HERTFORD, the county town, is of immemorial antiquity. The origin of the name has elicited much learned conjecture, and Hertford is one of several places held to be the _Durocobrivis_ mentioned by Antonine. It is the _Herudsford_ (_i.e._ red ford) of the Venerable Bede. That it was a town of some importance on the river Lea even in the days of the Trinobantes seems indisputable. Norden conjectured that the true name of the town was Hartford, so called because in Saxon times, when the surrounding country was densely wooded, the harts crossed the river by a natural ford at this spot. However this may be, the old borough seal, three or four centuries ago, bore as a device a hart in shallow water. The rivers Rib, Beane, and Maran all unite with the Lea in the immediate neighbourhood. Some reference may be here made to the doings of Alfred the Great in this neighbourhood. By putting together what is recorded by William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, Asser and others we learn that in the twenty-third year of Alfred's reign the Danes infested the Thames with their ships, sailed up the Lea in the lighter of their crafts, and built a fort about 20 miles from London, at or near what is now the town of Ware. Presently, in the course of their many foraging excursions, they sailed farther up the river towards Hertford, stripped the people in the town and burnt down many houses. They afterwards established a garrison near the town. Alfred brought his army down to the river side the following year and made a careful survey of the Danish fort and of the character and position of their ships. He is said to have passed from place to place in a boat, drawn by a horse, and to have carefully ascertained the depth of the water at different points. The precise nature of his subsequent operations is not well known, but he is said to have diverted the course of the river, to have erected a dam (Shass) at Blackwall, and by these means to have grounded the Danish fleet. The Danes held a treaty, and eventually withdrew into Cambridgeshire and Gloucestershire; the Londoners came down to the scene of Alfred's ingenuity and destroyed or appropriated the Danish ships.