But the King's measures had made the realm strong enough to set aside its old policy of defence for one of vigorous attack.
His son Eadward and his son-in-law AEthelred, whom he had set as Ealdorman over what remained of Mercia, showed themselves as skilful and active as the King.

The aim of the northmen was to rouse again the hostility of the Welsh, but while AElfred held Exeter against their fleet, Eadward and AEthelred caught their army near the Severn and overthrew it with a vast slaughter at Buttington.

The destruction of their camp on the Lea by the united English forces ended the war; in 897 Hasting again withdrew across the Channel, and the Danelaw made peace.

It was with the peace he had won still about him that AElfred died in 901, and warrior as his son Eadward had shown himself, he clung to his father's policy of rest.

It was not till 910 that a fresh rising of the northmen forced AElfred's children to gird themselves to the conquest of the Danelaw.
[Sidenote: Eadward the Elder] While Eadward bridled East-Anglia his sister AEthelflaed, in whose hands AEthelred's death left English Mercia, attacked the "Five Boroughs," a rude confederacy which had taken the place of the older Mercian kingdom.
Derby represented the original Mercia on the upper Trent, Lincoln the Lindiswaras, Leicester the Middle-English, Stamford the province of the Gyrwas, Nottingham probably that of the Southumbrians.