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368 of money in "marks" and "ores," and their reckoning of land by "mantals." The term "hundred" indeed was used in the north, but in quite different ways from its uses in Mercia and Wessex. Beyond the Welland it either denoted a sum of 120 ores, and was used as an elliptical expression for 8 pounds of silver or 12 marks, the ore being a sum of 16d., or else it was used as a term of land measurement and denoted 120 mantals, the mantal being a unit of cultivation about half the size of the English "yardland," ten of them making a ploughland or "tenmannetale." Similarly the Northern Danes preserved their own tariff of wergelds, which they stated in "thrymsas" or units of 3d., the hold's wergild being 1000 thrymsas, the jarl's 8000, and an aetheling's 15,000.

Acthelstan's successor was his half-brother Edmund, a youth of eighteen, who had fought at Brunanburh. His accession in October 939 was the signal for a tardy attempt to regain independence on the part of the Yorkshire Danes. Led by Wolfstan, whom Aethelstan had made Archbishop of York, they set up Anlaf Guthfrithson, the King of Dublin, as their ruler. By themselves the men of Yorkshire were perhaps no longer formidable; but the revolt quickly spread to the Five Boroughs, and this enabled Anlaf to cross the Welland and attack Northampton. There he was beaten off; but he soon afterwards stormed Tamworth. He was then himself in turn besieged by Edmund at Leicester. The upshot was a truce, by which Edmund acknowledged the Watling Street as his frontier. This was a great loss; but on Anlaf meeting his death in Bernicia in 941, Edmund at once fell on Anlaf Cuaran, Guthfrithson's cousin and successor; and in 942 he regained the ancient Mercian frontier, which ran from Dore near Sheffield eastwards to Whitwell near Worksop and so to the Humber. Two years later Anlaf Cuaran fled back to Dublin, and Edmund re-entered York, but feeling himself unequal to maintaining control over the whole of Aethelstan's realm, handed over Cumberland in 945 to Malcolm, King of Scots (942-952), on the condition "that he should be his fellow-worker by land and sea," and keep in control the unruly colony of Norwegians, who by this time had firmly seated themselves round Carlisle.

When not fighting Edmund seems to have been much under the influence of churchmen, especially of Oda, a remarkable Dane whom he promoted to the see of Canterbury, and of Dunstan, a Somersetshire noble a trifle younger than himself, whom he made Abbot of Glastonbury probably in 943. It is to Oda and other bishops, rather than to the king himself, that we must ascribe a measure, of considerable importance for the growth of civilisation, which is found in Edmund's dooms. This is an ordinance which declared that for the future a manslayer's kinsmen, provided they lent the culprit no support after the deed, were not to be held liable to make any amends to the slain man's kin, and conversely that the maegth or kindred of the slain man were only to take their