approach, the Danish host going over quietly to her side. She was in
communication with the Danes of York for the surrender of that city,
too, when she died suddenly in her royal town of Tamworth, in the year
918.

Meanwhile Eadward had been pushing forward his own boundary in the east,
building _burhs_ at Hertford and Witham, and endeavouring to subjugate
the Danish league in Bedford, Huntingdon, and Northampton. In 915,
Thurketel, the jarl of Bedford, "sought him for lord," and Eadward
afterwards built a _burh_ there also. On his sister's death, he annexed
all her territories, and then, in a fierce and long doubtful struggle,
reconquered not only Huntingdon and Northampton but East Anglia as well.
The Christian English hailed him as a deliverer. Next, he turned on
Stamford, the Danish capital of the Fens, and on Nottingham, the
stronghold of the Southumbrian host. In both towns he erected _burhs_.
These successes once more placed the West Saxon king in the foremost
position amongst the many rulers of Britain. The smaller principalities,
unable to hold their own against the Scandinavians, began spontaneously
to rally round Eadward as their leader and suzerain. In the same year
with the conquest of Stamford, "the kings of the North Welsh, Howel, and
Cledauc, and Jeothwel, and all the North Welsh kin, sought him for
lord." In 923, Eadward pushed further northward, and sent a Mercian host
to conquer "Manchester in Northumbria," and fortify and man it. A line
of twenty fortresses now girdled the English frontier, from Colchester,
through Bedford and Nottingham, to Manchester and Chester. Next year,
Eadward himself, now immediate king of all England south of Humber,
attacked the last remaining Danish kingdom, Northumbria, throwing a
bridge across the Trent at Nottingham, and marching against Bakewell in
Peakland, where again he built a _burh_. The new tactics were too fine
for the rough and ready Danish leaders. Before Eadward reached York, the