Terrible as were the ravages of the Scandinavian invaders, it is generally admitted that on the whole the benefit which resulted therefrom was greater than the suffering. That benefit was the consolidation of Anglo-Saxon England into one kingdom. In the thirty-seven years of the reign of Egbert of Wessex he attained, by steps which we are about to trace, to a supremacy which was probably wider than that of any of the Bretwaldas who had preceded him, and which in some degree justifies the popular conception of his position as founder of the English monarchy, though the unity of England was not in truth realised till a century later. But other Bretwaldas had been nearly as powerful as Egbert, and their overlordship in the hands of feeble descendants had melted away, while the “particularism” of the several lesser kingdoms had again successfully asserted itself. It may be doubted whether Egbert’s supremacy would not have gone the way of all the previous supremacies, but for that terrible series of Scandinavian invasions which seemed at the time to threaten not merely the prosperity but the very life of Anglo-Saxon peoples. For a century the terrible struggle continued and then ended for a time, to be renewed indeed with almost equal fury after an interval of rest; but the effect of that first fierce discipline was greatly to weaken if not altogether to destroy the spirit of particularism in the Anglo-Saxon states. After Athelstan’s death in 940 there was scarcely any serious thought of reestablishing Mercia or Northumbria as a separate kingdom from Wessex. Hard and cruel were the blows stricken by the hammer of Thor, but they had the effect of welding Angles, Saxons and Jutes into one people.