POLITICAL HISTORY 



greater part of the heathen host was destroyed, so that we never heard 

 of their being so defeated either before or since, in any country, on 

 any one day.' He uses no such strong language of any of Alfred's 

 victories. It was no doubt celebrated in song, for Henry of Huntingdon 

 seems to be quoting from a war ballad when he writes : ' The battle 

 was fought between armies of the greatest size, and was greater and 

 more obstinate than any that had been heard of in England. You 

 might see there the warriors thick as ears of corn charging upon either 

 hand, and rivers of blood rolling away the heads and the limbs of the 

 slain. God gave the fortune of the war to those who believed on 

 Him, and ineffable confusion to those who despised Him.' Still more 

 significant is the mention of the victory abroad, for Prudentius of Troyes, 

 noticing the going over of the host from the mouth of the Rhine against 

 the English, says : ' ab eis auxilio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi super- 

 antur.' Prudentius adds that he never heard of such a victory. It is a 

 matter of regret that the Song of Ockley does not exist as the Song 

 of Brunanbuhr does, to tell us how the eagle and the kite and 'the grey 

 deer the wolf of the Weald' scented the carnage from afar, and came 

 up from cliff and forest to the corpse-strewn slopes of the Surrey hills, 

 to the pleasant glades where now the primroses and the wild hyacinths 

 bloom and the oaks grow green, and the peace of a quiet country side 

 has brooded for a thousand years above the graves. 



After Ockley, with the exception of fighting about Thanet and in 

 Kent, and one attack from Southampton Water upon Winchester, which 

 was defeated, no recorded invasion vexed the southern counties for about 

 twenty years. The West Saxon dynasty had won a notable advantage in 

 time for its consolidation. The date of Ockley was 851. The years 851 

 and 853 are given in the chronicle in various MSS. But 850 is the 

 date given by the foreign authorities for the recovery of his settlement 

 on the Rhine by Ruric. If the superfluous force of his Danes went 

 on in the next cruising season to England, this would place Ockley in 

 the spring of 851. Moreover, Beorhtwulf of Mercia seems to have 

 been dead before 853, and he was alive in the year in which Ockley 

 was fought. Huda, the only ealdorman of Surrey whose name is 

 preserved, was killed fighting against the Danes in Thanet, soon after 

 Ockley. When the great Scandinavian invasion of some twenty years 

 after this occurred, in Ethelred's reign, Surrey was the scene perhaps of 

 some fighting, and no doubt of much devastation. The Danes were in 

 possession of East Anglia, Essex, London and Mercia, or allied with 

 the inhabitants of these places, so that the whole Thames frontier of 

 the West Saxons lay open to attack. The army, as the chronicler calls 

 it, came to Reading in 871, and nine great battles, 'folk-fights,' were 

 fought, chiefly in Berkshire and Hampshire, in the year. One battle 

 has been commonly attributed to Surrey. Ethelred, and Alfred his 

 brother, fought the invaders at ' Meretun,' and at first were victorious, 

 but the Danes at last had possession of the place of slaughter. The 

 subsequent fame of the religious house at Merton in Surrey made 



333 



