 
 the king's "hearth-keeper," "cook," "doorkeeper," "pin- 
 cema," " dapifer," "chamberlain," as well as the "Parcarius" 
 and " Accipitrarius " and the " Tres Forestarii " (Domesday) of 
 Somerset, as landholders near and in Petherton, point to the fact 
 that King William probably held a court at Petherton. There is 
 certainly no county in England with such an interesting and 
 unique forest history as Somerset. It is worth the very closest 
 attention from antiquaries, an attention that has never been 
 sufficiently given. 
 
The Battle of Edington. 77 
 
 The cowherd, or hogherd, the servant in the ballad of his 
 master at Newton Court, whom King Alfred met m his wander- 
 ings, and at whose house the well-known episode of the cakes 
 took place, was supposed by some to have been Denewulf, and 
 this is the quaint account handed down by Bishop Godwin, son 
 of a Bishop Godwin (1584), in his " De Pr»sulibus, and a six- 
 teenth century version : 
 
 "This Denewulf, as the fame goeth, was sometimes a hogge- 
 heard and dwelt in the place where the Abbey of Athelney in 
 Summersetshire was afterwards builded. It happened at that 
 time King Alfred (that famous King of the West Saxons) to bee 
 so neere followed of the Danes (that sought nothing more than 
 his life), as being abandoned of all his followers he knew no better 
 nor more likely course for his safety than, dissembling his estate, 
 to deliver himself for a while into the service of this hogheard, 
 dwelling in a place at that time almost inaccessible for water and 
 of very little or of no resort. So long he continued there as his 
 master and dame were almost weary of his service, wherein he 
 was not so ready as a man should that had had education accord- 
 ingly. Of her it is particularly delivered that when the King let 
 certain cakes bum that she had set him to toast, she reprehended 
 him as an unprofitable servant in these words : 
 
 ' Urere quos cernis panes girare moraris 
 Cum nimium gaudes hos manducare calentes.' 
 
 (Translated). 
 
 ' These cakes that burne 
 While them to turn 
 
 Yee make too little haste, 
 When drest they be 
 I warrant yee 
 
 Yo'wl eate them but too fast.' 
 
 " At last it fell out that the king's friends gathering themselves 
 together, he joyned himselfe unto them and his subjects that now 
 a great while thought him dead resorted unto him in great num- 
 bers, as setting upon the Danes he overthrew them and in a short 
 time not only brought them under his obedience, but also in a 
 manner reduced the whole Realme of England into one monarchy. 
 Having thus recovered the peaceable possession of his crown, hee 
 was not unmindful of his old master, in whom perceiving an ex- 
 cellent sharpness of wit, he caused him, though it were now late 
 being a man growne, to study, and having attained some compe- 
 tency of learning he preferred him to the Bishopricke of Win- 
 chester. Moreover, that he might shew himself thankful unto 
 God as well as man, in the place where this hogheard dwelt, he 
 built a monastery, the walls whereof are still standing." 
 
 William of Malmesbury narrates how King Alfred when in 
 happier circumstances was accustomed to relate in a lively and 
 agreeable manner his perils at Athelney and how he escaped them 
 by the merits of S. Cuthbert. 
 
78 The Story of 
 
 APPENDIX D. 
 
 OLD BALLAD. 
 
 KJng Alfred and the Shepherd, with the humours of 
 Gillian^ the shepherd^ s wife. 
 
 In this Ballad, reprinted with others by Thomas Evans (a.d. 1784) 
 from rare copies and MSS., there is a somewhat different form of 
 the cake story. The motive is also different. King Alfred under- 
 takes his errand in disguise in order to amuse himself with the 
 rustics. But the locality of Newton Court is interesting. 
 
