Note 485 — Chapter XI
Reading edition
The Saxon Chronicle gives to his predecessor, Edward the Elder, a fleet of some hundreds of ships, but this number is evidently too indefinite for any historical purpose. (Sax. Chron. A.D. 911.) If the charter granted to Worcester by this king in A.D. 964 be genuine, which Kemble doubts (Cod. Diplom. Ævi Saxon. ii. 404), he would seem to have been the first English monarch who claimed the “sovereignty of the sea.”