[5] Theodor Mommsen in 1898, Peter Hunter Blair in 1963 and David Dumville in 1974 (repeated in 1990) argued that the compilation took place at Sawley.
[11] It is, however, of note that Dean Hugh, when he resigned his deanship in 1135, retired to Fountains Abbey, supposedly taking with him a collection of books.
[10] The text of De obsessione Dunelmi describes, among other things, the history of 11th-century Northumbria, the career of the earls of Bamburgh along with their blood feud against Thurbrand the Hold and his descendants.
The historian Antonia Gransden viewed it as a biography of Earl Uhtred and described it as the first-known attempt to write a history of an English earldom.
[12] The "main story", however, according to the text itself, is the history of six manors belonging, rightfully it is asserted, to the diocese of Durham; the accounts tells how these were transferred several times during the course of the events described.
[16] He proceeds to divorce Ecgfrida in favour of Sige, daughter of Styr, with Bishop Ealdhun supposedly regaining his six vills.
Cnut and Swegn of Denmark invade England and ask for Uhtred's help against Æthelred, but the earl remains loyal to the English king.
When Uhtred travels to deliver it at a place called Wiheal, he is murdered by Thurbrand, the man he had earlier pledged to kill to marry Sige.