tame their turbulent vigour. A wave of missionary zeal from Rome and a
backwash from unconquered Ireland had met at the synod of Whitby in
664, and Roman priests recovered what Roman soldiers had lost. But the
church had not yet armed itself with the weapons of the world, and
Christian England was no more a match than Christian Britain had been
for a heathen foe. Ecgberht's feeble successors in Wessex, and their
feebler rivals in the subordinate kingdoms, gave way step by step
before the Danes, until in 879 Ecgberht's grandson Alfred the Great
was, like a second King Arthur, a fugitive lurking in the recesses of
his disappearing realm.

Wessex, however, was more closely knit than any Celtic realm had been;
the Danes were fewer than their Anglo-Saxon predecessors; and Alfred
was made of sterner stuff than early British princes. He was typical of
Wessex; moral strength and all-round capacity rather than supreme
ability in any one direction are his title-deeds to greatness. After
hard fighting he imposed terms of peace upon the Danish leader Guthrum.
England south-west of Watling Street, which ran from London to Chester,
was to be Alfred's, the rest to be Danish; and Guthrum succumbed to the
pacifying influence of Christianity. Not the least of Alfred's gains
was the destruction of Mercia's unity; its royal house had disappeared
in the struggle, and the kingdom was now divided; while Alfred lost his
nominal suzerainty over north-east England, he gained a real
sovereignty over south-west Mercia. His children, Edward the Elder and
Ethelfleda, the Lady of the Mercians, and his grandson Athelstan,
pushed on the expansion of Wessex thus begun, dividing the land as they
won it into shires, each with a burh (borough) or fortified centre for
its military organization; and Anglo-Saxon monarchy reached its zenith
under Edgar, who ruled over the whole of England and asserted a
suzerainty over most of Britain.