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Edward been assumed as settled. After receiving the submission of Thurcytel and his 'holds,' Eadward went to Bedford early in November, stayed there a month, and fortified it with a 'burh' on the southern side of the river. After a while Thurcytel and his Danes, finding that England was no place for them under such a King, obtained his leave to take ship and depart to 'Frankland.' Eadward restored Maldon and put a garrison there, perhaps in 917 {A.-S. Chron., Winton, 920; ,918), and the next year advanced to Towcester, built a 'burh' there, and ordered the fortification of Wigmore in Herefordshire. Then a vigorous effort was made by the Danes of Mercia and East Anglia to recover the ground they had lost. They besieged Towcester, Bedford, and Wigmore, but in each case were beaten off. A great host, partly from Huntingdon and partly from East Anglia, raised a 'work' at Tempsford as a point of attack on the English line of the Ouse, leaving Huntingdon deserted. This army was defeated, with the loss of the Danish king of East Anglia and many others, and an attack made on Maldon by the East Angles, in alliance with a viking fleet, was also foiled. Finally Eadward compelled the jarl Thurferth and the Danes of Northampton 'to seek him for father and lord,' and fortified Huntingdon and Colchester. The year was evidently a critical one; the struggle ended in the complete victory of the English king, who received the submission of the Danes of East Anglia, Essex, and Cambridge.

Meanwhile the Lady of the Mercians had, after some trouble, compelled the Welsh to keep the peace, and had then turned against the Danes of the Five Boroughs, subduing Derby and Leicester. She lived to hear that the people of York had submitted to her, and then died at Tamworth on 12 June 918 [on this date see under Ethelfleda (DNB00). Her vigorous policy had done much to forward the success of her brother. Between them they had succeeded in setting up a line of strongly fortified places which guarded all the approaches from the north from the Blackwater to the Lea, from the Lea to the Ouse, and from the Ouse to the Dee and the Mersey. Eadward was completing the reduction of the Fen country by the fortification of Stamford, when he heard of her death. He reduced Nottingham, another of the Five Boroughs, and caused it to be fortified afresh and colonised partly by Englishmen and partly by Danes. This brought the reconquest of the Mercian Danelaw to a triumphant close, and Eadward now took a step bv which the people of English Mercia, as well as of the newly conquered district, were brought into immediate dependence on the English king, Æthelflæds daughter Ælfwyn was, it is said, sought in marriage by Sihtric, the Danish king of York (, p. 47). This marriage would have given all the dominions that Æthelflæd had acquired, and all the vast influence which she exercised, into the hands of the Danes. Eadward therefore would not allow Ælfwyn to succeed to her mother's power, and in 919 carried her away into Wessex. The notice of this measure given by Henry of Huntingdon probably preserves the feelings of anger and regret with which the Mercians saw the extinction of the remains of their separate political existence. The ancient Mercian realm was now fully incorporated with Wessex, and all the people in the Mercian land, Danes as well as English, submitted to Eadward. A most important step was thus accomplished in the union of the kingdom.

The death of Æthelflæd appears to have roused the Danes to fresh activity; Sihtric made a raid into Cheshire (, an. 920), and a body of Norwegians from Ireland, who had perhaps been allowed by Æthelflæd to colonise the country round Chester, laid siege to, and possibly took, the town ('urbem Legionum,' Gesta Regum § 133. Mr. Green appears to take this as Leicester, and to believe that the passage refers to the raid of the Danes from Northampton and Leicester on Towcester, placed by the Winchester chronicler under 921, and by Florence, followed in the text, under 918. The help that the pagans received from the Welsh makes it almost certain that William of Malmesbury records a war at Chester, and possibly the siege that in the 'Fragment' of MacFirbisigh is assigned to the period of the last illness of the Mercian ealdorman Æthelred; see under Ethelfleda (DNB00). Eadward recovered the city, and received the submission of the Welsh, 'for the kings of the North Welsh and all the North Welsh race sought him for lord.' He now turned to a fresh enterprise; he desired to close the road from Northumbria into Middle England that gave Manchester its earliest importance, as well as to prepare for an attack on York, where a certain Ragnar had been received as king, Accordingly he fortified and colonised Thelwall, and sent an army to take Manchester in Northumbria, to renew its walls and to man them. This completed the line of fortresses which began with Chester, and he next set about connecting it with the strong places he had gained in the district of the Five Boroughs, for he strengthened Nottingham and built a 'burh' at Bakewell in Peakland, which commanded the Derwent standing about midway between Manchester and Derby. After recording how he placed