on of the Saxon kingdoms, and thither he
summoned his vassals to hear himself proclaimed their overlord. From
Winchester, Alfred, too, promulgated his new code of Wessex law--a part of
the famous _Domboc_, a copy of which is said to have been at one time
preserved among the archives of the City of London(20)--and the Easter
gemot, no matter where the other gemots of the year were held, was nearly
always held at Winchester. When it came to a question of trade regulation,
then London took precedence of Winchester. "Let one measure and one weight
pass, such as is observed at London and at Winchester,"(21) enacted King
Edgar, whose system of legislation was marked with so much success that
"Edgar's Law" was referred to by posterity as to the old constitution of
the realm.

(M15)

In the meantime, the country had been invaded by a fresh enemy, and the
same atrocities which the Briton had suffered at the hands of the Saxon,
the Saxon was made to suffer at the hands of the Dane. London suffered
with the rest of the kingdom. In 839 we read of a "great slaughter"
there;(22) in 851 the city was in the hands of the enemy, and continued to
remain at the mercy of the Danes, so much so, in fact, that in 872 we find
the Danish army taking up winter quarters within its walls, as in a city
that was their own.(23)

(M16)

It was now, when the clouds were darkest, that Alfred, brother of King
Ethelred, appeared on the scene, and after more than one signal success by
land and sea, concluded the treaty of Wedmore (A.D. 878)(24) by which a
vast tract of land bounded by an imaginary line drawn from the Thames
along the river Lea to Bedford, and thence along the Roman Watling Street
to the Welsh border, was ceded to the enemy under the name of _Danelagh_.
The treaty, although it curtailed the Kingdom of Wessex, and left London
itself at the mercy of the Danes, was followed by a period of comparative
tranquillity, which allowed Alfred time to make preparations for a fresh
struggle that was to wrest from the enemy the land they had won.

(M17)

The Danes, like the Angles and the Jutes before them, set little store by
fortifications and walled towns, preferring always to defend themselves by
combat in open field, and the Roman wall of the City was allowed to fall
still further into decay. In the eyes of Alfred on the other hand, London,
with its surrounding wall, was a place of the first importance, and one to
be acquired and kept at all h