"Never was yet such slaughter In this island, since hitherward English and Saxons came up from the east, Over the broad seas, and won this our land." The fight made Aethelstan once more lord of all Britain. The Scot king hastened to renew his submission, the Welsh and Cornish did him homage, the turbulent Northumbrian Danes bowed before him. He was considered so much the most powerful monarch in Western Europe, that all the neighbouring kings sought his alliance, and asked for the hands of ladies of his house. Of his sisters, one was married to the Emperor Otto I., one to Charles the Simple, King of the West Franks, others to the King of Arles and the Counts of Paris and Flanders. [Sidenote: =Edmund. 941-946.--Strathclyde granted as a fief to the Scotch king.=] Aethelstan died young, and left no son. He was followed on the throne by his two brothers Edmund and Eadred, who were equally unfortunate in being cut off in the flower of their age. Edmund suppressed more than one rebellion of the Northumbrian Danes, and completely conquered the Welsh kingdom of Strathclyde. Instead of incorporating it with England, he bestowed it as a fief on his vassal, Malcolm, King of the Scots, "on condition that he should be his faithful fellow-worker by sea and land." This was the first extension of Scotland to the south of the Clyde and Forth. Up to this time the Scots and the Picts, with whom they had become blended since the Scot Kenneth McAlpine had been elected king of the Picts in 836, had only ruled in the Highlands. Edmund came to a strange and bloody end. As he feasted in his hall at Pucklechurch, in Gloucestershire, he saw to his anger and surprise a notorious outlaw named Leofa enter the hall and seat himself at a table. The servants tried to turn him out, but he held his place, and Edmund grew so wrathful that he sprang from his high seat and rushed down to drag the intruder out with his own hands. He seized Leofa by the hair and threw him down, but the outlaw drew a knife and stabbed him to the heart. [Sidenote: =Eadred. 946-955.=] Eadred, the next king, was a prince of weak health, fonder of the church than the battle-field. Nevertheless he carried on his brother's policy, and kept a firm hand over the whole island of Britain. He put down the last rising of the Danes of Yorkshire, who had proclaimed Eric-with-the-bloody-axe as their king, and made one last attempt to assert their independence. After this he cut up Northumbria into two earldoms, and gave them both to an Englishman named Oswulf, to be ruled as separate provinces. [Sidenote: =Rise of Dunstan.=]