disasters which brought about the collapse of Mercia in 825. Wessex and Mercia, as it were, changed parts. Within a year the Mercian kingdom dwindled to half its former size, while Wessex expanded so that it may be regarded henceforth as including all England south of the Thames. Kent, it is true, still retained its individuality in the hands of Ecgbert's son, as an under-kingdom enjoying its own special customs, and as the chief seat of church government; but its affairs were nevertheless directed from Winchester, and the archbishops of Canterbury could no longer look to Tamworth for protection, but were brought much more under West Saxon influences.
For the Mercians the immediate question after 825 was, could they maintain their independence or must they accept Ecgbert as an overlord. They evidently went on with the struggle, but their new king, Ludeca, fared no better than Beornwulf. He fell in battle in 827 with five of his dukes. Wiglaf then succeeded, but likewise made no headway, and soon fled into exile. Meantime Ecgbert, with the help of the East Anglians, overran the Midlands at will, and for the moment was acclaimed lord of all men south of the Humber. In 829 he even projected an attack on Northumbria, and led his army to Dore, a frontier village in the Peak district. The Northumbrian king at this time was Eanred (808-840). He came to Dore and apparently bought off Ecgbert's hostility with offers of homage and perhaps of tribute. Too much has sometimes been made of these episodes. They have even been treated as marking the unification of England under a single overlord, but certainly they had no such result. Ecgbert's position in Mercia was really precarious, and the very next year we find Wiglaf restored to his kingdom. Patriotic West Saxon tradition in later days liked to picture Ecgbert as a "Bretwalda" worthy to be classed with Edwin and Oswy and the other ancient heroes who in Bede's pages stood pre-eminent as wielding an imperium before the rise of Mercia; but eulogy must not be mistaken for sober history. It would seem, on the contrary, that Ecgbert's power soon waned, and that Wiglaf's restoration was due to a Mercian revival. The Wessex chronicle gives no hint that Ecgbert was active in Mercia after 830, nor do any Mercian notables attest his landbooks. It has indeed been suggested that the Aethelstan, who ruled East Anglia in Ecgbert's later years, was one of his sons, but this is a guess incapable of proof and hardly in harmony with the independence admittedly enjoyed by the East Anglians shortly afterwards.
Ecgbert's last years are of interest not because of any growth of unity in England but because they witnessed the re-appearance of the Vikings and the consequent rise of a new and grave danger for all the English kingdoms. All through the first quarter of the ninth century Scandinavian long-ships had been harrying Western Scotland and Ireland, coming by way of the Faroe islands and the Orkneys. Beginning in 795 with attacks on Skye, they had in 802 come south to Iona and
