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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Political History of England,
-Volume I (of 12), by Thomas Hodgkin
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: The Political History of England, Volume I (of 12)
- From the Earliest Times to the Norman Conquest
-
-Author: Thomas Hodgkin
-
-Editors: William Hunt
- Reginald Lane Poole
-
-Release Date: August 30, 2022 [eBook #68870]
-
-Language: English
-
-Produced by: MWS, Charlie Howard, and the Online Distributed
- Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
- produced from images generously made available by The
- Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF
-ENGLAND, VOLUME I (OF 12) ***
-
-
-
-
-
-_THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND_
-
-
-_Seventy-five years have passed since Lingard completed his_ HISTORY
-OF ENGLAND, _which ends with the Revolution of 1688. During that
-period historical study has made a great advance. Year after year
-the mass of materials for a new History of England has increased;
-new lights have been thrown on events and characters, and old errors
-have been corrected. Many notable works have been written on various
-periods of our history; some of them at such length as to appeal
-almost exclusively to professed historical students. It is believed
-that the time has come when the advance which has been made in the
-knowledge of English history as a whole should be laid before the
-public in a single work of fairly adequate size. Such a book should
-be founded on independent thought and research, but should at the
-same time be written with a full knowledge of the works of the best
-modern historians and with a desire to take advantage of their teaching
-wherever it appears sound._
-
-_The vast number of authorities, printed and in manuscript, on which a
-History of England should be based, if it is to represent the existing
-state of knowledge, renders co-operation almost necessary and certainly
-advisable. The History, of which this volume is an instalment, is an
-attempt to set forth in a readable form the results at present attained
-by research. It will consist of twelve volumes by twelve different
-writers, each of them chosen as being specially capable of dealing
-with the period which he undertakes, and the editors, while leaving
-to each author as free a hand as possible, hope to insure a general
-similarity in method of treatment, so that the twelve volumes may
-in their contents, as well as in their outward appearance, form one
-History._
-
-_As its title imports, this History will primarily deal with politics,
-with the History of England and, after the date of the union with
-Scotland, Great Britain, as a state or body politic; but as the life
-of a nation is complex, and its condition at any given time cannot
-be understood without taking into account the various forces acting
-upon it, notices of religious matters and of intellectual, social, and
-economic progress will also find place in these volumes. The footnotes
-will, so far as is possible, be confined to references to authorities,
-and references will not be appended to statements which appear to be
-matters of common knowledge and do not call for support. Each volume
-will have an Appendix giving some account of the chief authorities,
-original and secondary, which the author has used. This account will
-be compiled with a view of helping students rather than of making long
-lists of books without any notes as to their contents or value. That
-the History will have faults both of its own and such as will always in
-some measure attend co-operative work, must be expected, but no pains
-have been spared to make it, so far as may be, not wholly unworthy of
-the greatness of its subject._
-
-_Each volume, while forming part of a complete History, will also in
-itself be a separate and complete book, will be sold separately, and
-will have its own index, and two or more maps._
-
- Vol. I. to 1066. By Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L., Litt.D., Fellow of
- University College, London; Fellow of the British Academy.
-
- Vol. II. 1066 to 1216. By George Burton Adams, M.A., Professor of
- History in Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
-
- Vol. III. 1216 to 1377. By T. F. Tout, M.A., Professor of Medieval
- and Modern History in the Victoria University of Manchester;
- formerly Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford.
-
- Vol. IV. 1377 to 1485. By C. Oman, M.A., Fellow of All Souls’
- College, and Chichele Professor of Modern History in the
- University of Oxford.
-
- Vol. V. 1485 to 1547. By H. A. L. Fisher, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of
- New College, Oxford.
-
- Vol. VI. 1547 to 1603. By A. F. Pollard, M.A., Professor of
- Constitutional History in University College, London.
-
- Vol. VII. 1603 to 1660. By F. C. Montague, M.A., Professor of
- History in University College, London; formerly Fellow of Oriel
- College, Oxford.
-
- Vol. VIII. 1660 to 1702. By Richard Lodge, M.A., Professor of
- History in the University of Edinburgh; formerly Fellow of
- Brasenose College, Oxford.
-
- Vol. IX. 1702 to 1760. By I. S. Leadam, M.A., formerly Fellow of
- Brasenose College, Oxford.
-
- Vol. X. 1760 to 1801. By the Rev. William Hunt, M.A., D.Litt.,
- Trinity College, Oxford.
-
- Vol. XI. 1801 to 1837. By the Hon. George C. Brodrick, D.C.L.,
- late Warden of Merton College, Oxford, and J. K. Fotheringham,
- M.A., Magdalen College, Oxford, Lecturer in Classics at King’s
- College, London.
-
- Vol. XII. 1837 to 1901. By Sidney J. Low, M.A., Balliol College,
- Oxford, formerly Lecturer on History at King’s College, London.
-
-
-
-
-The Political History of England
-
-IN TWELVE VOLUMES
-
-EDITED BY WILLIAM HUNT, D.LITT., AND REGINALD L. POOLE, M.A.
-
-
-
-
-I.
-
-THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE NORMAN CONQUEST
-
-
-
-
- THE
-
- HISTORY OF ENGLAND
-
- FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO
- THE NORMAN CONQUEST
-
- BY
-
- THOMAS HODGKIN, D.C.L., LITT.D.
-
- FELLOW OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON
- FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY
-
- LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
- 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
- NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
- 1906
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS.
-
-
- CHAPTER I.
-
- THE PREHISTORIC FOREWORLD.
-
- B.C. PAGE
-
- Palæolithic Man in Britain 1
-
- Neolithic Man in Britain 3
-
- Pre-Celtic stone-workers 4
-
- Celtic workers in bronze and iron 5
-
- Brythons and Goidels 6
-
- Dolicho-cephalic and Brachy-cephalic men 7
-
-
- CHAPTER II.
-
- CÆSAR IN BRITAIN.
-
- Pytheas the geographer: his description of Britain 8
-
- Cæsar’s conquest of Gaul 9
-
- 55. His first invasion of Britain. The voyage 11
-
- The landing 13
-
- First skirmish and naval disaster 14
-
- British war-chariots 15
-
- Return to Gaul and thanksgivings in Rome 16
-
- 54. Second invasion. Cassivellaunus heads the
- resistance of the Britons 17
-
- Battle of the Thames 18
-
- Mandubracius, a rival candidate to Cassivellaunus 18
-
- Cassivellaunus makes a nominal submission 19
-
- Cæsar returns to Gaul 19
-
- Cæsar’s description of Britain 20
-
- His motives for the invasion 21
-
- Note on Cæsar’s points of arrival and departure in
- his expeditions to Britain 23
-
-
- CHAPTER III.
-
- THE CENTURY OF SUSPENSE.
-
- Coin-kings of Britain--
-
- Commius 26
-
- Tincommius, Verica and Eppilus 26
-
- Dubnovellaunus 26
-
- Tasciovanus at Verulamium 27
-
- Cunobelinus: Shakespeare’s Cymbeline 28
-
-
- CHAPTER IV.
-
- THE ROMAN CONQUEST OF BRITAIN.
-
- A.D.
-
- 41. Claudius, Emperor of Rome 29
-
- Aulus Plautius, commander of expedition to
- Britain 30
-
- Mutinous disposition of the troops 31
-
- Battle of the Medway (?) 31
-
- Claudius arrives to complete the conquest 32
-
- Camulodunum captured 32
-
- 44. Cogidubnus and Prasutagus, subject allies of
- Rome 33
-
- 47. Aulus Plautius returns to Rome 34
-
- Ostorius Scapula, the new _legatus_ 35
-
- War against the Silures 35
-
- 51. Caratacus defeated: sent a captive to Rome 36
-
- 52. Didius Gallus, governor 37
-
- 59. Veranius, governor 37
-
- Suetonius Paulinus conquers the Druids of
- Anglesey 38
-
- Revolt of the Iceni under Boadicea 39
-
- Camulodunum sacked 41
-
- London and Verulam sacked 42
-
- Defeat and death of Boadicea 43
-
- 61. Recall of Suetonius 44
-
- Trebellius Maximus, an incompetent governor 45
-
- 71. Petillius Cerialis, governor, subdues the
- Brigantes 46
-
- 75. Julius Frontinus completes the conquest of the
- Silures 46
-
- 78. Agricola, governor, conquers the Ordovices 47
-
- Wise administration of Agricola 47
-
- 79. Probable foundation of Eburacum 48
-
- 80. Agricola subdues all the country up to the river
- Tanaus 49
-
- 81. Possible foundation of some of the stations on the
- Roman Wall 50
-
- 82–84. Agricola’s Caledonian campaigns 50
-
- 84. Recall of Agricola 51
-
-
- CHAPTER V.
-
- THE ROMAN OCCUPATION.
-
- The Roman Wall between Tyne and Solway 53
-
- _Circa_ 120. Probably built by Hadrian 54
-
- Manner of its construction 55
-
- The _Prætenturæ_ or camps on the line of the
- wall 56
-
- Troops garrisoning the wall 57
-
- _Circa_ 140. Wall of Antoninus Pius between Firths of Forth and
- Clyde 58
-
- 185. Ulpius Marcellus, governor 59
-
- 208. The Emperor Severus in Britain 60
-
- Builder or rebuilder of the wall (?) 61
-
- 211. Severus dies at Eburacum 62
-
- Third century a time of disintegration of the
- empire 63
-
- 284. Accession of Diocletian. His system of
- partnership-emperors 64
-
- 287–293. Usurpation of Carausius 65
-
- 293. Carausius assassinated by Allectus 65
-
- 296. Emperor Constantius overthrows Allectus 66
-
- 306. Death of Constantius. Proclamation of Constantine 67
-
- 367. Theodosius (father of the emperor) checks the
- ravages of the barbarians in Britain and
- relieves London 68
-
- 383. Usurpation of Maximus 69
-
- The _Notitia Imperii_ 70
-
- 409. The usurper Constantine withdraws the legions to
- Gaul 72
-
- Roman roads 73
-
- Sepulchral inscriptions 74
-
- Mithraism and Christianity 75
-
- Character of Roman occupation of Britain 77
-
-
- CHAPTER VI.
-
- THE ANGLO-SAXON CONQUEST.
-
- Previous location of Jutes and Saxons 80
-
- Angles related to Longobardi 81
-
- Latin authors on the Anglo-Saxon conquest--
-
- The chronicler, Prosper Tiro 82
-
- _Life of Germanus_ 83
-
- English authors on the conquest--
-
- Bede 86
-
- The _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ on the conquest-- 87
-
- Kent 88
-
- Sussex 89
-
- Wessex 90
-
- Deira and Bernicia 94
-
- British version of the conquest--
-
- Gildas 95
-
- Nennius 100
-
- Summary of results-- 107
-
- Did King Arthur exist? 107
-
- 500 or 516? British victory of Mount Badon 99, 107
-
- 577. Victory of Ceawlin, the West Saxon, at
- Deorham 92, 107
-
- March of King Cunedag from Lothian to Wales 102
-
- Did the Anglo-Saxon conquest involve the
- extermination of the Britons? 110
-
-
- CHAPTER VII.
-
- THE COMING OF AUGUSTINE.
-
- 553. Procopius held Britain to be the abode of departed
- spirits 113
-
- 577? Gregory and the Anglian lads in the Forum at
- Rome 115
-
- 596. Gregory sends Augustine to Britain 116
-
- 597. Interview of the missionaries with Ethelbert, King
- of Kent 117
-
- Ethelbert baptised 119
-
- Augustine sends report of his mission to
- Rome 120
-
- 597. Gregory’s reply and letters to the Kentish king
- and queen 121
-
- Essex partly converted. St. Paul’s Church in
- London built 122
-
- Conferences of Augustine with Welsh bishops 123
-
- 605? Death of Augustine. He is succeeded by Laurentius 125
-
- 616. Death of Ethelbert 125
-
- Ethelbert as Bretwalda 126
-
- The kings of Kent and Essex apostatise 127
-
- Vision of Archbishop Laurentius. The King of Kent
- returns to Christianity 128
-
-
- CHAPTER VIII.
-
- EDWIN OF DEIRA.
-
- Anglian settlement of Northumbria 131
-
- 547. Ida, King of Bernicia. His building of Bamburgh 132
-
- 593–617. Reign of Ethelfrid, grandson of Ida 133
-
- 603. Battle with the Scots at Dawston Burn 134
-
- 613. Battle with the Welsh at Chester 135
-
- Early history of Edwin, son of Aelle, King of
- Deira 136
-
- 617. Edwin defeats Ethelfrid at the river Idle 137
-
- Edwin as Bretwalda 138
-
- 625. Marriage with Ethelburga of Kent 139
-
- 626. Attempted assassination of Edwin 140
-
- Edwin and Paulinus 141
-
- Debate at Goodmanham. Acceptance of Christianity 142
-
- 627. Baptism of Edwin and his family 142
-
- 633. Battle of Heathfield against Penda of Mercia and
- Cadwallon of Wales. Edwin defeated and slain 144
-
-
- CHAPTER IX.
-
- OSWALD OF BERNICIA.
-
- 563. St. Columba and the religious settlement of
- Iona 147
-
- 615. Oswald, son of Ethelfrid takes refuge at
- Iona 150
-
- 633. Consequences of the Battle of Heathfield.
- Disastrous reign of Osric and Eanfrid 151
-
- 634. Oswald returns to Northumbria. Victory of
- Heavenfield over Cadwallon 152
-
- Oswald rules from Bamburgh 154
-
- St. Aidan’s mission planted at Lindisfarne 155
-
- Oswald as Bretwalda 157
-
- 642. Oswald defeated by Penda at Maserfield and
- slain 158
-
- Canonisation of Oswald 159
-
-
- CHAPTER X.
-
- OSWY AND PENDA.
-
- Early history of Mercia 160
-
- Conversion of Wessex by Birinus 161
-
- Conversion of East Anglia 163
-
- 637. Egric, King of East Anglia, slain in battle with
- Penda 164
-
- 654. His successor, Anna, shares the same fate 165
-
- Oswy reigns in Bernicia and Oswin in Deira 165
-
- Marriage of Oswy with Eanfled, daughter of
- Edwin 165
-
- Murder of Oswin, King of Deira 167
-
- Death of St. Aidan 167
-
- Ravages of Penda 168
-
- Penda’s son, Peada, converted to Christianity 169
-
- 655. Battle of the Winwaed. Penda defeated by Oswy and
- slain 170
-
-
- CHAPTER XI.
-
- TERRITORIAL CHANGES--THE CONFERENCE AT WHITBY--THE GREAT PLAGUE.
-
- History of Northumbria. Alchfrid, King of
- Deira 171
-
- The Bewcastle Cross 172
-
- 658. History of Mercia. Wulfhere, son of Penda, throws
- off the yoke of Oswald 173
-
- 653. Sigebert, King of Essex, becomes Christian 175
-
- Temporary relapse of East Saxons into heathenism 176
-
- Wars between Wessex and Mercia 178
-
- Division between Celtic and Roman Churches on the
- question of date of Easter 179
-
- 664. Synod convoked at Whitby to settle this
- question 180
-
- Chief combatants on either side 182
-
- First appearance of Wilfrid 183
-
- The dispute settled in favour of the Roman
- Easter 186
-
- Ravages of the great plague 188
-
- 671. Death of Oswy 190
-
-
- CHAPTER XII.
-
- KING EGFRID AND THREE GREAT CHURCHMEN: WILFRID, THEODORE, CUTHBERT.
-
- 671–685. Chief events of Egfrid’s reign 191
-
- Wilfrid, Bishop of York: his journey to
- Gaul 193
-
- Ceadda appointed in Wilfrid’s absence 195
-
- Theodore of Tarsus chosen for see of Canterbury 195
-
- 669. Theodore arrives in England 196
-
- He restores Wilfrid to diocese of York 198
-
- Egfrid’s wives: Etheldreda and Ermenburga 199
-
- Magnificence of Wilfrid 200
-
- Ermenburga and Theodore both hostile to
- Wilfrid 201
-
- 678. Wilfrid’s diocese divided against his will 202
-
- He appeals to Rome 203
-
- Wilfrid’s imprisonment and exile 204
-
- His missionary work in Sussex 204
-
- 678. Early life of St. Cuthbert 205
-
- 685. He is made Bishop of Lindisfarne 207
-
- 685. King Egfrid’s death on the battlefield of
- Nechtansmere miraculously revealed to
- St. Cuthbert 207
-
- Aldfrid, King of Northumbria 208
-
- 687. Death of St. Cuthbert 208
-
- 690. Death of Theodore 209
-
- 687. Wilfrid returns to his diocese 209
-
- 692. The quarrel breaks out again. Wilfrid’s second
- journey to Rome 209
-
- 705. Death of Aldfrid. Usurpation of Eadulf. Accession
- of Osred 210
-
- Synod by the Nidd: the dispute with Wilfrid
- settled 211
-
- 709. Death of Wilfrid 212
-
-
- CHAPTER XIII.
-
- THE LEGISLATION OF KING INE.
-
- 686. Cadwalla, King of Wessex 215
-
- 688. His pilgrimage to Rome 216
-
- Ine reigns over Wessex 216
-
- 726. His abdication and pilgrimage to Rome 217
-
- Laws of early Kentish kings 218
-
- 693. Ine promulgates his laws 219
-
- Open-field system of agriculture 221
-
- Position of the _ceorl_ (free husbandman) 223
-
- Position of the _theow_ (serf) 225
-
- Law of the _wergild_ 227
-
- Position of the thegn 228
-
- Position of the ealdorman 229
-
- Compurgation or oath-helping 229
-
- 693. The kings and their _witan_ 231
-
- Note on Anglo-Saxon money--
-
- Pounds, shillings and pence 233
-
- History of prices: purchasing power of money 234
-
- Special monetary terms: _Mancus_, _Thrymsa_,
- etc. 235
-
-
- CHAPTER XIV.
-
- THE EIGHTH CENTURY.
-
- Review of the life of Bede 237
-
- 735. Death of Bede 239
-
- 709. Death of Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne: his
- literary works 241
-
- The poet Cynewulf: verses on the Ruthwell
- Cross 242
-
- Religious decline: Bede’s letter to Archbishop
- Egbert 243
-
- Sham monasteries 244
-
- Rapid succession of Northumbrian kings: Ceolwulf
- and Eadbert 245
-
- _Circa_ 756. Northumbrian capital transferred to Corbridge 247
-
- 716–757. Ethelbald, King of Mercia 249
-
- His wars with Wessex 249
-
- 757–796. Offa, King of Mercia 250
-
- Offa’s Dyke 251
-
- Correspondence between Offa and Charlemagne 252
-
- 786. Cynewulf, King of Wessex--romantic story of his
- death 255
-
- 784–802. Beorhtric, King of Wessex: his evil-minded wife,
- Eadburh 255
-
-
- CHAPTER XV.
-
- EARLY DANISH INVASIONS--EGBERT AND ETHELWULF.
-
- 790. First affray with the Danes 257
-
- Scandinavian ravages in the ninth century 259
-
- Danish methods of fighting 261
-
- Consolidation of England due to the Danes 262
-
- 802. Egbert becomes King of the West Saxons 263
-
- 829. Egbert, Overlord of Mercia, and Bretwalda 264
-
- Northumbria recognises Egbert’s supremacy 264
-
- 835–838. Danish raids 265
-
- 839. Death of Egbert: accession of Ethelwulf 265
-
- Ethelwulf’s ministers: Swithun and Ealhstan 266
-
- 851. Victory over the Danes at Ockley 267
-
- 853. War with Rhodri Mawr, King of Wales 267
-
- 855. Ethelwulf with his little son Alfred visits
- Rome 268
-
- He endows the _Schola Saxonum_ at Rome 270
-
- 856. His second marriage to Judith, daughter of Charles
- the Bald 270
-
- Rebellion of Ethelbald and division of the
- kingdom 271
-
- Death of Ethelwulf. His testamentary gifts 271
-
-
- CHAPTER XVI.
-
- ETHELWULF’S SONS--DANISH INVASIONS TO THE BAPTISM OF GUTHRUM.
-
- 848. Birth of Alfred the Great 272
-
- His childhood: two visits to Rome 273
-
- Episode of the book of ballads 273
-
- 858. Ethelbald marries his father’s widow, Judith 274
-
- 860. Death of Ethelbald: accession of Ethelbert 275
-
- 866. Ethelbert succeeded by Ethelred: Alfred
- _Secundarius_ 275
-
- Danish invasions. Martyrdom of St. Edmund, King of
- East Anglia 277
-
- 871. “The year of battles” 278
-
- Battle of Aescesdune: the Danes defeated 279
-
- Death of Ethelred: accession of Alfred 280
-
- The Danes harry Mercia 281
-
- 875–883. Wanderings of the body of St. Cuthbert 282
-
- 876. Danish attacks on Wessex renewed under Guthrum 283
-
- 877. Danes at Chippenham: Alfred retires to Athelney 283
-
- 878. Ubba slain: Alfred defeats the Danes at
- Ethandune 284
-
- “Peace of Wedmore.” Baptism of Guthrum 285
-
-
- CHAPTER XVII.
-
- ALFRED AT PEACE.
-
- 878–892. Fourteen years of comparative peace 286
-
- _Circa_ 886. _Aelfredes and Guthrumes Frith_: its conditions:
- boundary between the two nations 287
-
- Family life of Alfred 289
-
- His mysterious sicknesses 290
-
- His exertions to raise the intellectual level of
- his subjects: foreign scholars invited to his
- court 291
-
- His translation of Gregory’s _Regula Pastoralis_ 292
-
- His translation of Orosius’s _History_ 293
-
- Narrative of Arctic voyager Ohthere 294
-
- His share in composition of _Saxon Chronicle_ 295
-
- His translation of Bede’s _Ecclesiastical
- History_ 295
-
- His translation of Boethius’s _Consolation of
- Philosophy_ 296
-
- Administration of his household 298
-
- Alfred’s Dooms 299
-
- Greater leniency in the penalties inflicted, as
- compared with those under Ine 301
-
- Local moots 302
-
- Condition of the servile class 303
-
- _Folcland_ and _Bocland_ 304
-
-
- CHAPTER XVIII.
-
- ALFRED’S LAST DAYS.
-
- 892. Danish invasions recommenced 307
-
- 893. Faithlessness of the pirate Hasting 309
-
- 894. The Danes at Chester 310
-
- 895. Danish encampment by the river Lea 311
-
- 896. End of the invasion: pestilence 312
-
- 897. Alfred’s navy: sea-fight at the Isle of
- Wight 313
-
- 900? Death of Alfred: his burial-place 314
-
- Note on the extent of the Danelaw--
-
- Distribution of the Danes in districts east
- of the Watling Street boundary as evidenced
- by place-names 315
-
-
- CHAPTER XIX.
-
- EDWARD AND HIS SONS.
-
- 900. Accession of Edward “the Elder” 318
-
- 900–904? Rebellion of Ethelwald 319
-
- Conquest of Danish kingdoms beyond the Watling
- Street 320
-
- 912–918. Prowess of Edward’s sister Ethelfled, “the Lady of
- the Mercians”. Her fortresses 321
-
- Edward continues her work of castle-building 323
-
- 924. Alleged recognition of Edward as overlord by
- Constantine II., King of Scots 325
-
- 924–925. Death of Edward: accession of Athelstan 328
-
- Doubts as to Athelstan’s legitimacy 329
-
- Character of Athelstan. His relation to
- continental powers 330
-
- Story of the adoption of Hakon of Norway 331
-
- Dealings with Northumbria and the Scots 332
-
- 937. Battle of Brunanburh. Discussion of its
- site 334
-
- Ballad of Brunanburh 335
-
- Athelstan as “King of all Britain,” and
- _Basileus_ 336
-
- Mysterious death of Athelstan’s brother,
- Edwin 337
-
- 940. Death of Athelstan. Succeeded by his brother
- Edmund 338
-
- 942. Edmund delivers the Five Boroughs from Danish
- thraldom 340
-
- 943. Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, helps the Danes
- against Edmund 340
-
- 945. Alleged “cession of Cumberland” to Malcolm, King
- of Scotland 341
-
- 946. Edmund assassinated by a robber. Accession of
- Edred 339
-
- 948. Eric, of Denmark, chosen King of Northumbria.
- Edred’s war with him and Archbishop Wulfstan 342
-
- 954. End of the Northumbrian kingdom 342
-
- 955. Death of Edred 343
-
-
- CHAPTER XX.
-
- EDGAR AND DUNSTAN.
-
- 955–959. Short and troublous reign of Edwy 344
-
- Early history of Dunstan 345
-
- Coronation banquet of Edwy. Dunstan forces Edwy to
- return to his nobles 349
-
- 957. Banishment of Dunstan 350
-
- 958. Archbishop Oda annuls the marriage of Edwy and
- Elfgiva 351
-
- 957. Edgar set up against Edwy. Division of the
- kingdom 351
-
- 958–959. Death of Edwy. Edgar sole king 352
-
- Recall of Dunstan, who is made Bishop of
- Worcester 352
-
- 960. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury 352
-
- 966. Westmorland harried by Thored 353
-
- 968. Thanet harried by Edgar 353
-
- Monastic reform; expulsion of _canonici_ 354
-
- Oswald and Ethelwold help on the reform 355
-
- 973. Edwin’s coronation. Water pageant on the
- Dee 356
-
- Legendary dealings with Scottish and Welsh
- kings 357
-
- Story of Edgar’s immense navy 357
-
- Character of Edgar. His marriage with Elfrida 359
-
- 975. Death of Edgar 359
-
-
- CHAPTER XXI.
-
- EDWARD THE MARTYR--OLD AGE OF DUNSTAN--NORMANS AND NORTHMEN.
-
- 975. Accession of Edward “the Martyr” 360
-
- Anti-monastic policy of Elfhere in Mercia.
- Banishment of Oslac, Earl of Northumbria 361
-
- 977–979. Three meetings of the Witenagemot on the monastic
- question. Catastrophe at Calne 362
-
- 978. Edward assassinated at Corfe 364
-
- Accession of Ethelred II. 365
-
- Closing years of Dunstan. His remonstrances
- against Ethelred’s spoliation of Church lands
- at Rochester 365
-
- 988. Death of Dunstan 365
-
- Story of the Dukes of Normandy 367
-
- 927. Duke William Longsword 368
-
- 943. Duke Richard the Fearless 369
-
- Origin of the house of Plantagenet 370
-
- Harold Blue-Tooth, King of Denmark 371
-
- Sweyn of Denmark dethrones his father 371
-
- Harold Fair-hair, King of Norway 372
-
-
- CHAPTER XXII.
-
- ETHELRED THE REDELESS.
-
- Imbecility of this king 374
-
- Severe criticisms of the Saxon Chronicle on his
- management of affairs 375
-
- 982–1016. Calendar of thirty-four years of Danish
- invasions 376
-
- 991. Lay of Brihtnoth, hero of the battle of
- Maldon 378
-
- Saxon armour 381
-
- Payments of tribute to the Danes: _gafol_
- (commonly called Danegeld) 382
-
- 992. Beginning of the “inexplicable treasons” of
- Ealdorman Elfric 383
-
- 994. Sweyn and Olaf Tryggvason invade England 384
-
- Bishop Alphege ambassador to Olaf 384
-
- 995–1000. Subsequent career of Olaf Tryggvason 385
-
- 1000. Norway conquered by Denmark and Sweden 385
-
- Ethelred ravages Cumberland 385
-
- 1002. Marriage of Ethelred to Emma of Normandy 386
-
- Massacre of Danes on St. Brice’s Day 387
-
- 1008. Taxation ordered for building of ships 388
-
- 1009. Treasons of Ealdorman Edric Streona 388
-
- London vainly attacked by the Danes 389
-
- 1011. Canterbury sacked by the Danes 389
-
- 1012. Archbishop Alphege martyred 390
-
- 1013. Sweyn and his son Canute land in England 391
-
- The English submit. Ethelred flees to Normandy 392
-
- 1014. Death of Sweyn. Return of Ethelred 393
-
- 1014. Canute’s brutal mutilation of hostages 394
-
- 1015. More villainies of Edric Streona 394
-
- 1016. Edmund Ironside, son of Ethelred, continues the
- war 395
-
- Death of Ethelred. Accession of Edmund II.
- (Ironside) 396
-
- Series of battles between Edmund and Canute 396
-
- Edmund defeated at Assandune 397
-
- Partition of the kingdom. Death of Edmund 397
-
-
- CHAPTER XXIII.
-
- CANUTE AND HIS SONS.
-
- 1016. Canute sole King 399
-
- Edwy “King of the Ceorls” 399
-
- Four great earls under Canute 401
-
- Edric killed: Thurkill banished 401
-
- 1017. Canute marries Emma, widow of Ethelred 402
-
- Numerous executions 402
-
- Family of Leofwine 402
-
- Godwine, son of Wulfnoth 403
-
- 1018. Danish troops dismissed 404
-
- 1023. Translation of the body of St. Alphege 405
-
- Northumbrian and Scottish affairs 406
-
- 1018. Great Scottish victory at Carham: loss of the
- Lothians 408
-
- 1031. Malcolm II. owns the supremacy of Canute 409
-
- 1026. Canute’s pilgrimage to Rome 410
-
- Alliance with Emperor Conrad II. 413
-
- 1025. Canute’s unsuccessful campaign against St. Olaf,
- King of Norway 415
-
- Canute orders the murder of Jarl Ulf, his
- brother-in-law 414
-
- 1028. St. Olaf defeated. Norway conquered 414
-
- Relations with Normandy 415
-
- 1035. Death of Canute 416
-
- England divided between his sons Harold Harefoot
- and Harthacnut 417
-
- 1036. Unsuccessful expedition of the Etheling
- Alfred 418
-
- His murder, and cruel treatment of his followers 419
-
- 1037. Queen Emma banished to Flanders 420
-
- Disputes between Harold and Archbishop Ethelnoth 420
-
- 1040. Death of Harold: accession of Harthacnut 421
-
- Severe tax laid upon the people 421
-
- 1041. Edward, son of Ethelred, invited over from
- Normandy 421
-
- 1042. Death of Harthacnut 422
-
-
- CHAPTER XXIV.
-
- LEGISLATION OF THE LATER KINGS.
-
- Importance of property in cattle 424
-
- _Judicia Civitatis Lundoniæ_: Insurance against
- cattle-stealing 425
-
- 1042. The Anglo-Saxon Hundred and its _gemôt_ 428
-
- The Danish _wapentake_ 429
-
- The Anglo-Saxon _burh_ and its development into
- the borough 429
-
- The _trinoda necessitas_: _fyrd-fare_, _burh-bote_
- and _bridge-bote_ 432
-
- The shire and its _gemôt_ 432
-
- Ealdormen, earls and shire-reeves 434
-
- Table of _wergilds_ in the _North-leoda
- laga_ 435
-
- _Rectitudines singularum Personarum_ 436
-
- Various classes of dependants; the _geneat_,
- _cotsetla_ and _gebur_ 437
-
- Tendency towards administrative strictness. The
- offence of _oferhyrnesse_ 438
-
- The _borh_ or warrantor: institution of the
- _tithing_ 439
-
- Ordeals 440
-
- Grants of _sake_ and _soke_ 441
-
- Tendencies towards feudalism 441
-
-
- CHAPTER XXV.
-
- EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.
-
- 1042. Accession of Edward 442
-
- 1043. Harsh treatment of Queen Emma 442
-
- 1045. Edward marries Edith, daughter of Earl Godwine 443
-
- 1047. _Foreign relations_: Magnus of Norway 444
-
- 1048. Edward joins the Emperor Henry III. against
- Baldwin 445
-
- 1049. Edward’s vow of pilgrimage to the Holy Land:
- Westminster Abbey planned 445
-
- _Internal History_: ships paid off: army tax
- (_here-gyld_) abolished 445
-
- Siward, Earl of Northumbria 447
-
- Leofric, Earl of Mercia 448
-
- Vast power of Earl Godwine and his family 448
-
- Misconduct of Sweyn, son of Godwine 449
-
- 1049. Sweyn murders his cousin Beorn 451
-
- 1052. Death of Sweyn 451
-
- Edward’s foreign relatives: their unpopularity 452
-
- Ecclesiastical favourites: Robert Champart 452
-
- 1051. Eustace of Boulogne and the men of Dover 453
-
- Godwine heads resistance to the foreigners 454
-
- Exile of Godwine and temporary ruin of his
- family 455
-
- Visit of William the Norman to England 457
-
- 1052. Death of Queen Emma 457
-
- Return of Earl Godwine and reinstatement of his
- family 459
-
- Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury 460
-
- Death of Earl Godwine: his son Harold all-powerful 461
-
- 1057. Return and death of the Etheling Edward 461
-
- _Scottish affairs_: Macbeth’s murder of the young
- King Duncan 462
-
- 1054. Siward of Northumbria aids Malcolm against
- Macbeth 463
-
- 1055. Death of Siward. His earldom given to Tostig 463
-
- 1037. _Welsh affairs_: Victories of Griffith ap
- Llewelyn 464
-
- 1055. Leofric’s son Elfgar outlawed 465
-
- Harold’s wars with Griffith 466
-
- Griffith marries Aldgyth, daughter of Elfgar 467
-
- 1063. Death of Griffith 467
-
- 1064? Harold’s visit to Normandy and oath to Duke
- William 469
-
- 1065. Northumbria rebels against Tostig Godwineson 470
-
- Tostig banished: his earldom given to Morkere, son
- of Elfgar 471
-
- Harold marries Aldgyth, widow of Griffith 471
-
- Dedication of Westminster Abbey 472
-
- 1066. Death of Edward the Confessor 472
-
-
- CHAPTER XXVI.
-
- STAMFORD BRIDGE AND HASTINGS.
-
- 1066. Election of Harold 474
-
- Duke William prepares to invade England 475
-
- Appearance of the comet 476
-
- Unsuccessful invasion of Tostig 477
-
- Invasion of Harold Hardrada of Norway and
- Tostig 479
-
- Sept. 20. Edwin and Morkere, sons of Elfgar,
- defeated at Fulford 479
-
- Harold marches northward 480
-
- Sept. 25. Battle of Stamford Bridge. Harold
- Hardrada and Tostig slain 481
-
- Sept. 28. William the Norman lands at Pevensey 482
-
- Story of the voyage of his fleet 483
-
- William entrenches himself at Hastings 483
-
- Movements of Harold 485
-
- Battle of Hastings (or Senlac). Numbers and
- weapons of the hostile armies 486
-
- Incident of the Malfosse 488
-
- Harold slain 489
-
- William’s supper on the battlefield. Disposal of
- the body of Harold 490
-
- Battle Abbey 491
-
-
- APPENDIX I. On Authorities 493
-
- II. Genealogy of Northumbrian kings 509
-
- III. Genealogy of West Saxon kings before Egbert 510
-
-
- INDEX 511
-
-
- MAPS.
-
- (AT THE END OF THE VOLUME.)
-
- Roman Britain.
-
- Anglo-Saxon Britain.
-
-
-
-
-ERRATA.
-
-
-Page 332, line 12, _for_ “Guthred” _read_ “Guthfred”.
-
-Page 333, line  3, _for_ “North Wales” _read_ “part of South Wales”.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I.
-
-THE PREHISTORIC FOREWORLD.
-
-
-The history of England if we wish to take it in its narrowest sense
-begins with the migrations of the Angles, Jutes and Saxons in the fifth
-century after Christ. Yet, remembering that we have dwelling close
-beside us and mingling their blood with ours a gallant little people
-who own no descent from the Anglo-Saxon invaders, and remembering also
-how magical was the effect on all the barbarian races, of contact
-with the all-transmuting civilisation of Rome, we cannot surely leave
-altogether untold the story of those five centuries during which our
-country was known to the rest of Europe not as Anglia but as Britannia.
-Can we absolutely stop even there? It is true that the conscious
-history of Britain, the history that was written by chroniclers and
-enshrined in libraries, begins, as do the histories of all the nations
-of Western Europe, with the day when they came first in contact with
-the Genius of Rome. But is it possible to avoid trying to peer a little
-further into the infinite, dim and misty ages that lie beyond that
-great historic landmark? This is what our teachers of natural science
-have endeavoured to do on our behalf, labouring with the spade of the
-excavator and the collected specimens of the comparative anatomist to
-read a few of those faded pages of the history of Britain which had
-already been long illegible when Julius Cæsar landed on our shores.
-
-And first we listen to the voice of Geology. After toiling through
-the all-but eternities of the Primary and Secondary systems of
-rock-formation, she seems to heave a sigh of relief as she enters the
-vestibule of the Tertiary system. New heavens and a new earth, an earth
-not utterly unlike that upon which we now dwell, seem to lie before
-her, and she names the four vast halls through which she leads her
-disciples “the Dawn of the New,” “the Less New,” “the More New,” and
-“the Most New” (Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene and Pleistocene). In the last
-of these halls, which is represented by a mere line on the geological
-ground plan, yet which may easily have had a duration of 200,000 years,
-we at last find our fellow-countryman, the first human inhabitant, as
-far as we know, of the British Isles. In certain well-known caves on
-the south coast of Devonshire (Kent’s Cavern and Brixham) there were
-found some sixty years ago flint implements undoubtedly fashioned by
-human hands, along with the remains of hyenas and other animals long
-since extinct in the British Islands, and these were lying under a
-stalagmite floor which must have taken at least 12,000 years, and
-may well have taken 100,000 years, for its formation. It was thus
-conclusively proved that Palæolithic man whose handiwork has been
-found in many other European countries, especially in the wonderfully
-interesting caves of Aquitaine, lived also, how many millenniums ago
-none can say, in the limestone caves of Britain. Besides these dwellers
-in caves and probably of an even earlier period than they, were the
-other Palæolithic men who have left abundant traces of their presence
-in the spear-heads, flints, scrapers and other large stone implements
-which are often found in the gravel deposits of ancient rivers.
-
-The Old Stone-workers, as this earliest known race of men is called
-to distinguish them from Neolithic men, their immeasurably remote
-descendants or representatives, knew, of course, nothing of the use
-of metals, and generally fashioned their flint implements or their
-bone needles in a somewhat rough and unworkmanlike manner. They
-knew nothing of the art of the weaver, and can therefore have had
-no other clothing than the skins of beasts. Neither did they ever
-manufacture anything in the nature of pottery; so that shells and the
-skulls of animals must have been their only drinking cups. But the
-relics of their primeval feasts show that they were in all probability
-not cannibals, and the very few Palæolithic skulls which have been
-preserved show a type decidedly nobler than some of the backward races
-of the present day. Curiously enough the men who had made so little
-advance in the homely industries of life had nevertheless a distinct
-feeling for graphic art. “By far the most noteworthy objects” in the
-Palæolithic caves “are the fragments of bone, horn, ivory and stone,
-which exhibit outlined and even shaded sketches of various animals.
-These engravings have been made with a sharp-pointed implement, and
-are often wonderfully characteristic representations of the creatures
-they portray. The figures are sometimes single; in other cases they are
-drawn in groups. We find representations of a fish, a seal, an ox, an
-ibex, the red-deer, the great Irish elk or deer, the bison, the horse,
-the cave-bear, the rein-deer and the mammoth or woolly elephant.”[1]
-
-Whatever may have been the precise relation of the Pleistocene period
-to the Great Ice Age--a point as to which there is some difference of
-opinion--it is admitted that at some time or other after that when
-the hyena howled in the Brixham Cave, and when Palæolithic man left
-there his rudely worked flint implements, the conditions of life in
-Northern Europe changed. The Arctic zone invaded the larger part
-of the Temperate zone, and a great cap of ice covered not only the
-Scandinavian countries and the greater part of Russia but Ireland,
-Scotland and England, at least as far south as the valley of the
-Thames. Now were our chalk hills rounded into smoothness, now were many
-of our river beds hollowed out, and untidy heaps of “terminal moraine”
-deposited where the glaciers debouched into the valleys. This dismal
-change, destructive of all the higher organic life and continuing
-possibly over a period of thousands of years, makes, in our island at
-any rate, an impassable barrier between two races of mankind. When
-the great ice deluge subsided, when the winter-tyrant returned to his
-true Arctic home, when the oak and the pine began again to appear
-upon the hills, and flowers like our own bloomed in the valleys, then
-the Neolithic man, the “New Stone-worker,” came upon the scene and
-scattered abundant evidences of his presence over the land. From that
-period--date we cannot call it, for we have no evidence which would
-justify us in making the roughest approximation to a date--man has been
-continuously a dweller in this island, Neolithic man at length yielding
-ground to the immigrant Celt, the Celt to the Saxon, the Saxon to the
-Dane and the Norman.
-
-At this point Ethnology must intervene and take up the story of the
-ages which has thus far been told by her sister Geology. Of what race
-were the men who after the retreat of the great desolating glaciers
-came to inhabit this our island? We know that on the one hand they
-were in a decidedly more advanced state of civilisation than their
-Palæolithic predecessors. Instead of the rough unshapely pyramids of
-flint which the Old Stone men used for axes and chisels, Neolithic
-man went on shaping and polishing his implements till scarcely a
-fault could be found in the symmetry of their curves. He continued,
-of course, to hunt and fish as his predecessor had done, but he had
-also some knowledge of agriculture, he was a breeder of cattle and
-he knew how to weave cloth and to bake pottery. He no longer lived
-principally in caves, but sometimes in a fairly constructed house,
-often, for security, built on the edge of a lake. But, strange to say,
-with all these great advances towards civilisation, he does not seem to
-have felt any of that passion for picture-drawing which distinguished
-his predecessor “the artistic hunter of the Reindeer period”.[2] The
-physiological characteristics which differentiate Neolithic man from
-the Celt, his conqueror, will be more fully dwelt on when we come to
-the next act in the drama; but meanwhile it may be stated that the race
-was not a tall one. Professor Rolleston says: “I have never found the
-stature to exceed 5 feet 9 inches in any skeleton from a barrow which
-was undoubtedly of the ‘stone and bone’ [_i.e._, Neolithic] period”.
-There is some reason to think that they were dark complexioned with
-black and curly hair, but it must be admitted that the evidence for
-this statement is not very conclusive.
-
-On the whole Ethnology decides that these earliest inhabitants of
-our island after the Great Ice Age were a non-Aryan race, strangers
-therefore to that great and widely scattered family to which, as far as
-language is concerned, all the great European peoples save the Turks,
-the Hungarians and the Finns, ultimately belong. Of course since no
-vestige of language survives to indicate their nationality, even this
-universally accepted classification, or rather refusal to classify,
-must be considered as purely conjectural. In the words of Professor
-Rolleston: “The race which used stone and bone implements, may, so
-far as the naturalist’s investigations lead him, have spoken either
-a Turanian or an Aryan tongue: what he sees in their skulls and their
-surroundings impresses him with the notion of an antiquity which may
-have given time enough and to spare for the more or less complete
-disappearance of more than one unwritten language”. The important fact
-to lay hold of is that the whole of the long period of Stone-workers
-in this country is pre-Celtic. Any name which we may for purposes
-of convenience give to these aborigines of Britain, whether the now
-nearly discarded word Turanians, to mark their exclusion from the
-Aryan family; or Iberians, to indicate a possible connexion with the
-mysterious Basques of the Pyrenees; or Silurians, in order to show
-a possible survival of their type in the countrymen of Caractacus;
-is only like an algebraical symbol, a label affixed to a locked box,
-denoting our ignorance of its contents.
-
-Perhaps the most important fact known in connexion with the Neolithic
-inhabitants of Britain is that recent discoveries show that they were
-the builders of Stonehenge. That a race of men using no implements of
-iron should have succeeded in rearing those huge blocks into position
-on the plain of Wiltshire is a stupendous marvel, equalling in its
-way the erection of the pyramids of Ghizeh, the placing of the great
-stones in the temple at Baalbek, or the superposition of the 300-ton
-block of Istrian marble on the tomb of Theodoric, at Ravenna. This
-discovery seems to throw some doubt on the generally received notion
-that Stonehenge was connected with Druidical worship, since that was
-probably of Celtic origin. It is possible that Stonehenge may be the
-“magnificent circular temple to Apollo” which, according to Diodorus
-Siculus, existed in an island which may be identified with Britain.
-
- * * * * *
-
-To the age of stone succeeded the age of bronze, and to the age of
-bronze succeeded that of iron. Both in our island belong to the
-domination of the Celts, except in so far as the age of iron may be
-said to have lasted through Roman, Saxon and Norman domination down
-to our own day. It is admitted by all that the Celtic immigrants came
-in two successive waves, the distinction between which may be seen
-to this day, or if not always seen in physical type, at least always
-heard in the language of their descendants. The first wave, which is
-generally known as the Gaelic, eventually rolled to the Highlands and
-islands of Scotland and to the shores of Ireland, and is represented
-philologically by the kindred dialects of Gaelic and Erse. The second
-wave, popularly known as the Cymric, overspread the whole east and
-centre of Britain, the Gaels being probably forced to retire before
-their Cymric conquerors. To this race belong the Welsh and the Bretons
-of France; and Cumberland and Cornwall once spoke their language.
-Some of our most recent authorities on British ethnology, believing
-the term Cymri to be of late origin and the term Gaelic to have some
-misleading associations, prefer to speak of Goidels and Brythons (early
-national names) instead of Gaels and Cymri; but the distinction between
-the two races and the main lines of their geographical distribution
-are generally accepted, and are not affected by this question of
-nomenclature.
-
-It is probable, then, that at some period whose date cannot yet be even
-approximately conjectured, and from some quarter which we may guess,
-but can only guess, to have been the north of Germany, a bronze-using
-race of warriors and hunters, ancestors of the modern Highlander and
-Irishman, crossed the sea and established themselves in the island of
-Britain, or, as it was, perhaps, then called, Albion. Later on, but how
-many centuries later none can say, another race, kindred but probably
-hostile, invaded our shores, drove the Gaels or Goidels before them,
-established themselves in the best parts of the southern portion of
-the island, and, being themselves called Brythons, gave to the whole
-land the name by which the Romans called it, Britannia. As we know that
-iron had been introduced into the country before the arrival of the
-Romans, we may conjecture that this second Celtic wave consisted of
-the wielders of weapons of iron, and that this was one cause of their
-victory over the Goidels. The Brythons, thus settled in the valley of
-the Thames and above the chalk cliffs of Sussex, were the enemies whom
-Cæsar encountered when he invaded Britain.
-
-A word may be said as to the relation of these Aryan invaders to the
-presumably non-Aryan aborigines, the Neolithic men to whom allusion
-was previously made. It used to be supposed that these aborigines
-disappeared before the men of bronze and iron as completely as the
-aborigines of Tasmania have disappeared before the Anglo-Saxon
-immigrant. More careful investigation has led our recent ethnologists
-to deny this conclusion. In the first place, there are features in the
-rude polity of the historic Celts which suggest a doubt whether they
-really constituted the whole population of the country. Their chiefs
-are warlike leaders, their rank and file are themselves owners of
-slaves. Everything about them seems to show that they were, like the
-Spartans, a comparatively small ruling race surrounded by a subject
-population, which they perhaps needed to keep severely in check.
-Then the testimony of the tombs--and it is after all to the tombs
-that we must chiefly resort for information as to the fate of these
-buried peoples--decidedly confirms the theory of the survival of the
-aborigines and of their blending to a considerable extent with their
-Celtic conquerors. The stone-using people buried their dead in oblong
-mounds technically known as “long barrows” generally some one hundred
-to two hundred feet long by forty or fifty feet wide. The skulls found
-in these long barrows, lying side by side with implements of stone,
-are uniformly of the type known as Dolicho-cephalic, that is, the
-width from ear to ear is very considerably less than the length from
-the eyes to the back of the head. With the introduction of bronze
-we at once find a noticeable difference both in the shape of the
-tomb and the appearance of its occupant. The mound is now circular,
-generally from forty to sixty feet in diameter, the “round barrow” of
-the archæologist; and the skulls found in it are at first uniformly
-of the Brachy-cephalic type, square and strong, the width generally
-about four-fifths of the length. The important point to observe for
-our present purpose is that as we pass from the early Celtic to the
-late Celtic type of barrow--a transition of which we are assured by
-the gradual introduction of iron as well as by other signs known
-to archæologists--the character of the skulls undergoes a certain
-modification towards the Dolicho-cephalic type. The conclusion arrived
-at by the greatest investigator of British barrows, Dr. Greenwell, is
-that “ultimately the two races became so mixed up and connected as to
-form one people. If this was the case, by a natural process the more
-numerous race would in the end absorb the other, until at length, with
-some exceptions to be accounted for by well-known laws, the whole
-population would become one, not only in the accidents of civilisation
-and government, but practically in blood also.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II.
-
-CÆSAR IN BRITAIN.
-
-
-Down to the middle of the first century before Christ the British Isles
-were scarcely more known to the civilised nations of southern Europe
-than the North Pole is to the men of our own day. The trade which had
-probably long existed in the tin of Cornish mines had been purposely
-kept in mysterious darkness by the Phœnicians who profited thereby,
-so that Herodotus, the much inquiring, only mentions the Tin-islands
-(Cassiterides) to say that he knows naught concerning them. That trade
-had now probably become, save for the short passage of the channel, an
-overland one, and enriched the merchants of Marseilles. A citizen of
-that busy port, Pytheas by name, who seems to have been contemporary
-with Alexander the Great, professed to have travelled over the greater
-part of Britain, and afterwards to have sailed to a great distance
-along the northern coast of Germany. It was the fashion of later
-authors, such as Polybius and Strabo, to sneer at his alleged voyage
-of discovery and to doubt his veracity, but the tendency of modern
-inquiry is in some degree to restore the credit of this Marco Polo of
-pre-Christian times, to show that in some points he had a more correct
-knowledge of geography than his critics, and to deepen our regret that
-his work is known to us only in a few passages selected and perhaps
-distorted by his hostile reviewers. It must be admitted that if he
-reported that the circumference of Britain was 40,000 stadia (about
-5,000 of our miles), and that he had traversed the whole of it on
-foot,[3] his statement was not altogether consistent with fact.
-
-Such, however, was all the information that the Greeks and Romans
-possessed concerning our island near the middle of the first century
-B.C., at the time when Cicero was thundering against Catiline, and
-Pompey was forcing his way into the temple at Jerusalem. Her time,
-however, for entrance on the great theatre of the world was near
-at hand, and it was for her a fortunate circumstance, and one not
-inconsistent with the part which she has played thereon in later ages,
-that the man who brought her on to the stage should have been himself
-the central figure in the world’s political history--Gaius Julius Cæsar.
-
-Sprung from one of the oldest and proudest families of Rome, yet
-nephew by marriage of the peasant-soldier Marius, Cæsar, the high-born
-democrat, possessed in his own person that combination of qualities
-which has ever been found most dangerous to the rule of a narrow and
-selfish oligarchy. The outworn machine which men still called the Roman
-republic was obviously creaking towards an utter breakdown, and must
-soon, if the provinces were not to be bled to death by greedy senators,
-be replaced by the government of a single man, whether that man were
-called king, or general, or dictator. The only question was who that
-single man should be. Cæsar felt that he was the man of destiny,
-foreordained to stand on that awful eminence. He flung out of the Roman
-forum and senate-house, teeming as they were with squalid intrigues
-and echoing to the cries of ignoble factions, and at the age of forty
-set himself to a ten years’ apprenticeship to empire on the banks of
-the Loire and the Saône, amid the vast forests of Britain or of Gaul.
-The French historian, Michelet, has finely said: “I would that I could
-have seen that pale countenance, aged before its time by the revelries
-of Rome: that delicate and epileptic man, walking at the head of his
-legions under the rains of Gaul, swimming across our rivers or riding
-on horseback among the litters in which his secretaries were carried,
-and dictating five or six letters at once: agitating Rome from the
-furthest corners of Belgium: sweeping two millions of men from his path
-and in the space of ten years subduing Gaul, the Rhine and the northern
-ocean”.
-
-At the end of the first three years of Cæsar’s proconsulship (58–56
-B.C.) having apparently almost completed the conquest of Gaul, he stood
-a conqueror on the southern shore of the Straits of Dover, looked
-across at the white cliffs of Albion, and dreamed of bringing that
-mysterious island within the circle of Roman dominion. Pretexts for
-invasion were never lacking to an adventurous proconsul. There were
-close ties of affinity between many of the northern tribes of Gaul
-and their British neighbours. Some tribes even bore the same name.
-The Atrebates of Arras were reflected in the Atrebates of Berkshire;
-there were Belgæ in Somerset and Wiltshire as well as in Belgium; even
-men call Parisii were found, strangely enough, in the East Riding of
-Yorkshire. Then there was also the connexion, whatever may have been
-its value, between the religion of the continental and the insular
-Celts. Our information concerning the Druids (chiefly derived from
-Cæsar himself) is somewhat vague and unsatisfactory, but there is
-no reason to doubt his statement that the Druidic “discipline” had
-originated in Britain and had been carried thence into Gaul, and thus
-any religious element that there may have been in the resistance of the
-Gallic tribes to Roman domination would look across the channel for
-sympathy and inspiration.
-
-There was already a certain amount of commercial intercourse between
-Britain and Gaul, and Cæsar endeavoured to ascertain by questioning the
-merchants engaged in that trade what was the size of the island, what
-were its best harbours, and what the customs and warlike usages of the
-natives. On none of these points, however, could he obtain satisfactory
-information. The proconsul therefore sent a lieutenant named Volusenus
-with a swift ship to reconnoitre the nearer coast, but he returned in
-five days without having ventured to land. Meanwhile, as the object
-of the general’s prolonged stay in the territory of the Morini became
-more and more evident, messengers from certain of the British tribes
-began to cross the channel, charged--so Cæsar says--with a commission
-to promise “obedience to the rule of the Roman people,” and to give
-hostages as a pledge of their fidelity. The arrival of the ambassadors
-and their attempt to turn the proconsul from his purpose by fair speech
-and unmeaning promises we may well believe. How much the Regni and the
-Cantii knew about the rule of the Roman people, and what intention
-they had of loyally submitting to it, may be left uncertain. Cæsar,
-however, availed himself of the opportunity to send over with these
-returning envoys a certain Celtic chieftain named Commius, whom he had
-himself made king of the continental Atrebates, and on whose fidelity
-he thought that he could rely, to exhort the native tribes peacefully
-to accept the dominion of the Roman people, as the representative of
-whom Cæsar himself would shortly make his appearance among them. This
-mission of Commius proved quite fruitless. As soon as he landed--so he
-said--the Britons arrested him and loaded him with chains, and it was
-only after the defeat which will shortly be described that they sent
-him back to Cæsar. As we find Commius only four years later taking a
-leading part in the insurrection of the tribes in the north of Gaul,
-and professing an especial hostility to all who bore the name of
-Roman, we may, perhaps, doubt whether, even at this time, his pleas
-for subjection were as earnest, or the chains imposed upon him by the
-Britons as heavy, as Cæsar’s narrative would seem to imply.
-
-Cæsar had determined to make his exploratory voyage with two legions,
-the Seventh and the Tenth. He perhaps hoped that actual war would
-not be necessary to bring about the formal submission of the tribes
-on the coast, and he therefore did not take with him more than the
-8,000 to 10,000 men, which were probably the actual muster of two
-legions, and a body of cavalry whose precise number is not stated. As
-fighting, however, might, after all, prove to be necessary, he took
-care that one of the legions which accompanied him should be the famous
-Tenth on whose courage and devotion he often relied, not in vain. To
-transport the legions he had collected about eighty cargo ships (_naves
-onerariæ_), many of which had been employed the year before in his
-naval campaign off the coast of Brittany. He had also a certain number
-of galleys (_naves longæ_) capable of being rowed much faster than
-the heavy transport ships could sail. On these latter his staff of
-officers, quæstors, legates and prefects were embarked, and no doubt
-the proconsul himself was their companion.
-
-The fleet set sail about midnight on August 26, B.C. 55, or on some
-day very near to that date. The port of embarkation was probably near
-to Cape Gris Nez and at the narrowest part of the channel, but almost
-every sentence of the following narrative has been the subject of
-an animated topographical discussion, and Cæsar himself mentions no
-names of places that can be certainly identified.[4] Whatever may have
-been the harbour from which the legions embarked it was not the same
-which had been appointed as a rendezvous for the cavalry. These latter
-were to be borne upon a little fleet of eighteen transports which
-were detained by a contrary wind at a port eight miles farther up the
-channel. As we shall see, their ill fortune in the matter of weather
-continued throughout the expedition, and their consequent inability
-to co-operate with the legions may have been the chief cause of the
-expedition’s failure.
-
-As for the main body of the fleet, it must have made an extremely
-slow voyage, for it was not till the fourth hour of the day (about
-8.30 A.M.) that the foremost ships caught sight of the shores of
-Britain. The landing was evidently not to be unopposed: on all the
-hills armed bodies of the enemy were drawn up. The word used by Cæsar
-signifies properly “hills,” but as he goes on to say that “the sea
-was commanded by such steep mountains that a weapon could easily be
-hurled from the higher ground to the shore,” we are probably right in
-understanding these “hills” to be the well-known chalk cliffs of Kent.
-Seeing therefore no suitable place for landing, Cæsar signalled for his
-fleet to gather round him, and lay quietly at anchor for five hours.
-Summoning his staff he imparted to them such information concerning the
-nature of the country as he had been able to gather from Volusenus,
-and explained that in maritime warfare such as that in which they were
-now engaged, liable to be affected by rapid changes of the weather and
-the sea, it was pre-eminently necessary that they should give prompt
-obedience to his orders. At about 3 P.M., apparently, the fleet weighed
-anchor, and, wind and tide having become favourable, moved forward
-about seven miles and there halted opposite a level and open shore
-which seemed well adapted for landing.
-
-The barbarians, however, who were of course watching Cæsar’s movements,
-sent forward their chariots and their cavalry, and following
-themselves with rapid movements were on the spot to oppose the Romans’
-disembarkation. It seemed for some time as if their opposition would
-be effectual. The ships drawing many feet of water could not approach
-near to the land, and the soldiers, with their hands encumbered by the
-_pilum_ or the sword and their bodies weighted with the heavy armour of
-the Roman legionary, found it no easy matter to jump from the ships,
-to stagger through the slippery ooze, to defend themselves against
-the attacks of the nimble and lightly armed barbarians. Seeing this,
-Cæsar ordered up the galleys, which were rowed rapidly backwards and
-forwards between the transports and the shore, and from the decks of
-which slings, bows and _balistae_ freely employed worked havoc among
-the barbarians, already disposed to terror by the unwonted sight of
-the triremes. But as the soldiers still hesitated, chiefly on account
-of the depth of the water into which it was necessary to plunge, the
-standard-bearer of the Tenth legion, after a short prayer to the gods
-for good luck to his legion, leapt into the sea, shouting with a loud
-voice: “Jump! comrades! unless you would see your eagle fall into the
-enemy’s hands. I at any rate will do my duty to the Republic and our
-general.” His example was contagious. All the soldiers leapt from
-the ships and were soon engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with the
-Britons, each man rallying to the standard that was nearest to him
-as it was hopeless in such a _mêlée_ to form regular rank by legions
-and cohorts. The barbarians, charging with their horses into deep
-water, were sometimes able to surround smaller parties of the invaders
-or to harass them from a distance with their darts. Hereupon, Cæsar
-filled the boats of the long ships and some of the lighter skiffs with
-soldiers, who rowing rapidly backwards and forwards carried help where
-it was most needed.
