92 Sir Frederick Pollock [March 3, 



king had lived to see his son Edward a warrior, and his grandson 

 iEthelstan a promising boy. Right well they both followed in 

 Alfred's path as just and valiant kings, Edward in alliance with his 

 no less valiant sister iEthelflaad. Glorious among the women of 

 our race, the Lady of the Mercians drove back the Dane step by 

 step for eighteen years more. Tarn worth, Stafford, and Warwick are 

 her work ; Derby and Leicester were her conquests. Alfred and 

 Ealhswith might well be proud of their children. 



The English kingdom might not last, indeed, in such manner and 

 form as Alfred established it. The Anglo-Saxon polity bore in it the 

 seeds of decay. Danish conquest — but not heathen — was to come 

 only a century after the great king's death ; Norman conquest — 

 which may be called Danish at one remove — after that. English 

 was transformed with travail and violence, but, in the long run, for 

 the better. Alfred's work also was transformed, but never broken. 

 It lives still in his old England ; it lives and waxes in the growth of 

 new English commonwealths round the world. 



Note on Elhandun (p. 85 above). — The opinion represented in the text, namely 

 that the Danish head-quarters were still at Chippenham when Alfred marched 

 from Selwood Forest, is that of almost all recent writers. On this assumption, 

 Heddington (as it is now written), almost due south of Calne, not the Edington 

 also in Wiltshire, seems the likeliest representative of Ethandun. But there is 

 another Edington in quite another direction, at the foot of the Polden Hill, near 

 Bridgwater. The late Bishop Clifford, of Clifton, maintained in 1875 (' Pro- 

 ceedings of Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society,' xxi. 1), 

 that this Edington of Somerset is the real Ethandun, taking a quite different 

 view of the campaign as a whole. His points, briefly summarised, are to this 

 effect. 



1. The Danish land army was acting in concert with the fleet commanded 

 by Ubbo or Hubba. The fleet landed at the mouth of the Parret; Asser's 

 " Cynwit " is the modem Combwich. Anything south of the Parret might then be 

 called Devon. Guthrum's army from Chippenham joined these invaders. 



2. Alfred watched the Danes from Athelney, and by feints and skirmishes led 

 them to believe that he was collecting his strength on the left bank of the Parret, 

 while he was really doing so on the far side of Selwood, beyond the Danish means 

 of observation. 



3. From Egbert's Stone (somewhere among the Brixtons, qu. Whit-Street- 

 Castle?) Alfred and his host doubled back upon Polden Hill, and succeeded in 

 capturing the key of the Danish position. 



4. The fort to which the Danes fled was not Chippenham, but probably 

 Bridgwater. If it was at or near Chippenham, why did not relief come to the 

 Danes from Mercia ? 



5. As a minor point, iEcglea or Iglea, the place of Alfred's halt on the march 

 from Egbert's Stone to Ethandun, is identified with Edgarlea, formerly Egerly, a 

 hamlet of Glastonbury close under Glastonbury Tor. The distances are about 

 right, and there is no other plausible identification of the name. 



This theory is worked out with great ingenuity — an ingenuity which is ex- 

 cessive in trying to fix definite interpretations on the language, not only of Asser 

 and the English Chronicle, but of later writers who probably knew nothinsr of 

 the country, and very little of war, and were quite indifferent to topographical 

 accuracy. I am informed that some competent students, with opportunities of 

 examining the ground, are convinced that Bishop Clifford was right, but I am 

 not acquainted with any published criticism of his hypothesis, favourable or un- 

 favourable, and it has certainly not found any general acceptance; whether 



