and with benignity guided his people
ever to righteousness, and controlled the violent,
and lived happily in the true faith
Then at last it befell that the Danish people
came with a fleet, harrying and slaying
widely over the land, as their custom is.
In that fleet were their chief men,
Hingwar and Hubba, associated by the devil,
and they landed in Northumbria with their ships,
and wasted the land and slew the people.
Then Hingwar turned eastward with his ships,
and Hubba was left in Northumbria,
having won the victory by means of cruelty.
Then Hingwar came rowing to East Anglia
in the year when Alfred the Ætheling was one and twenty years old,
he who afterward became the renowned king of the West-Saxons.
And the aforesaid Hingwar suddenly, like a wolf,
stalked over the land and slew the people,
men and women, and witless children,
and shamefully tormented the innocent Christians.
Then soon afterward he sent to the king
a threatening message, that he must bow down
to do him homage, if he recked of his life.
So the messenger came to king Edmund,
and speedily announced to him Hingwar's message.
'Hingwar our king, keen and victorious
by sea and by land, hath rule over many peoples,
