CHAP. V. Ælfred. 901 937. while drive the West Saxons back over the Watling Street. With the existing military system in fact, it The House of was impossible to bridle the Danes by efficient garrisons, while to bring them to a contented acquiescence in English rule was necessarily a work of time. We can hardly doubt that it was a sense of this danger in his rear, as well as of the formidable nature of the work to be done in the north, which made Eadward halt for a while at the Trent. Instead of a direct march on Northumbria he turned to a distant line of operations, whose aim seemed rather that of defence than of attack. From any direct onset of the Northumbrian Danes on his front the king was nearly secure. The fortresses at Nottingham and Stafford, with the other "burhs" on their flank and rear, made a passage of the Trent difficult, if not impossible. But on his north-western flank Eadward felt more open to attack. Not only might the Danes of Northumbria break over the western moors by the old Roman road from York to the Ribble to call the North Welsh to arms, but the Ostmen from Ireland might by a short march across the same wild tract bring aid to their brethren in Northumbria. indeed this constant succour from Ireland which made the after conquest of the northern Danelaw so long and arduous a task: and we can hardly doubt that it was a sense of the need of isolating Northumbria from both Welshmen and Ostmen ere he could safely attack it which guided the work of Eadward in the north-west. In seizing the estuaries of the Dee and the Mersey His fortresses by her "burhs" at Chester and Runcorn, Æthelflæd in the north-west. CHAP. V. had closed the natural landing-places by which the The House of Ostmen could make their way to York; but the Alfred. 901937. king aimed at barring their path by fortresses which commanded every road across the moors. While with his own host therefore he set about the building of a town at Thelwell in 923, he sent a Mercian force to occupy the old Roman town at Mancunium. To the north of the estuary of the Mersey a triangular mass of hill and moorland juts out from the Pennine range towards the sea, a tract whose slopes and streamvalleys are now the homes of a mighty industry, but which then was silent and desolate.1 On the southern side of this tract its waters gathered together at a point where the road over the moors from Eboracum came down upon the plain; and at this point had grown up under the Roman occupation the town of Mancunium. Since Æthelfrith's day the town had doubtless lain in ruin: but life was probably already flowing back to a site marked out for the dwelling of man, when in 923 Eadward renewed and "manned" the walls of Manchester. In the following year he linked these outlying strongholds with his general line by a burh at Bakewell, on the upper Derwent among the hills of the Peak, a point about mid-way between Manchester and the new English conquest of Derby, while he strengthened the key of his position on the Trent by throwing a bridge over the river at Nottingham, and securing it by a second mound and stockade on the southern bank.3 1 It still formed part of Northumbria. Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 923. "Manchester in Northumbria." 2 Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 923. 3 Ibid. a. 924. CHAP. V. Ælfred. 901 937. Wessex and the north. Efficient as these fortresses were for purposes of defence, they were as efficient for purposes of attack; The House of for from Manchester, or Bakewell, or Nottingham alike, the forces of Eadward could close upon York, whether by the western moors, or through the fastnesses of the Peak, or by the marshy levels along the Don. Eadward seems in fact to have been preparing for a more formidable struggle than any he had as yet undertaken, a struggle not with the Danes of Northumbria only, but with the leagued peoples of all northern Britain. His victories had wholly changed the political relations which had till now existed between the northern states of Britain and the WestSaxon kings. During Alfred's days, as through the earlier days of his son, fear of the Danes had driven the Britons of Strath-Clyde, with the Bernicians under the house of Eadwulf, to seek the friendship, if not the aid, of the house of Cerdic. The same fear had told even more powerfully on the kingdom of the Scots. Pirate raids had been shattering the Scotrealm for a hundred years, when in Elfred's days' a Norse Earldom was set up in the Orkneys and became the base for a more systematic attack. From this base the "black strangers " had ever since been conquering and colonizing the western Hebrides and winning inch by inch the mainland. From Caithness and the tract to which they have left their name of "Southern-land," or Sutherland, they pushed over Ross and Moray till, under its present king, Constantine, the Scot-kingdom had practically shrunk to little 1 Soon after 883. Skene, "Celtic Scotland," i. 344, note. 2 Skene, "Celtic Scotland," i. 341, seq. CHAP. V. Elfred. 901. more than the basin of the Tay. Pressed between The House of the Northmen of the Orkneys and the Danes of the Danelaw, the Scots, and in a lesser degree, their western and southern neighbours in Strath-Clyde and Bernicia, looked naturally with friendship to the power in the south which held the Danes at bay. 937. Submission of But with the triumphs of Eadward and his sister the northern the dread of the Danes was lifted from these northern league. states; and no sooner was it removed than it was replaced by a dread of the West-Saxons themselves. As Æthelflæd pushed the Danelaw further from the Welsh border, we see Welsh princes abandoning the WestSaxon alliance, and turning, though unsuccessfully, to the Dane. And at this moment the approach of Eadward, the steady closing round of his West-Saxon and Mercian hosts, seems to have worked as complete a change of policy in the north. In the gathering of 924 we catch the first signs of that general league of its states which was again and again to front the West-Saxon sovereigns, till it was finally broken by the statesmanship of Eadmund. While Eadward was establishing his base of operations along the south-west of Northumbria, the Scot-king Constantine, with the princes of Strath-Clyde and the lord of Bernicia, seem to have gathered to the aid of the Northumbrians. But if this were so, panic must have broken the dream of war, for we know only of this gathering by the submission to which it led. Eadward was already on his march by the route which led through the hills of the Peak, when his advance was arrested, probably at the point whose significant name of " Dor" CHAP. V. Elfred. or "door" marked the pass that opened from them on to the Northumbrian border, and where a hundred The House of years before the north had submitted to Ecgberht. Instead of fighting, the motley company of allies sought Eadward's camp among the hills and owned him as "father and lord." 1 901937. The triumph over the northern league was hardly Ethelstan. won when in the opening of 925 Eadward died at Fearndun in Mercia, and his son Æthelstan mounted the throne. After tradition preserved lovingly the 3 1 "And him chose there to father and lord the Scot-king and all Scot-folk, and Regnald, and Eadulf's son, and all that dwelt in Northumbria, whether Englishmen or Danish or Northmen or other, and eke the King of the Strath-Clyde Welshmen, aud all Strath-Clyde Welshmen." Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 924. No passage has been more fiercely fought over than this, since the legists of the English court made it the groundwork of the claims which the English crown advanced on the allegiance of Scotland; and it has of late been elaborately discussed by Mr. Robertson on the one side ("Scotland under her Early Kings," ii. 384) and Mr. Freeman on the other ("Norm. Conq." i. Appendix G.). The entry cannot be contemporary, for Regnald, whom it makes king in Northumbria, had died three years before, in 921, nor is there indeed ground for placing the compilation of this section of the Chronicle of Winchester earlier than 975, or the end of Eadgar's reign, some fifty years after the "Commendation" (Earle, Intro. xix-xxii.); and as the "imperial" claims of the English crown seem to date pretty much from the later days of Eadgar or the beginning of Ethelred's reign, an entry made at that time would naturally take its form from them. I cannot see any difference between this submission of the league in 924 and the subsequent submissions of the same confederates after their later outbreaks against Æthelstan, which are clearly mere episodes in the struggle for supremacy in the north. 2 For date see Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 925; for place, Eng. Chron. (Worc.) (D.) a. 924. 3 In the Eng. Chron. of Worcester (or Mercia) we are carefully |