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:?G THE SCANDINAVIANS, AND
BOOK i. Lodbrog as being the father of " Hinguar and Hubba,"
CuAr- IL
neither assigning any cause for the invasion of Nor-
thumberland, or making any allusion to Ella's cruelty
or Regnar's death.
Apparently the first English historian who
cause for the invasion of Northumbria
assigned any
by the Northmen, was Geoffry Gaimar, who wrote
about the middle ofthe twelfth century, 1
but the cause
which he assigns has no connexion whatsoever with
Ella, or Regnar, or Regnar's
sons. His statement
is, that the invasion originated from the revenge of
Buerno, an English nobleman, for an injury received
from King Osbright, and in this story Gaimar is
followed by Brompton.
But if Gaimar were the first to assign a cause for
the Danish invasion of Northumberland, Roger of
Wendover, a writer of the thirteenth century, was
probably the first to chronicle the death of Regnar
differs from
Lodbrog; yet in doing so he also wholly
the Northern legend, his story being that Regnar,
while hawking on the coast of Denmark, was driven
out to sea by a storm and cast on the English coast
and murdered, not in Northumbria by Ella, but in
East Anglia by the huntsman of its king, Edmund.
Nor is it less conclusive of the Northern legend, that
although the almost universal testimony of English
history is, that Edmund, king of East Anglia, was
cruelly martyred by Hinguar and Hubba, the sons
of Regnar Lodbrog, there is not a line in English
history to show that Ella, king of Northumberland,
1 Monum. Britt. p. 795. Geffri
2
Brompton, Hist. Ang. Script.,
Gaimar, 1. 2593, et teq. npud Twyaden, p. 803.