Danish and Viking

By the 8th Century there had been no significant invasions from abroad for 200 years. The sudden appearance of the Vikings in 793 AD, attacking Lindisfarne was a violent shock. They and their longships from northern lands, which the Anglo-Saxons called ”the force”, attacked the English shores, beginning in earnest in 835 AD. The harassment was as the form of hit and run raids: a landing was made, villages pillaged, the local armies fought and defeated, and the raiders left with their plunder. They stayed for a few weeks and seldom went more than 15 miles inland. Many of these attacks were across ‘our coast’. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that in 841 AD - ‘Ealdorman Herebryht was killed by heathen men, and many of the people of Romney Marsh with him’

In 851 AD they first ‘wintered’ here. The word ‘Viking’ is a generic term for Scandinavians -inhabitants of what is now Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
Danes predominated in the raids on southern England.
The ’Burghal Hidage’ is a document dating from the late 9th century. It lists 33 sites in Wessex and English Mercia fortified by Alfred as part of his campaign against the Danes. The list goes round the defensive ’burghs’ in order in his kingdom. It begins with EORPEBURNAM. So far unidentified, this settlement is in Sussex, east of Hastings and is probably Rye. It had a defensive line of 445.5 yards and a later survey of Rye’s town walls and ditch, recorded in 1847, gives the distance as 445.5 yards!!

King Alfred (871-899) halted the decline of the English, by organising armed opposition on land and he had ships built to attack at sea.

In 892, ” the great force...went ... from Boulogne, and there got ships, so that in one trip they set out with horses and all, then came up the mouth of the Lympne (Rother) with 250 ships. This rivermouth is in east Kent at the east end of the great wood we call Andred, the Weald... The river we have spoken of runs out of these woods, and on the river they took their ships four miles from the outward mouth, and there broke into a fort; in the stronghold there were only a few peasants staying, and it was half-built. ” (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.)

It goes on to say they built a fort at Appledore and they continued to harry the land for many years - indeed throughout the 10th Century.

In 978 AD King Ethelred came to the throne - but he was weak and had to pay larger and larger sums of tribute money to King Harold of Denmark - a strong king who had united the Viking lands – and his successor King Swein. From 992 AD the Vikings invaded almost every year until 1014, gaining more and more land and influence. Swein even took over the throne of England for a few weeks before his death in 1014. Ethelred came back from exile in 1014. After his death in 1016 his son Edmund took the throne. Swein’s son Cnut (Canute) succeeded Edmund, when he died seven months after his accession.

King Cnut married Ethelred’s Norman widow, Queen Emma, and fulfilled her late husband’s vow to give ‘our area’ – known as the Manor of Rameslie – to the Abbey of Fécamp in Normandy. This had great implications, as this Abbey was the favourite Abbey of the Duke of Normandy. From 1012 the kings had had the use of ships paid for from taxation. These were augmented by ships from what became known as ‘The Cinque Ports’ - Sandwich, Dover, Romney, Hythe and Hastings - when required. For a while our coastline had a peaceful time - as one of the main routes into England from the continent.

A series of Danish kings followed, to be succeeded by King Edward the Confessor in 1045. However, Godwine, Earl of Kent and Wessex, really ran the country. After a rift with Godwine, in which Godwine refused to attack his own people in the Dover area, Edward banished Godwine’s family (1051-2) and brought Norman’s into high government positions, thus antagonising the English.

Godwine fought back and returning from exile, he tried to regain his position along ‘our coast.’ He came from Bruges ‘with his ships .... and put out to sea one day before midsummer eve, so that he came to Dungeness, which is south of Romney. Then it came to the knowledge of the earls at Sandwich and they went out after the ships and called out the land forces. During this Earl Godwin was warned and turned to Pevensey; the weather became so violent that the earls could not tell what had become of Earl Godwine.’ (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle)

On hearing that the king’s ships had dispersed, Godwine returned to his friends in the Cinque Ports area of the south-eastern ports and joined up with their ships and seamen.

At the same time, Godwine’s son, Earl ‘Harold was on his way from Ireland with nine ships ‘. He met up with his father off the Isle of Wight and ‘Took what had been left behind, and went from there to Pevensey. They took as many ships as were serviceable, so continued to Dungeness, look all the ships that were in Romney, Hythe and Folkestone, then turned east to Dover, went up and seized as many ships and hostages as they would, and fared to Sandwich. There they did the same.’ (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle)

Godwine and Harold regained power with the support of the people in our area and they drove out many of Edward’s Norman advisors. In return for Norman support, Edward had apparently promised England’s crown to his great-nephew William of Normandy in 105l, but after Godwine’s death (1053) Edward relied heavily on Harold, who was also his brother in law. The dying monarch allegedly named Harold his successor.
The Rye area was still owned by the Abbey of Fécamp.