Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/74

Rh Mercia and East Anglia; the strife raged all along the line between London and Chester, the King's men throwing up works to guard the shires they were win&shy;ning back foot by foot. Essex seems to have been mastered in 913, Staffordshire and Warwickshire within the next few years. In 915, the Danish rulers of Bed&shy;ford and Northampton gave their allegiance to the great King of Wessex; Derby and Leicester fell before his sister. The Norsemen struggled hard against Edward's iron bit; but the whole of East Anglia and Cambridge yielded to him in 921. By the end of the following year, he was master of Stamford and Nottingham; Lin&shy;colnshire seems to have been the last of his conquests. In 924, all the English, Danes, and Celts in our island chose Edward, the champion of Christianity against heathenism, for their Father and Lord. England, as we see, was speedily becoming something more than a geographical name.

Alfred had been King of the South; Alfred's son had won the Midland; Alfred's grandsons were now to bring the North under their yoke. The Danes drove the many quarrelsome English kingdoms into unity in sheer self-defence; much as in our own time the Austrians helped Italy to become one nation. The Saxon Chronicle in 941 names the Five Danish Burghs which overawed Mercia, and which have had so great an influence on the tongue now spoken by us.