any real trace of a confederacy, or of the rule of one member of the group over the others; while north of the Humber the feeling between the Englishmen of Yorkshire and the Englishmen who had settled towards the Firth of Forth was one of hostility rather than of friendship.  But this age of isolation, of equality, of independence, had now come to an end.  The progress of the conquest had drawn a sharp line between the kingdoms of the conquerors.  The work of half of them was done.  In the south of the island not only Kent but Sussex, Essex, and Middlesex were surrounded by English territory, and hindered by that single fact from all further growth.  The same fate had befallen the East Engle, the South Engle, the Middle and the North Engle.  The West Saxons, on the other hand, and the West Engle, or Mercians, still remained free to conquer and expand on the south of the Humber, as the Englishmen of Deira and Bernicia remained free to the north of that river.  It was plain, therefore, that from this moment the growth of these powers would throw their fellow kingdoms into the background, and that with an ever-growing inequality of strength must come a new arrangement of political forces.  The greater kingdoms would in the end be drawn to subject and absorb the lesser ones, and to the war between Englishman and Briton would be added a struggle between Englishman and Englishman.

[Sidenote:  Kent]

It was through this struggle and the establishment of a lordship on the part of the stronger and growing states over their weaker and stationary fellows that the English kingdoms were to make their first step towards union in a single England.  Such an overlordship seemed destined but a few years before to fall to the lot of Wessex.  The victories of Ceawlin and Cuthwulf left it the most powerful of the English kingdoms.  None of its fellow states seemed able to hold their own against a power which stretched from the Chilterns to the Severn and from the Channel to the Ouse.  But after its defeat in the march upon Chester Wessex suddenly broke down into a chaos of warring tribes; and her place was taken by two powers whose rise to greatness was as sudden as her fall.  The first of these was Kent.  The Kentish king AEthelberht found himself hemmed in on every side by English territory; and since conquest over Britons was denied him he sought a new sphere of action in setting his kingdom at the head of the conquerors of the south.  The break up of Wessex no doubt aided his attempt; but we know little of the causes or events which brought about his success.  We know only that the supremacy of the Kentish king was owned at last by the English peoples of the east and centre of Britain.  But it was not by her political action that Kent was in the end to further the creation of a single England; for the lordship which AEthelberht built up was doomed to fall for ever with his death, and yet his death left Kent the centre of a national union far wider