260 The Battle of Ethandun. 
it respectively, at Yattendon and Eddington in Berkshire, perhaps 
fifty miles from that place, and being thus reminded of them, your 
readers may accept their additional testimony, to prove that, “I 
am justified in throwing a doubt on the statement of Dr. Thurnam 
that the Danes had their head quarters! at Chippenham both before 
and after the battle.” It will be for them also to determine whe- 
ther Mr. Scrope is himself justified in his decided and peremptory 
contradiction. It would be too great an infliction on your readers 
to lead them again minutely through Mr. Scrope’s repetition of Dr. 
Thurnam’s hypothesis of the march of Alfred, “from Brentford to 
Ealing, from Ealing to Acton, from Acton to Uxbridge,” and so 
forth.? I will, therefore, only add to my former statement—First, 
that if the shorter distances between the stations, there mentioned, 
are held subversive of their identification with the ancient nomen- 
clature of places in the line of march; we are not to measure the 
time occupied by the progress of an army from one to the other, 
by the ordinary facility of passage through an open country, but 
by the obstacles presented by a continuous forest and the rugged 
ground, which then characterised that neighbourhood: Secondly, 
with reference to the identity of Highley Common, and the Aiglea 
of Asser, I am informed on the very competent authority of a near 
resident,’ “that there is no such place as Highley Common, although 
there is a grazing meadow a little above the level of the river Avon, 
called Iley,t than which no spot is more deep and miry or less 
1 It is worthy of remark, that whilst modern writers opposed to the site of 
Edington, for the most part differ among themselves as to the locality of the 
battle; Camden, Spelman, Gibson, Gough, Turner, Sir Richard Hoare, and Dr. 
Giles, (cum multis aliis) all concur in referring it to the same spot. 
2 Foote’s ‘Mayor of Garrett.’ 
3 The Rey. J. Wilkinson, Rector of Broughton Gifford. 
4The name Iley, has been deduced from Isley, Insula, an island, and hence 
perhaps an argument in its favour may be drawn from the compound Aiglea of 
Asser, which may be described as the pasture on this island, but, independently 
of the apparent inconvertibility of the first syllable, into I, the word Ag 
means also an egg or oval form, and may have reference to the shape of the 
land: moreover, lea, is not necessarily a pasture or meadow, as Dr. Johnson 
derives our English word lea, from ‘ley’ Saxon, a fallow. May I be allowed 
to suggest that Iley and Highley may have been indifferently used, in modern 
times, and that the two Saxon words hih, high and lea or ley, explain Mr. 
