most portion of his kingdom to the English. The new frontier agreed upon is preserved for us in a document known as "Alfred and Guthrum's Peace." It went from the Thames east of London "up the river Lea to its source near Luton, then across country to Bedford, and from there up the river Ouse to the Watling Street." In other words the Danes ceded their portion of the Chilterns and the south-west half of Hendrica including St Albans, and these Alfred handed over to Duke Aethelred as being parts of Mercia. At the same time Aethelred married Aethelfleda, Alfred's eldest child, who was now about sixteen, and so still further cemented the bond between Mercia and Wessex. A further clause in the treaty which deserves notice, is the provision for equating the various grades of Englishmen and Danes, should legal questions arise in the ceded district involving a determination of their wergelds. As to this the treaty laid down the rule that the Danish bonde, though in his home across the North Sea only the equal of a ceorl, should, in disputes between Saxons and Danes, be regarded as the equal of the Mercian "twelve-hynd man," the thegn, as he had come to be called by Alfred's day, while the Mercian ceorl, or "twy-hynd man," was only to be regarded as the equal of the half-free liesing. In the case of the bonde and the thegn the wer was to be eight half marks of gold, equivalent, as the ratio of gold to silver was 9:1, to £24, and this in live stock meant 240 cows, the cow by Mercian law being valued at 24d. In the case of the liesing and the ceorl on the other hand the wer was to be two hundred Mercian shillings, that is to say 960d. or £4, the hundred in this case being the long hundred of six score, and the Mercian shilling being equivalent to 4d. The wer of the peasant classes therefore amounted in live stock to 40 cows, or the sixth part of the wer of the dear-born military class. All this, when properly understood, is of considerable interest; for it enables us to see how greatly Danish society had been modified by the conquest of Eastern England, and how seriously in the Danelaw the Saxon peasants had been depressed by the national defeat, even after some of their disasters had been retrieved and their prestige partially regained.
In 892 a far more dangerous crisis had to be faced when defeats in East Frankland drove another great fleet, led by a chief called Hasting, across the channel to seek lands in England. Over 800 ships, we are told, set sail from Boulogne and coming to Kent effected lodgements at Appledore near Romney and at Milton near Sheppey, and later on at Benfleet in Essex. With all his experience Alfred could hardly cope with the emergency, and for three years midland England was in a turmoil. It soon appeared that the aim of the invaders was to get possession of the Severn valley, still the least ravaged part of England, and in pursuit of this object they over and over again dashed across England from their base on the east coast and ravaged Aethelred's dukedom from end to end, one year wintering at Bridgnorth and another at Chester. In the end, however, Hasting was foiled in all his efforts by the steady co-
