His recovery of the Five Burgs, and the joy of the Christian English inhabitants, are vividly set forth in a fragmentary ballad embedded in the Chronicle.

The next year he harried Strathclyde or Cumberland, the Welsh kingdom between Clyde and Morecambe, and handed it over to Malcolm, king of Scots, as a pledge of his fidelity.

At Eadmund's death in 946--when he was stabbed in his royal hall by an outlaw--his kingdom fell to his brother Eadred.

Two years later Northumbria again revolted, and chose Eric for its king.

Eadred harried and burnt the province, which he then handed over to an earl of his own creation, one of the Bamborough family.