of all England drew him
to the north. Northumbria was still strong; in learning and arts it stood
at the head of the English race; and under a king like Eadberht it would
have withstood Ecgberht as resolutely as it had withstood AEthelbald. But
the ruin of Jarrow and Wearmouth had cast on it a spell of terror. Torn
by civil strife, and desperate of finding in itself the union needed to
meet the northmen, Northumbria sought union and deliverance in subjection
to a foreign master. Its thegns met Ecgberht in Derbyshire, and owned the
supremacy of Wessex.

[Sidenote: Conquests of the Northmen]

With the submission of Northumbria the work which Oswiu and AEthelbald had
failed to do was done, and the whole English race was for the first time
knit together under a single rule. The union came not a moment too soon.
Had the old severance of people from people, the old civil strife within
each separate realm, gone on it is hard to see how the attacks of the
northmen could have been withstood. They were already settled in Ireland;
and from Ireland a northern host landed in 836 at Charmouth in
Dorsetshire strong enough to drive Ecgberht, when he hastened to meet
them, from the field. His victory the year after at Hengestdun won a
little rest for the land; but AEthelwulf who mounted the throne on
Ecgberht's death in 839 had to face an attack which was only beaten off
by years of hard fighting. AEthelwulf fought bravely in defence of his
realm; in his defeat at Charmouth as in a final victory at Aclea in 851
he led his troops in person against the sea-robbers; and his success won
peace for the land through the short and uneventful reigns of his sons
AEthelbald and AEthelberht. But the northern storm burst in full force upon
England when a third son, AEthelred, followed his brothers on the throne.
The northmen were now settled on the coast of Ireland and the coast of
Gaul; they were masters of the sea; and from west and east alike they
closed upon Britain. While one host from Ireland fell on the Scot kingdom
north of the Firth of Forth, another from Scandinavia landed in 866 on
the coast of East-Anglia under Ivar the Boneless and marched the next
year upon York. A victory over two claimants of its crown gave the
pirates Northumbrian and seizing the passage of the Trent they threatened
an attack on the Mercian realm. Mercia was saved by a march of King
AEthelred to Nottingham, but the peace he made there with the northmen
left them le