ELLA (d. 867), king of the Northumbrians, became king about 862 on the deposition of Osbert, although he was not of royal birth. Afterwards he joined Osbert in an attack on the Danes, who had invaded Northumbria, and drove them into York. The Danes, however, defeated the Northumbrians, and both Ella and Osbert were slain.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. by C. Plummer (1892-99) Bede, Historiae ecclesiasticae, ed. by C. Plummer (Oxford, 1896) ; Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by T. Arnold, Rolls Series (1879) ; Asser, De rebus gestis Aelfredi, ed. by W. H. Stevenson (1904) ; J. R. Green, The Making of England (1897) ; and the Dic tionary of National Biography, vol. i. (1895).
