A HISTORY OF NORFOLK 866^ the Danes wintered in East Anglia, and the English made peace with them. In the next year" the northern host moved on to York and stormed the city. A Danish army, under two leaders, named Ingvar and Ubba,' sons of Radnor Lodbrok, defeated and killed King Edmund at the battle of Thetford ; they are also said to have subdued all that land, and to have destroyed all the monasteries to which they came. The next Danish invasion * is stated to have taken place in 880, when an army from Cirencester overran the land and divided it, no doubt to make it a base for further operations. King Alfred ^ appears now as their great opponent, and in 885 his fleet destroyed a Danish fleet at the mouth of the Stour, but was intercepted on its way home by a large fleet of vikings and severely handled. Guthorm,^ the northern king, who was the godson of Alfred, dwelt in East Anglia and died in 890. The Danes had now evidently firmly established themselves in this part of England, and during the period from 894 to 897 it was made the base for a series of predatory expeditions all round the English coast. ^ Edward, the successor of Alfred, taking advantage of the absence of the Danish army on a foray, ravaged East Anglia in 905.* The refusal of his Kentish contingent to withdraw according to orders brought on a desperate and bloody battle. The Danes, however, remained masters of the field though they lost their king Eric, and sufi-ered very heavily. In the following year King Edward made peace with the East Anglian Danes." The end of the tenth century saw a great revival of Danish attacks upon England, and East Anglia suffered heavily from the invasion which followed on the massacre of St. Brice's Day, 1002. Swegen, king of the Danes, brought his fleet up to Norwich in 1003, and attacked and burned the place. The East Anglians under Ulfketil made peace with the invaders, who in spite of the peace burned Thetford. Ulfketil, having failed in an attempt on the Danish ships, met their army at Thetford, and in the desperate battle which followed ^° the Danes eventually gained a victory, though they admitted that they had seldom met so fierce a resistance in England. The Danes finally established themselves in England under Cnut, who became king of all England. He is said to have divided England into four earldoms, one of which, that of East Anglia, was placed under Earl Thurkyll in 1 017." Under Edward the Confessor, East Anglia was held by Harold, son of Earl Godwin, and in Domesday there is satisfactory evidence as to his connexion with the county. This is as much as can be given of the history of the county previous to the Conquest owing to the impossibility of deriving a detailed and connected account from the fragmentary notices in the chronicles. There does not seem to have been much resistance to the Conqueror in the county; in fact, during the nine years following the Conquest its history is practically a blank. Following his policy of placing strongholds '" to overawe the population it is probable that the Conqueror threw up the castle ' Jng/Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 130. ' Ibid, i, 131. ' Ibid, i, 134, 135.
- Ibid, i, 150. ' Ibid, i, 152, et seq. " Ibid, i, 160.
' Ibid, i, 164, et seq. ' Ibid, i, 181, et seq. ' Ibid, i, 182, 183. «<' Ibid, i, 254. " Ibid, i, 284. " 'Custodes in casteUis strenuos viros ex Gsllis collocavit.' Ordericus Vitalis, Hist. Eccl. (Migne), 306. 468
