numerous a body as seemed to threaten it with universal
subjection. But the English, more military than the Britons, whom a few
centuries before they had treated with like violence, roused themselves
with a vigor proportioned to the exigency. Ceorle, governor of
Devonshire, fought a battle with one body of the Danes at Wiganburgh,[*]
and put them to rout with great slaughter.

[* H. Hunting, lib. v. Ethelwerd, lib. iii. cap 3.
Sim. Dunelm. p. 120.]

King Athelstan attacked another at sea, near Sandwich, sunk nine of
their ships, and put the rest to flight.[*]

[* Chron. Sax. p. 74. Asser. p. 2.]

A body of them, however, ventured, for the first time, to take up winter
quarters in England; and receiving in the spring a strong reenforcement
of their countrymen, in three hundred and fifty vessels, they advanced
from the Isle of Thanet, where they had stationed themselves, burnt the
cities of London and Canterbury, and having put to flight Brichtric, who
now governed Mercia under the title of king, they marched into the heart
of Surrey, and laid every place waste around them. Ethelwolf, impelled
by the urgency of the danger, marched against them at the head of the
West Saxons; and, carrying with him his second son, Ethelbald, gave them
battle at Okely, and gained a bloody victory over them. This advantage
procured but a short respite to the English. The Danes still maintained
their settlement in the Isle of Thanet; and, being attacked by Ealher
and Huda, governors of Kent and Surrey, though defeated in the beginning
of the action, they finally repulsed the assailants, and killed both
the governors, removed thence to the Isle of Shepey, where they took up
their winter quarters, that they might farther extend their devastation
and ravages.

This unsettled state of England hindered not Ethelwolf from making a
pilgrimage to Rome, whither he carried his fourth and favorite son,
Alfred, then only six years of age.[*] He passed there a twelvemonth
in exercises of devotion; and failed not in that most essential part of
devotion, liberality to the church of Rome. Besides giving presents to
the more distinguished ecclesiastics, he made a perpetual grant of three
hundred mancuses[**] a year to that see; one third to support the
lamps of St. Peter's, another those of St. Paul's, a third to the pope
himself.[***] In his return home, he married Judith, daughter of the
emperor Charles the Bald; but, on his landing in