Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Scandinavian Britain - II. The Danelaw - 3. The Five Boroughs
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the Saxons ; in which two kings, two jarls and other
leading men were slain. When ealdorman Æthelred
died, his widow Æthelflæd, the Lady of the Mercians,
continued his policy of building forts to protect English
Mercia, and the war against East Anglia naturally
drew the Five Boroughs more and more into conflict
with the growing Anglo-Saxon power.
On St. John the Baptist’s day of 918 (Florence of
Worcester), the Northampton and Leicester Danes
attacked the fort at Towcester, and, failing to storm
it, raided Buckinghamshire. But when Colchester
was taken and the kingdom of East Anglia came
to an end, the resistance of the Five Boroughs
weakened. Early in 919 Leicester made voluntary
submission to the Lady of the Mercians, and even
York offered adherence to her. In April King Eadward
marched to Stamford, built a fort on the south bank
of the Welland, and received the submission of the
neighbourhood. Thence he went to Nottingham,
which had been captured by his troops ; he repaired
the fortifications "and stationed both English and
Danes therein."
This is the beginning of a new policy. The king of
Wessex became actual and personal lord of a mixed
population of Angles and Danes. It was no longer a
question of mutual slaughter, but of a modus vivendi ;
the Danes were already there, and after thirty years’
possession they had taken root in the soil. But as
the earlier part of this war had been a war of extermination,
driving the Danes from the southern counties,
the change in attitude is noteworthy. The southern
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