Scandinavian-Britain

150 SCANDINAVIAN BRITAINas the Chronicle records to his honour, " he made acovenant with King ^Ethelred, even as he also fulfilled,that he never again would come as an enemy to theEnglish nation."Svein went to the Isle of Man, but the bulk of thearmy, who had remained at Southampton and weresupposed to be in the English service, ravaged Cornwalland Devon, burnt Tavistock Abbey, and thenharried Dorset and the Isle of Wight. Next yearthey sailed up the Medway, besieged Rochester andplundered in Kent. In this they were probably withinthe meaning of the act, as they understood it : thewest, and Kent, were not the country they had undertakento guard and it is to be borne in mind that;we have the story from one side only. There wasevasion of payment on several occasions in the accountof Saxon dealings with the Vikings; and the localjealousies of England suggest that one district wassometimes not entirely displeased to see anothervictimised.It has been suggested (Sir J. Ramsay, Foundationsof England, p. 340) that the Scandinavian settlementsin the Lake district date from this time : Thietmar ofMerseburg speaks of territory assigned to invadingbands for permanent occupation, and Jostein andGuthmund henceforward disappear from history "asif they had found comfortable quarters somewhere."But the Lake district was not in ^Ethelred's realm ;the quarters assigned seem to have been in andnear Southampton. ^Ethelred ravaged Cumberlanda few years later, as he would hardly have done if