[464] Laing’s Transl. of the Heimskringla, p. 135. [465] Monach. Sangall. De rebus Caroli Magni ap. Muratori. Antiq. v. 1. [466] Full details of this, and of two other less perfect vessels discovered about the same time, at Thorsbjerg and Nydam, in S. Jutland, are given in the very interesting work by Mr. C. Engelhardt, entitled “Denmark in the early Iron Age,” Lond. 4to. 1866. From the frontispiece of this work the accompanying plate has been taken. Special attention has been called to it by Mr. J. H. Burton, to whose “History of Scotland” we are indebted for some of the notices of the Scandinavians. [467] We have also a record of the discovery in England of two very ancient oak boats of considerable size. The first was found in 1822, in a deserted bed of the River Rother, near Matham, in Kent, and has been fully described in the Archæol. vol. xx. p. 553. This boat, which was sixty-three feet long by fifteen feet broad, appears to have been half-decked, and to have had at least one mast. It had been caulked with moss. The second was found in 1833, at North Stoke, near Arundel, in what was formerly a creek running into the River Arun. This boat, which was made of the half of a single oak-tree, hollowed out like a canoe, was thirty-five feet four inches long, and four feet six inches broad. It is now preserved in the British Museum, having been presented to that institution by the Earl of Egremont.—_Vide_ Archæol. vol. xxvi. [468] St. Patrick flourished from A.D. 432, the year of his mission to England, to 493; St. Brigit, about 500; and St. Columba, from 522-97. The venerable and more trustworthy Bede, who mentions Horsa by name (Eccles. Hist. i. c. 15), lived at a much later period, A.D. 750. [469] Bede, ii. 3. [470] The kingdom of Mercia comprised the midland and western counties. [471] Muratori, Antiq. v. 12. [472] Laws of Hlothar and Eadric, ap. Schmid’s Anglo-Sax. Laws, c. 1-5, p. 11. Leipsig, 1858. [473] Scriptores Brit. Gale, p. 762. [474] William of Malmesbury, s. 17, and M. Paris Vit. Offæ. [475] Macpherson, i. p. 251; and compare Monach. Sangall, i. c. 13, ap. Muratori, Antiq. v. 1. [4765] This first Danish invasion is said to have taken place A.D. 753. Macpherson, i. p. 247; and Chronic. Augustin, ap. Twysden. [477] Sir H. Nicolas (“Hist. Roy. Navy,” i. p. 10) states that the Snekkar, or Serpent, was manned by twenty rowers. See also Depping, “Hist. des Exped. Maritimes des Normands.” i. 71-73. [478] Macpherson, in his “Annals of Commerce,” vol. i. p. 254, says that “the Norwegians and Danes, under the names of Ostmen (_i.e._ eastern men), Gauls, Gentiles, Pagans, &c., were the chief, or rather the only commercial, people in Ireland, and continued for several centuries to carry on trade with the mother countries, and other places on the west coast of Europe, from their Irish settlements.”