CHAPTER XII.
THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE KINGDOMS.
With the final triumph of Christianity, all the formative elements of Anglo-Saxon Britain are complete.

We see it, a rough conglomeration of loosely-aggregated principalities, composed of a fighting aristocracy and a body of unvalued serfs; while interspersed through its parts are the bishops, monks, and clergy, centres of nascent civilisation for the seething mass of noble barbarism.

The country is divided into agricultural colonies, and its only industry is agriculture, its only wealth, land.

We want but one more conspicuous change to make it into the England of the Augustan Anglo-Saxon age--the reign of Eadgar--and that one change is the consolidation of the discordant kingdoms under a single loose over-lordship.

To understand this final step, we must glance briefly at the dull record of the political history.
Under AEthelfrith, Eadwine, and Oswiu, Northumbria had been the chief power in England.