nobantes seems indisputable. Norden conjectured that the true name of
the town was Hartford, so called because in Saxon times, when the
surrounding country was densely wooded, the harts crossed the river by a
natural ford at this spot. However this may be, the old borough seal,
three or four centuries ago, bore as a device a hart in shallow water.
The rivers Rib, Beane, and Maran all unite with the Lea in the immediate
neighbourhood. Some reference may be here made to the doings of Alfred
the Great in this neighbourhood. By putting together what is recorded by
William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, Asser and others we learn
that in the twenty-third year of Alfred's reign the Danes infested the
Thames with their ships, sailed up the Lea in the lighter of their
crafts, and built a fort about 20 miles from London, at or near what is
now the town of Ware. Presently, in the course of their many foraging
excursions, they sailed farther up the river towards Hertford, stripped
the people in the town and burnt down many houses. They afterwards
established a garrison near the town. Alfred brought his army down to
the river side the following year and made a careful survey of the
Danish fort and of the character and position of their ships. He is said
to have passed from place to place in a boat, drawn by a horse, and to
have carefully ascertained the depth of the water at different points.
The precise nature of his subsequent operations is not well known, but
he is said to have diverted the course of the river, to have erected a
dam (Shass) at Blackwall, and by these means to have grounded the Danish
fleet. The Danes held a treaty, and eventually withdrew into
Cambridgeshire and Gloucestershire; the Londoners came down to the scene
of Alfred's ingenuity and destroyed or appropriated the Danish ships.

Of the castle, built by Edward the Elder in 905, there still remain
several large fragments of an embattled wall, partly Norman, and a
postern gate. Of its history only a few leading facts can be mentioned
here. William I. entrusted it to the keeping of Peter de Valoignes; it
was besieged by Louis the Dauphin, and capitulated on the Feast of St.
Nicholas in 1216; it was granted, together with the town, to John of
Gaunt, Earl of Richmond, in whose time Kings John of France and David
of Scotland were prisoners within its walls, and after the Earl had been
created Duke of Lancaster he held a court in the castle for three weeks.
It