[115] See Keary, The Vikings in Western Christendom, pp. 139–42.
[116] Here is simply the Anglo-Saxon equivalent for army; but in the Chronicle it almost invariably means the Danish army, while fyrd is the word used for the English troops, which were in the nature of a militia.
[117] This fact has been especially emphasised by Freeman, Norman Conquest, i., 43–45.
[118] This date, as will be seen, is not that of his original burial, which probably took place near the beginning of July, 862, but the date of the “translation” of his remains to the cathedral, which was accomplished more than a century later.
[119] Stubbs, Const. Hist., i., 249, and 258.
[120] The translation of some of the terms used is conjectural.
[121] Liber Pontificalis, ii., 148 (ed. Duchesne).
[122] This restoration of the Schola Saxonum rests only on the authority of William of Malmesbury, and is doubted, but hardly disproved, by Mr. Stevenson in his edition of Asser, pp. 245–46. Notwithstanding the high authority of Monseigneur Duchesne, quoted by Mr. Stevenson, it does not seem to me probable that the scholæ peregrinorum were essentially military establishments, though they may have assumed somewhat of that character under the stress of the Saracen invasions in the ninth century.
[123] Charles the Bald was at this time thirty-two years of age. Ethelwulf cannot have been less than fifty and may have been considerably older.
[124] The reader is referred to the Appendix for an account of the controversies which have arisen respecting this book. It is enough to say here that we seem to be justified in accepting it as a contemporary, and in the main a truthful account of the life of the great king. It ends, however, with the year 887.