In the latter half of the eighth century Offa, who ultimately became the greatest ruler of the West of those times, raised the kingdom of Mercia to a height of greatness and prosperity that it had never before enjoyed,—an importance which it continued to hold for a period under the rule of his son Cenwulf. Warwickshire, as a part of Mercia, must naturally have benefited by its greatness and progress, but during the reign of Cenwulf the seeds of a far–reaching revolution were being sown, the fruits of which were the uniting of the kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia by Ecgberht or Egbert, King of the West Saxons, who has been sometimes incorrectly described as the first king of England. The incursions of the Danish invaders, which had been of frequent occurrence prior to the reign of Egbert, assumed a much more formidable aspect almost ere the King had succeeded in welding together the separate kingdoms under one head. Their first unwelcome visitations had begun in 787, some thirteen years before Egbert’s accession. In 868 they once again invaded and seriously ravaged Mercia. Two years later they conquered East Anglia. A year later their triumphant progress extended into Wessex, where they at first achieved some successes, although that kingdom was ruled by a wise and heroic ruler in the person of Æthelred, the brother of Alfred the Great, who succeeded him. In the following year, 871, no less than nine pitched battles were fought between the Danes and the Saxons. It is supposed that Mercia about this time was only a portion of the kingdom of Burhred, the last native king of central England, who had succeeded Ceolwulf. This in 874 had been divided by the victorious Danes, and committed as a tributary state to Ceolwulf. Be this as it may, the whole of Warwickshire, there is little reason to doubt, came into the hands of Alfred the Great by the Treaty of Wedmore in 878, made between him and Guthrun the Danish leader, and was ultimately formed by him into a duchy under his daughter Æthelflæd and her husband Æthelred. The effects of the Danish settlement were important on the future history of the kingdom, for it was that of a new people with different customs, modes of life, and traditions. How far–reaching the occupation was can be traced in local nomenclature, and the counties which were anciently West Saxon still retain the names and boundaries of the divisions founded by the successors of Cerdic. Mercia, in contradistinction to the local divisions of Wessex, which were evolved naturally, was apparently mapped out, and the extent of the Danish settlement of the county of Warwick may be traced from the fact that Rugby is the southernmost town possessing the Danish affix _by_, whilst there are a considerable number of places so distinguished in the more northern part of the county.