create an England and to crown the lord of the three
realms as its national king. But these things were
far off in Ecgberht's time. His conquests had given
him a supremacy over his fellow-kings, by which they
and their peoples were bound to pay him tribute and
to follow him in war. But their life remained in all
other matters as independent as before. In spite
of submission and tribute, Northumbria seems to
have remained almost wholly detached from its over-
lords. Rival claimants for its throne fought on as
of old, unhindered by any interference from the south,
and the successors of Ecgberht made not a single
effort to rescue it from the Dane. East Anglia re-
mained under its old line of kings, almost as iso-
lated as Northumbria from Wessex, and equally un-
aided by it in the coming struggle. Mercia itself,
broken as it was by defeat after defeat, was far from
passing into a mere province of the West-Saxon
realm; it retained its old national life as it retained
its bounds, and though Ecgberht drove its king
Wiglaf from his throne, he was forced, after three
years of struggle, to replace him on it. Even in later
years it was by ties of blood and wedlock, rather
than by more direct bonds of subjection, that the
policy of Wessex strove to bring the Midland realm
beneath its sway. It was, in fact, only by long and
patient effort that this vague supremacy of the West-
Saxon kings could have been developed into a na-
tional sovereignty, and the effort after such a sov-
ereignty had hardly begun when it was suddenly
broken by the coming of the Danes.

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