Note 10 — Chapter I · THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

878. It was from the town (Grantebrycge) that the Danes set forth, two years before, and surprised Alfred at Wareham. In the time of Ethelred, just before the Danish invasion, Cambridge was a royal mint; it was so in the time of the Conqueror, and had a Danish ‘moneyer,’ and continued to be so under the Plantagenet kings: even Henry VI. coined money at Cambridge. In Domesday the town is described as a “Hundred,” a description, says Stubbs, belonging to big towns with large surrounding common land—Norwich and Canterbury are similarly described. After the history of the town became merged in that of the university, two parliaments were summoned there; in 1388, and in 1447 (afterwards held at Bury-St.-Edmund’s). For the city, see also p. 36 and v. p. 260.