Who made these camps on eminences all over the country, or made the eminences themselves when nature had not provided them, is a question men grow more and more shy in answering. Time was when, drawing inferences from outline only, they said confidently this or that camp was British, Roman, Saxon, or Danish. Now the tendency is to go farther back still into prehistoric times, and even to doubt whether the origin of these camps is military at all. Learned men, who somehow or other contrive to excite respect and admiration without compelling conviction, argue that many, perhaps most, of the huge earthworks with which the face of England and Wales is studded, were piled up by primeval man as a defence against the wild beasts, and most of all against the ravening wolves which overran the land and threatened his flocks and herds. To the unlearned it appears that a mound without a crowning palisade would have been quite ineffectual against the nimble wolves, and that a palisade without the mound would have been quite as effectual as mound and palisade. These are amusing speculations, but they cannot reach a certain conclusion. What is beyond doubt is that, if an invading foe, Roman, Saxon, or Dane, found these works ready to his hand, he would use them for military purposes. If the compilers of _Domesday Book_ called Danbury Hill Danengeberia it was because the natives, as they doubtless called them, used this title, having in mind the last warriors who had availed themselves of the commanding position. Native memory, indeed, had not to tax itself severely in this case, nor to go back very far. The average man, not the historian steeped in the study of a period, is apt to allow his memories of histories read to settle down on broad and accurate lines. For him, as for me, until this book suggested refreshment of memory, Alfred was the man who conquered the Danes and secured the freedom of Saxon England. The fact that they made head again in the time of his son Edward the Elder, that they were indeed never expelled from East Anglia by Alfred, had passed out of memory. Edward succeeded to the throne, such as it was, in 901 only--dates are repellent to eye and mind, but it is worth while to remember how shortly before the Conquest this was--and Edward spent a good deal of his time in "bridling" the Danes of East Anglia, who had made common cause with his rival Ethelwald. Edward, indeed, "conducted his forces into East Anglia and retaliated the injuries which the inhabitants had committed by spreading the like devastation among them. Satiated with revenge and loaded with booty, he gave the order to retire." In fact his orders were disobeyed by his Kentish followers, who settled themselves at Bury and were attacked and defeated by the Danes. But in this battle Ethelwald, Edward's Saxon cousin and rival, was killed, so the Danish victory was Pyrrhic, for Ethelwald's cause was theirs. For all the rest of his reign of twenty-four years Edward