 In elder times that were of yore 
 
 When gibes of churlish glee 
 Were used among our country carls 
 
 Tho' no such thing now be. 
 The which King Alfred liking well, 
 
 Forsook his stately court. 
 And in disguise unknown went forth 
 
 To see that jovial sport, 
 
 He carries with him "a buckler good and strong " to give Jack 
 Sauce a rap, and presently, " coasting through Somersetshire," 
 
 Near Newton Court he met 
 A shepherd swain of lusty limb 
 That up and down did jet. 
 
 The shepherd was carrying a leather scrip with much good 
 meat therein, and the king challenges him for its possession. 
 Nothing abashed, the shepherd takes up the challenge. 
 
 " Thou seem 'St to be some sturdy thief 
 
 And mak'st me sore afraid 
 Yet if thou wilt thy dinner win, 
 
 Thy sword and buckler take : 
 And, it thou can'st into my scrip 
 
 Therewith an entrance make. 
 
 " Here stands my bottle, here my bag, 
 If thou can'st win them, roister. 
 Against thy sword and buckler here 
 My sheep-hook is my master. 
 
 They set-to and have a long round lasting four hours. 
 
 And wearied both, with right good will 
 Desired each other's stay, 
 " A truce, I crave," quoth Alfred then, 
 ' ' Good shepherd hold thy hand ; 
 A sturdier fellow than thyself 
 Lives not within the land." 
 
The Battle of Edington. 79 
 
 King Alfred discloses himself as " a gentleman well known in 
 good King Alfred's Court." 
 
 " The devil thou art the shepherd said, 
 Thou goest in rags all torn, 
 Thou seem'st rather I think to be 
 Some beggar basely born. 
 
 But if he would mend his ways and be a shepherd, 
 
 At night to GiUian my sweet wife 
 Thou shalt go home with me. 
 
 He promises him good store of "whig and whey," a good 
 "pease-straw fire," 
 
 And now and then good barley cakes 
 As better days require. 
 
 His master was "chief and lord of Newton Court," and gave 
 his shepherd swains curds and clouted cream of red-cows' morn- 
 ing milk. 
 
 Thus if thou wilt my man become. 
 
 This usage thou shalt have : 
 If not, adieu ! go hang thyself, 
 And so farewell ! sir knave." 
 
 King Alfred fell in with the suggestion, and agreed to be his 
 man at ten groats a year, which the shepherd deemed good wage. 
 
 " For did the king himself," quoth he, 
 " Unto my cottage come. 
 He should not, for a twelve- months' pay. 
 Receive a greater sum." 
 
 The shepherd and King Alfred go home, but Gillian was not at 
 all pleased to see the latter. 
 
 " A fellow, I doubt, will cut our throats 
 So like a knave looks he." 
 
 The king tries to re-assure her. 
 
 " My master hired me for ten groats 
 
 To serve you one whole year : 
 So, good Dame Gillian, grant me leave 
 
 Within your house to stay. 
 For, by St. Anne, do what you can 
 
 I will not yet away." 
 
 Then follows the story of the cakes. 
 
 Where lying on the hearth to bake. 
 
 By chance the cake did burn, 
 " Why can'st thou not, thou lout (quoth she) 
 
 Take pains the same to turn. 
 Thou art more quick to take it out. 
 
 And eat it up half dough. 
 But serve me such another trick 
 
 I'll thwack thee on the snout." 
 
 The threatened violence of Dame Gillian in the Ballad rather 
 agrees with old William Woodland's oral tradition that she did 
 catch him a clout on the side of the head." 
 
 However, King Alfred carries on the farce a little longer, and 
 went to sleep in the upper room amongst the cackling hens. 
 And o'er his head hang'd spider's webs 
 As if they had bean bells. 
 
8o Story of the Battle of Edington. 
 
 In the morning he got up early at cock-crow. 
 
 Then up got Alfred, with his horn 
 
 And blew so long a blast 
 That it made Gillian and her groom 
 
 In bed feel sore aghast. 
 " Arise," quoth she, " we are undone ; 
 
 This night we lodged have 
 All unawares, within our house, 
 
 A false dissembling knave. 
 Rise, husband, rise : he'll cut our throats : 
 
 He calleth for his mates : 
 I'd give, old Will, our good cade lamb, 
 
 He would depart our gates." 
 
