31 



showed that the men to whom they belonged had perished 

 in the full vigour of manhood. Some of the skulls had 

 been fractured, and the men to whom they belonged had 

 evidently come to a violent death. A jaw bone of a horse 

 and some teeth w^ere found in one of the pits, and among 

 the circumstances noted at the time was the fact that the 

 root of an ash tree, growing in the church-yard, had found 

 its way through the nutrient foramen of a thigh-bone, into 

 the cavity which contained the marrow, and had grown until 

 it penetrated the further end of the bone, and finally burst 

 the shaft : the bone and root were compacted together into 

 one solid mass. These remains were unfortunately collected 

 together and reinterred on the north side of the church- 

 yard, without being examined by any one interested in 

 craniology, the few fragments which escaped reinterment 

 being merely the teeth, which were sold at sixpence and a 

 shilling apiece by the workmen, as a remedy against tooth- 

 ache; for the possession of a dead man's tooth was supposed, 

 by the people in the neighbourhood at that time, to prevent 

 that malady. 



The interest in this discovery died away, and, so far as I 

 know, there was no attempt made to bring it into relation 

 with history, although it offers a striking proof of the 

 accuracy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. In the year 894 

 we read that the Danes, probably under the command of 

 Hgesten, left Beamfleet, or Benfleet, in Essex, and, after 

 plundering Mercia or central England, collected their forces 

 at Shoebury in Essex, and gathered together an army both 

 from the East Angiians and the Northumbrians. "They 

 then went up along the Thames till they reached the Severn ; 

 then up along the Severn. Then Ethered the ealdorman, and 

 iEthelnoth the ealdorman, and the Kings-thanes who were 

 then at home in the fortified places, gathered forces from 

 every town east of the Parret, and as well west as east of 

 Selwood, and also north of the Thames and west of the 



