The next great event was the Saxon Conquest, which in Kent was ushered in by the landing of a force in the year 449 A.D. During this part of its history the western, or larger portion of our county was included, as already mentioned, in the kingdom of Mercia, while the eastern and smaller section belonged to that of Essex. Of the numerous Mercian kings, the most renowned and most powerful was Offa, whose name survives in Offley, where he had a palace, and where he died about the year 796, while still engaged in building the Monastery and Abbey of St Alban. Mercia at this time made a bid for the supremacy of the petty kingdoms of this part of England, but was eventually beaten by Wessex under the able rule of Egbert. It was in the reign of the last-mentioned sovereign that invaders of another nationality--namely the Danes--began to make their presence seriously felt in the south; but it was not till the time of his son and successor Aethelwulf that they landed on the east coast. Early in his reign a council of Mercians and West Saxons was held at Kingsbury, near St Albans, to devise means for repelling the invaders; while a second assembly was called for the same purpose at Bennington in the year 850. Neither seems to have resulted in effectual measures, for in 851 we find a large Danish fleet which had sailed up the Thames beating off one of the Saxon kings, who had marched to stop its progress; and after this event the county was harried and raided time after time, till it was eventually divided about the year 880 by a treaty executed at Wedmore between the Saxon sovereign Alfred and Guthrum the Dane by a boundary line running from the mouth of the Lea to its source, and thence straight across country to Bedford. A few years later, however, namely in 894, the Danish fleet sailed up the Lea to Hertford, where Alfred crippled it by cutting into the banks of the river, so that by loss of water the vessels became stranded, and the Danish force had to fight its way to the west of England. After numerous skirmishes and fights, and the building of forts at Hertford and on a small island near Bishop’s Stortford, the Danish invasion was practically crushed by King Edward, who died in 925. Much, however, still remained to be done by his son Aethelstan, who stoutly attacked the invaders after they had made a raid on St Albans in 930. A memorial of the Danish sojourn still exists in Dacorum, the name of the western hundred in which Tring is situated; there is also evidence to the same effect in the records of gifts to St Albans Abbey by Danes who had settled in the neighbourhood. The Mercian shire-system, which was probably instituted as an aid against the Danes, is known to have come into force by 957; but in place of Hertfordshire having a sheriff of its own, it shared one with Essex; an arrangement which remained in force till the reign of Elizabeth. This was in Edgar’s reign (957–975); but even then we do