 The cade lamb was the lamb that was weaned from its mother 
 and brought up by hand about the house. 
 
 But still King Alfred blew his horn 
 
 Before them more and more : 
 Till that an hundred lords and knights 
 
 All lighted at the door : 
 Who cry'd " All hail ! All hail ! good king ! 
 
 Long have we sought your grace. 
 And here you find (my merry men all !) 
 
 Your sovereign in this place." 
 
 Gillian and her groom were now horror-struck at the turn 
 events had taken, and anticipated nothing less than the halter 
 " for using thus our good King Alfred." 
 
 " O pardon, mv liege," quoth Gillian then 
 ' ' For my husband and for me ! 
 By these ten bones, I never thought 
 To see what now I see," 
 " And by my hook," the shepherd said 
 
 (An oath both good and true) 
 " Before this time, O noble king, 
 I ne'er your highness knew. 
 Then pardon me and my old wife 
 
 That we may after say 
 When first you came into our house 
 It was a happy day." 
 
 Of course the king pardons them and, in addition, because the 
 shepherd had made such good play with his hook against his 
 sword and buckler, he bestowed upon him one thousand wethers 
 and enough pasture-ground as would suffice to feed them all. 
 
 " And this thy cottage I will change 
 Into a stately hall." 
 
 " And for the same, as duty binds," 
 
 The shepherd said, " Good king 
 A milk-white lamb, once every year, 
 
 I'll to your highness bring. 
 And Gillian, my wife, likewise. 
 
 Of wool to make you coats 
 Will give you as much at New Year's tide 
 
 As shall be worth ten groats." 
 
 ' And in your praise my bagpipes shall 
 Sound sweetly once a year, 
 How Alfred, our renowned king 
 Most kindly hath been here." 
 
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 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Chapters on the Forests and Deer Parks 
 OF Somerset. With notes on Forest Law, 
 Customs, Mediaeval Hunting and Rules of 
 Sport, with two maps. (Out of print). 
 
 The Land of Quantock. A descriptive and 
 historical account, with 15 illus. and 3 maps 
 ( Out of print). ^ ' 
 
 Chapters on the Early History of Glaston- 
 bury Abbey, with 20 full-page illus. and 
 others in the text. 6/6 net. 
 
Reviews of The Forests and Deer TarJ^s. 
 
 " This work betrays an immense amount of research that 
 appeals to the student of the history of sport." — Baily's 
 Magazine, October, 1906. 
 
 "We welcome Mr. Greswell's book as a substantial 
 addition to the somewhat limited number of works on 
 Forests." — The Field, March 3rd, 1907. 
 
 " Mr. Greswell shows rare diligence in following up in 
 records the story of the Somerset Forests, particularly that 
 of Exmoor." — Athenceum, Nov. 17th, 1906. 
 
 " This volume will become a standard work on the 
 Forests and Deer Parks of Somerset." — Sporting Times, 
 Nov. 3rd, igo6. 
 
 Review of The Land of Quantoc\. 
 
 " Mr. Greswell teaches the past of our country, based 
 on the associations of a Shire, and so contributes to the 
 intelligent understanding of the history of England," — 
 Athenceum, May 9th, 1903. 
 
 Of Mr. Greswell's Chapters on the Early History of 
 Glastonbury zAbbey, the Bishop of Bath and 
 Wells says : — 
 
 " 1 find these Chapters which mark so strongly and in so 
 many ways the Celtic associations of the ancient Abbey, 
 too often ignored by the mediaeval writers, of peculiar 
 interest." — Presidential Address to the members of the 
 Somerset Archaeological Society, 1909. See Proceedings, 
 vol. Iv., p. 49.