The Danish marauders ravaged the country, but were met at Stamford by a stout resistance from Saxons and Britons combined; but in the end they beat the Saxons and nearly destroyed Stamford in 870. A few years later, when, after the peace of Wedmore, Alfred the Great gave terms to Guthrum on condition that he kept away to the north of the Watling Street, the five towns of Stamford, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Lincoln were left to the Danes for strongholds; of these Lincoln then, as now, was the chief. [Sidenote: PARLIAMENT AT STAMFORD] The early importance of Stamford may be gauged by the facts that Parliament was convened there more than once in the fourteenth century, and several Councils of War and of State held there. One of these was called by Pope Boniface IX. to suppress the doctrines of Wyclif. There, too, a large number of nobles met to devise some check on King John, who was often in the neighbourhood either at Kingscliffe, in Rockingham Forest, or at Stamford itself—and from thence they marched to Runnymede. [Sidenote: STAMFORD TOWN] The town was on the Great North Road, so that kings, when moving up and down their realm, naturally stopped there. A good road also went east and west, hence, just outside the town gate on the road leading west towards Geddington and Northampton, a cross (the third) was set up in memory of the halting of Queen Eleanor’s funeral procession in 1293 on its way from Harby near Lincoln to Westminster. [Illustration: _St. George’s Square, Stamford._] [Sidenote: CITY ARMS]