-
-It was probably at this stage of the encounter that an incident took
-place which is recorded not by Cæsar himself but by Valerius Maximus,
-an anecdote-collector of a later date. He tells us that a legionary
-named Scæva with four comrades rowed to a rock surrounded by the sea
-and from thence dealt destruction with their arrows among the Britons.
-Before long the ebbing tide made their rock accessible from the shore
-and the other soldiers thought it was time to row back to their
-ship. Scæva, refusing to accompany them, was soon surrounded by the
-barbarians, with whom he fought single-handed. Many he killed, but he
-himself suffered fearfully. His thigh was pierced by an arrow, his face
-smashed by a stone, his shield broken. At last he threw himself into
-the sea and swam to his vessel. Cæsar and the officers began to applaud
-him for his bravery, but he flung himself at the proconsul’s feet and
-with tears implored forgiveness for the military crime of the loss of
-his shield.
-
-When the great body of the soldiers had at last struggled to the
-shore and could fight on firm land, Roman discipline soon prevailed
-over barbarian ardour. The Britons took to flight, but the absence
-of cavalry, bitterly regretted by Cæsar, checked pursuit. Next day
-there came ambassadors from the dispirited Britons praying for pardon,
-bringing the liberated Commius and promising to obey all Cæsar’s
-orders. After a grave rebuke for having violated the laws of nations
-by imprisoning his messengers, the proconsul granted his forgiveness
-and ordered the natives to hand over hostages for their good faith.
-A few were given, the rest who were to be sent by the more distant
-tribes were promised but never came. The reason of this failure of
-the negotiations (if they had ever had a chance of success) was the
-catastrophe which befel the lingering squadron with its freight of
-cavalry. On the fourth day after Cæsar’s landing, the eighteen ships
-with the horsemen on board drew nigh to Britain. Already they were
-descried by their comrades on shore when so violent a storm arose that
-they were hopelessly beaten off their course. Some were driven straight
-back to the harbour which they had quitted, others with imminent danger
-of shipwreck drifted down channel and at last, waterlogged and nearly
-helpless, regained some port in Gaul.
-
-On the night which followed this disastrous day, a night of full moon,
-the unusually high tide, a marvel and a mystery to these children of
-the Mediterranean, surrounded the Roman ships which had been drawn up,
-as they hoped, high and dry on the beach. Cables were broken, anchors
-lost, some of the ships probably dashed against one another; it seemed
-as though Cæsar would be stranded without ships and without supplies
-on the inhospitable shore of Britain. He at once sent out some of his
-soldiers to collect supplies from the Kentish harvest fields, and set
-others to repair those ships, whose repair was yet possible, at the
-expense of their hopelessly ruined companions. He admits an entire loss
-of twelve, but leaves us to infer that the remainder were patched into
-some sort of seaworthiness. By this time undoubtedly the one thought of
-both general and army was how to get safe back to Gaul; and naturally
-the one thought of the Britons, who knew all that had occurred, was how
-to prevent that return. The promised hostages of course never appeared;
-and a troop of barbarians ambushed in a neighbouring forest watched for
-a favourable opportunity of attacking the Romans. That opportunity
-came one day when the soldiers of the Seventh legion were out foraging
-in the harvest fields. The sentinels in the Roman camp descried a cloud
-of dust rising in the direction whither their comrades had gone, and
-brought word to the general, who at once suspected that the precarious
-peace was broken and that mischief was abroad. Sallying forth with four
-cohorts he found that it was even so. The barbarians had emerged from
-their ambush, had fallen upon the unsuspecting legionaries, quietly
-engaged in reaping the British harvest, had slain a few of them and
-were harassing the rest with “alarums and excursions” by their cavalry
-and their charioteers.
-
-At this point Cæsar interrupts his narrative to describe the British
-custom of using chariots in war, a custom which was evidently strange
-and disconcerting to the Roman soldiery. “This,” he says, “is their
-manner of fighting. First they drive their horses about in all
-directions, hurling darts, and by the very terror of their horses and
-clashing of their wheels often throw the ranks [of their enemies]
-into confusion. Then when they have insinuated themselves between the
-squadrons of the [hostile] cavalry they leap from their chariots and
-fight on foot. The charioteers meanwhile gradually draw out of the fray
-and so place the cars that if their friends should be overborne by the
-multitude of the enemy they may easily take refuge with them. In this
-way they combine the rapid movements of cavalry with the steadiness
-of infantry, and have acquired such a degree of dexterity by daily
-practice that they can hold up their galloping horses in the steepest
-descents, check and turn them in a moment, run along the pole or sit on
-the yoke, and then as quickly as possible fly back into the car.” It
-will be observed that Cæsar says nothing about the famous scythe-armed
-chariots of the Britons which, as has been often suggested, would
-surely on a battlefield be as dangerous to friends as to foes.
-
-Cæsar’s arrival rescued his troops from their perilous position, and
-he was able to lead them back in safety to the camp. Many stormy days
-followed, during which warlike operations were necessarily suspended
-on both sides, but the barbarians employed the interval in beating up
-recruits from all quarters, attracted by the hope of plunder and of
-making an end at one blow of the army of invasion, whose scanty numbers
-moved them to contempt. When fighting was resumed the legions easily
-repelled the British attack, and some horsemen who had been brought
-by Commius, though only thirty in number, enabled Cæsar to pursue the
-flying foe for some distance, to kill many of them and to lay waste a
-wide extent of country with fire and sword. The usual group of penitent
-ambassadors appeared the same day in Cæsar’s camp; the usual excuses
-were offered; were accepted as a matter of necessity; and twice the
-number of hostages was ordered to be surrendered. It did not greatly
-matter how many were demanded, for Cæsar had no intention of awaiting
-their delivery. Soon after midnight the Roman fleet set sail, and the
-whole army returned eventually safe to Gaul, though two of the ships
-bearing 300 men drifted down the coast of Picardy, and the soldiers,
-attacked by no fewer than 6,000 of the Morini, had much ado to defend
-themselves till the general sent a force of cavalry to their succour.
-
-On the arrival of Cæsar’s despatches in Rome the senate ordered a
-solemn _supplicatio_ or thanksgiving to the gods, which was to last
-for twenty days. The British expedition had been a daring and a showy
-exploit, but no one knew better than Cæsar himself that it had been an
-entire failure, and that nothing had really been done towards bringing
-a single British tribe under “the rule of the Roman people”. If this
-island was to be conquered, it was plain that a much larger force than
-two legions would be needed for the work. This Cæsar recognised, and
-accordingly he determined to make another attempt next year (B.C. 54)
-with five legions (perhaps about 21,000 men) and 2,000 cavalry. The
-previous campaign had evidently convinced the general of the importance
-of mounted men for this kind of warfare. He was also determined to
-have a longer interval before the autumnal equinox for the conduct of
-his campaign than he had allowed himself in the previous year, and
-accordingly somewhere about July 23 he set sail from the Portus Itius.
-He would, in fact, have started at least three weeks earlier, but the
-wind had been blowing persistently from a point a long way to the north
-of west. As soon as it shifted to the south-west, the fleet (which
-with all its companions consisted of 800 ships) started at sunset. In
-the night, however, the wind fell and the tide (which probably neither
-Cæsar nor any of his officers understood) carried the ships far out of
-their course. When the sun arose they saw that Britain was far behind
-them, on their left hand. Dropping their sails, they took to the oars,
-and Cæsar has words of well-deserved praise for his sturdy soldiers,
-who rowed so well that they made the heavy transport ships keep up with
-the lighter galleys which, as before, accompanied them. By a little
-after noon they reached the coast of Britain, apparently at their old
-landing-place. Their disembarkation was not now opposed; the Britons
-having, as it seems, lost heart when they saw so vast a flotilla
-approaching their shores.
-
-Notwithstanding his larger armament, Cæsar’s second invasion was in
-many respects a mere _replica_ of the first, and it is hardly worth
-while to describe it in equal detail. There was again a violent
-tempest which swept the fleet from its anchorage, destroyed forty of
-the ships, and obliged Cæsar to waste ten precious days in repairing
-the remainder. Toilsome as the task must be, he judged it advisable
-to draw all his ships up on land and surround them with a wall of
-circumvallation. When we remember that this was the precaution adopted
-by the Greeks who warred in Troy, we see how little essential change
-had been wrought in naval warfare in the course of 1,000 years.
-Meanwhile the Britons had assembled in large numbers in order to oppose
-the progress of the invaders, and had entrusted the national defence to
-a chief named Cassivellaunus who ruled over some of the tribes north
-of the Thames. Hitherto he had made himself apparently more feared
-than loved by his dealings with neighbouring tribes: the Trinobantes,
-especially, who dwelt in the district now known as Essex, had seen
-their king murdered and their king’s son made a fugitive by his orders;
-but now in the supreme hour of danger the hard, unscrupulous soldier
-was by general consent chosen as a kind of dictator.
-
-After some preliminary skirmishes in which the heavily armed Roman
-legionaries suffered severely from the dashing onslaught and rapid
-retreat of the British chariots and cavalry, Cæsar determined to
-cross the Thames and beard the lion Cassivellaunus in his den. He
-was stationed on the north bank of the river which was fordable, but
-defended by sharp stakes placed in the bed of the stream. It is not
-quite clear from Cæsar’s account how this obstacle of the stakes was
-dealt with by his soldiers. Possibly they may have been partly removed
-by the cavalry whom he says that he sent first into the water. They
-were followed by the legionaries, who went, he says, so swiftly and
-with such a dash, though only their heads were out of water, that the
-enemy, unable to stand before the combined rush of horsemen and foot
-soldiers, left their stations on the bank and scattered in flight.
-
-As was so often the case with these Celtic tribes, domestic discord
-in some degree lightened the labours of the invader. We have seen
-that Cassivellaunus had obtained by violence the sovereignty of the
-Trinobantes of Essex. Mandubracius, the son of the dead king, had fled
-to Gaul and cast himself on the protection of Cæsar, in whose train
-he returned to Britain. There was still probably a party in favour
-of the dethroned family, and it was not a mere formality when Cæsar
-ordered the tribe to accept Mandubracius for their chief, to supply
-his troops with corn, and to deliver forty hostages into his hands.
-Five other tribes whose unimportant names are given by Cæsar came in
-and made their submission; and from them the general learned that not
-far distant was the town (_oppidum_) of Cassivellaunus, filled with a
-multitude of men and cattle, and defended by forests and marshes. “Now
-the Britons,” says Cæsar, perhaps with a sneer, “call any place a town”
-(_oppidum_) “when they have chosen a position entangled with forests
-and strengthened it with rampart and ditch, so that they may gather
-into it for shelter from hostile incursion.” Thither then marched Cæsar
-with his legions. He found a place splendidly strong by nature and art,
-but he determined to attack it from two sides at once. After a brief
-defence, the natives collapsed before the headlong rush of the Romans,
-and streamed out of the camp on the opposite side. Many were slain,
-many taken prisoners, and a great number of cattle fell into the hands
-of the Romans.
-
-In order probably to divert the forces of his enemy from his own
-_oppidum_, the generalissimo Cassivellaunus had sent orders to the
-four kings of Kent to collect their forces and make a sudden attack on
-the naval camp of the Romans. The attack was repulsed by a vigorous
-sortie: many of the Britons were slain and one of their noblest leaders
-taken prisoner. Hereupon Cassivellaunus, recognising that the fortune
-of war was turning against him and that his own confederates were
-falling away, sent messengers to offer his submission and obtain peace
-through the mediation of his friend, perhaps his fellow-tribesman,
-Commius. Cæsar, who had his own reasons for desiring a speedy return
-to Gaul and who doubtless considered that enough had been done for
-his glory, accepted the proffered submission. He “ordered hostages to
-be delivered, and fixed the amount of tribute which was to be yearly
-paid by Britannia to the Roman people. He forbade Cassivellaunus to
-do any injury to Mandubracius or the Trinobantes,” and with these
-high-sounding phrases he departed. As he carried back many captives and
-not a few of his ships had perished in the storm, he had to make two
-crossings with his fleet, but both were accomplished without disaster.
-Of Cassivellaunus himself no further information is vouchsafed us, nor
-do we know what was the fate of the abandoned allies of Rome.
-
-The great general in this instance “had come and had seen” but had
-not “conquered”. Most valuable, however, to us is the information
-which he has given us concerning our sequestered island, though in
-some cases it is evidently inaccurate. We need not linger over Cæsar’s
-geographical statements, though it is curious to see how certain errors
-of earlier geographers still lingered on even into the Augustan age of
-Roman literature. Thus he thinks that, of the three sides of Britain’s
-triangle one looks towards Gaul and the east, another towards Spain and
-the west, while the third, which has no land opposite it, faces north.
-Besides Ireland, which is half the size of Britain, there are other
-islands, apparently on the west, concerning which certain writers have
-said that they have continual night during thirty days of winter. As
-to this Cæsar was not able to obtain any definite information, but his
-own _clepsydræ_ (water clocks) showed him that the nights in July were
-shorter in Britain than on the continent.
-
-“Of all the natives far the most civilised are those who inhabit the
-district of Kent, which is all situated on the coast: nor do these
-differ greatly in their manners from the inhabitants of Gaul. Those who
-live farther inland sow no corn, but live on milk and flesh, and are
-clothed in skins. All the Britons however dye themselves with woad,
-which gives them a blue colour and makes them look more terrible in
-battle. They wear long hair and shave every part of the body except the
-head and the upper lip. Ten or a dozen men have their wives in common,
-especially brothers with brothers, fathers with their sons, the
-woman’s offspring being reckoned to him who first cohabited with her.”
-This ghastly statement is probably a mere traveller’s tale, utterly
-untrue of the Celts of Britain or of any other Aryan tribe. It has been
-thought that it may possibly have been derived from an institution
-something like the Sclavonic _mir_, which caused all the descendants of
-one married couple for two or three generations to herd together in a
-single household. “The interior of Britain is inhabited by tribes which
-are, according to their own tradition, aboriginal: the sea-coast by
-those which for the sake of plunder have crossed over from Belgic Gaul,
-and after carrying on war have settled there and begun to cultivate
-the land. It is in consequence of this that nearly all of them have
-the same tribal names as those of the states from which they came.
-There is an infinite number of inhabitants, and one constantly meets
-with buildings almost like those of Gaul, as well as a great number of
-cattle.”
-
-“They use either golden money or thin bars of iron of a certain
-weight which pass for money.” Thus (according to the best reading
-of a much-disputed passage) does Cæsar speak as to the numismatic
-attainments of the Britons. We shall probably never know more than this
-as to the iron currency or quasi-currency of our predecessors; but
-the statement as to their gold currency has been entirely confirmed
-by modern discoveries. The most curious fact, however, in connexion
-with the pre-Roman gold coinage of Britain is that it is evidently an
-imitation, though a most barbarous imitation, of the coinage of Philip
-II. of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great. In the British
-imitations the fine classical features of the Macedonian monarch are
-twisted into the ignoble profile of a savage, while the curls of the
-hair and the leaves of the laurel crown, mechanically repeated and
-magnified, fill up the greater part of the coin. The effigy of a
-charioteer on the reverse of the coin is attempted to be copied in the
-same grotesque fashion with rather less success than the drawing of a
-child upon its slate. The charioteer himself is gradually resolved into
-a cluster of atoms, and though the likeness of the horse is for some
-time preserved, he is furnished with eight legs and gradually dwindles
-away into the spectre of a rocking-horse. Yet these queer pieces
-of money which occasionally turn up in English soil are intensely
-interesting, as showing how the influence of Greek art penetrated
-even into our world-forgotten island three centuries before the birth
-of Christ, travelling possibly by the same commercial route between
-the Euxine and the Baltic by which the Runes passed up from Thrace to
-Scandinavia, and the highly prized amber descended from Stralsund to
-Odessa.
-
-Cæsar proceeds to inform us that “tin (_plumbum album_) is found in the
-midland parts of the country [as to this he was of course misinformed];
-iron in the maritime regions, but in small quantities; all the bronze
-used is imported. There is timber of all kinds, as in Gaul, save the
-fir and the beech. They do not think it right to eat hares, geese or
-poultry, but keep these animals as pets. The climate is more temperate
-than that of Gaul, the cold less intense.” One regrets to learn from
-Strabo, who wrote half a century after Cæsar, that though “the climate
-is rainy rather than snowy, even in clear weather mists prevail so long
-that through the whole day the sun is visible only for three or four
-hours about noon”.
-
-In reviewing the history of Cæsar’s invasions of Britain we naturally
-inquire what was his object in fitting out those expeditions, why did
-they fail and why did he acquiesce in their failure. Whatever may have
-been the motive of the first (which, according to him, was chiefly the
-assistance given by the Britons to the cause of his Gaulish enemies),
-the second expedition at any rate, on which from 20,000 to 30,000 men
-were employed, cannot have been a mere reconnaissance, undertaken in
-the interests of scientific discovery. It was no doubt politic to
-stimulate the zeal of his partisans in Rome by voyages and marches
-which appeared to be
-
- Beyond the utmost bounds of human thought,
-
-but the general would hardly have spent so much treasure and risked the
-lives of so many of his legionaries without some hope of substantial
-advantage to himself, his soldiers, or the republic. Evidently the
-Britons fought better than he expected. Probably also, the forests
-and the marshes of the country made the movements of his troops
-exceptionally difficult. We can perceive also that the country was not
-so rich as he had hoped to find it--an important consideration for a
-general who had to reward his soldiers by frequent opportunities of
-“loot”. “We already know,” wrote Cicero to his brother Quintus, “that
-there is not an ounce of silver in that island nor any hope of booty
-except slaves, among whom I do not think you will expect to find any
-skilled in literature or music.” The only spoil that we hear of Cæsar’s
-carrying back from Britain was a breastplate adorned with precious
-pearls, which he dedicated in the Temple of Victory at Rome.
-
-One argument which doubtless influenced Cæsar against attempting a
-third expedition was derived from the peculiarly stormy and baffling
-character of the sea at the Straits of Dover. Each of his expeditions
-had been endangered and all but ruined by these unaccountable tides,
-these suddenly rising gales. He had to learn by bitter experience how
-different was that strange chopping sea from the peaceful waters of the
-Mediterranean. Had he been able to survey the channel more thoroughly,
-he would probably have found it worth while to make his passage at
-a broader part of it, like that which now separates Newhaven from
-Dieppe; perhaps even to anticipate the Saxon chieftains of the fifth
-century, to occupy the Isle of Wight, or to seek for his fleet the
-shelter of Southampton Water. After all, however, a sufficient reason
-for not renewing the attempt to conquer Britain was to be found in the
-precarious state of Roman dominion in Gaul. Cæsar evidently thought
-that his work in that country was practically finished in B.C. 55,
-when he first set his face towards Britain. Far otherwise: the hardest
-part of that work was yet to come. Five months after Cæsar’s return
-from his second expedition he heard the terrible tidings of the utter
-destruction of fifteen Roman cohorts by the Eburones. Then followed
-the revolt of Vercingetorix, bravest and most successful of Gaulish
-champions; the unsuccessful siege of Gergovia; the siege, successful
-but terribly hard to accomplish, of Alesia. Certainly we may say that
-the two years and a half which followed his return from Britain were
-among the most anxious, and seemed sometimes the most desperate stages
-in all that wonderful career which ended when, ten years after he had
-sailed away from Britain, he fell pierced by more than twenty dagger
-wounds--
-
- E’en at the base of Pompey’s statua,
- Which all the while ran blood.
-
-
-NOTE
-
-ON CÆSAR’S POINTS OF ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE IN HIS EXPEDITIONS TO
-BRITAIN.
-
-I. As to the point of embarkation from Gaul, the controversy lies
-principally between Boulogne and Wissant, Sir George Airy’s suggestion
-that Cæsar sailed from the estuary of the Somme being not easy to
-reconcile with his own statement that he went to the country of the
-Morini, “because thence was the shortest transit to Britain”.
-
-Boulogne, which was called by the Romans first Gesoriacum and then
-Bononia, was undoubtedly the regular harbour for passengers to Britain
-under the empire, and there would be little doubt that Cæsar started
-thence if he had not told us that the second expedition (presumably
-also the first) sailed from Portus Itius. It is not clear why Cæsar
-should have called Gesoriacum by any other name.
-
-The advocates of Wissant identify the Itian promontory with Cape Gris
-Nez, well known to all passengers from Dover to Calais, and think that
-its name would be naturally shared with the neighbouring village of
-Wissant, which was probably at one time nearer to the sea than it is
-now. On the whole, though the arguments on both sides are pretty evenly
-balanced, those in favour of Wissant seem slightly to preponderate.
-
-II. Sailing, then, from some port in Picardy (either Boulogne or
-Wissant), Cæsar reached a part of the British coast which from his
-description looks like the chalk cliffs west of Dover. So far there
-is not much difference between the commentators, but what happened
-in the afternoon when, after his long halt, he found the wind and
-tide both in his favour, gave the signal to weigh anchor, and “having
-advanced (_progressus_) about eight miles from that place, brought his
-ships to a stand at a level and open beach”? Certainly the natural
-rendering of these words would seem to be that he went seven English
-miles up channel, and so if he had really anchored off Dover he would
-reach Deal, and that port would be, as it has been generally supposed
-to be, the scene of the world-historical landing of the first Roman
-soldiers in Britain. It must be admitted, however, that there are great
-difficulties in this hypothesis. The most careful and minute inquiries
-that have been made seem to show that on that day (the fourth before
-the full moon) and at that hour (3 P.M.), the tide, if it ebbed and
-flowed as it does now, would be setting down, not up, the channel: and
-accordingly many authors have come to the conclusion that Cæsar sailed
-westward for those seven miles and landed either at Hythe or Lymne
-(well known afterwards to the Romans as Portus Lemanis), or possibly at
-some such place as Appledore, now inland but then at the head of a very
-sheltered bay.
-
-The discussion is much complicated by the undoubted fact of the great
-changes which have taken place in that part of the coastline, and Dr.
-Guest is perhaps entitled to argue that these changes may have so
-altered the set of the tides as to allow him to postulate an eastward
-flowing tide when Cæsar weighed anchor in the afternoon. It must,
-however, remain for the present a disputed question: Cæsar’s word,
-“_progressus_,” on the one side, the present course of the tides on the
-other. On the whole it seems to me that the balance of probability is
-slightly in favour of Deal.
-
-Among the authors who have written on this question may be mentioned
-Airy, Lewin, Appach, in favour of some port west of Dover; Long,
-Merivale, Guest, in favour of Deal. Guest’s arguments are perhaps
-the most satisfactory, but justice should be done to the extremely
-painstaking little treatise of Appach (_Caius Julius Cæsar’s British
-Expeditions_, etc., 1868), who, however, surely attempts the impossible
-in his elaborate back-calculations of the winds and tides of two
-thousand years ago.
-
-On the question of the point of departure from Gaul, reference may
-be made to T. R. Holmes’s _Conquest of Gaul_ (London, 1899) and to
-F. Haverfield’s review of that book in _English Historical Review_,
-xviii., 334–6.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III.
-
-THE CENTURY OF SUSPENSE.
-
-
-The second invasion of Britain by Cæsar took place, according to Roman
-reckoning, in the year 700 from the foundation of the City. The next,
-the successful invasion which was ordered by his collateral descendant
-in the fourth generation, the Emperor Claudius, took place in the year
-797 of the same reckoning. There was thus all but a century between the
-two events; that century which more powerfully than any other, before
-or after, has influenced the course of human history; yet which for
-that very reason, because in our chronology the years change from B.C.
-to A.D., the historical student sometimes finds it hard to recognise in
-its true perspective.
-
-As far as the work of the literary historian goes, Britain is almost a
-blank page during the whole of this century. It may be said that to the
-eyes of the Romans, her own mists closed round her when Cæsar left her
-shores, B.C. 54, and did not rise till Aulus Plautius approached them,
-A.D. 43. But the patient toil of the numismatist[5] has discovered the
-names of some British kings and enabled us to say something as to their
-mutual relations; a few brief notices of Roman historians have faintly
-illumined the scene; and it is now just possible to discern the actual
-lineaments of one who is not entirely a creature of romance--the royal
-Cymbeline.
-
-As has been already mentioned, a certain Commius, king of the
-continental Atrebates, was sent on an unsuccessful mission to Britain
-before Cæsar’s first invasion. In the mighty refluent wave of the
-Gaulish revolt against Rome, Commius either was actually swept away
-from his former fidelity or was suspected of being thus disloyal.
-However this might be, a foul attempt at his assassination, planned by
-Cæsar’s lieutenant, Labienus, converted him into an embittered enemy of
-Rome. He took part in the great campaigns of Vercingetorix; when they
-failed he sought succour from the other side of the Rhine; as captain
-of a band of freebooters he preyed on the subjects of Rome. At length
-(B.C. 51), seeing that further resistance was hopeless, he made his
-submission to Mark Antony, his only stipulation being that he might
-be allowed to go and dwell in some land where he would never again be
-offended by the sight of a Roman. With these words he vanishes from the
-pages of the historian of the Gallic war. As we find about the same
-time, or a little later, a certain Commius coining money in Britain, it
-is, at least, a tempting theory that the Roman-hating Gaulish refugee
-came to our island and reigned here over his kindred Atrebates and
-other tribes besides.
-
-Actual coins of Commius are, it must be admitted, not too certainly
-extant, but the large number of coins struck by three British kings who
-are proud to proclaim themselves his sons, clearly attest his existence
-and justify us in attributing to him considerable importance. These
-three British kings were Tincommius, Verica and Eppillus, and their
-dominions stretched from Hampshire to Kent. Their reigns probably
-occupied the last thirty years before the Christian era, and their
-coins exhibit an increasing tendency towards Roman manners and Roman
-art. The old barbaric survivals of the Macedonian effigies gradually
-disappear; classical profiles are introduced and the cornucopiæ, the
-eagle and the lion sometimes make their appearance.
-
-A British prince who was apparently a contemporary and a neighbour,
-possibly a rival of the family of Commius, was named Dubnovellaunus.
-The obverse of his coins shows a remarkable similarity to some of
-those of the just-mentioned King Eppillus. But the interesting fact
-in connexion with this otherwise unknown British chieftain is that a
-monument in the heart of Asia Minor preserves his name and records
-his dealings with the Roman Imperator. In the Turkish town of Angora
-on the side of a desolate Galatian hill stand the ruins of the marble
-temple of Augustus and Rome: and on the walls of the porch of that
-temple is a long bilingual inscription, recording in Latin and Greek
-the most memorable events of the fifty-eight years’ reign of the
-fortunate Augustus. Towards the end we find this passage: “To me fled
-as suppliant the Kings of the Parthians Tiridates and afterwards
-Phraates, Artaxares, son of Phraates, King of the Medes: the Kings of
-the Britons Dumnobellaunus and Tim ...” (the end of the last name being
-obliterated). It is not likely that if there had been many similar
-instances of British princes imploring the protection of Augustus they
-would have been left unrecorded in the monument of Angora; and it is
-therefore probably with some little courtly exaggeration that the
-contemporary geographer Strabo says: “Certain of the rulers of that
-country [Britain] by embassies and flattering attentions have gained
-the friendship of Cæsar Augustus and made votive offerings in the
-capital and have now rendered almost the whole island subject to the
-Romans”. This is certainly untrue. “The taxes which they bear are in no
-wise heavy and are levied on imports and exports between Britain and
-Gaul. The articles of this commerce are ivory rings and necklaces, and
-amber and vessels of glass and all such trumpery. It is not therefore
-desirable to put a garrison in the island, for it would require at
-least one legion and some cavalry in order to ensure the collection of
-the tribute, and the expense of keeping up such a force would equal the
-revenue received, since it would be necessary to lessen the customs
-duties if you were also levying tribute and there would be always a
-certain amount of danger attending the employment of force.” A very
-clear and sensible statement surely of the reasons which induced the
-cautious Augustus finally to abandon his thrice contemplated[6] scheme
-for the conquest of Britain.
-
-The British kings whom we have lately been describing reigned chiefly
-south of the Thames. North of that river in Middlesex, Herts and
-Essex (the district occupied by Cassivellaunus at the time of Cæsar’s
-invasion) there was reigning, probably from about B.C. 35 to A.D. 5,
-a chief named Tasciovanus, practically unknown in literary history
-but abundantly made known to us by his coins, which, though still
-for the most part barbarous, show some signs of Roman influence. His
-capital was Verulamium, the little Hertfordshire town which now bears
-the name of the martyred Saint Alban. On his death, which probably
-occurred about A.D. 5, he was succeeded by his two sons, one of whom,
-Cunobelinus, reigned at Camulodunum (the modern Colchester) over the
-Trinobantes and probably other tribes. Of him not only are the coins
-numerous and well known, but as the Cymbeline of Shakespeare’s drama,
-his name will be in the mouths of men as long as English literature
-endures. Of course the Cymbeline of the play has very little in common
-with the faintly outlined Cunobelinus of history. The lovely Imogen,
-faithful to her husband unto seeming death; the clownish Cloten,
-the wicked queen, the selfish boaster Leonatus; all these are mere
-creatures of the poet’s brain, of whom neither the romancer Geoffrey
-of Monmouth nor his copyist Holinshed had ever spoken. Yet in the
-conception of Cymbeline’s character, as an old king who rules his
-family and his court with little wisdom, there is nothing which clashes
-with historic truth; and the way in which Shakespeare has described the
-attitude of these little British princes towards the great, distant,
-dreadful power of Rome is surely one of the many evidences of his power
-of realising by instinct rather than by reason the political condition
-of a by-gone age. It may be noted in passing that Geoffrey of Monmouth
-informs us, whatever his information may be worth, that Kymbelinus, as
-he calls this king, “was a great soldier and had been brought up by
-Augustus Cæsar. He had contracted so great a friendship with the Romans
-that he freely paid them tribute when he might very well have refused
-it. In his days our Lord Jesus Christ was born.”
-
-A certain Adminius, who seems to have been a son of Cunobelinus, being
-expelled by his father, fled to the Roman camp in Germany with a small
-band of followers, and their humble supplications to the Emperor
-Caligula (37–41) caused that insane egotist to vaunt himself as the
-conqueror of Britain. A pompous epistle conveyed to the Senate the news
-of this great triumph, and the bearers thereof were especially charged
-to enter the city in a state-chariot and to deliver their important
-communication only in the Temple of Mars and to a crowded assembly. But
-the buffoonery of the nephew was to be followed by the serious labour
-of the uncle. The conquest of Britain was now nigh at hand.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV.
-
-THE ROMAN CONQUEST OF BRITAIN.
-
-
-In the year 41 after Christ’s birth the short madness of Caligula’s
-dominion over the world was ended by his assassination in one of the
-long corridors of the Palatine. His uncle Claudius, the despised
-weakling of the imperial family, dragged forth trembling from his
-hiding-place behind a curtain, and to his intense surprise acclaimed
-as Augustus by the mutinous Prætorians: this was the man for whom by a
-strange destiny was reserved the glory of adding Britain to the Roman
-Empire. Yet Claudius, for all his odd ways, his shambling gait, his
-shaking head, his stammering speech, was by no means the mere fool whom
-his relatives, ashamed of his physical deficiencies, had affected to
-consider him. He wrote in countless books the story of his imperial
-ancestors and his own; he knew the old Etruscan tongue, a knowledge,
-alas! now lost to the world, and translated treatises written therein;
-he cleared out the harbour of Ostia; he planted flourishing colonies;
-he brought water to Rome from the Æquian hills by the aqueduct which
-bears his name. Could the poor timorous old man have ventured to rely
-on himself, and to act on his own initiative, his name had perhaps
-been revered as that of one of the best emperors of Rome. It was his
-reliance on his wives and his freedmen, the government of the boudoir
-and the servants’ hall, which ruined his reputation with posterity.
-
-It was probably in the same year in which Claudius succeeded to the
-empire, or it may have been a year later, that old King Cunobelinus
-died in Britain and was succeeded by his two sons, Caratacus[7] and
-Togodumnus. There was, as usual, an exiled prince (whose name was
-Bericus) claiming Roman assistance for his restoration to his country,
-but whether he was one of the sons of Cunobelinus or not, neither
-history nor the coins inform us. The petition of the exiled Bericus
-was granted by Claudius, and an expedition was resolved on, nominally
-for his restoration (from this point onwards his name disappears
-from history), in reality for the conquest of Britain (A.D. 43). The
-command of the expedition was entrusted to Aulus Plautius, a senator of
-high rank--he had been consul fourteen years before with the Emperor
-Tiberius--and was possibly a kinsman of Claudius by marriage. Under his
-orders marched four legions[8]:--
-
- The Second: Augusta.
- The Ninth: Hispana.
- The Fourteenth: Gemina Martia; and
- The Twentieth: Valeria Victrix.
-
-All of these but the Ninth were withdrawn from service in Germany,
-and that legion came from Pannonia, in modern language Hungary west
-of the Danube. The Second and the Twentieth legions found a permanent
-home in our island; the Ninth, a grave; the Fourteenth after a
-brilliant career was withdrawn to Italy after about twenty-five years
-of British service. We have no exact statement of the number of the
-army of Plautius. The legions, if at their full complement, should
-stand for 20,000 men: the cavalry and cohorts of the allies should at
-least double that number. We are probably not far wrong in putting
-the invading force at 50,000, but the difficulty of forming an exact
-estimate is shown by the divergence between the calculations of two
-such experts as Mommsen and Hübner, the former of whom reckons the
-total at 40,000, and the latter at 70,000 men.
-
-Not without great difficulty (says our sole authority, Dion Cassius)
-was the army induced to depart from Gaul. The soldiers grumbled
-sorely at being called to do military service “outside of the
-habitable world,” and Claudius deemed it advisable to send to them
-his freedman-minister Narcissus to overcome their reluctance. The
-glib-tongued Greek mounted the general’s rostrum and began to harangue
-them greatly to his own satisfaction. But it was too much for the
-patience of the veteran legionaries to hear this imperial lackey, this
-liberated slave, preaching to them about their military duty. They
-shouted him down with a well-concerted cry of _Io Saturnalia_ (Hurrah
-for the slaves’ holiday), and then with the curious illogicality of
-soldiers they turned to Plautius and said that for his sake they would
-willingly follow wherever he led them. All this hesitation had caused
-considerable delay, but at last the flotilla bearing the soldiers
-embarked in three divisions, in order that the whole expedition might
-not be put to the hazard of a single landing. The soldiers were much
-disheartened when they found the winds or the tides apparently drifting
-them back to the port from which they had started, but then a meteor
-flashing from east to west seemed to indicate that their voyage
-would be prosperous and encouraged them to proceed. Their landing,
-or, more properly speaking, their three landings, were accomplished
-without difficulty, for the Britons, believing that the expedition was
-postponed on account of the mutiny, had made no preparations, and now
-fled to the forests and the marshes, hoping that the experience of the
-great Julius would be repeated and that this expedition also might soon
-return empty-handed.
-
-Plautius had therefore hard work to discover his foe, but he did
-at last come to close quarters, first with Caratacus and then with
-Togodumnus, both of whom he overcame. Either now or in the following
-operations, Togodumnus perished, but his brother survived to be for
-many years a thorn in the side of the Roman general. A British tribe
-named the Boduni, of whose geographical position we are ignorant,
-but who were subjects of the Catuvellauni, came in and offered their
-submission. Plautius left a garrison among them and marching forward
-arrived at the banks of a river, possibly the Medway, which the
-barbarians fondly hoped could not be traversed without a bridge.
-The Roman general, however, had in his army many Gaulish soldiers,
-probably those dwelling near the mouths of the Rhine and the Waal, who
-were accustomed to swim with all their armour on across the swiftest
-streams. These men, at the word of command, plunged into the river,
-swam across, attacked the dismayed and carelessly encamped barbarians,
-and directing their weapons especially against the horses harnessed to
-the chariots made the usual cavalry tactics of the Britons impossible.
-The young Vespasian (future emperor, and conqueror of the Jews) and his
-brother Sabinus were ordered to lead some more troops across the stream
-and complete the victory, which they did, slaying multitudes of the
-barbarians. Still the Britons made a stubborn resistance, till at last
-an officer named Cnæus Hosidius Geta, a kind of Roman paladin who had
-before this done knightly deeds in fighting against the Moors, almost
-single-handed and at the imminent risk of capture, achieved a victory
-which compelled them to retire, and for which he received the honours
-of a triumph.
-
-Hereupon the Britons withdrew behind the Thames, at that time and place
-a broad and shallow stream flowing wide over the marshes of Essex.
-The barbarians knew well its deeps and its shallows, and could find
-their way across it in safety. Not so the Romans, who suffered severe
-loss in attempting to follow them. As a mere question of strategy
-Plautius could probably have marched up the stream and crossed it at
-some narrower part of its course. He determined, however, to reserve
-this achievement for the emperor who had apparently already arranged
-to visit Britain and pluck the laurels planted for him by his general.
-Claudius prepared reinforcements, including, we are told, a number
-of elephants (not very serviceable, one would have thought, in the
-Essex marshes), sailed from his own port of Ostia to Marseilles,
-then travelled, chiefly by water, up and down the great rivers of
-Gaul, arrived at the camp of Plautius, crossed the Thames, the proper
-appliances having no doubt been prepared by the loyal general, and then
-marched on Camulodunum, which he took, making the palace of Cunobelinus
-his own. The fall of the powerful kingdom of the Catuvellauni brought
-with it the submission, voluntary or forced, of many neighbouring
-tribes.
-
-Claudius was saluted not once but many times as Imperator by his
-soldiers, and returning to Rome after a six months’ absence he was
-hailed by the Senate with the appellation of Britannicus, an honour
-which was also bestowed on his six-year-old son. He rode in his
-triumphal chariot up to the capitol, and he erected some years later in
-honour of this conquest a triumphal arch which spanned the Via Lata
-(now the Corso), and which was still standing almost perfect till the
-seventeenth century, when it was destroyed (1662) by Pope Alexander
-VII. Some fine sculptured slabs from this arch are still preserved in
-the Villa Borghese at Rome, along with fragments of an inscription
-which record that “Tiberius Claudius Augustus, Germanicus and Pious,
-tamed the Kings of Britain without any loss [to the republic], and was
-the first to bring her barbarous races under the control of Rome”.
-
- * * * * *
-
-The capture of Camulodunum involved the downfall of the house of
-Cymbeline, and the acceptance, at any rate the temporary acceptance,
-of Roman domination in all the south-eastern part of Britain. While
-Caratacus escaped to South Wales and there organised a desperate
-resistance to the Roman arms among the Silures, most of the smaller
-British chieftains seem to have bowed their necks beneath the yoke. An
-inscribed stone still standing in Goodwood Park, but originally found
-at Chichester, seems to record the building of a temple to Neptune and
-Minerva for the safety of the imperial house, at the command of King
-Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus, “legate of Augustus in Britain”. This
-inscription is an interesting confirmation of the statement made by
-Tacitus that “certain cities were handed over to King Cogidubnus who
-remained till our own day most faithful to the emperor, according to
-the old and long-established custom of the Roman people to make even
-kings the instruments of their dominion”.[9]
-
-It was probably about the same time that Prasutagus, King of the Iceni,
-who inhabited Norfolk, Suffolk and a part of Cambridgeshire, became
-a subject ally of Rome. Farther south the invaders were making less
-peaceful progress, if it be true, as we are told by the biographer
-of the future Emperor Vespasian, that he in these early years of the
-conquest “fought thirty battles as commander of the Second legion,
-subdued two powerful nations, took more than twenty towns and brought
-into subjection the Isle of Wight”. We learn from another source
-that he was once, when surrounded by the barbarians and in imminent
-peril of his life, rescued by his brave son Titus, and further that
-it was the elder soldier’s distinguished successes in this British
-war which won him the favour of the Roman people, and led to his
-being eventually clad in the imperial purple. An interesting evidence
-of the rapid development of this first act of the Roman conquest is
-afforded by the fact that a pig of lead mined in the Mendip Hills has
-been discovered, bearing the name of Claudius and his son with a date
-equivalent to A.D. 49, only six years after the landing of the legions.
-In the year 47, Aulus Plautius left Britain to receive the honour of
-an ovation, then almost exclusively reserved for the imperial family,
-and to find his wife Pomponia (a woman of gentle nature but touched
-with sadness) tending towards “a foreign religion” which, there is
-good reason to believe, was none other than Christianity. He probably
-left the frontier of the Roman dominion nearly coincident with a line
-drawn diagonally from the Bristol Channel to the Wash, though outlying
-districts like Cornwall and Devonshire were not yet assimilated by the
-new lords of Britain. But even so the fairest and most fertile half of
-Brythonic Britain was now apparently won for the empire.
-
-To the new Roman _legatus_, Ostorius Scapula, fell the hard labour of
-fighting the Goidelic nation of the Silures who occupied the hills
-and valleys of South Wales and were nerved to desperate resistance by
-the counsels of their willingly adopted leader Caratacus. Wales must
-therefore undoubtedly have been the main objective of the general, but
-meanwhile even the part of the country already conquered was not too
-secure. The lands of the friendly tribes were being overrun by the
-still unsubdued Britons beyond the border, who thought that winter
-and the change of commander would both be in their favour. Ostorius,
-who knew the importance of first impressions, hurriedly collected a
-sufficient number of troops to repel and harass these marauders, but
-the stern measures which he took for the defence of the line between
-Severn and Trent so angered the Iceni (proud of their unconquered
-condition, “the allies not the subjects” of Rome) that they took up
-arms, gathered round them a confederacy of the neighbouring tribes
-and drew themselves up in battle array in a position difficult of
-access and protected by an embankment, probably of turf. Without
-much difficulty, Ostorius stormed this rude fort, using only the
-irregular allied troops and without moving the legions from their
-quarters. As these irregulars were mostly cavalry and the Icenian
-camp was impervious to horsemen, the riders had to fight on foot,
-but nevertheless they won. Deeds of great valour were performed on
-both sides, and the son of Ostorius won the civic crown for saving
-the life of a Roman citizen. With the Iceni forced back into sullen
-tranquillity, and with the wavering tribes round them now siding
-with the victors, Ostorius was free to turn his attention to the
-difficult problem of Wales. He led his army into the territory of the
-Decangi,[10] who probably inhabited what is now Flintshire; he ravaged
-their fields; he gazed on the sea which separated him from Ireland; he
-would perhaps have anticipated the conquest of Anglesey had not some
-hostile movements among the Brigantes of Yorkshire, threatening his
-communications with the Midlands, warned him against a further advance.
-When the Brigantes were chastised and in a manner reconciled, he turned
-again to the work which he probably ought never to have delayed--the
-vanquishing of the Silures.
-
-This war against the Silures evidently occupied many years, and it
-is almost admitted by the Roman historian that Caratacus won many
-victories. Gliding rapidly, however, over this unpleasant interval,
-Tacitus brings us to the final battle--decisive so far as Caratacus
-was concerned--which, as a result of the strategy of Caratacus, was
-fought not in the territory of the Silures but in that of their
-northern neighbours the Ordovices. On the border of three counties,
-Shropshire, Hereford and Radnor, is the district in which tradition or
-the conjecture of learned men has placed the battlefield. High up soars
-Caer Caradoc, commanding a splendid view of the distant Wrekin. Not far
-off are the strongly marked lines of Brandon Camp (possibly the work of
-the soldiers of Ostorius); the quiet little village of Leintwardine,
-encircled by the rapid waters of the Teme, sleeps at the foot of hills,
-any one of which may have been the chosen position of the British king.
-Tacitus describes to us the way in which that position, already strong
-by the steepness of the hill and the treacherous deeps and shallows
-of the river, was further strengthened by a barrier of stones where
-approach seemed least difficult. Caratacus flew from rank to rank,
-exhorting his countrymen, descendants of the men who had repulsed the
-great Julius, to do their utmost on that eventful day which would
-decide their freedom or their slavery for ever. Ostorius, on the other
-hand, awed by the strength of the British position, was almost inclined
-to evade the encounter, but the legionaries loudly demanded battle and
-the officers backed their ardent entreaties. Ostorius thereupon moved
-forward and crossed the river without great difficulty. At the stone
-wall matters for a time went ill with the Romans and death was busy in
-their ranks, but after they had formed a _testudo_, with their locked
-shields held on high, they succeeded under its shelter in pulling out
-the stones of the roughly compacted wall. Once inside the camp, the
-well-drilled ranks of the Romans soon pierced the disorderly crowd
-of the barbarians, who had neither helmet nor breastplate to protect
-them from the sword and the _pilum_ of the legionary, from the rapier
-and the spear of the auxiliary cohorts. The victory was a brilliant
-one, and though Caratacus himself escaped, his wife, his daughter and
-his brethren fell into the hands of the Romans. The liberty of the
-fugitive prince was of short duration. Having escaped to the court of
-Cartimandua, Queen of the Brigantes, he was by her basely surrendered,
-in chains, to the victorious general. This event which may possibly
-have taken place some time after the battle, happened, as Tacitus
-remarks, in the ninth year after the commencement of the British
-war. This probably means A.D. 51 or 52, the same year in which the
-inscription was engraved on the triumphal arch of Claudius.
-
-The exhibition of the captive British king who had for so many years
-defied the power of Rome, was made the occasion of a splendid Roman
-holiday. The prætorian cohorts were drawn up in the meadows outside
-their camp (near where now stands the Villa Torlonia), and through
-the lane formed by their glittering spears passed first the train of
-the followers of Caratacus, bearing the golden torques, the embossed
-breastplates and other ornaments which he himself had won in former
-wars from vanquished kings, then his brothers, his wife and his
-daughter, and last of all Caratacus himself. He did not crouch or fawn,
-but looked boldly in the emperor’s face, and (if the speech recorded
-by Tacitus be not a mere rhetorical exercise) with quiet dignity
-reminded his conqueror that but for adverse fortune he might have
-entered Rome in very different guise as an ally, not as a captive.
-“I had horses, men, arms, wealth. Do you wonder that I was reluctant
-to lose them? If you wish to lord it over all the world, must others
-at once accept slavery? Slay me if you will, and I shall soon be
-forgotten. Preserve my life and I shall be an eternal memorial of your
-clemency.” The courageous and manly address touched the not ignoble
-nature of Claudius, who granted pardon to the British king and all his
-family. He was required, however, to offer thanks for his preservation
-to the emperor’s wife, Agrippina, mother of Nero, who sat haughtily
-on a tribunal of her own, not far from that of her husband: “a new
-and strange sight,” says Tacitus, for Roman soldiers to behold. Far
-better known than the speech thus recorded by Tacitus is the remark
-of the British king, preserved by the Greek historian Dion. After his
-liberation, when he was taken round through the streets of Rome, and
-saw all the wonders of the city, he said: “And yet you who possess all
-these things, and many others like them, actually covet the shanties
-of Britain”. With the capture and pardon of Caratacus, the house of
-Cymbeline disappears from history. It is implied that he and his family
-spent the rest of their days in Italy.
-
- * * * * *
-
-For the next seven years (A.D. 52–59), under Didius Gallus and
-Veranius, the history of Roman conquest was void of striking events.
-Didius was elderly and disinclined to risk his already great reputation
-by distant operations against the natives. Veranius, who was probably
-younger, certainly more adventurous, promised his master Nero (who
-succeeded Claudius in 54) that in two years the province should be at
-his feet, but died in his first year of office, with his high hopes
-unrealised. However, these two governors had apparently succeeded in
-pushing the Roman frontier northward as far as Chester and Lincoln:
-they had checked, though not subdued, the Silures, and had rescued
-their ally Cartimandua from the perilous position in which she had
-been placed by her indignant subjects, as a punishment for summarily
-dismissing her husband and handing herself over to his armour-bearer.
-Probably these seven years of rest were really useful to the cause
-of the empire. The more civilised tribes in the south and east were
-adopting Roman ways, and some of them, at any rate, were growing fat on
-Roman commerce, and if the subordinate officials of the empire would
-have used their power with moderation Britain might have become Roman
-without more blood-spilling. Unfortunately, these conditions were not
-observed, and a day of vengeance was at hand.
-
-In the year 59 Suetonius Paulinus, one of the two greatest generals
-that obeyed the orders of Nero (Corbulo, conqueror of Armenia, being
-the other), was appointed _legatus_ of Britain, and began his short but
-memorable career. Believing that he had a tranquil and easily governed
-province behind him, and desiring to rival the fame of Corbulo, he
-determined to attempt the conquest of Anglesey, which was invested
-with a mysterious awe as the high place of Druidism. After all, the
-difficulties of the enterprise were spiritual rather than material. A
-flotilla of flat-bottomed boats transported the legionaries across the
-Menai Straits; of the cavalry some swam, and some, we are told, forded
-the channel. But there on the other side stood not only a dense mass of
-armed men, but women, dressed like Furies with their hair hanging down
-and with lighted torches in their hands, were rushing about through
-the ranks, and Druid priests, with their hands upraised to Heaven, in
-terrible voices called down vengeance on the foe. At the unaccustomed
-sight the awed legionaries hung back; then the cheering speech of the
-general and their own reflection--“We must never let ourselves be
-frightened by a parcel of women and priests”--revived their fainting
-courage. They carried the eagles forward, hewed down the armed Britons,
-and used the terrible torches to burn the hostile camp. A fort and
-garrison were placed in the island in order to maintain the conquest,
-and the woods in which human sacrifices had been offered and cruel
-auguries practised with the bleeding limbs of men, were by Roman axes
-cleared from the face of the earth.
-
-All seemed going splendidly for Roman dominion in Britain when a
-breathless messenger brought to the tent of Suetonius (A.D. 60)[11] a
-tale not unlike that with which we were thrilled half a century ago at
-the outbreak of the Indian mutiny. The outburst of the flame of British
-discontent was in the country of the Iceni, and the exciting cause was
-the shameless and heartless greed of the Roman officials. The capital
-of the new province at this time seems to have been Cymbeline’s old
-city, Camulodunum (the modern Colchester), which had been turned into
-a Roman colony, a place in which the time-expired veterans might spend
-their old age, surrounded by their families, and lording it with no
-gentle mastership over their British slaves. High in this town, which
-took its name from Camulus, the Celtic war-god, rose the great temple
-dedicated to Claudius and Rome, a temple which was almost a fortress;
-but the town itself was surrounded by no walls, a piece of improvidence
-for which Tacitus justly blames the generals, who were thinking more
-of pleasurable ease than of military utility. In the chief house of
-the colony resided Catus Decianus, the _procurator_, who represented
-the emperor in all civil and financial matters, as Suetonius, the
-_legatus_, represented him in military affairs. Of all the grasping
-and unjust officials who made the name of the empire hated, this Catus
-seems to have been one of the worst. While oppressing the peasants by
-rigorous exaction of tribute, he demanded from the chiefs the return
-of the property (probably the result of confiscations from their own
-fellow-countrymen) which Claudius had bestowed upon them, saying that
-gifts such as this, of course, reverted to the giver. The financial
-distress of the unhappy province was aggravated, according to Dion, by
-the selfish timidity of the philosopher Seneca, Nero’s minister, who
-chose this opportunity suddenly and harshly to call in loans to the
-amount of 10,000,000 sesterces (about £90,000 sterling), which he had
-lent at usurious rates of interest to the natives or the settlers in
-Britain.
-
-Thus all was ready in Essex for revolt, when Norfolk and Suffolk, the
-country of the Iceni, were the scenes of outrages which set fire to the
-gathered fuel. King Prasutagus, the old and apparently loyal ally of
-Rome, who had long been famous for his wealth, died leaving the emperor
-and his own two daughters his joint heirs. There were old examples of
-this testamentary liberality in Roman history, both Pergamum and Cyprus
-having been bequeathed by their kings to the Roman people. Prasutagus
-hoped, we are told, by this display of confidence in the honour of the
-emperor that he would, at least, safeguard his kingdom and his family
-from violence. Bitterly was this hope disappointed. At the bidding of
-the _legatus_, centurions tramped across his kingdom; at the bidding
-of the procurator, clerks of servile condition swept bare the palace
-of its treasures, just as if all had been lawful prize of war. Nor did
-they even stop there. With incredible stupidity, as well as wickedness,
-the governor ordered or permitted the widow of Prasutagus, herself
-daughter as well as spouse of kings, to be beaten with rods, and gave
-over her two daughters to be violated. The chiefs of the Icenian nation
-were banished from their ancestral homes, and the kinsmen of the royal
-family were treated as slaves. At this all the manhood of the nation
-rose in rebellion; the widowed queen, who is known to posterity as
-Boadicea,[12] put herself at the head of the maddened confederates (for
-the Iceni were at once joined by the Trinobantes, possibly also by some
-of the other neighbouring tribes), and the numbers of the insurgent
-army are said to have reached 120,000.
-
-Of the long harangue which Dion represents Boadicea as having
-delivered to her army “from a tribunal made after the Roman fashion
-of peat-turves,” it is not necessary to quote anything here, as it
-is obviously but a literary exercise by a Greek rhetorician. The
-most interesting things which it contains are the description of the
-grievances endured under the Roman rule, as the rhetorician imagines
-her to have painted them, and her invocation of the Celtic goddess,
-Andraste,[13] whom she seems to invoke as the special protectress
-of her nation. The description which the same author gives of the
-appearance of the warrior-queen is life-like, and we must hope that it
-is trustworthy. “Tall in stature, hard-visaged and with fiercest eye:
-with a rough voice: with an abundance of bright yellow hair reaching
-down to her girdle: wearing a great collar of gold: with a tunic of
-divers colours drawn close round her bosom and a thick mantle over it,
-fastened with a clasp. So she was always dressed, but now she bore a
-lance in her hand to make her harangue more terrible.”
-
-The first onset of the barbarian army was directed against the hated
-colony, and thus there were soon a hundred thousand or more enraged
-Britons howling round, not the walls, but the unwalled enclosure of
-Camulodunum. Help for the defenceless city there was none or next to
-none. The four brave legions were far away: one in quarters at Caerleon
-upon Usk, two fighting with Druids in Anglesey or quartered at Chester,
-one, the nearest, at Lincoln. The greedy procurator, Catus, when
-appealed to for help, sent two hundred imperfectly armed soldiers to
-reinforce the scanty garrison, and then began to arrange for his own
-speedy flight to Gaul. Within the city there were treachery and the
-paralysis of despair. No ditch was dug nor even the hastiest rampart
-reared: the non-combatants, the old men and the women, were not sent
-away; as passive as if in profound peace they awaited the approach of
-the multitude of the barbarians. The city was stormed at once: the
-great temple-citadel, in which the few soldiers were collected, stood a
-two days’ siege and then likewise fell. Both here and in the two Roman
-cities which were yet to fall, indescribable horrors of murder, rape,
-ghastly and insulting mutilations are reported to have been practised
-by the barbarians. The Ninth legion under its commander (Petillius
-Cerialis), marching southward to the rescue, was met by the exultant
-conquerors, routed and almost destroyed. All the foot soldiers perished
-in the battlefield or in the flight; only Cerialis himself with his
-cavalry escaped to his former camp and was sheltered behind its
-fortifications.
-
-Some part of these dismal tidings must have been brought to Suetonius
-on the shore of the Menai Straits. “With marvellous constancy,” says
-Tacitus, “he marched through the midst of enemies to Londinium, a place
-which is not indeed dignified with the name of colony, but which is
-greatly celebrated for the number of its merchants and the abundance of
-its supplies.” This is the first mention of London in history. At this
-time it had not apparently attained anything like the dimensions of
-which even Roman London could boast in later times. It formed an oblong
-which measured probably about 800 yards from east to west and 500 from
-north to south, and covered a little more than 600 acres. The northern
-boundary was almost certainly the line of Cheapside and Cornhill, the
-southern that of Upper and Lower Thames Street. The eastern and western
-frontiers of the city are still obscure, but it is generally admitted
-that neither St. Paul’s on the west nor the Tower on the east would
-have been included within it. Such was the little busy city which
-Suetonius reached at the end of his daring march. He heard there, if
-he had not heard before, the terrible news of the loss of the Ninth
-legion. He probably also learned at the same time that the officer in
-charge of the Second legion, daring to disobey his general’s orders,
-was lingering at Caerleon, instead of marching to join him in the
-defence of the eastern portion of the province. The double ill-tidings
-upset all his plans for the defence of London. His army, which
-consisted of the Fourteenth legion and a detachment of the Twentieth,
-amounted only to about 10,000 men; provisions were running short, and
-the perpetual raids of the enemy made foraging difficult. It was too
-late to save Verulam, once a British capital, now a Roman _municipium_,
-which Boadicea had taken and where the bloody scenes of Camulodunum
-had been only too faithfully repeated. Now, with a heavy heart,
-notwithstanding the prayers and the tears of the citizens, Suetonius
-decided that London also must be left to its fate; by the loss of that
-one city all the rest of the province might haply be saved. Only this
-much he could grant, that those of the male inhabitants who could march
-with his troops might do so. Those whom the weakness of their sex or
-the weariness of age, or even their attachment to their homes, retained
-in the city were left, and were soon massacred by the barbarians, who
-took no captives and had no desire for ransoms, feeling that now was
-their day of vengeance, and foreboding that that day would be short.
-The Roman historians compute the loss of life in the three cities at
-70,000 persons, by no means all Romans, but including many of British,
-perhaps also of Gaulish extraction, who in the years of peace had
-become peaceable and trade-loving subjects of the empire.
-
-The movements of Suetonius, after he had decided to abandon Londinium
-to its fate, are not clearly indicated by Tacitus, but it seems
-probable that he retraced his steps northward in order to effect a
-junction with the troops which he had left at Chester and with the
-wreck of the Ninth legion still bravely defending itself at Lincoln.
-Boadicea with her vast horde of exultant Britons was probably hanging
-on his rear. Battle was inevitable, but the Roman general had some
-power of choosing the ground, and he chose it in a place protected on
-each side by the steep hills of a narrow defile and on the rear by a
-forest. The enemy could only move towards him across the open plain
-in front and there could be no lurking in ambush. The line was not too
-long to prevent the legionary soldiers from being drawn up in close
-ranks; on each side of them were the more lightly armed cohorts of the
-allies, and the cavalry were massed upon the wings. In great disorderly
-squadrons the Britons prepared to charge, full of fierce exultation at
-their past successes and so certain of their impending triumph that
-they had brought their wives, in waggons drawn up at the farther side
-of the plain, to behold their victory.
