26 On the History of Chippenham. 
quarters, it may not have been a bad one; for it stands, when you 
examine the situation, upon a kind of peninsula, the river winding 
round it in the form of a horse shoe. On the land side, towards 
the south-east, a line of earthwork would easily protect a tempo- 
rary camp. 
After a few months, Alfred came out of his Athelney retreat, 
and defeated the Danes, who broke up their quarters at Chip- 
penham and retired to Cirencester, leaving him at liberty to 
re-occupy his villa regia in peace. He died in a.p. 901, and was 
buried at Winchester, leaving, by his will, his Chippenham manor 
to his youngest daughter, Alfritha, who married Baldwin, Count 
of Flanders. This, of course, was only a provision for life; as 
Chippenham continued to belong to the Crown for centuries after- 
wards. It is next mentioned in the reign of king Edward the 
Confessor, about a.p. 1042, when we have a partial description of 
its condition. The record states that there was a church; the 
rector was one bishop Osbern, and one hundred acres belonged to 
the church. King Edward had also given to his huntsman Ulviet, 
a small farm for his life; and three others are named, to whom 
small portions of land had been granted; but, with these excep- 
tions, the whole manor was still in the king’s own hand. It paid 
no tax or assessment of any kind; so that this must have been 
its golden age. But iron days were drawing near: the fourth 
scourge was ready, and Chippenham manor fell into the hands of 
THe Normans. 
One of the Conqueror’s most celebrated acts, was the great 
survey of England, called Domesday Book. In making it, he had 
two objects in view; the first, to find out how much he was himself 
worth: the second, what every body else was worth, and how 
much taxing they would bear. He sent commissioners into every 
manor, (the word parish does not occur in Domesday Book'), who 
made inquiry so searching, that, as one person complains, the king 
knew of every cow and pig in the country, and even how many 
1 Notices on the Domesday Book for Wiltshire, by H. Moody, “‘ Memoirs of 
the Archeol, Inst. at Salisbury,” p, 177. 
