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The monastic culture of the north was practically blotted out by the heathen Danes, and they brought to an end the Angle Kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, and East Anglia. They overran and occupied the entire north and east of England. But the Kingdom of Wessex in the southwest, which had already become the strongest Anglo-Saxon state under Egbert, was left to struggle successfully against the Danes under its gallant, learned, and truly Christian king, Alfred the Great. Alfred, who ruled from 871 to 901, united all the rest of England against the Danes, and reorganized the Saxon army and revived the navy. He drove the Danes out of Wessex and recovered London. A line drawn approximately from London to modern Liverpool was made the frontier between the West Saxon Kingdom and the Danelaw, as the territory where Danish customs and institutions prevailed was called. Under Alfred’s son and grandsons the Danelaw was gradually reconquered and all England united under one ruler. The Danes had done at least the one service of obliterating the petty kingdoms in the territory they had occupied; and Kent, Sussex, and a part of Mercia had forgotten their differences and accepted a West Saxon king in order to escape the Danes. The Danes also brought England into closer trade relations with the rest of Europe than before, and were more inclined to town life than the country-loving Anglo-Saxons. Their armor was a military improvement; and they brought in a large class of freemen to a land where, for a century or two before, the weak had been falling under the domination of the strong.
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