-
-The barbarians came on with loud clamour and menacing war-songs; the
-Romans awaited them in silence and perfect order till they were within
-reach of a javelin’s throw. Then at the signal given, raising the
-battle-cry, they hurled the _pilum_ and rushed at the double against
-the slow-marching barbarians, broke their ranks, and pierced through
-the dense mass like a wedge. After a desperate hand-to-hand struggle,
-the barbarians, whose lack of defensive armour had caused them to
-suffer terribly from the arrows and the _pila_ of the Romans, fled in
-disorder before them. The fugitives reached and were stopped by the
-waggons. The pursuers, maddened probably by the remembrance of the
-horrors of the sack of the three Roman cities, hewed down not only the
-fugitive combatants but the women, and even the horses that drew the
-chariots. So the victory was won. The Romans admitted a loss of some
-800 killed and wounded, and claimed to have slaughtered a little less
-than 80,000 Britons. The apparent accuracy of these words, “a little
-less,” need not deceive us as to the general untrustworthiness of such
-estimates as these, but the victory was undoubtedly decisive, and, as
-such things are reckoned, glorious. Boadicea is said by Tacitus to have
-ended her life by poison. Dion Cassius, with less probability, says
-that she died of disease.
-
-Far away in Monmouthshire there was another suicide, the result of
-this great encounter. “Poenius Postumus, prefect of the camp of the
-Second legion” (who had presumably held the command in the temporary
-absence of the _legatus_), “when he heard how well things had gone with
-the Fourteenth and the Twentieth, enraged with himself because he had
-cheated his own legion of like glory, and had, contrary to military
-rule, disobeyed the orders of his superior, pierced himself through
-with his own sword.” Possibly he was neither a coward nor a mutineer,
-but a man suddenly called to assume a crushing load of responsibility
-in a terrible crisis, who had failed to read aright the signs of the
-times. The Fourteenth legion, which had borne the greatest part of the
-work in the suppression of the rebellion, was called, when its officers
-would stimulate its military pride, the “Tamers of Britain” (_Domitores
-Britanniæ_). The renown which it had acquired caused its services to
-be eagerly sought for in the great game of Cæsar-making which followed
-upon the death of Nero. It was transferred to Belgic Gaul in A.D. 70,
-helped to quell the insurrection of Civilis, and never afterwards
-returned to Britain.
-
-The tenure of office by Suetonius Paulinus was a very short one. He had
-indeed shown himself
-
- A daring pilot in extremity;
-
-but Nero, who with all his viciousness was not destitute of
-statesmanlike ability, probably considered that the pilot ought not to
-have taken his ship into such dangerous channels. After replacing the
-losses of the Ninth legion by the transfer of some 7,000 soldiers from
-Germany, the emperor sent a certain Julius Classicianus as successor to
-the detested _procurator_ Catus. Suetonius seems to have been in favour
-of stern repression, laying waste with fire and sword the territories
-of all the tribes of doubtful loyalty. Classicianus, on the other hand,
-held that the real foe that had now to be fought was famine, especially
-since the insurgents, intent on the plunder of the Roman warehouses,
-had neglected the sowing of their spring corn. Differences soon arose
-between the merciful _procurator_ and the stern _legatus_. To settle
-the quarrel Nero sent one of his freedmen, named Polyclitus, who
-travelled with great pomp and a long train of attendants, burdensome
-to the provinces through which he passed, but calculated to impress
-the Roman soldiery with a sense of his importance. The barbarians, on
-the other hand, who had heard from what a low and servile condition
-Polyclitus had risen, marvelled that so great a general and so brave an
-army should tamely submit to the arbitrament of a slave. They profited,
-however, by that docility; for Polyclitus, though, as his after career
-showed, not averse from plundering on his own account, made a report to
-the emperor in favour of the lenient policy of the _procurator_, and
-Suetonius, after an eventful lieutenancy of not more than two years,
-was recalled to Rome (A.D. 61).
-
-In the ten years that followed the recall of Suetonius (A.D. 61–71),
-years which witnessed the downfall of Nero and the terrible civil war
-which shook the empire after his death, no great commotion disturbed
-the much-needed repose of the exhausted province. In the career of
-Trebellius Maximus, the governor who held nominal power for the greater
-part of this time, we have a typical instance of the bickerings,
-sometimes between the civil and military authorities, sometimes, as in
-this case, between the chief _legatus_ and his military subordinates,
-which varied the monotony of existence in a conquered province. Tacitus
-tells us that Trebellius, who was an indolent man, with no experience
-of camp life, endeavoured to hold the province by mere good nature; a
-policy not altogether impracticable, because the barbarians had now
-begun to look more favourably on the pleasant vices of civilisation.
-The army, however, despised and hated the governor for his avarice and
-meanness, and their discontent was fomented and forcibly expressed by
-Roscius Coelius, the _legatus_ of the Twentieth legion. “It is your
-fault,” said the governor to him, “that discipline is relaxed and the
-troops are on the verge of mutiny.” “It is yours,” replied Coelius,
-“that the soldiers are kept poor and defrauded of their pay.” Soon
-not the legionaries only, but the humbler auxiliaries, dared to hurl
-their taunts at the governor, who, at last alarmed for his safety, fled
-to some obscure hiding-place. Drawn out from thence, he prolonged,
-apparently for a little while, the precarious tenure of his rule; the
-implied bargain between him and the army being: “To you licence to
-do as you please; to me unthreatened life”. Then the situation again
-became desperate. The miserable Trebellius escaped to Germany, took
-refuge in the camp of the insurgent Emperor Vitellius, did not share
-his transient success, and never returned to Britain.
-
-When the civil war was ended by the triumph of the strong, sensible,
-common-place emperor Vespasian, a new impulse was given to Roman
-conquest in Britain. Petillius Cerialis, a near relative of the new
-emperor, a capable if somewhat rash soldier, the same who, at the
-head of the Ninth legion, had vainly sought to stem the torrent
-of Boadicea’s rebellion, held office for four years (A.D. 71–75),
-during which time he humbled and perhaps subdued the Brigantes,
-who ever since Cartimandua’s marital troubles had been more or less
-at enmity with the empire. This conquest, if really made at this
-time, involved the addition of Yorkshire to the empire, perhaps the
-foundation of Eburacum (York), once the capital of Roman Britain.
-Julius Frontinus (A.D. 75–78) followed Cerialis, and completed the
-long-delayed subjugation of the Silures in South Wales, who at this
-time, twenty-four years after Caratacus had been led in triumph through
-the streets of Rome, were still unreconciled to the Roman dominion. An
-interesting point in connexion with the name of Julius Frontinus is
-the fact that nearly twenty years after his return from Britain (A.D.
-97) he was appointed by the Emperor Nerva _Curator Aquarum_, and in
-that capacity, though he was already advanced in years, carried great
-reforms and corrected many abuses which had grown up in connexion with
-the water-supply of the Eternal City. His treatise on the subject
-is still the source from which we derive almost all our information
-concerning the splendid aqueducts of Rome.
-
-In the year 78, the Emperor Vespasian appointed as his _legatus_ the
-most celebrated and probably the greatest of the governors of Britain,
-Gnæus Julius Agricola. Verging as he was upon his fortieth year he was
-in the very prime of his matured and disciplined strength. He knew
-Britain well, having served when quite a young man as tribune (a rank
-nearly corresponding to our lieutenant) under Suetonius Paulinus,
-and having probably heard the clamour of the barbarian multitude who
-crowded round the chariot of Boadicea. Again, ten years later, he
-had been sent over to Britain to confirm the doubtful loyalty of the
-Twentieth legion. Since then he had been governor of the important
-province of Aquitaine, afterwards consul, and he was actually holding
-the distinguished and well-paid office of Pontifex Maximus when he
-was appointed to the British command. What was more important for his
-future fame and for our knowledge of the history of Britain, he had
-given his daughter in marriage to that master of grave historic style,
-shot with indignant epigram, Cornelius Tacitus. When the new governor
-landed in Britain, both soldiers and natives thought that, the summer
-being now nearly ended, there would be no more fighting that year.
-Not so, decided Agricola. The Ordovices, dwellers in North Wales, had
-lately almost destroyed an _ala_ (squadron) of cavalry stationed
-within their borders. This insolence, it was felt, must be chastised,
-and the might of Rome speedily displayed by the new _legatus_, who at
-once marched against them with a moderate force of legionaries and
-allies. The Ordovices refused to descend into the plain and fight there
-on equal terms. Agricola having climbed the hills of Denbighshire at
-the head of his troops, defeated and all but destroyed that clan of
-mountaineers. He looked westwards to the sacred Isle of Anglesey,
-once conquered by his old general Suetonius, but almost immediately
-abandoned on account of the terrible tidings from Camulodunum. He
-had no ships in which to cross the Menai Straits, but he had among
-his auxiliary troops men, probably from the mouths of the Rhine and
-the Waal, expert swimmers and skilled in finding possible fords, and
-these men laying aside the cumbrous loads which the Roman soldier was
-accustomed to carry, dashed into the stream, appeared on the shore
-of Mona and received the submission of the surprised and terrified
-islanders, who thought that till ships appeared in the straits they at
-least were safe from conquest. Having thus displayed his power, the
-governor now set himself to win the hearts of the natives by reforms
-in the administration, especially the financial administration, and
-redress of grievances. The burdens which rested upon the provincials
-of Britain were of two kinds, the _tributum_ and the _annona_: the
-former a payment in money which was, it may be presumed, remitted by
-the revenue officers direct to Rome; the latter a payment in kind of
-the various stores needed for the sustenance of the army--fodder, lard,
-fish, firewood, but pre-eminently corn; and these things would of
-course not be sent out of the country but consumed in the various camps
-and cities where the soldiers were quartered. There was some good work
-to be done by Agricola in equalising the assessments to _tributum_,
-or rendering them proportionate to the ability of the British town or
-village responsible for its payment. But the chief abuses seem to have
-arisen in connexion with the _annona_. Fraudulent revenue officers
-would probably contract for the harvest on low terms before it was
-reaped, would gather it into the granaries, close the doors and laugh
-in the faces of the unhappy natives who were ordered to furnish so
-many bushels of corn and could only comply with the order by buying it
-from them at their own extortionate price. Then they would purposely
-fix the place where the _annona_ had to be delivered, as far off as
-possible, in districts traversed by the poorest of roads. All these
-various abuses were, we are told, at once removed or greatly mitigated
-by the firm hand of Agricola.
-
-It was not enough to remove causes of complaint. He would also win
-over the natives to positive affection for the Roman rule. He was
-constantly urging all the wealthier Britons to come into the towns and
-to take part in building operations. Everywhere temples, market-places,
-well-built houses were rising, reared by British natives, and pledges
-for their future loyalty. He gathered round him the sons of the chiefs,
-had them instructed in liberal arts, praised their aptness to learn
-at the expense of their Gaulish contemporaries, listened before long
-to eloquent declamations, delivered, of course, in the Latin tongue,
-by young Britons, gracefully clad in the Roman toga. The bath and the
-luxurious banquet offered their attractions not in vain to the late
-hunter of the forests, and as Tacitus sarcastically observes “the
-simple folk called that civilisation (_humanitas_) which was really the
-beginning of slavery”.
-
-The summer of A.D. 79, the second year of Agricola’s command, seems
-to have been chiefly occupied in measures for completing the military
-occupation of the recently conquered territory, that is, probably,
-Yorkshire, Lancashire and Northumberland, the country of the Brigantes.
-“He himself chose the site of the camps; he himself reconnoitred the
-forests and the estuaries” (probably of the Tees, the Wear and the
-Tyne, and perhaps also Solway Firth), “and meanwhile he gave the enemy
-no rest, but was for ever harassing them by sudden excursions, and when
-he had terrified them sufficiently, then by holding his hand he gave
-them an inducement to desire peace. In consequence hereof many native
-states which up to that time had treated the empire on a footing of
-equality now gave hostages and laid aside their animosity. They found
-themselves surrounded with forts and garrisons, and all was done with
-so much science and system as had never before been applied to any
-newly conquered part of Britain.” It is possible that Eburacum, which
-at this time, or very soon after, became the headquarters of the Ninth
-legion, was one of the strong places thus founded or fortified by
-Agricola.
-
-The record of the year 80, the third year of Agricola’s command, is
-one of the most interesting to all north-country Englishmen, but it is
-unfortunately also one of the most obscure. It will be well to quote
-the words of Tacitus as they stand, without attempting conjectural
-amplification. “The third year of expeditions opened up to us new
-tribes, all the nations up to the estuary called Tanaus having their
-lands laid waste. The enemy cowed by these operations did not dare to
-harass the army, though it was buffeted by fierce tempests, and thus
-a respite was afforded which was employed in building more forts.
-It was observed by military experts that no general ever showed
-greater ability in his choice of suitable sites for such defences.
-No fort founded by Agricola was ever stormed by hostile violence,
-or surrendered, or abandoned by its fugitive garrison: yet frequent
-sallies were made from them, for they were fortified against a tedious
-siege by a yearly renewed stock of provisions. This gave the defenders
-courage for the winter; each garrison relied on itself for its safety,
-and the enemy were driven to despair by the uselessness of their
-attacks. For aforetime they had been wont to recoup themselves for the
-losses of the summer by the successes of winter, but now they found
-themselves repelled in both seasons alike.” We have here evidently to
-deal with an extensive system of fortification; but we are provoked by
-being unable precisely to identify the region in which it took place.
-What is the meaning of the estuary called Tanaus “up to which Agricola
-ravaged the land”? It is certainly not the Tay (which was indicated
-by the corrupt reading Taum); it may be the Firth of Forth; only that
-estuary is immediately after called Bodotria. The little Scottish river
-Tyne near North Berwick has a kind of estuary, and Mommsen’s conjecture
-that this is the Tanaus of Tacitus would have much probability, were
-it not so near to the far mightier estuary of the Forth that it is
-difficult to imagine any one choosing it as a landmark. The better
-known Tyne of Newcastle would be clearly the strongest claimant if the
-course of the narrative did not seem to have already carried us to the
-north of it. No piece of water would meet the geographical condition
-better than the splendid estuary of the Tweed, so well fitted by
-nature for a limitary stream, but no other passage of any author has
-been found in which any name resembling Tanaus has been applied to
-that river. In the next year (A.D. 81) Agricola undoubtedly reached
-and fortified the narrow neck of land between Clyde and Forth (Clota
-and Bodotria); but the point practically at issue is this: “May we
-understand that we have in this passage of Tacitus a description of
-the building by Agricola of some at least of the forts between Tyne
-and Solway on the line which was afterwards marked by the Roman wall?”
-It has been often suggested, and in the opinion of the present writer
-with some probability, that we may. In that case great additional
-interest attaches to Chesters, Housesteads and others of the ruined
-Roman stations in Northumberland, when we think that they may have been
-planned by the exceptional military genius of Agricola.
-
-With the three remaining campaigns of this general (A.D. 82–84) we
-have no special concern, as they were all fought beyond the limits of
-England. We must not follow him as he cruises about the Kyles of Bute
-and the Mull of Cantire, gazes across to Ireland (an island, Tacitus
-thinks, with better harbours and more frequented by merchants than
-England), nor discuss his opinion, often expressed to his son-in-law,
-that with one legion and a moderate supply of auxiliaries he could
-have added Hibernia to the empire. Nor must we linger over Tacitus’
-celebrated description of the great fight on the Mons Graupius,[14]
-and the spirited war-speech of the Caledonian hero Galgacus, which
-according to Tacitus preceded the encounter. Almost immediately after
-this victory--perhaps more dearly bought and less decisive than would
-appear on the surface of the Tacitean narrative--Agricola, whose term
-of command was already of exceptional length, was recalled to Rome.
-The Emperor Domitian’s jealousy of a soldier whose admiring legions
-might insist on proclaiming him as a candidate for the empire, may have
-been, as Tacitus suggests, the sole reason for his recall; but nearer
-danger was also threatening Rome from the region of the Danube, and,
-as Mommsen has pointed out, one of the British legions was actually
-recalled for service in Pannonia. True statesmanship as well as mean
-personal jealousy may have prompted the recall of so adventurous a
-general from the scene of his triumphs. Agricola made no attempt to
-resist his supersession, but returned to Rome, lived there as a private
-but harassed citizen, declining the governorship of Syria (which was
-offered to him with a hint that it would be dangerous to accept it),
-and died at Rome in the fifty-fourth year of his age on August 23, A.D.
-93. The suggestions of foul play and of poison stealthily administered
-by order of Domitian are mentioned, but hardly endorsed, even by the
-suspicious pen of his son-in-law. That son-in-law was absent from Rome
-at the time of his death, but describes the deathbed scene from the
-reports of the bystanders; and his farewell to the departed spirit of
-the beloved one, the celebrated peroration of the Life of Agricola, is
-one of the most beautiful things in Roman literature.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V.
-
-THE ROMAN OCCUPATION.
-
-
-With the departure of Agricola the literary history of Roman Britain
-comes to an end. For three centuries longer the legions were to remain
-in our island, and the buildings which they reared, the altars which
-they inscribed, the roads which they constructed, tell us something of
-the life which they led during that long space of time, as long as the
-whole period that has elapsed from Elizabeth’s days to ours. Archæology
-has much to tell us concerning it, but history is almost altogether
-silent. A few sections of Dion Cassius, some confused notices in
-the _Historia Augusta_, a page or two of Ammianus Marcellinus, are
-practically all that is left to us of the written history of our
-country from Agricola to Stilicho. We need not here discuss the causes
-of a silence so tantalising and so irremediable; how far it may have
-sprung from Roman contempt of a distant and mist-enveloped island, how
-far from a decay of courage and hopefulness in the Romans themselves,
-symptoms of the impending ruin of their empire; it is enough that the
-pages are for us left blank and can now never be filled.
-
-The greatest monument of Roman power in Britain and that which has
-yielded the most fruitful results to archæology is the Roman Wall
-between the two estuaries of Tyne and Solway. Almost all that we know
-of Roman life in Britain during the second century centres round
-this one great work. Towards the end of the first century a change
-took place in the organisation of the defence of the empire on the
-frontiers. Hitherto the republic, and after it the empire, had been
-satisfied to keep a strong body of troops in all the imperfectly
-conquered provinces, and to plant well-garrisoned castles near the
-river or the range of mountains on the other side of which were the
-barbarians of Europe or Africa, or the hostile monarchies of Asia. Soon
-after the death of Nero a different system was adopted, involving the
-formation of a definitely marked boundary which when not protected by
-very strong natural barriers was guarded by an actual wall of stone
-or earth upon which the garrisoned fortresses were strung, like beads
-on a chain. Not only in Britain are traces of these limiting walls
-to be found, but also in Germany, between the Lower Rhine and the
-Danube, and in the Dobrudscha on the western shore of the Black Sea:
-and there is reason to believe that a similar wall of defence shut out
-the barbarians of Mount Aures who threatened the provincials of Roman
-Africa.
-
-“The real authors of the frontier system were the Flavian and Antonine
-Emperors, and the period extending from the accession of Vespasian to
-the death of Marcus Aurelius, or, roughly, from 70 A.D. to 180 A.D.,
-witnessed its complete organisation. The interest of these emperors in
-the matter was no doubt quickened by the growing anxiety, an anxiety
-unknown to the Augustan age, but perceptible in Tacitus, as to the
-increasing pressure from without upon the empire.... It is well for
-students of the British frontier to remember that the emperor with
-whose name the organisation of the imperial frontier system is most
-closely connected is Hadrian.”[15]
-
-There has been much discussion about this matter. As we shall see,
-there is good reason for connecting the name of a later emperor,
-Severus, with the building of the wall, but, on the whole, the
-testimony of inscriptions and the labours of archæologists tend to
-confirm the clear statement of the biographer Spartianus (writing,
-it is true, a century and a half after the event): “Hadrian visited
-Britain, in which island he corrected many things that were amiss,
-and was the first to draw a wall across for eighty miles, in order to
-divide the barbarians and the Romans”. In all the long list of Roman
-emperors it would be hard to find a more fascinating figure than that
-of this great wall-builder. By no means the best of his class, far
-surpassed in moral excellence by Trajan, Antoninus and Marcus, but
-removed by an immeasurable distance from the worst, from such men as
-Nero, Domitian and Commodus; architect, artist, author, and, above
-all things, indefatigable traveller, Publius Ælius Hadrianus united a
-truly Greek versatility and brilliancy of intellect to all the Roman’s
-strong sense of duty towards the great _Res Publica_, and willingness
-for Rome’s sake to sacrifice many of the sensual gratifications in
-which his soul only too clearly delighted. The traveller who wanders
-for hours through the ruins of the vast collection of luxurious palaces
-which is called the _Villa Hadriani_, or who, in sunny Athens, sees
-the arch which bears the proud inscription, “On this side the city of
-Theseus, on that the city of Hadrian,” can in some measure realise the
-self-denial which must have been involved in Hadrian’s presence with
-the legions during the setting out of eighty Roman miles of wall[16]
-across the misty moors of Northumberland and Cumberland.
-
-It was probably in the year 120, three years after his accession to
-the empire, that Hadrian visited Britain. The journey may have been
-only part of his pre-arranged tour through the western portion of his
-dominions, but it is also possible that it was the result of some
-recent and special disaster in Britain to the Roman arms. Some forty
-or fifty years afterwards the orator Fronto alluded to “the great
-number of soldiers slain by the Britons during the reign of Hadrian,”
-and it is allowable at least as a matter of conjecture to couple these
-words with the ominous disappearance of one of the legions stationed
-in Britain from the army list of the empire. The unlucky Ninth legion,
-once quartered at Lincoln, afterwards at York, had been, as we have
-seen, nearly destroyed in the insurrection headed by Boadicea. It had
-again suffered most severely, under Agricola, from a night attack made
-by the Caledonians before the battle of Mons Graupius. And now, just
-about this time, either in the later years of Trajan or the earlier
-years of Hadrian, it vanishes clean out of the lists of the Roman
-army and is replaced by the Sixth legion, surnamed the Victorious,
-which was brought over to Britain and stationed at Eburacum. There is
-some discussion as to the earlier cantonment of the legions, whether
-four or three, that had been quartered in Britain, but as to the
-general question of their allocation during, at least, the second
-and third centuries of our era there can be no doubt. The Second
-legion (_Augusta_) at Isca (Caerleon-upon-Usk); the Sixth (_Victrix_)
-at Eburacum (York), and the Twentieth (_Valeria Victrix_) at Deva
-(Chester), have left abundant tokens of their long-continued presence.
-
-From all these legions, however, considerable drafts were taken to
-assist in the building of the wall from Tyne to Solway, the existing
-remains of which must now be described. At the two ends of its course,
-where it has had the ill-fortune either to meet with the fierce
-industrial energy of the dwellers by the estuary of the Tyne, or to
-attract the envious glances of the farmers of fertile Cumberland, the
-wall has practically ceased to exist, though it has seldom passed that
-way for more than two or three miles without leaving some traces,
-however faint, of its presence to reward the quest of the earnest
-antiquary. But in the central part of its course, where it has left
-the busy haunts of men and climbed the bleak moorlands and the steep
-basaltic cliffs of Western Northumberland and Eastern Cumberland, it
-still exists in what its great historian, Dr. Bruce, used to call “an
-encouraging state of preservation”. For twenty miles or more it goes
-striding over mountain and moor, religiously climbing every cliff and
-dipping down into every hollow of the sharply outlined, serrated,
-whinstone range. Sometimes we see only the rough rubble-work which
-formed the core of the wall, but more often the well-hewn square blocks
-which faced its northern and southern sides are still visible. The
-height attained by it is in one or two places as much as nine feet,
-but its more usual altitude is four to five feet. It was probably
-when perfect about seventeen feet high; and its width, as we know
-from the existing remains, varied from six to eight feet. The line
-of the wall once fixed, its builders seem to have pursued a nearly
-uniform plan, regardless of the help which they might have derived
-from natural defences. Thus in one place it crowns the heights of
-some steep basaltic cliffs at whose feet lies a small Northumbrian
-lake. No desperation of bravery would ever have caused a Brigantian
-chief to dash across that lake and climb those pinnacles of columnar
-basalt: still even here the wall pursues its undeviating course, and,
-so far as we know, retained its undiminished height. It is possible,
-however, that in such a case as this it was meant as a defence, not
-against barbarians, but against the weather. Snowstorms sometimes sweep
-violently across these bleak moorlands, and it may have been thought
-desirable to provide the Roman sentinel, pacing backwards and forwards
-between camp and camp, with some shelter from their fury.
-
-Along the line of the wall are situated fortified enclosures of
-three kinds which now go by the names of camps, mile-castles and
-turrets. The _camps_, of which there were seventeen, between Tyne and
-Solway, and which were probably called by the Romans _Prætenturæ_ or
-_Stationes_, vary in size from three to six acres. They were destined
-for the housing of one cohort--a body of men varying in size from 600
-to 1,000--with, no doubt, a certain number of camp-followers, and in
-some cases a considerable troop of horses. Public buildings, known by
-antiquaries as the prætorium, the forum and the like, are to be found
-generally in the centre of the camp, sometimes on the side most exposed
-to the enemy’s attacks: and the quarters of the officers may generally
-be distinguished from those of the common soldiers by the elaborate
-arrangements for warming them, known as hypocausts. In these the floor
-of the room is supported on ranges of short pillars (generally about
-eight or nine inches high), between which the hot air circulated, being
-brought by flues from the furnace at a corner of the camp, in which it
-is evident that the fuel used was often the coal of Northumberland. The
-great number of oyster-shells, the beef-bones and mutton-bones found
-near many of the camps give us an indication of the food supplied to
-the officers, perhaps also to some of the privates. Many interesting
-illustrations of the immense length of time that the Roman occupation
-of Britain endured may be derived from these _Prætenturæ_. Thus we have
-several inscriptions recording the repair of a granary or a temple
-ruined by age (_vetustate conlapsum_): and in the sacred well of the
-nymph Coventina, just outside the camp of Procolitia, there were found
-16,000 coins ranging over a period from A.D. 100 to 300 which had
-been thrown into the well by generations of Roman soldiers as votive
-offerings to the goddess.
-
-Besides the larger camps, there were, as has been said, also smaller
-forts, erected at regular intervals of a thousand Roman paces, which
-are now known by the designation _mile-castles_; and other still
-smaller enclosures, hardly more than sentry boxes, about three to the
-mile, which are called, not very aptly, _turrets_, and of which very
-few specimens still remain.
-
-The soldiers by whom the line of the wall was defended did not
-belong to the legions, though legionaries had been employed in its
-construction. They belonged to various auxiliary corps recruited in
-the outlying provinces of the empire, and they were theoretically less
-Roman, less Italian, than their comrades enlisted in the legions,
-though this distinction was practically to a large extent breaking down
-in the second and third centuries of the empire. While Britons were
-being enlisted for service abroad, Asturians from Spain, Frisians and
-Batavians from Holland, Tungrians from Belgium, Lingones from Gaul,
-even Dalmatians and Dacians from the distant provinces which bore their
-names, were tramping from station to station along the mighty wall
-of Hadrian, bathing in the chilly waters of the Tyne, or hunting the
-deer on the misty slopes of Cross Fell. Most gladly would we learn how
-these detachments of soldiers, which for something like three centuries
-guarded the British _Limes Imperii_, were recruited; whether fresh
-drafts came, for instance, from Spain and from Dalmatia to replace the
-veterans who had earned their discharge, or whether the sons of the
-barracks kept the barracks full, in which case there would be probably
-an ever-increasing strain of British blood in the limitary garrisons.
-But on this point we lack definite information, which may possibly be
-supplied to us by the spade and the pick-axe of future excavators.
-
-The total number of actual soldiers on the line of the wall has been
-computed at 10,000. In addition to these there would undoubtedly be a
-certain number of domestic servants, grooms, camp-followers of various
-kinds, besides the wives and concubines of the soldiers, so that we
-may probably conjecture the population of the _Limes_ at not less
-than 20,000, a much larger number of persons than is to be found in
-that beautiful but solitary region to-day. Not only the numbers but
-the nationality of these vanished dwellers by the Tyne and Irthing
-strike us by their strange contrast with the present. Besides the
-Asturian and Dalmatian soldiers there must have been merchants and
-money-lenders and camp-followers of all kinds, speaking many tongues,
-upon these wind-swept moorlands. In the museum at South Shields is a
-sepulchral monument representing a woman seated, holding in her right
-hand a jewel-box, in her left implements of needlework. Underneath is a
-bilingual inscription, telling us in Latin that the figure represents
-“Regina, freedwoman and wife of Barate the Palmyrene, herself of the
-[British] nation of the Catuallauni, who died at the age of thirty”.
-In characters akin to Hebrew the Oriental part of the inscription
-says simply, “Regina, the freedwoman of Barate. Alas!” The blended
-nationality, the British girl bought, enfranchised, loved and too soon
-lost by the Syrian,--merchant perchance or usurer,--who followed the
-flight of the eagles of Rome, are all brought before us by these few
-roughly carved lines, and they tell a story of world-wide empire, in
-which, perhaps, the Britain of our own day could offer the closest
-parallel to Rome.
-
-Under the Emperor Antoninus Pius (138–161), the successor of Hadrian,
-another wall was built, some fifty or sixty miles north of the first,
-between the Firths of Forth and of Clyde. There were no stones in
-this wall, which was made of layers of turf, and, moreover, it has
-suffered cruelly (from an archæological point of view) through the
-operations necessary first for the cutting of a canal and afterwards
-for the building of a railroad between the two seas; but an abundance
-of inscribed stones tell us much concerning the names and occupations
-of the soldiers by whom it was garrisoned, and abundantly confirm the
-testimony of historians who attribute its erection to Antoninus Pius
-(138–161), one of the best and noblest of Roman emperors. Doubtless, at
-the time of its building, the country between the two walls (comprising
-the county of Northumberland and the whole south of Scotland) was
-subject to Roman rule. The precise period when that district was
-finally lost to the empire is still unknown to us. The philosopher
-emperor, Marcus Aurelius (161–180), was closely occupied with the
-defence of the empire against the barbarians of the Middle Danube,
-and his name is scarcely mentioned in connexion with the history of
-Britain. We are told, however, that “the Britannic war pressed heavily
-on his mind,” and that he sent a second Agricola to settle it. This
-general of Marcus, Calpurnius Agricola, was not, as far as we know,
-descended from his great namesake, the general of Domitian.
-
-With the accession of Commodus (180–192), son of Marcus, the long
-and glorious period of the patriot emperors came to an end, and the
-ruin of the empire began. The foolish and headstrong boy, who was now
-lord of the Roman world, sacrificed some of the best generals in
-his service to his jealous and cowardly suspicions, and while he was
-devoting himself to the bloody pastimes of the amphitheatre, allowed
-the necessary work of the defence of the frontier to fall behind.
-“The tribes in the island of Britain,” we are told by Dion Cassius,
-“over-passed the wall which separated them from the Roman armies,
-committed widespread ravages, and cut to pieces a Roman general with
-the troops under his command.” Which of the two walls is here referred
-to is not easy to say. It may be conjectured, however, that the wall
-of Antoninus had been already broken down in the reign of Marcus,
-during the “heavily pressing” Britannic war, and that we have here a
-description of one of those barbaric demolitions of which we find such
-abundant traces in the wall of Hadrian. To chastise the barbarians and
-to restore the broken _Limes_ Commodus sent probably his best general,
-the sturdy old soldier, Ulpius Marcellus. If discipline were relaxed
-in the legions on the British frontier, here was certainly the man to
-restore it. St. Paul himself was not more resolute to “buffet his body
-and bring it into subjection” than this chief of many legions. A scanty
-sleeper himself, he framed ingenious plans to keep his centurions
-and officers at night harassed and awake. An old man with toothless
-and tender gums, he would eat only the stale hard bread which he had
-brought from Rome, in order that he might not fall into gluttony and
-excess. Such was the man who restored for a time the honour of the
-Roman arms, and who chastised the barbarians so thoroughly that all men
-marvelled that he was not, on his return to Rome, condemned to death by
-the jealous Commodus.
-
-The assassination of Commodus (192), followed in less than three months
-by the murder of his excellent successor, Pertinax, and by the sale
-of the imperial dignity to the highest bidder, introduced a dreadful
-period of civil war in which the whole empire had nearly fallen asunder
-in ruin. Of the three candidates for the purple, Pescennius Niger
-in Syria, Albinus in Britain, and Septimius Severus on the Middle
-Danube, Severus, who had the advantage of being nearest to the capital
-and was therefore first acclaimed as emperor, was also at last the
-victorious one, but he had a hard fight, especially with Albinus, who
-led the three legions which still composed the army of Britain to a
-bloody battle in the plains of Lyons. The confusion of the times and
-the absence of the Roman legions were undoubtedly favourable to the
-restless barbarians. The wall of Hadrian was broken through; the Mæatæ,
-who lived immediately to the north of it, burst into the province, and
-the governor, Virius Lupus, purchased a precarious peace by paying a
-large sum to the invaders. It may be easily imagined that the condition
-of Britain after such an ignominious conclusion of a campaign, and even
-after the return of the disaffected legions of Albinus, was far from
-satisfactory, but it was apparently not till 208 that Septimius Severus
-set forth from Rome to bring the affairs of the province into order.
-He was already more than sixty years of age, his joints were racked by
-gout and his heart was sore through the fierce dissensions of his two
-sons, Caracalla and Geta, and the evils which these foreboded for the
-empire. Yet even these dissensions urged him the more to undertake the
-expedition, for he hoped that common labours and common dangers might
-in some degree tend to draw the two hostile brothers together, and that
-the necessary hardships of a camp life under our northern skies might
-restore some of the moral tone which had been lost amid the vicious
-indulgences of Rome. In this hope, it is true, he was completely
-disappointed. The hatred of Caracalla, especially for his brother,
-waxed fiercer and fiercer, and included also his father, for whose
-death he longed with scarcely concealed eagerness. Borne in his litter,
-on account of his sufferings from gout, the brave old soldier traversed
-the greater part of Caledonia, hewing down forests and throwing
-causeways across marshes; slaying, of course, multitudes of barbarians,
-but losing also 50,000 of his own troops (so we are told, but the
-estimate is probably exaggerated) by hostile ambuscades, severities of
-weather, even by the swords of his own soldiers, who often killed their
-own comrades to prevent their falling into the hands of the barbarians.
-He had a mind, too, to explore the secrets of Nature, and compared with
-wonder the all-but perpetual day of midsummer and the scanty measure of
-light at midwinter in northern Scotland.
-
-The dates of Severus’ campaign are only obscurely indicated, but it
-seems probable that by the year 210 the subjection of the Caledonians
-had been apparently completed. Severus, accompanied by Caracalla and
-his staff, was riding on horseback, notwithstanding his physical
-infirmity, towards a certain place of meeting which had been appointed
-for the barbarians, that they might surrender their swords and swear
-fidelity to the empire. Caracalla, riding behind him, drew his sword
-and made his horse rear and prance, intending, apparently, to be
-brought into collision with his father and thus to kill him by apparent
-misadventure. A warning shout from some member of the staff caused the
-emperor to look round and the parricidal design was foiled. Severus
-said nothing, but rode calmly on, took his place on the tribunal and
-went through the ceremony that had been arranged. He then sent for
-his son and two of his chief ministers (one of them the great lawyer
-Papinian), having ordered that a naked sword should be placed in the
-middle of the tent. He sternly rebuked his son for the impious deed
-which he had meditated in the sight of the allies and the enemies
-of Rome, and then, changing his tone, said: “If you still desire to
-slay me, here is the sword, draw it and destroy me. Or, since I have
-associated you with me in the empire, give your orders to Papinian and
-let him be my executioner. You are young and strong: I am old and shall
-lay me down to rest without a sigh.” The invitation was not accepted,
-for Caracalla shrank now from the guilt of manifest parricide. But the
-father’s words revealed too plainly the bitterness of his soul. Many
-cruelties and much needless bloodshed had marked his own ascent to
-power, but they were surely all avenged by the misery of that day in
-the land of the Caledonians.
-
-It was possibly in this same year 210, at any rate during his stay in
-Britain, that Severus completed a great and necessary work--the repair
-of the wall of Hadrian. So grievously had this long barrier suffered at
-the hands of the barbarians that reconstruction seemed to the soldiers
-engaged in it like an actual fresh construction. It is only thus that
-we can explain the language of the careless, inaccurate authors of the
-_Historia Augusta_, who, forgetful apparently of the fact that they
-have already assigned the credit of the work to Hadrian, now say of
-Severus: “The greatest glory of his reign is that he fortified Britain
-by a wall drawn across the island and ending on both sides with the
-ocean, for which achievement he received the name of Britannicus”.
-Attempts have been made to explain the apparent discrepancy between
-the two accounts by assigning part of the fortification to Hadrian and
-part to Severus--for instance, the earthen mounds to the former and
-the stone wall to the latter; but a careful study of the existing
-remains does not favour these theories. It seems better to admit that
-the writer was careless and forgetful, and that British affairs and the
-story of the Roman wall were of infinitely less importance to him than
-they are now to us, dwellers in Britain.
-
-Severus was doomed to discover, like Edward Plantagenet a thousand
-years later, how deceptive were victories over the Northern
-mountaineers. Next year (211) the Mæatæ were again up in arms and were
-joined by the Caledonians. Filled with wrath he ordered his troops
-again to invade their land, repeating often the lines of Homer:--
-
- Let not one of the race escape the steepness of ruin,
- None, your avenging hands, not e’en the babe at the bosom.
-
-He was preparing himself once more to set forth in his litter in the
-short dark winter days for the northern moorlands, when sickness
-attacked him, aided, some men thought, by Caracalla and the physicians,
-and on February 4, 211, the old man died at Eburacum. He had lived
-sixty-five years and reigned seventeen, and he was the last Roman
-emperor of whose doings in our land we have any detailed description.
-Scarcely had Severus died when his sons, renouncing apparently all
-thoughts of vengeance on the Caledonians, left the wintry north and
-returned to the delights of Rome. The hardly suppressed enmity of the
-brothers now broke out into open flame; and after various ineffectual
-attempts, always foiled by the younger man’s vigilance, Caracalla’s
-centurions slew Geta in his mother’s arms. Wheresoever the name of
-his victim occurred on the monuments, it was erased by order of the
-murderer. This strange manifestation of posthumous vindictiveness has
-left traces in our own country (for instance on a monument in the
-abbey-church of Hexham) as well as on the Arch of Severus in Rome, and
-in an inscription near the Second Cataract of the Nile.
-
-Caracalla himself was assassinated in 217, but emperors of his kindred
-wore the imperial purple down to the year 235, and thus the dynasty
-of Severus may be said to have lasted for more than forty years.
-Both in coins and inscriptions the princes of this house have left
-an exceptionally full record in the British province. From 235, the
-date of the murder of Severus Alexander (an excellent young emperor,
-last of his line), down to 284, a period of almost half a century, the
-Roman empire was in a state of absolute disintegration. The barbarians
-were pressing fiercely on its frontiers. This was the era of the
-first and terrible invasion of the Goths (244–270), an invasion which
-after awful losses on both sides, and the death of a Roman emperor
-from the pestilence caused by the war, ended in the abandonment to
-the barbarians of the great province of Dacia, won for the empire by
-the victories of Trajan. It was the era, too, of a most humiliating
-defeat by the Persians, and the conversion of a Roman emperor into a
-footstool for the Persian king. But more dangerous, if possible, than
-the external foes of the empire, was its internal disorganisation. In
-these forty-nine years no fewer than fifteen emperors were recognised
-at Rome, besides a multitude of obscure competitors (commonly known as
-the thirty tyrants) in the provinces. It is needless to say that the
-reigns, which thus lasted on an average little more than three years,
-were generally terminated by mutiny and murder; needless to dilate on
-the miserable collapse of law and order which inevitably followed from
-such continual changes in the depositary of supreme power in the state.
-Of this dismal period there is, naturally enough, no written record
-in the annals of Britain. Undoubtedly the wave of Roman influence
-ebbed; we can hardly be wrong in thinking that now, at any rate, if not
-before, the country between the two walls was permanently abandoned to
-the barbarians. The Northumbrian camps were probably also sacked, and
-we may, if we will, read some pages of that long unwritten chapter in
-the ruined walls of the camps erected by Hadrian and Severus, in the
-places where fire has evidently passed upon the corridors of a Roman
-villa, destroying the elaborate bathing arrangements of tribune or
-centurion.
-
-For the empire as a whole this interregnum of anarchy came to an end in
-the year 284 when Diocletian, the second Augustus, ascended the throne.
-This man, of obscure, even of servile origin, showed statesmanship of a
-rare order, rescuing the water-logged and all-but foundering vessel of
-the state from destruction, and steering it into a harbour in which it
-rode safely for a hundred years. His chief expedient was the division
-of the imperial power, in recognition of the fact that the vast fabric
-of the empire could no longer be upheld by a single ruler, and that
-if the supreme Augustus would not have rivals he must have partners.
-Dividing the empire into four great sections called prefectures, he
-chose for himself the prefecture of the East, including Egypt, Syria,
-Asia Minor and Thrace. His contemporary and colleague, the stout old
-soldier Maximian, who, like himself, bore the title of Augustus, ruled
-Italy, southern Germany and the greater part of Roman Africa. After
-Diocletian had reigned seven years he associated with himself in
-addition two junior partners, not Augusti but merely Cæsars; Galerius
-who governed the Illyrian lands, which in the meaning then given to
-the name stretched from Cape Matapan to the Danube. To the youngest
-of all, Constantius Chlorus, was assigned the prefecture of the west,
-stretching from Tangier to Hexham, and including three great “Dioceses”
-as the divisions intermediate between prefectures and provinces were
-called: Western Africa and Spain, Gaul and Britain. A noble portion
-was this, for the junior partner of the imperial firm, and one which
-might have satisfied the ambition even of a Napoleon. But there was
-one annoying drawback to the greatness of the western Cæsar. After all
-the rest of the empire had been restored to tranquillity the island of
-Britain still remained outside the imperial orbit, and what made this
-circumstance the more exasperating was the remembrance that it was
-due to the treachery of an officer chosen by the emperors themselves.
-Desiring to check the piratical expeditions of the Franks and Saxons
-who were already beginning to infest both coasts of the British
-channel, Maximian, who was at that time ruling and warring in Gaul,
-had entrusted the command of a naval squadron to a certain Carausius,
-a man of mean extraction, born either in Flanders or Ireland,[17] who
-had already distinguished himself by his bravery and his skill in
-naval warfare. From his strong place of arms at Gesoriacum (Boulogne),
-Carausius soon made his power felt by the barbarians, but before
-long Maximian had reason to suspect that the officer of the empire
-was himself in secret league with at least some of the pirates and
-shared their plunder. He summoned Carausius to appear before him, but
-that astute personage, suspecting the motive for the summons, hastily
-quitted Boulogne and sailed for Britain, which in the disorganised
-condition of Roman affairs he had not much difficulty in making his own.
-
-Having declared himself emperor and having even constrained the
-two legitimate Augusti to recognise him as a quasi-partner of their
-dignity, Carausius actually succeeded in maintaining his position
-for six years (287–293), perhaps the only time in the history of our
-island when there has been a veritable “Emperor of Britain”. Of the
-character of his government we have unfortunately no information
-except some sentences of invective from professional rhetoricians; but
-at least the numismatist has reason to remember his reign which has
-supplied our museums with a multitude of coins. In these, while the
-obverse represents the head of the self-made emperor, a middle-aged
-common-place man who looks like a self-made manufacturer, the reverse
-bears sometimes the well-known Roman emblems of the wolf and the
-twins; or a lion with a thunderbolt in his mouth symbolises the valour
-of Augustus; or a female milking a cow the fertility of his kingdom;
-while in some of them the association with Jovius and Herculius (the
-titles of the two legitimate Augusti) attests his share in the imperial
-partnership.
-
-Notwithstanding this interchange of compliments it was felt at
-headquarters that it was time that this separatist empire should
-come to an end, and it was in fact chiefly to accomplish this that
-Constantius had been created Cæsar of the west. The history of the
-campaign has to be gathered with difficulty from the rhetoric of
-Mamertinus and Eumenius, two professional panegyrists of the conqueror,
-but we seem to perceive that Carausius or his pirate allies still held
-the harbour of Boulogne, and that it was necessary to seal up the
-channel with beams of timber and cargoes of stone to prevent their
-exit. Stormy weather then delayed for some time the operations of
-Constantius, and meanwhile Carausius had been assassinated by one of
-his officers named Allectus, who at once assumed the purple and struck
-coins describing himself as Pious, Fortunate and August.
-
-For nearly three years Allectus reigned. At last, in 296, Constantius
-set forth for the overthrow of this new usurper. “Other emperors,”
-cries his flatterer, “have received the credit of victories won
-under their auspices though they themselves were tarrying in Rome.
-You, unconquered Cæsar! put yourself at the head of your troops;
-you gave the signal to start, when sea and sky were alike turbid,
-notwithstanding the hesitation of the other leaders. The wind struck
-obliquely on your sail: you made your vessel tack. All the soldiers,
-enraptured, cried: ‘Let us follow Cæsar wherever he leads us’. Fortune
-did indeed favour you. We have heard from the companions of your voyage
-how the mists hung low over the back of the sea so that the hostile
-fleet stationed in ambush round the Isle of Wight never saw you pass.
-As soon as they touched the shore of Britain your unconquered army
-set fire to all their ships, urged surely, by some warning voice of
-your divinity, to seek their safety only in fight and victory.” And
-so, with more of these pompous periods, the orator describes how
-the usurper Allectus fled as soon as he saw the imperial fleet, and
-fleeing fell into the hands of the soldiers of Constantius, how half
-dead with terror he thus hastened to his death, and by his neglect of
-all military precautions handed over an easy victory to the imperial
-troops. “Scarcely one Roman was killed while all the hills and plains
-around were covered with the ugly bodies of the slain. Those dresses
-worn in barbarian fashion, those locks of bright red hue were now all
-defiled with dust and gore. That standard bearer of rebellion himself
-[Allectus], having in the hope of concealment stripped off the purple
-robe which he had degraded by wearing it, now lay with scarce a rag
-to cover his nakedness.”[18] The orator then goes on to describe in
-words of turgid obscurity how some of the soldiers of Constantius,
-parted from the main body of the fleet in the fog which had baffled the
-look-out of Allectus, wandered to the “oppidum Londiniense,” and there
-were fortunate enough to meet and defeat the remains of the “mercenary
-multitude” of the usurper’s forces which had taken refuge in that town.
-We thank even the bombastic orator for some slight indication of what
-was passing in the streets of the little Roman London at the end of the
-third century.
-
-It was, as we have seen, in the year 296 that Britain was recovered
-for the empire by Constantius. Ten years afterwards that emperor, in
-failing health and knowing that he had not long to live, was looking
-anxiously eastwards for the arrival of his favourite son, the offspring
-of his concubine Helena, the brave and brilliant soldier Constantine.
-Diocletian and Maximian had both abdicated the empire. Constantius
-Chlorus was now raised from the rank of Cæsar to the higher rank
-of Augustus, but he shared that dignity with a jealous colleague,
-Galerius, who had been allowed to name the two new Cæsars. Of those
-two junior partners Constantine was not one. Worse than that, he was
-retained as a kind of hostage at the Bithynian palace of Galerius, and
-it was doubtful whether father and son would ever be allowed to meet
-again. But in a moment of irresolution or of alarm Galerius gave the
-desired permission, and Constantine, not risking the chance of its
-withdrawal, departed from the court without formal leave-taking and
-hurried across Europe to Boulogne where his father was then residing.
-It was currently reported two centuries later that in order to prevent
-the possibility of pursuit he ordered the post-horses at each imperial
-_mutatio_, which he did not himself require, to be either killed or so
-mutilated as to make them unfit for travel. Gibbon derides this “very
-foolish story,” but it is not easy to understand why, if untrue, it
-should have obtained such general acceptance.
-
-However this may be, it is certain that Constantine arrived safely at
-his father’s headquarters at Boulogne, shared with him the labours of
-a short campaign against the Picts, and was present in his chamber,
-in the Prætorian palace at Eburacum, when, worn out with toil and
-disease, Constantius Chlorus breathed his last (July 25, 306). His own
-elevation to the imperial dignity by the soldiers, who enthusiastically
-hailed him as Augustus, followed immediately after, and we may fairly
-suppose that the same place which had witnessed the death of the father
-witnessed also the accession of the son. He speedily quitted Britain
-in order to take part in that desperate game of empire, with partners
-constantly changing and occasionally putting one another to death,
-from which after eighteen years he finally arose sole emperor. With
-all this later life of his, with his adoption of Christianity, with
-his choice of a new capital by the Bosphorus, with his convocation of
-the Nicene council, we have here no concern; but it is worth while to
-emphasise the fact that a reign so immensely important for all the
-after-history of Europe and of the world began in our island by the
-slow, wide-wandering river Ouse. Thus in a certain sense York is the
-mother-city of Constantinople.
-
-We come now to another blank half century in the history of Roman
-Britain. Save for an obscure hint of the presence of the Emperor
-Constans, son of Constantine, at some time between 337 and 350, we have
-scarcely any information as to British affairs from the proclamation of
-Constantine in 306 to the despatch of the elder Theodosius to Britain
-in 367. This general, father of the more celebrated emperor of the
-same name, was sent by the Emperor Valentinian to restore some degree
-of order in the unhappy island, which had suffered from rapacious
-governors, from accusations of disloyalty cruelly avenged, and more
-recently from bloody inroads of the Picts and Scots with whom were
-now joined a tribe who are called “the most valiant nation of the
-Attacotti,” but who, if we may believe the extraordinary statement of
-St. Jerome, were actually addicted to the practice of cannibalism. In
-the three years of Theodosius’ command, the northern invaders were
-driven back to their mountains, the inhabitants of “that ancient town
-which was formerly called Londinium but which (in the fourth century)
-“more often bore the name Augusta” were relieved from their terrors: a
-new province, the geographical position of which is not made known to
-us, was staked out and received the name Valentia, in compliment to the
-emperor. For the time, but probably not for a long time, the blessings
-of “the Roman peace” were restored to Britain. The general who had
-achieved this result was shortly after executed at Carthage, a victim
-to the cowardly suspicion and jealousy of the Emperor Valens, brother
-of Valentinian. Soon, however, the whirligig of Time brought about a
-strange revenge. Valens himself perished in the awful catastrophe of
-Hadrianople, the battle in which the Visigoths utterly routed a great
-Roman army, the battle which first brought home to the minds of men
-the possibility of the collapse of the Roman empire. The nephew of
-Valens, the young and generous Gratian, looking round for some man who
-as partner of his throne might avert the menaced ruin, found none more
-suitable than the son and namesake of the murdered pacifier of Britain,
-and accordingly, in the year 379, Theodosius (whom historians have
-surnamed the Great) was hailed as Augustus at Constantinople.
-
-But now did Britain begin to rear that crop of rival emperors who were
-the curse of Europe during some of the dying days of the western
-empire. In 383 a general named Maximus, of whom an unfavourable
-witness, the ecclesiastic Orosius, testifies that he was “vigorous
-and honest and would have been worthy of the diadem if he had not, to
-obtain it, broken his oath of loyalty” was almost against his will
-declared emperor by the army. He crossed over into Gaul, carrying
-with him no doubt the bulk of his army. He skilfully played on the
-disaffection of Gratian’s legions, offended at the partiality which
-he had showed for his barbarian auxiliaries; a general mutiny was
-organised; Gratian fled for his life, was pursued and murdered near the
-city of Vienne. For five years Theodosius had to endure the enforced
-partnership in the empire of his benefactor’s murderer: then in 388 the
-smouldering hatred broke out into a flame, and after a hard struggle
-Maximus was defeated and slain at Aquileia, on the northern shore of
-the Adriatic (388). According to traditions current two centuries
-later, this usurpation of Maximus and his consequent withdrawal of the
-British legions in order to vindicate his claims to the empire, were
-most important factors in the overthrow of Roman power in Britain.
-
-A large army, on paper, still existed in the island. It was probably
-about the year 402 that the last edition of the _Notitia Imperii_,
-that edition which has been handed down to posterity, was issued from
-the imperial chancery. In this most valuable document--an army list
-and official directory of both the eastern and western portions of
-the empire--we still find cohorts of infantry and wings of cavalry
-stationed _per lineam valli_ (along the line of the Wall) as they had
-been for three centuries. We may, however, doubt whether any Roman
-soldiers were actually keeping the line of the Wall so late as 402. It
-is remarkable that very few coins have been found in the ruins of the
-camps of a later date than the reign of Gratian (375–83). If there were
-any such military units still there, they were probably but the ghosts
-of their former selves.
-
-To understand the political condition of our island at this time we
-must have recourse to the pages of the _Notitia_, which elaborately
-sets forth the various degrees of the civil and military hierarchy of
-the empire. On one page we find:--
-
- THE ILLUSTRIOUS PRÆTORIAN PREFECT OF THE GAULS.
-
- “Under his disposition are the Vicarii of Spain, of the Seven
- Provinces of Gaul and of Britain.”
-
-On a later page:--
-
- “The Spectabilis VICARIUS BRITANNIARUM.”
-
-Under his disposition were five (civil) governors:--
-
- The Consularis of Maxima Cæsariensis.
- „ Valentia.
- The Præses of Britannia Prima.
- „ Britannia Secunda.
- „ Flavia Cæsariensis.
-
-The limits and geographical position of these five districts (we are
-not entitled to call them provinces) have not yet been ascertained,
-though they have been often conjectured. It may be hoped that
-the discovery of further inscriptions may enable us to fix them
-decisively.[19]
-
-Besides these civil officers there were, according to the rearrangement
-of offices made by Diocletian, certain military commandants, called
-_comites_ and _duces_, of whom the count was, contrary to medieval
-usage, generally of higher rank than the duke.
-
-The _Notitia_ introduces us to three of these officers:--
-
-1. The Comes Britanniæ.
-
-2. The Comes Litoris Saxonici per Britanniam.
-
-3. The Dux Britanniarum.
-
-As to the first it gives us no information beyond the simple fact
-that the Provincia Britannia was “under his disposition”. The obvious
-conjecture is that numbers 2 and 3 were subject to him, but this is
-not asserted, and it perhaps militates against this theory that they,
-like him, belonged to the second grade in the official hierarchy, the
-_spectabiles_. It is possible that his special duty was the defence
-of Mid-Britain against the imperfectly subdued tribes of the Welsh
-mountains, and that the Second legion at Caerleon and the Twentieth at
-Chester were for a time under his orders for this purpose. The more
-interesting title for us is that of “The Count of the Saxon Shore in
-Britain”. He had under his command the garrisons of seven fortified
-places dotted around the eastern and south-eastern coast of England,
-from the Wash to Beachy Head.[20] He had also at his bidding the
-prefect of the Second “Augustan” legion, which had been moved from
-the quarters it had so long occupied at Caerleon-upon-Usk to Rutupiæ,
-or Richborough, close to the Isle of Thanet. The meaning of this
-arrangement is obvious. Like the Martello towers, which were reared
-along the same coasts last century, these fortresses were raised and
-garrisoned in order to defend that part of the projecting coast of
-Britain which was most exposed to the attacks of the Saxon pirates,
-already no doubt swarming in these seas in the fourth century, and
-to become far more formidable in the fifth century. The words, “per
-Britanniam,” added to the title of the _spectabilis comes_, are used
-because, as the _Notitia_ informs us, there was another Saxon shore
-which needed to be guarded on the other side of the channel; and, taken
-in this connexion, there is a special interest for us in the words of
-Apollinaris Sidonius, bishop of Clermont,[21] which show that in the
-succeeding century the coasts of Gaul, as well as of Britain, were kept
-in constant alarm by the Saxon sea-rovers.
-
-3. Of the Duke of the Britains we have only here to remark that he
-appears to have had under his disposition the Sixth legion, stationed
-at York, and numerous detachments of auxiliary troops in Yorkshire,
-Westmorland and Lancashire, and _item per lineam valli_ (also along
-the line of the wall) the various auxiliary cohorts raised in Spain,
-Gaul and Germany, to whom reference has already been made, and who are
-to all students of the literature of the Roman wall among the most
-interesting elements of the army of the empire.
-
-Meanwhile events were rapidly ripening towards the catastrophe which
-was to make the solemn _Notitia Imperii_ a mere hunting-ground for the
-archæologist. In 395 died the great Emperor Theodosius, who had for a
-generation staved off the ruin which seemed inevitable at the death
-of Valens. He was succeeded by his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius,
-who, with about equal incapacity, presided over the collapse of the
-eastern and the western half of the empire. For the first thirteen
-years, however, of the reign of Honorius his incapacity was somewhat
-veiled by the courage and ability of the Vandal soldier Stilicho,
-whom Theodosius had left as the guardian of his son. When in the year
-400 Alaric, the far-famed King of the Goths, entered Italy, Stilicho
-undertook the long and wearisome campaigns, partly, as it would seem,
-north of the Alps, but chiefly in what we now call Piedmont and
-Lombardy, by which Alaric’s designs on Rome were foiled, and at last in
-the year 403 the Goths were driven forth from Italy. But in order to
-avert the danger which thus threatened the heart of the empire, it was
-necessary seriously to weaken the defence of its extremities. One of
-the three Roman legions quartered in Britain (probably the Twentieth)
-was recalled to Italy and apparently never returned. Three years after
-the repulse of Alaric came in 406 the great cataclysm of the irruption
-of barbarian hordes, Vandals, Sueves, Burgundians and Alans into Gaul,
-which led, though not immediately, to the severance of Gaul and Spain
-from the empire. The inrush of the barbarians spread terror even into
-Britain, and caused the soldiers, weary of the inept government which
-was manifestly ruining the empire, to elect an emperor on their own
-account, and set up, as it were, a “government of national defence”.
-But revolutionary rulers of this kind are more easily proclaimed than
-established. First a certain Marcus was proclaimed: then as they found
-that “he did not suit their tempers” he was slain, and a British
-citizen named Gratian was invested with the purple, crowned with the
-diadem and surrounded with a bodyguard. After four months Gratian
-also was deposed and murdered, and thereupon a private soldier of
-the meanest rank, named Constantine, who had nothing but that great
-historic name to recommend him, was robed in the imperial purple. He at
-once crossed over into Gaul, where he maintained himself with varying
-fortune for three or four years, being even once, in 409, for a short
-time recognised as a legitimate partner in the empire by Honorius. With
-his later fortunes, however, and with the whole story of the fall of
-the Roman empire in the west we have no further concern. We have heard
-of the exit of the legions, but we never hear of their return, and we
-are probably justified in fixing on the date 407, the period of the
-usurper Constantine’s departure from our island, as the end of the
-Roman occupation of Britain.
-
-Writers and readers must alike lament the extremely jejune character of
-the history of that occupation. Since we lost the guidance of Tacitus,
-we have had scarcely anything that could be called a continuous and
-intelligible narrative of events; nor, unless some happy fortune could
-restore to us the lost books of Ammianus, is such literary assistance
-now to be expected. We are thus thrown back on such information as
-inscriptions, buried ruins, finds of coins may afford to the patient
-archæologist. And these have done something for us, though we may
-reasonably hope that the judicious use of the spade and pickaxe, guided
-by science and not by mere capricious quest for curiosities, may do
-much more.
-
-We may here notice very briefly some of the chief contributions which
-archæological research has thus made to history.
-
-1. Of all the marks made by our imperial conquerors in this island, the
-most distinct and ineffaceable was that made by them as road-makers.
