A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



alliance to it at the price of its nominal independence. 1 The witan of 

 the East Angles continued to act as the centre of local government and 

 military organization. The thing of the South folk may have met at 

 Thingoe 2 at Bury, in fact. In 866 the Danes, who had been for long 

 harassing the coasts, lurking among the creeks and inlets, came first to land and 

 took up their quarters in East Anglia, ' and there they were horsed.' s Four 

 years later Suffolk acquired its famous martyr, for King Edmund was killed in 

 defence of his kingdom. In 884 East Anglia became Danish. The army 

 under Guthrum settled there and apportioned it among themselves, and it 

 became by virtue of the treaties of Wedmore part of Danelagh. The return of 

 the Danish army from a pillaging expedition in France was the signal for 

 the breaking-out of the Anglo-Danes. Alfred prevented the landing of one 

 detachment in the Stour, but a second pirate fleet swept away his victorious 

 ships and landed its men. 4 On Edward's accession Ethelwald, the pretender 

 to Alfred's throne, thought to make good his claim by Danish arms, fled to 

 East Anglia and gathered a large army among them. 5 This gave Edward a 

 chance of ravaging the county in 906," and he afterwards bridled the South 

 folk by a chain of forts. The Danes broke through the line again and 

 again, and it was not till 920 7 that Edward was able to oust the Danes 

 from the Huntingdon-Cambridge line of defence. He took them in the rear, 

 making Colchester his head quarters and sending expeditions thence into East 

 Anglia, where the English and the Danish colonists received him gladly. 

 The army, caught in the fens, with Edward and his army behind and his 

 forts in front, had to submit. From now until 991 East Anglia enjoyed a 

 cessation of raids, but in that year the Danes, who for ten years had been 

 burning intermittently the south and west, landed and fired Ipswich, 8 and then 

 over-ran the county. This was the year which saw the first payment of 

 Danegeld by the exhausted English. The county, however, both paid and 

 suffered. In 1010 Ulfkytel, the alderman, met the army invading the 

 Stour at Ringmere near Ipswich. 9 His army, composed of the county levies, 

 had in its ranks the usual traitor, this time one of Danish extraction, for 

 Thurkytel, a Danish jarl, was the first to flee. The county levy was slaughtered, 

 and for three months the pagans lived on the whole district, where they 

 destroyed men and cattle, and burned even into the wild fens. So great was 

 the misery that St. Edmund appeared to fight for his people, and smote 

 Sweyn the tyrant, so that he died, 10 and the county was rid of one 

 oppressor. Even the martyr however could not fight the army single- 

 handed, and in i o 1 6 Cnut had obtained so firm a footing that for a second 

 time a partition of the kingdom took place, and again East Anglia fell to the 

 Danes. The death of King Edmund affirmed Cnut's hold upon England, 

 and he divided the whole kingdom into four provinces and gave East Anglia u 

 to Thurkill as his viceroy. East Anglia afterwards continued to be governed 

 by its earl, and was part of Harold's earldom and later of Gyrth's, but it was 

 not until the fourteenth century that the earldom of Suffolk was separated 

 from that of Norfolk or East Anglia. 



1 A. S. Citron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 1 10-1. ' Gage, The Hundred of Thingoe, I. 



' A. S. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 130-1. 4 Ibid, i, 152-3. 5 Ibid, i, 180-1. 



Ibid, i, 182-3. ' Ibid - ' '94-5- " Ibi<1 . ' 2 3 8 ~9- 



Ibid, i, 262-3. '" w 'll- of Malmesbury, Gesta Reguai (Rolls Ser.), i, 212. 

 " A. S. Chrm. (Rolls Ser.), i, 284-5. 



164 



