surable overlordship on the side of the greater potentate. Indeed from the language used by the chronicler in recording the events of the year 893 we might be led to think that the Danes themselves, not only in East-Anglia but in Northumberland, had given oaths and hostages at some time before that year. About the same time also as the fortification of London, Ælfred received the submission of several princes of Wales, who agreed to pay to him the same subjection which Æthelred paid in Mercia. Ælfred was thus, in name at least, restored to the position of his grandfather Ecgberht, as overlord of all England, with a much greater immediate dominion than Ecgberht had ever held.
For several years no warlike acts are recorded. We hear chiefly of Ælfred sending alms to Rome, and of his reception of his British friend and biographer Asser, and of saintly wanderers from Ireland. This was the chief time of his literary work, and most likely of his legislation also. When the time of strife came again, it began with an attack from the continent. In 893 the Northmen who had been defeated by King Arnulf of Germany crossed to England, and landed on the borders of Kent and Sussex, while the famous wiking Hasting sailed up the Thames. Ælfred now exacted fresh oaths and hostages from the Danes in England, both in East-Anglia and in Northumberland; but they presently broke their oaths, and joined the invaders. The campaigns which followed in 894 and following years to 897 are told with great detail in the Chronicles. They are remarkable for the great extent of country which they cover. The war begins in south-eastern England, but it presently spreads into the distant west. While the king goes to defend Exeter, attacked by sea by the Danes from Northumberland and East-Anglia, Ealdorman Æthelred has to follow the other army along both the Thames and the Severn. Defeated at Buttington, they go back to Essex; then, with new forces from Northumberland and East-Anglia, they cross the island again, and winter in the Wirrall in Cheshire, within the forsaken walls of the city which had been Deva and which was before long to be Chester. The two next years there is fighting in nearly every part of England. The king, the men of London, and the South-Saxons, show themselves vigorous in resistance, and the war goes on as far north as York. In 897 the invaders seem to have been tired out. Some withdrew to the continent, some to East-Anglia and Northumberland. Warfare by land comes to an end; and, by improvements in the build of his ships, Ælfred is able to put down the small parties of wikings which still infest the channel. We do not read of any renewed peace, of any more oaths or hostages; perhaps Ælfred had learned how little they went for. But the war clearly came to an end, as for three years more the Chronicles have nothing to record.
Two personal notices of Ælfred during this war are worth noticing. At some early stage of it, the details of which are not easy to settle, Hasting himself swore oaths to Ælfred, and consented to the baptism of his two children, Ælfred being godfather to one and Æthelred to the other. At a later stage, when Hasting had broken his oaths, the two boys and their mother fell into the king's hands, and Ælfred gave them back to Hasting. On the other hand, at the very end of the war, Ælfred hanged the crews of the captured Danish ships. After their repeated oath-breakings and harryings, there was nothing wonderful in this; but it may be noticed as the only act of Ælfred which looks at all like harshness.
In the fourth year after the end of the last Danish war, 28 Oct. 901, Ælfred died in his fifty-third year, and was buried in the New Minster, afterwards Hyde Abbey, at Winchester. By his wife Ealhswith, who survived him till 902 or 905, he left five children—two sons, his successor Eadward, who succeeded him, and Æthelward, and three daughters, Æthelflæd, the Lady of the Mercians, Ælfthryth, married to Baldwin, Count of Flanders, and Æthelgifu, Abbess of Shaftesbury.
The general outward result of the reign of Ælfred is thus perfectly plain. When the Scandinavian invasions threatened the utter overthrow of England, and especially of English Christianity, he saved his own kingdom from the general wreck, and made it the centre for the deliverance and union of the whole country. The Danish invasions did more than any other one cause to bring about the unity of England; but that they did so was only because Ælfred was able to use them to that end. The Danes, by breaking to pieces the other kingdoms and leaving one, gave that one an altogether new position. Ecgberht brought all England under his supremacy as a conqueror; Ælfred and his successors were able to win back that supremacy as deliverers. Ælfred did not form a single kingdom of England, but he took the first steps towards its formation by his son and grandsons. His royal style is remarkable. Besides the obvious title of ‘West-Saxonum rex,’ he very often calls himself ‘Rex Saxonum,’ a title unknown before, and not common afterwards. No
