kingdoms, duchies, and counties, each with its proper governor, and all governed by equal laws.

On Christmas Day, 800, Charles was crowned by Pope Leo III. at Rome, and proclaimed Cæsar Augustus, the successor of the old Emperors of Rome. Egbert was present at the ceremony. That year, or very soon afterwards, he heard of his own accession to the throne of his native country. King Brihtric was dead, poisoned by his wife. She had mixed the draught for a young man of whom she was jealous, and her husband drank it by mistake. Egbert, who was now the only descendant of the old Wessex kings, was chosen in his absence. He seems to have set himself to carry out the plans which he had learnt to form in the company of the Emperor Charles. He had a long and hard struggle before him. For twenty years and more he was engaged in a conflict with Mercia. In 823 came his success, and, if the Saxon Chronicle is to be believed, came all at once. "In this year Egbert, King of the West Saxons, and Beornwulf, King of the Mercians, fought at Ellandune [probably Wilton, near Salisbury]. Egbert gained the victory. The slaughter was very great. Then the King sent his son Ethelfulf, with Ealstan the Bishop and Wulfhard the Count, into Kent with a great army. These put to flight Baldred, King of Kent, in the northern part of that region near the river Kent. After this the people of Kent and of

* See “Germany," Story of the Nations (pp. 58-91). There could not then have been a better place than this for Egbert to prepare himself for his future work. In Charles's camps he learnt the art of war, and in him saw how a great kingdom might be ruled wisely and justly.

KING EGBERT'S CONQUESTS.

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Surrey, and the South Saxons, and the East Saxons, came over to him. And these in former, times had been unjustly wrested from his ancestors. In this same year also the King of the East Angles and his people begged King Egbert to make peace with them and to be their protector. This they did for fear of the

Mercians. In this year also the East Angles slew Beornwulf, King of the Mercians." We may guess that many things had been preparing the way for this result, and that the success was not quite as sudden as is here described. Anyhow, Egbert was now overlord of Southern and Western England. Four years later his dominion was largely extended. I quote again from the Saxon Chronicle: "In this same year (827) King Egbert subdued the kingdom of the Mercians, and all the region that is to the south of the Humber. . . . He also led an army to Dore [probably in Yorkshire] against the men of Northumbria. But they, meeting him there, offered him submission and peace; after that they parted from each other." The Chronicler tells us that Egbert was "the eighth king that was Bretwalda." The title itself had become extinct for some time, the last holder having been Oswin of Northumbria, who died in 670. It was now revived and given to Egbert. There is no doubt that his power was superior to that exercised by any of his predecessors, and, indeed, was such as to entitle him to be called "King of England." We must not sup pose, however, that all England was subject to him in the same way that his own dominions of Wessex were subject. Probably the relations between him and the other English princes were various. Kent, with which

he was connected by birth, and which was ruled by his son, may be said to have been as much subject to him as was Wessex itself. Northern England retained, it would seem, more independence. Mercia was not absolutely conquered till long afterwards, while Northumbria, by its voluntary acknowledgment of Egbert's supremacy, preserved its freedom practitically entire.

It was not only over the English that Egbert gained his successes. The British kingdoms also felt his power. In the year 828 he led an army against the North Britons," i.e., the inhabitants of North Wales, and made them all humbly obedient to him. The Celtic kings of Cumberland and Strathclyde probably followed the same course, as did the Northumbrians, and escaped attack by a submission which left them still free.

Egbert died in 836, but not till he had seen the first beginnings of another great movement of races, which was to trouble for many years, and in the end to overthrow, the kingdom which he had built up. After some four centuries of conflict, first against the Britons, then among themselves, the English had been wrought into one power. And now another stock of their own race, under the names of Danes, Northmen, Normans, was beginning to bring that power to the ground. So important a subject demands a new chapter.

THE SUCCESSORS OF EGBERT, AND THE DANES.

WE have seen that for more than a hundred years before the end of the Roman dominion, the eastern and southern shores of Britain were ravaged by fleets of pirates from Northern and Eastern Europe. We have also seen that when the Roman armies were withdrawn, these ravages became more serious and more constant; that, in fact, the plunderers became. conquerors, and possessed themselves of the whole island, the mountainous and remote districts of the west excepted. When this conquest was complete, the visits from these dwellers in the North and East ceased altogether. For two hundred and fifty years. after Uffa landed on the coast of Norfolk, and founded the kingdom of East Anglia, the rovers either stopped at home, or busied themselves with other expeditions. For some time a feeling of kinship would prevent them 'from invading the new dwelling-places of their own relatives. Afterwards the southward movement of other tribes left them room to expand. Indeed, the natives of the old English, Jutish, and Saxon regions from which the conquerors came forth, do not seem to have ever sent out again any great number of

adventurers. The rovers of the sea, of whom we shall hear so much for the next hundred and fifty years, came from more northern parts, from the peninsula and islands of Denmark, from the coasts. of Sweden and Norway. The Irish Chronicles speak of them as of two races, the Fingalls (fair strangers), whom we may identify with the Swedes and Norwegians, and the Dubhgalls (dark strangers), in whom we recognize the Danes. The latter seem to have

been, as they have often shown themselves in later times, the stronger and the ruling race, and this is the name by which they will be known in the story which we have now to tell.

In 753 we hear of a landing in the Isle of Thanet; but there is nothing to show who were the invaders. The first express mention of the Danes by the Saxon Chronicler is under the year 787. "In these days there came for the first time three ships of the Northmen to the land of the Herethi [probably Dorsetshire]. The King's lieutenant rode thither, and would have made them come to the King's house, for he knew not who they were. But there was he slain. These were the first ships of the Danes that came into England." Ten years later we hear of them on the east coast. "Certain Pagans made ravages among the Northumbrians, and plundered the monastery which is at the mouth of the Wear. One of their chiefs was slain, and sundry of their ships wrecked. Many of the men were drowned, and such as reached the harbour alive were straightway slain." Little mercy then, as afterwards, was shown on either side.

For some years after this date the Saxon Chronicle