an annual tax imposed on the Anglo-Saxons, for every hide of land throughout the realm, in order to maintain such a number of forces as were thought sufficient to clear the British seas of Danish pirates, who heretofore had greatly annoyed our coasts.

Danegelt was first imposed as a standing yearly tax on the whole nation under King Ethelred, A.D. 991. That prince, says Camden, much distressed by the continued invasions of the Danes, in order to procure a peace, was compelled to charge his people with heavy taxes called danegelt. Edward the Confessor remitted this tax, but William I. and II. resumed it occasionally. In the reign of Henry I. it was accounted among the king's standing revenues; but King Stephen, on his coronation-day, abrogated it for ever. No church or church-land paid a penny to the danegelt; because, as is set forth in an ancient Saxon law, the people of England placed more confidence in the prayers of the church than in any military defence they could make.