he collected his materials.

On the other hand, it cannot be denied that while Christianity made
great progress, many marks of heathendom were still left among the
people. Well-worship and stone-worship, devil-craft and sacrifices to
idols, are mentioned in every Anglo-Saxon code of laws, and had to be
provided against even as late as the time of Eadgar. The belief in elves
and other semi-heathen beings, and the reverence for heathen memorials,
was rife, and shows itself in such names as AElfred, elf-counsel;
AElfstan, elf-stone; AElfgifu, elf-given; AEthelstan, noble-stone; and
Wulfstan, wolf-stone. Heathendom was banished from high places, but it
lingered on among the lower classes, and affected the nomenclature even
of the later West Saxon kings themselves. Indeed, it was closely
interwoven with all the life and thought of the people, and entered, in
altered forms, even into the conceptions of Christianity current amongst
them. The Christian poem of Caedmon is tinctured on every page with ideas
derived from the legends of the old heathen mythology. And it will
probably surprise many to learn that even at this late date, tattooing
continued to be practised by the English chieftains.

CHAPTER XII.

THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE KINGDOMS.

With the final triumph of Christianity, all the formative elements of
Anglo-Saxon Britain are complete. We see it, a rough conglomeration of
loosely-aggregated principalities, composed of a fighting aristocracy
and a body of unvalued serfs; while interspersed through its parts are
the bishops, monks, and clergy, centres of nascent civilisation for the
seething mass of noble barbarism. The country is divided into
agricultural colonies, and its only industry is agriculture, its only
wealth, land. We want but one more conspicuous change to make it into
the England of the Augustan Anglo-Saxon age--the reign of Eadgar--and
that one change is the consolidation of the discordant kingdoms under a
single loose over-lordship. To understand this final step, we must
glance briefly at the dull record of the political history.

Under AEthelfrith, Eadwine, and Oswiu, Northumbria had been the chief
power in England. But the eighth century is taken up with the greatness
of Mercia. Ecgfrith, the last great king of Northumbria, whose
over-lordship extended over the Picts of Galloway and the Cumbrians of
Strathclyde, endeavoured to carry his conquests beyond the Forth, and
annex the free land lyi