attacked by earl Wulfward, who slew many thousands of them and put them to a disgraceful flight. But not long after, in the same year, the same pagans effected a landing at the mouth of the port, and commenced ravaging the country. On hearing of this, duke Athelhelm, with the men of Dorset, attacked and put them to flight, but was himself slain by them as he incautiously advanced too far in the pursuit. The cause of the Danish scourge. Now that we are come to that very great and terrible plague, which the sins of the English nations brought on them by the instrumentality of the Danes, I think it good briefly to unfold the cause of that visitation by way of warning to posterity. In the primitive church of the English religion shone with great lustre, insomuch that kings and queens, princes and dukes, earls and barons, and rulers of churches, from love of the heavenly kingdom, chose the monastic life, voluntarily submitting to exile and a life of solitude, and forsaking all things, that they might follow the Lord ; but in process of time all goodness had so died away among them, that no people could be compared with them for treachery and fraud, nor was anything so odious among them as piety and justice, or anything which conferred honour so much as civil wars and shedding innocent blood. Almighty God sent, therefore, against them those cruel and pagan nations, like swarms of bees, who spared neither the female sex nor infantile years,—Danes and Norwegians, Goths and Swedes, Vandals and Frisians, who from the commencement of the reign of the aforesaid Athelwulf until the arrival of the Normans, for nearly two hundred and thirty years, devastated this sinful land from sea to sea, and from man to beast; for their repeated invasions in every part were not made with a view to subjugate and possess the country, but to waste and destroy it. And if they were sometimes defeated, it availed the English nothing, for a greater fleet with more numerous forces would arrive unexpectedly and suddenly in another part ; so that whilst the kings of the English would be hastening towards the eastern coast of the kingdom to fight against them, a messenger would arrive and thus address him, " Whither, 0 king, are you marching ? for an innumerable host of pagans has landed in