isure to prepare for an invasion of East-Anglia, whose
under-king, Eadmund, brought prisoner before their leaders, was bound to
a tree and shot to death with arrows. His martyrdom by the heathen made
Eadmund the St. Sebastian of English legend; in later days his figure
gleamed from the pictured windows of church after church along the
eastern coast, and the stately Abbey of St. Edmundsbury rose over his
relics. With him ended the line of East-Anglian under-kings, for his
kingdom was not only conquered, but divided among the soldiers of the
pirate host when in 880 Guthrum assumed its crown. Already the northmen
had turned to the richer spoil of the great abbeys of the Fen.
Peterborough, Crowland, Ely went up in flames, and their monks fled or
lay slain among the ruins. Mercia, though still free from actual attack,
cowered panic-stricken before the Danes, and by payment of tribute owned
them as its overlords.

[Illustration: England and the Danelaw (v1-map-3t.jpg)]

[Sidenote: Wessex and the Northmen]

In five years the work of Ecgberht had been undone, and England north of
the Thames had been torn from the overlordship of Wessex. So rapid a
change could only have been made possible by the temper of the conquered
kingdoms. To them the conquest was simply their transfer from one
overlord to another, and it may be that in all there were men who
preferred the overlordship of the Northman to the overlordship of the
West-Saxon. But the loss of the subject kingdoms left Wessex face to face
with the invaders. The time had now come for it to fight, not for
supremacy, but for life. As yet the land seemed paralyzed by terror. With
the exception of his one march on Nottingham, King AEthelred had done
nothing to save his under-kingdoms from the wreck. But the pirates no
sooner pushed up Thames to Reading in 871 than the West-Saxons, attacked
on their own soil, turned fiercely at bay. A desperate attack drove the
northmen from Ashdown on the heights that overlook the Vale of White
Horse, but their camp in the tongue of land between the Kennet and Thames
proved impregnable. AEthelred died in the midst of the struggle, and his
brother AElfred, who now became king, bought the withdrawal of the pirates
and a few years' breathing-space for his realm. It was easy for the quick
eye of AElfred to see that the northmen had withdrawn simply with the view
of gaining firmer footing for a new attack; three years indeed had hardly
passed before M