Huge cathedrals lift themselves over the red-tiled roofs of little market towns, the models of stately fabrics which superseded the lowlier churches of AElfred or Dunstan, while the windy heights that look over orchard and meadowland are crowned with the square grey keeps which Normandy gave to the cliffs of Richmond and the banks of Thames.

It was Hrolf the Ganger, or Walker, a pirate leader like Guthrum or Hasting, who wrested this land from the French king, Charles the Simple, in 912, at the moment when AElfred's children were beginning their conquest of the English Danelaw.

The treaty of Clair-on-Epte in which France purchased peace by this cession of the coast was a close imitation of the Peace of Wedmore.

Hrolf, like Guthrum, was baptized, received the king's daughter in marriage, and became his vassal for the territory which now took the name of "the Northman's land" or Normandy.

But vassalage and the new faith sat lightly on the Dane.