-Often indeed their works survive only as boundaries between parishes
-or counties, but sometimes we can see the track still going straight
-to its mark over hill and dale, and we say instinctively, “That must
-be a Roman road”. It was certainly not mere unskilfulness or ignorance
-of the science of road-making which led the _stratores viarum_ to draw
-their lines across the country with this uncompromising directness.
-The prime object of the officer charged with the work was essentially
-military, and for watching the movements of barbarian insurgents
-or preventing the ravages of marauders, the crests of the hills
-successively surmounted by the marching legions were invaluable posts
-of observation.
-
-The chief highways of the Romans, known to us for the most part by the
-names given to them by our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, converging, as most
-of them do, towards “the town anciently named Londinium,” coincide
-in a remarkable manner with the main lines of our modern railroad
-communication. The Watling Street, running from the neighbourhood of
-London to Etocetum (a little north of Birmingham) and thence to Deva
-(Chester) and so on into Lancashire, corresponds with the London and
-North-Western Railway; while another road which generally bears the
-same name and which traverses Yorkshire and Northumberland is less
-accurately represented by the North-Eastern. Erming Street, from London
-to Doncaster, is often not far from the line of the Great Northern;
-and Abona (on the Avon near Bristol) and Isca Damnoniorum (Exeter)
-were reached by roads bearing now no special names, but imitating in
-their general course the Great Western and South-Western Railways.
-One great artery, the Fosse Way, may be clearly traced between
-Axminster (in Devonshire) and the great colony which now bears the
-name of Lincoln; but this road has no representative in our railway
-system. The imperfect character of the Roman conquest of the district
-which we now call Wales is evidenced by the feeble and fragmentary
-traces of Roman roads now to be found in the principality. There was,
-however, a road traversing the country from north to south, from
-Carnarvon to Carmarthen, and thence by a somewhat circuitous course to
-Caerleon-upon-Usk, and part of this road is still known by the name of
-Sarn Helen. Is it possible that there is in this name some vague and
-inaccurate remembrance of the mother of Constantine?
-
-2. The sepulchral inscriptions which have been discovered in large
-numbers in various parts of the island give us a little insight
-into the domestic relations of the Roman garrison, as the votive
-altars do into their sentiments concerning religion. The former
-class of inscriptions always begin in the usual Roman style with a
-dedication to the _Dii Manes_, the shade-gods, or, as we should say,
-the spirit of the departed one, and often add some endearing epithet
-to the name, such as “a well-deserving husband,” “a most religious
-wife who lived for thirty-three years an unspotted life”. Where the
-age is mentioned it is most frequently that either of a child or a
-person in middle life, the numbers between thirty and forty being of
-frequent occurrence. This is probably accounted for by the fact that
-veterans, whether officers or privates, would generally return to their
-native land to spend the last years of their lives. The religious
-inscriptions bring before us some interesting phenomena, but are so
-far characterised by one memorable omission, that of the new religion
-which was destined to supplant the old. The ordinary Olympian deities,
-Jupiter, Mars, Bellona, Neptune, are of course commemorated, though
-in a somewhat perfunctory fashion; and the official divinity of the
-emperors, living and dead, is duly recognised. But we have also a
-number of altars to gods bearing uncouth Celtic names: Belatucader,
-Anociticus, Cocidius and the like, plainly showing that the Roman
-soldiers, like the Assyrian settlers in Palestine,[22] wished to keep
-on good terms with the gods of the land. Even more conspicuous is
-the devotion of the Roman soldiers to “the unconquered Mithras”. The
-strange Oriental cult called Mithraism, probably a form of sun-worship,
-spread rapidly through the Roman empire in the second and third
-centuries, and seemed likely at one time to be a successful rival
-to Christianity. It is marvellous to see in the palace of the Roman
-emperors at Ostia a chapel with all the emblems of Mithraic worship,
-and then to find the remains of a similar chapel with precisely
-similar emblems, though broken and mutilated, on the bare hillside of
-Housesteads in Northumberland. The favourite symbol of this strange
-dead religion is a young man, crowned with a tiara, bestriding a bull,
-into whose side he is driving deep a short sword or dagger. Whatever
-this curious bas-relief may represent--and some have seen in it a
-symbol of the sun, the unconquered hero entering the constellation
-Taurus--it was no doubt faithfully reproduced in that little chapel on
-our northern moorlands, and it is perfectly figured on a small marble
-tablet lately discovered under the pavement of a London street while
-the workmen were repairing a sewer.
-
-Thus, of so many strange pagan superstitions we have abundant vestiges,
-but of Christianity in Roman Britain we have singularly few traces.
-It is true that here and there among undoubtedly Roman remains the
-Christian monogram (X P) or Christian formulæ such as _Vivas in Deo_
-or _Spes in Deo_ have been met with.[23] In the recent excavations
-at Silchester a small building which is almost certainly a Christian
-basilica has also been discovered, but these are slight evidences for
-the existence of a faith which was certainly professed by multitudes
-ere the legions quitted Britain. As to the actual date of the
-introduction of Christianity into our island we must be contented
-to confess our ignorance. The story contained in the book of Papal
-Lives, which was reproduced by Bede, that a certain King Lucius of
-Britain, about the year 180, sent over to Pope Eleutherus, asking
-for missionaries to instruct his people in the Christian faith, must
-be dismissed as the fable of a later age; nor can we speak with much
-certainty concerning the so-called proto-martyr, St. Alban, who is said
-to have suffered for the faith in the persecution of Diocletian. There
-can be no doubt, however, that there were some converts to Christianity
-in Britain during the second century, and in the third century it
-must have become the dominant religion here as in the rest of the
-empire. Towards the end of that century our island, which produced so
-many rival Cæsars, produced also one of the most famous of heretics,
-Pelagius, and, of course, the existence of his heterodoxy implies also
-the existence of the orthodoxy out of which it sprang. Thus, though
-we cannot help sometimes relying on the “argument from silence,” the
-present condition of our archæological information concerning the
-existence of Christianity in Roman Britain shows us how untrustworthy
-may sometimes be that very argument.
-
-3. It is, however, partly in reliance on such negative evidence that we
-venture to assert that the Roman occupation of Britain was before all
-things a military occupation, and that they either did not attempt, or
-did not succeed in the attempt, largely to win over the inhabitants to
-their own ways and to accustom them to that civic life which had been
-the cradle of their own civilisation. In Italy itself, in Gaul and in
-most of the provinces of western Europe we find abundant evidence of
-the municipalisation of the conquered tribes. “Decurio” and “Duumvir,”
-which we may represent by town councillor and mayor, are indications of
-rank which we meet with continually on provincial tombstones in those
-countries; but in Britain amid the crowd of inscriptions to centurions,
-tribunes and other military officers who served here we meet with only
-one here and there to civic dignitaries. “The highest form of town life
-known to the Romans was naturally rare in Britain. The _coloniæ_ and
-_municipia_, the privileged municipalities, with institutions on the
-Italian model, which mark the supreme development of Roman political
-civilisation in the provinces, were not common in Britain. We know only
-of five: Colchester, Lincoln, Gloucester, and York were _coloniæ_,
-Verulam probably a _municipium_, and despite their legal rank none of
-these could count among the greater cities of the empire. Four of them,
-indeed, probably owed their existence not to any development of Britain
-but to the need of providing for time-expired soldiers discharged from
-the army.”[24] There was, of course, a certain number of towns such as
-Londinium which had sprung out of pre-Roman settlements, some of which
-no doubt grew and prospered exceedingly with the growth of commerce due
-to the prevalence of “the Roman peace,” but these towns were apparently
-not modelled on the Roman pattern, and what may have been the nature of
-their institutions can only be a matter of conjecture.
-
-It seems probable that the prevailing type of social organisation
-during the Roman period was the _villa_ or great estate owned by a
-Roman proprietor and dotted over with the cottages of British serfs
-or slaves, whose labour was directed for his lord’s benefit by a
-_villicus_ or farm bailiff, sometimes himself a slave. Whether or no
-this system lasted on to any great extent after the Saxon invasion (the
-barbarian invader seating himself in the place of power and claiming
-all his ousted predecessor’s rights), and whether it thus passed in
-the course of centuries into the feudal manor, is one of the most
-interesting questions now debated by our archæologists. Mr. Seebohm
-is the most conspicuous advocate of this Roman-villa theory, which
-cuts right across the theories of Kemble and Freeman, who held that
-the Teutonic invaders brought with them to our island and everywhere
-established a system of free but co-operative land-ownership,
-resembling that described in the _Germania_ of Tacitus. The discussion,
-as has been said, is one of great interest to all who desire to get
-below the surface in the history of the past ages of Britain, but many
-positions will probably be won and lost before the battle is finally
-decided.
-
-The same may be said of the larger question, how far the influence
-exerted by our Roman conquerors during the four centuries of their
-stay lasted on after the departure of the legions. That Britain was
-not assimilated as Gaul was, is admitted by all, the mere fact that
-Welsh is not, like French, an offshoot from Latin, being in itself a
-sufficient proof of the difference between the two conquests; but why
-the Romanisation of Britain was so much less thorough; how far it did
-after all extend; and what influences modified or destroyed it; these
-are all questions still unsolved, to which, however, we may, perhaps,
-some day get an answer from a more thorough and scientific study of
-Celtic literature, and of Romano-British antiquities.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI.
-
-THE ANGLO-SAXON CONQUEST.
-
-
-With the departure of the Roman legions from Britain we enter upon a
-period of even denser darkness than those which we have been lately
-traversing, nor is the veil lifted till by the mission of St. Augustine
-(596) our island is again brought into the family of the Christian
-nations of Europe. The two centuries during which the voice of
-authentic history is thus silent, from 407 to 596, were the period of
-the fall of the Roman empire in the west and the establishment in its
-stead of the great Teutonic kingdoms, Frankish, Burgundian, Visigothic,
-from which the states of modern Europe are descended.
-
-Owing to the extremely imperfect character of our information
-concerning the Anglo-Saxon conquest, which was for us the chief
-event of these two centuries, and the fact that scarcely any of it
-is contemporary, some of it obviously legendary and fabulous, it is
-impossible to speak with any confidence as to its details. Almost
-every date may be challenged: “probably” or “to the best of our
-knowledge” are qualifying clauses which should be prefixed to almost
-every statement. It may be well, however, first to set forth in broad
-outlines the main facts which are beyond the reach of controversy. No
-one doubts that about the middle of the fifth century, if not before,
-the Romano-Celtic inhabitants of Britain were invaded by Teutonic
-tribes from the shores of the German Ocean and the Baltic. The tribes
-chiefly concerned in the invasion were the Saxons and the Angles, but
-the smaller nation of the Jutes are said to have been the first to
-undertake a definite scheme of conquest, and it is asserted with much
-positiveness that they came at first as auxiliaries to help the Britons
-against the Picts of Caledonia and the Scots of Ireland, who were
-ravaging the undefended land. To the Jutes is attributed the foundation
-of the kingdom of Kent and a settlement in the Isle of Wight. The far
-more numerous Saxons who followed them established the two kingdoms of
-the South Saxons and East Saxons, which are represented by the modern
-counties of Sussex and Essex; and after the lapse of two generations
-the West Saxons, invading Hampshire, laid there the foundation of
-the great kingdom of Wessex, which gradually included almost all the
-country south of the Thames. Their kings eventually became lords of the
-whole of Britain, and were ancestors through females of the sovereign
-who now sits upon the throne. The Angles, who were apparently the
-latest comers of all, founded the kingdoms of East Anglia (Norfolk
-and Suffolk), Mercia (the midland counties), Deira (Yorkshire), and
-Bernicia (Durham, Northumberland, and East Scotland as far as the Firth
-of Forth).
-
-A few words must be said as to the ethnological relations of these
-three tribes. It is not disputed that they all belonged to the great
-Low German family of nations, to which the Goths probably belonged and
-from which the Dutch and most of the inhabitants of northern Germany
-are descended. As to the little nation of the Jutes we require further
-information. They were once said to be identical with the Goths,
-and more recently they have been connected with the inhabitants of
-Jutland. The first identification is certainly wrong, the second, for
-philological reasons, is doubtful.[25] It seems that at present the
-question must be left in suspense.[26]
-
-The Saxons were placed by the geographer, Ptolemy (who wrote early in
-the second century), in the country now known as Holstein, but in the
-fourth century the name seems to have been applied to a much wider
-range of people. The Saxons with whom Charlemagne waged his stubborn
-wars at the close of the eighth century, inhabited the whole of
-Westphalia, Hanover and Brunswick and other lands beside. From any part
-of that country our Saxon ancestors may have come.
-
-Of the Angles, who in the first century after Christ were living on the
-right bank of the Elbe, near its mouth, Tacitus gives us an interesting
-account. He tells us that they, together with the kindred tribes
-between Elbe and Oder, worshipped the great goddess Nerthus, whose
-image, ordinarily kept in the dark recesses of a sacred island, at
-certain seasons paraded the lands of her votaries in a chariot drawn
-by kine. Wherever the image of the goddess came, mirth reigned and war
-ceased; but when her pilgrimage was ended, the image and the chariot,
-returning to the dark island, were washed in a sacred lake, beneath
-whose waters all the slaves who had taken part in the ceremony were at
-once engulfed, in order to ensure their silence as to the mysteries
-which they had beheld. A more interesting fact for us is the close
-relation which, according to Tacitus, existed between the Angli and the
-Longobardi, the tribe by whom, after long wanderings through central
-Europe, the conquest of Italy was at last achieved in 568, possibly at
-the very time when some of their old Anglian neighbours were beginning
-to fit out their barks for the invasion of England. This ethnological
-connexion is confirmed by the similarity of names to be found among
-the two nations, a similarity which is but slightly veiled by the
-changes which in the course of five centuries turned the Lombards from
-a people speaking Low German to one with a High German language. Thus
-the Adelperga of the Lombards corresponds to the Ethelberga of the
-Anglo-Saxons; Sisibert to Sigeberht, Alipert to Alberht, Rotopert to
-Rodberht, Adelbert to Ethelberht, and Audoin to Edwin. Moreover, the
-great historian of the Lombards, Paulus Diaconus, who wrote towards
-the end of the eighth century, tells us that their queen, Theodelinda,
-adorned her palace at Pavia with pictures representing the Lombard
-invaders of Italy in the very garb which they then wore, and which had
-become antiquated in the two centuries that had elapsed before his own
-time. “Their garments,” he says, “were loose and for the most part
-made of linen, _such as the Anglo-Saxons are wont to wear_, adorned
-with wide borders woven in various colours.” This is a valuable note
-of costume, for its own sake, and a striking confirmation of the close
-relationship once existing between the ancestors of two great nations
-now joined in friendly alliance.
-
- * * * * *
-
-After this sketch of the antecedents of the three new actors on
-the stage of British history, it remains for us to examine the
-evidence--the slender evidence, as has been already said--as to their
-proceedings during the conquest. It will be well to consider this
-evidence under three heads:--
-
-(1) The slight notices contained in the works of contemporary or nearly
-contemporary Latin authors.
-
-(2) The story of the conquest as given to us by the descendants of
-the invaders, that is, especially by Bede and the authors of the
-Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
-
-(3) The same story as told by the descendants of the conquered, that
-is, especially by Gildas and Nennius.
-
-1. In the fifth century the writing of history in the Roman empire
-had practically dwindled down to the composition of short books of
-chronicles, generally by ecclesiastics. As literary compositions they
-have no merit: they are generally very short, giving only three or
-four lines to each year, and they have no sense of the proportionate
-importance of the events which they record. But they give us for
-the most part absolutely contemporary evidence, and the historian,
-therefore, accepts them gratefully, with all their defects. One such
-chronicle, by no means the best of its kind, is generally known by the
-name of Prosper Tiro (a friend and correspondent of St. Augustine),
-though it is certain that it was not written by him but by some
-ecclesiastic of the period, with semi-Pelagian views. This dull and
-second-rate writer gives us the two following precious entries, the
-only contemporary evidence that we possess as to the Saxon invasions:
-“The fifteenth year of Arcadius and Honorius [A.D. 409]: at this time
-the strength of the Romans was utterly wasted by sickness; and the
-provinces of Britain were laid waste by the incursion of the Saxons”.
-“The eighteenth year of Theodosius II. [A.D. 441]: the provinces of
-Britain which up to this time had been torn by various slaughters and
-disasters, are brought under the dominion of the Saxons.”
-
-There are two points in these entries to which the reader’s attention
-should be particularly directed: the first, that the Saxon invasions
-are represented as beginning in 409, almost immediately after the
-departure of the usurper Constantine with the legions; the second, that
-the subjugation of Britain by the Saxons is assigned by the chronicler
-to 441, not 449, the date usually current on the authority of Bede. It
-should be remarked, in passing, that if the chronicler supposed that
-the whole of Roman Britain (which he calls Britanniæ, in the plural)
-came under the dominion of the Saxons (or Saxons, Angles, and Jutes)
-in that year, he was certainly mistaken. But some important stage in
-the conquest, if we may trust this, our only contemporary authority,
-was evidently reached in the year 441, and it was the climax of a
-series of aggressions which had apparently been going on for thirty-two
-years.
-
-It should be mentioned that one other nearly contemporary authority,
-the Greek historian Zosimus, alludes to the collapse of Roman rule in
-Britain, which he attributes to a revolt of the natives, following
-on the departure of the usurper Constantine with the legions. His
-language, however, is obscure and even self-contradictory, and he
-throws little light on the situation.
-
-The authority which we have next to consider is the _Life of St.
-Germanus_, written by the presbyter Constantius about the year 480.
-It will be seen that this document is not strictly contemporary, the
-writer being separated by an interval of about half a century from the
-chief events recorded by him: and, moreover, there is throughout the
-Life a tendency to glorify the saint by attributing to him various
-manifestations of a miraculous or semi-miraculous kind, which does not
-increase our confidence in his trustworthiness as a historian. But
-all students of early medieval history are accustomed to this kind of
-document, in which every remarkable event in the life of the subject
-of the biography is invested with a halo of thaumaturgic sanctity, and
-though they are not the sort of historic materials which we prefer,
-we must accept them (while making our own private reservations as to
-the amount of faith which we repose in all their details) or give up
-writing the story of the Middle Ages altogether.
-
-In the case before us, the missionary Germanus, whose adventures in
-Britain are related by the biographer, was a great and well-known
-historical personage. He had held, under the empire, the high military
-dignity of duke of the Armorican shore (Normandy and Brittany), had
-been consecrated Bishop of Auxerre against his will, had thereupon said
-farewell to the delights of sportsmanship, and entered earnestly on
-the duties of his new calling. He had as a fellow-missionary, Lupus,
-who many years after, as Bishop of Troyes, earned great renown by
-dissuading the savage warrior, Attila, from an attack on his cathedral
-city. It is a striking testimony to the character of both men that
-their contemporary, Apollinaris Sidonius, when he wishes to celebrate
-the virtues of another eminent prelate, Anianus, Bishop of Orleans,
-can find no higher term of praise than this: “He was equal to Lupus
-and not unequal to Germanus”. Such were the two men who in the year
-429 were sent at the bidding of Pope Celestine, and in conformity with
-the resolutions of a synod of Gaulish bishops, “to purge the minds of
-the people of Britain from the Pelagian heresy and bring them back to
-the Catholic faith,” that is, to the Augustinian teaching on free-will
-and the Divine grace. Their zealous preaching won over the multitude
-to their side, but the Pelagians, who seem to have been found chiefly
-among the wealthier Britons, challenged them to a public discussion, in
-which their simple earnestness prevailed over the elaborate rhetoric of
-the gaily clothed orators on the other side. A miracle followed: the
-restoration of sight to a little girl of ten years old, the daughter
-of “a certain man of tribunician rank”. After visiting the tomb of the
-martyred Saint Alban and exchanging relics with the keepers of the
-shrine, they resumed their journey, but, unfortunately, Germanus was
-for several days confined by a sprained ankle to a humble cottage in
-the country. The cottage itself and all the little hovels round it were
-thatched with reeds from the marsh, and fire having broken out in the
-little settlement, the saint’s life seemed to be in jeopardy, but he
-refused to stir, and his cottage alone remained unconsumed.
-
-Then followed the celebrated incident of the Hallelujah battle which
-is the chief reason for referring to the mission. The scene of the
-encounter is not made known to us, but it evidently took place in a
-mountainous country, possibly in Wales.[27] The first sentence of
-the biographer, describing the campaign, is so important that it
-must be translated literally: “In the meanwhile the Saxons and the
-Picts, driven into one camp by the same necessity, with conjoined
-force undertook war against the Britons, and, when the latter deemed
-their strength unequal to the contest, they sought the aid of the
-holy bishops, who, hastening their arrival, brought with them such
-an accession of confidence as was equivalent to a mighty host”. The
-biographer then describes the baptism of the larger part of the
-army on Easter day; their eagerness for battle while they were still
-moist with the baptismal water; the choice of the battle-field by the
-veteran officer Germanus; that battle-field a valley surrounded by
-mountains; the placing of an ambuscade whose duty it was to signal to
-him the approach of the foe. At the signal given the bishops gave the
-word “Hallelujah,” which was repeated in a tremendous shout by the
-multitudes carefully posted out of sight, and was repeated from peak
-to peak of the surrounding mountains. Hereat the terror-stricken foes
-imagined not only rocks hurled down upon them, but the very artillery
-of heaven let loose for their destruction. Casting away their arms they
-fled in all directions, and the larger number of them were swallowed up
-in the river which they had just crossed; the Hallelujah victory was
-complete, a victory like that of Gideon over the Midianites, won by
-moral means alone.
-
-This narrative when we remember its nearly contemporary character has
-an important bearing on the history of Britain in the fifth century. It
-seems to show that, twenty years after the withdrawal of the legions,
-the condition of the Britons was not absolutely desperate. There were
-still among them wealthy men and eloquent ecclesiastics dressed in
-costly garments, and the people were not too much engrossed by the
-mere struggle for existence to have leisure to listen to the elaborate
-arguments about original sin, free will and assisting grace which
-formed the staple of the Pelagian controversy. Moreover the union of
-the Saxons with the Picts in the hostile army is surely a point of no
-small importance. If we connect it with the previously quoted entry
-of Tiro, assigning to the year 409 the beginning of a series of Saxon
-devastations, we may suspect that the commonly received story which
-attributes the Teutonic invasions entirely to the folly of the Britons
-who called in the Saxons to help them against the Picts, is, if not
-altogether false, at any rate an exaggeration of one not very important
-incident in the contest.
-
- * * * * *
-
-2. For the story told by the invaders, our chief authorities are Bede
-and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. (_a_) It must be confessed that for
-this part of the history we do not get much assistance from the monk
-of Jarrow, the Venerable Bede. He was probably the most learned man
-of his time in Europe; his conception of the duty of a historian
-is a high and noble one, and when we reach the seventh century, the
-golden age of Northumbrian Christianity, we shall find his assistance
-invaluable; but, writing as he did in 731, he was separated by nearly
-three centuries from the great Saxon invasions, and it seems clear
-that he had little or nothing derived from the genuine traditions of
-his race to say concerning them. The first book of his _Ecclesiastical
-History_ is therefore little more than a mosaic of passages from
-Orosius, Eutropius, and, pre-eminently, the Briton Gildas (hereafter
-to be described), from whom he derives almost the whole history of the
-Caledonian invasion, and of the calling in of the Saxons as defenders
-against the attacks of the Picts. It is, however, to Bede that we owe
-the first mention of the British king Vortigern as well as of the names
-of Hengest and Horsa. It must remain an unsolved question from what
-source Bede derived the name of Vortigern, the inviter of the Saxons
-into Britain. Gildas, who is his main authority for this part of the
-story, while hinting at the personality of Vortigern, hides his name.
-After describing the three invading nations, the Jutes, the Saxons
-and the Angles, Bede continues: “Their generals” (according to strict
-grammatical construction this should refer not to the Jutes but to
-the Angles) “are said to have been two brothers, Hengest and Horsa,
-of whom Horsa was afterwards slain in war by the Britons. To this day
-a monument inscribed by his name exists in the eastern parts of Kent.
-These two were sons of Wictgils, the son of Witta, the son of Wecta,
-the son of Woden, from whose stock the royal families of many provinces
-derived their origin.” Bede then goes on to describe how the bands of
-the three nations already named began to pour into the island, how
-they made a treaty with the Picts whom they had previously conquered
-and driven far away, and how they then turned their arms against their
-British allies. From this point he merely copies Gildas, describing in
-lamentable tones the ravage wrought by his countrymen. It is pointed
-out by Bede’s latest editor, Plummer, that such information as the
-Northumbrian monk possessed concerning Kent would be naturally derived
-by him from his Kentish friends, Albinus, abbot of Canterbury, and
-Nothelm, priest of the church of London, to both of whom he expressly
-refers in his preface. But apparently even their traditions could not
-carry him very far. Save for such information as the conquered race
-could supply, Bede’s mind was little more than a blank as to events in
-England between the ages of Honorius and Gregory the Great.
-
-The _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ is the great historical monument of our
-race in its youthful days, and probably owes its original inception to
-the wise encouragement of Alfred. As that great prince ruled in the
-later years of the ninth century it is plain that the interval between
-the historian and the events recorded is even greater in the case of
-the Chronicle than in that of Bede. To a considerable extent the early
-annals in the Chronicle are founded upon Bede’s history, and so far we
-may safely neglect them since they add nothing to the evidence already
-before the court; but there is also a certain amount of information,
-especially relating to the kingdom of Wessex, to which we find nothing
-that corresponds in Bede; and this part of the Chronicle--whatever
-it may be worth--must of course be treated as a primary authority.
-What is the real historical value of the statements which we find in
-it concerning yet heathen England? There is evidently in them some
-admixture of the fabulous. When we find, as we shall do, a Saxon
-chieftain, Port, described as the founder of Portsmouth, the _Portus
-Magnus_ of the Romans, and Wihtgar made the name-giver to the Isle
-of Wight, which had been known as Vectis for centuries before he was
-born, we feel that we are in the presence of traditions, not genuine
-but manufactured out of etymology. Moreover the dates so elaborately
-given by the Chronicle seem to have been arranged (as was pointed
-out by Lappenberg) on an artificial system with recurring periods of
-eight and four years; which looks like the work of men with slender
-materials trying to make the bricks of history without the straw of
-genuine chronology. There is a good deal of distrust of the earlier
-portions of the Chronicle in the minds of historical students, side by
-side with a high appreciation of its general fairness, and gratitude
-to the scribes who have preserved for us so much of the records of
-the past, even though their narrative is often somewhat arid. On the
-whole it seems the wisest, in fact the only possible course, to take
-thankfully the information which the Chronicle gives us as to these
-two mist-enshrouded centuries, not absolutely maintaining its accuracy
-in every particular, but yielding to it a provisional assent, until
-either by internal or external evidence it shall be proved to be
-legendary or impossible.
-
-It may be as well to state here that there are various manuscripts
-of the Chronicle hailing from different ecclesiastical centres, the
-divergences of which in the later centuries of Anglo-Saxon history
-are sometimes of great importance. For the present, however, this
-question does not arise. Save for a few not very important Northumbrian
-interpolations, the manuscripts of the Chronicle may be considered
-as one, and their source of origin may be considered to have been
-Winchester, the focus of all West Saxon government and culture.
-
-The allusions made in the Chronicle to the departure of the Romans
-from Britain are naturally very scanty: “In 409 the Goths broke up the
-city of Rome, and never after that did the Romans rule in Britain”.
-“In 418 the Romans gathered together all the gold-hoards that were in
-Britain and hid some in the earth, so that no man thenceforth should
-ever find them, and some they took with them into Gaul.” Let us proceed
-therefore to examine the evidence furnished from this source as to the
-foundation of the kingdoms of Kent, Sussex, Wessex, and Northumbria. As
-to the early history of East Anglia, Essex and Mercia the Chronicle is
-altogether silent.
-
-_Kent._--A.D. 449.[28] Wyrtgeorn [Vortigern] invites the Angles to
-Britain. They come over in three “keels” and land at Heopwines-fleet
-[Ebbs-fleet in the Isle of Thanet], and he gives them lands in the
-south-east of the country on condition of their fighting the Picts.
-This they do successfully, but they send home for more of their
-countrymen, telling them of the worthlessness of the Britons and the
-goodness of the land. Their generals were two brothers, Hengest and
-Horsa, sons of Wictgils with the pedigree as given by Bede.
-
-A.D. 455. Hengest and Horsa fight with Vortigern at Aegeles-threp
-[Aylesford on the Medway]. Horsa is slain. Hengest assumes the title of
-king, and associates with himself his son Aesc.
-
-A.D. 456. Hengest and Aesc fight with the Britons at Crecgan-ford
-[Crayford, about six miles south-east of Woolwich], and slay 4,000
-of them. The Britons evacuate Kent and with much fear flee to
-London-borough.
-
-A.D. 465. Hengest and Aesc fight with the “Welshmen” [Britons] near
-Wippedes-fleote, and there slay twelve Welsh nobles, themselves losing
-one thane, whose name was Wipped.
-
-A.D. 473. Hengest and Aesc fight with the “Welshmen,” and take booty
-past counting. The Welsh flee “as a man fleeth fire”.
-
-That is all the information vouchsafed us as to the conquest of Kent,
-which was evidently not an easy matter, taking as it did nearly thirty
-years to finish. Possibly ere the strife was ended the invaders
-somewhat modified their views as to the military worthlessness of the
-Britons. London, which is transiently mentioned here in the annal for
-456 is not mentioned again in the Chronicle till 851. We hear of it,
-however, in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History in 604. The history of Kent
-is a blank from the year 473 till 565 when Ethelbert, who afterwards
-embraced Christianity, began his long reign of fifty-three years.
-
-_Sussex._--We know from other sources that, far on into the Middle
-Ages, Sussex was divided from Kent by the dense forest of the
-Andredesweald or Andredesleag, and accordingly the conquest of one
-country by no means necessitated the conquest of the other, which is
-assigned to a considerably later date than that given for the landing
-of Hengest and Horsa.
-
-A.D. 477. Aelle with three sons and three keels come to the place
-called Cymenes ora. He slays many “Welshmen,” and drives others to take
-refuge in the wood that is called Andredesleag.
-
-A.D. 485. He fights with “Welshmen” near Mearcredesburn.
-
-A.D. 491. “Aelle and Cissa begirt Andredesceaster and slay all who
-dwell therein, nor was there for that reason one Briton left alive.”
-
-This wholesale butchery of the British defenders of the Roman fortress
-of Anderida, overlooking Pevensey Bay, has naturally attracted much
-attention, and is constantly appealed to by those who maintain that
-the earlier stages of the Saxon conquest were an absolute war of
-extermination. It is to be observed that Aelle, who founded an
-exceptionally short-lived dynasty, is not credited with any long line
-of ancestors reaching back to the mythic Woden. Chichester, capital of
-the South Saxon kingdom, founded probably on the site of the Roman city
-of Regnum, is said to have derived its name from Cissa, son of Aelle.
-
-_Wessex._--As might naturally be expected in a chronicle having its
-birth-place in Winchester, the historical details as to Wessex are much
-fuller than for the other kingdoms; so full that it is possible to
-relinquish the mere annalistic form and to weave them into a continuous
-narrative. In 495 (more than half a century after Tiro’s date of the
-Saxon conquest) two chieftains, Cerdic and Cynric his son, came with
-five ships to a place called Cerdices ora, and on the very day of their
-landing fought a battle with the “Welshmen”. The scene of the landing
-was probably somewhere in the noble harbour of Southampton Water. The
-two chieftains were not as yet spoken of as kings, but bore the lower
-title of _ealdormen_. Of Cerdic, however, the Chronicle recites the
-usual half-legendary pedigree, reaching back through eight intervening
-links to Woden, from whom (of course under later Christian influences)
-the line is traced back to Noah and Adam. These pedigrees, or at least
-the genuine Teutonic portion of them, may very probably have been
-preserved in the songs of minstrels, and obviously belong to that
-element of the Chronicle which is independent of Bede. We may look
-upon the divine ancestor Woden as marking the limit of the minstrel’s
-memory or knowledge, and we shall therefore probably be justified in
-concluding that the West Saxon tribe possessed some sort of continuous
-historical tradition reaching back for eight generations behind Cerdic
-(himself a middle-aged man in 495), or about to the beginning of the
-third century. No wonder that kings whose very flatterers could not
-trace back their lineage to an earlier date than that of the Emperor
-Severus, felt their dynasties new and short-lived in presence of the
-immemorial antiquity of Rome.
-
-In 508, the two chiefs slew a British king named Natanleod and 5,000
-men with him. Evidently by this time they must have been at the head of
-a large number of followers. We are told that “the land”--apparently
-the scene of the battle--was named after the slain king; and it is
-generally supposed that this gives us the origin of the name Netley,
-well known for its ruined abbey and its military hospital. Eleven
-years later (in 519) they assumed the title of kings, being no longer
-contented with the humbler designation of ealdormen, and fought the
-Britons at Cerdicesford, a place identified with Charford on the Avon,
-about six miles south of Salisbury. Meanwhile, however, there had been
-other Saxon invasions of the same region. In 501 is placed the visit
-of the legendary Port with his two sons to Portsmouth, and the death
-of a young Briton of very high birth who vainly tried to defend his
-land from their invasion. In 514 certain West Saxon reinforcements
-are represented as arriving (perhaps in the Isle of Wight) under the
-leadership of another eponymous hero, Wihtgar, and his brother Stuf,
-nephews of Cerdic; and, probably with their help, in 530 Cerdic and
-Cynric took possession of the Isle of Wight, after slaying many Britons
-at Wihtgaræsbyrg or Carisbrooke. The statements in the Chronicle about
-the conquest of the Isle of Wight, obscure and confused in themselves,
-become yet more so when we compare them with an earlier passage
-interpolated from Bede, in which the Jutes, not the West Saxons, are
-represented as the conquerors of the Isle of Wight. Of course two
-tides of Teutonic conquest may have passed over the island, but it
-is difficult to bring the two lines of tradition into their proper
-relation to one another.
-
-In 534, Cerdic, who must now have been an old man, ended his life and
-his near forty years of British warfare, and Cynric his son reigned
-alone. We may sum up the total of Cerdic’s achievements by saying
-that he seems to have completed the conquest of Hampshire and the
-Isle of Wight, and that he probably fixed his royal residence at the
-Romano-British city of Venta Belgarum, thereafter to be known as
-Winchester. The fact that it required the labour of a lifetime to
-achieve the conquest of a moderate-sized English county, sufficiently
-shows that the Britons were not the mere Nithings (men of naught) whom
-Hengest and some of Hengest’s Teutonic countrymen have represented them
-to have been.
-
-Of the reign of Cynric, which, according to the Chronicle, lasted
-from 534 to 560, we have but little told us in that work. We hear
-of a battle at Old Sarum in 552 and of another four years later at
-Beranbyrig which is identified with Barbury in the north of Wiltshire.
-Apparently the achievement of his reign was the addition of the greater
-part of Wiltshire to the West Saxon kingdom. We may so far anticipate
-the evidence of the British writers as to say that the twenty-six
-years of Cynric probably coincide with part of the forty-four years of
-comparative peace which they describe as following the British victory
-of Mount Badon.
-
-Far fuller of decisive events was the memorable reign of Ceawlin,
-son of Cynric, which is assigned to the years between 560 and 592.
-He was the eldest of a gallant band of brothers whose mutually
-resembling names, Cutha and Cuthwine and Ceol and Ceolric, have given
-no small trouble to the genealogists. The eighth year of his reign was
-signalised by an event, unprecedented as far as we know in the history
-of Anglo-Saxon England, namely, war between the invaders themselves.
-The object of the West Saxon attack in 568 was Kent, whose young king
-Ethelbert, after but three years of kingship, saw his land invaded
-by Ceawlin and his brother Cutha. The battle-place was Wibbandune,
-possibly Wimbledon in Surrey, and there two of Ethelbert’s ealdormen
-were slain and himself put to flight. What terms he may have made with
-the victors we know not, but he was not permanently dethroned, since
-twenty-eight years afterwards we find him welcoming to his palace in
-Canterbury the missionaries from Rome.
-
-Three years later (571) a vigorous attack was made by Cutha on the
-Britons, north of the Thames. A battle was fought at Bedford in which
-Cutha himself was slain, but victory crowned the Saxon arms in the
-general campaign, and four towns in Oxfordshire and Bucks (of which
-Aylesbury alone has retained its importance till the present day) were
-added to the kingdom of Wessex. The year 577 was of immense importance
-in the history of the Saxon progress. In that year a great battle was
-fought at Deorham, in Gloucestershire, about ten miles east of Bristol.
-There were arrayed on the one side Ceawlin and his brother Cuthwine, on
-the other three British kings, Coinmail and Condidan and Farinmail, all
-of whom were slain. Three great cities of Roman foundation (“ceastra”
-as the Chronicle calls them) were the price of victory: they were
-Gloucester, Cirencester and Bathanceaster or Bath. All historians are
-agreed as to the importance of this victory, which not only added
-Gloucester and (probably) part of Somerset to the West-Saxon kingdom,
-but by cutting off the Cymry of “West Wales” (Devon and Cornwall) from
-their brethren north of the Bristol Channel practically ensured their
-eventual if slow submission.
-
-“In 584 Ceawlin and Cutha fought with the Britons in the place that
-is called Fethan-lea,[29] and Cutha was slain, and Ceawlin took many
-‘towns’ and innumerable quantities of booty and departed in anger to
-his own land.” The chronicler seems to be here telling us of a Saxon
-reverse. Though Ceawlin captured many towns and took vast heaps of
-spoil he lost his son in the great battle and departed in wrath,
-assuredly in effect defeated, to his own land. After defeat came
-apparently domestic treason and civil broils. The entries for 591 to
-593 show us the proclamation of a certain Ceolric, brother or nephew
-of Ceawlin, and a battle in 592 evidently not with the Britons, but
-between Saxon and Saxon, fought at Wodnesbeorge,[30] which resulted in
-the “driving out” of Ceawlin. Next year (593) Ceawlin with two others,
-probably princes of his house, named Cuichelm and Crida “perished”.[31]
-The wording of the annal shows pretty plainly that they all died a
-violent death, whether on the battlefield or by assassination, whether
-as friends or foes, it is impossible to say; but there can be no doubt
-that the sun of Ceawlin’s fortunes, which had at one time shone so
-splendidly, set in clouds and storms.
-
-In 597 (apparently on the death of Ceolric) Ceolwulf, nephew of
-Ceawlin, “began to reign over the West Saxons, and he fought
-continually and successfully either with Englishmen or with Welshmen
-or with Picts or with Scots”. He was, however, reigning at the time of
-Augustine’s mission, and with that event the historical interest which
-has been slightly stirred by the story of the West Saxons’ advance is
-transferred to another quarter. Throughout the seventh century Kent and
-Mercia and pre-eminently Northumbria claim our attention so absorbingly
-that we cannot spare much thought for the obscure annals of Wessex.
-
-Concerning the two Northumbrian kingdoms, Deira and Bernicia, we have
-no information in the Chronicle for the first hundred years after the
-landing of Hengest and Horsa. We are then under the year told that Ida
-(descended in the ninth generation from Woden) was the founder of the
-royal line of Northumbria; that he built Bebbanburh (Bamburgh) and that
-this celebrated fortress was in the first instance surrounded with a
-fence and afterwards with a wall. The chronicler then tells us that
-in 560, on the death of Ida, Aelle (eleventh in descent from Woden)
-began to reign over Northumbria and reigned for [nearly] thirty years.
-The chronicler here either wilfully or inadvertently has suppressed
-something of the truth. From his language one might have conjectured
-that Aelle was of the lineage of Ida, and had succeeded peaceably to
-his ancestor. Instead of this peaceable succession, however, we know
-from other sources that we have here to deal with two rival kingly
-lines, whose feuds and reconciliations make an important chapter in
-Northumbrian history. The true situation was this: essentially the
-kings of Ida’s line were rulers of Bernicia, while Aelle and his
-descendants ruled Deira. That is to say: from their steep rock-palace
-of Bamburgh the sons of Ida reigned by ancestral right over all the
-eastern portion of the lands between Tyne and Forth, between the wall
-of Hadrian and the wall of Antoninus. Similarly Aelle and his sons,
-firmly settled in the great Roman city of Eburacum, governed the
-country between Tyne and Humber; but each king ever aspired to extend
-his sway over the other kingdom and often succeeded for a while in
-doing so. Thus we have constant vicissitudes but a general tendency
-towards the union of the two kingdoms into one Northumbria, which obeys
-now an “Iding,” now an “Aelling” ruler. What strifes and commotions
-may have attended the transition from one line to another we can only
-in part discern. We are only obscurely told that in 588 Aelle’s line
-was ousted, and that Ethelric the son, and after him Ethelfrith the
-grandson of Ida reigned over all Northumbria.
-
- * * * * *
-
-3. We now come to the British version of the conquest. Though a
-nation is naturally reluctant to tell the story of its own defeat,
-we might have expected to receive from a comparatively civilised and
-Christianised people, such as the Romano-Britons of the fifth century,
-some intelligible literary history of so important an event as the
-Teutonic conquest of their island. This expectation, however, is
-dismally disappointed. We have practically nothing from the vanquished
-people, but the lamentations of the sixth century author Gildas, and
-the obviously fable-tainted narratives of the puzzle-headed Nennius of
-the eighth century.
-
-Gildas, who obtained from after ages the surname of “the Wise,” seems
-to have been a native of Scottish Strathclyde and was born early in the
-sixth century; he became a monk and at the age of forty-four wrote what
-Bede truly calls “a tearful discourse concerning the ruin of Britain”.
-His object in this discourse was to rebuke the ungodliness of his
-countrymen and to remind them of the tokens of the Divine wrath which
-they had already received. He is consequently, for our purpose, a most
-disappointing writer. We go to him for history and we get a sermon,
-but we ought in fairness to remember that he never proposed to give us
-anything else. A large part of his treatise consists of reproductions
-of the denunciatory passages of the old Hebrew prophets: a more
-interesting section, but one outside our present purpose, consists
-of fierce invectives against five wicked, or at least unfriendly,
-kings of Wales. But there are a few chapters, the only ones that now
-concern us, in which, in pathetic tones, he tells us something as to
-the circumstances of the invasion of his country. He harks back to the
-departure from Britain of the usurper Maximus (383), to which, rather
-than to the later usurpation of Constantine, he traces her defenceless
-condition. Stripped of the multitude of brave young men who followed
-the fortunes of Maximus and never returned, and being themselves
-ignorant of war, the Britons were “trampled under foot by two savage
-nations from beyond seas, namely the Scots from the north-west and
-the Picts from the north”. The description of the invaders as coming
-from beyond the seas is important. The term “Scots” at this time and
-for four centuries afterwards means primarily the inhabitants of the
-north of Ireland, and only secondarily the offshoot from that race who
-settled in Argyll and the Isles. These invaders, of course, were as
-Gildas calls them “_transmarini_”: but it is possible that the Picts
-also, some of whom we know to have been settled in Wigtonshire, came
-across the shallow land-girdled waters of Solway Firth, instead of
-attacking the yet undemolished wall, and thus that they too seemed to
-the dwellers in North-west Britain to be coming from “beyond the seas”.
-
-According to Gildas the Britons sent an embassy to Rome, piteously
-imploring help against the invaders. The Romans came, drove out the
-barbarians and exhorted the inhabitants to build a wall between the
-two seas, which they accordingly did, from Forth to Clyde, building it
-only of turf. A fresh invasion followed, a second embassy, again utter
-rout and slaughter of the enemy, but, alas! there came also a solemn
-warning from the Romans that they could not wear out their strength in
-these constant expeditions for the deliverance of Britain, and that its
-inhabitants must henceforth look to their own right arms for safety;
-but nevertheless before they abandoned them they would help them to
-build a wall, this time of stone not of turf, on the line between Tyne
-and Solway. Moreover, they built a line of towers along the coast right
-down to the southern shore where their ships were wont to be stationed,
-and then they said farewell to their allies, as men who expected never
-to see them again.
-
-All this part of Gildas’s story is quite untrustworthy. No one who
-has carefully studied the architecture of the two walls and the
-inscriptions along their course will attribute their origin or even
-any important restorations of them, to those troublous years of dying
-Rome, the years between 390 and 440. Gildas is here evidently retailing
-the legend which had sprung up among an ignorant and half-barbarised
-people as to the great works of the foreigner in their land, and
-he has not only in this matter “darkened counsel by words without
-knowledge,” but he has grievously misled his worthy follower Bede, who
-is brought into hopeless perplexity by his attempt to reconcile his
-own more correct information about the Roman walls with the unsound
-Welsh traditions or conjectures which he found in Gildas. The tearful
-narrative proceeds: There is more misery in Britain: civil war is
-added to barbarian invasion, and food, save such as can be procured
-by hunting, vanishes out of the land. In 446 the poor remnants of the
-Britons send their celebrated letter to that Roman general whose name
-was at the time most famous among men: the letter which began, “To
-Aetius,[32] thrice consul, the groans of the Britons,” and went on to
-say, “The barbarians drive us to the sea: the sea drives us back on
-the barbarians: we have but a choice between two modes of dying, either
-to have our throats cut or to be drowned”. But not even this piteous
-request brought help, for Aetius was too busily occupied with his wars
-against Attila and the Huns to be able to spare thought or men for
-the defence of Britain. However, pressed by the pangs of hunger, the
-Britons grew bolder and even achieved some small measure of success
-against their enemies. The impudent Hibernian robbers returned to their
-homes; the Picts at their end of the island remained quiet for a time,
-though both nations soon began again their plundering forays. But with
-success came luxury, drunkenness, envy, quarrelsomeness, falsehood, all
-the signs of a demoralised people. And then for the punishment of the
-nation came first a pestilence so terrible that the living scarcely
-sufficed to bury the dead, and then, direst plague of all, the fatal
-resolution to call in foreign aid.
-
-“A rumour was spread that their inveterate enemies were moving for
-their utter extermination. A council was called to consider the best
-means of repelling their fatal and oft-repeated invasions and ravages.
-Then all the councillors, together with the proud tyrant,[33] with
-blinded souls, devised this defence (say rather ruin) for their
-country, that those most ferocious and ill-famed Saxons--a race hateful
-to God and man--should be invited into the island (as one might
-‘invite’ a wolf into the sheepfold) in order to beat back the northern
-natives. Never was a step taken more ruinous or more bitter than this.
-Oh, the depth of these men’s blindness! Oh, the desperate and foolish
-dulness of their minds! ‘Foolish are the princes of Zoan, giving unto
-Pharaoh senseless counsel.’[34] Then that horde of cubs burst forth
-from the den of their mother, the lioness, in three _cyuls_ (keels),
-as their language calls them, or as we should say, ‘long-ships’. They
-relied on favourable omens and on a certain prophecy which had been
-made to them, in which it was predicted that for 300 years they should
-occupy the land towards which their prows were pointed, and for half of
-that time they should lay it waste by frequent ravages. Thus, at the
-bidding of that unlucky tyrant did they first fix their terrible claws
-into the eastern part of the island, pretending that they were going
-to fight for the deliverance of the country, but in truth intending to
-capture it for themselves. Then the aforesaid mother-lioness, learning
-how the first brood had prospered, sent another and more numerous array
-of her cubs, who, borne hither in barks, joined themselves to these
-treacherous allies.”
-
-Space fails us to repeat in his own words the whole of the author’s
-pitiful story. Somewhat condensed it amounts to this: The strangers
-claimed that liberal rations should be given them in consideration
-of the great dangers which they ran. The request was granted and
-“shut the dog’s mouth” for a time. But soon they began to complain
-of the insufficiency of these rations: they invented all sorts of
-grievances against their hosts, and used these as a justification
-for breaking their covenant with the British king, and roaming with
-ravage all over the island. “The flame kindled by that sacrilegious
-band spread desolation over nearly all the land till at last its red
-and savage tongue licked the coasts of the western sea.” The towns
-[_coloniæ_] were levelled to the ground with battering rams; the
-farmers [_coloni_], with the rulers of the Church, with the priests
-and people, were laid low by the flashing swords of the barbarians or
-perished in the devouring flames. Coping-stone and battlement, altars
-and columns, fragments of corpses covered with clots of gore, were all
-piled together in the middle of the ruined towns, as in a horrible
-wine-press. Burial there was none, save under the ruins of the houses
-or in the maw of some beast of prey or ravenous bird. Some of the
-miserable remnant who had escaped to the mountains were caught there
-and slain in heaps. Others, pressed by hunger, submitted and became
-slaves of the conquerors; others fled beyond the sea. A very few who
-had fled to the mountains, there on the tops of precipitous cliffs
-or in the depths of impenetrable forests succeeded in dragging out a
-life, precarious truly and full of terrors, but still a life in their
-fatherland.
-
-At last the tide turned. Some of the invaders returned to their
-own homes, and the unsubdued mountaineers saw the remnant of their
-countrymen flocking to them from every quarter and beseeching them
-to save them from extermination. A little band of patriots was thus
-formed, under the leadership of Ambrosius Aurelianus, a man of modest
-temper but of high descent, and in fact the only Roman sprung from
-the wearers of the purple who had survived the storm of the invasion.
-Under this leader the patriots dared to challenge the invaders to a
-pitched battle, which, by the favour of the Lord, resulted in their
-victory. From that time the struggle went on with varying fortune, now
-the citizens, now the enemy triumphing, till the year of the siege of
-Mount Badon, which was also the year of the birth of Gildas, and from
-which forty-four years had elapsed to the time of his present writing.
-That was the last and greatest slaughter of “the scoundrels”. From that
-time onwards external war had ceased, and for a space the hearts of all
-men, delivered from despair and chastened by adversity, turned to the
-Lord, and all men, whether kings or private persons, whether bishops or
-simple ecclesiastics, kept their proper ranks and orders in the state.
-Of late, however, on the decease of the men of that generation, morals
-had again declined, anarchy had begun to prevail, and owing to the
-frequent occurrence of civil wars, the cities were no longer inhabited
-as securely as of old.
-
-Gildas then proceeds to describe further the demoralisation of
-his countrymen, and especially the outrageous vices of the five
-contemporary British kings, Constantine, Caninus, Vortipor, Cuneglas,
-and Maglocunus (or Maelgwn), upon all of whom he pours forth the vials
-of his righteous indignation; but into this part of his discourse there
-is no need for us to follow him. However little to our taste may be the
-somewhat inflated rhetoric of this author, it is important always to
-remember that he lived about two centuries nearer to the Saxon conquest
-than our next authority on the subject, Bede, and we must gratefully
-acknowledge that he does give us a few valuable facts of which we
-should otherwise be ignorant. His description of the horrors of the
-invasion, though highly coloured, is sufficiently paralleled by the
-well-attested events of the later Danish conquest to be not altogether
-improbable. His mention of Ambrosius Aurelianus, the modest descendant
-of emperors (perhaps of Maximus or the usurper Constantine), and the
-brave leader of revolt against the invaders, looks like historical
-fact, and the story of the British triumph at Mount Badon is not made a
-whit less probable by the patriotic silence of the Chronicle concerning
-a Saxon disaster. Both the place and the date of that great battle have
-been the subjects of long debate. Mons Badonicus used to be thought to
-represent Bath, and after a good deal of discussion this identification
-seems again to be coming into favour.
-
-The sentence in which Gildas appears to connect the date of the
-battle with his own birth is almost hopelessly obscure and the text
-is probably corrupt; but on the whole it seems most probable that
-he meant to say, as above suggested: “The battle of Mount Badon was
-fought forty-four years ago, and in that year I was born”. The _Annales
-Cambriæ_ (a compilation of the tenth century) give 516 for the year
-of the battle, a date which would fix the composition of the tearful
-discourse to 560. Mommsen prefers 500 for the date of the birth of
-Gildas. In any event there is a strong inducement to connect at least
-a part of the long period of comparative peace which, according to
-Gildas, followed the battle of Mount Badon with the confessedly
-uneventful reign of Cynric, the West Saxon.
-
- * * * * *
-
-We now pass on to the other writer of British origin who dealt with the
-history of the Anglo-Saxon conquest--namely, _Nennius_. If one has to
-speak in rather severe terms of the literary quality of this writer’s
-work and of the value of his testimony as a historian, it must be
-remembered in extenuation of his many faults that he lived at a time
-and in a nation in which literary excellence and the acquisition of
-accurate knowledge of the past were made well-nigh impossible by the
-hard pressure of daily life, brutalised and barbarised as it was by
-perpetual wars both from without and from within. We shall have again
-to notice the same phenomenon of the utter decay of the historical and
-literary faculty in a highly cultured people when the Danes ravaged
-the monasteries of Northumbria, and it is but justice to these poor
-stammerers of a vanished age to remember how much more easily a nation
-might then be deprived of its whole literary heritage than can ever now
-be the case since the invention of printing.
-
-There have been long and sharp discussions as to the age, the country,
-and even the personality of the author who is generally known as
-Nennius. The following pages represent the chief conclusions arrived at
-by a German student of Celtic literature, Professor Zimmer, who in his
-book, _Nennius Vindicatus_, has surely vindicated his client’s right
-to exist, though he admits as fully as any one that client’s terrible
-deficiencies as a historian. We may now, then, venture to assert
-that Nennius, the author of the _Historia Brittonum_, was born about
-the middle of the eighth century, that he lived in South-East Wales,
-probably near the borders of Brecon and Radnor, that he wrote his book
-in or about the year 796, and that it was subjected, about 810, to a
-very early revision by a scribe who calls himself Samuel, and who lived
-in North Wales. For some reason or other the book had considerable
-popularity both in England and on the continent, especially in
-Brittany, but it suffered much at the hands of ignorant transcribers,
-and a narrative, not originally very lucid, has in some places been
-made almost unintelligible, owing to the transposition of some of the
-leaves of manuscript which have fallen out and been replaced in a wrong
-order. The restoration of these wrongly sorted chapters to their proper
-place in the book is one of Professor Zimmer’s greatest achievements.
-The work of an ill-informed and uncritical scribe such as Nennius
-evidently was,[35] subject also to all these adversities in the course
-of its transmission to us, and originally written three centuries
-and a half after the events recorded, might be considered so poor an
-authority as to be unworthy of our further notice. But, in the first
-place, we have practically no other British authority save Gildas for
-the events which interest us so deeply; and, secondly, the author has
-at one point incorporated in his work a document much earlier and much
-more valuable than his own. This is the so-called “Genealogies of the
-Kings,” which occupy sections 57 to 65 of the _Historia Brittonum_, and
-which, though they consist chiefly of strings of names, the ancestors
-of Anglian kings, are of a comparatively early date, since they bring
-the history down only to 679 (being thus slightly earlier even than
-Bede), and have this especial interest for us that we have here,
-imbedded in a passionately Celtic work, information otherwise lacking
-as to the rulers of the Anglian kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia in
-the sixth century.
-
-Probably the most valuable piece of information conveyed to us by
-Nennius, relating, it is true, rather to the history of Wales than
-to that of England, is derived from these same _Genealogiæ Regum_.
-It is to the effect that Maelgwn, King of Gwynedd (North Wales), was
-descended in the fifth degree from a certain Cunedag, who with eight
-sons marched southward from Manau Guotodin (which is identified with
-the district of Lothian), and drove “the Scots” from the region of
-Gwynedd, to which they never returned. This southward march took place,
-he says, 146 years before Maelgwn reigned. Now, Maelgwn, who was one
-of the five kings so fiercely denounced by Gildas, is a historical
-personage who certainly reigned in North Wales and whose death is dated
-in 547. He is also a link in the chain of Welsh kings who continued
-to reign so long as Wales had any independent rulers. The statement,
-therefore, amounts to this, that a little before 400, say in 380, or
-about the date of the usurpation of Maximus, a chieftain named Cunedag
-with his eight sons, and, doubtless, a large army, marched right across
-Britain from the Firth of Forth to the Menai Straits, drove out the
-“Scots,” that is the Irish invaders who were in possession of the
-country, and established a dynasty which endured for nine centuries
-(380–1283), till Llewelyn and David, the last royal descendants of
-Cunedag, were slain by the order of Edward Plantagenet. This is a
-fact unrelated to any other that has been handed down to us, but
-which suggests the reflection how many great movements of population,
-all memory of which has perished, may have been going forward in our
-island during these mist-covered fifth and sixth centuries of our
-era. Moreover, the fact that we have here apparently an instance of
-a Pictish king conducting a campaign of extermination against the
-“Scots,” though these Scots were in Wales, throws some doubt on the
-conventional theory that all the calamities of undefended Britain were
-due to a war in which the Picts and the Scots were acting in concert.
-
-As to the actual events of the Anglo-Saxon conquest Nennius leads us
-into a perfect jungle-growth of legend and fable, but adds very little
-to our real information. He repeats the name of the unhappy Vortigern
-and blackens it with all sorts of foul crimes, such as murder and
-incest. He blends his narrative with alleged scandals, not only untrue
-but historically impossible, against the saintly Germanus. He hints
-that there was rivalry and discord between Vortigern and Ambrosius; and
-here we can neither confirm nor refute his statement, though certainly
-the story as told by Gildas does not give us the impression that they
-were contemporaries. He tells us that when Hengest sent for the second
-draft of his followers they came over in sixteen keels, and that in one
-of those keels was “a girl fair of face and very stately in person,
-the daughter of Hengest” (the name Rowena is not mentioned till a
-much later age). The damsel serves the king with strong drink. “Satan
-enters into the heart of Vortigern, and through an interpreter whose
-name was Ceretic [this little detail looks like genuine tradition] he
-asks for the maiden in marriage, promising to give half his kingdom in
-exchange, and he does in fact give her the district of Kent, though a
-prince named Guoyrancgon was then reigning there and knew not that he
-was being thus handed over into the power of the pagans.” Hengest then
-proceeded to give his new son-in-law fatherly advice, which he assured
-him would effectually secure his kingdom: “I will invite my son and
-his nephew, for they are warlike men, that they may fight against the
-Scots, and do thou give unto them those regions which are in the north,
-next to the wall which is called Guaul”. Obeying this recommendation,
-Vortigern invited them and they came, “to wit Octha and Ebissa with
-forty keels; but whilst they were sailing round the Picts they laid
-waste the Orkney islands, and came and occupied many countries beyond
-the Frisian Sea [the Firth of Forth?] as far as the boundary of the
-Picts”. A dark and difficult passage truly; but there is some reason
-to think that there may be in it a germ of historical truth, and that
-there was really a Jutish settlement in Scotland.
-
-After this the story relapses into mere romance. We hear of enchanted
-towers, of a wonder-working child who was afterwards known as the
-enchanter Merlin, and who apparently calls up the spirit of the dead
-Ambrosius. Then we are introduced to Vortimer, the brave son of
-Vortigern, who defeats the barbarians in four great battles; but,
-dying soon after, he desires to be buried on a hill above the place
-where they had first landed, since he has a prophetic intimation that
-they shall not dwell in the land for ever, but shall one day be driven
-forth; a prophecy the fulfilment of which still lingers. Discouraged by
-the victories of Vortimer, Hengest now resorts to stratagem, and calls
-for a conference to which both Britons and Saxons are to come unarmed,
-and at which they shall establish a league of lasting friendship.
