Читать книгу History of the Fylde of Lancashire онлайн

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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.”[12] 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. The seat of the new ruler has not been discovered, but as far as his personal association with the Fylde is concerned it will be sufficient to state that almost on its boundaries, in the township of Preston, he held six hundred acres of cultivated soil, to which all the lands and villages of Amounderness were tributary. As a governor Tosti proved himself both brutal and oppressive. In a very limited space of time his tyrannical and merciless conduct goaded his subjects to rebellion, and with one consent they ejected him from his dukedom and elected earl Morcar in his stead, a step commended and confirmed by Harold, when the unjust severity of his brother had been made known to him. Tosti embraced the Norman cause, and fell at the head of a Norwegian force in an engagement which took place at Standford a few months before the famous and eventful battle of Hastings.