All autumn the West Saxon fyrd waited for the enemy, but in the end "it came to naught more than it had oft erst done." The host took up quarters in Wight, marched across Hants and Berks to Reading, and burned Wallingford.

Thence they returned with their booty to the fleet, by the very walls of the royal city.

"There might the Winchester folk behold an insolent host and fearless wend past their gate to sea." The king himself had fled into Shropshire.

The tone of utter despair with which the Chronicle narrates all these events is the best measure of the national degradation.

"There was so muckle awe of the host," says the annalist, "that no man could think how man could drive them from this earth or hold this earth against them; for that they had cruelly marked each shire of Wessex with burning and with harrying." The English had sunk into hopeless misery, and were only waiting for a strong rule to rescue them from their misery.
The strong rule came at last.