CHAP. V.

Elfred.

901

937.

It was probably to aid in the re-peopling of the town that a secular house of the Mercian Saint, The House of Werburgh, was founded in the north-eastern quarter of the city and the security of the little settlement may have been provided for by a custom which we find existing in later days, that bound every hide in the shire about it to furnish a man at its town-reeve's call to repair walls and bridge.1

Outbreak

Small as the settlement was, the end of the Mercian rulers was gained by their seizure of the town, for of the Danes. the shortest road between Wales and the Danelaw was now in their hands. That the check was felt by the Danes was shown by a growing restlessness which broke out at last in open warfare. A raid of the pirates over Mercia in 9102 had to be repulsed at Tottenhale by a joint force of Mercians and WestSaxons under Eadward himself, who avenged the attack by following the beaten host across the border and harrying their land there for five weeks. The blow seems to have roused the warlike spirit of the

3

1 It was only by slow degrees that the new town extended itself over the ruins of the old. St. Werburgh's house stood alone in its north-eastern quarter; and only the southern half of the city, where we find on either side of Bridge Street the churches of St. Bridget and St. Michael, can represent the town of Æthelflæd, for yet more to the south the church of St. Olaf marks a later extension which can hardly be earlier than the days of Cnut.

2 Eng. Chron. (Worc.), a. 910. The raid is told in greater detail by Ethelweard, whose Chronicle, till now a mere version of the English Chronicle of Winchester, becomes independent from about 893 to its close in 975. His whole work, however, is all but worthless.

3 Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 910.

CHAP. V.

whole Danelaw. In 911 Eadward was drawn southThe House of ward by danger from the sea, where in the preceding

Elfred.

901937.

Eadward and the Thames

valley.

year a pirate force had landed in the Severn and been driven back with difficulty by the fyrds of the neighbouring shires. It marks the quiet work that had been done in the years of rest which Alfred had gained, that Eadward was able to muster a hundred ships and to ride master of the Channel. But with his stay in the south Mercia was left to its own resources; and the Northumbrians resolved to avenge the losses of their brethren across Trent. A "frith" like that of East-Anglia had bound them till now to Wessex, but this was broken, and setting aside the offers of accommodation made by Eadward and his Witenagemot,' the pirate host under its kings Ecwils and Halfdene poured ravaging over Mercia. But distant as Eadward himself was, his forces were already on the march, and as the Danes fell back loaded with spoil they were overtaken and attacked. The English victory was complete, and thousands of Danes fell round their two kings on the field.

If Ealdorman Æthelred led the host to this triumph, the effort must have been his last; for he died in 912,2 and the changes which followed on his death told on the whole character of the conflict. Within Mercia itself the change was little, for Æthelflæd, who remained its sole governor, had acted throughout as joint-ruler with Ethelred. But for Wessex it was great. The death of Ethelred enabled Eadward to take a new step in the disintegration of the shrunken 1 Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 911. 2 Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 912.

Mercian realm, and he now took from Mercia London
and Oxford "and the lands that belonged to them,'
in other words, the lower valley of the Thames. The
annexation was important, not only as pointing for-
ward to Eadward's plans of a yet wider re-union,
but as doing away with the barrier which Ælfred
had set between Wessex and the Danelaw by the in-
terposition of the Mercian Ealdormanry. In bringing
his border into contact with that of the Danelaw,
Eadward announced that the time of rest was over,
and that a time of action had begun. His course,
however, was marked by extreme caution. It was
easy to secure the line of the Thames by renewing, as
Elfred had done, the older walls of London, a work of
reparation which has left its mark everywhere among
the Roman brickwork and masonry; while the deep
morasses along the valley of the Lea still offered a fair
check to any attack from the Danes in Essex. But
at the point where the boundary of the Danelaw
struck to the north-west from the Lea across the bare
uplands of the Chilterns the way lay open to an in-
road, and it was to guard this open ground that Eadward
seized the ford over the Lea, first by a fort or
stockaded mound on the northern side of the river
between the little streams of the Maran and the
Beane, and then by a like fort on the southern bank,
two "burhs" which have since grown into our
Hertford. The bend of its present shire-line east-
ward along the upper course of the Stort and so round
by the crest of the Chilterns, may represent the land
which Eadward took across the line fixed by the
1 Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 912.

2 Ib. a. 913

CHAP. V.

The House of
Elfred.

901

937.