After this defeat the Danes who escaped made
their way to Shoebury, where another fortified camp
was constructed. Shortly afterwards Haesten led
his Danes from Shoebury up the Thames and across
country to Buttington, near Welshpool, where he
was besieged and defeated. Those who escaped
returned to Essex, but hunger drove them out again,
and, going westwards once more, were chased into
Chester, where they spent the winter, returning to
Mersea by way of Northumbria. In the following
spring (895) they sailed round the coast and up the
river Lea to a place about twenty miles above London,
and there at Wallbury Camp they constructed
another stronghold. Alfred by a clever stratagem
"bottled" their ships in the Lea and compelled them
to ride off across country once more. They went to
Quatford, on the Severn, below Bridgnorth, and there
built another fortified camp, where they wintered.
In the following summer the host finally dispersed ;
some settled in East Anglia and Northumbria, but the
majority returned to France under Haesten and took
service under the Frankish king. In 1900 a vessel
was dug up from the mud between Tottenham and
Walthamstow and identified as a Danish war vessel
stranded there at the time of Alfred's victory. It
was fifty feet long and nine feet in beam, measuring
less than four feet in depth. It probably represents
the type of ship brought by Haesten from Boulogne
and moored in Benfleet Creek. It was almost
certainly hunger and the need for securing cattle
and grain that drove the Danes to make these
hazardous cross-country expeditions. The rapidity of
their movements is explained by the fact that their
tactics were those of mounted infantry; they
commandeered the horses in any district in which they
settled and rode them until they died, when, probably,
they used them for food.
NORMAN TIMES.
Domesday Book provides the next certain
information relating to Benfleet. The greater part of
9