OT 
oJL 
showed that the men to whom they belonged had perished 
in the full vigour of manhood. Some of the skulls had 
been fractured, and the men to whom they belonged had 
evidently come to a violent death. A jaw bone of a horse 
and some teeth were found in one of the pits, and among 
the circumstances noted at the time was the fact that the 
root of an ash tree, growing in the church-yard, had found 
its way through the nutrient foramen of a thigh-bone, into 
the cavity which contained the marrow, and had grown until 
it penetrated the further end of the bone, and finally burst 
the shaft : the bone and root were compacted together into 
one solid mass. These remains were unfortunately collected 
together and reinterred on the north side of the church- 
yard, without being examined by any one interested in 
craniology, the few fragments which escaped reinterment 
being merely the teeth, which were sold at sixpence and a 
shilling apiece by the workmen, as a remedy against tooth- 
ache; for the possession of a dead man’s tooth was supposed, 
by the people in the neighbourhood at that time, to prevent 
that malady. 
The interest in this discovery died away, and, so far as I 
know, there was no attempt made to bring it into relation 
with history, although it offers a striking proof of the 
accuracy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. In the year 894 
we read that the Danes, probably under the command of 
Hsesten, left Beamfleet, or Benfleet, in Essex, and, after 
plundering Mercia or central England, collected their forces 
at Shoebury in Essex, and gathered together an army both 
from the East Anglians and the Northumbrians. “They 
then went up along the Thames till they reached the Severn ; 
then up along the Severn. Then Ethered the ealdorman, and 
iEthelnoth the ealdorman, and the Kings-thanes who were 
then at home in the fortified places, gathered forces from 
every town east of the Parret, and as well west as east of 
Selwood, and also north of the Thames and west of the 
