A HISTORY OF SURREY 



the place well known, and this battle has been placed there. So far, 

 however, as we can follow the probable course of the campaign, it 

 would seem likely that the battle was fought further west. The sole 

 undoubted victory of the West Saxons had been at Ashdown in Berk- 

 shire. This was not decisive, and was followed by a defeat at Basing 

 in Hampshire. Then came this battle of ' Meretun,' then the death of 

 Ethelred, then a defeat, though not a decisive defeat, of Alfred at 

 Wilton near Salisbury. The Danes may have fallen back towards 

 London after Basing ; but Marton in South Damerham in Wiltshire, in 

 Domesday Mertone, seems a more likely place in which to find them 

 after their success at Basing than anywhere in Surrey. But there is 

 no certainty. Soon after the battle at ' Meretun ' Ethelred died. Later 

 stories say that he died of wounds received in the battle, and the brass 

 to his memory in Wimborne Minster, of many centuries later date, 

 says that he was killed by the Danes. The silence of the chronicle 

 which records the death of the bishop of Sherborne at ' Meretun ' 

 makes it improbable that the king fell there. But the Danes, after 

 all, found the better organized West Saxon kingdom a less easy prey 

 than the chaotic north and Mercia, and retired to London in 872, 

 probably through the confines of Surrey. In the earlier part of Alfred's 

 reign, when the Danes again came over the Thames from Mercia and 

 overran the West Saxon lands westward, cooping up the king himself 

 amongst the Somersetshire marshes, the whole of south-east England, 

 Surrey included, must have been at their mercy. The county must 

 have suffered terribly in these wars, and Chertsey Abbey was sacked by 

 the Danes. 1 Surrey took no share in the national recovery and victory 

 of the year 878. The peace of Wedmore in that year restored it to 

 the West Saxon kingdom. 



In 886 Alfred was sufficiently master in the south-east to restore 

 the fortifications of the probably ruined city of London, making it an 

 important barrier upon the movements of his lately baptized godson 

 Guthrum and his people in Essex, and a protection to the passages up 

 and down and across the Thames. 



In 893 two Scandinavian bands established themselves in fortified 

 camps, at Milton near Gravesend, and at Appledore on the Rother, 

 behind Romney Marsh. The king lay between them, ready to move 

 against either should they endeavour to penetrate westward north or 

 south of the Andred's Weald respectively. His headquarters may possibly 

 have been at Tonbridge, 2 on a road reaching towards Hastings on the 

 one side and London on the other. Certainly he was guarding the 

 eastern side of Surrey. In three years the enemy were continually 

 checked by his vigilance, till in 896 the Appledore force penetrated by 

 forest roads 3 through the Weald and plundered in Hampshire and 



1 Before Edgar's reign ; therefore probably at this time. See William of Malmesbury, De Gestii 

 Pont. lib. ii. 



* Where the mound of the de Clares' castle may possibly represent an early English fortification. 

 3 Ethelwerd's chronicle. 



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