and on the Battles of Cynuit and Ethandun. 81 
and the pursuit to the hill fortress of Bury Wood camp, where the 
booty was taken, and where, for fourteen days, the miserable and 
vanquished Danes were shut up and besieged by “England’s 
darling,” the victorious Alfred.! 
Dismissing this great event, and returning to the minor question 
with which we were occupied, the place of Hubba’s death and 
burial, it may be worth while to inquire how the notion of his 
having fallen, and being interred near Chippenham, arose. All the 
cotemporary and earliest writers are, as has been shewn, silent on 
this point; but what they do state is not inconsistent with the assertion 
of some later authorities, as to his having met his death at Cynuit 
in Devonshire. The first author, who connects the death of Hubba 
with Chippenham, is one of late date, John Brompton, Abbot of 
Jervaulx in Yorkshire, whose chronicle, compiled at the end of the 
14th century, is of but little authority, though as the learned Dr. 
Lappenberg tells us, it is too often appealed to. Brompton places 
these events under the year 873, four or five years before their real 
date. He does not, however, connect them with the great battle 
1 There are two other views, as to the site of the battle of Ethandun, which 
may be briefly referred to. First, that of Mr. J. M. Moffat,! who adopts Whit- 
aker’s view as to the Aicglea of the chronicle being at Iley or Highley, near 
Melksham, and assigns the battle to a spot called ‘‘ Woeful Danes Bottom,” 
near Minchinhampton, in Gloucestershire, which town is enclosed by a large 
entrenched camp, popularly termed Danish. This, however, would give near 
thirty miles for the third day’s march; and the place is, also, too far from 
Chippenham, being twenty miles to the north. Altogether this view seems 
untenable; though the spot having this peculiar name, is likely enough to 
have been the scene of some bloody encounter with the Danes. There were 
various other battles and skirmishes, between them and the Saxons, in this part 
of England, as well late in the ninth, as early in the eleventh century; and 
among the latter, the celebrated battle of Sceorstan, (Shirestones ?) between 
Canute and Edmund Ironside. With this, possibly, some further combat near 
Minchinhampton may have been connected. 
Second, that of Mr. Lysons,? who, on the authority of Dr. Beke, professor of 
Modern History at Oxford, places Ethandun at Eddington or Hedington, near 
Hungerford, in Berkshire, and Acglea in the same neighbourhood. This would 
give forty miles as the distance from Egbryght’s stane, across the whole of 
Wiltshire, for the second day’s march, This view scems, of all suggested, the 
most improbable. 
1 See ** Graphic Mlustrator,” 1834, p. 106. 2 “Magna Britannia, Berkshire,”’ 1813, p. 162. 
M 
