POLITICAL HISTORY 



' Rex,' occur in charters of doubtful authenticity from about 765 to 



795-' 



The kingdom of the South Saxons continued thus semi-independent 



until Egbert in 823 completed the consolidation of England by sending 

 his son Ethelwulf to receive the submission of Kent, Surrey, Sussex and 

 Essex."* These four kingdoms, or counties as they may now perhaps be 

 considered, on Egbert's death in 836 formed the portion of his younger 

 son Athelstan,' and in 855, on the death of Ethelwulf, they passed to 

 his second son Ethelbert." Ethelwulf himself was buried at Steyning,' 

 though, as the chronicle states that his body was at Winchester,' it is 

 probable that it was translated thither by his famous son Alfred, whose 

 connection with Sussex is of considerable interest. It was at ' Dene ' 

 in this county that Asser, his friend and biographer, first made his royal 

 master's acquaintance.' This is usually held to have been West Dean 

 near Seaford, at which last named place tradition in the twelfth century 

 asserted that Alfred once presided over a meeting of the Witan.* A 

 .large proportion of the lands bequeathed by his will' were in Sussex : 

 thus to his nephew Ethelm he left the vills of Aldingbourne, Compton, 

 Beeding, Beddingham (?) and Barnham ; to his other nephew, Ethel- 

 wold, that of Steyning ; and to Osferth his cousin the vills of Beckley, 

 Rotherfield, Ditchling, Sutton, Lyminster, Angmering and Felpham. 



Of the early plundering raids of the Danes no details relating to 

 Sussex have been preserved, and the first occasion on which they appear 

 is in 895 when a Danish force returning from the siege of Exeter 

 attacked the men of Chichester and suffered a severe defeat at their 

 hands, the townsmen, it is said, killing many hundreds of them and even 

 capturing some of their ships." Two years later two Danish ships, 

 which had been damaged in a fierce encounter with Alfred's forces 

 under the reeve Lucumon, were driven on to the Sussex shore, where 

 their crews were captured and taken to Winchester and hanged." In 

 897 Eadulf was appointed to protect Sussex from the Danes," but he 

 died the same year of the plague which was then raging." After this 

 for almost a hundred years there is a blank in the history of the county, 

 till in 994 Olaf of Norway and Swegen of Denmark, failing in their 

 attack on London, turned aside into Sussex and the neighbourhood and 

 ' wrought the greatest evil that ever any army could do in burning and 

 harrying and' in man-slaying.'" Again, in 998, the Danes wintered in 

 the Isle of Wight, and obtained their provisions by plundering Hamp- 

 shire and Sussex,'^ the latter county being also ravaged in 1006 by a 

 force which landed at Sandwich and was making its way to the favourite 

 winter quarters in the Isle of Wight.'" 



• Searle, Anglo-Saxon Kings and Nobles, 269. 



2 Ang. Sax. Chron. (Roils Ser.), ii. 53. ' Ibid. 55. * Ibid. 54. 



B Asser, Life of King Alfred (ed. Stevenson, 1904), p. 132. 



6 Ang. Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), ii. 57. ' Asser, op. cit. cap. 79. * Ibid. note. 



9 Liber de Hyda (RoUs Ser.), 531. «) Ang. Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), ii. 72. 



" Ibid. 74. " Ric. de Cirencester (Rolls Ser.), ii. 48. 



" Ang. Sax. Chron. (RoUs Ser.), ii. 73. ■♦ Ibid. 106. '^ Ibid. 108. 



" Walt, of Coventry (Rolls Ser.), i. 29. 



483 



