Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Scandinavian Britain - II. The Danelaw - 1. The Age of Ælfred
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unable—to leave the country. Early in April the
Danes at Appledore tried to reach their friends in
East Anglia by a route west of the Weald, but the
Saxons continuing to regard them as enemies, pursued
and drove them to take refuge in the island of
Thorney, near West Drayton. Guthorm sent a fleet
to attack Exeter ; and, from some port in Lancashire
or Cumberland held by the Northumbrian Danes,
another fleet came to the North Devon coast. Both
invasions were repulsed, and the Danes in Thorney
succeeded in joining their friends in East Anglia,
whither Hástein followed them. He built the burg at
Benfleet, called by Æthelwerd Danasuda (Dana-suð,
the "Danes’ clinch": suð being the clinched outer
boarding of a house or planking of a ship). When
this was stormed in his absence, he built a new burg
at Shoebury, and then marched up the Thames and
across country, in the hope of finding in Wales the
home denied in England. At Buttingdune (Buttington,
near Welshpool ; see a paper by Mr. C. W.
Dymond, Powysland Club, 1900) he was besieged and
defeated. The survivors rode back to Essex, but
before long their pressing needs drove them west
again. This time they were chased into the old
Roman walls of Chester, and, after a winter of starvation,
were hunted out of North Wales, and returned
through Northumbria to Mersea Island, in Essex.
But Mersea Island was insufficient to find food for
their numbers, and food was their chief necessity. In
the spring of 895 they sailed round the coast, and
towed their ships up the river Lea, to a place twenty
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