Page:Public School History of England and Canada (1892).djvu/17

 the land. The English also lost much of their fierceness and love of plunder and fighting, and began to love learning as taught them by the monks.

4. Supremacy of Wessex. For a long time after the English came they remained divided under their several kings. In the north there was a powerful kingdom called Northumbria, in the inland another called Mercia, while in the south and west we find another called Wessex. Indeed at one time there were seven of these little kingdoms, known as the “Heptarchy;” but their boundaries were continually changing through the wars waged by one against the other. When one king became stronger than the others he held a kind of supremacy over them, and was known as the “Bretwalds.” At first the King of Northumbria was “Bretwalds”, then the King of Mercia, and finally in 827, Egbert, King of Wessex, got the supremacy and was Bretwalda from the south to the Fifth of Forth. He was alto the king of all the English south of the Thanes. In these days, a king was not called King of England, but King of the English. So, for over 200 years the kings of Wessex held the chief power over the English people.

 

1. The Coming of the Danes.—but peace did not come to the English when Egbert became king, for new enemies appeared. These were the Danes, a people of the same blood as the English, but living in Denmark and Norway. They were called Northmen or Norsemen, and unlike the English, had remained heathens. They were as fierce and warlike as the English had been before Christianity changed their habits and softened their manners. They came in great numbers in their boats, and landing on the coasts of England, Scotland, Ireland, and France, plundered the inhabitants, carrying off prisoners, and burning the homes of the defenceless people. They specially delighted in robbing and burning monasteries, partly because they were the homes of the priests