POLITICAL HISTORY 



and peopled both with Englishmen and with Danish.' Then it was that 'all 

 the people who were settled in the Mercian's land submitted to him, both 

 Danish and English. ' l Two years later Edward again visited Nottingham and 

 secured his conquest by a second ' burgh ' stationed on the south side of the 

 river opposite the other fortification, and connected with the other by a 

 bridge ' built and manned there in the immediate neighbourhood.' 8 A mixed 

 population of Danish and English seems to have inhabited the town and 

 possibly the county of Nottingham until the reign of Edmund, a younger son 

 of Edward the Elder. He, in the year 940 or 941, seems to have entirely 

 repeopled the five boroughs with Englishmen. 8 If this statement is true it 

 may be that Edmund's idea was to draw closer the union between Wessex and 

 Mercia, and clench his father's policy. But Danish influence still remained 

 strong in the county,* and all hope of continuing Edward's policy of concen- 

 tration was frustrated by the weakness of the monarchy and the unhappy 

 rivalry between the incapable Edwy and his brother Edgar, when the Danelaw, 

 with English Mercia, chose Edgar for their king, while Wessex remained true 

 to Edwy. When Edwy was dead and Edgar was sole king, Nottingham, 

 both town and county, must have grown prosperous again under the just and 

 peaceful rule of Edgar and his wise adviser St. Dunstan. But after Edgar's 

 death, when England, prepared for subjugation by the unstable rule of Ethel- 

 red the Unready, was being forced into submission by the Danish Cnut, 

 Mercia and the Danelaw had to be reduced, as the entrance to the north, and 

 Nottinghamshire, as one of the most important keys to that position, suffered 

 with the rest. 6 Yet there is little definite information concerning the part 

 taken by the county in the desperate struggle which followed Cnut's death, 

 and finally resulted in the battle of Hastings. The break up of Mercia under 

 Harthacnut had meant the formation of a new earldom of the middle 

 English, over which Earl Godwin set his nephew Beorn, brother of Swein 

 Estrithson, and of which Nottingham formed part. After the treacherous 

 murder of Beorn by Swein, son of Godwin, in 1049-50,' the earldom seems to 

 have again become part of Leofric's earldom of Mercia, and so to have come 

 to his grandsons Edwin and Morkere. Jealousy of the house of Godwin led 

 these two Mercian earls to forsake Harold, 7 as jealousy of William's success 

 led them later to rebel against him, and the men of Nottingham were of 

 necessity drawn into their treachery. It was to Nottingham that William 

 went with his whole army 8 in 1068, when he heard that ' the people of the 

 north had gathered themselves together and would stand against him if he 

 came." The burghs which Edward the Elder had raised were undoubtedly 

 guarded against him, but it would almost seem as though the town was half- 

 hearted in its defence, since the number of king's thegns retaining their land 

 in the county at the time of the Domesday Survey would seem to suggest that 

 it made an easy submission. 



1 Jng/.-Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 195 ; ii, 84. Matt. Paris, op. cit. i, 445. Ric. de Clrencatria (Rolls 

 Ser.), ii, 57. * jfngl.-Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 196 ; ii, 84. 



8 Ibid, ii, 89. Thus also Robert of Gloucester records that Edmund drove away ' the Saracens ' that 

 were yet remaining in Lincoln, Leicester, Derby, Stafford, and Nottingham, and ' brought back Christian men 

 in their stead.' Rob. ofGIouc. (Rolls Ser.), i, 409. 



4 See Introd. to Dom. Surv. * See former reference to the harrying of the county by Cnut. 



6 Angl.-Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 307 ; ii, 140. ' Ibid. 



8 Flor. Wlgprn (Eng. Hist. Soc.), ' Rex Willelmus cum exercitu suo Snottingaham venit.' 



* Angl.-Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 342 ; ii, 172. 



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