-Privately, however, he orders his followers to hide each man a small
-knife under his foot in the middle of his boot, and when he calls out
-“_Eu Saxones nimmath tha saxas_” (Ye Saxons grasp the daggers), out
-flash the deadly weapons; the 300 senators of Vortigern are slain, and
-he himself is taken prisoner and loaded with chains till he consents to
-give Hengest Essex and Sussex for his ransom. The story ends with the
-death of Vortigern. “Some say that he died a broken-hearted wanderer,
-hated by all his people, and others that the earth opened and swallowed
-him up on the night on which the enchanted citadel was burned.”
-
-The traitorous conference and Hengest’s cry to his followers seem to
-have about them a slight savour of probability, but it will probably
-be the opinion of any one who carefully peruses the chapters of
-Nennius of which a slight outline has here been traced, that they are
-for the most part of as much historical value as the Arabian Nights’
-Entertainments. But the elements of which this strange work is composed
-are of various value. After a sketch of the life of St. Patrick which
-is taken from a well-known source and which need not here detain us,
-Nennius gives an important paragraph which seems to be taken from
-his earlier Northumbrian authority, and, if so, is entitled to more
-respectful attention: “On the death of Hengest, his son Octha crossed
-from the northern region of Britain to the kingdom of Kent. From him
-are descended the present kings of that country. Then did Arthur fight
-against the Saxons in those days along with the leaders of the Britons,
-but he himself was leader in the wars.”[36] The author then proceeds
-to give us the sites of twelve great battles fought by Arthur. Of the
-eighth, he says it was “in the castle of Guinnion, whereat Arthur
-carried on his shoulders the image of the holy Mary, ever a Virgin, and
-the pagans were turned to flight in that day, and a great slaughter was
-made among them by the power of Christ and his Virgin Mother. The ninth
-battle was fought in the city of the legion (_Castra Legionis_).[37]...
-The twelfth was fought at Mount Badon, at which 960 men fell in one day
-at one onslaught by Arthur, and no one felled them but he alone, and in
-all the wars he stood forth as conqueror.”
-
-The scenes of the twelve battles fought by Arthur have been variously
-identified, some authors placing them in South Wales and some in the
-Scottish lowlands. Except as regards Castra Legionis and Mons Badonis,
-there is something to be said for the latter set of identifications,
-which seem to agree with the Northumbrian origin of the document quoted
-by Nennius.
-
-Is there any historical truth in the personality of Arthur, or is he
-a mere creature of romance? The answer to that much-debated question
-depends on the degree of credit which, upon a review of the whole case,
-we may consider ourselves at liberty to attach to these few sentences
-of Nennius. All the rest that has been said concerning him, whether by
-pseudo-historians, such as Geoffrey of Monmouth, by avowed romancers
-like Sir Thomas Malory, or by poets like Tennyson, is confessedly
-but the product of imagination, some of it very beautiful, some of
-it rather foolish; but Nennius, and he alone, can answer for us the
-question whether Arthur ever really was.
-
-It is believed that the reader has now been introduced to all the
-authentic information which has been handed down to us concerning
-the great revolution or rather series of revolutions which changed
-Britannia into Engla-land. The chroniclers of the twelfth century,
-William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, Florence of Worcester, for
-the most part honourable and truth-seeking men, have dealt with these
-historical materials, each after his own fashion, seeking to weave them
-into a connected and harmonious narrative; but it is generally agreed
-by those who have carefully studied their works that they knew no more
-than we as to the events of the fifth and sixth centuries, and that
-historical science can gain little or nothing, for this part of the
-history of England, from a study of their chronicles. Much less, of
-course, does it behove us to give any attention to the mere romances
-which Geoffrey of Monmouth and the storytellers of his school imagined
-about the fictitious kings of England, from Brut to Lud. Already in
-the seventeenth century these sports of fancy were beginning to be
-appraised at their true value by scholars like Milton, who rehearsed
-but evidently did not believe them. Now, happily, no English historian
-thinks it necessary to waste his time and the time of his readers by
-proving their utter unreality. Still, no doubt the mind of every
-historical student longs for a continuous and rightly co-ordinated
-narrative of events, and dislikes to see the evidence presented in
-such disjointed fashion as that in which it has been here submitted to
-the reader. This however appears to be for the present a disagreeable
-necessity. Great danger seems to attend every attempt to make one
-plain story out of the various materials supplied to us by Bede, the
-Chronicle, Gildas and Nennius. It may be that the labours of future
-investigators may enable them to achieve this result; but the time is
-not yet.
-
-One or two great landmarks may perhaps be accurately discerned through
-the mist. The united testimony of Prosper Tiro and the biographer of
-Germanus seems to justify us in asserting that the Saxon assaults upon
-Britain were contemporaneous with those of the Picts, and never really
-ceased throughout the first half of the fifth century. The allusion
-in the Chronicle to a burial of treasure and flight of the Romans in
-418 perhaps refers to some otherwise unrecorded invasion of the Saxons
-and to a consequent emigration of the Romanised Britons to Gaul. That
-such an emigration on a large scale must have taken place somewhat
-early in the century seems to follow as a necessary consequence from
-the fact that the Armorican peninsula received then that name of
-Britannia, Bretagne or Brittany which in one shape or other it has ever
-since retained, and that already in 469 we find Apollinaris Sidonius
-speaking, as a matter of course, of the inhabitants of that region as
-Britons.[38]
-
-There was probably an invasion of Kent in 441 by a Teutonic tribe,
-whom we may perhaps call Jutes, and this invasion was less of a mere
-piratical raid and more of an abiding conquest than the previous
-expeditions. We notice the same difference three centuries later in the
-Danish invasions. Vortigern is probably an historical character, and
-his marriage with the daughter of the Teutonic chief was the sort of
-event which might well strike the minds of contemporaries and linger
-long in the songs of later generations. Probably, however, he was not a
-“king”--Roman institutions would hardly have allowed of the formation
-so early of a regal dynasty--but a great and powerful landowner who
-armed his dependants and wielded practically something like kingly
-power. His invocation of Jutish aid to repel a Pictish invasion may
-be historically true, but far too much has doubtless been made of
-the whole affair by British fabulists, anxious to excuse the failure
-of their countrymen and determined to make the luckless Vortigern
-the scapegoat of their nation. “We were betrayed!” is the natural
-exclamation of every vanquished people.
-
-Ambrosius Aurelianus, the descendant of Roman wearers of the purple,
-is almost certainly a historical personage, though it is impossible to
-fix the time and place of his operations. So, too, with a shade less
-of probability is Arthur, or Artorius, whom we may fairly credit with
-having stayed for a time the torrent of the Saxon advance by the great
-victory of the Mons Badonicus won at some time between 500 and 516. In
-both these British champions, however, we ought probably to see not
-Cymric kings, but Romano-British generals, wielding a power like that
-of the Roman _duces_ and _comites_, and perhaps even commanding bodies
-of men trained in some of the traditions of the Roman legion. Most
-important, on this view of the case, are the words of Nennius himself:
-“Arthur fought against the Saxons along with the kings of the Britons,
-but he himself was _Dux Bellorum_”.
-
-The short and business-like entries of the Chronicle as to the
-successive victories which marked the extension of the West Saxon
-kingdom seem in the main worthy of belief, though we cannot rely
-with much confidence on the dates attached to every entry. It does
-not surprise us to find no record of the Saxon defeat at the Mons
-Badonicus, nor, as has been said, does such silence lessen the
-probability of its having actually occurred. Ceawlin, the hero of the
-West Saxons, is undoubtedly a real figure in history, and we may in
-the main accept with confidence the history of his battles, especially
-of his crowning victory at Deorham, which undid the work of Mount
-Badon, and, by giving the command of the Severn Valley and the Bristol
-Channel to the Saxons, finally separated “West Wales” from Wales. The
-domestic strife which disastrously ended his career and hurled him from
-his throne is pretty clearly hinted at in the Chronicle, and we may
-be allowed to conjecture that it was the continuance of this internal
-discord which prevented for a long while the further development of
-Wessex; which made the rising power of Mercia instead of the West Saxon
-state the protagonist in the conflict with Wales; and which struck the
-annals of the latter kingdom in the seventh century with barrenness.
-When Ceawlin died, in 593, already the great pope who was to reunite
-Britain to Christian Europe was presiding over the Roman Church, and we
-may be said now at last to see land, the _terra firma_ of authentic and
-continuous history.
-
-On reviewing the whole course of the Teutonic conquest of our island
-we cannot fail to be struck by the different rates of speed at which
-that conquest proceeded at different times. By about the middle of the
-sixth century the invaders seem to have possessed themselves of nearly
-all the country lying to the east of a line drawn from Berwick-on-Tweed
-through Lichfield to Salisbury. After that period, however, their
-advance, never very rapid, becomes extremely slow. Wales the Saxons
-never conquered. “West Wales,” as Devon and Cornwall were called, were
-not subdued till the ninth century. Cumberland, which formed part of
-the Celtic kingdom of Strathclyde, does not seem to have become English
-till the close of the seventh century, and even then was very loosely
-joined to the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria. It is to be hoped that
-we may one day obtain some clearer light on the reason for this great
-difference in the rate of conquest between the eastern and western
-halves of the island; how far it may have been due to the different
-resisting powers of two Celtic races, the “Brythonic” and “Goidelic”;
-whether earlier Saxon settlements along the shore of the German Ocean
-facilitated the work of the new invaders; or whether the flat alluvial
-lands of the east, more easily overrun by mounted bands of freebooters
-than the rough mountainous country of the west, were the chief factors
-in the problem.
-
-A question which has been often and fiercely discussed and on which
-probably the last word has not yet been said is: “How far did the great
-movements of invasion which we have been discussing amount to an
-actual replacement of one population by another?” or, in other words:
-“Are the Englishmen of to-day pure Saxons and Angles or partly Celts?”
-In considering this question two factors have to be considered: (1) the
-amount of new population imported into the country; and (2) the degree
-to which the invaders carried the process of extermination of the older
-inhabitants. As to the first point we are furnished with extremely
-scanty information by all our authorities. The mythical “three keels”
-and “five keels,” which the chroniclers speak of as containing the
-whole forces of the invaders, point only to a scanty number of
-warriors, accompanied probably by their horses, but certainly not by
-their wives and children. The story of the legendary Rowena, on the
-other hand, suggests--what is doubtless the truth--that the invaders,
-once established in the land, sent speedily for the wives and daughters
-whom they had left by the Elbe or the Baltic. One late authority speaks
-of the Saxons as inviting over so many of their kith and kin that an
-island which they had previously inhabited was left almost void of
-people. Undoubtedly every indication of language and of later social
-state points to the conclusion that the invasions were not mere raids
-of freebooting warriors, but great national migrations such as were
-the fashion in the fourth and fifth centuries after Christ, such as
-Claudian describes as headed by Alaric and such as Ennodius paints in
-his laudation of Theodoric.
-
-Moreover, even for such a great national displacement we may find a
-sufficient cause in the condition of central Europe between 432 and
-452. During all these years the fear of the mighty Hunnish war-lord
-Attila lay like a nightmare upon Europe; not upon the Romanised men
-of the southern cities only, but quite as much upon the Teuton in his
-forests, for the Teuton loathed the very smell of the Hun, and, when
-forced to submit to him for a time, chafed under his yoke and as soon
-as possible escaped from his abhorred neighbourhood. Now when we find
-it stated by the Roman ambassadors to his court[39] that Attila had by
-the year 448 made “all the islands in the ocean” subject to him, we who
-know that the coasts of the Baltic, of Denmark and the Scandinavian
-peninsula were all looked upon as islands by the classical geographers,
-may not improbably conjecture that the pressure of the Hun was felt by
-the Angle and the Saxon as it had been felt before by his kinsmen the
-Goth and the Burgundian. We have every reason therefore to conjecture,
-if we cannot hold it for proved, that there was an immense transference
-of Teutonic family life from the lands bordering on the Elbe to the
-banks of the Thames, the Humber and the Tyne.
-
-But it is on the second factor of the equation, on the extent of
-denudation of the older, the Celtic stratum of the people, that the
-controversy chiefly turns. The theory of the virtual extermination
-of the Britons from at least the eastern half of the island is thus
-stated by its most illustrious champion, Freeman: “Though the literal
-extirpation of a nation is an impossibility, there is every reason
-to believe that the Celtic inhabitants of these parts of Britain
-which had become English at the end of the sixth century had been
-as nearly extirpated as a nation can be”. In support of this theory
-Freeman appeals to the absolutely Teutonic type of the language
-spoken by Englishmen before the Norman conquest, to the Teutonic
-character of their institutions and to the terrible entry in the
-Chronicle concerning the capture of Anderida: “491. Now Aella and Cissa
-encompassed Andredes-ceaster and slew off all that dwelt therein: nor
-was there afterward a single Briton left there.”
-
-It cannot be said that the tendency of recent inquirers is in
-favour of so strong an assertion as this of the entire obliteration
-of the British element in any part of our island. Physiological
-investigations, the measurement of skulls and the examination of
-graves, do not confirm the hypothesis of the absolute disappearance
-anywhere of the pre-Saxon races. The study of institutions does not
-confirm it: the more closely these are examined the more does the
-conviction grow that some Roman or Celtic elements are imbedded in
-the generally Teutonic character of the Anglo-Saxon state. And even
-the celebrated passage concerning the slaughter at Anderida is not,
-perhaps, so conclusive an argument as it appears at first sight.
-Nothing is said there which necessarily implies a determination to
-destroy a whole people. We may see in it only the cruel action of
-assailants maddened by the stubborn defence of a fortress which may
-have long held the Saxons at bay; and even the fact of the emphatic
-mention in the Chronicle of this one bloody deed seems to imply that
-it was not the usual accompaniment of Saxon conquest.
-
-When we examine carefully the pleadings on both sides we see that the
-disputants are not so far apart as they suppose themselves to be.
-No one denies that the general framework of society in Anglo-Saxon
-Britain, like the language, was Teutonic, or that the masters of
-the land were English and looked upon the Romanised Celts whom they
-called _Wealas_ as an alien and inferior race. But, on the other hand,
-Freeman himself admits, though reluctantly, that the majority of the
-British women would be spared to be the wives or concubines of the
-invaders, and nearly all the slaves to be their thralls. This admission
-is fatal to the claim of the ordinary Englishman of to-day, after
-all the upheavings and down-sinkings of the various social strata,
-to be a pure-blooded Teuton. The evidence of language tends in the
-same direction. It is certainly surprising--and the advocates of the
-extirpation-theory have a right to point triumphantly to the fact--how
-small a number of Romano-Celtic words crept into the language spoken
-here before the Norman Conquest. But the words which did thus survive
-are, for the most part, such words as women would use in connexion with
-the affairs of the household, words like rasher and rug. When we thus
-review the circumstances of the Saxon conquest, and especially when
-we remember the immense influx of Celtic blood which we have received
-in later centuries from the Gael and the Erse folk, we may perhaps
-conclude that we should accept and glory in the term Anglo-Celt, rather
-than Anglo-Saxon, as the fitting designation of our race.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII.
-
-THE COMING OF AUGUSTINE.
-
-
-During the two centuries in which Britain had been forgotten by the
-rest of Europe, great events, most of them disastrous events, had been
-happening in the world. The imperial city, Rome, had been four times
-captured and plundered by barbarian armies. After the third of these
-captures (that by Totila in 546), we are told that the mighty city
-remained for six weeks absolutely empty of inhabitants, neither man nor
-beast being left therein. During these two centuries the vast empire
-of Attila the Hun which seemed likely at one time to be a universal
-monarchy had risen into greatness and had fallen into ruin; so, too,
-had risen and fallen the fair fabric raised in Italy by the converted
-barbarian Theodoric; Clovis the Frank had become, from chief of a petty
-principality, lord of a mighty realm, which under his sons had spread
-over the greater part of the two countries which we now call France and
-Germany; Justinian had framed his imperishable code, and the Bishop of
-Rome had become the unquestioned patriarch of the west.
-
-Two references to our island made by the greatest historian of the
-period serve to emphasise its utter seclusion from the world of
-civilisation and culture. Procopius in his immortal history of the
-Gothic siege of Rome,[40] tells us that at a certain period of the
-blockade (537) when the Gothic leaders began to despair of taking the
-city they opened negotiations with Belisarius, the imperial general,
-and endeavoured to persuade him to retire from Italy on condition of
-receiving a formal cession of the island of Sicily. The absurdity of
-the suggestion consisted in this, that Sicily, which was the natural
-prize of the greatest sea power in the Mediterranean, was already
-hopelessly lost to the Gothic kingdom; and this fact gave point to the
-sarcastic reply of Belisarius: “And we, too, will allow the Goths to
-possess the whole island of Britain which is much larger than Sicily
-and which _once_ belonged to the Romans, as Sicily once belonged to
-you. For when any one has received a favour it is fitting that he
-should repay it in kind.” So utterly had Britain fallen out of the
-orbit of the empire that a heroic Roman general could even afford to
-joke over its disappearance.
-
-Again, towards the end of his history,[41] Procopius, who evidently
-wishes to follow the example of Herodotus in supplying his readers with
-the best information in his power about strange and savage lands, gives
-a detailed description of Britain. “It is divided into two parts by a
-wall built by ‘the men of old’. On the eastern side of that wall all
-is fresh and fair; neither heat nor cold excessive; fruits, harvests,
-men abound; a fertile soil is blessed with abundance of water. But on
-the western side things are altogether different, so that no man can
-live there even for half an hour. Numberless vipers and serpents and
-other venomous beasts abound there, and so pestilent is the air that
-the moment a man crosses the wall he dies.” Furthermore, a strange
-story was told concerning this island, for the truth of which Procopius
-does not vouch, but which he repeats lest he should be thought to be
-ignorant of a matter of common notoriety. “On the shore of the Channel
-opposite to Britain are many villages inhabited by fishermen who are
-exempt from the usual tribute ‘payable to the Kings of the Franks’ on
-condition of their undertaking in rotation the duty of rowing over
-to Britain the spirits of the dead. The boatman whose turn it is to
-undertake this duty lies down at nightfall to snatch a brief slumber.
-At dead of night a knock is heard at the door of his hut and a muffled
-voice calls him and his fellows forth to their duty. They see ships,
-not their own, anchored in the harbour. Embarking on these they seize
-the oars and push off from land; at once the ships, though apparently
-empty, are pressed down to the water’s edge by an unseen cargo. When
-they reach the shore of Britain a disembarkation as invisible as the
-embarkation takes place. They see no man; only a voice proclaims the
-names of the invisible passengers, the offices they held in life, the
-husbands of the dead wives, if any such should be among the number.
-Quickly do they return to the Gaulish shore, and now the ship is not
-sunk deeper than her keel.” Gladly would we learn in whose interest
-and at what period of the great struggle this wild story was put in
-circulation concerning a country which had been for at least three
-centuries in the full prosaic daylight of Roman civilisation.
-
-It was probably about the year 553 that Procopius of Cæsarea wrote
-this strange story, worthy of the age of Orpheus and the Argonauts,
-concerning our ghostly island. Some twenty years later, the celebrated
-scene between Gregory and the fair-haired Yorkshire lads was enacted
-in the Roman forum.[42] We cannot avoid listening once more to the
-thousand times quoted words of Bede:--[43]
-
-“I may not pass by in silence the event which according to the
-tradition of the elders was the cause of Gregory’s abiding interest
-in the salvation of our people. They say that on a certain day the
-news of the arrival of some merchants caused a concourse of intending
-purchasers to assemble in the forum where their goods were displayed.
-Among the rest came Gregory who saw there, beside the other market
-wares, certain boys set up for sale, with fair skins and beautiful
-faces, noticeable for their golden hair and comely shapes. When he
-beheld them, he asked from what part of the world they came. The
-merchant told him that they came from the island of Britain, whose
-inhabitants all presented the same appearance. Again he asked whether
-they were Christians, or still involved in the errors of Paganism.
-‘They are Pagans,’ was the reply. Hereupon he heaved a sigh from his
-inmost heart, and said: ‘Alas! the pity of it! that the Prince of
-Darkness should own as his subjects men of such shining countenance,
-and that such grace of outward form should veil minds destitute of
-heavenly grace within’. Again he asked what was the name of that
-nation. The merchant answered: ‘They are called Angles’. ‘Well named,’
-said he, ‘for they have angelic faces and ought to be co-heirs with
-the angels in heaven. What is the name of that province from which
-they have been brought?’ ‘The inhabitants of that province are called
-Deiri.’ ‘Well again: rescued _de ira_ and called out of wrath into the
-mercy of Christ. How is their king named?’ ‘Aelle.’ Playing on the
-name he said: ‘Alleluia. It must needs be that the praises of God the
-Creator resound in those regions.’”
-
-It has been conjectured that the lads who stood on that fateful morning
-for sale in the Roman forum had lost their liberty owing to the wars
-waged between their lord, Aelle of Deira, and Ethelfrith of Bernicia.
-The grave and reverend ecclesiastic who spoke to them in that historic
-forum which still doubtless showed the senate-house and rostra of the
-republic, and was overlooked by the palaces of the empire, was a man
-who himself was sprung of a senatorial family and had worn the purple
-of the prefect of the city. A year or two, however, before the dialogue
-in the forum, about 575, he had laid aside that splendid robe and
-donned the coarse scapular of a Benedictine monk. His stately palace
-on the Cælian he had turned into a monastery, which still exists and
-bears his name, though originally dedicated to St. Andrew. Such was the
-man who, intensely Roman at heart as well as Christian, brought Britain
-once again within the attraction of Rome.
-
-In the first fervour of his missionary zeal, Gregory himself started on
-the northward road, but was recalled by the command of the pope.[44]
-Then came the years which he spent as papal nuncio (_apocrisiarius_)
-at the splendid but not altogether friendly court of Constantinople;
-his return to Rome; his rule as abbot in his monastery; and lastly his
-election in 590 by the enthusiastic and unanimous voices of the people
-to the office of pope, vacant by the death of Pelagius II. Still the
-vision of the conversion of Britain remained dear to his heart; but in
-the distracted state of Italy, living, as he said, “between the swords
-of the Lombards,”[45] he was for some time unable to take any steps
-towards its fulfilment. In September, 595, he wrote to the steward of
-the papal estates in Gaul, directing him to buy as many English slaves
-as he could, of the age of seventeen or eighteen, that they might be
-distributed to various monasteries and there taught the elements of
-the Christian faith. The terms of this commission give us a strong
-impression of the regularity of the export of slaves from Britain to
-Gaul. And where such a regular slave-trade exists we may generally
-infer the prevalence of a chronic state of war.
-
-At last, in 596, he sent forth his friend Augustine, prior of his
-monastery of St. Andrew’s, with a company of monks, upon the great
-enterprise. Augustine himself, a somewhat timorous and small-souled
-man, who lacked the great qualities of his patron, when he had reached
-the south of Gaul and heard from the bishops of that province dire
-stories of Saxon barbarism, turned faint-hearted, and conversation
-with his companions increased rather than allayed his fears. At last
-they came to the inglorious conclusion “that it would be safer to
-return home than to visit a barbarous, fierce and unbelieving nation,
-of whose very language they were ignorant”. Augustine himself started
-on the return journey, bearer of the unanimous request that they might
-be excused from undertaking so perilous and laborious a mission, and
-one of such doubtful issue. Probably he had not reached Rome when he
-received a letter (dated July 23, 596) in which the pope informed the
-whole company that it would have been better never to have begun a
-good work than to turn back disheartened from its accomplishment. He
-exhorted them not to be daunted by the difficulties of the journey,
-nor discouraged by the words of evil-speaking men, but to press on
-with zeal to finish the work which God had given them to do; knowing
-that the greater the labour the richer would be the eternal recompense
-of reward. At the same time a letter of commendation to Etherius,
-Archbishop of Arles, probably smoothed their labours and did something
-to allay their fears.
-
-In truth the mission upon which the trembling monks were despatched,
-though of immense importance, was one of no great danger, and it would
-probably be safe to say that the missionaries of all the Christian
-Churches have in the last two centuries cheerfully faced greater perils
-and undergone greater hardships in the service of the Gospel of Christ,
-than were the portion of Augustine and his friends. Ethelbert, the
-king of Kent, whose court was the objective of their campaign, was far
-the most powerful of the English kings, and in his reign, which had
-now lasted more than thirty years, he had, we are told, “stretched
-the bounds of his empire as far as the river Humber”.[46] His wife,
-Bertha, daughter of Charibert, king of the Franks, and grand-daughter
-of Clovis, was allowed to worship after the Christian manner without
-let or hindrance, having her own private chaplain, Bishop Liudhard, and
-we may fairly suppose that the messengers who came to preach the same
-faith, bringing introductions from Frankish kings and prelates as well
-as from the great Bishop of Rome, were safe from insult or molestation
-in the wide region included in the over-lordship of her husband, the
-limits of which they probably never overstepped.
-
-At last after long and leisurely journeyings, visits to the courts
-of Frankish kings, and the formation of a staff of interpreters,
-Augustine and his companions, forty in number, landed, apparently in
-the spring of 597, on the shores of Britain. Their landing-place was in
-that extreme north-eastern corner of Kent which still bears the name
-of the Isle of Thanet, though it has lost its insular character. In
-the seventh century the little stream of the Stour, which flows round
-this region and which then emptied itself into the channel called the
-Wantsum, was a considerable river, probably tidal, 600 yards broad and
-fordable only in two places. Thus Thanet was then a genuine island, and
-here Augustine and his little band took up their temporary quarters.
-Sending some of their Frankish interpreters to Ethelbert they informed
-him that they had come from Rome, the bearers of the best of all good
-news, and that if he would hearken to their counsels they could without
-any doubt promise him eternal happiness in heaven and a future kingdom
-without end in the presence of the living and true God. The king
-replied with words courteous but cautious: “Remain in that island in
-which you now are, while I consider what I shall do with you. Meanwhile
-I will supply you with the necessaries of life.” After certain days
-Ethelbert crossed the Wantsum and held a conference with the strangers.
-The place of meeting was fixed in the open air, for the old king,
-notwithstanding his life-long intercourse with Christians, feared that
-he should be fascinated by magical arts if he met the missionaries
-within doors. Soon Augustine and his forty companions were seen to
-approach, bearing on high a silver cross by way of banner and a painted
-picture of the Saviour, and chanting litanies, in which they prayed the
-Lord to grant eternal life to themselves and to those for whose sake
-they had come from far. At the king’s command they took their seats,
-and then one of their number, probably Augustine himself, through the
-medium of an interpreter, set forth to the king “how the mild-hearted
-Saviour by His own throes of suffering redeemed this guilty world and
-opened the kingdom of heaven to believing men”. The king replied: “Fair
-are the words which you speak and the promises which you make to me,
-but since they are new and vague I cannot give my assent to them, nor
-leave those rites which I, together with the whole English nation,
-have so long practised. But since you have come from so far, and, as
-I perceive, desire to share with us that which you hold to be best
-and truest, we will not be grievous unto you, but rather receive you
-with friendly hospitality and make it our business to supply you with
-needful food; nor will we forbid you to attach to yourselves all whom
-you can, by your preaching, win over to your faith.”
-
-Herewith, permitting them to leave the Isle of Thanet, he assigned them
-quarters in the capital of his kingdom. This was the once insignificant
-town of Durovernis, situated at the point where the Roman road to
-Richborough diverged from the road between London and Dover. As the
-capital of the Jutish kingdom this roadside station had already
-attained to some importance under the name of Cantwaraburh, but showed
-little promise of the world-wide fame which it was to achieve under its
-more modern name of Canterbury. As the missionary band approached their
-destined home they raised aloft the silver crucifix and the picture,
-chanting with one accord a litany which may be thus translated:--
-
- From this city, Lord! we pray
- May Thy wrath be turned away.
- We have sinned: but let Thy pity
- Spare Thy house in yonder city.
- Alleluia! Alleluia!
-
-This litany was one which had been sung for more than a century on
-Rogation days in the churches of Gaul, and we must not, therefore,
-seek in its words for any special application to the little Saxon city
-towards which the missionaries were gazing. As it happened, however,
-there was already in that city a Christian church, erected probably
-in the very last years of the Roman occupation of Britain,[47] and
-dedicated to St. Martin of Tours. Here Ethelbert’s queen had since her
-marriage been allowed to attend a Christian service, celebrated by
-her Frankish chaplain, Liudhard. It was the opinion of Pope Gregory
-that the Frankish ecclesiastics of Gaul had been somewhat neglectful
-of their duties in reference to their heathen neighbours of Britain,
-and probably the court chaplain Liudhard was not altogether exempt
-from this reproach. However this may be, the church of St. Martin,
-now handed over to the Roman mission, became a centre of religious
-activity. The preaching and the prayers, the vigils and the fasts
-of the white-robed strangers, their patient and self-denying life,
-their professed willingness to suffer death itself on behalf of the
-Christian faith, produced a great impression on the minds of the men
-of Kent, rough doubtless and barbarous, but able to appreciate that
-which they beheld of noble and godlike. They began to flock to the
-church and crave the administration of baptism; and at last even the
-king presented himself at the sacred font and received baptism at the
-hands of Augustine. From that day the process of conversion went on
-rapidly, but we are assured that no pressure was put by the king on his
-subjects to compel them to follow his example, “since he had learned
-from his teachers that the service of Christ must be a voluntary
-matter and not a thing of compulsion”. He at once, however, provided
-the missionaries with a residence in Canterbury suitable to their
-dignity, and notwithstanding their life of abstinence and renunciation
-he made to them grants of lands in various districts, thus beginning
-that series of donations to the Church by Anglo-Saxon kings which was
-continued by them for near five centuries with splendid liberality, and
-the carefully preserved records of which constitute one of our most
-valuable sources of information on the social condition of England
-before the Norman conquest.
-
-The mission having thus far met with such marvellous success Augustine
-felt that the time was come for him to assume a regular ecclesiastical
-position, and accordingly he journeyed to Arles, where the archbishop
-of that see, in accordance with orders received from Gregory,
-consecrated him as archbishop of the English nation.[48] Divers doubts
-and questionings having occurred to the soul of the new metropolitan he
-despatched, about 600, two of his brethren, Laurentius and Peter, to
-lay his difficulties before his Roman patron. The questions asked are
-of an extraordinary kind, and startle us by their strange juxtaposition
-of things momentous and things indifferent. Thus a question whether
-it is permissible for two brothers to marry two sisters, to whom they
-themselves stand in no kind of relationship, is followed by another,
-whether a man may be permitted to many his father’s widow. It is
-difficult to believe that the framer of such a question can have even
-read St. Paul’s letters to the Christians of Corinth. However, if the
-archbishop’s questions seem to us rather surprising, the pope’s answers
-are noble and statesmanlike. Especially memorable is his answer to the
-inquiry: “The faith being one, what can I say as to the diverse customs
-of the Churches, as, for instance, where the mass is celebrated in one
-way in the Holy Roman Church and in another way in the Churches of
-Gaul?” Pope Gregory replied, “You, my brother, know well the custom
-of the Roman Church in which you were reared. But my pleasure is that
-you should anxiously select whatever custom you may find, whether in
-the Roman or in the Gaulish or any other Church, which is pleasing to
-Almighty God, and teach the customs which you have thus gathered from
-many Churches to the Church of the Angles, which is yet new to the
-faith. For things are not to be prized according to the places from
-which they originate, but places are to be loved according to the good
-things to which they give birth.”
-
-The letter containing these answers was carried, not by the returning
-messengers of Augustine, but by a fresh mission from Rome, consisting
-of Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, and Rufinianus. They brought with
-them also a woollen _pallium_ for Augustine, the symbol of his
-archiepiscopal dignity, many relics of saints and ornaments for the
-churches and the precious gift of a large number of manuscripts.
-While entrusting Augustine with the precious _pallium_, a gift which
-he was somewhat chary of bestowing, Pope Gregory at the same time
-provided for the erection of an archiepiscopal see at Eburacum. In
-future, after Augustine’s own death, the archiepiscopate of the south
-was to be placed at Lundonia; and thereafter London and York, the two
-archiepiscopal centres of their respective provinces, were to have
-equal power, priority of dignity being assigned to whichever prelate
-might happen to have been first ordained. The messengers brought also
-letters specially directed to the King and Queen of Kent. In the
-letter to Ethelbert, Gregory struck a note which was often heard in
-his correspondence: “Moreover, we wish your Glory to know that, as we
-are assured in Holy Scripture by the words of Almighty God, the end of
-this present world is nigh at hand and the unending reign of the Saints
-is about to begin. Before that day comes many things must come to pass
-such as have not yet been seen: changes in the air, terrors in the
-sky, tempests out of season, wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes.
-All these things, it is true, will not happen in our own day, but
-after our days they will follow.” In the letter to Bertha, the pope,
-while gently hinting that one so well grounded in the true faith ought
-long ago to have effected the conversion of her husband, praises her
-for what she has done in protecting and befriending the missionaries;
-exhorts her to use all her influence in order to keep her husband
-steadfast in the faith. He assures her that her memory will be revered
-like that of Helena who turned her son Constantine to Christianity, and
-that the fame of her great work has reached not only to Rome but even
-to Constantinople (delightful thought for the daughter of barbarian
-kings), and that its completion will bring joy to the angels in heaven.
-
-In a letter addressed to the messenger Mellitus, containing some
-thoughts which had come into the pope’s mind during his long musings
-after the departure of his legation, Gregory desires him to direct
-Augustine on no account to destroy the temples of the idols, but
-to sprinkle them with holy water, construct altars and enrich them
-with relics. The old pagan sacrifices of animals to their false gods
-are, of course, to cease, but as a sort of concession to the festive
-propensities of the converts, on the day of the dedication of the
-church or on the birthday of the martyr whose relics were there
-deposited, the people were to be encouraged to make little huts of
-boughs all round the newly consecrated church, and therein, after
-slaying animals for feasting, not for sacrifice, to express with joy
-and gladness of heart their gratitude to the Giver of every good
-gift. A remembrance of the Jewish feast of tabernacles seems to cross
-the mind of the pontiff as he thus ordains the conversion of pagan
-sacrifices into Christian festivities.
-
-The story of the conversion of the English nation to Christianity is an
-interesting one, and if at this point of our narrative religious topics
-seem to claim too large a share of our attention, it must be remembered
-that our chief, almost our only authority for this period is the
-_Historia Ecclesiastica_ of Bede, a splendid piece of historical work,
-but still one which, by the law of its being, concerns itself rather
-with the Church than with the State. Church affairs, however, sometimes
-throw an important light on political changes. We should be in entire
-ignorance as to the time and manner of the conquest of London by the
-invaders but for Bede’s information that: “Augustine ordained Mellitus
-as bishop (604), and sent him to preach in the province of the East
-Saxons, who are separated from Kent by the river Thames and are close
-to the eastern sea. Their metropolis is the city of Lundonia, situated
-on the banks of the aforesaid river and itself the mart of many nations
-flocking thither by land and sea: over which people [the East Saxons]
-at that time Saberct reigned, nephew of Ethelbert through his sister
-Ricula. He was, however, in a subordinate position to Ethelbert, who,
-as has been already said, ruled all the races of the English up to the
-river Humber. When, therefore, that province [Essex] had received the
-word of truth from the preaching of Mellitus, Ethelbert built in the
-city of Lundonia a church to the holy apostle Paul, in which was fixed
-the episcopal seat of Mellitus and his successors.”
-
-At the same time Augustine consecrated Justus, who, as we have seen,
-was a colleague of Mellitus in the Roman legation, Bishop of Dorubrevi,
-“which from an old chieftain of theirs named Hrof the English nation
-calls Hrofaescaestre” (Rochester). These two bishoprics, Canterbury and
-Rochester, both founded in the one kingdom of Kent, seem to represent a
-certain political duality in that region,[49] as if it were the normal
-state of affairs that East and West Kent should have separate rulers.
-However this may be, it is well for us to bear in mind that the title
-of king was one of rather vague significance. Besides the great and
-powerful kings of the eight chief provinces there was many a cluster of
-petty princes dignified with the name of kings, of whom the national
-history can take no notice, but whose names figure royally in charters
-and testamentary documents.
-
-It was probably soon after the arrival of the messengers from Rome,
-and to some extent in compliance with Gregory’s wishes, that some
-important but, unhappily, resultless overtures were made by Augustine
-to the rulers of the Welsh Church. Using the powerful advocacy of
-Ethelbert, he invited the doctors and bishops of the British province
-to meet him about the year 602 at a place in the west of England which
-was known long after as “Augustine’s oak”. There Augustine addressed
-the Welsh ecclesiastics and besought them to enter into the Catholic
-peace, and undertake with him a common labour for the conversion of
-the heathen. The chief point on which he insisted was the necessity of
-their conforming to the Roman practice in the calculation of Easter,
-a wearisome matter of debate as to which we shall hear more than
-enough in the century of Anglian history that now lies before us.
-When argument failed, the Roman advocate proposed to have recourse to
-miracle: “Let some sick man be brought into our midst, and the party
-whose prayers avail to heal him shall be deemed to be the advocates
-of the cause approved by God”. Unwillingly the Britons consented. A
-blind Englishman was introduced into the assembly. The prayers of the
-Welshmen failed to restore him to sight, but the prayers of Augustine,
-we are told, succeeded. Then, it is said, the Britons professed to
-be convinced that the course recommended by Augustine was the way of
-righteousness, but declared that they could not, without the consent of
-their countrymen, abandon their ancient customs. They therefore pleaded
-for a second conference, which was to be held at some place which is
-not named, and was to be attended by a much larger body of clergy.
-
-To this second conference came seven bishops from Wales, possibly
-including some from Cornwall, and a whole troop of learned doctors,
-most of whom hailed from the great and noble monastery of Bangor.[50]
-On their way to the council they turned aside to ask the advice of a
-certain holy hermit, whether they should hold fast their old traditions
-or accept the teaching of Augustine. “If he is a man of God,” said
-he, “of course you must follow him.” “But how can we prove whether
-he be or no?” The answer showed a rare insight into the true spirit
-of Christianity: “The Lord said: Take my yoke upon you and learn of
-Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart. If, therefore, this Augustine
-is meek and lowly of heart, it is probable that he bears the yoke
-of Christ himself and offers it to you to share it with him. But if
-he is proud and discourteous, he is not of God and we need not care
-for his words.... Arrange therefore, that he shall first reach the
-place of meeting, and if, when you draw near, he rises to receive
-you, be assured that he is a servant of Christ and listen to him with
-deference, but if he despises you and does not choose to rise to you
-who are the larger party, then let him be despised by you.” So it came
-to pass. The Britons when they arrived found Augustine seated on a
-chair of state, and he made no motion to arise therefrom. His demeanour
-may have been the result of shyness or absence of mind, but they set
-it down to pride, and being filled with wrath they made a point of
-contradicting everything that he said. Soon doubtless the dispute
-waxed warm, and cries of “Quarto-deciman,” “The last quarter of the
-waning moon,” “The cycle of eighty-four years,” “The cycle of eighteen
-years,” “The blessed apostle John,” “The prince of the apostles,
-Peter,” with every variety of intonation, from the sharp notes of the
-Italian cleric to the gruff voices of the Celtic mountaineer, resounded
-through the air. Augustine seems to have done his best, too late, to
-calm the ruffled spirits of his hearers. “Ye do many things,” he said,
-“contrary to our custom: nay, contrary to the custom of the universal
-Church, but if on three points ye will hearken to me we will patiently
-bear your divergence on all others. These three points are, that ye
-shall celebrate Easter at its own right time: that ye shall administer
-baptism according to the usage of the Apostolical Roman Church,[51]
-and that ye shall join with us in preaching the word of the Lord to
-the English nation.” The Cambrians, however, refused to comply with
-any of these conditions or to accept Augustine as their archbishop,
-muttering one to another: “He would not even rise to receive us when we
-were strangers: if we once submit ourselves to his authority he will
-treat us as the dust under his feet”. Before the disputants parted from
-one another, Augustine raised his voice in threatening prophecy: “If
-you will not accept peace with your brethren, you will have to accept
-war with your enemies: and if you will not preach the way of life to
-the English nation, you shall suffer from their hands the requital of
-death”. A prophecy which Bede considered to have afterwards received
-its fulfilment in the bloody battle of Chester.
-
-It certainly must raise our opinion of the absolute honesty of Bede as
-a historian to find him, whose sympathies are all on the side of Roman
-as against British Christianity, thus faithfully describing a scene
-in which his hero Augustine certainly plays an unattractive part. The
-Welshmen may have erred in attributing his conduct to pride, but his
-most ardent champions must admit that he showed a grievous want of
-tact in this important interview. It was a golden opportunity that was
-offered for the reconciliation of two great hostile races at the feet
-of one Saviour, and that opportunity once lost never returned. The
-wound which the Saxon invasions had caused, still comparatively fresh,
-might possibly have been then healed by first intention. Unhealed
-then, it went festering on for centuries; and more than once or twice
-since the days of Augustine, Christianity, which ought to be the great
-reconciler of men, has proved itself the great divider between Celt and
-Saxon. Soon probably after this fatal interview, Augustine died (May
-26, 605?), and was succeeded in his archiepiscopal see by his friend
-Laurentius, a companion of his labours from the beginning, and the man
-whom he had himself in his lifetime ordained to be his successor.
-
-The death of Ethelbert of Kent, which occurred in February 24, 616,
-about eleven years after that of Augustine, serves as the occasion to
-our one most trusted authority for giving us some valuable information
-as to the political condition of our island. It will be well therefore
-to translate in full a few sentences from the _Ecclesiastical History_.
-
-“In the year of our Lord’s Incarnation, 616, Aedilberct [Ethelbert],
-King of the Cantwaras, after a glorious reign on earth of fifty-six
-years, entered the eternal joys of the heavenly kingdom. He was the
-third among the kings of the English nation who ruled over all their
-southern provinces which are separated from the northern ones by the
-river Humber, and the boundaries adjoining: but he was the first of
-all to mount to the Kingdom of Heaven. [He came, as I have said, third
-in the other list.] For the first to wield dominion of this kind was
-Aelle, King of the South Saxons; the second Caelin, King of the West
-Saxons, who was called Ceawlin in their language; the third, as we
-have said, Aedilberct, King of the Cantwaras; the fourth who possessed
-it was Redwald, King of the East Angles, who even in the lifetime of
-Aedilberct won the leadership for that same nation of his.” Bede then
-proceeds to give us the names of three more leader-kings--names which
-will figure largely in the following chapters of this history--Aeduini
-(Edwin), Oswald and Oswiu (Oswy), all kings of Northumbria.
-
-The Chronicle when it has to speak of Egbert the West Saxon and his
-acquisition of supreme power over the English people, remarks that
-“he was the eighth king that was _Bretwalda_” (or according to a
-better attested reading _Brytenwealda_), and then repeats the above
-list as given by Bede, adding Egbert’s name at its close. On the
-strength of this passage historians have concluded, no doubt rightly,
-that _Bretwalda_ or some similar word was the title given to these
-exceptionally powerful English kings whom we find from time to time
-during the period of the so-called Heptarchy wielding practically the
-whole power of English Britain, and this idea of a “Britain-wielder”
-seems to be now generally accepted as explanatory of the name. There
-has been much discussion as to the attributes of this _Bretwalda_
-sovereignty of Britain, but it cannot be said that any very definite
-conclusion has yet been arrived at. It was probably what the Greeks
-called a “hegemony,” rather than a formal and constituted sovereignty:
-a leadership and preponderating influence such as the King of Prussia
-possessed in Germany even before he was formally proclaimed emperor.
-It will be observed that during Ethelbert’s reign his nephew, the East
-Anglian Redwald, won the leadership from him. Evidently there were some
-unrecorded vicissitudes in the life of Ethelbert.
-
-The death of Ethelbert (who had married a second wife after the decease
-of Frankish Bertha) seems to have been shortly followed by that of his
-nephew, Saberct the East Saxon. Now was it too plainly seen how slight
-a hold the new religion, promoted as it had been by royal favour and
-the fashion of a court, had upon the hearts of the people. The hegemony
-of Kent, sapped as it had apparently been in the lifetime of Ethelbert,
-entirely disappeared at his death. Moreover his son Eadbald, who had
-set his heart on wedding his widowed stepmother, and who could by no
-means induce Archbishop Laurentius to sanction such an incestuous
-union, openly revolted from the Church and went back to paganism. In
-the frequent fits of insanity by which he was afterwards afflicted, the
-faithful saw the work of unclean spirits and the permitted chastisement
-of his sin.
-
-Nor did affairs go better for Christianity in the neighbouring kingdom
-of Essex. King Saberct had left three sons, joint-successors to his
-kingdom, who during their father’s lifetime had yielded a sort of
-fitful adherence to Christianity, but had not submitted to the rite of
-baptism and remained apparently pagans at heart. Their quarrel with
-Mellitus, Bishop of London, arose out of his refusal to permit them to
-partake of the communion. They saw the bishop standing at the altar
-administering the eucharist to the people; and “Why,” demanded they in
-angry tones, “do you not give us some of that pure white bread which
-you used to give to our father, and which we see you still handing
-forth to the people?” Mellitus explained that it was not permitted to
-give the bread except to those who had undergone the rite of baptism;
-but they persisted that they had no need of baptismal purification, yet
-meant to have a share of the consecrated bread. When Mellitus still
-refused they said: “If you will not gratify us in so small a matter
-you shall not stay in our province,” and drove him forth from their
-kingdom. Mellitus, arriving in Kent, conferred with his brethren,
-Laurentius and Justus, as to what should be done in the face of the
-gathering storm-clouds. They unanimously came to the conclusion that
-the better course was to return to their own country, and there serve
-God with unharassed minds, rather than abide in that barbarous land
-and carry on their fruitless labours among a population rebellious to
-the faith. Mellitus and Justus accordingly left their respective sees
-and betook themselves to Gaul, meaning there to abide till the hourly
-expected end of the world, of which Gregory had so often warned them,
-should be revealed. Shortly after their departure the three arrogant
-East Saxon kings who had expelled Mellitus fell in battle against the
-Gewissas or men of Wessex. But though the idolatrous rulers were gone,
-their influence upon the people remained, and it was long before the
-city of London could be persuaded to tolerate in its midst the votaries
-of the new faith.
-
-Thus it seemed that the seed sown by Augustine, which had sprung up
-so quickly, having no deepness of earth, was about to wither away
-as quickly before the parching blasts of persecution. A dream, or
-a trance, or a mysterious mental struggle through which Archbishop
-Laurentius passed, prevented the utter abandonment of the great
-enterprise. In the night before his intended departure from Britain,
-having laid him down to rest in a chamber of the monastery dedicated
-by Augustine to St. Peter and St. Paul, Laurentius saw in a vision
-the Apostle Peter who indignantly rebuked him for his faint-hearted
-desertion of the flock committed to his care. With every sentence came
-a blow from the apostolic scourge on the shoulders of the faint-hearted
-archbishop, and this chastisement endured through many hours of the
-secret and solitary night. In the morning Laurentius found that his
-back was covered with wales from St. Peter’s lash, and going straight
-to the palace he showed his wounds to the king. Eadbald asked in wrath
-who had dared thus to chastise so eminent a man, and being told that
-it was the long dead apostle of Christ, he was stricken with fear,
-abandoned his idolatrous rites, put away his forbidden wife, received
-baptism, and thenceforward promoted to the utmost of his power the
-cause of the new religion.[52]
-
-Thus then Laurentius did not take his hand from the plough. His
-brethren, Mellitus and Justus, were recalled by Eadbald from Gaul,
-but the newly converted king, less powerful than his father, availed
-not to persuade the stubborn Londoners to receive Mellitus into their
-midst. Not long after (February 2, 619) Laurentius himself died, and
-was succeeded in the archiepiscopal see by Mellitus. He too died
-(April 24, 624) after a five years’ tenure of office, and was succeeded
-by Justus. Thus, one after another, Pope Gregory’s missionaries were
-passing away, and their bodies were laid in the portico which, like
-the great _atrium_ of the church of St. Ambrose at Milan, stood in
-front of the slowly reared church of St. Peter and St. Paul. But the
-Christianity of the Saxons in the south was still but a sickly and
-shallow-rooted plant. It was left for the Angles of Northumbria to show
-a genuine, hearty, popular conversion to the new faith, and to produce
-that splendid series of saintly kings, bishops and princesses who have
-made the seventh century for ever memorable in the history of English
-Christianity.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII.
-
-EDWIN OF DEIRA.
-
-
-As our attention in dealing with the history of the seventh century
-will now be fixed chiefly on Northumbria, that being the region where
-Christianity won its most glorious victories and as it was at this
-time undoubtedly the predominant state in Britain, it is necessary
-at the cost of a little repetition to describe the course of the
-English settlements in that northern land. And first, a word as to
-its geographical limits. The district which was popularly called
-_Northhymbraland_, and which consisted politically of the two kingdoms
-of _Beornice_ (Bernicia) and _Dearnerice_ (Deira), stretched from the
-Firth of Forth to the river Humber. It is important to remember that
-we have here no concern with the medieval and modern boundary between
-England and Scotland, in which Tweed and Cheviot are the principal
-factors. St. Cuthbert, born on the slopes of the Lammermoor Hills,
-was no Scot but an Englishman; and Edinburgh, which is to us the
-very type and symbol of Scotticism, was in all probability founded
-by the English prince whose name stands at the head of this chapter.
-Between these two great natural frontiers, the Forth and the Humber,
-the bounding lines ran--as they still do, more than is generally
-recognised--north and south rather than east and west. The western half
-of the lowlands of Scotland, together with Westmorland and the greater
-part of Cumberland, formed the British kingdom of Strathclyde, and
-was--with the exception of some intervals of subjection to its Anglian
-neighbours--under the rule of kings of Celtic race, whose capital
-was the strong rock-fortress of Alclyde or Dumbarton. South of the
-kingdom of Strathclyde the high land which now sunders Yorkshire from
-Lancashire probably formed for some generations the boundary between
-the Angles and the Britons; yet not even up to that boundary was the
-Anglian dominion pushed in the first invasion, for we hear indistinctly
-of a British kingdom of Elmet, otherwise called Loidis, which probably
-included at any rate the upper part of the valleys of the Wharfe,
-the Aire and the Calder, all Yorkshire streams. As to the boundary
-between the two Anglian kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira we cannot speak
-with absolute certainty, but we are told on trustworthy authority[53]
-that it was the River Tees. The fact that both kingdoms were so often
-united under one sovereign perhaps made the assignment of precise
-boundaries less needful. Thus, to recapitulate these facts in terms of
-modern geography, Bernicia included probably all the three Lothians,
-the counties of Berwick, Peebles and Roxburgh, the eastern half of
-Northumberland and the county of Durham; while Deira claimed the North
-and East Ridings of Yorkshire.
-
-Surveying the ethnological condition of this region during the fifth
-and sixth centuries we can dimly discern a few important changes.
-There are some indications of a settlement of Frisians in that which
-we now call the Border country, and it is thought that they gave their
-name to the town of Dumfries. The time of their migration, however,
-is altogether uncertain, and as they were a Low German tribe, nearly
-allied in blood to both Angles and Saxons, we may conjecture that
-in the course of generations they so melted into the great Anglian
-population by which Bernicia was overrun as to be indistinguishable
-therefrom. Another national movement, about which we have more certain
-information, was that migration of the Pictic chief Cunedag from
-Lothian to Anglesey, about 380, to which attention has already been
-called, and which gave to Wales a line of sovereigns that endured for
-nine centuries. Then followed, about the middle of the fifth century,
-that settlement of the Jutes on the east coast of Scotland to which
-reference was made in our sixth chapter, and of which Hengest’s son and
-nephew, Octha and Ebissa, were leaders. This settlement is mentioned
-only by Nennius, but as we meet with it in that part of his history
-which is borrowed from an earlier Northumbrian annalist, we may
-probably accept it as historic fact that the Jutes thus bore a part
-in the migrations which Teutonised the eastern half of Caledonia as
-well as Britannia. Octha is spoken of in a later chapter of Nennius as
-having passed over from the northern part of Britain into Kent on the
-death of his father Hengest, and become the ancestor of the kings of
-Kent who were reigning in the historian’s lifetime.
-
-In the shadowy traditions of the Welsh bards we hear of a certain Ossa
-Cyllelawr or Ossa the Knife-man, who is spoken of as a great antagonist
-of Arthur, and who appears to be a genuine progenitor of the Bernician
-kings. It is apparently his son Eobba who bears the terrible title,
-“The Great Burner of Towns,” which is generally given to the next
-link in the pedigree, Ida, King of Bernicia. Here, at last, we are on
-firmer historical ground, for this is that Ida of whom we read in the
-Chronicle (here quoting Bede) that “he began to reign in 547, and that
-from him sprang the royal line of Northumbria,” that “he reigned twelve
-years, and that he built Bebbanburh [Bamburgh], which was at first
-surrounded by a hedge and thereafter with a wall”.[54] Notwithstanding
-the comparative shortness of his reign, Bernician Ida from his
-rock-fortress of Bamburgh evidently wielded a mighty power, and we are
-probably right in attributing to him the first great extension and
-consolidation of the Anglian power between the Tees and the Firth of
-Forth. He had twelve sons, six of whom followed him in rather quick
-succession during the last half of the sixth century. We have no hint
-of civil war or domestic treason, and it is therefore reasonable to
-suppose that many of these warlike kings fell in battle with their
-Celtic neighbours in the west. This is indeed hinted by the scanty
-notices in Nennius’s history.
-
-We appear to be justified in speaking of Ida as king of Northumbria,
-though that may not have been the title given to him by his
-contemporaries, for it seems to be the outcome of the very confused
-notices in Nennius’s _Historia Brittonum_ that Deira as well as
-Bernicia was subject to his sway. But on the death of Ida (560), if we
-may trust the Chronicle, a prince of another line claiming descent from
-Woden through eleven generations of mortal men, Aelle or Ella, began to
-reign over the southern kingdom, Deira, and reigned for twenty-eight
-years. Were the relations between the two dissevered kingdoms friendly
-or hostile? It is impossible to say. The presence of the Deiran slave
-boys in the Roman forum suggests the latter hypothesis; the fact that
-Acha, the daughter of Aelle, was married to Ethelfrid of Bernicia
-suggests the former. Possibly a war between the two Anglian kingdoms
-had been followed by peace and a matrimonial alliance. However this may
-be, on the death of Aelle in 588, Ethelric of Bernicia, son of Ida,
-succeeded--assuredly not peaceably--to the throne of Deira, which,
-after five years of reigning, he handed on together with his ancestral
-kingdom to his son Ethelfrid.
-
-The reign of Ethelfrid which lasted for twenty-four years, from 593 to
-617, was undoubtedly an important period in the history of Northumbria.
-We are apt to think of him only in connexion with that relentless
-persecution of his young brother-in-law, Edwin, which we shall soon
-have to consider; but he was certainly a powerful ruler, this fierce
-pagan sovereign of Northumbria. Read what Bede the Northumbrian, who
-had often heard his name mentioned with reluctant admiration in the
-cloisters of Jarrow and Wearmouth, says concerning him: “In these days
-the kingdom of the Northumbrians was governed by Ethelfrid, a most
-valiant king and most covetous of glory, who, more than all the chiefs
-of the Angles, harassed the nation of the Britons, so that it would
-seem fitting to compare him to Saul, King of Israel, except for this
-one point that he was ignorant of the Divine religion. For no ealdorman
-or king made wider tracts of land, after destroying or subduing their
-inhabitants, either tributary to the English nation or open to their
-occupation, than this king. So that the blessing which the patriarch,
-anticipating the deeds of Saul, bestowed on his own son might fittingly
-be applied to Ethelfrid: ‘Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf. In the
-morning he shall devour the prey: in the evening he shall divide the
-spoils.’”
-
-In the year 603, when Ethelfrid had been ten years on the throne,
-“Aidan, King of the Scots who inhabit Britain,”[55] resenting the
-Anglian king’s encroachments, prepared to invade Bernicia. Here at
-last we have the word Scots clearly used not of our western but of
-our northern neighbours. For these are the Scots who crossed over the
-straits between Ulster and Cantyre and founded in Argyll and the Isles
-that kingdom of Dalriada which was one day to give a monarch, Kenneth
-MacAlpine, to the whole of North Britain and impose on Caledonia the
-name of _Scotland_. It is important also to observe that by this time
-all the dwellers in what we now call Scotland professed the Christian
-faith, the great mission of St. Columba to the Northern Picts and his
-settlement in Iona having taken place in 565, thirty-eight years before
-the events with which we are now concerned. The invasion of King Aidan,
-the friend and in a certain sense the nominee of St. Columba, though
-made by him at the head of a huge host, proved unsuccessful. He was met
-(says the patriotic Englishman Bede) by Ethelfrid with but few men.
-The two armies joined battle at Degsastan, probably the high moorland
-which forms the watershed between Liddesdale and Upper Tynedale, and
-which by one little stream, the Dawston Burn, still preserves the name
-of that old battlefield of the nations. Ethelfrid’s brother, Theodbald,
-with all the division of the army which he commanded, fell before the
-Scottish onslaught, but in another part of the field Aidan suffered
-so severe a defeat that he was forced to fly ignominiously from the
-bleak moorland, covered with the corpses of his followers. The battle
-of Dawston Rig seems to have been in truth the Flodden of the seventh
-century. Bede, writing 128 years afterwards, says: “Never from that day
-to this, hath any king of the Scots dared to join battle in Britain
-with the nation of the Angles”.
-
-Some years after this victory over the Scots, Ethelfrid won another
-of equal importance over the Cambrian Britons (613?). The Archbishop
-Augustine, as we have seen, in his last conference with the Welsh
-ecclesiastics, warned them that if they were unwilling to preach the
-way of life to the English nation they should suffer a bloody requital
-at their hands.[56] And now Ethelfrid, having all the hosts of Deira
-and Bernicia at his disposal, collecting a large army, marched,
-probably by a branch of the Watling Street,[57] from York across
-Yorkshire to Manchester, and appeared full of the menace of battle
-before the walls of the city on the Dee, which, once known as Deva,
-now, 200 years after the last Roman soldiers had quitted Britain,
-still bore the name of the Camp of the Legions. In later times this
-name--_Caerlegion_ in Welsh, _Legacaestir_ in the English tongue--has
-been shortened to Chester, and thus this picturesque old city, which
-still keeps its medieval walls and is crowded with interesting relics
-both of Roman and of Norman domination, claims not unworthily the
-right to be _the_ Chester among all the many Chesters in our land, the
-representative of all the cities which have arisen on the site of the
-camps of the legions.
-
-On the eve of the battle, Ethelfrid descried a number of men clad in
-priestly garb who occupied what they deemed to be a place of safe
-shelter at a little distance from the British army. They were in fact
-a large deputation from the monastery of Bangor (which contained not
-fewer than 2,100 inmates), and they had come, sanctified by a three
-days’ fast, to aid the British king Brochmail by their prayers. “Who
-are those men?” cried Ethelfrid, “and what do they there?” Learning
-the reason of their presence, he exclaimed, “If they are calling on
-their God against us, they also are fighting against us, though it be
-not with arms but with curses,” and he directed the first movements of
-his army against them. This unexpected opening of the game seems to
-have confounded Brochmail, who is accused by Bede of having in cowardly
-panic forsaken the holy men whom he was especially bound to protect.
