on of the throne. From this fatal cause,
together with the admiration of the monastic life, and the opinion of
merit attending the preservation of chastity even in a married state,
the royal families had been entirely extinguished in all the kingdoms
except that of Wessex; and the emulations, suspicions, and conspiracies,
which had formerly been confined to the princes of the blood alone, were
now diffused among all the nobility in the several Saxon states. Egbert
was the sole descendant of those first conquerors who subdued Britain,
and who enhanced their authority by claiming a pedigree from Woden, the
supreme divinity of their ancestors. But that prince, though invited by
this favorable circumstance to make attempts on the neighboring Saxons,
gave them for some time no disturbance, and rather chose to turn his
arms against the Britons in Cornwall, whom he defeated in several
battles. He was recalled from the conquest of that country by an
invasion made upon his dominions by Bernulf, King of Mercia.

The Mercians, before the accession of Egbert, had very nearly attained
the absolute sovereignty in the heptarchy: they had reduced the East
Angles under subjection, and established tributary princes in the
kingdoms of Kent and Essex. Northumberland was involved in anarchy; and
no state of any consequence remained but that of Wessex, which, much
inferior in extent to Mercia, was supported solely by the great
qualities of its sovereign. Egbert led his army against the invaders;
and encountering them at Ellandun, in Wiltshire, obtained a complete
victory, and, by the great slaughter which he made of them in their
flight, gave a mortal blow to the power of the Mercians. While he
himself, in prosecution of his victory, entered their country on the
side of Oxfordshire, and threatened the heart of their dominions, he
sent an army into Kent, commanded by Ethelwulf, his eldest son, and,
expelling Baldred, the tributary King, soon made himself master of that
country.

The kingdom of Essex was conquered with equal facility, and the East
Angles, from their hatred of the Mercian government, which had been
established over them by treachery and violence, and probably exercised
with tyranny, immediately rose in arms and craved the protection of
Egbert. Bernulf, the Mercian King, who marched against them, was
defeated and slain; and two years after, Ludican, his successor, met
with the same fate. These insurrections and calamities facil