For more than a century Cheshire remained under British rule, but stronger grew the Saxon power, when the rival kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex had settled their quarrels; and in A.D. 828 King Egbert came to Cheshire, captured the city, and made the country parts of the Mercian kingdom. This Mercian kingdom embraced a large extent of country, and was not divided into shires until the beginning of the tenth century. The older counties--Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hants, Wilts, Berkshire, Dorset, Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, Middlesex, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk--some of them representing old kingdoms, are known to have existed as defined districts in the ninth century. In these the shire is not named after the chief town except in Hants; but when, in A.D. 912, Mercia was divided, each shire took its name from the county town. Thus we have Stafford-shire, Worcester-shire, and others, and Chester-shire or Cheshire. The county then assumed the concrete shape and size which it has since preserved. At the end of the ninth century came the first visit of those dread marauders, the Danes, who carried fire and sword through so many fair regions of England. From Northumberland they swooped down on the fields of Cheshire, led by the sea-king Hastings, and “arrived at a western city in Wirall which is called Lega-ceaster. Then were the forces [of King Alfred] unable to come up with them before they were in the fortress; nevertheless they beset the fortress about for some two days, and took all the cattle that were there without, and slew the men whom they were able to take without the fortress, and burned all the corn, and with their horses ate it every morning.”[2] The Danes liked not this, and were reduced to eating horse-flesh, and were glad to leave the country and escape to North Wales. The _Saxon Chronicle_ tells us nothing more of the visits of the Danes. Higden mentions that at the close of the tenth century the county was laid waste by pirates, doubtless the sea-rovers, the Danes, but the evidence of names proves that the Danes were firmly established in the shire as settlers. By the Peace of Wedmore in A.D. 878, they won from Alfred all the country east and north of Watling Street, including the greater part of Cheshire. Indications of their presence are not so strong as in Lancashire, but these are sufficiently plain to show they partially colonised the country. There is a church at Chester dedicated to St. Olave, a Scandinavian king and saint, to whom the Danish colony in London dedicated a church (Tooley Street in London is, of course, a corruption of St. Olaf’s Street). All names ending in _by_ are Danish, of which we have Kirby, Pensby, Irby, Frankby, Greasby. That the Danes were Christians is proved by such names as Kirby, Kirkdale, Crosby. But the most remarkable memorial of all is the name Thingwall, the place where the Folkmote or Thing met. It is surrounded by several other villages with Scandinavian names on