-However this may be, 1,200 of the Bangor monks were slain and only
-fifty escaped. The British king and his men fled in disgraceful rout;
-Ethelfrid’s victory was complete; the city of the legions was taken and
-sacked and remained apparently “a waste Chester” for near 300 years.
-
-Thus for more than twenty years had Ethelfrid of Bamburgh marched from
-victory to victory. Meanwhile his foe and brother-in-law, Edwin, son
-of Ella, the rightful heir of Deira, was leading the life of a hunted
-fugitive, “an ascender of the stairs of other men,” hearing perchance
-of the victories of the enemy of his house, as Charles Stuart in
-his places of refuge in Holland or France heard of the triumphant
-campaigns of Cromwell. There is, indeed, a tradition that Edwin, when
-a boy, had sought shelter at the court of Cadvan, the British king of
-North-West Wales, and that this was the cause of Ethelfrid’s vigorous
-assault on the British confederacy; but this story seems hardly
-consistent with the pagan character of Edwin’s upbringing. For some
-time he seems to have sought shelter with a sovereign of the new and
-rising state of Mercia, whose daughter he married; but probably on
-her death he wandered forth again into exile. And thus after long and
-various experiences of the sad life of a fugitive in different kingdoms
-of the land, he found his way to the court of Redwald, King of the
-East Angles, and received a promise of protection from that powerful
-monarch. When Ethelfrid, however, heard that his hated rival was
-harboured at the East Anglian court, he sent messenger upon messenger
-to Redwald, offering him large bribes to take the life of his youthful
-guest. Long did Redwald refuse to do anything that would bring so dark
-a stain upon his kingly honour, but at last the third messenger, who
-brought not only more magnificent bribes, but the threat of war in
-the event of refusal, prevailed. In the first watch of the night an
-East Anglian noble, friendly to Edwin, entered the fugitive’s bedroom,
-called him forth outside the palace, told him his danger, counselled
-him to flee, and promised to lead him to a safe hiding-place, where
-neither Redwald nor Ethelfrid would be able to find him. Edwin thanked
-him for his warning, but refused to be the first to break covenant with
-his host by showing a doubt of his protection, and wearily exclaimed:
-“If I must die let me die here, rather than begin again that life of a
-fugitive which I have already led for so many years in every province
-of Britain”. His friend left him and he remained alone with his sad
-thoughts in the darkening night.
-
-Suddenly a man whose face and garb were alike unknown to him, stood
-before him and asked him why he sat there so mournfully on his seat
-of stone, while all within the palace were wrapped in sleep. “What
-is it to thee,” said the weary exile, “where I choose to spend the
-night?” “But I know,” answered the stranger, “both why thou art here,
-and why thou art so sad and what thou fearest. Now what wouldst thou
-give to any one who should free thee from thy anxieties and persuade
-Redwald not to deliver thee into the hands of thy enemies?” “All that
-I possess,” said Edwin. “And what if he assured thee that thou shouldst
-overcome thine enemies and become a king greater than any English
-king before thee?” “I would give the gratitude which he deserved to
-any one who could confer on me such benefits.” “And how, if he could
-point out to thee a new way of life and salvation better than any
-that thy fathers have known? Wouldst thou hearken to his voice and
-obey his counsels?” “Assuredly I would,” said Edwin. The stranger put
-his hand upon his head and said: “When next thou shalt receive this
-sign, remember what thou hast promised and fulfil it.” With that the
-stranger, whether he were living man or spirit, zealous missionary or
-martyred apostle, vanished into the darkness. A little cheered by the
-vision but still melancholy and anxious, Edwin was sitting yet before
-the palace when lo! his friend the courtier returned to him with joy in
-his countenance and said: “Arise, dismiss thy cares, go to thy couch
-and slumber with a quiet mind. The danger is past. The queen, to whom
-in secret Redwald disclosed his purpose, persuaded him not for any
-of Ethelfrid’s gold to sell his far more precious kingly honour, or
-sacrifice the friend who had sought his protection in extremity.” When
-day dawned it was seen that Edwin’s friend had spoken truly. The king
-dismissed Ethelfrid’s messengers with a final refusal, and knowing now
-that he would have to face that king’s anger, resolved to anticipate
-the blow and to restore the fugitive to his kingdom. Hastily collecting
-his army he came upon the surprised and imperfectly prepared Ethelfrid
-on the banks of the Idle, a little river of Nottinghamshire, and there
-won a decisive victory. It was true that Redwald’s own son, Regenheri,
-perished in the fight, but Ethelfrid himself was also slain, and the
-power of Bernicia for a season annihilated. It was a memorable day for
-the dwellers in the fens by the Humber, and six centuries later the
-historian, Henry of Huntingdon, still heard the proverb: “As when the
-Idle river grew foul with Anglian blood.”
-
-This great battle which for the time overthrew the Bernician dynasty
-and gave the dominion of all Northumbria to Edwin of Deira was fought
-probably in the year 617. Edwin, who was born in 585, and whose life
-since he was a child of three years old had been passed in exile, was
-therefore a man thirty-two years of age when he thus recovered his
-father’s kingdom. The sons of Ethelfrid fled to the Celts of Scotland,
-and at least one of them sought the friendly shelter of Iona. Edwin
-no doubt fixed his capital at York, that great and important city
-which under its Anglian name of Eoforwac carried on the traditions
-of Roman Eburacum. The fact that the Roman name subsisted still with
-so little change in the language of the conquerors makes it probable
-that there was here no such utter destruction and desolation as at
-Anderida and Chester, but that there was a continuous civic life from
-the departure of the last Roman soldier to the enthronement of the
-first Anglian king. How gladly would we exchange much of the scanty
-knowledge of the invasion that we do possess for the details of the
-capture of the Roman capital of the north;[58] but over this conquest,
-as well as over that of the sister city of Londinium, there hangs a
-pall of impenetrable darkness. The lines of the Roman city may still be
-traced with considerable precision; the noble ruin of the multangular
-tower clearly marks its western corner, but we have not yet recovered,
-possibly shall never recover, the site of the once stately edifice
-where the Roman _Dux Britanniarum_ dwelt aforetime, and where in
-all probability the Anglian kings of Deira held their court. There,
-however, we may safely imagine Edwin enthroned; from thence his armies
-marched forth along one or other of the great network of Roman roads
-which centred at Eburacum. One of his earliest conquests was probably
-that of the British kingdom of Elmet or Loidis which still lingered
-on in the dales of the West Riding, but seems to have come to an end
-about this time. Having consolidated his power over Northumbria, Edwin
-became the mightiest of all the English kings. The title of Bretwalda
-was recognised as rightfully belonging to him, and all the other kings
-of Britain, Anglian, Saxon, Celtic, for a time at least acknowledged
-him as in a certain sense their superior. Even the islands of Man and
-Anglesey were added by him to his dominions, the latter island probably
-deriving from this conquest by the Angles the name which it still
-bears. Only Jutish Kent still maintained its independence, and with its
-king Edwin before long formed a close tie of alliance. An unexplained
-phenomenon in these first ten years of Edwin’s reign, during which,
-still heathen, he seems to have been pursuing a career of unbroken
-success, is the disappearance of East Anglia from the scene. It was the
-might of Redwald the East Anglian which broke the power of Ethelfrid
-on the great day of the battle at the river Idle, and yet we hear of
-Edwin, still apparently in the lifetime of his benefactor, establishing
-his supremacy over all the kings of the Angles and Britons, including
-therefore among his subject allies even Redwald himself.
-
-It was probably about the year 624 when Edwin was in full middle life,
-and his sons, by his first Mercian wife, were growing up towards
-manhood, that he made proposals of marriage to the Kentish princess,
-Ethelburga. She, like himself, must have been middle-aged. Her father,
-Ethelbert, had been for some years dead, and her brother, Eadbald, had
-the disposal of her hand. Mindful of the stripes and the warnings of
-Laurentius, Eadbald was now loyal in his adherence to Christianity,
-and replied to Edwin’s messengers “that it was not lawful to give a
-Christian maiden in marriage to a pagan, lest the faith and sacrament
-of the heavenly King should be profaned by intercourse with an
-earthly king who was ignorant of the worship of the true God”. To
-this objection (a remarkable one as coming from the offspring of the
-union between the Christian Bertha and the pagan Ethelbert) Edwin
-replied that he would do nothing contrary to the Christian faith of the
-princess if she became his bride; that she might bring with her as many
-ministers of that faith as she pleased, whether male or female, and
-should have full liberty of worship along with them; and, moreover, he
-held out hopes that he himself might become a convert to Christianity
-if on examination by the wise men of his kingdom it should be found
-more holy and worthier of the Most High than the religion which it
-offered to supersede. After this reassuring statement, Eadbald’s
-objections were withdrawn. Ethelburga was sent northwards to meet her
-bridegroom, and in her train came Paulinus, who was now consecrated on
-July 21, 625, by Archbishop Justus, bishop of York, which was virtually
-equivalent to bishop of Northumbria.
-
-Paulinus, who is certainly the noblest figure in the Roman mission
-to England, was constant in preaching the Christian faith in season
-and out of season to the men of Northumbria. He met at first with
-but little success, but a year after his arrival, in April 20, 626, a
-foully attempted crime brought him in a strange way nearer to his goal.
-The history of Wessex for some generations after the dethronement of
-Ceawlin in 592 is obscure and inglorious. Her once powerful kings seem
-to have accepted without a murmur the supremacy first of Kent and then
-of East Anglia, and if now they resented the rapidly extended dominion
-of Northumbria they sought to overthrow it not in fair fight but by
-the dastardly hand of the conspirator. The kings of the West Saxons at
-this time were Cynegils and Cwichelm, the latter of whom, perhaps in
-concert with his colleague, sent an assassin named Eomer, armed with
-a poisoned dagger, to the court of Edwin. The king was then dwelling
-in a royal villa near the Yorkshire Derwent (one of the many English
-rivers bearing that name), and there Eomer presented himself with a
-pretended message from his master. While Edwin listened intently to
-his words he drew the deadly weapon from its sheath and made a sudden
-onslaught upon the king. A faithful thegn named Lilia, who dearly loved
-his lord, having no shield ready to hand, rushed in between and broke
-the force of the blow, but not even the sacrifice of his life saved the
-monarch from a wound; and before Eomer was hewn down by the swords of
-the surrounding soldiers he had succeeded in stabbing one of them named
-Fordheri with his fatal weapon. That very night--it was the night of
-Easter Sunday, 626--Edwin’s queen was delivered of a daughter, to whom
-was given the name of Eanfled. Touched by the mingled congratulations
-and exhortations of Paulinus, Edwin gladly consented that his infant
-daughter, along with eleven members of his household, should receive
-baptism on the eve of the following Whitsunday. For himself, though he
-was inclined to listen to the advice of Paulinus, all other matters had
-to be postponed to the great campaign of vengeance which, as soon as he
-had recovered from his wound, he undertook against the vile West Saxon
-murderers. In this campaign he was completely successful. Having slain
-five kings and much people, and returned victorious from the war, he at
-once abandoned the worship of idols and began seriously to consider the
-question of making a formal profession of Christianity.
-
-It was apparently during this religious interregnum that the King and
-Queen of Northumbria received each a letter from Pope Boniface V. The
-letters, verbose and unpersuasive in style, can hardly have had much
-influence on the fresh and vigorous intellect of the Northumbrian king,
-but no doubt the fact that they should have been written at all by
-the father of western Christendom was felt as a compliment to Edwin’s
-greatness. Still, however, the king hesitated before making a final
-breach with the traditions of his fathers and accepting Christ instead
-of his ancestral Woden. Unable to dismiss the subject from his thoughts
-he sat much apart in solitary places and there mused upon the parting
-of the ways. While he thus sat one day, Paulinus came unbidden into
-his presence, laid his hand upon his head and said: “Rememberest thou
-this sign?” With that the scene outside the East Anglian palace came
-back vividly into Edwin’s memory. He was about to fall at the feet
-of Paulinus, but the bishop lifting him up said in a gentle voice:
-“Behold thou hast escaped by the Divine favour the snares of thine
-enemies: thou hast received the kingdom which was promised thee: delay
-not to stretch out thy hand and grasp the third blessing, even eternal
-life”.[59]
-
-Thus admonished Edwin determined to delay no longer his profession of
-Christianity, but wisely resolved to associate as many as possible
-of his counsellors with him, and to make the great change the act of
-the nation rather than of the king alone. Then followed the memorable
-and well-known scene in the Witenagemot, or meeting of the wise men,
-perhaps at York, perhaps at the royal villa by the Derwent. When the
-subject of the proposed change of faith was mooted in the assembly
-of the elders, its first and most strenuous advocate was found to be
-the chief priest Coifi, who complained that his past years spent in
-zealous service of the gods had brought him no proportionate share of
-the royal favour. To this sordid calculator of the worldly advantages
-to be derived from this or that form of faith, succeeded an unnamed
-ealdorman who, in words as well fitted to the twentieth century as to
-the seventh, painted the short, perplexing and precarious life of man
-“like a sparrow flitting through your hall, O king! when we are seated
-round the fire at supper-time, while the winds are howling and the
-snow is drifting without. It passes swiftly in at one door and out at
-another, feeling for the moment the warmth and shelter of your palace,
-but it flies from winter to winter and swiftly escapes from our sight.
-Even such is our life here, and if any one can tell us certainly what
-lies beyond it, we shall do wisely to follow his teaching.” Moved
-by these and similar arguments the elders and counsellors of the
-king, unanimously as it would seem, voted for the proposed religious
-revolution.
-
-After Paulinus had expounded to the assembly the doctrines of
-Christianity, Coifi exclaimed: “Long ago had I suspected that the
-things which we were worshipping were naught, for the more earnestly I
-sought for truth in that worship the less did I find it. Now I openly
-profess that in this new preaching alone is the way of eternal life to
-be found. O king! let us at once give over to the flames the temples
-and altars which we have consecrated so vainly.” The king gladly
-consented, but asked who should deal the death-blow. “I,” said Coifi.
-“Who more fitting than I to destroy, in the new wisdom which is given
-me, the idols which I worshipped in my folly?” He besought the king to
-give him arms and a war-horse, and though the multitude, who knew that
-it was forbidden to one of their priests to bear arms or to ride on
-anything but a mare, deemed him to be insane, he mounted the charger,
-rode to a great temple in the neighbourhood, hurled his lance into its
-sacred precincts and called upon his companions to give to the flames
-the shrine itself and all the enclosures by which it was surrounded
-from the gaze of the multitude. A hundred years afterwards men still
-showed at Goodmanham on the Derwent, east of York, the ruins of this
-great iconoclasm.
-
-The overthrow of the old faith was followed by the visible triumph of
-the new. On Easter eve, 627, just a year after his escape from the
-dagger of the man of Wessex, Edwin was baptised by Paulinus in the new
-wooden church of St. Peter at York, a church which he was shortly to
-replace by a more elaborate edifice in stone. His sons by the Mercian
-princess before long followed his example: his young children, the
-offspring of Ethelburga, and even a little grandson Yffi, son of
-Osfrid, together with a great number of the nobles of the court, were
-all solemnly received into the Christian Church. The preaching of
-Paulinus, so long resultless, now seemed to be bearing abundant fruit.
-Up in remote Bernicia, where the royal villa of Yeavering nestled under
-a hill, an outlying sentinel of the Cheviots which still bears the name
-of Yeavering Bell, Paulinus was engaged for twenty-six consecutive days
-catechising and baptising in the river Glen the multitudes who flocked
-to him. Returning to Deira, to the Roman station of Cataractonium,
-he there baptised many converts in the river Swale, no church or
-oratory having yet been erected for Christian worship. In his zeal he
-overpassed the strict limits of Northumbria: he crossed the Humber,
-preached the Gospel in Lindsey, converted the “prefect” of the city of
-Lincoln, and baptised a multitude of people at noon-day in the river
-Trent, King Edwin himself honouring the ceremony by his presence. One
-of the many converts who went down on that day into the river with
-Paulinus described the scene to a youth who when an abbot, in his
-reverend old age, passed the tradition on to Bede, telling him that
-the great missionary was a man of tall stature, slightly stooping,
-with black hair, thin face, aquiline but slender nose, in his general
-aspect at once venerable and awe-inspiring. His constant attendant was
-a certain deacon James, a courageous and energetic man, who also lived
-to be a contemporary of the historian.
-
-In after years of turbulence and discord men looked back on the reign
-of Edwin as a sort of golden age. They said that then a woman with her
-new-born babe might cross Britain from sea to sea unharmed by any man.
-In many a place where he saw a clear fountain bubbling up beside the
-public way he would order stakes to be erected, upon which brazen pots
-were hung, and none dared to touch them save the thirsty travellers for
-whose use they were designed. His state was indeed kingly. Not only in
-war was his standard displayed; but in peace also, as he was journeying
-from villa to villa and from province to province, attended by a long
-and brilliant train of servants, a banner with a tuft of feathers,
-called by the Romans _tufa_ and by the English _thuuf_ and hinting
-perhaps at something like imperial dignity, was borne before the mighty
-king of Northumbria.
-
-But this splendour of regal power was early overshadowed. It was not,
-after all, from Eburacum that the word of power was to go forth which
-was to bind the various Teutonic races of England into one nation. The
-Anglian power was not thoroughly established over Wales, and already
-the destined rival of Northumbria, the Mercian kingdom, was rising into
-baleful pre-eminence. Singularly enough, it was from these two powers
-which are said to have sheltered Edwin in the time of his evil fortunes
-that his ruin came. Cadwallon, King of Gwynedd, descended from that
-Maelgwn whom Gildas vituperated under the name of “The Great Dragon of
-the Island,” was son of Cadvan, at whose court, it is said, Edwin had
-passed his boyhood. Doubtless Cadwallon keenly resented the position
-of inferiority to which his nation had been reduced by Ethelfrid’s
-great victory of Chester, which shut them off from Strathclyde, as
-Ceawlin’s victory of Deorham had shut them off from Devon and Cornwall.
-When Edwin, once Cadvan’s humble guest, had become the mightiest
-prince in Britain, Cadwallon, unwilling to accept his yoke, had taken
-refuge--so say the Welsh annals--in Ireland. He had now returned and
-was determined to strike one more blow for independence and for liberty
-of passage to Strathclyde. With this intent he formed an alliance with
-the ruler of Mercia, Penda, who became king in 626, a year before
-Edwin’s baptism; who was still pagan; and who in his dull ferocity
-was as typical a specimen of the old faith as Edwin of the new. The
-alliance of the Welsh Christian and the English pagan for the overthrow
-of the newly born Christianity of Northumbria was scarcely felt to be
-unnatural, so intense was the bitterness engendered by the Paschal
-controversy and the varying fashions of ecclesiastical tonsure.
-
-The armies met at Heathfield, which is identified with Hatfield Chase
-on the north-east of Doncaster, on October 12, 633. We have no details
-of the encounter: we only know that Edwin was defeated, that he and his
-eldest son Osfrid were slain, and that Cadwallon and his ally roamed
-in savage wrath over the plains of Yorkshire and Northumberland. The
-Christian, even more ferocious than the pagan, spared neither sex nor
-age, recognised no claim to mercy drawn from the profession of one
-common faith, and vowed (this surely when out of hearing of his ally)
-that he would root out the whole brood of Angles from the land of
-Britain.[60]
-
-Edwin’s second son fled for refuge to the court of the Mercian king,
-and was afterwards slain by him, in violation of his sworn promise of
-protection. The widowed Ethelburga fled to the court of her brother,
-the King of Kent, under the escort of Paulinus. The royal infants--such
-was the terror of the times--were separated from their mother, and it
-was left for a brave soldier named Bass, one of Edwin’s thegns, to
-bring to the Kentish court the girl Eanfled, her brother Wuscfrea, and
-their little nephew Yffi, the orphaned son of Osfrid. The widowed queen
-afterwards sent the boys to the court of her cousin, Frankish Dagobert,
-that they might be safe from the new rulers of Bernicia, but both died
-in infancy in that foreign land. As for Paulinus he seems to have bowed
-his head to the storm of the recrudescent paganism of Northumbria. He
-vacated his Yorkish see, and was appointed Bishop of Rochester, in
-succession to Romanus, who had been drowned in the Mediterranean when
-sent on a mission to Rome. He died in 644. The ill-starred union of
-Mercian paganism and British fanaticism seemed to have accomplished its
-purpose. Northumberland was a wilderness and Northumbrian Christianity
-a vanished dream.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX.
-
-OSWALD OF BERNICIA.
-
-
-When the cause of Christianity and, as connected with it, the hope of
-eventually building in the new England a civilised and well-ordered
-state seemed at its darkest, light arose from an island in the
-Hebrides; it spread to a rough storm-beaten rock on the Northumbrian
-coast; it illumined one of the noblest and loveliest pages in the
-history of our nation, the reign of Oswald of Bernicia.
-
-The conversion of the southern Picts to Christianity is believed to
-have taken place more than two centuries before the date that we have
-now reached. Near the close of the fourth century when the Roman empire
-had already begun to crumble into ruin, St. Ninian, a Briton educated
-at Rome, filled with veneration for the soldier-saint, Martin of Tours,
-came to the region between the Roman Wall and the Grampians, preached
-Christianity with much success to the Picts who dwelt in that country,
-and built a monastic church dedicated to St. Martin, on one of the
-promontories of Galloway which project south into the Irish sea. This
-church, built of stone, and thereby differing from the humbler wooden
-churches of the period, was called _Candida Casa_ (a name represented
-in its modern successor Whithern), and it is said to have been still
-in course of erection when Ninian heard of the death of the holy man
-in whose name he dedicated his beautiful “white house”. Nearly two
-centuries passed away. There was much intercourse of various kinds
-between the dwellers in the Hebrides and their neighbours the Scots
-of Ireland. The Dalriadic kingdom, Scottish (that is Erse) by race
-and Christian by religious profession, was set up in Argyll and the
-adjacent islands; but the Picts north of the Grampians whose relations
-to Dalriada were generally hostile, remained obstinately heathen.
-All this was changed by an event which took place about the year
-563--the arrival of St. Columba from Ireland. Whatever accretions of
-superstitious legend may have grown up around the name of this saint,
-the historic importance of the great apostle of the Picts cannot be
-denied, and can hardly be over-stated.
-
-Born in Donegal, in the year 521, a scion of the princely clan of
-the Hy Neill, descended from Irish kings both on his father’s and
-his mother’s side, the young Irishman in his boyish days showed such
-zeal in his attendance at church that his baptismal name of Colum
-was changed to Colum-cille or Columba of the church. He was ordained
-priest, but the bent of his religious temper like that of most of his
-Irish contemporaries was all towards the monastic profession. During
-his early middle life he was busily engaged in founding monasteries,
-the first in point of date being that of Derry, and the most famous
-that of Durrow in the diocese of Meath. But in his fortieth year,
-561, he became entangled in one of the ever-recurring civil wars of
-his distressful country. A great battle was fought at Cuildremhne,
-in Connaught, near the boundary between that province and Ulster.
-Columba’s kinsfolk, the northern Hy Neill, prevailed and the King of
-Ireland, commanding the clans of the southern Hy Neill, was defeated.
-Though his friends’ cause triumphed, the battle appears in some
-unexplained manner to have injured Columba’s religious position in his
-native country. He seems to have been excommunicated by some of his
-brethren, possibly on account of his alleged responsibility for the
-strife. At any rate he now resolved to quit his country and, perhaps as
-a penance for his sins, to take up his abode in some place from which
-he could not even see the shores of his beloved Ireland. Such a place,
-after some wandering, he found in the then little known island of Hy,
-famous to after ages under the name of Iona; where, as tradition tells,
-he ascended a hill which still bears the name of Cul-ri-Erin (back
-turned to Erin), and when he found that no line of the Irish coast,
-however dimly seen, could thence be discerned on the horizon, amid all
-the cluster of surrounding islands, he determined to make that little
-spot his dwelling-place. Iona is separated from the much larger island
-of Mull by a channel about one mile broad. It is only three miles long,
-and from a mile to a mile and a half in breadth; yet in this little
-space there is considerable variety of scenery; hills, the highest of
-which attains to an elevation of 320 feet, “retired dells, long reaches
-of sand on shores indented with quiet bays, little coves between bare
-and striking rocks, and on the west wild barren cliffs and high rocky
-islets opposed to the sweep of the Atlantic”.[61] As Bede says: “it is
-not large but computed as containing five families according to English
-reckoning”. (The word “families” is rendered “hides” in the English
-_Chronicle_, and this is an important passage as showing what were
-the average dimensions of a “hide of land” in early Saxon times.) The
-ruins now visible on the island are those of a Benedictine abbey of the
-thirteenth century. No traces remain of the buildings, probably wooden,
-raised by St. Columba, but there are many interesting natural features
-which may be recognised in the nearly contemporary life of the saint
-written by the ninth abbot of Iona, Adamnan.
-
-The objects which Columba set before himself after his migration to
-Iona were political as well as religious. His kinsmen, the Scots of
-Dalriada, were harassed and oppressed by the pagan Picts in the east of
-the island, whose king, Brude, had in the year 560 inflicted a crushing
-defeat on the Scottish king, Gabhran. Columba would fain convert the
-Pictish conqueror to Christianity, and at the same time obtain more
-generous treatment for his beaten countrymen; and by the magic of
-his personality he achieved a striking success in both directions.
-King Brude in 565 embraced Christianity, and relations of peace and
-friendship were established between him and the man whom, in 574,
-Columba succeeded in placing on the throne of Dalriada, Aidan, Prince
-of Strathclyde. The thirty-four years of Columba’s life, after his
-great migration, were spent in establishing monasteries in the land of
-the northern Picts, in the Hebrides and in his native Ireland, to which
-he paid several visits, and where the once excommunicated partisan was
-now an honoured, almost worshipped guest. These Columban monasteries,
-“the family of Iona” as they were called, were of a distinctly
-different type from that of the monasteries of the Benedictine rule.
-Like all the Irish monastic establishments they partook largely of the
-tribal character. The tribe gave the land, contributed to the support
-of the monks, had a right to receive, apparently without special
-charge, their religious ministrations, and in certain circumstances
-had also a right to nominate one of its members as abbot, though the
-first claim upon this coveted office resided in the family of the
-founder. It was thus that the first nine abbots of Iona were all
-descended from the same family, the northern Hy Neill, from which St.
-Columba himself had sprung. This tribal character of the monasteries
-suited the genius of the Celtic populations, and was one reason of the
-success of the missionaries in converting them to Christianity. It has
-been truly said[62] that “these large monasteries, as in their external
-aspect they appeared to be, were in reality Christian colonies into
-which converts, after being tonsured, were brought under the name of
-monks”.
-
-The large part thus played by the monasteries in the work of conversion
-impressed in its turn a peculiar character on the churches of Ireland
-and Hebridean Scotland, rendering them more exclusively monastic
-and less purely episcopal than the churches of Italy and Gaul. This
-divergence resulted in part from the nature of things, and was due
-to the differences of place and time in which the conversion of the
-several countries was respectively effected. The Bishops of Lyons and
-Vienne, of Toledo and Seville began their work while the Roman Empire
-was still standing, were to some extent moulded by its form, shared the
-prosperity and the influence of its great towns and were essentially
-magnates of cities. Columba, his comrades and his pupils, came into a
-much ruder and more primitive state of society. The rough tribal rulers
-whom they converted had scarcely any cities worthy of the name. The new
-missionaries planted their monasteries in such rural places as promised
-them the supply of their simple wants, or even only safety from the
-attacks of a midnight foe--often on an island in a lake or surrounded
-by the ocean--and there, not so much by eloquent preaching as by mere
-rightness and simplicity of living, succeeded in converting whole
-populations to the religion of Christ. The conversions thus obtained
-seem to have been for the most part more genuine and more durable than
-those which were first effected in the large cities of the old Roman
-world and from thence radiated outwards into the country.
-
-It has seemed necessary to emphasise this distinction between the two
-types of ecclesiastical organisation (the fourth century Gaulish and
-the sixth century Irish Churches) because the difference reappears in
-our own history. The Roman mission under Augustine and his successors,
-and especially under Paulinus in Northumbria, seems to have gone on the
-old urban and episcopal lines, while the far more successful mission
-from Iona, with which we have now to deal, was monastic, many-centred
-and rural. In the year 597, the very year of Augustine’s arrival
-in England, St. Columba died. He is one of the most vividly seen
-personalities of the early Middle Ages: a man of somewhat hot temper in
-youth, softened and controlled in later life, with a stately beauty of
-feature which seemed to correspond with his princely descent, and with
-a kind of magnetic power of attracting to himself the devotion of his
-followers, a lover of animals and beloved by them. One of his natural
-gifts was an extraordinarily strong and resonant voice which, when he
-sang the psalms of the church, could be heard distinctly for more than
-a mile. A great open-air preacher, an organiser and a poet--he eagerly
-championed the cause of his brother bards before an Irish synod--he
-might, perhaps, not unfittingly, be called the John Wesley of the sixth
-century.
-
-In 615, about eighteen years after the death of Columba, when his
-fellow-tribesman Fergna was ruling, fourth in the series of abbots, at
-Iona, a party of refugees from the south crossed the little channel and
-landed on the shore of the island, craving shelter and sanctuary. They
-were some of the attendants of Ethelfrid, the late King of Bernicia,
-who had been slain “when the river Idle ran foul with Anglian blood,”
-and they brought, besides other noble youths, Oswald, that king’s
-second son, and implored the brethren to protect him from the avenging
-might of Edwin. There was no shadow of a claim for this young Anglian,
-son of an obstinate pagan, on the hospitality of the Irish monks, but
-the request was willingly granted. Oswald and the young nobles his
-companions were kindly received, were soon baptised, and instructed
-in the doctrines of Christianity, and growing up to manhood on the
-sequestered Hebridean isle, probably looked forward to no other sort
-of life than that which was led by the simple-hearted monks their
-entertainers.
-
-All this was changed, in 633, by the great and unlooked-for catastrophe
-of Heathfield. The two Northumbrian kingdoms, united under the strong
-rule of Ethelfrid and Edwin, fell once more apart. Osric, cousin of
-Edwin, son of his uncle Elfric, ruled in Deira, and Eanfrid, eldest son
-of Ethelfrid, in Bernicia. These two young princes, each of whom had
-made profession of the Christian faith, both apostatised and returned
-to paganism. Possibly the sordid calculations by which Coifi had
-justified his renunciation of the faith of his fathers weighed with
-them now in the opposite scale, and they felt themselves justified in
-deserting the Christians’ God, who had abandoned their land to the
-tender mercies of Penda and Cadwallon. But the triumph of paganism
-was short. Osric, who with inadequate forces besieged Cadwallon while
-holding the “municipium” of York, was killed and his whole army cut to
-pieces by a sudden sally of the Welsh king. This happened in the summer
-of the year which followed the battle of Heathfield, and, apparently
-in the following autumn, Bernician Eanfrid, coming with twelve chosen
-warriors to treat of peace with Cadwallon, was treacherously slain
-by his orders. So full of gloomy memories was this year, 634, that
-the monkish chroniclers, who afterwards drew up a scheme of Anglian
-chronology, decided that it should not come into the number of the
-years, and silently included it in the glorious reign of him who
-succeeded the apostates.
-
-This successor was Oswald, who came from Iona evidently determined to
-play the part of a Christian hero-king, and who endured to his life’s
-end steadfast in that decision. By one bold stroke he delivered his
-nation, Bernicia, from the Cambrian ravagers. “When he arrived after
-the death of his brother Eanfrid with a small army, and fortified by
-the faith of Christ, the wicked general of the Britons with the immense
-forces which, as he boasted, nothing could resist, was slain by him at
-the place which is called in the English tongue Denisesburn,’ that is,
-the stream of Denis.” So runs the first simple statement of Bede as to
-this important encounter which for ever settled the question whether
-the Celt or the Teuton was to be supreme in Northern Britain. From Bede
-himself, as a kind of afterthought, and from Adamnan, the biographer of
-St. Columba, we get some additional particulars which enable us to see
-more clearly if not the strategic features of the battle at least what
-was passing in the minds of the combatants. It seems that the battle
-itself was fought not at “Denisesburn” but at Heavenfield, a little on
-the north of the Roman wall, which probably was an important element
-in the problem that the Anglian king, with his great inferiority of
-forces, had to solve.[63] The great Roman work, striding across the
-country in its uncompromising way, here traverses a high moorland which
-separates the main stream of the Tyne from its northern affluent, and
-in this portion of its career it is from 700 to 800 feet above the
-level of the sea. Though none of its stones are here remaining, we can
-yet trace the high mounds and deep fosses of its companion, the line of
-fortification on the south, which is known by the name of the _vallum_.
-Between these two lines, that of stone and that of earth, ran the
-Roman road, still probably in Edwin’s day capable of being traversed,
-notwithstanding 230 years of neglect. Along this road Cadwallon may
-have marched, and by it he may have encamped for the night, while
-somewhere, behind either wall or _vallum_, Oswald may have placed in
-ambush his father’s veterans. He himself was in a mood of religious and
-patriotic exaltation. On the day before the battle he had in his sleep
-a vision of the blessed Columba, whom he had never seen with the eyes
-of the flesh. The saint’s beautiful face shone with angelic brightness:
-his figure rose majestic till it seemed to touch the clouds: he spread
-his mantle over the Anglian camp. Addressing Oswald in the words which
-Moses spake to Joshua he told him to be strong and of a good courage,
-for the Lord would be with him. Let him march out on the following
-night to battle: his foes should be all scattered in flight, and the
-Welsh king should be delivered into his hands.
-
-Awaking, Oswald assembled his council, told them his dream and received
-the unanimous promise of the army that if they won the victory they
-would make profession of the Christian faith. He then caused a large
-wooden cross to be prepared and a hole to be dug, in which it was
-firmly planted, he himself holding it erect with both hands while
-his soldiers filled in the soil. When this was done he cried to the
-host with a loud voice: “Let us all bend our knees and together call
-upon God Almighty, the Living and the True, that He in His pity will
-defend us from our proud and cruel foe: for He knoweth that this is a
-just war that we have undertaken for the deliverance of our people”.
-All obeyed his command and prayed to the God of the Christians. That
-night, just before dawn, they moved out of camp, attacked the probably
-unsuspecting Britons, and inflicted upon them a crushing defeat. Many
-of the enemy must have perished on the wide moorland; some who probably
-fled southwards with Cadwallon, their king, were whelmed in the deep
-waters of the Tyne. Cadwallon himself met his death (how we know not)
-on the banks of the little Rowley Burn, some five miles south of the
-Tyne and ten miles from the field of battle. Such was the event which
-ruined the British hopes of a reconquest of the island, which confirmed
-the endangered work of Ethelfrid, ratified the victory of Chester, cut
-off the Britons of the south from their kinsmen in Strathclyde, and
-confined the former to that mountainous rectangle of territory which we
-know as Wales. The son of the slain king, “Cadwallader the Blessed,”
-perhaps strove for a time to maintain the high, almost imperial
-pretensions of his father, but his long reign seems to have been on
-the whole disastrous, and when he died a pilgrim at Rome in the year
-681, the Welsh chronicler himself admits that “thenceforth the Britons
-lost the crown of the kingdom and the Saxons gained it”.[64] The two
-centuries which followed the battle of Heavenfield are the darkest and
-dreariest in the history of Wales.
-
-Returning in triumph, as Columba in vision had promised him, Oswald
-proceeded to his father’s wooden palace at Bamburgh, and from thence,
-apparently with little difficulty, extended his rule over all
-Northumbria. In Bernicia he would, of course, as the son of Ethelfrid,
-find many loyal hearts ready to greet him; and even Deira, now that
-Edwin and his progeny were off the stage, had possibly a welcome for
-the man who was not only the deliverer from British oppression, but
-also on his mother’s side descended from the old line. For it will be
-remembered that Acha, wife of Ethelfrid, was daughter of Aelle of Deira.
-
-Thus, then, did Bamburgh, which is now a lonely village by the German
-Ocean, become “the royal city,” the most strongly fortified abode of
-the most powerful king in Britain,[65] the centre of a realm which
-stretched from the Humber to the Firth of Forth, and apparently,
-through the rest of the seventh century, the destined capital of
-England, if England should ever attain to unity. The traveller who
-now visits this dethroned queen of Northumbria will see much that,
-however noble and picturesque, must be eliminated by an effort of the
-imagination if he would picture to himself the Bamburgh of King Oswald.
-The massive keep that “stands four-square to every wind that blows,”
-dates from the reign of Henry II.; the great hall of the castle now
-ingeniously restored by a modern architect, was originally of the time
-of Edward I.; some of the still existing buildings were reared by a
-benevolent ecclesiastic in the reign of George III.; but the natural
-features of the place are unchangeable and unchanged, and in looking
-upon them we know that we behold the same scenes that met the eye of
-the conqueror of Cadwallon. Such is the rock itself, an upheaved mass
-of basalt upon whose black sides the tooth of time seems to gnaw in
-vain; such are the long sandy dunes which gather round its base; such
-the Inner and Outer Farne Islands, fragments of basalt rising out
-of the ocean at distances ranging from three to six miles from the
-castle; such the far-off peninsula, which when the tide flows, becomes
-Holy Island; such the long range of Cheviot on the western horizon,
-snow-covered for many months of the year. Such, we might almost say,
-is the fierce wind which, from one quarter or another, seems for
-ever attacking the lonely fortress, and which assuredly battered the
-“timbered” palace of Oswald as it now batters the time-worn fortress of
-the Plantagenet.
-
-Scarcely had Oswald seated himself on the Northumbrian throne when he
-began to labour for the conversion of his new subjects to Christianity,
-a Christianity, however, not altogether after the fashion which
-Paulinus had taught to Edwin of Deira, but rather according to that
-which he himself had learned of his friends, the monks of Iona. The
-abbot Seghine paid him a visit, probably soon after his accession,
-and heard from his own lips the marvellous story of his vision of
-Columba and the victory of Heavenfield; and one of his monastic family
-was despatched to teach the Northumbrians the religion of Christ.
-This missionary was a man of narrow intellect and austere temper, who
-soon returned to Iona with the unwelcome tidings that it was but lost
-labour to try to teach a nation so barbarous and untamable. At the
-council whereat this report was rendered sat a man, probably in early
-middle life, the monk Aidan. “It seems to me, my brother,” said he,
-“that thou hast been somewhat too hard on these poor unlearned folk,
-and hast scarcely remembered the apostolic precept to give milk to
-babes till such time as they may be able to understand and to keep
-the more sublime commands of God.” The eyes of all in the council
-were turned upon the speaker who had so opportunely spoken words of
-wisdom. “Aidan shall be bishop,” “Aidan shall be ordained to preach
-to the Northumbrians,” was the unanimous decision of the assembly. He
-accordingly went southward, and for the next sixteen years (635–51) was
-the great missionary bishop of Northumbria.
-
-It must have seemed to Aidan when he visited the palace of the
-king, his patron, as if it was a special act of Providence that had
-fixed that palace where he found it. For here on the storm-beaten
-Northumbrian coast, within six miles from the royal dwelling, lay
-an island whereupon he could establish his monastery, and wherein
-he could be out of the world yet within reach of the world like his
-prototype Columba in Iona. This island which was given him by the king
-for his possession, bore then and has borne intermittently ever since
-the name of Lindisfarne; but even at this day for once that its legal
-designation of Lindisfarne is mentioned, you shall hear it a thousand
-times called by the endearing appellation of Holy Island, given to it
-probably twelve centuries ago when it first received the imprint of
-Aidan’s sandals. The island is but a small one, only about 1,000 acres
-in extent, with three fair-sized farms, and a population of about 800
-persons, chiefly engaged in fishing, and in winter often hard pressed
-for subsistence. The beautiful ruins of the Benedictine abbey, the
-parish church, the castle, built in the Commonwealth period, all belong
-to ages long posterior to the time when it first became “Holy Island”;
-but here, as at Bamburgh, the natural features of the landscape are
-so unchanged that it requires but little effort of the imagination to
-enable the beholder to travel backward through the centuries to see
-Cuthbert praying among the sea-gulls, or Aidan slowly pacing the long
-spit of sand which lay between him and the palace of the king. It will
-be seen that it is spoken of as an island, and such for all practical
-purposes it has ever been; for though on the north it stretches out a
-long sandy arm to the mainland, and at dead low water travellers may
-reach it from thence all-but dry shod, still their path, traversing
-three miles of wet sand and leading them through the waste of waters on
-either hand, seems to sever them from the mainland rather than to unite
-them thereto, and the inhabitants are at this day islanders in heart
-and feeling.
-
-Here then dwelt the Celtic apostle of Northumbria, and from hence did
-he diffuse that influence which accomplished the lasting conversion of
-the northern Angles to Christianity. In this work he was powerfully
-aided by King Oswald. In all the history of Christian Church and
-state during eighteen centuries there are few fairer chapters than
-that which deals with the intercourse between Oswald and Aidan. There
-was evidently something in the character of the Celtic bishop which
-won for him more than the veneration, the love, of the Anglian king.
-Aidan was a man of absolute simplicity of character, intent on one
-purpose alone, that of spreading the Christian faith in the kingdom of
-Northumbria, utterly indifferent to wealth, and fame, and power, and
-yet without that harshness and austerity which the men of one idea so
-often display, and which made many of the noblest of medieval saints
-unloveable. Herein, and in his genuine, not feigned, contempt of riches
-we trace a certain resemblance between the saint of Lindisfarne and
-the saint of Assisi. Bede describes the character of Aidan with an
-enthusiasm all the more trustworthy, because he regretfully observes
-that “his zeal for God was not according to knowledge, since he kept
-the day of the Lord’s Pascha according to the manner of his race, that
-is from the fourteenth day to the twentieth”. He says of him, however,
-that “herein did he chiefly commend his doctrine to others in that he
-taught none otherwise than as he lived among his friends”; words which
-remind us of Chaucer’s often quoted description of the “Poure Persoun
-of a Toun”:--
-
- But Criste’s loore and his Apostles twelve
- He taughte, but first he folwed it hymselve.
-
-It was a strange, but, as Bede says, a most beautiful sight, when
-the missionary who as yet had not fully mastered our English tongue
-would preach to the people; when Oswald, whose boyhood passed at
-Iona had made him master of the difficult Gaelic tongue, stood forth
-as interpreter, and translated to his own grim warriors and to the
-servants of his palace “the words of the heavenly life” as they fell
-from the lips of Aidan. Occasionally, but not too often, for he
-dreaded the fascinations of a court, Aidan would accept the royal
-invitation and appear with one or two of his clergy in the great hall
-at Bamburgh. Even then after a short and hurried repast he would go
-forth speedily with his friends to read the Scriptures, to chant the
-Psalter, or to pray. But the scene enacted at one such courtly festival
-lingered for generations in the memory of men. It was Easter day (the
-heterodox Easter, as it may be feared), and the king and the bishop
-had just sat down to the mid-day meal. The bishop was on the point
-of stretching forth his hand to bless the royal dainties which were
-served in a splendid silver dish, when the king’s almoner abruptly
-entered and told his master that a multitude of poor persons gathered
-from all quarters had arrived, and were sitting in the streets and in
-the courtyard of the palace, plaintively demanding alms from the king.
-Thereupon Oswald at once ordered the victuals to be distributed among
-the beggars, and the dish itself to be broken up into fragments, one of
-which should be given to each of them. Aidan, who was himself a most
-generous benefactor of the poor, was so delighted with the deed that he
-clasped the king’s right hand and exclaimed, “May this hand never see
-corruption!”
-
-Devoted as Oswald was to the Christianisation of his people he was
-no pious _roi fainéant_, but a strong and successful monarch who
-made his power felt at least from the Firth of Forth to the Bristol
-Channel. Bede tells us, perhaps with some unconscious exaggeration of
-the glory of his native Northumbria, that “he received under his sway
-all the nations and provinces of Britain, which are divided into four
-languages, those of the Britons, the Picts, the Scots, and the Angles”.
-As he evidently here uses “Angles” as equivalent to Angles and Saxons,
-this sentence represents Oswald as accomplishing more than Egbert was
-to achieve two centuries later, and as practically the lord of our
-whole island. Consistently herewith he represents him as the sixth of
-the Bretwaldas; and Adamnan, who at first calls him merely “regnator
-Saxonicus,” says that after the victory of Heavenfield he was “ordained
-by God emperor of the whole of Britain”. But all these statements must
-be taken with considerable reservation. Oswald wielded evidently during
-the seven years of his reign the predominant power in the island, but
-we are not to think of him as interfering with any of the details of
-administration in Wessex or East Anglia, still less in Wales or among
-the Scots of Dalriada. With Wessex, indeed, we are expressly told that
-he formed ties both of relationship and of religion. When Cynegils,
-King of the West Saxons, who had been converted to Christianity by
-the preaching of Birinus, was baptised, his godfather, the man who,
-according to ecclesiastical phrase, “received him emerging from the
-sacred laver,” was Oswald of Bernicia, who also became his son-in-law,
-accepting from the old West Saxon king the hand of his daughter in
-marriage.
-
-From the character of our one chief authority, Bede’s _Ecclesiastical
-History_, it naturally but unfortunately follows that we are left in
-almost total ignorance of the political events in Oswald’s reign.
-Gladly would we know, for instance, whether the fierce Mercian,
-Penda, bowed his head even for a time under the yoke of Northumbrian
-supremacy, but on this point we are left without information. There are
-hints of earlier wars and fightings between the two states, but all
-that we can certainly say is that on August 5, 642, Oswald and Penda
-met in battle at a place called Maserfield,[66] and that though Penda’s
-brother fell in the fight the Mercian king “was victorious by diabolic
-art,” and Oswald lay dead on the battlefield. He died praying: when he
-saw himself girt round by the Mercian host and knew that his death was
-inevitable, he cried aloud: “Lord, have mercy on the souls of my army,”
-and the remembrance of this prayer passed into a proverb: “‘Lord, pity
-their souls,’ as Oswald said when he was falling to the ground”.
-
-Oswald was in his thirty-eighth year when he died, the second
-Northumbrian prince in the prime and vigour of his days, who had
-fallen before the elderly barbarian, Penda. The brutal heathen had his
-head and hands severed from the body and fixed on stakes; but before
-long, at a turn of the wheel of fortune, these relics, now deemed to
-be endowed with miraculous power, were carried to distant sites where
-they met with more honourable treatment. The head was deposited in the
-monastery at Holy Island, and in after years shared the migrations of
-the relics of St. Cuthbert: the hand, “the uncorrupted hand” which
-Aidan had blessed, was enshrined at Bamburgh: the body, by the order
-of Oswald’s niece, Osthryd, now Queen of the Mercians, was reverently
-laid in the monastery of Bardney in the centre of Lincolnshire. In
-his lifetime Oswald had, with some display of force, extended his
-dominion over this South-Humbrian land, mindful of which fact the
-patriotic monks were loth to receive the body of their conqueror, but a
-pillar of fire hovering at night over the coffin showed them that the
-corpse to which they were refusing admittance would be a precious and
-wonder-working relic, and turned their aversion into eagerness for its
-possession. Numerous in fact were the miracles alleged to be wrought
-by the dissevered fragments of the kingly body, and even by the dust
-of the battlefield on which he had fallen. The day of his martyrdom,
-August 5, was appropriated to the cult of Saint Oswald, and the fame of
-the new saint and his wonder-working relics spread rapidly not only in
-England but in Ireland and on the Continent.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X.
-
-OSWY AND PENDA.
-
-
-The Mercian victory of the Maserfield was doubtless followed by a
-ravaging expedition into Northumbria. When the waters of the flood
-subside we find that country again split into the two kingdoms of
-Bernicia and Deira. In the former reigned Oswy (or Oswiu), brother of
-the martyred Oswald; in the latter, Oswin, son of that Osric, Edwin’s
-cousin, whose one year’s reign preceded the accession of Oswald. For
-seven years (644–651) these two kings reigned side by side in the
-northern land, but before their further career is described it is
-necessary to turn back and consider more closely the history of that
-midland kingdom which was running so even a race with Northumbria for
-the supremacy in Britain.
-
-The causes and the stages of the development of the Mercian power, and
-even the origin of the Mercian state, are alike hidden from us. All
-that can be said is that in the early part of the seventh century we
-find the Mercians, an Anglian tribe, manifesting themselves in force in
-Staffordshire and Shropshire along the Welsh _March_ from which they
-perhaps derived their name. As the century proceeds, they conquer or
-ally with themselves the Middle Anglians, who seem to have inhabited
-Leicestershire and some of the country adjacent thereto; as well as
-the South Angles in Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and Hertfordshire,
-who sooner or later became incorporated in the new state. The agent in
-these great changes was probably Penda himself, the strong-willed pagan
-who, in 626, at the age of fifty, ascended the Mercian throne, which
-he occupied for nearly thirty years. Of his alliance with Cadwallon
-of Wales, and his successful wars with the Northumbrian kings, Edwin
-and Oswald, enough has already been said in previous chapters; but his
-dealings with Wessex and East Anglia require some further notice.
-
-In the year 628, as we learn from the Chronicle, Cynegils and Cwichelm
-fought with Penda at Cirencester and made a treaty there. These are
-the two Kings of Wessex, apparently reigning together as father and
-son, who sent the assassin to deal that murderous blow at the life of
-Edwin which was foiled only by the self-devotion of the loyal thegn,
-Lilla. That event and the retaliatory campaign of Edwin against Wessex
-no doubt preceded by some years this war of 628 between Wessex and
-Mercia. Of the details of the treaty by which the war was ended we know
-nothing, but it has been conjectured with some probability[67] that it
-included a cession of the north-western conquests of Ceawlin to Mercia,
-and the acceptance by Wessex of the line of the Thames as her northern
-boundary.[68]
-
-Penda’s next intervention in the affairs of his southern neighbours
-took place in 645, three years after his overthrow of Oswald. Wessex
-had in the meantime become Christian, chiefly through the preaching of
-a certain Birinus, who had received his commission from Pope Honorius
-on his assurance “that he would scatter the seeds of the holy faith in
-the innermost parts of England whither no teacher had preceded him”.
-The orthodoxy of Pope Honorius has been sorely attacked on account of
-his unfortunate vacillations on the subject of the Monothelete heresy,
-but his evident interest in the conversion of our remote island should
-be allowed to plead on his behalf as at least one who was zealous for
-the Christian faith. Birinus discharged the commission entrusted to him
-with energy and success. We have but little authentic information as
-to his life, but it seems clear that in respect of the conversion of
-the kingdoms he held the same relation towards Wessex that Augustine
-had held to Kent, Paulinus to Deira, and Aidan to Bernicia. The
-influence of Northumbrian Christianity aided the zealous missionary,
-and, as we have seen, Oswald of Bernicia stood sponsor for his future
-father-in-law when in the year 635 Cynegils, the aged King of Wessex,
-received the sign of baptism. Cwichelm, son of Cynegils and partner
-of his throne, the chief actor apparently in the murderous attempt
-upon Edwin of Deira, followed his father’s example in the following
-year, but died soon after, and when old Cynegils died (641) five
-years later, he was succeeded by another son, named Cenwalh, who
-still persisted in heathenism. Soon, however, as Bede remarks, he who
-refused the offer of the heavenly kingdom, lost his earthly crown.
-Growing tired of his wife, who was a daughter of Penda, he divorced
-her, and this repudiation naturally brought upon him the wrath of
-the Mercian king. Expelled from his kingdom (645) by the victorious
-arms of Penda, Cenwalh took refuge in East Anglia, at that time the
-most enthusiastically Christian of all the English kingdoms, with the
-possible exception of Kent. The persuasions of the East Anglian king,
-Anna, induced him to make profession of Christianity, and when, after
-three years’ exile (648), he succeeded in recovering his ancestral
-kingdom, Cenwalh continued faithful to his new creed, and for the
-remaining twenty-eight years of his reign he ruled as a Christian king.
-Thus Wessex, before the seventh century was half way through, accepted
-the faith of Christ.
-
-The place which witnessed the baptisms of these West Saxon kings, and
-in which Birinus fixed his episcopal seat, deserves a passing notice.
-The Dorchester of Oxfordshire (which must on no account be confounded
-with the county-town of Dorset) is now a pleasant but obscure village
-on the left bank of the Thames about twelve miles south-east of Oxford.
-It is in a country full of archæological interest. High on a hill to
-the west rises what has been truly called “the mighty camp of Sinodun,”
-a relic apparently of pre-Roman times; and nearer may be traced the
-so-called “dykes” of the Thames, the work probably of Roman engineers.
-In the village itself is a fine old abbey church with architecture
-of various ages, a church which might yet serve on occasion as a
-cathedral. There is also a great charm in the antique appearance
-of the place with its picturesque houses, some of them dating from
-the seventeenth century. Brought thus in contact with the spirit of
-the past, and freed from the importunate clamours of the industrial
-present, the traveller finds it not hard to re-create the scenes of
-the yet more distant past, to imagine Birinus preaching in his little
-wooden church, or Cynegils and his thegns riding through the swollen
-river. But for all this, it is hard to bring home to oneself the truth
-that this village was an ecclesiastical, and almost a literary centre,
-while Oxford, if it existed at all, was an obscure cluster of cottages;
-that she was the ecclesiastical metropolis, first of Wessex and then
-of Mercia, and that royal Winchester and stately Lincoln are both in a
-certain sense the daughters of Dorchester.
-
-The shelter which King Anna gave to the fugitive Cenwalh was an act of
-generous courage in the ruler of a country which had already suffered
-much and was to suffer more at the hands of the terrible Penda. It
-will be remembered that Redwald, King of East Anglia, who had shown
-hospitality to Edwin, died a heathen, though more than tolerant of
-Christianity; but his successor, Earpwald (617–28), yielding to the
-persuasions of the Northumbrian king, allowed himself to be baptised.
-After a short reign Earpwald was assassinated by a worshipper of the
-old gods.[69] Heathenism and anarchy then prevailed in East Anglia
-for three years, at the end of which time Sigebert the Learned,
-brother or half-brother of Earpwald, returned from Gaul, in which
-country he had spent some years, having incurred for some reason the
-hatred of Redwald. In Gaul he had become a Christian and had pursued
-those studies which had procured for him his surname “the Learned”.
-When raised to the East Anglian throne, he successfully attempted
-the reconversion of the country to Christianity, from which it never
-afterwards relapsed. He also--a noteworthy fact--“established a school
-in which boys might be instructed in letters,” following herein the
-example set him by the King of Kent, and bringing his school teachers
-from Canterbury. In all his works, scholastic and religious, he was
-zealously aided by Felix, a missionary-bishop from Burgundy, who had
-fixed the seat of his episcopate at Dunwich, a city on the coast of
-Suffolk, long since swallowed up by the ocean. While the trained
-ecclesiastic, Felix, supplied the organising and educating influences
-needed by the infant Church of East Anglia, an enthusiastic energy
-was imparted to it by an Irish monk named Fursa, a man of vivid
-imagination, full of his marvellous revelations of the world of
-spirits, one whom, when we read the story of his visions as it is told
-us by Bede, we are almost persuaded to call the unlettered Dante of
-the seventh century. As men in Florence said when they saw the poet
-pass, “That man has been in hell,” so the awe-struck Angles of Norfolk
-and Suffolk noted on the cheek and shoulder of Fursa the scars of the
-burning inflicted upon him for a slight offence by the foul fiends
-whom he had seen in one of his visions; and they remembered how in the
-depths of winter, and though he was thinly clad, the sweat streamed
-down his face while he rehearsed the terrible story.
-
-Thus then, in the fourth decade of the seventh century, East Anglia
-became Christian: and already in her history was manifested that
-extraordinary desire of men in high places to save their own souls
-at the cost of leaving their duties to their fellows unfulfilled,
-which was, it may be said, the glory and the shame of Anglo-Saxon
-Christianity. After two or three years of reigning, Sigebert
-abdicated in 634, received the tonsure, and retired to a monastery.
-He was succeeded by his cousin Egric, but ere the new king had
-been long on the throne, the terrible Penda (probably crossing the
-fens which separated the two kingdoms) invaded East Anglia (637?).
-Some remembrance of Sigebert’s capacity and valour in war seems to
-have dwelt in the minds of his late subjects, who saw themselves
-out-numbered by the Mercian hosts. They surrounded the monastery, and
-when their clamorous cries for Sigebert failed to draw him from his
-retirement, they pulled him out by main force and compelled him to
-place himself at their head. But he, mindful of his vow, refused to arm
-himself with any other weapon than a rod, and remained passive through
-all the tumult of the battle. He was slain and Egric with him; the East
-Anglian army was cut to pieces, and Penda, as usual, triumphed.
-
-It will be observed, however, that in these inter-Anglian contests
-annexation scarcely ever follows victory. The conquered people choose
-another king, over whom the conqueror no doubt asserts some sort of
-supremacy, and all goes on as before. So was it now. Anna, the son
-of Eni, of the royal East Anglian stock, but how nearly related to
-Sigebert we are not informed, succeeded his kinsman and reigned for
-some seventeen or eighteen years (637–654). During this time, as we
-have seen, he gave shelter to the fugitive King of Wessex, Cenwalh, and
-converted him to Christianity. He is chiefly noted for his “saintly
-progeny” of daughters and granddaughters, some of whom married into the
-royal houses of Kent and Mercia, carrying thither their enthusiastic
-zeal for the propagation of the Christian faith, and nearly all of
-whom became eventually abbesses in Britain or Gaul. The reign of this
-excellent king came to an end about 654. It is scarcely necessary to
-state the cause of his death. He was slain, probably slain in battle,
-by the nearly octogenarian Penda. Thus had three kings of East Anglia
-as well as two kings of Northumbria fallen before the all-conquering
-Mercian. But the tale of his victories was well-nigh told. Let us turn
-back to consider what had been happening in Northumbria during the
-twelve years that had elapsed since the death of Oswald.
