"A. 1001. In this year was much fighting in
the land of the English, and well nigh everywhere they (the
Danes) ravaged and burned so that they advanced on one course
until they came to the town of Alton; and then there came
against them the men of Hampshire and fought against them.
And there was Ethelward the King's high-steward slain, and Leofric at
Whitchurch and Leofwin the King's high-steward and Wulfhere the
bishop's thane, and Godwin at Worthy, Bishop Elfry's son, and of all
men one hundred and eighty; and there were of the Danish men many more
slain, though they had possession of the place of slaughter." A mere
plundering expedition, we may think, but it foretold with certainty the
rule of the Danes in England, which as we know came to pass, and was
not the catastrophe it might have been, because of the victory of
Alfred at Ethandune, a century and a half before, when he had made
Guthrum and his host Christians. Till the year 1788 Alfred's bones lay
beside this very gate through which the beaten Saxons poured into his
city in 1001. For though Hyde Abbey was destroyed at the Reformation
his bones seem to have been forgotten, to be discovered in the end of
the eighteenth century in their great leaden coffin and sold, I know
not to whom, for the sum of two pounds.
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