There was no longer an "ealdorman of Mercia" but the shires did not get an ealdorman apiece and in the Danelagh the name of earl replaced that of ealdorman, the earl being apparently in most cases a Danish jarl.Ībout the year 921, when AEthelflaed died, the absorption of Mercia and East Anglia was completed and before Edward's death, probably in 924, the kings of Wales and of the North had "taken him to father and lord" among them Constantine, the grandson of Kenneth McAlpine, king of the Scots and Picts. Mercia, like Wessex, was parcelled out into shires but beyond Watling Street the shire was the district appertaining to a Danish military centre such as Leicester or Derby and it would appear that south of Watling Street the shire was the district appertaining to one of AEthelflaed's boroughs. The conquest, however, did not mean the expulsion of the Danes, but little more than their effective acceptance of the supremacy of the Saxon king. The great feature of the campaigning was the appropriation of the system borrowed from the Danes themselves of establishing fortified posts or burhs either at strategic points or where villages had already begun to develop into important towns. Hence the reign of Edward was largely taken up with the establishment of a real supremacy over the greater part of the Danelagh, a policy which was practically forced upon the Saxon king and was carried out with great efficiency by the energetic co-operation of the Lady of Mercia, who, like Edward himself, must have inherited her father's military talents and his capacity for inspiring enthusiastic devotion. The relations between Wessex and the Danelagh were doomed not to be permanent, for it was always a difficult matter to keep the Danes from aggressive movement. Alfred's successor on the throne of Wessex was Edward, called the Elder. The "Frith" or agreement with Guthrum manifestly aimed at discouraging intercourse between the Saxon kingdom and the Danelagh, probably because such intercourse was regarded as more likely to bring about hostilities than to increase amity.Īlfred's own kingdom included a large part of Mercia and was under the government of an ealdorman, AEthelred, who may have belonged to the house of Offa, and who had to wife Alfred's very remarkable daughter AEthelflaed, who, after her husband's death, was known as the Lady of Mercia. The Angles might not love the Danes, but after all the Danes were little more alien than the Wessex folk.įinally, if there was any sort of submission of the Danelagh to Alfred's sovereignty it was of a merely formal character. Edmund, had apparently been chosen by the men of East Anglia from the old line, not appointed by the king of Wessex from Ecgbert's line. In East Anglia the Saxon dynasty had no stronghold, and the last sub-king, St. For it must be borne in mind that the north and east had never owned the overlordship of Wessex till forty years before Alfred's accession.
Where the Danes were already masters they were allowed to remain masters the king had better work to do in organising his half of the country than in embarking upon an impracticable attempt to reconquer the Danelagh. Alfred's treaty with the Danes had simply recognised the facts.
When King Alfred died England south of the Tyne was divided into two parts, the line passing diagonally from Chester to the Thames estuary below London.