The Danes, and their successors the Normans, did not content themselves with the temporary overthrow of the Anglo-Saxon dominion; they annihilated it for ever. In this the Danes may be said to have been more active than the Normans. They not only gradually settled themselves under their own laws and their own chiefs, in half of England, but spread themselves over the whole of it. In the time of Alfred the Great, they once held all England in subjection; and at an early period obtained places amongst the highest ecclesiastical and secular aristocracy of the country. In the tenth century, the Anglo-Saxon king Edgar favoured the Danes so much, that during his reign the Danish power had an opportunity to consolidate and extend itself. Even the Anglo-Saxon royal family became mixed with Danish blood. Among the Anglo-Saxons, both high and low, weakness and proneness to vice went on continually increasing; whilst the Danish dominion, prepared by two centuries of independent Viking expeditions, and by the subsequent settlements of the Northmen, established itself completely, as soon as the sea kings and wandering Vikings were succeeded by Danish monarchs with considerable fleets at their command. All England yielded to the conqueror Canute, and under his wise, powerful, and just administration, enjoyed that tranquillity and happiness of which it had long felt the want. The Anglo-Saxons and Danes now became more amalgamated. But Canute’s sons wanted their father’s ability and strength of purpose. The old dissensions and quarrels broke out afresh; whilst violent internal disturbances in the newly Christianized Scandinavian North, where the Viking spirit became extinguished, deprived the Danes in England of the succour necessary in their contests with the natives. The Danish power in England fell, but left the population completely mixed and saturated with Danish elements. The Anglo-Saxon royal race, as it was called, was now half Danish. The higher clergy and nobility were connected by the closest ties of relationship with the Danes and their chiefs, in whose hands several of the most important fiefs remained. The Danes had acquired considerable influence in many of the largest cities; and in about half of England the majority of the population was of Danish extraction, and possessed Danish laws and other Danish characteristics. The Danes who, naturally enough, could not forget that they had been absolute masters in that conquered land, obeyed unwillingly a king of another race, though they had not the power to place one of their own race upon the throne. The unmixed Saxon population, on the other hand, could not endure that the royal sceptre should continue to be borne, in the once independent country of their forefathers, by foreign conquerors from Denmark, whose power, besides, seemed at that time on the wane. Inward dissensions increased; the kings were too feeble to maintain efficiently their