This was practically the end of the independence of the Danelaw. Next year, 917, brother and sister made their last advance together, and captured Leicester and Stamford, and on June 12 Aethelflæd died. She had been her brother’s right hand, and so well had she performed her part that little now remained to be done. By 919 Eadward had consolidated his rule as far as the Humber, had occupied and secured southern Lancashire, and had received homage from Regnald, the Danish ruler of Deira; Ealdred, the English chief of Bernicia; Constantine III., King of Scotland; and Donald, King of Strathclyde. Ealdred’s submission was natural; the more shadowy allegiance of Constantine and Donald was obviously prompted by fear of the Vikings, whose settlements in Scotland included all the northern and western islands, and much of the adjacent mainland. When Eadward ‘the Elder’ died in 824 his supremacy over Britain was such as no monarch had yet enjoyed, and his power passed undiminished to his son Aethelstan. Aethelstan’s reign passed by largely in peace chequered by rebellions which were quickly suppressed. Aethelstan rather prematurely annexed Deira, deposing its Danish vassal king; but he was strong enough to keep down the turbulent Danes of Northumbria. He had more difficulty with Constantine of Scotland, who soon began to regret the engagement into which he had entered with the English ‘Basileus’ of all Britain. In 933 he threw off his allegiance; but Aethelstan proceeded northward with an army and fleet, marched through eastern Scotland to Dunnottar, and brought him to temporary submission. He was not cowed, however, and proceeded to organize underhand a great confederacy, which had as its object the destruction of the power of the overshadowing _Dispensator regni totius Britanniæ_. His chief motive for this action was probably that he was hindered in his designs of absorbing Strathclyde and Northern Bernicia; but common fear of the now mighty English power had more than anything to do with the formation of the heterogeneous alliance, which included not only Scotland and Strathclyde, and probably the Galloway Picts, no less than those of the North, but Anlaf Guthfrithson, King of Dublin, Anlaf Quaran, claimant to the Danish crown of York, and three more Viking sea-kings, with a great host of warriors.