several days, amusing them and their King Guthrum with his music, until he had learned all he wanted to know. However this may be, he reappeared on a sudden at the head of the West-Saxon forces, and gave the Danes such a defeat at a place called Ethandun, that they soon yielded to him. Guthrum submitted to be baptized; and the Witan meeting at Wedmore, a treaty was made, by which the Danes received, as vassals of the West-Saxon King, East-Anglia, and part of Essex and Mercia. The Danes of Northumberland, who were not Guthrum's men, submitted to Alfred some years later. So after all Alfred's labour, the greater part of England was left in Danish hands, and consequently the English race became largely infused with Scandinavian blood. In this way it comes to pass that so many places have Danish names, marked by the ending by, which answers to the English ton or town. Thus Streoneshalh got the Danish name of Whitby, and North weorthig that of Derby.

6. Alfred's Government.-Alfred worked as hard in peace as in war. He made a collection of dooms, that is, laws; some taken from the Mosaic law, others from the old codes of Ethelbert, Ine, and Offa, adding but few of his own, because he said he did not know how those who came after him might like them. He kept up a fleet, and did all he could to revive the old seafaring spirit, which seemed to have died out. He gave largely to the poor and to churches, founded monasteries, and encouraged learned men, English and foreign, to instruct his people. Knowing Latin well, he translated many books from that language. He sent out seamen to the North on voyages of exploration; also embassies to the Pope, to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and what is still more remarkable, to India, with alms for the Christian churches there, which had been founded, it is said, by the Apostles St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew. This was the

first intercourse between England and the far-off Eastern land which now forms part of the British Empire. Alfred had other wars with the Danes, but his courage and determination carried him through all, and his last years were spent in quiet. In 901 he died, and was buried at Winchester, in the new Minster, afterwards called Hyde Abbey, which be had begun, and which his son Edward finished.

The Lord

7. Eadward or Edward the Elder, 901-925. ship of Britain.-Alfred was succeeded by his eldest son Edward, who was as good a soldier, though not so good a scholar, as his father. He became more powerful than anyone before him, for at his death he was King of the English as far as the Humber, and Lord of all Britain; the Northumbrians, whether English, Danes, or Norwegians, the Scots, and the Welsh of Strathclyde (a district extending from the Firth of Clyde southwards into modern Cumberland), all owning him for their lord.

8. Rolf the Northman.-One foreign event in Edward's time had important consequences for England. There was a noted Sea-King, the Northman Rolf, called in French Rou and in Latin Rollo, and surnamed, it is said, “ Ganger,” that is, the Goer or Walker, because he was too tall to ride; for when mounted on one of the little horses of his country, his feet touched the ground. Rolf spent many years in plundering, until Charles the Simple, King of the West-Franks, bribed him to peace by granting him the land at the mouth of the Seine. Rolf turned Christian, and proved a good ruler. He was called Duke of the Northmen, or Normans, as the word was softened in French, and his land got the name of Normandy.

CHAPTER V.

FROM ETHELSTAN TO THE DANISH KINGS.

Athelstan; Brunanburh; imperial titles (1)—Edmund; grant of Strathclyde (2)-Edred; St. Dunstan (3)—Edwy; the Monks and the Seculars; Ælfgifu (4) Edgar-tribute of wolves' heads (5)—Edward the Martyr (6)—Æthelred the Unready; Danegeld; invasion of Swegen; martyrdom of Elfheah (7)—the Danish conquest; restoration of Ethelred (8)-Edmund Ironside; division of England (9).

1. Æthelstan, 925-940. Empire of Britain.-Æthelstan, eldest son of Edward, is famous for his victory in 937 at Brunanburh, where he and his brother Edmund overthrew Anlaf, a Danish King from Ireland, Constantine King of Scots, Owen of Cumberland, and all the Scots and Danes and Welsh of the north. Of Anlaf there is a tale that he played the spy in the English camp, disguised, like Alfred before him, as a minstrel; and that Æthelstan and his nobles gave him money, which Anlaf, too proud to keep, buried in the ground. All that is known of the position of Brunanburh is that it was north of Humber. Æthelstan took Northumberland into his own hands, so that now there was but one king in England. He and his successors sometimes called themselves Emperors of Britain, to show that they were lords of the island, and that the Emperors of East and West had no power over them.

