which AElfred had been forced to man with
Frisian seamen. The national fyrd or levy of all freemen at the King's
call was reorganized. It was now divided into two halves, one of which
served in the field while the other guarded its own burhs and townships
and served to relieve its fellow when the men's forty days of service
were ended. A more disciplined military force was provided by subjecting
all owners of five hides of land to thegn-service, a step which
recognized the change that had now substituted the thegn for the eorl and
in which we see the beginning of a feudal system. How effective these
measures were was seen when the new resistance they met on the Continent
drove the northmen to a fresh attack on Britain. In 893 a large fleet
steered for the Andredsweald, while the sea-king Hasting entered the
Thames. AElfred held both at bay through the year till the men of the
Danelaw rose at their comrades' call. Wessex stood again front to front
with the northmen. But the King's measures had made the realm strong
enough to set aside its old policy of defence for one of vigorous attack.
His son Eadward and his son-in-law AEthelred, whom he had set as Ealdorman
over what remained of Mercia, showed themselves as skilful and active as
the King. The aim of the northmen was to rouse again the hostility of the
Welsh, but while AElfred held Exeter against their fleet, Eadward and
AEthelred caught their army near the Severn and overthrew it with a vast
slaughter at Buttington. The destruction of their camp on the Lea by the
united English forces ended the war; in 897 Hasting again withdrew across
the Channel, and the Danelaw made peace. It was with the peace he had won
still about him that AElfred died in 901, and warrior as his son Eadward
had shown himself, he clung to his father's policy of rest. It was not
till 910 that a fresh rising of the northmen forced AElfred's children to
gird themselves to the conquest of the Danelaw.

[Sidenote: Eadward the Elder]

While Eadward bridled East-Anglia his sister AEthelflaed, in whose hands
AEthelred's death left English Mercia, attacked the "Five Boroughs," a
rude confederacy which had taken the place of the older Mercian kingdom.
Derby represented the original Mercia on the upper Trent, Lincoln the
Lindiswaras, Leicester the Middle-English, Stamford the province of the
Gyrwas, Nottingham probably that of the Southumbrians. Each of these
"Five Boroughs" seems to have been ruled by it