s earl with his separate
"host"; within each twelve "lawmen" administered Danish law, while a
common "Thing" may have existed for the whole district. In her attack on
this powerful league AEthelflaed abandoned the older strategy of battle and
raid for that of siege and fortress-building. Advancing along the line of
Trent, she fortified Tamworth and Stafford on its head-waters; when a
rising in Gwent called her back to the Welsh border, her army stormed
Brecknock; and its king no sooner fled for shelter to the northmen in
whose aid he had risen than AEthelflaed at once closed on Derby. Raids from
Middle-England failed to draw the Lady of Mercia from her prey; and Derby
was hardly her own when, turning southward, she forced the surrender of
Leicester. Nor had the brilliancy of his sister's exploits eclipsed those
of the King, for the son of AElfred was a vigorous and active ruler; he
had repulsed a dangerous inroad of the northmen from France, summoned no
doubt by the cry of distress from their brethren in England, and had
bridled East-Anglia to the south by the erection of forts at Hertford and
Witham. On the death of AEthelflaed in 918 he came boldly to the front.
Annexing Mercia to Wessex, and thus gathering the whole strength of the
kingdom into his single hand, he undertook the systematic reduction of
the Danelaw. South of the Middle-English and the Fens lay a tract watered
by the Ouse and the Nen--originally the district of a tribe known as the
South-English, and now, like the Five Boroughs of the north, grouped
round the towns of Bedford, Huntingdon, and Northampton. The reduction of
these was followed by that of East-Anglia; the northmen of the Fens
submitted with Stamford, the Southumbrians with Nottingham. Eadward's
Mercian troops had already seized Manchester; he himself was preparing to
complete his conquests, when in 924 the whole of the North suddenly laid
itself at his feet. Not merely Northumbria but the Scots and the Britons
of Strathclyde "chose him to father and lord."

[Sidenote: AEthelstan]

The triumph was his last. Eadward died in 925, but the reign of his son
AEthelstan, AElfred's golden-haired grandson whom the King had girded as a
child with a sword set in a golden scabbard and a gem-studded belt,
proved even more glorious than his own. In spite of its submission the
North had still to be won. Dread of the northmen had drawn Scot and
Cumbrian to their acknowledgement of Eadward's overlordship, bu