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Hardrada's fleet consisted of two hundred war-ships, and three hundred other vessels, and all the best warriors of Norway were in his host. He sailed first to the Orkneys, where many of the islanders joined him, and then to Yorkshire. After a severe conflict near York, he completely routed Earls Edwin and Morcar, the governors of Northumbria.
The territorial sway of the Archbishop at Ripon must be of earlier origin, and it may even have arisen out of the grant of the monastery with its thirty or forty hides of land to Wilfrid and his retention of them after his elevation to the see of Northumbria.
Dunstan, by whose admonition he bore with patience his frequent bodily pains, prolonged his prayers, and made his palace altogether the school of virtue." But although pious, he was by no means wanting in manly energy, as was shown by his vigorous and successful campaign in Northumbria, on the occasion of the attempt to set Eric, son of Harold, on the throne of Northumbria.
Edwy yawned as he replied, "Thank God it is over; I thought Odo was going to preach to me all day, and the incense almost stifled me; the one good thing is that it is done now, and all England Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Essex, Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia have all acknowledged me as their liege lord, the Basileus of Britain.
Not merely Northumbria but the Scots and the Britons of Strathclyde "chose him to father and lord." The triumph was his last. Eadward died in 925, but the reign of his son Æthelstan, Ælfred's golden-haired grandson whom the King had girded as a child with a sword set in a golden scabbard and a gem-studded belt, proved even more glorious than his own.
For Hubba went to Northumbria, there to complete his conquests, and Halfden was on the western borders of Wessex. And before he went Guthrum took great care for the good ordering of our land and that he might leave it at all at that time was enough to show that he feared no revolt against him. Now as I sat in our hall, listless and downcast, one day in July, Cyneward came in to me.
Northumbria had revolted as one man, from the tyrannous cruelty of Tostig; the insurgents had marched upon York; Tostig had fled in dismay, none as yet knew whither.
Here reigned Ida and his sons six of them for more or less short and stormy periods, and Ethelric of Bernicia, who vanquished the neighbouring prince of Deira, and thus reigned as the first king of Northumbria as Northumbria. The fact that Bamburgh is the only pre-Conquest castle in Northumberland disposes of the claim of Alnwick.
But Ecgberht had wider aims than those of supremacy over Mercia alone. The dream of a union of all England drew him to the north. Northumbria was still strong; in learning and arts it stood at the head of the English race; and under a king like Eadberht it would have withstood Ecgberht as resolutely as it had withstood Æthelbald.
The Saxons of Kent and the Southern Kingdoms generally were converted by missionaries from France or Rome, or native preachers of the first or second Christian generation; those of Northumbria recognise as their Apostles St. Aidan and St. Cuthbert, two Fathers from Iona. The Kingdom of Northumbria, as the name implies, embraced nearly all the country from the Humber to the Pictish border.
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