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The abdication of Ina was not productive of good consequences to Wessex; and for nineteen years, from 733 to 752, the country was subject, as has already been mentioned, to the yoke of Mercia until, led by their king Cuthred, the second in succession to Ina, the people won freedom at the battle of Burford. This stage of the history of Wessex is not very important, and closes in 802, when the great king Egbert ascended the throne.

Egbert had laid claim to the throne on the death of Cynewulf, which took place in 784, but without success. Bertric was elected. Fear of the vengeance of his more successful rival caused him to take refuge at the court of Offa of Mercia, but still pursued by the jealousy of Bertric he eventually withdrew to the court of Charles the Great. A close friendship arose between the two, and Egbert modelled his after-career on that of his benefactor. On the death of Bertric he was elected in his absence by the Witena-gemot, or assembly of the wise men, in due form, and reigned until 836. At once he set himself to win a superiority over the island, as Charles had established a dominion on the continent. In the cases of the southern kingdoms his task was easy, and they submitted without a blow; East Anglia being allowed to retain her line of sovereigns as subordinate kings, Kent, Essex and Sussex being practically annexed to Wessex. But with Mercia the task was not so easy. However, in 823 he defeated the Mercians so completely at the great battle of Ellandune that their subject kingdoms, the names and extent of which are not exactly known, were at once annexed to Wessex; and four years later Mercia itself owned his supremacy, the king becoming his subordinate. In the following year Northumbria, torn to pieces by internal dissensions, submitted on similar terms. He thus became ruler over all England, and is deservedly honoured by the "Chronicle" with the title of Bretwalda, or "Wealder of Britain," which is bestowed on some of his predecessors with far more questionable propriety.

MEETING OF THE SHIRE-MOOT. (See p. [34.])

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Not only did Egbert set himself the task of mastering all the English; but he determined to conquer territory from the Welsh as well. During the greater part of the reign the struggle went on with varying fortunes, the general result being that Devonshire became English, that after the subjection of Mercia the whole of Wales proper submitted (828), but that he failed to make any impression upon the Celtic peoples north of the Dee. In 835, the year before he died, the West Welsh, or Cornish, rose in arms, and were reinforced by the Danes, who now began to scourge the English coasts. Egbert, however, won a victory over them at Hengestesdun. At the time of his death this great king ruled over the whole country south of the Forth, with the exception of Cornwall and the south-west of Scotland and north-west corner of England. Evidently he must have been a man of first-rate ability; but of his personal character and disposition singularly little is known.

Before coming to the period when the Danish invasions (which, however, had already begun) became a matter of annual occurrence, it may be well to see what changes had been effected in the social system of our ancestors since their migration from the banks of the Elbe.

The system of land-owning was much changed, and private property in land became the rule rather than the exception. At first land was allotted to each village, and every family had a portion, known as a hide, as its share. The dimensions of the hide appear to have varied according to locality; as a rule it comprised from thirty to forty acres, but in later times it covered as much as a hundred and twenty. The remainder of the land was theoretically public property, and hence was called folkland; but it was in the hands of the king, who, with the assent of the Witena-gemot, made grants of it from time to time to his thegns, or to the great monasteries, when it was known as bookland, land that is granted out on copyhold tenure—to use a modern legal equivalent, which is fairly exact. Ethel, or alod, was land held by undisputed possession from the first settlement, and which could be transmitted from father to son. The owners of Ethel had no title-deeds to show, but based their claim to ownership on tradition. Later on, however, the distinction between Ethel and bookland disappears, the owners of the former finding it a safer course to get a charter for their property.

As to the administration of the English kingdoms, the important point to notice is that it was not entirely in the hands of a central authority, but each local community had its own affairs in its hands to a very considerable extent. In viewing the social organism, it will be well to start, as before, from the village community, whether in the form of vicus or rural township, town or group of houses surrounded by a quickset hedge or tun, and borough the dwellings round the fortified house (burh) of a great noble. In each of these there was a moot, or local assembly, presided over by a magistrate or reeve, who was at first elected by the general body of the inhabitants, but later on appointed by the neighbouring nobility. So, too, the judicial functions of these petty assemblies were rapidly taken from them, and cases were tried instead at the manor-courts of the great lords.