ercia was invaded and its under-king driven over sea to
make place for a tributary of the invaders. From Repton half their host
marched northwards to the Tyne, while Guthrum led the rest to Cambridge
to prepare for their next year's attack on Wessex. In 876 his fleet
appeared before Wareham, and in spite of a treaty bought by AElfred, the
northmen threw themselves into Exeter. Their presence there was likely to
stir a rising of the Welsh, and through the winter AElfred girded himself
for this new peril. At break of spring his army closed round the town, a
hired fleet cruised off the coast to guard against rescue, and the defeat
of their fellows at Wareham in an attempt to relieve them drove the
pirates to surrender. They swore to leave Wessex and withdrew to
Gloucester. But AElfred had hardly disbanded his troops when his enemies,
roused by the arrival of fresh hordes eager for plunder, reappeared at
Chippenham, and in the opening of 878 marched ravaging over the land. The
surprise of Wessex was complete, and for a month or two the general panic
left no hope of resistance. AElfred, with his small band of followers,
could only throw himself into a fort raised hastily in the isle of
Athelney among the marshes of the Parret, a position from which he could
watch closely the movements of his foes. But with the first burst of
spring he called the thegns of Somerset to his standard, and still
gathering troops as he moved marched through Wiltshire on the northmen.
He found their host at Edington, defeated it in a great battle, and after
a siege of fourteen days forced them to surrender and to bind themselves
by a solemn peace or "frith" at Wedmore in Somerset. In form the Peace of
Wedmore seemed a surrender of the bulk of Britain to its invaders. All
Northumbria, all East-Anglia, all Central England east of a line which
stretched from Thames' mouth along the Lea to Bedford, thence along the
Ouse to Watling Street, and by Watling Street to Chester, was left
subject to the northmen. Throughout this "Danelaw"--as it was called--the
conquerors settled down among the conquered population as lords of the
soil, thickly in northern Britain, more thinly in its central districts,
but everywhere guarding jealously their old isolation and gathering in
separate "heres" or armies round towns which were only linked in loose
confederacies. The peace had in fact saved little more than Wessex
itself. But in saving Wessex it saved England. The spell