Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IX. OF THE KINGS OF THE ENGLISH FROM THE TIME THAT ENGLAND BECAME ONE KINGDOM TILL THE DANES CAME AGAIN. § i. The Reign Of King -vthelstan. 925—940. When King Edward died, his eldest son Ethelstan was chosen King, and we find it specially said that the Mercians chose him, so that the Mercians must still have had a meeting of their own Wise Men separate from the meeting of the West-Saxons. He was then hallowed as King at Kingston in Surrey, as were several of the Kings after him. You know that Westminster is now the place where our Kings are crowned, but this did not begin till the time of King Harold. King Ethelstan now gave one of his sisters, as I before told you, to Sihtric, the Danish King of Northumberland. But Sihtric died the next year, and then Ethelstan drove out his son Guthfrith or Godfrey, who had succeeded him, and took Northumberland into his own hands. Then the other princes of Britain, Howel King of the West-Welsh,1 and Owen King of Gwent, and Constantine King of Scots, and Ealdred the son of Ead- wulf of Bamborough, tried to fight against Ethelstan, but he overcame them in battle and made them do homage, and hedrove out Ealdred altogether. So Ethelstan was Lord of all Britain, as his father Edward had been before him. 1 The West-Welsh generally means the Welsh of Cornwall and Devonshire, but here it seems to mean the western part of Wales as opposed to Gwent or Monmouthshire. This Howel is a very famous King among the Welsh, on account of the Laws which he put together. He is called Howel the Good. Thus much we learn from the Chronicle with a little help from Florence, who explains some matters a little more at large; but it is somewhat strange that, though Ethelstan was undoubtedly one of our greatest Kings, the account of his reign in the...