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In the forest belts which stretched over vast spaces of country they found barriers which in all cases checked their advance and in some cases finally stopped it. The Kentishmen and the South-Saxons were brought utterly to a standstill by the Andredsweald. The East-Saxons could never pierce the woods of their western border.
As for me, it was the best day that could have dawned when he found me in the woods as a lost child. And that my father said also. Our Sussex was the last land in all England that was heathen. I suppose that the last heathen thanes in Sussex were those whose manors lay in the Andredsweald, as did ours.
At the southern verge of the mighty forest called the Andredsweald, or Anderida Sylva, Gilbert d'Aquila, last of that name, founded the Priory of Michelham for the good of his soul.
In 893 a large fleet steered for the Andredsweald, while the sea-king Hasting entered the Thames. Ælfred held both at bay through the year till the men of the Danelaw rose at their comrades' call. Wessex stood again front to front with the northmen. But the King's measures had made the realm strong enough to set aside its old policy of defence for one of vigorous attack.
David's Head, from the Andredsweald to the Firth of Forth the country still remained unconquered: and there was little in the years which followed Arthur's triumph to herald that onset of the invaders which was soon to make Britain England. Till now its assailants had been drawn from two only of the three tribes whom we saw dwelling by the northern sea, from the Saxons and the Jutes.
He had hoped to do much for love of his Lord, to carry the message of the Gospel into the Andredsweald, where the kindred of his mother yet lived, and the thought that he should never see their forest glades again was painful.
A vast sheet of scrub, woodland, and waste which then bore the name of the Andredsweald stretched for more than a hundred miles from the borders of Kent to the Hampshire Downs, extending northward almost to the Thames and leaving only a thin strip of coast which now bears the name of Sussex between its southern edge and the sea.
Never were sweeter nooks, wherein to spend Maytide, than around the villages and hamlets of the Andredsweald, whither the action of our tale betakes itself again around Chiddinglye, Hellinglye, Alfristun, Selmestun, Heathfeld, Mayfeld, and the like not, as now, accessible by rail and surrounded by arable lands; but settlements in the forest, with the mighty oaks and beeches which had perchance seen the coming of Ella and Cissa, long ere the Norman set foot in Angleland; and with solemn glades where the wind made music in the tree tops, and the graceful deer bounded athwart the avenue, to seek refuge in tangled brake and inaccessible morass.
In 893 a large fleet steered for the Andredsweald, while the sea-king Hasting entered the Thames. Alfred held both at bay through the year till the men of the Danelagh rose at their comrades' call. Wessex stood again front to front with the Northmen. But the King's measures had made the realm strong enough to set aside its old policy of defence for one of vigorous attack.
That was not so long a time, however, save that the years of a child are long years; for at this time, when I first learned the full wildness of the woods of the great Andredsweald and knew what loneliness was, I was only ten years old.
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