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or dead. But as they were on their way thither, then came such a wind against them as no man before remembered, and the ships it then utterly beat, and smashed to pieces, and cast upon the land; and soon came Wulfnoth, and burned the ships. When this was thus known in the other ships where the king was, how the others had fared, then was it as if it had been all hopeless; and the king went his way home, and the ealdormen and the nobility, and thus lightly left the ships; and then afterwards, the people who were in the ships brought them to London: and they let the whole nation's toil thus lightly pass away; and no better was that victory on which the whole English nation had fixed their hopes. When this ship-expedition had thus ended, then came, soon after Lammas, the vast hostile army, which we have called Thurkill's army, to Sandwich; and they soon went their way to Canterbury, and the city would soon have subdued, if the citizens had not first desired peace of them: and all the people of East-Kent made peace with the army, and gave them three thousand pounds. And then, soon after that, the army went forth till they came to the Isle of Wight; and thence every where in Sussex, and in Hampshire, and also in Berkshire, they ravaged and plundered as their wont is.^[1] Then the king commanded the whole nation to be called out; so that they should be opposed on every side: but lo! nevertheless, they marched as they pleased. Then, upon a certain occasion, the king had got before them with all his forces, as they would go to their ships; and all the people were ready to attack them. But it was then prevented through Edric the ealdorman, as it ever is still^[1] Then, after St. Martin's-mass, they went once more into Kent, and took up their winter-quarters on the Thames, and obtained their food from Essex, and from the shires which wore there nearest, on both sides of the Thames. And oft they fought against the city of London: but praise be to God that it yet stands sound, and they there ever met with ill fare. And then, after mid-winter, took they their way upwards through Chiltern, and so to Oxford, and burned the city; and betook themselves then, on both sides of the

1. These expressions in the present tense afford a strong proof that the original records of these transactions are nearly coeval with the transactions themselves. Later MSS. use the past tense.—Ingram.