But the ruin of Jarrow and Wearmouth had cast on it a spell of terror.

Torn by civil strife, and desperate of finding in itself the union needed to meet the northmen, Northumbria sought union and deliverance in subjection to a foreign master.

Its thegns met Ecgberht in Derbyshire, and owned the supremacy of Wessex.
[Sidenote: Conquests of the Northmen] With the submission of Northumbria the work which Oswiu and AEthelbald had failed to do was done, and the whole English race was for the first time knit together under a single rule.

The union came not a moment too soon.
Had the old severance of people from people, the old civil strife within each separate realm, gone on it is hard to see how the attacks of the northmen could have been withstood.

They were already settled in Ireland; and from Ireland a northern host landed in 836 at Charmouth in Dorsetshire strong enough to drive Ecgberht, when he hastened to meet them, from the field.