Chapter XXI: Appendix: B

WATLING STREET AND THE DANELAGH

It has been pointed out by Schmid (_Gesetze der Angelsachsen_, xxxviii.) that the document called _Alfred and Guthrum's Peace_ cannot belong to the year of Guthrum's baptism at Wedmore; and Mr J. R. Green (_Conquest of England_, p. 151) goes further, and doubts whether the boundaries laid down in this deed refer to anything except to the East Anglian kingdom of Guthrum. But Mr Green gives no adequate reason for rejecting the generally accepted conclusion that the Watling Street was the boundary between English and Danish Mercia, which is borne out by the following facts: (1) the Danish confederacy of the five boroughs, Lincoln, Stamford, Leicester, Nottingham, and Derby, pretty well covers the part of Mercia north of Watling Street, especially when Chester is added, as it sometimes is, to the list; (2) the division into wapentakes instead of hundreds, now believed to be of Danish origin, is found in Lincolnshire, Notts, Derbyshire, Rutland, Leicestershire, and Northamptonshire. Staffordshire, it is true, is not divided into wapentakes, but it was apparently won by conquest when Ethelfleda fortified the town. Chester was occupied by her husband in 908. Watling Street furnishes such a well-defined line that it was natural to fix upon it as a frontier.

APPENDIX C

THE MILITARY ORIGIN OF ALFRED'S BOROUGHS

Keutgen (_Untersuchungen über den Ursprung der Deutschen Stadtverfassung_, 1895) appears to have been the first to notice the military origin of the Old Saxon boroughs; and Professor Maitland saw the applicability of the theory to the boroughs of Alfred and Edward the Elder. (_Domesday Book and Beyond._) The _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, in 894, speaks of "the men whose duty it was to defend the towns"; this proves that Alfred had made some special arrangement for the defence of the towns; and this arrangement must have been something quite apart from the ordinary service of the _fyrd_ or militia, which was only due for a short time. It must have been something permanent, with an adequate economic basis, such as we have in Henry the Fowler's plan.