During the latter half of the same century, the Danes were again active, and in 877 made Exeter their headquarters. Seventeen years later they besieged the city, which was relieved by Alfred the Great, who confided the direction of church affairs in the city and county to the learned Asser, author of the _Saxon Chronicle_. In 1001, the Danes, having landed at Exmouth, made an attempt on Exeter, when the Saxons of Devon and Somerset, hastening to the rescue, were overthrown in a severe encounter at Pinhoe, and the piratical invaders returned to their ships, laden with spoil. The following year was marked by a general massacre of the Danes at the behest of Ethelred, and, to avenge this treacherous slaughter, Sweyn (or Swegen) swooped, like a vulture, on the land, and, through the perfidy of Norman Hugh, the reeve, was admitted within the gates of Exeter. As usual on such occasions, red ruin was the grim sequel; but in after days, when the Danish dynasty was in secure possession of the throne, Canute (or Cnut) cherished no malice by reason of the tragic horror inflicted on his race, but conferred on Exeter’s chief monastery the dignity of a cathedral. In a secular as well as in a religious sense, far the most romantic episodes of Saxon rule in Devon centre around the old Abbey of St. Rumon, Tavistock, the largest and most splendid of all the conventual institutions in the fair county. Ordulf, the reputed founder, was no ordinary mortal. He looms through the mist of ages as a being of gigantic stature, whose delight it was, with one stroke of his hunting-knife, to cleave from their bodies the heads of animals taken in the chase, and whose thigh-bone, it is said, is yet preserved in Tavistock Church. But if he had something in common with Goliath and John Ridd, Ordulf was likewise, and very plainly, cousin german to Saint Hubert, for having been bidden in a vision, he built Tavistock Abbey, to whose site his wife was conducted by an angel. An alternative version associates with him in this pious work his father, Orgar. However that may be, the edifice was destroyed by the Danes in the course of a predatory expedition up the Tamar to Lydford. This was in 997. It was re-built on a still grander scale, and bore the assaults of time until the days of the sacrilegious Hal, when it was suppressed and given to William, Lord Russell. So much for the Abbey. Now for the secular romance, which yields a striking illustration of Shakespeare’s warning:— Friendship is constant in all other things Save in the office and affairs of love: Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues, Let ev’ry eye negotiate for itself And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.