A.D. 870.J TH E DANES AT .BERWICK. 195 that it might be proved whether God would deliver him from the danger. The huntsman accordingly was sent out to the open sea, and was carried in a few days to Denmark ; and being • found by the keepers of the ports, the Danes recognized the boat as that in which their lord Lothbroc was wont to go fowling. Taking him, therefore, to Hinguar and Hubba, the sons of the Dane who had been slain in England, and who were men of great power and cruelty, they straightway put Berne to the torture with a view to make him disclose what had befallen their father, who had been carried from them in that boat. After undergoing severe and varied torments, Berne falsely asserted that their father had chanced to land in England, and being found by Edmund, king of the East-Angles, had by his orders been put to death. On hear• ing this they burst into the most bitter weeping, and, in the excess of their grief for their father's death, they swore by their omnipotent gods that they would not suffer it to pass unavenged. With a view, therefore, to take vengeance on king Edmund, they made Berne the huntsman, who had arrived in their father's boat, their guide. Then assembling a numerous force, they took to sea and turned their sails towards the country of the East-Angles, with an armament of twenty thousand men, to punish king Edmund for a murder of which he was wholly innocent; but the winds driving their fleet in a contrary direction, they were compelled to land at Berwick-upon-Tweed in Scotland, where they commenced their ravages, which they continued on all sides, till at length they reached East-Anglia, where they pitched their camp at a village called Redford, and put to the edge of the sword all they found, whether men or women. At length, when the tyrant Hinguar, who was the most atrocious of those murderers, had somewhat satiated his rage, he called to him some rustics whom he deemed unworthy of his sword, and straitly questioned them as to the place where their king was then living ; for the fame had reached him of the might and prowess of the most pious king Edmund, as also of his incomparable bodily size and stature ; wherefore he was the more anxious to put to death all he found, that the king might not be able to form an army for the defence of his country. Now the glorious king and future martyr Edmund was abiding at that time in a royal vili called o2