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The ravages of the Danes still
continued, and in 865 the first recorded attempt to buy them off was
made.66
Under the Peace of Wedmore in 878 Kent remained under
Alfred’s rule. But six years later he had to rescue Rochester from the
siege of a new force of Danes which had come over from France. Guthrum
‘broke peace,’ and appears to have sent help to the besiegers, and
Alfred afterwards sent a fleet from Kent to punish the East Anglian
Danes for their breach of faith.67 In 892 a fleet of
250 ships sailed from Boulogne to Lympne, where the invaders landed and
constructed a ‘work’ for the winter at Appledore, while a smaller
detachment with 80 ships under Hasting entered the Thames and entrenched
itself at Milton, near Sittingbourne.68 Alfred took up
a position between the two forces, and made an agreement with Hasting,
who allowed his two sons to be baptized, but afterwards broke the truce
and was joined by the other force. The subsequent operations of a very
complicated campaign took place outside of Kent.69 During
the next three years a pestilence carried off many victims, including
the bishop of Rochester and Ceolmund, ealdorman of Kent.70
The appointment of this ealdorman was evidently part of Alfred’s new
scheme of defence, and Kentish ships must have played an important part
in the fleet which in his last years he equipped to defend the coast.
The accession of Edward in 901 was followed by the revolt of his cousin
Ethelwold, son of Ethelred, who fled to France and returned in 904. He
gained the support of the Danes of East Anglia, and next year they
ravaged Mercia. Edward followed them as they retreated with their booty,
and harried their land. When he had determined to withdraw, the men of
Kent refused to retreat, though seven messengers were sent to them with
orders to do so, and thus brought on a battle in which they lost two
ealdormen and other nobles; Ethelwold, however, ‘who enticed the Danes
to that breach of the peace,’ was killed, and the danger of civil war
was thus removed.71 Under Edward and his
strong successors Kent enjoyed the happiness of having no history. Odo,
who was consecrated to the see of Canterbury in 942, was the first of a
long line of archbishop prime ministers, and his great successor Dunstan
carried it on. In 969 Edgar ‘caused all Thanet to be ravaged,’72
either as a punishment for some local rising 73 or as a
precautionary measure against invasion.74
The reign of Ethelred ‘the Redeless’ (978-1016) saw a
great renewal of the invasion, which ended in the establishment of the
Danish kingdom of England under Cnut. The harrying of Kent began again
in 980.75 Six years later the young king himself
‘on account of certain dissensions besieged Rochester, and being
unable to take it invaded and laid waste the patrimony of St. Andrew,’
until Dunstan bought him off with 100 pounds of silver.76 The
great battle of Maldon in Essex followed in 991, and the subsequent
payment
66 Ibid. sub anno 865. ‘A
heathen army . . . made peace with the people of Kent, and the people of
Kent promised them money for the peace; and during the peace and the
promise of money the army stole itself away by night and ravaged all
Kent eastwards.’
67 Ang1.-Sax. Chron. sub anno 885 (884).
68 Ibid. 893 (892). Hasted, Hist. Kent, i,
p. xxxix, identifies this entrenchment with ‘Castle Ruff’ on Kemsley
Downs, and finds Alfred’s counter-fortification at ‘ Baford Castle’
on the other side of the creek.
69 Ibid. 894 (893).
70 Ibid. 897. 71
Ibid. sub anno 905. 72 Ibid. 969.
73 Hen. of Huntingdon, Hist. AngI. (Rolls
Ser.), 166; ‘quia jura regalia spreverant.’
74 A similar action by Edward the Confessor is
mentioned in Hardy, Catalogue Brit. Hist. (Rolls Ser.), i, 380
(cited by Plummer, Two Sax. Chron. ii, 160).
75 Angl.-Sax. Chron. sub anno.
76 Memorials of Dunstan (Rolls Ser.), 117. |