till it came to Wightland, and there everywhere in Suth-Sex, and on Hamtunshire, and eke on Berkshire harried and burnt, as their wont is.  Then bade the king call out all the people, that men should hold against them on every half [side]:  but none the less, look! they fared where they willed.  Then one time had the king foregone before them with all the fyrd as they were going to their ships, and all the folk was ready to fight them.  But it was let, through Eadric ealdorman, as it ever yet was.  Then, after St. Martin’s mass, they fared eft again into Kent, and took them a winter seat on Thames, and victualled themselves from East-Sex and from the shires that there next were, on the twain halves of Thames.  And oft they fought against the burg of Lunden, but praise be to God, it yet stands sound, and they ever there fared evilly.  And there after mid-winter they took their way up, out through Chiltern, and so to Oxenaford [Oxford], and for-burnt the burg, and took their way on to the twa halves of Thames to shipward.  There man warned them that there was fyrd gathered at Lunden against them; then wended they over at Stane [Staines].  And thus fared they all the winter, and that Lent were in Kent and bettered [repaired] their ships.

We possess several manuscript versions of the Chronicle, belonging to different abbeys, and containing in places somewhat different accounts.  Thus the Peterborough copy is fullest on matters affecting that monastery, and even inserts several spurious grants, which, however, are of value as showing how incapable the writers were of scientific forgery, and so as guarantees of the general accuracy of the document.  But in the main facts they all agree.  Nor do they stop short at the Norman Conquest.  Most of them continue half through the reign of William, and then cease; while one manuscript goes on uninterruptedly till the reign of Stephen, and breaks off abruptly in the year 1154 with an unfinished sentence.  With it, native prose literature dies down altogether until the reign of Edward III.

As a whole, however, the Conquest struck the death-blow of Anglo-Saxon literature almost at once.  During the reigns of AElfred’s descendants Wessex had produced a rich crop of native works on all subjects, but especially religious.  In this literature the greatest name was that of AElfric, whose Homilies are models of the classical West Saxon prose.  But after the Conquest our native literature died out wholly, and a new literature, founded on Romance models, took its place.  The Anglo-Saxon style lingered on among the people, but it was gradually killed down by the Romance style of the court writers.  In prose, the history of William of Malmesbury, written in Latin, and in a wider continental spirit, marks the change.  In poetry, the English school struggled on longer, but at last succumbed.  A few words on the nature of this process will not be thrown away.