Dr. Wilkes, Willenhall's
most eminent son, and no mean authority on such matters, says that:--"In
the year 895, King Alfred having by a stratagem forced them to leave
Hereford on the Wye, they came up to the River Severn as far as
Bridgnorth, then called Quat, Quatbridge, or Quatford, committing great
enormities, and destroying all before them. We hear no more of them
hereabout for thirteen years, but then they raised a great army and
fought two bloody battles with King Edward."

The contemporary Saxon annals tell us that the Danes were beaten in
Mercia in 911, but do not say where. Doubtless from time to time the
whole plain rang with "the din of battle bray," the shout of exultation,
and the groan of pain; with the clash of steel on steel, and the dull
thud of mighty battleaxe on shields of tough bull hide, all through that
disturbed period. It would appear from a later account that at the
earlier engagement of 910, which by this writer has been confidently
located between Tettenhall and the Wergs, King Edward was himself in
command of the Saxon forces, and that he not only gained a decisive
victory, but pursued the enemy for five weeks, following them up in their
northern fastnesses beyond the Watling Street, from one Danish village to
another, burning and utterly wasting every one of them as they had been
mere hornets' nests.

At the encounter of the following year (A.D. 911) the Danes, after a
great pillaging expedition, having strongly posted themselves at
Wednesfield, little advantage was gained by either side after many hours
of hard fighting, till at last the Saxons were reinforced by Earl
Kenwolf. Victory then fell to the Saxons.

This Kenwolf, who is said to have been the greatest notable of the
locality, and seated on a good estate at Stowe Heath, was mortally
wounded in the fray; and on the opposite side there fell Healfden and
Ecwills, two Danish kings; Ohter and Scurfar, two of their Earls; a
number of other great noblemen and generals, among them Othulf, Beneting,
Therferth, Guthferth, Agmund, Anlaf the Black, and Osferth the
tax-gatherer, and a host of men. The name of a third slaughtered king,
Fuver, is given by another old chronicler. It is to the quality rather
than to the quantity of the slain that the locality is indebted for the
number of tumuli on which so much of this superstructure of quasi-history
seems to be raised.

The historians who restrict themselves to "two" kings specify the