A HISTORY OF NORFOLK 



866^ the Danes wintered in East Anglia, and the English made peace with 

 them. In the next year" the northern host moved on to York and stormed the 

 city. A Danish army, under two leaders, named Ingvar and Ubba,' sons of 

 Radnor Lodbrok, defeated and killed King Edmund at the battle of Thetford ; 

 they are also said to have subdued all that land, and to have destroyed all the 

 monasteries to which they came. The next Danish invasion * is stated to have 

 taken place in 880, when an army from Cirencester overran the land and 

 divided it, no doubt to make it a base for further operations. King Alfred ^ 

 appears now as their great opponent, and in 885 his fleet destroyed a Danish 

 fleet at the mouth of the Stour, but was intercepted on its way home by a 

 large fleet of vikings and severely handled. 



Guthorm,^ the northern king, who was the godson of Alfred, dwelt in 

 East Anglia and died in 890. The Danes had now evidently firmly established 

 themselves in this part of England, and during the period from 894 to 897 

 it was made the base for a series of predatory expeditions all round the 

 English coast. ^ Edward, the successor of Alfred, taking advantage of the 

 absence of the Danish army on a foray, ravaged East Anglia in 905.* The 

 refusal of his Kentish contingent to withdraw according to orders brought 

 on a desperate and bloody battle. The Danes, however, remained masters of 

 the field though they lost their king Eric, and sufi-ered very heavily. In the 

 following year King Edward made peace with the East Anglian Danes." 



The end of the tenth century saw a great revival of Danish attacks 

 upon England, and East Anglia suffered heavily from the invasion which 

 followed on the massacre of St. Brice's Day, 1002. Swegen, king of the 

 Danes, brought his fleet up to Norwich in 1003, and attacked and burned the 

 place. The East Anglians under Ulfketil made peace with the invaders, 

 who in spite of the peace burned Thetford. Ulfketil, having failed in an 

 attempt on the Danish ships, met their army at Thetford, and in the 

 desperate battle which followed ^° the Danes eventually gained a victory, 

 though they admitted that they had seldom met so fierce a resistance in 

 England. 



The Danes finally established themselves in England under Cnut, who 

 became king of all England. He is said to have divided England into four 

 earldoms, one of which, that of East Anglia, was placed under Earl Thurkyll 

 in 1 017." 



Under Edward the Confessor, East Anglia was held by Harold, son of 

 Earl Godwin, and in Domesday there is satisfactory evidence as to his 

 connexion with the county. This is as much as can be given of the history 

 of the county previous to the Conquest owing to the impossibility of deriving 

 a detailed and connected account from the fragmentary notices in the 

 chronicles. 



There does not seem to have been much resistance to the Conqueror in 

 the county; in fact, during the nine years following the Conquest its history 

 is practically a blank. Following his policy of placing strongholds '" to 

 overawe the population it is probable that the Conqueror threw up the castle 



' Jng/Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 130. ' Ibid, i, 131. ' Ibid, i, 134, 135. 



* Ibid, i, 150. ' Ibid, i, 152, et seq. " Ibid, i, 160. 



' Ibid, i, 164, et seq. ' Ibid, i, 181, et seq. ' Ibid, i, 182, 183. 



«<' Ibid, i, 254. " Ibid, i, 284. 



" 'Custodes in casteUis strenuos viros ex Gsllis collocavit.' Ordericus Vitalis, Hist. Eccl. (Migne), 306. 



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