Scandinavian-Britain

148 SCANDINAVIAN BRITAINsaid to have abolished it about 1051, but William theConqueror levied a similar tax when he was crowned,and another in the following year, and again anotherin 1083-1084. Prof. Maitland (Domesday Book andBeyond^ p. 6) calls the sums exacted under ^Ethelredand Kniit "appalling." At two shillings the hide,which was worth about a pound, England in themiddle of the twelfth century could pay only ^5198 ;so that ,30,000 would be half the total value of thekingdom, unless it was richer in the tenth than inthe twelfth century, or unless recourse could be hadto the hoarded wealth of many ancestral treasuries.It must be remembered, however, that some of theViking hosts remained for a considerable time in thecountry buccaneers are often ;open-handed, and muchof their prize-money must have gone back to thepeople of the towns where they took up theirquarters.After the battle of Maldon, Olaf Tryggvason himselfjoined his kinsmen, and the host was enlisted bythe Saxon Witan to remain and defend Wessex fromthe Danes. A further sum of ^22,000 is said to havebeen paid as a retaining fee, beside salaries whilethey were on active service : but at the same timethey were allowed in certain cases to wage war ormake raids on other parts of the island, and anyprovince making a separate treaty with them was tobe outlawed. So next year we find a great fleet inthe English service on the Thames, commanded byThord of York, /Elfric, formerly a refugee in Denmark,and two bishops. It is not surprising that ^Elfric first