Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

DANES IN EAST ANGLIA.
*
land one that Mercia and East Anglia were still ex-
isting as kingdoms. In 855 King Edmund, who was
to fight the Danes with his own special weapons,
began to reign
F
over the East Angles.
III the meantime, the inheritance of Ethelwulf,
that is, ^Yessex and Kent, passed peacefully to his
elder sons, whilst Ethelred and Alfred bided their
time. They had not long to wait. Ethelred became
king in 866, and Alfred in 871. In the very year of
Ethelred's accession a Danish fleet, shortly followed
by the advent of Hinguar and Hubba, Danish chiefs
high in command, appeared in the East of England.
They imposed upon King Edmund with their apparently
peaceful intentions, and profited by their
position to study its weak points. No reliance \vas
to be placed 011 the Dane. Soon afterwards (867),
headed by Hinguar and Hubba, they made a descent
upon the North, which was easy of access through
the dissensions of its princes. Northumbrians were
thus the
-
first to bear the Danish yoke. The Danes
carried desolation as far as Nottingham, and all the
hope of England wras in Ethelred and Alfred.
The burning of Croylaiid, the destruction of Peter-
borough, the massacre of St. Ethelreda's nuns at
Ely, and the heroic resistance offered to the Danes
at Coldingham belong to the time when the two
royal brothers were girded for the fight. It is, in-
deed, a matter for regret that the acts of those
martyrdoms are not fully recorded. Ingulf has
chronicled the fate of Croylaiid : the massacre of its
89