[185] See Freeman’s Historical Essays, first series, 15–25, for a refutation of the legend of Elfrida’s marriage.
[186] See Robertson’s Historical Essays, pp. 166–71. There is no evidence that Elfrida shared her husband’s coronation, but she is the first king’s wife after Judith to sign charters as Regina.
[187] Kemble’s Codex Diplomaticus, 700.
[188] Especially by Sir H. Howorth, Archæologia, xlv., 235–50.
[189] The following passages are almost all taken from the Peterborough version of the Chronicle which was based for this part of the narrative on a Canterbury Chronicle. Hence, doubtless, the fulness of the entries relating to Kent.
[190] Now corrupted into Skutchamfly Barrow, eight and a half miles from the White Horse in Berkshire.
[191] The term Danegeld seems to be properly applicable to the tax imposed on the king’s subjects in order to provide for the payment to the Danes. The payment itself is generally called gafol in the Chronicle.
[192] It is stated in Ethelred’s Treaty with Olaf (Liebermann, i., 220–228) that the sum promised to the invaders was “22,000 pounds of gold and silver”. The document is, on other grounds, an interesting one, as it seems to show a serious effort to secure permanent peace between the two nations.
[193] Stubbs’ Constitutional History, i., 118, 623.
[194] Freeman, Hist. of Norm. Conq., i., 279.