Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/33

 individually, possessed five hides of land, a bell-house, a church, a kitchen, and a separate office in the king's hall, should be raised to the privileged rank of Thane. Sometime in the interval between the death of this monarch, in 941, and the arrival of William the Conqueror, the Hundred of Amounderness had been relinquished by the See of York, probably owing to frequent wars and disturbances having so ruined the country and thinned the inhabitants that the grant had ceased to be profitable.

During the earlier part of the Saxon era the clergy claimed one tenth or tithe of the produce of the soil, and exemption for their monasteries and churches from all taxations. These demands were resisted for a considerable period, but at length were conceded by Ethelwulf "for the honour of God, and for his own everlasting salvation." In 1002, it is recorded in the Saxon Chronicle, that "the king (Ethelred) ordered all the Danish men who were in England to be slain, because it was made known to him that they would treacherously bereave him of his life, and after that have his kingdom without any gainsaying." In accordance with the royal mandate, which was circulated in secret, the Anglo-Saxon populace of the villages and farms of the Fylde, as elsewhere, rose at the appointed day upon the unprepared and unsuspecting Northmen, barbarously massacring old and young, male and female alike. Great must have been the slaughter in districts like our own, where from the Danes having been established for so many generations and its proximity to the coast and the estuaries of Wyre and Ribble, a safe landing and a friendly soil would be insured, and attract numbers of their countrymen from Scandinavia. The vengeance of Sweyn, king of Denmark, was speedy and complete; the country of Northumbria was laid waste, towns and hamlets were pillaged and destroyed, and for four years all that fire and sword, spurred on by hatred and revenge, could effect in depopulating and devastating a land was accomplished in Lancashire, and the neighbouring counties, by the enraged Dane. Half a century later than the events just narrated, earl Tosti, the brother of Harold, who forfeited his life and kingdom to the Norman invaders on the field of Hastings, was chosen duke of Northumbria.