These wars brought a very different fate to the English and the Irish. In England, when the Danes had planted a colony on every inlet of the sea (_c._ 800), they took horse and rode conquering over the inland plains. They slew every English king and wiped out every English royal house save that of Wessex; and in their place set up their own kings in Northumbria and East Anglia, and made of all middle England a vast "Danelaw" a land ruled by Danish law, and by confederations of Danish towns. At the last Wessex itself was conquered, and a Danish king ruled over all England (1013). In Ireland, on the other hand, the invincible power of the tribal system for defence barred the way of invaders. Every foot of land was defended; every tribe fought for its own soil. There could be no subjection of the Irish clans except by their extermination. A Norwegian leader, Thorgils, made one supreme effort at conquest. He fixed his capital at Armagh and set up at its shrine the worship of Thor, while his wife gave her oracles from the high altar of Clonmacnois on the Shannon, in the prophetess's cloak set with stones to the hem, the necklace of glass beads, the staff, and the great skin pouch of charms. But in the end Thorgils was taken by the king of Meath and executed, being cast into Loch Nair. The Danes, who held long and secure possession of England, great part of Scotland, and Normandy, were never able to occupy permanently any part of Ireland more than a day's march from the chief stations of their fleets. Through two hundred years of war no Irish royal house was destroyed, no kingdom was extinguished, and no national supremacy of the Danes replaced the national supremacy of the Irish.