Many of the houses were burnt or destroyed, the people were all dressed in the poorest garb, and their sad faces and listless mien told of the despair which everywhere prevailed.

In every church the altars had been thrown down, the holy emblems and images destroyed, the monks and priests had fled across the sea or had been slain.
The Danish gods, Thor and Woden, had become the divinities of the land, and the Saxons, in whom Christianity had but recently supplanted the superstitions of paganism, were fast returning to the worship of the pagan gods.

Edmund and his companions were shocked at the change.

On reaching home they found that the ravages of the Danes had here been particularly severe, doubtless in revenge for the heavy loss which had been sustained by them in their attack upon Edmund's fortification.

His own abode had been completely levelled to the ground, and the villages and farm-houses for the most part wholly destroyed.