POLITICAL HISTORY ' Rex,' occur in charters of doubtful authenticity from about 765 to 795-' The kingdom of the South Saxons continued thus semi-independent until Egbert in 823 completed the consolidation of England by sending his son Ethelwulf to receive the submission of Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Essex."* These four kingdoms, or counties as they may now perhaps be considered, on Egbert's death in 836 formed the portion of his younger son Athelstan,' and in 855, on the death of Ethelwulf, they passed to his second son Ethelbert." Ethelwulf himself was buried at Steyning,' though, as the chronicle states that his body was at Winchester,' it is probable that it was translated thither by his famous son Alfred, whose connection with Sussex is of considerable interest. It was at ' Dene ' in this county that Asser, his friend and biographer, first made his royal master's acquaintance.' This is usually held to have been West Dean near Seaford, at which last named place tradition in the twelfth century asserted that Alfred once presided over a meeting of the Witan.* A .large proportion of the lands bequeathed by his will' were in Sussex : thus to his nephew Ethelm he left the vills of Aldingbourne, Compton, Beeding, Beddingham (?) and Barnham ; to his other nephew, Ethel- wold, that of Steyning ; and to Osferth his cousin the vills of Beckley, Rotherfield, Ditchling, Sutton, Lyminster, Angmering and Felpham. Of the early plundering raids of the Danes no details relating to Sussex have been preserved, and the first occasion on which they appear is in 895 when a Danish force returning from the siege of Exeter attacked the men of Chichester and suffered a severe defeat at their hands, the townsmen, it is said, killing many hundreds of them and even capturing some of their ships." Two years later two Danish ships, which had been damaged in a fierce encounter with Alfred's forces under the reeve Lucumon, were driven on to the Sussex shore, where their crews were captured and taken to Winchester and hanged." In 897 Eadulf was appointed to protect Sussex from the Danes," but he died the same year of the plague which was then raging." After this for almost a hundred years there is a blank in the history of the county, till in 994 Olaf of Norway and Swegen of Denmark, failing in their attack on London, turned aside into Sussex and the neighbourhood and ' wrought the greatest evil that ever any army could do in burning and harrying and' in man-slaying.'" Again, in 998, the Danes wintered in the Isle of Wight, and obtained their provisions by plundering Hamp- shire and Sussex,'^ the latter county being also ravaged in 1006 by a force which landed at Sandwich and was making its way to the favourite winter quarters in the Isle of Wight.'" • Searle, Anglo-Saxon Kings and Nobles, 269. 2 Ang. Sax. Chron. (Roils Ser.), ii. 53. ' Ibid. 55. * Ibid. 54. B Asser, Life of King Alfred (ed. Stevenson, 1904), p. 132. 6 Ang. Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), ii. 57. ' Asser, op. cit. cap. 79. * Ibid. note. 9 Liber de Hyda (RoUs Ser.), 531. «) Ang. Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.), ii. 72. " Ibid. 74. " Ric. de Cirencester (Rolls Ser.), ii. 48. " Ang. Sax. Chron. (RoUs Ser.), ii. 73. ■♦ Ibid. 106. '^ Ibid. 108. " Walt, of Coventry (Rolls Ser.), i. 29. 483
