we do not find that King Edward at all oppressed the Danes, for, when he fortified Nottingham, he set both Englishmen and Danes to live in the town. That year, 922, all the Welsh Kings came to Edward and "sought him to lord." But some say that this was not till after a good deal of fighting, in which the Welsh, with some Danes and Irish to help them, had tried to get possession of Chester. The next year, 923, King Edward built Thelwall in Cheshire, and took Manchester "in Northumberland." But we read the same year that Rægnald (Reginald, Rainald), a Danish King, took York, but he soon became King Edward's man. In 924 King Edward built another fort at Nottingham so as to secure both sides of the river Trent, with a bridge across it. Thus he had pretty well all Mercia in his hands. And now we read,

"And him chose then to father and to lord the King of Scots and all the folk of the Scots, and Rægnald and Eadulf's son,1 and all that in Northumberland dwell, whether English or Danish or Northmen or any others; and eke the King of the Strathclyde Welsh and all the Strathclyde Welsh."

Thus did Edward, King of the English, become LORD OF ALL BRITAIN. Wessex, Kent, and Sussex he had inherited, Mercia, Essex, and East-Anglia he and his sister had won back from the Danes. Thus much was his own Kingdom. And all Northumberland, Wales, Scotland, and Strathclyde did homage to him as their Over-lord. No one King in Britain had ever had so much power. None of the old Bretwaldas had so large a country in their own hands, none of them had extended their power so completely over the Welsh, and none of them, save those who reigned in Northumberland, had any power over the Scots at all. From this time the King of the English was the Over-lord of the Welsh and the Scots, just as much as the Emperor and the King of the West-Franks were Over-lords of any of the princes within their dominions who held their Duchies and Counties of them. You must well understand this, because otherwise you will get very wrong notions of some things in later times. When another King Edward, the first of the name after the Norman Conquest, made the Scots and Welsh do homage to him, he was 1 He was the English prince of Bernicia, who reigned at Bamborough.

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not, as many people fancy, doing anything new or demanding anything unjust, but was simply defending the rights of his Crown which had been handed down to all the Kings of the English from the time of the first Edward, the son of Alfred. The year after he had reached this height of power, the great King Edward died at Farndon in Mercia, that is in Northamptonshire, and was buried at Winchester. He left behind him a great many sons and daughters, most of whom became Kings and Queens. Three of his sons, Æthelstan, Eadmund, and Eadred, were all Kings of the English. Of his daughters five married foreign princes, either in their father's time or in their brother Æthelstan's; another had to put up with a Danish King Sihtric in Northumberland; and three became nuns. You know it was not usual in those days to marry out of the country, but King Æthelstan, through the marriages of his sisters, became brother-in-law to most of the chief princes of Europe. For, as I think I told you, Eadgifu married Charles the Simple, King of the WestFranks; and afterwards, when King Charles was deposed, she and her son Lewis took shelter with her father King Edward. Another Eadgifu married Lewis, King of Provence or Arles, that is the southern part of the Kingdom of Burgundy; Eadhild married Hugh the Great, Duke of the French, son of King Robert, whom I mentioned before. And another sister made a greater marriage than all. For Henry, King of the East-Franks, sent to Æthelstan to ask for one of his sisters in marriage for his son Otto. So Æthelstan sent him two, Eadgyth or Edith and Ælfgifu, and bade him choose one for his son and give the other to one of his princes. So Ælfgifu was given to a prince near the Alps; but Otto chose Edith for his wife. This was Otto the Great, who was afterwards Emperor, and who joined the Empire for ever to the Kingdom of the East-Franks, but this was not till after Edith was dead, so that she never was Empress. Of another sister, Eadburh, men told this tale.

The Story of Eadburh the Daughter of Edward.

Now when Eadburh, the daughter of King Edward and Eadgifu his Lady, was but three years old, it came into the King's heart to prove the child whether she would dwell in the

world or would go out of the world to serve God. So he put on one side rings and bracelets and on the other side a chalice and a book of the Gospels. And the child was brought in the arms of her nurse, and King Edward took her on his knees, and he said, "Now, my child, whether of these things wilt thou choose?" And the child turned away from the rings and the bracelets, and took in her hand the chalice and the book of the Gospels. Then King Edward kissed his child and said, "Go whither God calleth thee; follow the spouse whom thou hast chosen; and thy mother and I will be happy if we have a child holier than ourselves." So Eadburh became a nun in the city of Winchester, and served God with fastings and prayers all the days of her life.

Besides his three sons who reigned after him, King Edward had a son Edwin, of whom we shall hear again, and another son Æthelweard or Ælfweard, who is said to have been a great scholar and to have been in all things like his grandfather Alfred, but he died soon after his father. And some say that . he had yet another son, named Gregory, who went away to Rome, and became a monk, and thence went into the mountains of Swabia and became Abbot of Einsiedlen and got many gifts for his church from his brother-in-law the Emperor Otto. But I do not find anything like this in our English books, and I feel sure that no son of an English King in those days was called Gregory, though he may have changed his name to Gregory when he became a monk.

Also I must tell you that King Edward divided the diocese of Sherborne into two, and gave the men of Somersetshire a Bishop of their own, and placed his see in the church of Saint Andrew in Wells which King Ine had founded. The first Bishop of Wells was Ealdhelm. Thus it was in the year 909 that Wells became a Bishop's see and Saint Andrew's a cathedral church.

I have now told you how the Danes came into England, and how England became one Kingdom. So I will end this long chapter here and begin another with the reign of the great Æthelstan, the son of Edward.

CHAPTER IX.

OF THE KINGS OF THE ENGLISH FROM THE TIME THAT ENGLAND BECAME ONE KINGDOM TILL THE DANES CAME AGAIN.

§ 1. THE REIGN OF KING ÆTHELSTAN.

925-940.

WHEN King Edward died, his eldest son Æthelstan was chosen King, and we find it specially said that the Mercians chose him, so that the Mercians must still have had a meeting of their own Wise Men separate from the meeting of the West-Saxons. He was then hallowed as King at Kingston in Surrey, as were several of the Kings after him. You know that Westminster is now the place where our Kings are crowned, but this did not begin till the time of King Harold. King Æthelstan now gave one of his sisters, as I before told you, to Sihtric, the Danish King of Northumberland. But Sihtric died the next year, and then Æthelstan drove out his son Guthfrith or Godfrey, who had succeeded him, and took Northumberland into his own hands. Then the other princes of Britain, Howel King of the West-Welsh,1 and Owen King of Gwent, and Constantine King of Scots, and Ealdred the son of Eadwulf of Bamborough, tried to fight against Æthelstan, but he overcame them in battle and made them become his men, and

1 By the West-Welsh is commonly meant the Welsh of Cornwall and Devonshire, but here the name seems to mean the western part of Wales as opposed to Gwent or Monmouthshire. This Howel is a very famous King among the Welsh, on account of the Laws which he put together. He is called Howel the Good.