Among the chronicles of old monkish writers prior to the Conquest, is a story accounting for the first advent of the Danes upon our shores, as connected with the amusement of hawking: “A Danish chieftain of high rank, named Lothbroc, amusing himself with hawking near the sea, upon the western shores of Denmark, the bird in pursuit of her game fell into the water; Lothbroc, anxious for her safety, got into a little boat that was near at hand, and rowed from the shore to take her up; but before he could return to land, a sudden storm arose, and he was driven out to sea. After suffering great hardships, during a voyage of infinite peril, he reached the coast of Norfolk, and landed at a port called Reedham, (now a small village on the railway line from London to Yarmouth,) where he was immediately seized by the inhabitants, and sent to the court of Edmund, King of the East Angles, who received him favourably, and soon became strongly attached to him for his skill in training and flying hawks. The partiality shown to the foreigner excited the jealousy of Beoric, the king’s falconer, who took an opportunity of murdering the Dane whilst he was exercising his birds in a small wood, where he secreted the body. The vigilance of a favourite spaniel discovered the deed. Beoric was apprehended and convicted of the murder, and condemned to be put in an open boat, without sails, oars, or rudder, and abandoned to the mercy of the winds and wares. It so chanced that the boat was wafted to the very point of land that Lothbroc came from; and Beoric was apprehended by the Danes, and taken before their two chieftains, Hinguer and Hubba, the sons of Lothbroc, to whom the crafty falconer made a statement as ingenious as false, wherein he affirmed that their father had been murdered by Edmund, and himself sent adrift for opposing the deed. Irritated by the falsehood, the Danes invaded the kingdom of the East Angles, pillaged their country, took their king prisoner, tied him to a stake, and shot him to death with arrows.” Lidgate, a monk of St. Edmund’s at Bury, has given this legend a place in his poetical life of the tutelary saint of his monastery, but it bears upon it every mark of a legendary tale, and the fact is well known that Danish pirates had infested the shores long prior to the date assigned to the events narrated in it.