, in
839 and in 852: they had pillaged London, which they presently occupied,
making it their headquarters. With this Danish occupation ends the first
Saxon settlement of the City.

9. THE SECOND SAXON SETTLEMENT.

The Danes held the City for twelve years at least. One cannot believe
that these fierce warriors, who were exactly what the Saxons and Jutes
had been four hundred years before--as fierce, as rude, as
pagan--suffered any of the inhabitants, except the slaves, to remain.
Massacre and pillage--or the fear of both--drove away all the residents.
But the City was the headquarters of the Danes. Alfred recovered it in
the year 884.

He found it as the East Saxons had found it three hundred years before,
a city of ruins; the wall a ruin; the churches destroyed.

King Alfred has left many imperishable monuments of his reign. One of
the greatest is the City of London, which he rebuilt. A recent historian
(Loftie, _Historic Towns_, 'London') says that it would hardly be wrong
to write, 'London was founded, rather more than a thousand years ago, by
King Alfred--who chose for the site of his city a place formerly
fortified by the Romans but desolated successively by the Saxons and the
Danes.'

The first thing he did was to rebuild the wall. This work re-established
confidence in the minds of the citizens. Alfred placed his son-in-law
Ethelred, afterwards Alderman (i.e. Chief man--Governor) of the
Mercians, in command of the City, which seems to have been immediately
filled with people. The London citizens went out with Ethelred to defeat
the Danes at Benfleet, and with Alfred to defeat the Danes at the mouth
of the river Lea; they went out with Athelstan to fight at Brunanburgh.
London was never again taken by the Danes. Twice Sweyn endeavoured to
take the City but was repulsed. Nor did London open her gates to him
until the King had left the City. And when the Danes again entered the
City there was no more pillage or massacre; London was too strong to be
pillaged or massacred, and too rich to be abandoned to the army.

King Ethelred came back and died, and was buried in St. Paul's; the old
St. Paul's--that of King Ethelbert or that of Bishop Cedd--was burned
down and the Londoners were building a new cathedral.

Edmund Ironside was elected and crowned within the City walls. Then
followed a siege of London by Canute. He dug a canal through the swamps,
and dragged his ships by its means from Redriff to Lambe