254 ANGLO-SAXONS AND DANES. 



It is more pleasant to extract from the Anglo-Saxon Chro- 

 nicle a notice that in 876, " Halfdene apportioned the lands of 

 Northumbria, and they thenceforth continued ploughing and 

 tilling them ; " and again that in 880, the army settled in East 

 Anglia and apportioned it ; for after this some years of com- 

 parative quiet rewarded the wisdom of Alfred. 



It is not often, amidst the prosperous fields of the north, that 

 our ploughmen are startled by the perishing remains of Danish 

 or Saxon combatants. It is not easy to point exactly to the 

 spot where Edwin fell at Hatfield (633), and Oswald at Maser- 

 feld (642), and their destroyer Penda at Winwidfield (655). 

 Even Brunanburgh, the greatest Anglo-Saxon victory (937), 

 where Athelstan "of earls the lord, of heroes the bracelet 

 giver " three nations crushed, has no fixed place and no settled 

 name. Only a curious eye can trace at Kiccall the landing- 

 place, and at Fulford the combat, which opened to Hardrada the 

 gates of York (1066), or find at 'Stamford Brig' the ' Battle- 

 flat ' where the warriors of the Baltic lay by thousands round the 

 heroic Northman, on the land he thought to rule. 



This was, however, not the last of the ' Danish' invasions. In 

 1069, three sons of Sweyne came from Denmark with 240 ships 

 into the Humber, and assisted by Waltheof and the Northum- 

 brians, demolished the castle of York. In 1075 the Minster 

 was pillaged by Northmen, and but for a mutiny in the Danish 

 fleet, the year 1085 might have beheld the son of King Sweyne 

 at the head of a mingled army of Danes and Northumbrians, 

 and the battle of Hastings might have been won in vain*. 



* See, on all points of Saxon and Danish history in England, the Saxon 

 Chronicle, compared in the earlier parts with Bede's Ecclesiastical History, 

 Ethelwerd's Chronicle, and Nennius's History of the Britons ; Simeon of 

 Durham, Henry of Huntingdon, William of Malmesbury, for the later 

 events ; and the Heimskringla and Egill's Saga for details as to Brunan- 

 burgh and Stamford Brig. 



