WANTAGE, a market-town and parish of the county of Berks, and in the hundred of the same name, sixty miles
1 This work forms the second volume of Todd's Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Brian Walton, D. D. Lord Bishop of Chester. Lond. 1821, 2 vols. 8vo.
from London. This place is celebrated from King Alfred having been born in a royal residence which it once contained. The town stands in the vale of the White Horse; a name given to it from the figure of a gigantic horse cut in the side of a chalk-hill, to commemorate Alfred's victory over the Danes. It is in a galloping position, and covers nearly an acre of ground. Near to the horse are some stones set on edge, said to be the burial-place of the Danish leaders who fell in the battle, which, according to the tradition, was fought near it. The peasantry in the neighbourhood are accustomed to assemble yearly at midsummer for what is called scouring the horse, when they remove every weed and obstacle that may have obscured the figure, and afterwards spend the day in various rural sports. It is now a place of little trade, except that of making flaxen cloth for bagging. There is a market on Saturday, and four annual fairs. The population amounted in 1821 to 2560, and in 1833 to 2507.
WAPENTAKE is the same with what is called a hundred, especially used in the north counties beyond the river Trent. The word seems to be of Danish original, and to be so applied for this reason: when first the kingdom, or a part, was divided into wapentakes, he who was the chief of the wapentake or hundred, and who is now called a high constable, as soon as he entered upon his office, appeared in a field on a certain day on horseback with a pike in his hand, and all the chief men of the hundred met him there with their lances, and touched his pike; which was a sign that they were firmly united to each other by the touching their weapons. But Sir Thomas Smith says, that anciently musters were made of the armour and weapons of the several inhabitants of every wapentake; and from those that could not find sufficient pledges for their good bearing, their weapons were taken away and given to others; from whence he derives the word.