Page:The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Giles).djvu/78

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THE ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE.
A.D. 894.

eastward. These went onwards until they came to London: and then with the townsmen, and the aid which came to them from the west, they went east to Bamfleet. Hasten was then come there with his band which before sat at Milton; and the great army was also come thereto, which before sat at Appledore near Limne-mouth. The fortress at Bamfleet had been ere this constructed by Hasten, and he was at that time gone out to plunder; and the great army was therein. Then came they thereto, and put the army to flight, and stormed the fortress, and took all that was within it, as well the property, as the women, and the children also, and brought the whole to London; and all the ships they either broke in pieces or burned, or brought to London or to Rochester; and they brought the wife of Hasten and his two sons to the king: and he afterwards gave them up to him again, because one of them was his godson, and the other Ethered, the ealdorman's. They had become their godfathers before Hasten came to Bamfleet, and at that time Hasten had delivered to him hostages and taken oaths: and the king had also given him many gifts; and so likewise when he gave up the youth and the woman. But as soon as they came to Bamfleet, and the fortress was constructed, then plundered he that very part of the king's realm which was in the keeping of Ethered his compeer; and again, this second time, he had gone out to plunder that very same district when his fortress was stormed. Now the king with his forces had turned westward towards Exeter, as I said before, and the army had beset the city ; but when he arrived there, then went they to their ships. While the king was thus busied with the array there, in the west, and both the other armies had drawn together at Shoebury in Essex, and there had constructed a fortress, then both together went up along the Thames, and a great addition came to them, as well from the East-Anglians as from the North-humbrians. They then went up along the Thames till they reached the Severn; then up along the Severn. Then Ethered the ealdorman, and Ethelm the ealdorman, and Ethelnoth the ealdorman, and the king's thanes who were then at home in the fortified places, gathered forces from every town east of the Parret, and as well west as east of Selwood, and also north of the Thames and west of the