Scot and Cumbrian fought beside the northmen against the West-Saxon King; but his victory at Brunanburh crushed the confederacy and won peace till his death.

His brother Eadmund was but eighteen at his accession in 940, and the North again rose in revolt.

The men of the Five Boroughs joined their kinsmen in Northumbria; once Eadmund was driven to a peace which left him king but south of the Watling Street; and only years of hard fighting again laid the Danelaw at his feet.
[Sidenote: Dunstan] But policy was now to supplement the work of the sword.

The completion of the West-Saxon realm was in fact reserved for the hands, not of a king or warrior, but of a priest.

Dunstan stands first in the line of ecclesiastical statesmen who counted among them Lanfranc and Wolsey and ended in Laud.