e name of the land. Slowly as the
conquering tribes had learned to know themselves, by the one national
name of Englishmen, they learned yet more slowly to stamp their name on
the land they had won. It was not till Eadgar's day that the name of
Britain passed into the name of Engla-land, the land of Englishmen,
England. The same vigorous rule which secured rest for the country during
these years of national union told on the growth of material prosperity.
Commerce sprang into a wider life. Its extension is seen in the complaint
that men learned fierceness from the Saxon of Germany, effeminacy from
the Fleming, and drunkenness from the Dane. The laws of AEthelred which
provide for the protection and regulation of foreign trade only recognize
a state of things which grew up under Eadgar. "Men of the Empire,"
traders of Lower Lorraine and the Rhine-land, "Men of Rouen," traders
from the new Norman duchy of the Seine, were seen in the streets of
London. It was in Eadgar's day indeed that London rose to the commercial
greatness it has held ever since.

[Sidenote: Eadward the Martyr]

Though Eadgar reigned for sixteen years, he was still in the prime of
manhood when he died in 975. His death gave a fresh opening to the great
nobles. He had bequeathed the crown to his elder son Eadward; but the
ealdorman of East-Anglia, AEthelwine, rose at once to set a younger child,
AEthelred, on the throne. But the two primates of Canterbury and York who
had joined in setting the crown on the head of Eadgar now joined in
setting it on the head of Eadward, and Dunstan remained as before master
of the realm. The boy's reign however was troubled by strife between the
monastic party and their opponents till in 979 the quarrel was cut short
by his murder at Corfe, and with the accession of AEthelred, the power of
Dunstan made way for that of ealdorman AEthelwine and the queen-mother.
Some years of tranquillity followed this victory; but though AEthelwine
preserved order at home he showed little sense of the danger which
threatened from abroad. The North was girding itself for a fresh, onset
on England. The Scandinavian peoples had drawn together into their
kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway; and it was no longer in isolated
bands but in national hosts that they were about to seek conquests in the
South. As AEthelred drew to manhood some chance descents on the coast told
of this fresh stir in the North, and the usual result of the northman's