-
-Two kings, as has been said, with perplexingly similar names, had been,
-perhaps by some tumultuary vote of their countrymen, raised to the two
-now separate Northumbrian thrones: Oswy, son of Ethelfrid, to reign in
-his great grandfather Ida’s palace at Bamburgh, as king of Bernicia;
-Oswin, collateral descendant of Aelle and Edwin, to reign at York over
-Deira. Soon after his accession Oswy, who though only about thirty
-years of age, was a widower with at least two nearly grown-up children,
-sent a priest named Utta, “a man of much gravity and truth, and for
-that reason held in high honour even by princes,” to solicit from the
-king of Kent the hand of his niece Eanfled, the exiled daughter of
-Edwin of Deira. It was arranged that Utta should travel to Kent by
-land, but--perhaps from fear of robbers--he was to return with the
-maiden by sea. Before his departure the priest sought Aidan’s blessing
-and prayers for his safe journey. The saint foretold that he would
-meet with contrary winds, rising to a tempest, but gave him a bottle
-of holy oil to cast upon the raging waters. All happened as Aidan had
-foretold. The ship in which Utta and his precious charge were embarked
-was assailed by a tremendous storm: no anchors would hold; the sailors,
-finding the ship beginning to fill with water from the waves that swept
-over her, gave themselves up for lost. Then the priest, remembering
-Aidan’s gift, poured oil from his flask upon the waters and the sea
-ceased from its raging. Probably the violence of the storm has been
-somewhat exaggerated by the narrators; but it is interesting to note
-that modern seamanship does not disdain to use an expedient which
-in the seventh century was deemed miraculous. One object in Oswy’s
-matrimonial alliance was doubtless that of strengthening his claim on
-the men of Deira by his union with Edwin’s daughter. Another result
-which he perhaps did not foresee was the revival in an acuter form of
-the strife between the Roman and Celtic Churches for the possession
-of Northumbria, since Eanfled represented the Roman Christianity of
-Augustine and Paulinus, while Oswy, like Oswald, had learned in his
-youth the Christianity of the Hebrides which was represented by his
-friend the saintly Aidan.
-
-It was probably more or less the aim of every Northumbrian king to
-reunite the two kingdoms over which Edwin and Oswald had ruled as one
-realm. Thus Oswy may from the beginning have seen with impatience the
-rival power of Oswin of Deira. The latter was a man dear alike to
-martial thane and to devout Churchman: “fair of face, tall of stature,
-pleasant of speech, courteous in manner, and open-handed both to the
-noble and to the base-born. This truly royal dignity of his, displayed
-both in his looks and in his actions, won for him the love of all, so
-that from nearly all the [other] provinces [of the land] men of noblest
-birth flocked to do him service.”
-
-To this kingly soul was conjoined the virtue, rare in kings, of
-humility, to illustrate which Bede tells a well-known story. It appears
-that Aidan, from his island home in Lindisfarne, now often extended his
-missionary journeys far and wide through Deira, and, though he made a
-point of travelling on foot, had accepted from Oswin the present of a
-horse to enable him to cross the manifold rivers of Yorkshire. Meeting
-one day a poor man who asked of him an alms, and having apparently no
-money in his scrip, he gave to the astonished beggar the horse with
-all its royal trappings, “for he was very pitiful, a nourisher of the
-poor and, so to speak, a father of the miserable”. When the king heard
-this he very naturally asked the bishop the reason of his strange
-procedure. “I had specially chosen that horse for your use, and if it
-was a question of giving horses to beggars at all, I had others, much
-cheaper ones, in my stable which would have served your purpose as
-well.” Hardly with justice Aidan answered: “What art thou saying, O
-King? Is my steed, the offspring of a mare, dearer to thee than that
-poor man, a son of God?” And thereupon they went into the palace to
-dine. The bishop sat apart in his own place; the king who had just come
-in from hunting stood at the fire with his courtiers warming himself.
-Suddenly the reproving words of the bishop darted into his soul. He
-ungirded himself of his sword, which he handed to a courtier, and
-hastening to the bishop fell at his feet and asked forgiveness, “for
-never henceforward will I cavil at any act of thine in giving from my
-treasures what thou wilt to the children of God”. The bishop assured
-him of his forgiveness and bade him sit down joyfully to the feast.
-Oswin obeyed, and his merry laugh soon resounded through the hall, but
-the mantle of his late sadness fell upon Aidan who began to weep. “Why
-these tears, my father?” said a priestly companion in the Celtic speech
-which the men of Deira could not understand. “I know,” answered the
-bishop, “that this king will not live long. I never saw so humble a
-prince, and this people is not worthy to have such a ruler.”
-
-Too soon were Aidan’s forebodings justified. In the seventh year of
-Oswin’s reign the disputes between the two Northumbrian kingdoms
-reached a head, and their armies met in the field near Catterick, in
-Yorkshire. Finding himself hopelessly out-numbered, Oswin dismissed his
-soldiers to their homes and fled to the house of one of his followers
-named Hunwald whom he believed to be a loyal friend. Unfortunately
-Hunwald betrayed him to Oswy, whose officer Ethelwin was admitted into
-the house by the treacherous host and slew Oswin, together with his
-faithful henchman, Tondheri, who had shared his flight. This deed,
-which was evidently considered no fair act of war, but a foul and
-detestable murder, took place at Gilling (near Richmond in Yorkshire),
-on August 20, 651. At the request of Queen Eanfled, Oswin’s near
-kinswoman, a monastery was erected on the spot by Oswy as a sort of
-expiation of his crime. Prayers in that monastery were daily offered
-for the souls of the two kings, the murderer and the murdered, but the
-blot on Oswy’s memory remained. Twelve days after the death of his
-royal friend and disciple (Aug. 31, 651), Aidan also died after having
-for seventeen years held the see of Lindisfarne. The shortness of the
-interval after Oswin’s death, and the close connexion with that event
-in which it is mentioned by Bede, seem to authorise the conjecture that
-grief at this treacherous murder of a Christian prince by his professed
-brother in the faith may have hastened the death of the toil-worn
-prelate. He died, not at Lindisfarne, but at a certain _villa regia_
-“not far from the city,” says Bede, “of which I have already spoken”.
-It is generally assumed, perhaps too hastily, that this royal _villa_
-was on the site of the modern village of Bamburgh, close to the foot of
-the rock on the top of which stood undoubtedly both the palace and the
-town of Bebbanburh. A tent was spread for the dying saint contiguous to
-the church on its western side. He died leaning against a buttress of
-the church, and the lovers of miracles noticed that when the village
-and the church were wrapped in flames in the course of one of Penda’s
-ravaging expeditions, this buttress against which the dying saint had
-leaned his head was the only part of the fabric which survived the
-conflagration.
-
-The Northumbrian ravages of Penda may possibly have been of frequent
-occurrence. Besides that just mentioned there was at least one more in
-the lifetime of the saint, possibly soon after the death of Oswald.
-In this expedition also he sought by the aid of fire to achieve the
-conquest of the fortress which, in fact, remained impregnable till the
-invention of gunpowder. Destroying all the hamlets in the immediate
-neighbourhood of the royal city, he collected their ruins together,
-an immense mass of wooden beams, brushwood, straw-thatch and other
-inflammable materials, and piling them up against the lowest end of the
-cliff, waited for a favourable breeze to kindle his fire. It happened
-that at this time Aidan had retired from monastic Lindisfarne to the
-yet more solitary Farne Islands, where, but for the myriads of sea-fowl
-which resort thither in the breeding season, he could be alone with
-his Creator. Looking across the two miles of sea which separated him
-from Bamburgh, the saint saw clouds of smoke arising and balls of fire
-flying high over the castle walls. With hands and eyes uplifted towards
-heaven he cried: “See, O Lord, what ills Penda worketh”. Thereat, says
-the legend, the wind changed, the flames beaten back from the fortress
-were driven upon the besiegers, who, with some of their number badly
-burned and all utterly affrighted, at once desisted from the siege of
-the city.
-
-But there must have been peaceful intervals in the long duel between
-Mercia and Northumbria. In one of these intervals, Alchfrid, Oswy’s
-son, sought and obtained the hand of Penda’s daughter, Cyneburga, in
-marriage. This led to a similar request from Penda’s son, Peada, King
-of the Middle Angles, for the hand of Alchfleda, daughter of Oswy. He
-was told that the only terms on which his suit could be successful were
-that he and all his people should receive the Christian faith. His
-brother-in-law, Alchfrid, strongly urged him to the same conclusion,
-and he consented to listen to the teaching of the Christian priests.
-When he heard of the promise of a heavenly kingdom, the hope of a
-resurrection and of future immortality, he declared that he would
-gladly accept such a religion as that, even though no virgin-bride was
-to be the prize of his conversion. He came in 653 with a long train
-of thegns, soldiers and servants, and was baptised by Finan, Aidan’s
-successor, at a royal _villa_ called Ad Murum, close to the Roman wall,
-and twelve miles from the sea. The conversion of Peada was followed
-by the mission of four priests to the Middle Angles, that is the
-inhabitants of Leicestershire. The preaching of these men, seconded by
-the royal influence, was most successful, and practically the whole of
-that tribe came over to the new faith. Mercia, properly so called, on
-the west of the country of the Middle Angles, was still heathen, but
-even there Penda did not prohibit the preaching of Christianity. He
-does not seem to have had any deep-rooted objection to the doctrine of
-the Nazarene, though it was not for him, the descendant of Woden, to
-worship a deity so unlike the gods of his fathers. He did not, however,
-conceal his hatred and contempt of those men who, professing the faith
-of Christ, did not bring forth works according thereto, saying that
-they were poor and despicable wretches who did not obey the God in whom
-they professed to believe.
-
-At last when the old king was close upon his eightieth year, the
-ever-smouldering quarrel with Northumbria broke out again into flame.
-Oswy felt that the repeated raids of Penda must by some means be
-brought to an end. He offered quantities of costly royal ornaments
-as the price of peace, but in vain. Penda would give no promise to
-cease from ravaging. “Then,” said he, “if the barbarian will not be
-mollified by our gifts, let us offer them to the Lord God as the
-price of victory.” His daughter dedicated to sacred virginity; twelve
-estates given for the foundation of as many monasteries; these were
-his vows to the Most High, and having made these promises he moved
-forward with confidence to the war, though his army was much smaller
-than that of the enemy; though his young son, Egfrid, was a hostage
-in Penda’s hands; though his nephew, Ethelwald, Oswald’s son, who had
-been elected King of Deira, was apparently on the side of the enemy;
-and though Ethelhere, brother of the martyred Anna, now marched to
-battle in the host of the terrible pagan who had bound East Anglia to
-his chariot-wheels.[70] Alchfrid, son of Oswy, fought by his father’s
-side, notwithstanding his affinity with Penda. If we may trust the
-fitful light of Nennius’s history, Penda was again in this attack on
-Northumbria allied with the Britons, and Catgabail, King of Gwyneth,
-went with him to the war, but by a stealthy night march evaded the
-necessity of fighting.
-
-The armies met on the banks of the Winwaed, possibly the Went, a stream
-in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The exaggerated traditions of a later
-day assigned to the Mercian king thirty regiments, each as large as
-the little army of Oswy, under the command of as many noble generals.
-Evidently, however, there was no little treachery in Penda’s camp. The
-Welsh king, as we have seen, deserted on the night before the action.
-Ethelwald, in the hour of conflict, drew off his troops, and from a
-safe distance watched the event of the battle. Possibly there were
-others in the Mercian army who at heart sympathised with the Christian
-king. At any rate, Oswy won a signal victory (November 15, 655). Nearly
-all the thirty Mercian generals, including the East Anglian Ethelhere,
-were killed. Multitudes of fugitives were drowned in the waters of
-the Winwaed, swollen with autumnal rain. Most important of all, the
-octogenarian Penda, the slayer of five kings, perished in the fight,
-and with him fell the last hopes of English heathendom.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI.
-
-TERRITORIAL CHANGES--THE CONFERENCE AT WHITBY--THE GREAT PLAGUE.
-
-
-The victory by the Winwaed left Oswy undoubtedly the mightiest king in
-Britain. It may be convenient to enumerate here the chief territorial
-changes during the latter half of the seventh century which can be
-discerned between the succession of bishops and the miracles of saints
-that form naturally the chief subject of Bede’s _Ecclesiastical
-History_.
-
-1. Northumbria, at any rate after Oswy’s victory, may have stretched
-along the eastern coast from Aberdeen or the Cromarty Firth nearly to
-the Wash. We are distinctly told that “he subdued the nation of the
-Picts or at least the largest part of them to the Anglian kingdom,”
-and it is generally agreed that this must refer to the Picts north
-of the Firth of Forth, which was at this time the ordinary Anglian
-boundary. Southward, the dominions of which Oswy was overlord probably
-now included the whole of Yorkshire. It seems, however, to have been
-an accepted principle that when the overlord was king in Bernicia
-there must be an under-king in Deira. For seven years, as we have
-seen, the comely and gracious Oswin, either as equal colleague or as
-such under-king, reigned in Deira (644–51). After his murder and the
-consequent extinction of the direct male line of the descendants of
-Aelle, Oswald’s son, Ethelwald, ruled over the southern kingdom. Did
-his dubious conduct on the battle-plain of the Winwaed fail to secure
-for him the favour of his victorious uncle? We cannot say, but it is an
-ominous circumstance that soon after that event he vanishes from the
-scene and is replaced by Alchfrid, son of Oswy by his first marriage.
-We have heard of this prince as assisting in the conversion of his
-brother-in-law, Peada, to Christianity; we have seen him fighting by
-his father’s side against his father-in-law, Penda; we shall find
-him taking a leading part in the discussions about the date of Easter
-and generally befriending the Roman party; but besides these facts we
-hear also of some action on his part, possibly in the way of overt
-rebellion, whereby he added to the “labours” of his father. Whatever
-the date of this rebellion, if such it were, after 664 we hear no more
-of Alchfrid.
-
-The mystery, however, that hangs over the life and death of Alchfrid
-almost heightens the interest which is attached to a monument raised
-to his memory, the celebrated Bewcastle Cross. There in the midst of
-a wide and desolate moor, as desolate, perhaps, now as it was twelve
-hundred years ago, rises an obelisk fourteen and a half feet high,
-once surmounted by a cross which has now disappeared, bearing in
-Runic letters the sacred name “Gessus Christus” (so must our Anglian
-ancestors have spoken of the Saviour), and an inscription which, though
-not yet deciphered beyond dispute, certainly says that the stone was
-raised as a memorial of “Alchfrith, son of Oswy, and aforetime King”.
-Other runes give us the names of Alchfrid’s wife, Cyneburga, of her
-sister (?) Cyneswitha, and of her brother Wulfhere, King of Mercia. An
-inscription seems to record that it was reared in the first year of his
-brother Egfrid, that is in 670. This date gives additional interest
-to the quaint but not ungraceful specimens of Anglian art with which
-the obelisk is enriched, to the flowing tracery of vine-leaves and
-grape-clusters, the birds and dogs, the figures of John the Baptist and
-our Lord, and (in the lowest compartment of all) the standing figure of
-a man with a bird on his wrist, perhaps King Alchfrid himself with his
-falcon. Even should the reading of one line of the inscription, “Pray
-for his soul’s great sin,” prove too fanciful to be accepted by future
-students, we have in the other utterances of this monument enough to
-invest with a peculiar interest the name of Oswy’s son and Penda’s
-son-in-law.
-
-After the death of this prince, two younger sons of Oswy are spoken of
-on somewhat doubtful authority as successively holding the position of
-Deiran under-kings. It seems clear that there was in the two provinces,
-Bernicia and Deira, a certain reluctance to coalesce, an unwillingness
-of each to submit to the king chosen by the other, which it is not
-difficult to understand. Whatever may have been its cause, this
-tendency to estrangement between its two great provinces had doubtless
-something to do with the early downfall of Northumbria.
-
-The southern boundary of Oswy’s kingdom was at this time a somewhat
-uncertain one. In the first place, what is now the county of Lincoln,
-or, as it was then called, Lindissi, was for generations the regular
-prize of war between Northumbria and Mercia. It was added to his
-dominions by the victorious Edwin, and if lost through his defeat by
-Penda, it was recovered by Oswald, but, as we have seen, so little was
-his yoke beloved that the monks of Bardney in Lincolnshire at first
-refused to give shelter to his bones. Under Penda it was doubtless
-again annexed to Mercia, and probably shared the fortunes of that
-middle kingdom until, between 671 and 675, it was recovered from
-Wulfhere, son of Penda, by Oswy’s son and successor, Egfrid. It was
-once more regained for Mercia by Ethelred, probably about the year 679,
-and apparently never after owned the sway of a Northumbrian king.
-
-2. After the victory of the Winwaed, Oswy seems to have been virtually
-master of Mercia. He continued his son-in-law, Peada, as under-king of
-Southern Mercia, that is the part of the kingdom south of the river
-Trent, but he apparently kept Northern Mercia in his own hands. In
-the spring of the following year, however, at the very time when the
-newly converted nation was celebrating the Easter festival, Peada was
-murdered, and dark suspicions prevailed that his young Christian wife
-was an accomplice in the crime. It is not hinted that Oswy himself
-had instigated the deed, but doubtless the horror of it added to the
-dislike with which the people of Mercia viewed the Northumbrian rule.
-Three years after old Penda’s death, three of his veteran generals
-successfully conspired against the Northerner, brought out of his
-hiding-place a young son of their late master, named Wulfhere, whom
-they had till then successfully concealed, expelled Oswy’s thanes,
-and restored the independence of the Mercian kingdom, apparently with
-its old boundaries. The new king Wulfhere was a zealous Christian--as
-indeed, strange to say, were all the children of Penda--and reigned for
-seventeen years well and gloriously (659–675). We hear of no attempt by
-Oswy to recover his supremacy over Mercia, although, as we have seen,
-his son did recover that shuttle-cock of battle, Lindsey. Wulfhere’s
-chief wars seem to have been with the Kings of Wessex, over whom he
-won several victories. The extent of his power is most clearly shown by
-the fact that having formed a friendship with Ethelwalh, King of the
-South Saxons, and persuaded him to be baptised, he handed over to him
-the Isle of Wight and the district occupied by the Meonwaras in the
-east of Hampshire, which he had wrested from the King of Wessex. The
-son of Penda officiated as godfather to the new convert, whose example
-in accepting the Christian faith was followed by many of his thanes and
-soldiers, but not as yet by the bulk of the South Saxon people.
-
-3. Of political events in the kingdom of the East Angles in the period
-now under review, we find scarcely a trace. Shut off from the rest
-of England by the great fen-lands, which covered almost the whole of
-the modern counties of Cambridge and Huntingdon, East Anglia seems to
-have generally kept the even tenour of her own solitary way, which
-was at this time the way of holiness. If we may judge of the people
-from their rulers, we should be inclined to conjecture that, under the
-influence of the preaching of Felix and Fursa, this isolated district
-of England was passing through a phase of religious fervour like that
-which made its counties the stronghold of Lollardy in the fourteenth,
-and of Puritanism in the seventeenth centuries, sending at the latter
-period so many stern enthusiasts to fight in the new-modelled army
-of Cromwell. Of course, in the seventh century religious zeal took
-a direction which would have brought it into fierce collision with
-the Ironsides of Naseby and Marston Moor. All the fairest fruits of
-Christianity at this time were ripened in the cloister, and a monastic
-life seems to have had irresistible attractions for the ladies of the
-royal East Anglian race. King Anna, who, as we have seen, fell in
-battle against Penda in the year 654, left three daughters, two of whom
-were the wives of kings, but all of whom ended their lives as abbesses
-in a convent, and in the next generation two daughters of one of these
-saintly ladies (one of them also a queen consort) followed their
-mother’s example.
-
-4. Very different at one time was the religious history of the kingdom
-of the East Saxons, represented by the two modern counties of Essex and
-Middlesex. When we last heard of the affairs of this little kingdom
-Mellitus had been contemptuously driven forth from his episcopal
-seat in London because he refused to administer the white bread of
-the communion to the heathen sons of King Saberct (617?). Since that
-time a generation had passed away, and Essex was still heathen. The
-king now reigning in London--one of the many Sigeberts who about this
-time perplex the student of Anglo-Saxon pedigrees--was, we are told,
-a friend and a frequent visitor to Oswy of Northumbria. In the halls
-of Bamburgh and Ad Murum the conversation often turned on religious
-subjects; and “How,” said the Northumbrian king, “can you think that
-these things are gods, which are made by the hands of men? You take
-a piece of wood or stone, and what is not needed for the purpose of
-idol-making you either burn in the fire or shape into some common
-household utensil which, when it is done with, is pitched out of doors
-and trodden under foot of men. How can these things be divine? We must
-think of the true God as incomprehensible, unseen, omnipotent, eternal,
-the righteous ruler of the world, who does not dwell in perishable
-substances but has His eternal seat on high. We can understand, too,
-that the beings whom He has created, if they will learn His will and
-do it, shall receive from Him eternal rewards.” Many dialogues of this
-kind at last produced an effect. The East Saxon king was baptised by
-Finan of Lindisfarne, Aidan’s successor, at the same royal _villa_
-of Ad Murum which had witnessed the baptism of Peada, the Mercian.
-Returning to his own kingdom he sought to bring his subjects over to
-his new faith and sent to Oswy for a missionary (653). Hereupon Cedd,
-one of a family of zealous Northumbrian converts who had been preaching
-Christianity in Mercia, was recalled from his work in the Midlands
-and sent to Essex, where he carried on a most successful mission, was
-consecrated as bishop, and, apparently for the first time, founded the
-church of London on a secure basis. Sigebert, however, was slain after
-a reign of some years by two noblemen of his kindred who were offended
-by his meek submission to the counsels of the bishop, and after one
-intervening reign,[71] two kings named Sighere and Sebbi reigned over
-the East Saxons jointly, but always in subjection to the overlordship
-of Wulfhere, King of Mercia, whose “sphere of influence” evidently
-included all the south of England with the doubtful exception of Wessex.
-
-The accession of these two kings probably took place soon after
-660, but dates as well as accurate pedigrees are grievously wanting
-for all this portion of history. In 664 a terrible pestilence, which
-ravaged Essex as well as all the rest of England, shook the newly-born
-faith of the people and divided their rulers. Sighere and all his
-subjects openly apostatised from the faith of Christ, sought out the
-old half-ruined heathen fanes, and began once more to worship the
-idols replaced therein. Sebbi, on the other hand, and the men under
-his sway remained steadfast in their profession of Christianity. Nor
-does the relapse into heathenism of the other half of the kingdom seem
-to have been of long continuance. The zeal of the overlord Wulfhere
-soon remedied that error. He sent his Mercian bishop, Jaruman, on a
-mission to the East Saxons, the third which had been despatched to
-that wavering people, and Jaruman, backed by the authority of his
-sovereign, without much difficulty overturned once more the idol-altars
-and brought back the recalcitrant East Saxons within the embraces of
-the Church. From this time onwards London, its bishops and its commerce
-become of ever-increasing importance in the pages of the historians.
-
-5. The political history of Kent during this period offers little of
-interest. The king whose name figures most largely in the pages of
-Bede is Erconbert (640–64). He married Sexburh, daughter of Anna, one
-of the devout East Anglian family, and, partly perhaps owing to her
-influence, Church and State were more closely welded together in this
-than in any of the other kingdoms. “He was the first of all the English
-kings who by his princely authority ordered the idols throughout his
-kingdom to be abandoned and destroyed, and the fast of the forty days
-[of Lent] to be observed. And in order that these commands might be
-despised by none, he proclaimed fit and proper punishments against the
-transgressors.” Thus in Kent we have reached the second stage in the
-establishment of Christianity, which is now no longer merely tolerated
-or approved by the sovereign but dominant and in a certain sense
-persecuting.
-
-6. The obscure history of the South Saxon kingdom has been already
-touched upon in connexion with that of Mercia. Suffice it to remind
-the reader that under the protecting hand of the great Midland king,
-who evidently wished to make of this kingdom a counterpoise to the
-power of Wessex, it included not only the modern county of Sussex but
-also the Isle of Wight and a good deal of the east of Hampshire; and
-that though its royal family were Christian the bulk of the people
-remained idolators. This religious isolation of the South Saxon people
-is generally attributed to the fact already alluded to, that they
-were separated from the rest of England by the mighty forest of the
-Andredeswald, that “dark impenetrable wood” which yielded in later
-ages to the axes of the charcoal-burners of Sussex and Kent, so that
-the country which we call the Weald is now left comparatively bare and
-treeless. It is hard for us who now know the chief town of the coast
-of Sussex as virtually a suburb of London, to imagine the time when
-Sussex, isolated in its heathen barbarism, remained virtually another
-world to the inhabitants of Essex and Middlesex.
-
-7. The history of the West Saxon kingdom, for which such a brilliant
-future was reserved in the coming generations, is for the seventh
-century obscure and uninteresting. Partly, of course, this may be
-accounted for by the fact that our one transcendent authority for this
-period, Bede, is himself a most patriotic Northumbrian, and cares
-little for distant Wessex. But even after making allowance for this
-weighting of one of the scales, it is impossible not to recognise the
-fact that in the West Saxon line during the greater part of the seventh
-century we meet with no such powerful personalities as Edwin, Oswald,
-and Oswy, nor do we find there any symptoms which would have warranted
-a beholder in looking for the eventual appearance of the splendid
-figures of Alfred, Edward, and Athelstan.
-
-As we have seen, the fortunes of Wessex in her conflict with Mercia
-were at this time generally unprosperous. In 628 there was the
-disastrous war with Mercia. Then came the preaching of Birinus, the
-baptism and death of Cynegils and his son, the accession of the still
-heathen Cenwalh and his expulsion by his enraged brother-in-law of
-Mercia. He returned, perhaps, on the invitation of his kinsman Cuthred,
-to whom he made an enormous grant of property (3,000 “lands” or hides)
-at Ashdown in Berkshire. Having embraced Christianity in his exile, he
-completed the conversion of Wessex to the new faith. Unsuccessful as
-he seems generally to have been in his wars with Mercia, he met with
-better fortune in his campaigns against the southern Britons. In 652
-we are told that he fought--assuredly with the “Walas,” though this
-is not expressly stated--at Bradford-upon-Avon. He thus apparently
-completed the conquest of Wiltshire, and it may well have been within a
-generation after Cenwalh’s victory that Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury,
-built that quaint little church, dedicated to St. Lawrence, which still
-stands overlooking the south-country Bradford, and which is nearly the
-best surviving monument of true Saxon architecture. Six years later
-(658) Cenwalh again fought with the Welsh at Peonnum (or the Pens,
-generally identified with Pensel Wood on the south-eastern border of
-Somerset), and this time we are distinctly told that he drove them as
-far as the river Parret. The larger half of the county of Somerset
-thus became definitively West Saxon, and the far-famed sanctuary of
-Glastonbury and the poetic valley of Avalon now owned the sway of a
-king who, though a Saxon, was also a Christian.
-
-An important acquisition certainly: yet the very fact that it had
-still to be made, illustrates the extremely gradual character of the
-Saxon conquest of Britain. Two hundred years have now elapsed since
-the accepted date of the landing of Hengest, one hundred and seventy
-since Cerdic, one of the latest of the invaders, set foot on the shore
-of Southampton Water, and yet the West Saxons have only just crossed
-the Mendip Hills; nearly half of Somerset and the whole of Devonshire
-and Cornwall have yet to be won. The other records of the reign of
-Cenwalh relate to his battles, generally unsuccessful, with the Mercian
-kings. His fellow-Christian, young Wulfhere, ravaged what was left of
-West Saxon territory north of the Thames, as far as Ashdown. While the
-territory of Wessex had been in some degree growing towards the west,
-it was, as we have already seen, curtailed towards the east by the
-loss of the district of the Meonwaras and the Isle of Wight which were
-handed over by Wulfhere to Sussex. Altogether there was little in the
-fortunes of the West Saxon dynasty under Cenwalh, or under the obscure
-rulers who followed him, to betoken that the hegemony would one day be
-theirs. When towards the end of the century Caedwalla and Ine appear
-upon the scene, the prospect somewhat brightens, but the victories of
-the first and the laws of the second must be dealt with in a later
-chapter.
-
-From this brief review of the relations of the various English
-kingdoms to one another towards the close of the seventh century, it
-will be abundantly evident how far we yet were from anything like
-national unity. There does not even seem to be any dawning feeling
-of fellowship of race. Angle wages with Angle and Saxon with Saxon
-a long and embittered warfare; and more than once a Mercian or West
-Saxon king avails himself of British help to win the victory over
-his kinsfolk. If Anglo-Saxon unity was at length obtained, and we
-know that it was not till far on in the tenth century that it was
-even approximately realised, this result was due undoubtedly to two
-great causes: the influence of the national Christian Church and the
-necessity of self-defence against the Scandinavian invaders. With the
-first of these causes alone we have here to deal. It cannot be doubted
-that zeal for their new-born Christian faith was already in some
-measure drawing the English kings together. When Oswald of Bernicia
-stood sponsor for West Saxon Cynegils, when his brother Oswy persuaded
-East Saxon Sigebert to forsake the follies of idolatry, a moral
-bond of union was formed, which might be developed into a political
-relationship. The consciousness of common interest in the _Civitas
-Dei_ might well become, and eventually did become, a consciousness of
-fellow-citizenship in one great country.
-
-In order however that the Church might exert this unifying influence
-on English politics it was essential that she should be of one mind
-herself; but at this time the unfortunate division between the Roman
-and the Celtic Churches on the utterly unimportant questions of the
-shape of the tonsure and the right calculation of Easter did much to
-prevent so desirable a consummation. Utterly unimportant they seem to
-us, and probably few ecclesiastics of any school of thought would now
-deny their triviality; but there is a well-known law of theological
-dynamics that the bitterness of feeling between rival Churches is in
-inverse proportion to the magnitude of the issues between them; and so
-it proved at this crisis. Owing to the different quarters from which
-the different English kingdoms had received their Christianity, the
-religious map of England was divided in the following manner. Kent and
-East Anglia were firm in their following of Rome. Wessex also, which
-had been won for Christianity by Birinus, was steadily, though perhaps
-not enthusiastically, Roman. Bernicia, till late in the reign of Oswy,
-clung firmly to the teachings of Iona. Deira seems to have been
-generally on the same side, though the remembrance of the teaching of
-Paulinus, kept alive, as it was, by the teaching of his follower James
-the Deacon, had probably modified the strength of its Celticism; and
-Alchfrid the king, influenced by the persuasions of his friend Cenwalh,
-King of Wessex, had embraced with fervour the party of Rome. Mercia and
-Essex, both of which had been evangelised by Northumbrian missionaries,
-seem to have been somewhat half-hearted in their adherence to the
-Celtic traditions.
-
-Such being the condition of things, Oswy, in conjunction with his
-son and colleague, Alchfrid, convoked in the year 664 a synod at
-Streanæshalch to discuss the thorny question of the difference
-between the Churches. The place was well fitted to be the scene of a
-memorable meeting. Its Saxon name, which, according to Bede, signified
-lighthouse-bay, well indicates that conspicuous cliff on the Yorkshire
-coast which we now know so well by the more common-place name of
-Whitby, given to it some three centuries later by its Danish destroyers
-and rebuilders. Hither, to this wind-beaten rock, had the holy Hilda,
-great-niece of Edwin of Deira, removed her convent from the more
-northern Hartlepool; and here she dwelt, ruling her double monastery of
-monks and nuns in all gentleness and purity, while the little Elfleda,
-Oswy’s youngest daughter, whom he had vowed to God on the eve of his
-great battle with Penda, was growing up under her tuition into all
-the virtues of a perfect nun, and preparing to take her place one day
-as abbess of the convent. To the student of English literature Whitby
-monastery is for ever memorable as the home of the first English poet,
-Caedmon, who there, while sitting in the cow-byre, received the command
-from a heavenly visitor to sing “the beginning of things, the going
-forth out of Egypt, the suffering and the resurrection of the Lord”.
-
-At this place, then, all that was eminent for holiness in the infant
-Church of Northumbria came together to discuss the then all-important
-question of the true date for the keeping of Easter. However
-uninteresting from a religious point of view this question may now
-appear, the practical inconvenience of its unsettled condition was
-clearly seen in the household of King Oswy. Here was he, following
-the Celtic usage, celebrating his Easter feast on the fourteenth day
-of the lunar month which included the vernal equinox, while his wife,
-Eanfled, daughter of Edwin and granddaughter of Ethelbert of Kent,
-refused to recognise as a possible Easter any Sunday earlier than the
-fifteenth of the same month. Hence it might possibly happen, nay, in
-the very next year after the council it actually would have happened,
-that in the very same palace the king would be celebrating Easter
-Sunday with all the feasting and the gladness which were considered the
-suitable accompaniments of the day of the Lord’s resurrection, while
-the queen and all the holy men and women of her party would be sitting
-in the sadness of Lent preparing to follow in imagination the Dolorous
-Way by which on the successive days of Passion week the Saviour would
-be led up to the crowning grief of Calvary. The difference, as the
-fair-minded Bede is careful to explain, was not the same as that which
-separated the so-called Quarto-decimans from the Western Church, and
-which was finally condemned at the Council of Nicæa. That party,
-adhering strictly to the Jewish usage, celebrated Easter at the same
-time as the old Passover on “the fourteenth day of the first month,”
-on whatever day of the week that day might happen to fall. Not so,
-however, with the sons of Iona. Columba, Aidan and all the saints of
-the old Celtic Church remembered the Crucifixion on a Friday and the
-Resurrection on a Sunday, whether those days fell on the fourteenth
-or sixteenth of the lunar month or not. Thus the correct date for the
-Christian seasons for both parties had to be arrived at by a compromise
-between the week reckoning and the month reckoning; the only question
-at issue being the form of that compromise and the limits of permitted
-deviation. The Celt contended that the pendulum must swing between
-the fourteenth and the twentieth days of the moon’s age; while the
-Roman ecclesiastic allowed it to swing only between the fifteenth and
-the twenty-first. A small difference truly to cause such long and
-heated arguments, yet, as we have seen, where a house was divided
-against itself on this question, it might occasion no little practical
-inconvenience.
-
-There was much that was illogical and unscientific in the arguments
-on both sides of the controversy. The fathers from Iona were fond
-of appealing to the authority of the beloved Apostle John, which,
-so far as it proved anything, proved not their contention but that
-of the old, universally condemned Quarto-decimans. The supporters
-of the Roman usage loudly asserted the necessity of following St.
-Peter, who certainly cannot be proved, nor can with much probability
-be even conjectured, to have ever expressed an opinion on the point
-at issue between the Churches. Much stress did they also lay on the
-unchanging custom of the Roman Church, whereas that Church had in
-fact shown its good sense by modifying its calendar in some important
-particulars in deference to the calculations of the more scientific
-fathers of Alexandria. Doubtless the real arguments, appealing to the
-heart rather than to the head, were on the one side the remembrance of
-saintly Christian lives, such as those of Columba and Aidan, producing
-a natural reluctance to admit that such men had lived and died in
-grievous error; and on the other side a feeling of impatience that
-the inhabitants of a few rocky islands in the wild Atlantic should
-set their judgment against the richly endowed and stately Churches of
-Paris, Arles and Vienne, of Milan and of Rome.
-
-On the Celtic side of the controversy were ranged the saintly Hilda
-herself, and Colman, Bishop of Lindisfarne, who, after the short
-intervening episcopate of Finan, had succeeded to the dignity held by
-the universally venerated Aidan. It was probably hoped, too, that King
-Oswy would be a stout defender of the usages which he and his brothers
-had learned in their long boyish banishment at Iona. On the other side,
-eager for union with Canterbury and Rome, stood Eanfled, the queen,
-and her step-son, Alchfrid of Deira. There, too, was James the Deacon,
-the follower of Paulinus, who for thirty-one years had maintained the
-cause of Roman Christianity in Deira. Highest in ecclesiastical rank
-on this side was Agilbert the Frank, Bishop of Dorchester, a learned
-man who had studied for some years in Ireland--then a great centre of
-theological study--but had apparently not cared to add the knowledge
-of Anglo-Saxon to his other accomplishments, for we are told that
-Cenwalh, King of Wessex, once his friend and admirer, growing weary at
-length of his “barbarous” way of talking, planted down at Winchester a
-rival bishop who could talk with him in Saxon. This gave Agilbert such
-offence that he resigned his diminished see of Dorchester, and returned
-to Gaul, where he was appointed Bishop of Paris. That migration was,
-however, yet in the future, and it was still as Bishop of the West
-Saxons, though possibly of the divided see, that Agilbert appeared to
-support his sovereign’s friend, Alchfrid, in the great controversy.
-The hint about Agilbert’s “barbarous” Frankish language is especially
-interesting to the philologer as showing how widely the language of
-the Franks, probably from its admixture with degenerate Latin, was
-beginning to diverge from the kindred Anglo-Saxon. Two generations
-previously at the court of Ethelbert, the Kentish courtiers seem to
-have conversed without difficulty with the companions of their Frankish
-queen.
-
-When all were seated, King Oswy arose and made a speech on the need for
-unity of practice between men who were all seeking the same heavenly
-kingdom. Let them inquire which was the true rule for the calculation
-of Easter, and all follow that. He then called on his own bishop,
-Colman, to set forth the reason for his rule. Colman replied with
-the usual reference to the holiness of his predecessors and to the
-authority of the beloved Apostle John. Bishop Agilbert being called
-upon to reply, acutely conscious of his inability to speak in the
-English tongue, prayed that the task of replying might be assigned to
-one of his disciples, named Wilfrid the presbyter, who fully shared
-all his opinions and could clearly set them forth in the king’s own
-language without the intervention of an interpreter.
-
-Herewith there stepped on to the stage of English history an actor who
-was never to be long absent thence through more than forty troublous
-years. Wilfrid, who was now about thirty years of age, was the son of
-a Northumbrian thegn, a youth brought up in the rude luxury of a rich
-Anglian’s hall, with horses, armour and goodly raiment at his disposal;
-but at the age of fourteen a harsh step-mother in his home, and some
-instinct of aspiration after a holier life, sent him to Lindisfarne,
-where he learned much, but gradually became dissatisfied with the
-Celtic position of isolation from Rome. Queen Eanfled, encouraging his
-disaffection, assisted him to visit the court of her cousin, Erconbert
-of Kent, from whence in his twentieth year he set out for Rome. On his
-way through Gaul the bright and handsome Northumbrian had offers of
-worldly preferment and a rich marriage from the Archbishop of Lyons,
-but refusing all such worldly advantages, he pressed on to “the tombs
-of the apostles”. Though to the reader of the pontifical annals, Rome
-in the middle of the seventh century, with its Monotheletic controversy
-and its Lombard wars, may not seem a very inspiring theme, it is
-clear that the great world-city, with its stately ruins and statelier
-church-organisation, exerted a powerful fascination over the mind of
-the young Northumbrian, and during all the rest of his life we find
-him, like another Loyola, staunch in his resolve to live or die for
-the defence of the Holy See. He learned from a certain Archdeacon
-Boniface “the daily lessons from the four gospels, the reasonable mode
-of calculating Easter, and many other things relating to the discipline
-of the Church of which he had been ignorant in his own country,” and
-then returning through Gaul he again visited his friend, the Archbishop
-of Lyons, and received from him the monastic tonsure. The archbishop
-was still minded to make him his heir, and apparently with some such
-expectation Wilfrid remained for three years in attendance upon him.
-By one of those reverses of fortune to which the courtier-prelates of
-Merovingian Gaul were frequently subject, Wilfrid’s patron lost both
-office and life, and Wilfrid himself narrowly, and only on account of
-his foreign origin, escaped sharing his doom.[72] Returning at last
-(in 658), after long wanderings, to his native Deira, he there found
-Alchfrid reigning, a man like-minded with himself in his preference
-of Rome to Iona. He settled eventually in a monastery at Ripon, from
-which Eata, friend and pupil of Aidan, had been expelled on account of
-his adherence to the Celtic usages by the hotly partisan king. Here
-Wilfrid, a year before the convocation of the synod, had been ordained
-as priest by Bishop Agilbert and installed as abbot of the monastery,
-which seems to have been to the end of his days the most dearly loved
-of his homes.
-
-Such was the man, already well versed in the Paschal controversy, and
-deeply tinged with the Roman and Gaulish contempt for the religion of
-the Hebrides, to whom the grateful task was assigned of demolishing the
-arguments of Colman. “The Easter which we observe,” said he, “is that
-which I myself have seen celebrated at Rome, home and burial-place of
-the two great apostles. Wheresoever I journeyed, intent on learning and
-on prayer, throughout Italy and Gaul I found this feast celebrated.
-This feast, Africa, Asia, Egypt, Greece, nay, and the whole Christian
-world through all its various nations and languages do observe,
-save only these two obstinate nations, the Picts and the Britons
-(inhabitants of the two furthest isles in the ocean and of only a part
-even of them), who do with stupid energy strive against the opinion of
-the whole world.” So spoke the haughty, foreign-fashioned ecclesiastic;
-and when we have heard this first tactless utterance of his, we are the
-better able to understand why all the forty years of his episcopate
-were more or less passed in strife. Colman plaintively asked if
-Wilfrid would call the blessed apostle John stupid. Wilfrid replied
-that St. John like St. Paul might do many things to conciliate Jewish
-prejudice, and that after all, his usage being that of the earlier
-Quarto-decimans, did not coincide with the Celtic Easter which must
-always fall on a Sunday. “No,” he ended, “you who shut out the 21st day
-of the moon from your calculation, agree neither with John nor with
-Peter, neither with the Law nor with the Gospel.”
-
-The debate then drifted off into a discussion of “the cycle of
-Anatolius,”[73] and an appeal by Colman to the virtues of Columba and
-his successors who had kept the Celtic Easter. “Surely,” he pleaded,
-“the miracles which they had wrought showed that their teaching was
-acceptable in the sight of God.” “I do not deny,” answered Wilfrid,
-“that these men of whom you thus speak were God’s servants. I think
-that if any Catholic calculator had come to them and taught them the
-better way, they would have obeyed his monitions. And however holy
-your, or I would rather say our, Columba may have been, however mighty
-in signs and wonders, can you prefer his authority to that of the
-blessed Prince of the Apostles, to whom the Lord said, ‘Thou art Peter,
-and on this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall
-not prevail against it, and I will give thee the keys of the kingdom
-of heaven’?” As Wilfrid made this closing quotation the king turned
-to Colman and said: “Is it true that these words were spoken by the
-Lord to Peter?” “It is true, O king!” was the answer. “Can you produce
-any instance of a similar power conferred on your Columba?” “We have
-none,” answered Colman. Said the king: “Do both parties agree without
-controversy on this point, that these words were spoken pre-eminently
-to Peter and that to him the keys of heaven were granted by the
-Lord?” Both answered: “We do”. Thereupon the king thus announced his
-conclusion: “Then I say to you that this is the door-keeper whom I am
-loth to contradict, and whose ordinances I desire to obey to the utmost
-of my power, lest haply when I arrive at the doors of the kingdom there
-shall be none to open them unto me if I have lost the favour of him who
-keeps the keys thereof”.
-
-The Bernician king evidently conceived of heaven as of a Northumbrian
-palace hall: and not unnaturally he, who knew his hands to be stained
-with the blood of his gracious kinsman Oswin, desired to enlist the
-sympathies of the most powerful patron possible on his side against
-the day when he should have to plead for entrance therein. Oswy’s
-decision was, of course, final. All over Northumberland the Roman
-customs as to Easter and the tonsure now prevailed. Bishop Colman, who
-could not reconcile himself to the new ways, abdicated his see and
-returned to Iona, accompanied by all the Irish monks from Lindisfarne
-and by thirty Anglian brethren who shared their opinions. From Iona
-he afterwards went to Ireland and founded a monastery on an island
-off the coast of Mayo, which had not a very successful career. Cedd,
-bishop of the East Saxons, who had acted as interpreter and to some
-extent as mediator between the two parties, accepted the decision of
-the synod, and returned to enforce it in London and the rest of his
-diocese. Everywhere now throughout Teutonic Britain unity with Rome
-was established, and little more than a century elapsed before all the
-Celtic communities in Iona, in Ireland, even in sturdy recalcitrant
-Wales, had adopted the Roman Easter and the coronal tonsure.[74]
-
-The change was one which probably ought upon the whole to be considered
-beneficial. Unity was the thing now most needed, both politically and
-ecclesiastically, and unity had to be achieved by the State through
-the Church. It was, therefore, well that this pebble, which broke the
-full flow of the stream towards unity, should be removed out of the
-way by the synod of Whitby. It was well, also, that there should be no
-hindrance to free and full intercourse between the ecclesiastics of
-England and those of the continent. True, the civilisation of Italy
-and Gaul in the seventh century was nothing to boast of. To Cicero
-or to Marcus Aurelius it would have seemed like barbarism: but it
-was superior to the barbarism of the Saxon, perhaps in some respects
-superior even to the undoubtedly high civilisation, at this time, of
-Celtic Tara and Armagh. Still it was not all gain that resulted from
-the decision of the synod of Whitby and the rupture of the spiritual
-bond that had bound Lindisfarne to Iona. Even Bede, with all his
-loyalty to Rome and abhorrence of the Celtic Easter, seems to feel
-this fact; else why does he introduce just at this point an eloquent
-panegyric on the simple life of Colman and his predecessors, their
-genuine poverty and the faithfulness with which they at once handed to
-the poor any money which they received from the rich? “At that time
-the religious habit was held in great veneration, so that wheresoever
-cleric or monk appeared, he was joyfully welcomed by all as the servant
-of God; those who met him on the road with bent necks rejoiced to
-receive the blessing of his lips or of his extended hand: they listened
-eagerly to his words of exhortation. The priests and clerics of that
-day had no care for anything else but preaching, baptising, visiting
-the sick--in a word, for the salvation of souls. So utterly were
-they delivered from the poison of avarice, that no one of them would
-receive land or presents even for the building of monasteries, unless
-absolutely compelled to do so by secular rulers.” In these and similar
-sentences Bede hints at the degeneracy of his own times and seems to
-mourn that more of the spirit of Iona had not lingered in the Anglian
-Church. In Columba, Aidan, Colman and their disciples, as has been
-already said, we seem to see something of that absolute indifference
-to wealth, that kinship with Nature and her children, that almost
-passionate love for Poverty and the Poor which, six centuries later,
-was to shed a halo round the head of Francis of Assisi. These men were
-zealous missionaries, “humble and holy men of heart”: the men who were
-about to replace them in the organised and regularly affiliated Church,
-though by no means devoid of missionary zeal, nor of the spirit of
-self-denial, were before all, great ecclesiastics and lordly rulers of
-the Church.
-
-The year 664 which witnessed the assembling of the synod at Whitby
-was, for other reasons, a sadly memorable one to the English nation.
-In that year, on May 1, there was a total eclipse of the sun, and
-this, to the unscientific minds of our ancestors, seemed to be in some
-mysterious way connected with a terrible visitation of pestilence
-which, apparently in the summer and autumn, swept over our island,
-beginning at the southern shore and from thence passing northward till
-it reached Northumbria, and crossed over into Ireland; everywhere
-carrying off multitudes of people. On July 14, Erconbert, King of
-Kent, and Deusdedit, archbishop, both died within a few hours of each
-other, apparently smitten by the pestilence. Later on, probably in
-the same year, Tuda, the new Bishop of Lindisfarne, and Cedd, the
-interpreter-bishop of the Whitby synod, fell victims to the same
-wide-wasting enemy. We have already had occasion to notice the effect
-which this terrible calamity had in causing many of the East Saxons
-to relapse for a time into idolatry. The stories concerning the
-plague with which Bede crowds his pages are generally of the edifying
-death-bed sayings uttered by its victims and the visions of supernal
-bliss vouchsafed to them before their departure. Intent on these
-spiritual aspects of the visitation, and not sparing his readers one
-of the miracles which he had heard of as marking its course, Bede has
-not recorded any of its physical symptoms as Thucydides has done in
-his memorable description of the Plague of Athens. We learn, however,
-from other sources[75] that it was intensely infectious, that one of
-the symptoms was inflamed swellings, and that the faces of the patients
-were tinged with a ghastly yellow colour. Probably, therefore, it
-belonged to the same type of disease as the yellow fever which is
-now so suddenly fatal in tropical countries. We perceive from Bede’s
-narrative that its force was not expended by the visitation of 664, but
-that it returned at intervals during the next twenty years, and that
-there was one outbreak of especial violence in the year 686 from which
-Bede’s own monastery of Jarrow suffered severely. The coadjutor-abbot
-Eosterwine of the sister convent of Wearmouth died of the plague in
-his thirty-seventh year; and at Jarrow the pestilence carried off all
-the monks who could read or preach or sing the antiphons, save only
-the abbot Ceolfrid and one little boy whom he had trained. The old man
-and the child kept up an abridged form of the daily service without
-the antiphons for one week. Then, as the tears of Ceolfrid had almost
-prevented him from taking part in this mutilated service, they summoned
-up courage to sing the whole psalter through, antiphons and all, till
-at last a full choir had been trained to help them to bear the burden.
-It is generally believed, though it cannot be proved, that the little
-boy who thus officiated with Ceolfrid was Bede.
-
-In reading Bede’s _Ecclesiastical History_ it is impossible not to be
-struck with the especial severity wherewith the plague raged in the
-monasteries both of men and women. At Lindisfarne, at Ely, at Wearmouth
-and Jarrow, at Carlisle, at Barking and at Lastingham in the East
-Riding of Yorkshire, the plague committed great ravages, often carrying
-off nearly all the inmates. The manager of a modern school or hospital
-will not be surprised at this, when he remembers that the monastic rule
-enjoined the use of woollen garments and prohibited linen; that the
-more ascetically disposed monks or nuns washed themselves only three
-or four times in the year; and that the monks lay down to rest in the
-same woollen garments and with the same unloosed shoes which they had
-worn and in which they had worked throughout the day. This self-denial,
-especially in the sons and daughters of princely houses, sprang from
-a noble motive: it had been perhaps originally ordained as a protest
-against the luxurious life of the young Roman nobility for whom
-
- The Bath and Wine and Women made up life.
-
-But it was none the less a calamity for Europe that an unnatural
-and unneeded divorce should have been made between Christianity and
-cleanliness. Sanitary science, during the long medieval centuries and
-even for some time after they had ended, had little chance of making
-its way in the world. Exactly one thousand years after the pestilence
-of 664 were felt the first foreboding symptoms of the Great Plague of
-London.
-
- * * * * *
-
-There is little else to record as to the reign of Oswy of Bernicia
-after the departure of the ecclesiastics from Whitby. In consequence
-of the death of Archbishop Deusdedit, the two Kings of Northumbria and
-Kent took counsel “concerning the state of the English Church” (this
-joint action of North and South in an ecclesiastical matter was itself
-an important event), and decided to send one of the late archbishop’s
-clergy named Wighard to Rome that he might there be consecrated as his
-successor. This step was taken probably in the year 667, and though at
-the time unsuccessful, for Wighard and nearly all his companions died
-of pestilence soon after their arrival in Rome, it led to important
-results.
-
-Towards the end of his reign Oswy suffered from declining health.
-Like so many other kings and ecclesiastics of Anglo-Saxon stock, he
-desired to go to Rome and, if it might be, end his days there, and
-he would fain have had Wilfrid, now a consecrated bishop, as guide
-of his journey. With this view he offered large moneys to the young
-ecclesiastic--the very offer seems to show the difference between
-Wilfrid’s character and Aidan’s--but apparently the disease made too
-rapid progress for the fulfilment of his design. The journey to Rome
-had to be abandoned; Oswy died on February 15, 671,[76] and Egfrid his
-son, son of Eanfled and grandson of Edwin of Deira, reigned in his
-stead.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII.
-
-KING EGFRID AND THREE GREAT CHURCHMEN: WILFRID THEODORE, CUTHBERT.
-
-
-The purely political events of the reign of Egfrid, as far as we know
-them, are soon told. Coming to the throne, as we have seen, in the year
-671, he reigned for fourteen years. At the very beginning of his reign
-he gained (says Wilfrid’s biographer) a great victory over “the bestial
-hordes of the Picts who, chafing at their subjection to the Saxons and
-hoping to throw off the yoke of servitude,” mustered “like a swarm of
-ants under the leadership of an audacious chieftain named Bernhaeth,
-but were attacked by Egfrid at the head of his cavalry and utterly
-routed. So great was the slaughter that two rivers were filled with the
-corpses of the slain, and the victorious Northumbrians passed dry-shod
-over them in pursuit of the foe.” About four years later, apparently,
-Egfrid fought Wulfhere, King of the Mercians, defeated him and put
-him to flight, and thus won back that debatable land, the province of
-Lindsey. In 679 he fought a great battle on the banks of the Trent with
-Ethelred, Wulfhere’s brother and successor, who had married his sister
-Osthryd. The victory in this battle perhaps remained doubtful, but it
-brought sore distress in its train, for in it fell Egfrid’s brother
-Alfwin, under-king of Deira, a youth eighteen years of age, who was, we
-are told, “much beloved by both provinces”. It seemed as though this
-calamity would cause the flame of war to burn more fiercely than ever
-between the Northumbrian and the Mercian kings, but the Archbishop
-Theodore interposed his peaceful counsels. The amount of _wergeld_ to
-be paid as compensation for the death of Alfwin was arranged by him.
-Lindsey was probably handed back to Mercia, and a treaty of peace,
-which remained unbroken for many years, was concluded between the two
-kingdoms.
-
-In the year 684, against the advice of St. Cuthbert and all his best
-counsellors, King Egfrid, for reasons which we can only conjecture,
-sent an army to Ireland and “miserably wasted that harmless nation
-which hath ever been most friendly to the nation of the English; so
-that not even churches and monasteries were spared by the hostile
-band”. The Irish defended themselves to the best of their ability,
-but had at last to take refuge in curses and prayers to heaven
-for vengeance, the answer to which, in the opinion of the English
-historian, was not long in coming. For in the next year Egfrid, again
-refusing to listen to Cuthbert’s counsels, rashly ventured on an
-expedition against the Picts dwelling north of the Firth of Forth. The
-enemy, feigning flight, drew him into the recesses of the mountainous
-country, then turned and fell upon him, cutting the greater part of his
-army to pieces and slaying the king himself. The scene of this battle,
-which was fought on May 20th, 685, is not mentioned by Bede, but is
-given by other authorities as Nechtansmere or Nechtan’s Fort (Dûin
-Nechtan), and is identified with Dunnichen, about five miles east of
-Forfar.
-
-By the battle of Nechtansmere Northumbria’s fair prospects of
-permanently holding the hegemony of the English states were for ever
-destroyed. “From that time,” says Bede, “the hopes and the manhood
-of the Anglian [Northumbrian] kingdom began to dissolve and to fall
-into ruin. For the Picts recovered the lands once possessed by them,
-which the Angles had held; also the Scots [men of Dalriada] who were
-in Britain, and a considerable part of the Britons recovered their
-freedom. Many of the English nation were slain with the sword, or bound
-to slavery or else escaped by flight from the land of the Picts.”
-Among the latter was Trumwine, the Northumbrian Bishop of Abercorn
-on the Forth, who fled from his see and had to beg for an asylum for
-himself and his followers from the monks of Whitby. Apparently the
-result of this battle was the loss by Northumbria of all the territory
-north of the Cheviots and the Solway as well as of the southern part
-of the kingdom of Strathclyde. The Northumbrian kingdom survived
-indeed for some centuries and even recovered for a short time some
-part of its lost territories, but it survived for the most part in
-a maimed and enfeebled condition like the Athenian state after the
-battle of Aegospotami. The prestige of the kingdom was gone; no more
-did any great Bretwalda issue his commands to subject princes from
-his rock-built palace at Bamburgh; and soon anarchy and intestine
-feuds completed the ruin which had been begun on the fatal day of
-Nechtansmere.
-
-Such, as has been here indicated, is the short and disastrous political
-history of Egfrid’s reign; but to understand its true significance we
-must devote some attention to the biography of three great churchmen
-whose lives were closely intertwined with that of the Northumbrian
-king. They are:--
-
-Wilfrid, who lived from 634 to 709; Theodore, who lived from 602 to
-690; and Cuthbert, who lived from 630 to 687.
-
-After Bishop Colman, disheartened by the defeat of his party in the
-synod of Whitby, had left Northumbria and returned to Iona, an Irishman
-named Tuda, an advocate for the Roman Easter, was consecrated as his
-successor, but, as has been said, died almost immediately afterwards,
-a victim to the plague which was ravaging England. On his death there
-was a discussion between the Northumbrian kings and the Wise Men of the
-kingdoms who should be elected to the vacant see. The choice naturally
-fell on Wilfrid, the champion of the Roman cause, young, noble and
-victorious. At the same time it seems to have been generally agreed
-that the seat of the episcopate should be removed from sea-girdled
-Lindisfarne, too full perhaps of the memories of Iona, to York, the
-capital of Deira, the city whose walls and palaces, even in their ruin,
-testified to the greatness of that Rome with whom Northumbria was now
-entering into such full and perfect fellowship. Objecting, however,
-that it was difficult to find in Britain bishops to perform the act of
-consecration, who were not more or less tainted with what he called
-the heresy of the Quarto-decimans, Wilfrid begged that he might be
-sent to Gaul to receive consecration there from bishops in undoubted
-communion with the Roman see. The kings consented: a ship, a retinue
-of attendants and a large store of money were placed at Wilfrid’s
-disposal that so the new bishop (whose preference through life was
-always strongly marked for the gorgeous and the stately) “might arrive
-in very honourable style in the region of Gaul”. The journey was
-successfully performed: a great assembly of twelve bishops was convened
-at Compiègne (664); among them Agilbert, late bishop of Dorchester, now
-of Paris, Wilfrid’s ally at the Whitby synod, doubtless now rejoicing
-at finding himself once more among men to whom his speech was not
-strange. These men received Wilfrid in the presence of all the people
-with demonstrations of high honour: they made him sit on a golden chair
-which was then, according to their usual custom, lifted on high and
-borne by the hands of bishops alone into the oratory, while hymns and
-canticles sounded through the choir.
-
-Were the stately ceremonies and the well-furnished episcopal dwellings
-of Merovingian Gaul too attractive to the æsthetic soul of Wilfrid,
-and was he loth to return to the rude wooden churches and the rough
-untrained psalmody of his fatherland? This can only be conjectured,
-but it seems certain that he committed one of the great errors of his
-life by lingering too long, certainly for more than a year, in Gaul,
-instead of returning at once to Northumbria and there beginning his
-episcopal career. At last, in the year 666, he set sail for England,
-accompanied, says his biographer, by 120 armed retainers besides his
-clerical followers. The clergy sang loud their psalms, to cheer the
-arms of the rowers, but in the midst of their psalmody a mighty tempest
-arose and drove them on the coast of Sussex. The inhabitants, still
-heathen and barbarous, flocked to the stranded vessel and began to
-strip it of its treasures and to divide its passengers among them as
-their slaves. Wilfrid offered them money and spoke words of peace and
-conciliation, but the natives proudly answered, “All is ours that the
-sea throws up on the shore”. Meanwhile, a priest of the Saxon idolatry,
-standing on a high mound near the shore, ceased not to curse the
-Christian strangers and sought by his magic arts to render vain their
-efforts for deliverance. At last one of Wilfrid’s companions flung a
-stone--“a stone,” says his biographer, “blessed by all the people of
-God”--which hit the high priest on the head and wounded him to the
-death. His fall discouraged the South Saxons; the 120 soldiers fought
-bravely with the much larger forces of their foes; Wilfrid and his
-clergy prayed like Moses, Aaron and Hur upon the mountain; the Saxons
-were thrice repulsed, and at length victory, cheaply earned by the loss
-of five of Wilfrid’s followers, crowned the exertions and the prayers
-of the Northumbrians. A miraculously early tide floated the vessel off
-the shore and she reached Sandwich without further misadventure.
