ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



Of the future history of the see of Dunwich but little is known. It 

 •came to an end with the incursion of the Danes. There were eleven bishops 

 of Dunwich after ./Ecci, whose names were /Escwulf, Eadulf (signature 747), 

 Cuthwine, Aldberht, Ecglaf, Heardred (signatures 781-89), Aelhun (790-3), 

 Tidferth (798-816), Waeremund (signature 824), Wilred (signatures 825-45), 

 and TEthelwulf. 1 



For about a hundred and fifty years after Archbishop Theodore, the 

 signatures of the bishops of the two East Anglian sees are appended to the 

 various acts of the national synods ; but after the death of Humbert of 

 Elmham (870) and /Ethelwulf of Dunwich, in the ninth century, the name of 

 no East Anglian bishop occurs for about a hundred years. The reason is not 

 far to seek ; the province was overrun with the hordes of heathen Northmen 

 or Danes who landed in constantly increasing numbers on the long line of 

 seaboard, finding their chief spoils in Christian churches and monasteries. At 

 last, in 861, 'a great heathen army came to the land of the English nation, 

 and took up their winter quarters among the East Angles, and there they 

 were housed ; and the East Angles made peace with them.' 2 This was the 

 date of their first definite settlement. When the winter of 866-7 had 

 passed away, the Danes in great multitudes left their quarters in Suffolk and 

 Norfolk, and for three years cruelly ravaged Yorkshire, Northumberland, and 

 Nottinghamshire. In 870 they returned to East Anglia, making Thetford 

 their head quarters for the winter. 3 During the absence of their army for 

 those three years, the courage of the men of East Anglia had revived. 

 Edmund, their king, full of Christian ardour, rallied them to resist the 

 heathen marauders and strike a blow for freedom. A great battle was fought 

 near the town that afterwards bore the martyr's name ; but the English were 

 ■defeated and their king taken prisoner. Hingwar and the other Danish chief- 

 tains would have spared Edmund's life had he but consented to be their 

 tributary prince and abjured his baptism. The king, on the contrary, refused 

 to reign under Hingwar unless the latter first embraced Christianity. A cruel 

 scourging followed this refusal ; he was bound to a tree and met with a 

 lingering death as a target for Danish arrows, according to the well-known 

 and oft-illustrated story of his martyrdom. 4 



After they had slain St. Edmund, the chroniclers all agree that the 

 Danes, recognizing the religious nature of the uprising against their cruel 

 rule, fell with renewed force on the remaining churches and monasteries or 



walls. As supporters of the North Elmham site it will suffice to mention Camden and Spelman of earlier writers 

 and Dr. Jessopp and the Bishop of Bristol among modern ecclesiologists. See also Bright, Early Engl. Ck. 250. 

 The arguments in favour of South Elmham being the seat of the bishopric were set forth in a paper by the 

 late Mr. Harrod in 1874, Suff. Arch. Inst. Proc. iv, 7-13 ; a previous paper in the same volume gives a plan 

 and description of the moated site by Mr. Woodward. 



1 The spelling adopted by Dr. Stubbs in his Reg. Sacr. Angl. (230-1) is the one used in the text. For 

 the attendance at synods and for the signatures of these early bishops of Dunwich and Elmham see Hadden 

 and Stubbs, Councils and Eccl. Doc. vol. ii, passim. 



* Ang. Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 137. s Ibid. 



* The legendary lives of St. Edmund and the contradictions of annalists make the truth connected with 

 Edmund's actions and death difficult to elucidate. But the bare facts cited above seem undoubtedly true. As 

 to his martyrdom there were two different early versions, which have been termed the clerical and the secular. 

 According to the first of these, as described by Abbo, Florence, and Malmesbury, Edmund when attacked by 

 the Danes made no resistance, and was led as a lamb to the slaughter. According to the other and better 

 ■established version, supported by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Asser, and Ethelward, Edmund and his men 

 fought stoutly against the Danes. As to the various lives of St. Edmund, see Arnold, Memorials of St. Edmund's 

 Abbey (Rolls Ser.), 3 vols. (1890-6), particularly the introduction to vol. i. 



5 



