urage of the townsmen themselves. Eadward,
after his sister's death, took into his own hands the government of
Mercia, and from that time all southern and central England was
united under him. In =922= the Welsh kings acknowledged his supremacy.

11. =Eadward and the Scots.=--Tradition assigns to Eadward a wider
rule shortly before his death. In the middle of the ninth century the
Picts and the intruding Scots (see p. 42) had been amalgamated under
Keneth MacAlpin, the king of the Scots, and the new kingdom had since
been welded together, just as Mercia and Wessex were being welded
together by the attacks of the Danes. It is said that in =925= the
king of the Scots, together with other northern rulers, chose Eadward
'to father and lord.' Probably this statement only covers some act of
alliance formed by the English king with the king of Scots and other
lesser rulers. Nothing was more natural than that the Scottish king,
Constantine, should wish to obtain the support of Eadward against his
enemies; and it was also natural that if Eadward agreed to support
him, he would require some acknowledgment of the superiority of the
English king; but what was the precise form of the acknowledgment must
remain uncertain. In =925= Eadward died.

12. =AEthelstan. 925--940.=--Three sons of Eadward reigned in
succession. The eldest, of illegitimate birth, was AEthelstan. Sihtric,
the Danish king at York, owned him as over-lord, and on Sihtric's
death in =926=, AEthelstan took Danish North-humberland under his
direct rule. The Welsh kings were reduced to make a fuller
acknowledgment of his supremacy than they had made to his father. He
drove the Welsh out of the half of Exeter which had been left to them,
and confined them to the modern Cornwall beyond the Tamar. Great
rulers on the Continent sought his alliance. The empire of Charles the
Great had broken up. One of AEthelstan's sisters was given to Charles
the Simple, the king of the Western Franks; another to Hugh the Great,
Duke of the French and lord of Paris, who, though nominally the vassal
of the king, was equal in power to his lord, and whose son was
afterwards the first king of modern France. A third sister was given
to Otto, the son of Henry, the king of the Eastern Franks, from whom,
in due time, sprang a new line of Emperors. AEthelstan's greatness drew
upon him the jealousy of the king of the Scots and of all the northern
kings. In =937= he defeated them all in a great batt