Scandinavian-Britain

196 SCANDINAVIAN BRITAINpastures of the first settlers met, is Thingwall and near;it is Landican, which, if we are right in explaining thename as the chapel of an Irish saint or priest, standsin relation to the Thingsteadas the central church inthe Isle of Man does to the Tynwald. And further,we see that Ingimund's Norse were already Christianisedin Dublin and brought their religion with them ;or, if they were not all as yet Christians, we may be surethat the Lady of the Mercians insisted that settlersunder her rule should be baptised, though she didnot make them take an English priest. But just upthe hillside, above the muddy dell in which thechapel stood, is Prenton (in Domesday, Prestune), thepriest's farm. As in Iceland, the priest farmed hisown glebe. Later, when a new church was built,perhaps (from its monuments) a generation or twoafter the first settlement, the farm attached to it wasknown as West Kirk-by. The churches at Nestonand Bromborough, as the crosses suggest, are of theend of the tenth century, or early in the eleventh.Overchurch, of course, was pre-Viking, and no doubtdestroyed by Hastein, or even earlier.In Wirral we seem to have the first of those agriculturalsettlements which characterise the Norse of thewest coast, as distinguished from the predatory andtrading centres of the Vikings in Wales, and the conqueredlands of the great Danish invasion in the eastof England. To their presence in Cheshire musthave been due the rise of the town refounded byealdorman ^Ethelred, for its wealth in the eleventhcentury was won by trade with Dublin (see Mr.