an as AElfred is greater for what he
was than for what he did. No other king ever showed forth so well in
his own person the truth of the saying, 'He that would be first among
you, let him be the servant of all.'

9. =Eadward the Elder. 899--925.=--In =899= AElfred died. He had
already fortified London as an outpost against the Danes, and he left
to his son, Eadward, a small but strong and consolidated kingdom. The
Danes on the other side of the frontier were not united. Guthrum's
kingdom stretched over the old Essex and East Anglia, as well as over
the south-eastern part of the old Mercia. The land from the Humber to
the Nen was under the rule of Danes settled in the towns known to the
English as the Five boroughs of Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Stamford,
and Nottingham. In the old Deira or modern Yorkshire was a separate
Danish kingdom. Danes, in short, settled wherever we now find the
place-names, such as Derby and Whitby, ending in the Danish
termination 'by' instead of in the English terminations 'ton' or
'ham,' as in Luton and Chippenham. Yet even in these parts the bulk of
the population was usually English, and the English population would
everywhere welcome an English conqueror. A century earlier a Mercian
or a North-humbrian had preferred independence to submission to a West
Saxon king. They now preferred a West Saxon king to a Danish master,
especially as the old royal houses were extinct, and there was no one
but the West Saxon king to lead them against the Danes.

10. =Eadward's Conquests.=--Eadward was not, like his father, a
legislator or a scholar, but he was a great warrior. In a series of
campaigns he subdued the Danish parts of England as far north as the
Humber. He was aided by his brother-in-law, AEthelred, and after
AEthelred's death by his own sister, AEthelred's widow, AEthelflaed, the
Lady of the Mercians, one of the few warrior-women of the world. Step
by step the brother and sister won their way, not contenting
themselves with victories in the open country, but securing each
district as they advanced by the erection of 'burhs' or
fortifications. Some of these 'burhs' were placed in desolate Roman
strongholds, such as Chester. Others were raised, like that of
Warwick, on the mounds piled up in past times by a still earlier race.
Others again, like that of Stafford, were placed where no fortress had
been before. Towns, small at first, grew up in and around the 'burhs,'
and were guarded by the co