95.] ETHELBALD AND ETHELBERT.
Ethelwolf lived only two years after making this grant; and by his will he shared England between his two eldest sons, Ethelbald and Ethelbert; the west being assigned to the former, the east to the latter.

Ethelbald was a profligate prince; and marrying Judith, his mother-in-law, gave great offence to the people; but moved by the remonstrances of Swithun, bishop of Winchester, he was at last prevailed on to divorce her.
His reign was short; and Ethelbert, his brother, succeeding to the government, behaved himself, during a reign of five years, in a manner more worthy of his birth and station.

The kingdom, however, was still infested by the Danes, who made an inroad and sacked Winchester, but were there defeated.

A body also of these pirates, who were quartered in the Isle of Thanet, having deceived the English by a treaty, unexpectedly broke into Kent, and committed great outrages.
ETHERED Ethelbert was succeeded by his brother Ethered, who, though he defended himself with bravery, enjoyed, during his whole reign, no tranquillity from those Danish irruptions.

His younger brother, Alfred, seconded him in all his enterprises, and generously sacrificed to the public good all resentment, which he might entertain on account of his being excluded by Ethered from a large patrimony which had been left him by his father.
The first landing of the Danes, in the reign of Ethered, was among the East Angles, who, more anxious for their present safety than for the common interest, entered into a separate treaty with the enemy, and furnished them with horses, which enabled them to make an irruption by land into the kingdom of Northumberland.