town and parish of the hundred of Plomsgate, in the county of Suffolk, eighty-nine miles from London. It is situated on a hill, with good prospects around it, and is not well built, but has a large church. It has very little trade, but a market is held on Thursday. The population amounted in 1801 to 855, in 1811 to 957, in 1821 to 989, and in 1831 to 1048.

Saxo-Græmaticus, descended from an illustrious Danish family, was born about the middle of the twelfth century. Stephens, in his edition of Saxo-Græmaticus, printed at Sorø, indubitably proves that he must have been alive in 1150; but he cannot ascertain the exact place and time of his birth. On account of his uncommon learning, Saxo was distinguished by the name of Græmaticus. He was provost of the cathedral church of Roskild, and warmly patronized by the learned and warlike Absalon, the celebrated archbishop of Lund, at whose instigation he wrote the History of Denmark. His epitaph, which is a dry panegyric in bad Latin verses, gives no account of the era of his death, which happened, according to Stephens, in 1204. His history, consisting of sixteen books, begins from the earliest account of the Danish annals, and concludes with the year 1186. According to the opinion of an accurate writer, the first part, which relates to the origin of the Danes, and the reigns of the ancient kings, is full of fables; but the eight last books, and particularly those which regard the events of his own times, deserve the utmost credit. He wrote in Latin; and the style, if we consider the barbarous age in which he flourished, is in general extremely elegant, but rather too poetical for history. Mallet, in his Histoire de Danemark (vol. i. p. 182), says that "Sperling, a writer of great erudition, has proved, in contradiction to the assertions of Stephens and others, that Saxo-Grammaticus was secretary to Absalon, and that the Saxo, provost of Roskild, was another person, and lived earlier."