How can these accounts be reconciled to probability, and to the state of the navy in the time of Alfred?
W.Thorne makes the whole number amount only to three hundred, which is more probable.

The fleet of Ethelred, Edgar's son, must have been short of a thousand ships; yet the Saxon Chronicle (p.

137) says it was the greatest navy that ever had been seen in England.] [Footnote 4: NOTE D, p.109.Almost all the ancient historians speak of this massacre of the Danes as if it had been universal, and as if every individual of that nation throughout England had been put to death.
But the Danes were almost the sole inhabitants in the kingdoms of Northumberland and East Anglia, and were very numerous in Mercia.

This representation, therefore, of the matter is absolutely impossible.

Great resistance must have been made, and violent wars ensued; which was not the case.