and blend in a common England. Such a three-
fold kingship and lordship of the Dane Æthelstan
had won in his earliest years of rule; and the years
of peace which had passed since the submission of
Northumbria seemed the beginning of a time of
national union. But with the rising under Olaf the
prospect of union vanished like a dream. Van-
quished as it was, Northumbria was still strong
enough to tear itself away from the king's personal
grasp, and to force Æthelstan to restore its old un-
der-kingship, with the isolated life which that king-
ship embodied. The hard fighting of his successors,
if it forced the north to own their supremacy, never
succeeded in bringing it again within their personal
sovereignty: the under-kingdom was, indeed, re-
placed later by an earldom, but the land remained
almost as much apart from the kingdom at large
under earl as under under-king; and on the very
eve of the Norman Conquest, no king's writ ran in
the Northumbria of Siward.

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