2. Eadmund or Edmund the Magnificent (that is, The Doer of Great Deeds), 940-946.-Edmund, a brave warrior like his brother, came to a sad end when still a young man, being stabbed by Liofa, a banished robber, who, having insolently seated himself at the royal board, resisted the

attempts of the King and others to turn him out. Strathclyde was granted by Edmund to Malcolm King of Scots, on condition of service in war.

3. Eadred or Edred, 946-955.-Edmund's sons being still children, his brother Edred was chosen King. He took for his adviser a wise man, Dunstan, afterwards styled Saint, who had been as a youth at the court of King Æthelstan, but, having turned monk, had given himself up to study, and to arts useful for the services of the Church, such as music, painting, and metal-work. By King Edmund he had been made Abbot of Glastonbury.

4. Eadwig or Edwy, 955-959. The Monks and the Seculars.-Edwy, eldest son of Edmund, though still very young, was chosen King after Edred's death. The history of this time is so coloured by party spirit that it is hard to make out the truth. The main subject of dispute was the reformation of the Church. The Danish invaders had destroyed many monasteries; in those which were left discipline had become lax, and the monks lived much as they chose. Among the secular clergy —that is, those who were not monks, but parsons of parishes and canons of cathedral and collegiate churches-there is said to have been much ignorance and vice. Moreover, the secular clergy were often married, and this was specially hateful in the eyes of the reforming Bishops, who shared the idea which had gradually grown up in the Western Church, that the clergy ought not to marry. They accordingly set themselves with great zeal, not only to make the monks live according to their rules, but also to force the married clergy to put away their wives. Further, they tried to get all the cathedral and other great churches into the hands of monks, whom they liked better than secular clergymen, married or unmarried. The quarrel ran high, and while Dunstan stood at the head of the monks' party, young King Edwy, though no enemy to the Church, took the other side. Edwy's mar

riage was another cause of strife. It appears that his wife Elfgifu (in Latin Elgiva) was related to him within the very numerous degrees then forbidden by the ecclesiastical law of marriage, and Dunstan's party therefore refused to consider her as the King's wife. Edwy, on his part, seems to have behaved unwisely, and in the end he drove Dunstan out of the country. Whether it was by this, or by his government in general, the King gave great offence, and in 957 all England north of Thames revolted, choosing Edwy's brother Edgar for its King. The next year Archbishop Oda prevailed on Edwy to divorce Ælfgifu. There is a horrible story, which happily there seems no good reason for believing, that Oda had her branded in the face and banished, and that when she ventured to come back his men put her to a cruel death. Nothing is really known of her end; as for Edwy, he died in 959.

5. Eadgar or Edgar, surnamed the Peaceful, 959-975.——— Edwy's brother, King Edgar, a youth of sixteen, was now chosen by the whole people as their ruler, and his reign proved peaceable and prosperous. Like Alfred, he maintained a strong fleet, and thereby kept the country from invasion. Dunstan, now Archbishop of Canterbury, was his counsellor; and, though in many churches secular priests were turned out to make way for monks, Dunstan was too much a statesman to foster the violence of many of his party. Edgar's coronation was put off until he had reigned thirteen years. It took place at Bath in 973, after which he sailed with his fleet to Chester, where some six or eight of his vassal Kings with their fleets came to do him homage, -the ceremony by which one man declared himself vassal of another. There is a tradition that Edgar exacted of Idwal, a rebellious North-Welsh prince, a tribute of three hundred wolves' heads yearly, and that this he paid for three years, but omitted in the fourth, declaring that he could find no