In the year that his sister Ætheflæd died, which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded in 918, King Edward the Elder embarked on an audacious tour of the midlands, establishing urban centres and summoning local leaders to acknowledge his authority as King. They included Welsh kings as well as English earls and Danish warlords.

King Edward’s tour of the midlands continued with new urban centres at Nottingham and Manchester, but it was at Bakewell in Derbyshire that he established his court, and awaited local dignitaries from Strathclyde, Northumbria and the Scots. There they pledged themselves to his service, and Edward became lord of more peoples than any English king before him.

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