ed was to reign, to give forth his laws and to plan
his campaigns against the same enemy. He was victorious, as we know,
and at Ethandune not only broke his pagan foes, but dragged Guthrum,
their leader, to baptism. And in his capital he made and kept the only
record we have of the Dark Ages in England, the "Saxon Chronicle,"
begun in Wolvesey Palace; founded the famous nunnery of St Mary to the
north-east of the Cathedral in the meads; and provided for the
foundation, by Edward his son, of the great New Minster close by, where
his bones at last were to be laid. The three great churches with their
attendant buildings must have been the noblest group to be seen in the
England of that day. Thus Winchester flourished more than ever secure
in its position as capital, so that Athelstan, we read, established
there six mints, and Edgar, reigning there, made "Winchester measure"
the standard for the whole kingdom: "and let one money pass throughout
the king's dominions, and let no man refuse; and let one measure and
one weight pass, such as is observed at London and Winchester."

Such was Winchester at the beginning of the ninth century; before the
end of that century she was to suffer violence from the Danes; and in
the first years of the tenth century to fall with the rest of England
into their absolute power, and to see a Danish king, Canute, crowned in
her Cathedral. There, too, at last, that Danish king was buried. He was
a generous conqueror, and a great benefactor to his capital, and
with him passes much of the splendour of Winchester. Edward the
Confessor, though hallowed at Winchester, looked upon London
as his capital and there built the great abbey which was thenceforth
to see the crowning of England's kings. For St Edward was at
heart a Norman, and Winchester, beside summing up in itself all the
splendour of pre-Norman England, had been given by Ethelred to the
widow of Canute, Emma, the mother of St Edward. She allied herself with
the great Earl Godwin to oppose the Norman influence which St Edward
had brought into England, and it was only when she died that the king
came again into Winchester for Easter, and to hold a solemn court.
During that Easter week Earl Godwin died, and was buried in the
Cathedral. He was the last champion of Saxon England to lie there.

Nothing marks the change that England had passed through during the
first half of the eleventh century more certainly than the fact that
William Duke of N