The following are the most important passages in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relating to London. Its importance as a military station appears to have been very great in the time of Cnut, to judge by the efforts he made to capture the town; and the proportion of tribute paid in 1018 seems to show that the population and wealth of the city must have been very considerable. =Source.=—_The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle._ AN. 457. Hengist and Æsc his son fought against the Britons at the place called Cregan Ford, and there slew four thousand men; and the Britons then forsook Kent and in great terror fled to London. AN. 886. In this year the army again went west, which had before landed in the east, and then up the Seine, and there took winter-quarters at the city of Paris. In the same year king Ælfred restored London; and all the Angle-race turned to him that were not in the bondage of the Danish men; and he then committed the burgh to the keeping of the aldorman Æthered. AN. 894.... Then those who dwell with the Northumbrians and with the East Angles gathered some hundred ships, and went south about, and besieged a work in Devonshire by the north sea; and those who went south about besieged Exeter. When the King heard that, he turned west towards Exeter with all the force, save a very powerful body of the people eastwards. These went on until they came to London, and then, with the townsmen and with the aid which came to them from the west, marched east to Benfleet. Hæsten was then come there with his army, which had previously sat at Middleton (Milton); and the great army also was come thereto, which had before sat at the mouth of the Limen, at Appledore. Hæsten had before wrought the work at Benfleet, and was then gone out harrying, and the great army was at home. They then marched up and put the army to flight, and stormed the work, and took all that there was within, as well money, as women and children, and brought all to London; and all the ships they either broke in pieces, or burned, or brought to London, or to Rochester. AN. 994. In this year came Olaf (Anlaf) and Svein to London, on the Nativity of St. Mary (Sept. 8th), with ninetyfour ships, and they were obstinately fighting against the town, and would also have set it on fire. But they there sustained more harm and evil than they ever weened that any townsmen could do to them. For the holy mother of God, on that day, manifested her mercy to the townsmen, and delivered them from their foes.