Lunch - Speaker Stephen Quant

THE GREAT HEATHEN ARMY

Stephen Quant, husband of the Henley Rotary Club speaker’s secretary, has perhaps understandably already spoken on at least three occasions to the club when his wife Vivienne has been unable to get hold of someone to fill the programme.

His previous subjects have been English history before 1066, the Roman occupation and the history of the Rifles Regiment. His breadth of knowledge is impressive and, at this week’s lunch meeting at the Red Lion Hotel, he described the ‘Great Heathen Army and the Viking Raids,’ mainly concentrating on their progress through England from A.D. 865 onwards.

Earlier incursions had been in A.D. 789 and 793, the year of the great raid on Lindisfarne in Scotland and he explained that the Vikings who raided Scotland were mainly from Norway, those from Sweden went to Russia, whilst the Danes concentrated on England, which at that time was divided into four kingdoms, Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and East Anglia.

Landing in East Anglia in A.D. 865, the invaders made their way northwards towards York which they occupied in 866. Whilst a contingent ventured into Northumbria, most made their way south by differing routes, finishing up in the kingdom of Wessex in Exeter and Wareham and in the southern edge of Mercia at Gloucester.

Earlier Alfred the Great of Wessex had attempted to buy off the Danes but they had kept returning until he defeated them at the battle of Edington in Wiltshire in A.D.878. They continued to dominate Mercia and the rest of England, but the Anglo-Saxons held Wessex from then on.

Lionel Scott, the club’s president-elect who was chairing the meeting in the absence of John Grout, gave the vote of thanks.

David Rusman reported that he was hoping to enter a team for the Henley Bridge Rotary Club’s annual quiz night on March 24.