This advantage
procured but a short respite to the English. The Danes still maintained
their settlement in the Isle of Thanet; and, being attacked by Ealher
and Huda, governors of Kent and Surrey, though defeated in the beginning
of the action, they finally repulsed the assailants, and killed both
the governors, removed thence to the Isle of Shepey, where they took up
their winter quarters, that they might farther extend their devastation
and ravages.
This unsettled state of England hindered not Ethelwolf from making a
pilgrimage to Rome, whither he carried his fourth and favorite son,
Alfred, then only six years of age.[*] He passed there a twelvemonth
in exercises of devotion; and failed not in that most essential part of
devotion, liberality to the church of Rome. Besides giving presents to
the more distinguished ecclesiastics, he made a perpetual grant of three
hundred mancuses[**] a year to that see; one third to support the
lamps of St. Peter's, another those of St. Paul's, a third to the pope
himself.[***] In his return home, he married Judith, daughter of the
emperor Charles the Bald; but, on his landing in England, he met with an
opposition which he little looked for.
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