A.D. 899. SUCCESSION OF EDWAED THE EIDEB. 59 enemy might be overcome. On these being launched, the king gave orders to take alive, as many as they could, and to slay those whom they could not take ; the result of which was, that in the same year, thirty ships of the Danish pirates were captured, some of whom were slain, and some taken to the king alive, and hanged on gibbets. In the year 897, Eolio, the first duke of the Normans, with his army laid siege to the city of Chartres ; but "Walzelm, the bishop of that city, calling Richard, duke of Burgundy, and Ebalus, earl of Poitou, to his aid, and carrying the tunic of Saint Mary in his hands, by the Divine will put duke Rollo to flight, and delivered the city. In the year 898, Ethelbald was ordained archbishop of York. In the year from the incarnation of our Lord 899, king Alfred, son of the most pious king Ethelwulph, having-reigned twenty-nine years and six months, departed this life, in the fourth year of the indiction,21 on the fifth day before the calends of November, and was buried in the new monastery at Winchester. He was succeeded by his son Edward, surnamed the Elder, who was inferior to his father in his acquaintance with literature, but his equal in dignity and power, and his superior in glory. For, as will be shewn in the sequel, he extended the limits of bis kingdom much farther than his father did. He also built many cities, and restored some that had been destroyed ; the whole of Essex, East Anglia, Northumbria, and many districts of Mercia, of which the Danes had been long in possession, he manfully wrested from their hands. After the death of his sister Ethelfreda, he obtained possession of the whole of Mercia, and received the submission of all the kings of the Scots, the Cumbrians, the people of Strath-Clyde, and the West Britons. By Egewinna, a most noble lady, he had Ethelstan, his eldest son : by bis wife Edgiva he had three sons, Edwin, Edmund, andEdred, and a daughter named Eadburga, a virgin most 21 The indiction was so called from the edicts of the Roman emperors ; and as one such edict was supposed to appear regularly every fifteen years, the years were reckoned hy their distance from the year cf each indiction. From the time of Athanasius downwards, they were generally employed by ecclesiastical writers in describing epochs.