was beginning to take an active share in the affairs of the kingdom. He was recognised as "secondarius" in the realm. How much is implied in the title is uncertain. It may be taken as a general description of the part Alfred played as his brother's right-hand man, signing royal warrants next to him, acting as chief officer of the staff in war, and as first minister in time of peace. Soon after Æthelred's accession a general assembly, or moot of the Wise Men, was held, and the question raised whether there should be any division of the royal property between the two brothers. Alfred wished to have his share and to administer it independently. Æthelred replied that he had come into his inheritance so long before his brother, and had added so much to it, that division would be very difficult; but that after his own death Alfred should be sole heir. To this Alfred willingly agreed. The preference for a compromise rather than a quarrel, and of the future to the present, are characteristic both of the man and the family.

This was the situation when, with appalling suddenness, the two young men found themselves the only effective representatives left of the royal house of the West Saxons, and the only English princes who had preserved their royal inheritance. What actually happened is more easily told than explained. In the year 866, when Alfred was

eighteen years old, a great fleet of Danish keels sailed up the mouth of the Wash and landed an army in East Anglia. The four main divisions of Teutonic England, Northumbria, East Anglia [England], Mercia, and Wessex were practically independent of one another. England was divided into four sections isolated like watertight compartments in a ship, in any one of which a disaster might occur which would leave the rest for the time unharmed. The overlordship which Ecgberht had won for Wessex in 827 carried with it hardly any administrative responsibilities and somewhat dubious obligations of mutual defence. So when the Danish host landed in East Anglia there was no national army, but only the East English militia or fyrd, which could be summoned to meet it. The men of each kingdom were well satisfied if they could transfer the burden of an invading host to another folk. What happened in East England indicates how far England was from being a nation with a national consciousness as yet, and suggests the doubt whether the different elements ever would have been welded into one without overwhelming pressure from the outside. The Danish host took up winter quarters and patched up some kind of terms with the East English. It was part of their strategic plan to fight only with extremely mobile forces; so that the first necessity for a successful campaign was to

find a sufficient number of horses. With the whole force horsed they would be able to appear unexpectedly at the point where they had marked down their booty, work their wild will on abbey or town, and disappear laden with spoil long before any local fyrd could assemble.

The East English, thinking perhaps that if the pagans were horsed they would be rid of them, found them horses, and so prepared the scourge which was to be used for their own backs. But the turn of Northumbria came first. There, an internecine struggle had prepared the way for a foreign invasion. Osberht, the hereditary king, had been dethroned, and a rival, Ella, not of royal blood, sat on the throne. The Danes, profiting by the distraction of the country, marched straight into York. Then the two parties united, too late, in an attempt to rally against the common enemy. They succeeded in getting into York over a wooden stockading, which was all its defence. There the Danish leaders turned at bay, and drove the Northumbrians before them. Osberht and Ella were both slain, and so great was the slaughter that those who were left were glad to make peace with the Danes on their own terms. A puppet king was set up in the northern half of Northumbria, and the rest was reserved for plunder rather than possession by this army of pirates. Then England

learned what a Danish conquest meant. At Tynemouth, Streoneshealh, Melrose, and Lastingham smoking and ghastly ruins of once famous abbeys told where the culture and piety and learning of Northumbria lay slain and buried. Holy Island was visited and its ancient monastery plundered. The Bishop of Lindsey went southwards, and the bishopric of Hexham came wholly to an end. Northumbria, which had once been famous as the home and school of saintly men like Cuthbert and Cæadda, and the early makers of English poetry and prose like Bede, Cædmon and Cynewulf, now became for two hundred years the most backward, rude, and forbidding part of England.

With an appetite whetted by success, the Danes turned on Mercia. They seized the passage of the Trent at Nottingham and formed a winter camp there, intending to break out on Mercia as soon as they found a favourable opportunity. opportunity. But the Mercian king, Burhred, was brother-in-law of the young king of Wessex, and Mercia itself marched so closely with the West Saxon borders that if it fell to the Danes it would provide an open door, or rather a choice of open doors into Wessex. So when the news came to Ethelred and Alfred that a Danish camp was formed at Nottingham, and with it an appeal from Burhred for help, they at once gathered an army and marched

towards Nottingham. The Danes were too skilful in tactics to withdraw from a fortified position into the open, and there was as yet no Saxon army which could hope to attack a Danish camp successfully. So the campaign ended without a victory or defeat for either party. So far as any one could be said to have had the upper hand it was the Danes, and their success was won by diplomacy rather than by arms. A treaty was made in which Æthelred and Alfred were outwitted by Ingwar [Hingwar], the Norwegian pirate king. On the other hand, the brothers were so far successful as to avert the Danish onslaught from Mercia. It suited the pirate host best to follow the line of the richest plunder and the least resistance, and they soon found that East England offered both advantages as compared with Mercia.

At the close of the year 869 the Danes turned on East England. How much resistance they met with on this march is uncertain.1 In spite of famous deeds on the part of the defenders they found easy and abundant booty at Peterborough, then known as Medehampstead, and they sacked Crowland and Ely. In each place they found a thriving abbey and left a black and crimson ruin. The sack of Crowland is described in detail in a

1 The incredible story of the exploits of Algar and lay brother Tolby rest only on the authority of the forger Ingulf.