Saxon Conquest of the Danelaw
The conquest of the Danelaw became imperative to the Saxons - at every crisis which befell Wessex, the Danes of the north-east would attack. One example of such an act was the support of the Danes for Ethelwald, pretender to the Wesex throne against Edward the Elder (Ethelwald took Wimborne and Christchurch in Dorset in 901AD).
The Saxons finally overpowered the Danelaw in the 10th century when Athelstan could claim to be the first king of the English and, although its success was to be short-lived, this was the century when the Anglo-Saxon monarchy reached the pinnacle of its power.
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Ethelfleda, Lady of Mercia and sister of Edward the Elder (901-925), commenced the blow to the Danelaw; she conquered all the five Danish boroughs and, abandoning the previous Anglo-Saxon policy of raids and battles, built forts at Derby and Leicester. |
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After Ethelfleda's death in 918, Edward the Elder continued where his sister had left-off by further conquest and fort-building; he conquered the East Midlands, Essex, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and South Lancashire. He built forts to secure the new gains at Bedford, Stamford, Nottingham and Manchester to form a defensive line from the Blackwater to the Lea, the Lea to the Ouse and the Ouse to the Dee and the Mersey.
Having succeeded Alfred the Great to the throne of Wessex, Edward became monarch of the lands up to the Humber, Overlord of North Wales, Northumbria and Strathclyde and was also (Edward, personally) recognised as Overlord by the King of the Scots as a subject ally.
The increasing power of Athelstan who succeeded Edward the Elder in 925 led to a final attempt to destroy the power of the kingdom of Wessex by an alliance of Constantine, King of the Scots, the King of Strathclyde and two heathen Danish kings from Ireland which was a stronghold of the Danes in 937.
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Athelstan routed the allies at the Battle of Brunansburgh and became the undisputed master of England with a vaguer authority over the whole of Britain - Rex Anglorum curegulus totius Britanniae . |
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