By the Rev. W. C. Plenderleath. 17 



wished, to retain power over their money or landed estates, and both 

 to use and devolve them according to their pleasure. Hence two 

 monks of the monastery at Abingdon, named Leofric and Godrick 

 Cild, appear to have obtained manors situated upon the Thames by 

 right of inheritance, the one of whom, Godrick, held Spersholt, 

 near the place commonly known as the Whitehorse Hill, and the 

 other, Leofric, that of Whitchurch, during the time that Aldhelm 

 was Abbot of this place.] 



This Aldhelm appears to have been Abbot from 1072 to 1084, 

 and from the terms in which the White Horse Hill is mentioned, 

 the name was evidently an old one at that time. 



Now it was only 200 years before this time that a very famous 

 victory was gained by King Alfred over the Danes close to this very 

 spot. "Four days after the battle of Reading [i.e., A.D. 871) ,'' 

 says Asser, " King ^thelred, and Alfred his brother fought against 



the whole army of the pagans at Ashdown And the 



flower of the pagan youths were there slain, so that neither before 

 nor since, was ever such destruction known since the Saxons first 

 gained Britain by their arms." And it was in memory of this 

 victory, that, according to local tradition, King Alfred caused his 

 men, on the day after the battle, to cut out the While Horse, th« 

 standard of Hengist, on the hill-side just under the castle. The 

 name Hengist, or Hengst, I may remind you, means stone horse 

 in the Saxon language, and Bishop Nicholson, in his " English 

 Atlas," goes so far as to suppose the names of Hengist and Horsa 

 to have been, not proper at all, but simply emblematical, even as, 

 says he, " the Emperour of the Germans was called the Eagle, and 

 the King of France the Lilly. 



And in fact the probability of this tradition of the memorialization 

 of Alfred^s victory by the UiRngton Horse has often been a subject 

 of controversy among antiquarians. Aubrey, in the valuable 

 transcript of his IMSS. annotated by Sir R. Hoare, which we have 

 in the library of this Society, unhesitatingly says, " The White 

 Horse was made by Hengist, who bore one on his arms or standard," 

 p. 41. I see, however, that Mr. Hughes is reported in the Times of 

 June 10th, in last year, to have said, in a communication to the 



VOL. XIV. — NO. XL. c 



