itated the
enterprises of Egbert, who advanced into the centre of the Mercian
territories and made easy conquests over a dispirited and divided
people. In order to engage them more easily to submission, he allowed
Wiglef, their countryman, to retain the title of king, while he himself
exercised the real powers of sovereignty. The anarchy which prevailed in
Northumberland tempted him to carry still further his victorious arms;
and the inhabitants, unable to resist his power, and desirous of
possessing some established form of government, were forward, on his
first appearance, to send deputies, who submitted to his authority and
swore allegiance to him as their sovereign. Egbert, however, still
allowed to Northumberland, as he had done to Mercia and East Anglia, the
power of electing a king, who paid him tribute and was dependent on him.

Thus were united all the kingdoms of the heptarchy in one great state,
near four hundred years after the first arrival of the Saxons in
Britain; and the fortunate arms and prudent policy of Egbert at last
effected what had been so often attempted in vain by so many princes.
Kent, Northumberland, and Mercia, which had successfully aspired to
general dominion, were now incorporated in his empire; and the other
subordinate kingdoms seemed willingly to share the same fate. His
territories were nearly of the same extent with what is now properly
called England; and a favorable prospect was afforded to the
Anglo-Saxons of establishing a civilized monarchy, possessed of
tranquillity within itself, and secure against foreign invasion. This
great event happened in the year 827.

The Saxons, though they had been so long settled in the island, seem not
as yet to have been much improved beyond their German ancestors, either
in arts, civility, knowledge, humanity, justice, or obedience to the
laws. Even Christianity, though it opened the way to connections between
them and the more polished states of Europe, had not hitherto been very
effectual in banishing their ignorance or softening their barbarous
manners. As they received that doctrine through the corrupted channels
of Rome, it carried along with it a great mixture of credulity and
superstition, equally destructive to the understanding and to morals.
The reverence toward saints and relics seems to have almost supplanted
the adoration of the Supreme Being; monastic observances were esteemed
more meritorious than the active virtues; the knowledge