[256] This method of describing the extent of the new king's dominion shows how far from consolidated the so-called Frankish kingdom really was. The royal domain proper, that is, the land over which the king had immediate control, was limited to a long fertile strip extending from the Somme to a point south of Orleans, including the important towns of Paris, Orleans, Etampes, Senlis, and Compiegne. Even this was not continuous, but was cut into here and there by the estates of practically independent feudal lords. By far the greater portion of modern France (the name in 987 was only beginning to be applied to the whole country) consisted of great counties and duchies, owing comparatively little allegiance to the king and usually rendering even less than they owed. Of these the most important was the county (later duchy) of Normandy, the county of Bretagne (Brittany), the county of Flanders, the county of Anjou, the county of Blois, the duchy of Burgundy, the duchy of Aquitaine, the county of Toulouse, the county of Gascony, and the county of Barcelona (south of the Pyrenees). The "Goths" referred to by Richer were the inhabitants of the "march," or border county, of Gothia along the Mediterranean coast between the lower Rhone and the Pyrenees (old Septimania). CHAPTER XI. ALFRED THE GREAT IN WAR AND IN PEACE 30. The Danes in England The earliest recorded visit of the Danes, or Northmen, to England somewhat antedates the appearance of these peoples on the Frankish coast in the year 800. In 787 three Danish vessels came to shore at Warham in Dorset and their sailors slew the unfortunate reeve who mistook them for ordinary foreign merchants and tried to collect port dues from them. Thereafter the British coasts were never free for many years at a time from the depredations of the marauders. In 793 the famous church at Lindisfarne, in Northumberland, was plundered; in 795 the Irish coasts began to suffer; in 833 a fleet of twenty-five vessels appeared at the mouth of the Thames; in 834 twelve hundred pillagers landed in Dorset; in 842 London and Rochester were sacked and their population scattered; in 850 a fleet of 350 ships carrying perhaps ten or twelve thousand men, wintered at the mouth of the Thames and in the spring caused London again to suffer; and from then on until the accession of King Alfred, in 871, destructive raids followed one another with distressing frequency.