larger and richer part of the land, its
conquerors were no longer drawn greedily westward by the hope of plunder;
while the severance of the British kingdoms took from their enemies the
pressure of a common danger. The conquests of AEthelfrith left him without
a rival in military power, and he turned from victories over the Welsh,
as their English foes called the Britons, to the building up of a
lordship over his own countrymen.

[Sidenote: Eadwine]

The power of AEthelberht seems to have declined with old age, and though
the Essex men still owned his supremacy, the English tribes of
Mid-Britain shook it off. So strong however had the instinct of union now
become, that we hear nothing of any return to their old isolation.
Mercians and Southumbrians, Middle-English and South-English now owned
the lordship of the East-English King Raedwald. The shelter given by
Raedwald to AElla's son Eadwine served as a pretext for a Northumbrian
attack. Fortune however deserted AEthelfrith, and a snatch of northern
song still tells of the day when the river Idle by Retford saw his defeat
and fall. But the greatness of Northumbria survived its king. In 617
Eadwine was welcomed back by his own men of Deira; and his conquest of
Bernicia maintained that union of the two realms which the Bernician
conquest of Deira had first brought about. The greatness of Northumbria
now reached its height. Within his own dominions, Eadwine displayed a
genius for civil government which shows how utterly the mere age of
conquest had passed away. With him began the English proverb so often
applied to after kings: "A woman with her babe might walk scatheless from
sea to sea in Eadwine's day." Peaceful communication revived along the
deserted highways; the springs by the roadside were marked with stakes,
and a cup of brass set beside each for the traveller's refreshment. Some
faint traditions of the Roman past may have flung their glory round this
new "Empire of the English"; a royal standard of purple and gold floated
before Eadwine as he rode through the villages; a feather tuft attached
to a spear, the Roman tufa, preceded him as he walked through the
streets. The Northumbrian king became in fact supreme over Britain as no
king of English blood had been before. Northward his frontier reached to
the Firth of Forth, and here, if we trust tradition, Eadwine founded a
city which bore his name, Edinburgh, Eadwine's burgh. To the west his
arms crushed the long