The period of depression that followed the golden days of the twin monasteries has left us but scanty memorials of their history. We begin to hear of times of insecurity, of attacks made upon the eastern coast of England by Danish pirates. The situations of the two churches would, under these circumstances, be distinctly against them. Jarrow is to this day conspicuous; it is probably less well known that Monkwearmouth Church stood for centuries upon the top of a hill. This is shown quite clearly in the engraving of the year 1785. The sea rovers would take their own survey of the coast and its harbours, and would make for any place that offered promise of pillage. There is much good and rich land between the Wear and the Tyne, and the monks of early days were assiduous cultivators. The country of Wilfrid and Biscop and Bede was no uncivilized or neglected part of the world. To a pagan race there would be no impediment in the form of religious scruples. The wealth of the Church would but invite the spoilers to their prey. And so the Danes came first to Northern England, to begin with, somewhat tentatively, in the year 793, harrying the island of Lindisfarne, plundering its monastery, and burning the church. The next year their ships put into the Tyne. On the hill overlooking the slake, just where that river receives its tributary the Don, stood the monastery of Jarrow, Egfrid’s Port lying immediately below it. Here they landed, and took such booty as they found. But the people of the neighbourhood rallied, and drove back the invaders to their ships. Few of them made good their escape, for the wind was against them. The storm came up into the river, and the fugitives were driven to the shore, where they and their chieftain, Ragner Lodbrog, met with the vengeance they deserved. It is quite clear that the lesson thus given was not forgotten. We hear no more of Danish invasions for well on to sixty years. When they recommenced, they were directed elsewhere. In the year 851 the Danes landed in Sheppey, and this time they came to stay. The chroniclers have much to say about _the Army_; but it was not till the year 875 that it marched into Northern England, and then probably not much beyond York; it moved south two years later. But meanwhile there had no doubt been many a raid upon the settlements on the coast. The year 866 was marked by one of the most serious of these. At that date Hingvar and Hubba burned the church of Monkwearmouth. The traces of this conflagration are still distinctly perceptible. Again in the year 875 the fleet of Halfdan was in the Tyne. Contemporaneously with this event took place the flight from Lindisfarne, and the commencement of the journeyings of the body of St. Cuthbert.