-
-But when at last Wilfrid reached his diocese, he found unpleasant
-tidings awaiting him there. Weary of his long delay, King Oswy had
-appointed Bishop Ceadda (famous in English hagiology as St. Chad) to
-the bishopric of York. The act was certainly irregular, and Wilfrid had
-good cause to complain, but with more meekness than might have been
-looked for, he accepted the rebuff and retired to his dearly loved
-monastery of Ripon, a place which more than all others, except perhaps
-Hexham, was enriched by his labours and preserves his memory. Moreover,
-at the request of Wulfhere of Mercia and Egbert of Kent he undertook
-some volunteer episcopal work in those two kingdoms, travelling about
-with his band of singers, masons, and teachers of every kind of art,
-and everywhere founding monasteries or reforming them according to the
-strict rule of St. Benedict which he had minutely studied at Canterbury.
-
-After three years this parenthesis in Wilfrid’s life came to an end,
-owing to the intervention of the new archbishop, Theodore, to whose
-history we now turn. We have seen that the Kings of Northumbria and
-Kent, taking counsel together after the death of Archbishop Deusdedit,
-sent Wighard to Rome as the bearer of their request that he might be
-consecrated archbishop, and that after their arrival in Rome Wighard
-and nearly all of his companions fell victims to the pestilence then
-raging in the Eternal City. Thereupon the Pope, Vitalian, whose courage
-and skill had already been displayed on the occasion of the unwelcome
-visit of the Emperor Constans to Rome, deliberated anxiously with his
-council on the question whom he should send as archbishop to Canterbury
-in place of the dead Englishman. After some hesitation and two refusals
-of the dignity, his choice fell upon Theodore, a learned Greek monk,
-who was at that time living in Rome and who had possibly come over to
-Italy in the train of the Emperor Constans. Theodore, who was, like
-the apostle Paul, a native of Tarsus in Cilicia, was now sixty-six
-years of age, and dreaded not so much the duties of the office as the
-hardships of the long journey to a remote and chilly island. However,
-the abbot, Hadrian, an African, who had himself refused the offered
-dignity and had recommended Theodore to the Pope, volunteered to
-accompany his friend, having already twice made the journey through
-Gaul; and Vitalian, who seems to have entertained some groundless fear
-as to the perfect orthodoxy of this Greek monk on the great question
-of the Monothelete controversy, gladly consented to this arrangement.
-But however free Theodore might be from Greek errors of doctrine, the
-fashion of his tonsure, which professed to be after the example of St.
-Paul, and which consisted in the shaving of the whole head, declared
-but too plainly to the world his Greek origin. He had therefore, after
-being ordained sub-deacon, to wait four months till his hair had grown
-sufficiently to enable him to receive the Roman tonsure, which made
-a crown of baldness on the top of the head. He was then consecrated
-archbishop by Vitalian, and set forth on May 27, 668, with his friend
-Hadrian for his distant diocese. His journey through Gaul seems to
-have been performed in a very leisurely manner, and we are expressly
-told that he tarried for a long time with Agilbert, by whom he was
-cordially received, and with whom he doubtless had much conversation
-concerning affairs on the other side of the channel. Meanwhile Egbert,
-King of Kent, being informed of the events which had happened at Rome,
-sent his “prefect” Radfrid to escort Theodore into his kingdom. But
-notwithstanding this special embassy, we are told--and the information
-throws a curious light on the European politics of the time--that
-Ebroin, the all-powerful mayor of the palace, would not permit
-Hadrian to accompany his friend, because he suspected that he was
-the bearer of some message from the Emperor to the kings of Britain,
-which might be adverse to the interests of the Frankish kingdom. It
-is with some surprise that we learn that a statesman of the seventh
-century contemplated the possibility of a combination of England and
-Constantinople against France. After a time Ebroin, having satisfied
-himself that no secret embassy such as he feared had ever formed part
-of Hadrian’s instructions, permitted him to follow Theodore, by whom
-he was made abbot of the great monastery of St. Peter and St. Paul at
-Canterbury, the Westminster Abbey of the Kentish kingdom.
-
-Theodore of Tarsus arrived at Canterbury and was enthroned there on May
-27, 669, thus commencing a memorable career, which lasted for more than
-twenty-one years. “Soon,” says Bede, “having traversed the whole island
-wherever the tribes of the English abode, and being heartily welcomed
-and listened to by all, he spread abroad the right way of living and
-the canonical rule for the celebration of Easter; Hadrian everywhere
-appearing as his companion and helper. For he was the first of the
-archbishops to whom the whole Church of the English agreed to give the
-hand of fellowship.” We see at once how great a step towards national
-unity, at least as far as the English people was concerned, was taken
-under the guidance of this Oriental stranger, who came from under the
-shadow of Mount Taurus. Unfortunately there is no evidence that he did
-anything to break down the middle wall of partition which the arrogance
-of Augustine had raised between the English and the Welsh Churches;
-while, to the yet unreconciled Celts of Ireland and the Hebrides his
-very appointment was in the nature of a challenge.
-
-Bede proceeds to describe to us how Theodore’s copious stores of
-learning, both sacred and secular, were made available for the people.
-He tells us of the multitude of disciples who flocked to his daily
-lectures and those of his friend Hadrian; of the knowledge “of the
-metrical art, of astronomy and of ecclesiastical arithmetic,” which,
-along with the sacred Scriptures, they imparted to their hearers. “A
-proof hereof is,” says he, “that to this day there survive some of
-their disciples, who know the Latin and Greek tongues as well as that
-wherein they were born. Nor in fact were there ever happier times since
-the days when the English first landed in Britain, since now, under the
-leadership of most valiant and Christian kings, they were a terror to
-all the barbarous nations; the desires of men were strongly directed
-towards the new-found joys of the heavenly kingdom; and all who desired
-to be instructed in the sacred Scriptures had teachers near at hand,
-who could impart to them that knowledge.” There can be no doubt that
-Theodore possessed a genius for organisation such as had not been
-displayed by Augustine or any of the subsequent prelates, and that
-to him more than to any other single person is due the structure of
-the Anglo-Saxon Church, such as it remained till the Norman conquest.
-One change which he perceived to be necessary for the good of the
-Church, but which also inevitably tended towards the augmentation of
-his own power, was an increase in the number of bishoprics. Hitherto
-the tendency had been to have one bishopric only for each of the
-English kingdoms, an arrangement quite unlike that which had generally
-prevailed throughout the Roman empire, in some parts of which almost
-every town that was above the rank of a village had its own episcopal
-ruler. Such great unwieldy bishoprics as Northumbria, Mercia or Wessex,
-were not likely to be administered efficiently by a single bishop,
-while, on the other hand, their very magnitude suggested dangerous
-thoughts of rivalry with a primate whose immediate sway extended only
-over a part of Kent. Thus Theodore was impelled by every motive, public
-and private, to strive to break up the existing bishoprics into smaller
-portions. In that process the wise but masterful old man certainly did
-not show himself to any undue extent a respecter of persons.
-
-One of the first cases in which Theodore had to exert his
-archiepiscopal authority was that of the bishopric of York. However
-aggrieved both king and people might have been by Wilfrid’s
-long-delayed return, there was no doubt that the intrusion of another
-bishop into a see already filled was entirely contrary to the
-canons; and, moreover, from the strict Roman point of view Ceadda’s
-consecration to the episcopate was not safe from attack, inasmuch
-as two “Quarto-deciman” bishops had taken part therein. When all
-these various objections were stated by Theodore to Ceadda, the
-simple-minded and unambitious old man at once declared his willingness
-at Theodore’s call to resign a dignity of which he had never deemed
-himself worthy. “No: not the episcopate,” was Theodore’s answer. “To
-that I will reordain you with all due formalities; but stand aside
-for the present from this see, which of right belongs to Wilfrid.”
-Thus Wilfrid, after three years of suspension, was once again bishop
-of the great diocese of York, extending from the Humber to the Firth
-of Forth, or even beyond. For Ceadda meanwhile a place was quickly
-found, the scarcely less important bishopric of Mercia; and Theodore’s
-regard for the saintly old man was shown by ordering him no longer to
-perform his long episcopal journeys on foot, but to ride through his
-diocese. When Ceadda hesitated, mindful of his beloved Aidan’s example,
-Theodore insisted, possibly himself provided him with a steed, at any
-rate with his own archiepiscopal hands lifted him into the saddle.
-Ceadda’s tenure of the Mercian episcopate was short, as he fell a
-victim to the plague in 672. He died, however, not only in the odour
-of sanctity, but, what is better, surrounded by the unfeigned love
-of his monastic brethren, and able to speak even of the Angel of the
-Pestilence as “that lovable guest who hath been wont of late to visit
-our brotherhood”.
-
-All the ecclesiastical events which have been described in this
-chapter, save the last, took place in the reign of Oswy. In the year
-671, as we have seen, a new monarch, Egfrid, ascended the Northumbrian
-throne. He had already been for some years the nominal husband of
-one of the saintly members of the East Anglian family, Etheldreda, a
-daughter of King Anna, but she, though Egfrid was her second husband,
-was at heart a devoted nun and insisted through life on keeping
-her virginity unstained. Here was already cause for trouble in the
-Northumbrian palace, trouble which was aggravated by the interference
-of Wilfrid, who, in defiance of apostolic precept and the Church’s
-law, made himself the champion of the cause of the disobedient wife,
-and at last (probably in the first or second year of Egfrid’s reign)
-with the hardly won consent of her husband arrayed her in the veil of
-a “_sanctimonialis femina_”. She retired first to the monastery of
-Coldingham, then ruled by Ebba, the aunt of Egfrid. After a year’s
-residence therein she became abbess of the great convent which she
-had herself founded in the Isle of Ely on lands devised to her by her
-first husband. There, after bearing rule for seven years, she died. The
-signal triumph of religious zeal over worldly ambition and luxury which
-her life displayed was celebrated in enthusiastic and acrostic verse by
-her admirer Bede. She was undoubtedly one of the most popular saints of
-the Anglo-Saxon epoch, and her name in the abbreviated form of Audrey
-still possesses a certain attraction for Englishmen.
-
-The place which Etheldreda had vacated by the side of Egfrid was at
-once filled by a second wife named Ermenburga, who was persistently
-hostile to Wilfrid, and is accordingly likened to Jezebel by his
-enthusiastic biographer. There was, however, much in Wilfrid’s position
-at this, the most glorious period of his career, which might well rouse
-the jealousy of the secular rulers of the nation. Between 671 and 678
-he was probably the foremost man in all Northumbria. He built great
-basilicas, the marvels of the age, at Hexham[77] and at Ripon.[78]
-At the dedication of the basilica at Ripon, Wilfrid stood before the
-altar, which was draped in purple and marvellously enriched with gold
-and silver, and there rehearsed, in the presence of the Northumbrian
-kings, the great gifts of landed property which the royal house had
-bestowed upon the Church, and also enumerated the places which had
-belonged in old time to the British Church and to which, though then
-desolate, it was evident that the English Church meant to assert her
-claim. When his sermon was ended a great feast was spread, to which the
-kings and all their followers were invited, and which lasted amid great
-rejoicings for three days and nights.
-
-Of Wilfrid’s wonderful churches no trace now remains above ground.
-We are told that the church of Hexham was “supported by various
-columns” (perhaps taken from Roman temples) “and many porches,
-adorned with walls of wondrous length and height, and with variously
-winding passages, leading now up, now down, by stately staircases”.
-Both at Ripon and Hexham the crypt “carried deep down into the earth
-with marvellously smoothed stones” still remains; and at Hexham
-inscriptions, bas-reliefs and the shape of the stones employed show
-us all too plainly that the Roman camps along the line of the wall
-were the quarry from whence Wilfrid’s marvellously smoothed stones
-were obtained. But the great bishop was not giving all his time to
-his architectural labours. He rode from end to end of his diocese,
-ordaining priests and deacons in great numbers, and attracting to
-himself the love and devotion of the powerful abbots and abbesses,
-who very generally, either by present transfer or by testamentary
-disposition, arranged that he should become lord of the lands of
-their monasteries. Many Anglian nobles also sent their sons to be
-brought up in the bishop’s house, in order that they might either by
-his introduction enter the life of religion, or if they preferred
-the profession of arms, might by him be recommended to the king. In
-everything that Wilfrid touched the same note of sumptuous magnificence
-might be discerned. Thus, on the day of the dedication of the church
-at Ripon, he presented to it “the four illuminated Gospels traced in
-purest gold on purple parchment, which he had caused to be transcribed
-for the welfare of his soul, also a bookcase for these books, all made
-of the purest gold and adorned with the most precious jewels”. But all
-this pomp and splendour (though coupled with personal abstinence and
-the practice of monastic austerities) was rearing up for Wilfrid a host
-of lifelong enemies; at their head Queen Ermenburga, who ceased not
-to remind her husband of “all the worldly pomp of Bishop Wilfrid, his
-riches, the multitude of his abbeys, the grandeur of his buildings, and
-the numberless host of his followers adorned with royal raiment and
-equipped with arms”.
-
-The jealousy which the royal pair felt at the greatness of the Bishop
-of York was powerfully aided by their alliance with Archbishop
-Theodore. For the formation of this alliance it is quite unnecessary to
-accept the biographer’s story of bribes out of ecclesiastical property
-offered by the king and accepted by the archbishop. On the contrary,
-it might almost have been foretold by any one who was acquainted with
-the two men, Wilfrid and Theodore, that they must necessarily sooner
-or later come into collision. They were both men of great intellectual
-stature, both devoted to the Roman obedience and intent on bringing
-the English Church fully into that obedience, but they would do it in
-different ways. Theodore, as Metropolitan of the whole land, would
-enforce Church order, subdivide the unwieldy dioceses, and make his
-strong hand felt by every bishop and abbot in every corner of the
-English kingdoms. Wilfrid had no thought of resigning any part of his
-power over his vast diocese, in which he was virtually independent.
-Nay more, faint as are the traces of such a scheme in history, it
-is difficult not to suppose that Wilfrid was cognisant of Gregory’s
-original plan for the establishment of two independent archbishoprics
-in Britain, one at London and the other at York, and hoped to
-convert--as was actually done half a century later--his bishopric into
-an archbishopric. Such an arrangement would be far more in accordance
-with ecclesiastical precedent throughout the Roman empire than that
-which actually prevailed, since the general usage had been to place
-the Metropolitan in the chief city of the province. All the venerable
-associations which now cluster round the name of Canterbury should
-not cause us to forget the fact that it is merely owing to a series
-of accidents (foremost among them the relapse of the East Saxons
-into idolatry) that the chief pastor of the English Church now bears
-the title of Archbishop of Canterbury. Either Londinium or Eburacum,
-pre-eminently the latter, had better right to give an archbishop to
-England than the little insignificant city of Durovernis.
-
-Intent on his schemes of Church reform and full of the paramount
-authority symbolised by his archiepiscopal _pallium_, Theodore visited
-Northumbria and found there in the royal palace a ready acquiescence
-in his grand project for the division of the diocese. He at once, in
-Wilfrid’s absence, ordained three new bishops who were to divide among
-themselves a large part of his diocese, leaving him probably the city
-of York and a certain part of Deira as his portion.[79] It was a strong
-measure to adopt, certainly, not courteous nor perhaps canonically
-correct in the absence of the bishop whose diocese was thus invaded;
-and it is no wonder that Wilfrid sought an interview with the king
-and archbishop, and demanded by what right they, without any cause of
-offence alleged against him, thus defrauded him in robber-fashion of
-property given him by the king for God’s service. They answered, says
-his biographer, in the presence of all the people with the memorable
-words: “No accusation is made against thee of having done injury to
-any man, but the decision which we have come to in thy case we will
-not change”. Hereat Wilfrid signified his intention of appealing to
-Rome (678) against this unjust act of spoliation. The flatterers who
-surrounded the king laughed aloud at his words, but he turned round and
-rebuked them sternly, saying: “You laugh now, evidently rejoicing at
-my condemnation, but on the anniversary of this day bitterly shall ye
-weep to your own confusion”. And in fact men noted with awe that it was
-on the exact anniversary of Wilfrid’s interview with the king that the
-body of the beloved under-king, Alfwin, was brought back to York from
-the battlefield on the banks of the Trent, and was received by all the
-people with tears and rent garments and passionate lamentations.
-
-And now began that long duel between prelate and king, with visits
-to Rome, confiscations, imprisonments, reconciliations, repentances,
-which lasted with some intermissions and some changes in the person of
-the royal disputant, for nearly thirty years, and which in some of its
-vicissitudes reminds us of the contention between Henry Plantagenet
-and Thomas Becket. It is a history with much intrinsic interest, and
-rendered additionally interesting to us by the fact that the Life of
-Wilfrid by Eddius, in which it is recorded, was written some years
-before the Ecclesiastical History of Bede, and is probably the earliest
-extant piece of Latin writing that has proceeded from an Anglo-Saxon
-pen. Skilfully escaping from the toils of his enemies (whose emissaries
-by a laughable mistake attacked and plundered a harmless bishop named
-Winfrid instead of him), Wilfrid landed in Friesland, made friends
-with the king of the Frisians, and began that career of missionary
-enterprise in Germany which was continued by his disciple, Willibrord,
-and in later years by the West Saxon, Boniface, with vast results
-on European history. He then travelled through Gaul, visiting King
-Dagobert II., whom, when an exile in Ireland, he had sped on his way to
-France, and thus had helped to recover his father’s throne. Dagobert’s
-gratitude now showed itself by assisting Wilfrid on his journey to
-Rome. In Italy he was befriended in a similar way by the Lombard King
-Perctarit, who had himself once led the life of a hunted fugitive,
-and refused to surrender him to his foes. Arriving at Rome, where he
-spent the winter of 679–80, he laid his complaint before the recently
-consecrated Pope, Agatho the Sicilian, and claimed his protection.
-A council was held in the Lateran basilica, where Theodore’s
-representative, a monk named Coenred, stated the case for Canterbury.
-Wilfrid’s petition was read, setting forth that he did not refuse to
-consent to the division of his bishopric, but claiming that he should
-be consulted as to the persons intruded upon him as colleagues; and
-the synod having listened to the representations of “the most holy
-Archbishop Theodore” and “the God-beloved Bishop Wilfrid” decided in
-favour of the latter.
-
-Armed with this papal decree, and not doubting of the triumph which it
-would procure for him, Wilfrid presented himself at the Northumbrian
-court, but was at once accused of having obtained the decree by
-bribery, thrown into prison and despoiled of his personal possessions.
-One of the most precious of these, a reliquary, was appropriated by
-Ermenburga to her own use, and always carried about by her, whether
-she abode in her bedchamber or rode abroad in her chariot. Wilfrid’s
-first place of imprisonment was the royal city of Bromnis.[80] On the
-refusal of the governor, whose wife had fallen dangerously ill, to act
-any longer as jailer of so holy a man, Egfrid sent him to another of
-his cities named Dynbaer (Dunbar), another proof, if any were needed,
-how far northward at this time stretched the kingdom of Northumbria. At
-last after he had undergone a rigorous imprisonment for nine months,
-the dangerous illness of Ermenburga (which seemed to take the form of
-demoniac possession), and the entreaties and warnings of the saintly
-Ebba, brought about Wilfrid’s liberation from the dungeon, but not his
-restoration to his bishopric. He went forth as an exile into Mercia,
-where he was favourably entertained by a nephew of King Ethelred and
-received land for the foundation of a monastery. But as Ethelred was
-Egfrid’s brother-in-law, he soon ordered Wilfrid to quit his kingdom.
-He turned his steps to Wessex and there for a little space had rest,
-but soon was expelled thence also, King Centwine having married
-Ermenburga’s sister. It is easy to see how hard the lot of a fugitive
-from one of the English courts might be made by the matrimonial
-alliances that were so frequent between them.
-
-Thus expelled from Christian England the hunted fugitive turned his
-thoughts to the land of the South Saxons: “a heathen province of our
-race” (says the biographer) “which for the multitude of its rocks
-and the density of its woods remained impregnable by all the other
-provinces”. Here Ethelwalh, himself a Christian, as we have seen,[81]
-was reigning over a still heathen people, and to him Wilfrid confided
-the whole story of his wrongs. The king made with him a covenant of
-peace so strong that, as he declared, no terror of the sword of any
-hostile warrior and no gifts however costly should avail to move him
-from the troth then plighted. In this inaccessible corner of the land
-which we now name Sussex, Wilfrid remained for five years, preaching
-the story of the creation of the world, its redemption, the day of
-judgment, the rewards and punishments to come, with such eloquence and
-fervour that he achieved the conversion of the entire people, thus
-ending in the year 686 the long spiritual campaign for the conversion
-of England which was begun in 597 by the arrival of Augustine. King
-Ethelwalh gave him his own villa of Selsey for his episcopal seat,
-adding to it a gift of land amounting to eighty-seven hides.
-
-During Wilfrid’s sojourn in Sussex his unreconciled enemy King Egfrid
-died. The story of his death brings us into close relation with our
-third great churchman, Cuthbert, to whose life we now turn. Born
-somewhere about 630 in the region of the Lammermoor Hills, the young
-Cuthbert, when he was tending sheep by the River Leader, saw one
-night in a vision angels carrying a holy soul into heaven. He found
-afterwards that it was on the same night, August 31, 651, that the
-venerable saint, Aidan, had died. He waited not, however, for this
-confirmation of his faith, but at once transferred the sheep to their
-owners and descended into the valley of the Tweed to seek admission
-into the recently founded monastery of Melrose. After some years’
-residence there, he went in the train of the Abbot Eata to Ripon; but
-on the arrival of Wilfrid at that place fresh from Rome, and with a
-grant from King Alchfrid in his hand, the whole party of Celtic-trained
-monks, Cuthbert among them, were forced to leave the pleasant valley of
-the Nidd and return to Melrose on the Tweed. There, however, ended his
-antagonism to the new teaching. Whether actually present or not at the
-synod of Whitby, he certainly accepted its decisions, and after some
-years was sent by his friend, Eata, to govern as prior the monastery
-at Lindisfarne. It was not altogether an easy task to rule the monks
-on Holy Island after the revolution which the decrees of the synod had
-caused, but more by gentleness than by sternness Cuthbert succeeded
-in enforcing discipline, all the more readily perhaps as in food, in
-vigils, in dress, he set an example of rigorous austerity. But after
-all, neither as prior nor afterwards as bishop did he ever care for
-the possession of power. In character he much more closely resembled
-Aidan than either Theodore or Wilfrid. He loved to be alone with Nature
-and with God, and was ever moving about among the country folk and
-“stirring them up” by his conversation rather than by set sermons “to
-seek after the heavenly crown”. There is still shown in a cleft of the
-basaltic range of low hills on the mainland overlooking the winding
-shore of Holy Island a cave, affording bare shelter from the rain and
-none from the wind, where the saint is said to have passed some months
-of his life. “Cuddy’s Hole” is to this day the name given to it by the
-neighbouring farmers.
-
-Often, too, he seems to have retired to the little island which still
-bears his name and which lies at a short distance from the ruined abbey
-on Holy Island, being like Lindisfarne itself island or peninsula
-according to the state of the tide. There, while apparently still
-holding the office of prior, he “began to learn the rudiments of a
-solitary life,” and when his education was completed and his spirit
-braced for the great renunciation, he gave up his office of prior
-(676) and withdrew to the more utter seclusion which was afforded by
-one of the little group of Farne Islands, about five miles from Holy
-Island and two or three miles from the rock of Bamburgh. These rocky
-islets, some thirty or forty in number, are now furnished with two
-lighthouses; and the memory of Grace Darling, the courageous daughter
-of an old lighthouse keeper, rivals but does not eclipse the fame of
-St. Cuthbert. Countless flocks of sea-birds make these rocks their
-breeding place; and there are seen the eider ducks, bold in their
-gentleness, which calmly hatch their young within a few feet of the
-intruding wayfarer, and whose tameness, attributed to the miraculous
-working of the saint, has procured for them the name of “Saint
-Cuthbert’s Chickens”. Was it the loneliness of these weather-beaten
-rocks or the sad cry of the sea-birds that procured for them the evil
-reputation of being “unfit for human habitation by reason of the number
-of malign spirits by whom they were haunted”? Howsoever that may be,
-it is admitted that at the approach of the man of God the evil spirits
-departed and the place at his prayer became completely habitable. Here
-then Cuthbert built for himself a little round cell made of large
-unwrought stones and turf, and so constructed that he could see from it
-nothing of earth or sea, but was forced to keep his eyes ever fixed on
-the heaven above him. Here, after dismissing the few brethren who had
-helped him in his labours, Cuthbert lived absolutely alone for eight
-years, enjoying the heavenly visions, but also wrestling with the awful
-spiritual terrors, which have ever been the portion of the anchorite.
-
-At length in 684, Tunberct, Bishop of Hexham, one of Theodore’s
-intruding prelates, having been for some reason deposed from his see, a
-synod was held at “Twyford” on the Alne (probably the modern Alnmouth)
-to consider the question of the appointment of his successor. In this
-synod, at which Theodore himself presided, the name of Cuthbert was
-suggested and received with unanimous approval. It was, however, no
-easy matter to induce the anchorite thus to return to the common abodes
-of men. At last a deputation of nobles and ecclesiastics, headed by
-King Egfrid himself and by Trumwine, Bishop of Pictland, accomplished
-the difficult task, and on March 26, 685, Cuthbert received at York
-the episcopal charge at the hands of Theodore and six other bishops.
-He still, however, remained so far faithful to the wind-swept shores
-of the North Sea that he chose Holy Island for his episcopal seat,
-persuading his old friend Eata to migrate from thence to the busier
-diocese of Hexham.
-
-It must have been during the long negotiations which preceded the
-consecration of St. Cuthbert that he pressed upon the unwilling king
-his vain dissuasions against the barbarous Irish expedition. Equally
-vain, as we have seen, was his attempt to dissuade Egfrid from that
-disastrous expedition against the Picts, which was undertaken in the
-very first months of Cuthbert’s episcopate. At the time of Egfrid’s
-invasion of Scotland Cuthbert was abiding at the Roman city of
-Luguvallium (Carlisle), which had been bestowed upon him by the king
-at his consecration. There also was dwelling the queen, Ermenburga,
-Wilfrid’s enemy, who had gone for shelter during this warlike time
-to a convent ruled by her sister. While Cuthbert was going round the
-walls of the city on the afternoon of Saturday, May 20, escorted by the
-king’s reeve, Paga, and by a multitude of the citizens, he suddenly
-stood still, leaning on his staff. With downcast face he gazed upon the
-ground, then looked up at the darkening sky and said with a deep groan:
-“Perhaps even now the conflict is decided”. He would not more plainly
-impart his fears, even to his own clerical companions, but hastening to
-the convent warned the queen to be ready to depart on the Monday for
-York “lest haply the king should have fallen”. On Sunday he preached a
-sermon which hinted at some coming trouble. On Monday came the tidings
-of the fatal field of Nechtansmere, fought on the very day and hour
-when Cuthbert had his telepathic warning of the disaster.
-
-Egfrid’s widow, Ermenburga, according to her enemy Eddius, “after the
-slaughter of the king, from a she-wolf became one of God’s lambs and
-was changed into a perfect abbess and a most excellent mother of her
-[monastic] family”. Apparently there was no issue of her marriage with
-Egfrid, who was succeeded by his half-brother or nephew Aldfrid, either
-a son or grandson of King Oswy. He had been for some years an exile
-in Ireland and the Hebrides, and had acquired a considerable store of
-learning in the Celtic monasteries, so that he was generally known as
-Aldfrid the Learned. The twenty years’ reign of Aldfrid (685–705) was
-marked by few striking events. Northumbria, as we have seen, was now
-shorn of her greatness and was no longer the leading power in Britain.
-It was probably as much as Aldfrid could do to preserve his weakened
-and diminished kingdom from conquest by its Pictish and Mercian
-neighbours. It will suffice briefly to indicate the further fortunes
-of the three great Churchmen whose lives had been of late so closely
-intertwined with that of Egfrid.
-
-The newly consecrated bishop Cuthbert did not long sustain the weight
-of the uncongenial mitre. In 686 he made another journey to Carlisle,
-on which occasion he gave the nun’s veil to the widowed Ermenburga.
-Here also he received a visit from an old friend of his named Herbert,
-who like him led the life of an island-hermit but amid far different
-scenes from the stormy Farnes. Herbert dwelt on an island of “that
-very large lake from which the young waters of the Derwent issue
-forth”--in other words, on St. Herbert’s Isle in Derwent-water--and
-had been accustomed to pay a yearly visit to Cuthbert and to hear from
-him counsels concerning the life eternal. He now besought his friend,
-whose whole soul was filled with thoughts of his coming end, to pray
-that they might both die at the same time, a longing which was in
-fact fulfilled. Soon after Christmas Cuthbert returned to his lonely
-dwelling on the Farnes: at the end of February he was seized by his
-last illness. The monks of Holy Island prayed to be allowed to minister
-to him in his extreme weakness, but it was not till near the very end
-that he suffered them to enter his cell. In the morning of March 20,
-687, after many faintly uttered words of advice and farewell, the great
-anchorite passed away. There was no English saint, till Thomas Becket
-was slain before the altar in Canterbury, who filled half as large a
-space in the memories of the English people, at any rate in the North
-of England, as Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. The strange migrations of his
-corpse in later centuries, the magnificence of its final resting-place,
-the wide domains and princely revenues of the Bishops of Durham, whose
-chief claim to lordship was derived from the fact that they were the
-guardians of his tomb--all these things fixed deep in the mind of the
-medieval Englishman the greatness and the glory of the shepherd of the
-Lammermoors. Eight centuries after his death we find the soldiers of
-“the bishopric” rejoicing over the fall of James IV. on the field of
-Flodden, and tracing therein the manifest workings of the anger of the
-saint, whom he had offended by the demolition of his castles at Ford
-and Norham.
-
-We pass from the hermit to the archbishop. Of Theodore of Tarsus there
-is little more which need be related here save that soon after Egfrid’s
-death he became reconciled to Wilfrid; asked him to come to London to
-meet him, and (according to Eddius) made him a full apology for all
-the injustices which he had committed towards him, even expressing a
-desire that Wilfrid might succeed him in his archbishopric. He died
-on September 19, 690, in the eighty-eighth year of his age after an
-archiepiscopate of twenty-two years, and was laid to rest in the abbey
-of St. Peter and St. Paul, along with many other primates and princes
-of Kent.
-
-The long exiled Bishop Wilfrid was at last, soon after the death of
-Egfrid, permitted to return home and restored to some portion of his
-lost grandeur (686–87). The death of the hostile king, interpreted by
-Wilfrid’s partisans as the judgment of heaven on his despoiler, had
-probably something to do with this change of policy, to which also his
-reconciliation with the archbishop largely contributed. His restoration
-was not, however, by any means to all his old dignities, though he
-was once again in possession of his favourite abbeys of Hexham and
-Ripon. And even this restoration was only for a time. After five years
-of peace the eternal dispute broke out again on Wilfrid’s refusal to
-acknowledge the lawfulness of some of the acts of Theodore. He was
-banished from Northumbria and took refuge in Mercia, where he dwelt for
-ten years (692–702). Then came one more journey to Rome, undertaken
-by the brave old man in the sixty-ninth year of his age. His appeal
-succeeded, but, as before, the decree in his favour failed to change
-the purpose of the Northumbrian king. Aldfrid was still immutably
-fixed in his determination to modify nothing in that decision “which
-formerly the kings, my predecessors, and the archbishop with their
-councillors did form, and which afterwards we, with the archbishop
-sent us from the apostolic see and with almost all the [spiritual]
-rulers of our race in Britain, confirmed. That decision,” said he to
-Wilfrid’s messengers, “so long as I live I will never change for the
-writings which, as you say, you have received from the apostolic see.”
-Scarcely had this answer been returned when the Northumbrian king was
-stricken with mortal sickness, an event in which the partisans of
-Wilfrid not unnaturally thought that they could trace the vengeance of
-Heaven for his audacious contempt of the papal mandate. It was believed
-that on his death-bed he repented of his behaviour towards Wilfrid and
-expressed his intention of being reconciled with him in the event of
-his recovery, but he died in 705 after lying speechless for many days,
-and was unable to give effect to his intentions if such intentions ever
-existed.
-
-On the death of Aldfrid a certain Eadulf, of whose relationship to the
-royal family nothing is known, usurped the throne. Aldfrid’s son Osred
-was a boy of eight years old, but the faithful friends of his father,
-headed by Berthfrid, who is described as “a noble next in dignity to
-the king,” gathered round him in the fortress-city of Bamburgh. To
-quote Berthfrid’s words, as related to us by Wilfrid’s biographer
-who, of course, views all events in relation to the fortunes of his
-hero: “When we were besieged in the city which is called Bebbanburg
-and everywhere girt round by the forces of the enemy, having only
-that narrow rock on which to dwell, we came to the conclusion amongst
-ourselves that if God would grant to our royal boy the kingdom of his
-father, we would promise God to fulfil those things which the apostolic
-authority had ordained concerning Bishop Wilfrid. No sooner had we made
-this vow than the hearts of our enemies were changed: with quickened
-steps they turned towards us swearing to be our friends; the doors were
-opened; we were freed from that narrow dwelling; our enemies fled and
-we recovered the kingdom.”
-
-This is all the information that we possess concerning a domestic
-revolution which, probably on account of its extremely short duration,
-is unnoticed by Bede. It seems to be clear that during the two
-months of his usurped reign Eadulf absolutely refused to redress the
-grievances of Wilfrid, but that in the early months of Osred’s reign
-a great synod was held near the river Nidd in Yorkshire to settle
-finally the wearisome business. The boy-king presided: Bertwald of
-Canterbury was there with all the bishops and abbots in his obedience.
-There, too, was Elfleda, the daughter long ago vowed by Oswy to the
-service of God, now and for many years past sitting in the seat of
-the venerated Hilda as abbess of Whitby: “a most wise virgin,” says
-the biographer, “ever the best consoler and counsellor of the whole
-province”. She was a great friend of Cuthbert, and had probably at one
-time shared the general Northumbrian or, at least, Bernician dislike
-to the all-grasping Bishop of York; but the letter which the aged
-Theodore had written, almost from his death-bed, beseeching her to
-become reconciled to Wilfrid had perhaps changed her mind towards him,
-and she now strongly pressed his claims and vouched for the fact that
-her step-brother Aldfrid on his death-bed declared his intention of
-complying with all the demands made on his behalf by the apostolic see.
-The result of the deliberation which followed was that the king, his
-nobles and all the bishops swore to maintain peace and concord with
-Wilfrid, and on that same day gave him the kiss of peace and broke the
-bread of communion with him. At the same time the abbeys of Ripon and
-Hexham, with all their revenues, were restored to him, and the thirty
-years’ war was at an end. This result was after all a compromise,
-and, as has been well pointed out by Dr. Bright, a compromise less
-favourable to Wilfrid than that which had been made before. He had lost
-the bishopric of York and had to be content with the less important
-bishopric of Hexham, but he recovered possession of all his domains and
-monasteries in Northumbria and Mercia.
-
-Wilfrid had now four years of peace at the end of his stormy life.
-Not long before his death he “invited two abbots and certain very
-faithful brethren, to the number of eight in all, to meet him at
-Ripon, and commanded the key-bearer to open his treasury, and to set
-forth in their sight all the gold and silver with the precious stones,
-and then ordered them to be divided into four parts according to his
-judgment”. He explained that it had been his intention to make yet
-another journey to Rome and offer one of these four portions at the
-shrines of the Virgin and the saints. Should death prevent him from
-carrying this design into effect, he charged them to send messengers
-to offer the gifts in his stead. Of the remaining portions one was to
-be given to the poor for the redemption of his soul; another was to
-be divided between the rulers of his two beloved abbeys Hexham and
-Ripon, “that they may be able by their gifts to win the friendship of
-kings and bishops”; the last was to be distributed among the friends
-and companions of his exile to whom he had not yet given landed
-possessions. From the minute account which the biographer gives of the
-whole scene, it seems probable that he was one of the six faithful
-brethren permitted to gaze on the opened treasury, and one of the
-companions of the exile who received a share in the bequest.
-
-After some further arrangements about the future government of the
-abbey of Ripon, Wilfrid journeyed into Mercia, on an invitation from
-King Ceolred, reached the monastery of Oundle in Northamptonshire,
-and there, in 709, after a short sickness, ended his days, in the
-seventy-sixth year of his age. In the forty-six years of his episcopate
-he had dedicated churches and ordained bishops, priests and deacons
-past counting. His body was taken to Ripon and there interred with
-great solemnity. The abbots of his two chief monasteries believed that
-they had secured in the departed saint a heavenly intercessor of equal
-power with their apostolic patrons St. Peter and St. Andrew, and their
-faith was confirmed when, at a great meeting on the anniversary of his
-death, they beheld at night a white circle in the heavens reaching all
-round the sky and seeming to encompass the monastery of St. Peter at
-Ripon with its protecting glory.
-
-The life of Wilfrid with all its strange vicissitudes of triumph
-and disgrace is confessedly one of the most difficult problems in
-early Anglo-Saxon history. The enthusiastic panegyric of Eddius, the
-conventional praise and strange reticence of Bede, leave us still
-greatly in the dark as to the real cause of the hostility of the
-leading men of Northumbria, both in Church and State, towards one
-who seemed made to be a victorious leader of men. The vast blanks
-in the history can now be supplied only by conjecture, and any such
-conjectural emendation would probably be unjust to one or other of
-the disputants, to Wilfrid, to Theodore or to Egfrid. Only this much
-may with confidence be asserted, that the dispute, bitter as it was,
-turned on no question of doctrine or of morals; hardly in the end on
-any question of Church government. It is the possession of the great
-monastic properties, both in Northumbria and Mercia, which seems to
-be the real bone of contention between Wilfrid and his foes, and when
-we read of the large possessions wherewith these were endowed, ten
-“families” to one monastery and thirty to another (domains probably
-equivalent to at least 1,200 and 3,400 acres), and when we see the
-well-filled treasury blazing with gold and jewels, which after all his
-reverses gladdens the aged eyes of Wilfrid at the close of his career,
-we are, perhaps, enabled to understand a little more clearly what was
-the unexpressed grievance in the mind of the Northumbrian kings and
-bishops against their greatest ecclesiastic. With justice he exclaimed
-again and again, “What are the crimes of which you accuse me?” They
-had, it would seem, no crimes to allege against him, but the king felt
-that the vast wealth which he had accumulated made him a dangerous
-subject, and the bishops thought that he had abused the great position
-which he had achieved by his victory at Whitby, to secure for himself
-an unfair share of the new riches of the Church. Whatever view may
-be taken of the struggle, the very fact of its existence and of the
-somewhat sordid interests at stake shows us how far we have already
-travelled in less than two generations from the days of Oswald and
-Aidan. The victory of the Roman Easter was not all pure gain to the
-churches of northern Britain.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII.
-
-THE LEGISLATION OF KING INE.
-
-
-We have now nearly reached the end of the seventh century of our era,
-and we may well take note of the fact that it was, not for England
-only, a century of great religious change. The world-famous Hegira of
-Mohammed happened in 622, when Edwin was reigning in Deira. Throughout
-the reigns of the great kings at Bamburgh the invincible armies of
-Islam were sweeping over Syria and Egypt, overthrowing the ancient
-kingdom of Persia and for seven long years laying siege, all-but
-successful siege, to Constantinople. It may be well for us children of
-the Saxon to be reminded that our profession of Christianity is not
-older than the Mussulman’s allegiance to the faith of the Prophet.
-Our ancestors were idolators at the same time as the ancestors of our
-Mohammedan fellow-subjects in the east; the same century saw both our
-own forefathers and theirs converted from polytheism to monotheism,
-from chaotic Nature-worships to “the religion of a book”.
-
-A very noticeable figure in the south of England at the close of this
-century was Cadwalla, King of the West Saxons. The kingdom of Wessex
-had fallen after the death of Cenwalh in 672 into dire confusion and
-disorder. Cadwalla, who was descended in the fourth generation from the
-great fighter Ceawlin, was one of the many claimants for the throne.
-His first victories, however, were not won over any rival competitors
-for the West Saxon crown, but over his South Saxon neighbours. Between
-Wessex and Sussex there seems to have existed in these early centuries
-an enduring blood-feud. The enmity was not likely to be lessened by
-remembrance of the fact, already mentioned, that in 661 Wulfhere, King
-of Mercia, had wrested the Isle of Wight and part of Hampshire from the
-West Saxons and handed them over to his convert and godson, Ethelwalh
-of Sussex. Against Sussex, therefore, Cadwalla, “that most strenuous
-young man of the royal race of the Gewissas,” while still an exile,
-about 685, directed the arms of the followers whom he had gathered
-round him in the forests of Chiltern. He was at first successful,
-slaying King Ethelwalh and laying waste the land of Sussex with cruel
-and depopulating slaughter, but was repulsed by two ealdormen who acted
-as regents after the death of the king. Just at this time, however,
-Cadwalla seems to have made good his claim to the crown of Wessex, and
-with the forces of the whole West Saxon kingdom now at his back, he set
-himself to recover the lost provinces of Wight and the Meonwaras, and
-at the same time to extirpate the idolatry which still lingered in that
-conservative Jutish population. Herein he seems to have been abetted by
-the zealous Wilfrid, who notwithstanding his friendship for Ethelwalh
-was willing to work for the good of the Church with Ethelwalh’s
-destroyer, and who received from him as the reward of his co-operation
-one fourth of the 1,200 hides into which the Isle of Wight was divided.
-
-King Cadwalla, though an apostle of Christianity, reflected, of course,
-some of the barbarism of his age. There were two lads of royal blood
-(brothers of the last king of Wight) who had escaped to the mainland,
-but whose hiding-place was unfortunately discovered. Cadwalla, who had
-been wounded in the wars and was resting for a time at a house not
-far distant, ordered that the youths should be slain; but a certain
-Cyniberct, abbot of the monastery of Redbridge, came to Cadwalla’s
-bedside and made earnest intercession, not for the lives of the hapless
-lads, but that before their execution “they might be imbued with the
-sacraments of the Christian faith”. The request was granted. The two
-young princes were converted and baptised, and when the executioner
-made his appearance “they joyfully submitted to the temporal death by
-which they doubted not that they should pass over into the everlasting
-life of the soul”.
-
-The war of Wessex with Sussex continued and soon brought in Kent also,
-which came to the help of its southern neighbour. After two years’
-ravaging of Kent, the king’s brother Mul, by some sudden turn of
-fortune, fell into the hands of the men of that land (687), and they
-in their rage and exasperation burned him and twelve of his followers
-alive, a savage deed, which was like to have made a truceless war
-between the West Saxons and the men of Kent. Strange to say, however,
-this work of revenge was not long engaged in by the brother of the
-victim. In the year 688, after little more than two years of bloody
-reign, Cadwalla, stricken with satiety or remorse, went on pilgrimage
-to Rome. He had two great desires: “to be baptised at the threshold
-of the apostles and to be speedily freed from the flesh that he might
-pass into eternal joy”. Both desires were granted. The devout Syrian
-Pope, Sergius I., baptised him by the name of Peter on April 10, 689,
-and on the 20th, while yet wearing the white robes of a catechumen, he
-died of Roman fever. He was buried in the great church of St. Peter,
-and a Latin epitaph in twelve elegiacs was carved over his tomb. The
-meteoric career of “the most strenuous Cadwalla” who reigns and ravages
-for two years and a half, and at thirty dies “in Christ’s garments” at
-Rome, and is buried at St. Peter’s, forms one of the strangest pages in
-Anglo-Saxon history.
-
-Cadwalla’s successor, a remote kinsman named Ine, descended from
-Cerdic, but not from Ceawlin, reigned for thirty-seven years (688–726)
-over the West Saxons. In the sixth year of his kingship the blood-feud
-with Kent was ended by a treaty under which the men of Kent bound
-themselves to pay 30,000 coins of some kind (the denomination is not
-clearly stated) for the murder of Mul. The West Saxon king seems to
-have had but little difficulty in holding down Sussex, which before
-the end of the eighth century altogether disappears from the list of
-the kingdoms. He probably established some sort of protectorate over
-Essex, since (apparently about 693) he calls Erconwald, Bishop of
-London, “my bishop”. In 715 he fought with Ceolred, King of Mercia,
-at Wodensburh.[82] As the result of the battle is not stated we may,
-perhaps, infer that the victory was doubtful. The chief operations of
-the West Saxon king seem, however, to have been on his Western borders
-which were notably extended by him. In 710 he and his kinsman Nun, king
-of the South Saxons, fought against Geraint, king of the West Welshmen,
-and it was probably to mark and to secure the increase of territory
-thus won that Ine built the fortress of Taunton in the valley of the
-Tone.
-
-On the other hand there were, as so often happened in the disorganised
-West Saxon house, troubles with the king’s own kinsfolk. In 721 it
-is said “Ine slew Cynewulf the Etheling”. In the next year, Ine’s
-own queen, Ethelburga, appears as the demolisher of the newly raised
-fortress of Taunton. Apparently, however, she was warring for, not
-against her husband, and we may, perhaps, safely connect this entry
-with those which immediately follow it: “Ealdbert went into banishment
-into Surrey and Sussex, and Ine fought with the South Saxons,” and
-(725) “Ine fought with the South Saxons and there slew Ealdbert the
-Etheling whom he had before expelled from his kingdom”. If we are not
-erroneously combining these scanty notices, Ealdbert an Etheling of
-the royal house rebelled against his kinsman, seized the new fort of
-Taunton, was besieged therein by the martial consort of Ine, and on the
-storming of that stronghold fled into Sussex, where, three years after,
-he was defeated and slain by the West Saxon king.
-
-In 726, sated apparently with rule and strife and victory, the elderly
-Ine followed the example of his predecessor, resigned the crown to a
-kinsman--apparently a remote kinsman--named Ethelheard, and performed
-the great pilgrimage to Rome, “desiring in this life to wander round
-the neighbourhood of the holy places, that he might win a kinder
-reception from the holy ones in heaven”. According to William of
-Malmesbury[83] the king’s wavering and procrastinating temper was
-definitely turned towards the Roman pilgrimage by the exhortations of
-his wife Ethelburga who acted the following parable in order to give
-weight to her words. It happened upon a day that the king and his court
-left a certain _tun_ in which they had been dwelling with a profusion
-of regal luxury. By Ethelburga’s orders the steward filled the rooms
-of the royal abode with rubbish, allowed cattle to wander through it,
-defiling its floors, and placed a sow which had just littered, in the
-royal couch. Persuading the king, on some pretext or other, to go back
-to the _tun_, she turned his natural surprise at the hideous change
-into an argument for relinquishing the world. “Where, lord husband, are
-now the pomps and delights of yesterday? Like a river hastening to the
-sea is all the glory of man. As hath been the delight of our life here
-so shall be our torments hereafter.” With these words and with the
-sight of the squalid habitation, she persuaded him at once to perform
-the great renunciation for which she had so long vainly laboured. The
-death of Ine was apparently not so sudden or so dramatic as that of his
-predecessor, but there can be no doubt that he died in Rome and never
-returned to his native land.
-
-The especial interest, for us, of the reign of Ine lies in the fact
-that he was the first King of Wessex who published written laws for
-the guidance of his subjects. Till his time such legislative activity
-as existed among our ancestors had been confined to the kingdom of
-Kent, where it had evidently been called into being by the organising
-and civilising influence of the Roman ecclesiastics. “These are the
-dooms which Ethelbert the king gave forth in Augustine’s days”: so runs
-the title of the document which now stands first in the collection
-of Anglo-Saxon laws. This document is little more than a schedule of
-the fines to be paid for various offences committed. Though later
-legislators are a little less dry and curt in their utterances, the
-general character of their work is not greatly different. As with
-most of the barbarian codes the repression of crime and the redress
-of injuries is their first care. They say little about rights, much
-about wrongs. The rules which guided the devolution of property, and
-the various customs which made up “folkright” were, no doubt, deeply
-engraved on the minds and hearts of the people, and it is not from any
-formal enactment of a royal legislator, only from casual allusions to
-them, that we have to learn their nature and their history.
-
-After the death of Ethelbert, law-making activity seems to have
-slumbered for two generations. Then about the year 680, Hlothere
-and Eadric, who were apparently joint kings of Kent, put forth a
-small collection of “dooms” adding some items to Ethelbert’s list of
-offences and penalties. Eadric’s son, Wihtred, in the year 696, issued
-another set of laws, dealing more with offences against morality and
-religion--with adultery, Sabbath-breaking, the worship of devils,
-the eating of flesh in Lent, and so forth. The strong ecclesiastical
-influence under which Wihtred’s laws were framed is evidenced by the
-preface which is to this effect: “When Wihtred the most gracious king
-of Kent was ruling, in the fifth year of his reign (696), ... the 6th
-day of October, in the place which is called Berkhamstead, there was
-gathered together for counsel an assembly of great men. There was
-Berwald, archbishop of the Britons, also Gybmund, bishop of Rochester:
-and every rank of the churches of the land spake in concord with the
-obedient people. Then did the great men with the consent of all men
-‘find’ these dooms and added them to the law-customs of Kent, as is
-hereafter said and spoken.”
-
-The expressions used in this and many similar prefaces in the
-collection of Anglo-Saxon laws indicate that which is probably
-incapable of definition, the sort of share which the leading men of
-Church and State had in the royal legislation. Laws are passed in
-the name and by the authority of the king, but he is no uncontrolled
-autocrat, and for any important change in the “law-customs” of the
-people, the great men of the realm must share the responsibility.
-
-We may now turn from the rather obscure and elliptical “dooms” of the
-Kentish kings to the much fuller and more interesting laws of Ine
-of Wessex which seem to have been promulgated about 693, a year or
-two before those of Wihtred. Like the latter they were framed “with
-the counsel and consent of my two bishops, Hedde of Winchester and
-Erconwald of London, and of all mine ealdormen and the oldest _witan_
-of my people and also of a great assembly of the servants of God”. “My
-father Cenred” is also named among the royal advisers, thereby raising
-a difficult question as to Ine’s accession to the throne while his
-father was still living. The preface ends, “And let no ealdorman nor
-any of our subjects after this seek to turn aside any of these our
-dooms”.
-
-As it is impossible to give here anything like a complete digest of
-the Anglo-Saxon laws, we may leave unnoticed the ordinances for the
-repression of crime--especially the crime of theft--which constitute
-the larger part of the document before us, and may confine our
-attention to those paragraphs which deal with the tenure of land and
-with the ranks and orders in the West Saxon state.
-
-In all the earlier stages of a nation’s life, before the people have
-begun to flock into great cities, there is no subject of more vital
-importance than the relation of the Folk to the Land. In the seventh
-century in England this was doubtless governed chiefly by old unwritten
-customs which needed not to be formally enunciated because they were
-universally understood. Two precious sentences, however, in Ine’s
-laws give us a glimpse of the agricultural life of that day, and,
-combined with information drawn from other sources, enable us in some
-measure to reconstruct the rural community as it then existed. “A
-ceorl’s homestead[84] should be fenced in, winter and summer. If he
-be unfenced and his neighbour’s beast rush in by the opening which
-he has left, he shall receive nothing on account of [the damage done
-by] that beast, but must drive it out and bear the loss” (§ 40). “If
-ceorls have a common meadow[85] or other divided land[86] to fence,
-and some have fenced their portion, others not, and [stray beasts[87]]
-eat their common arable or pasture, then those who are responsible for
-the opening shall pay the others who have fenced their portion for
-the injury that is done and take such compensation as is due from the
-[owners of the intruding] cattle” (§ 42).
-
-This law shows clearly that we are here in presence of an institution,
-the existence of which is proved by sentences of Tacitus, by
-charters of Anglo-Saxon kings, by manor-rolls of many succeeding
-generations down to the very last century, the so-called Open Field
-System. This system was not socialistic nor what we understand by
-the word communistic, and yet it may truly be described in terms
-drawn from the life of to-day as a system which formed “a community
-of shareholders”.[88] Such a community was settled, by what means,
-peaceful or warlike, we need not inquire, on some land cleared,
-perhaps, from the forest where they founded what we should call a
-village, but what they called a _tun_ or a _ham_,[89] to which they
-gave the name of their own little tribe or kinship. The memory of the
-Yslings may have quite died out from suburban Islington, and Birmingham
-is no longer the little Mercian _ham_ where once the Beormings
-clustered, but there seems no sufficient reason to doubt that from some
-such settlements as these sprang the numerous _tons_ and _hams_ which
-dot the map of England and have given their names to a stalwart progeny
-in America and at the Antipodes.[90]
-
-In the village settlements thus formed, of course, the main business
-of the inhabitants was agriculture, and this appears to have been
-conducted mainly on the Three Field System in which the land that was
-not reserved for pasture was put one year under wheat sown in the
-winter, the next year under oats or barley sown in the spring, and the
-third year lay fallow. Now the peculiarity of the Open Field System is
-this, that instead of each owner having his own bit of land separate
-from the rest, in which he could practise this rotation of crops by
-himself, the community as a whole had three large districts undergoing
-that rotation, and in each of these districts the _ceorl_ (as the
-Anglo-Saxon village shareholder was called) had a number of separate
-strips of land, as a rule not adjacent to one another, assigned to him,
-and in the cultivation of these strips he was probably for ever helping
-or being helped by the owners of the strips adjoining. The system
-appears to us inconceivably complicated and absurd: it can hardly be
-even understood without reference to a map[91] in which we see the
-strips of varying width, but generally a furlong in length, lying side
-by side for a while, and then in another group starting off at right
-angles to their former direction, but always preserving this strip-like
-formation. Looking on such a map we can better understand what King
-Ine meant when he talked of the _gedal-land_ or divided land which it
-was the duty of the ceorl owner to fence; since, obviously, if the end
-of his strip abutted on the forest or on the pasture in which the cows
-of the community were feeding, his carelessness in leaving it unfenced
-would work annoyance and loss to many others besides himself.
-
-The causes and the origin of this remarkable system are lost in
-prehistoric darkness. It has been well said[92] that “it is the more
-remarkable, because with all its inconveniences of communication,
-all its backwardness in regard to improvements, all its trammels on
-individual enterprise and thrift, all its awkward dependence of the
-individual on the behaviour of his neighbours, it repeats itself over
-and over again for centuries, not only over the whole of England but
-over a great part of Europe”. One thinks that some idea of future
-repartitions, some desire to prevent any one individual or family from
-getting too strong a grip of the land, must have been at work here
-as with the Germans in the first Christian century, of whom Tacitus
-wrote: “They change their fields year by year, and there is still land
-left over”.[93] To continue the previous quotation: “the system was
-particularly adapted to the requirements of a community of shareholders
-who were closely joined together in the performance of their work,
-the assertion of their rights, the fulfilment of their duties and the
-payment of their dues”.
-
-If we now inquire what was the extent of the land thus strangely
-divided which was generally owned in the seventh century by the
-Anglo-Saxon ceorl, we shall find that the determining factor is his
-ability to grapple with the necessary cultivation of the soil; or,
-in other words, the size of his estate is expressed in terms of his
-ploughing power. The normal English plough-team consisted of eight
-oxen yoked two and two together; and the land which it was possible to
-plough by such an ox-team was called in English a _hide_, in the Latin
-of the later lawyers a _carucate_.[94] The extent of a hide was not
-always precisely the same even in the earliest times,[95] and in later
-times there are puzzling differences in its dimensions, but as a rule
-it seems safe to estimate it at 120 acres.
-
-If a husbandman had only two oxen (in which case he would generally
-have to rely on co-operation with his neighbours to get his land
-tilled) he could only hope to cultivate the fourth part of a hide. This
-was called a _yard-land_ in Old English, or a _virgate_[96] in legal
-Latin. An even smaller division was the _ox-gang_ or _bovate_ (the
-eighth of a hide), which belonged to the husbandman who had but one ox
-to contribute to the common ploughing.[97]
-
-The question now arises, “What was the ordinary holding of the
-Anglo-Saxon ceorl during the first ages after his settlement in the
-land, and what was his social position?” The answer, of course, must
-be mainly conjectural, but especially when we consider the language
-of Bede, and his Anglo-Saxon translators, who use “family” as the
-equivalent of “hide,” it seems probable that the hide, whatever its
-dimensions may have been, was the normal holding of the ceorl in his
-day, and all the indications derived from the history of the seventh
-century seem to point to the conclusion that the ceorl was a free man,
-proprietor of the land which he cultivated, liable to service in the
-_fyrd_ or national army, and to certain ecclesiastical payments, but in
-every other relation independent. Metaphors are dangerous things, but
-we may probably with safety characterise the numerous and sturdy class
-of ceorls as the backbone of the Anglo-Saxon community.
-
-On the other hand, whatever the normal property of the ceorl might be,
-it is certain that in the course of time holdings would be split up
-and the size of proprietorships would vary. While some ceorls--as we
-shall see later on--might become owners of as many as five hides and
-thus “attain unto thegn-right,” many more would see their holdings
-dwindle into virgates and bovates; perhaps even[98] the virgate or
-yard-land would become the typical holding of the descendant of the
-original ceorl-settlers. The owner of 15 acres or even of 30 acres in
-those days when “intensive” cultivation was unknown, would not be able
-to do much more than provide food for himself and his family, and in
-a rough, undemocratic age would be deemed a person of little account
-in comparison with the great thegn or the abbot of a wealthy monastery
-who sat in the king’s council and affixed his cross to the king’s
-charters. Thus we can easily understand how the _status_ of some, by no
-means of all the ceorls might already towards the close of the seventh
-century be slowly changing from absolute independence into ill-defined
-subjection or payment of rent to some great neighbouring land-owner
-whom he was learning to call his _hlaford_, or lord.[99]
-
-Owing to the peculiar mode of its division the arable land of the _tun_
-has attracted the largest share of our attention. It is not to be
-forgotten, however, that surrounding the three great open fields which
-at one time or another came under the plough, there was also a large
-meadow in which there was “common of pasture” for the cattle belonging
-to the members of the _tun_. Surrounding this, again, and disparting
-one tun or ham from its neighbour, there would generally be found a
-belt of forest-land, as to which we have some interesting utterances
-from the mouth of the West Saxon legislator. The great economic use of
-the forest, in addition to the provision of fuel, was its supply of
-“mast” for the swine, whose flesh was an important part of the food of
-the people. In the forty-fourth of Ine’s laws it is ordained that if
-any one cut down a tree under which thirty swine could take shelter
-he shall pay a fine of thirty shillings. In the twentieth law we are
-introduced to “a foreigner or other stranger”--probably in most cases
-a Welshman--pushing towards us through a trackless forest. “Comest
-thou peaceably?” is evidently the question that rises to the lips of
-the Saxon ceorl as he sees the figure in outlandish garb dimly moving
-through the trees. If the stranger would dispel suspicion he must
-either wind his horn or shout at frequent intervals; otherwise the West
-Saxon may assume that he is a thief and either slay him or capture
-and hold him to ransom. In the former alternative, however, he must
-at once make the matter known and swear that he took the dead man for
-a thief; otherwise he will be liable to judicial process at the hands
-of the dead man’s kinsmen. Again,[100] if a man burns a single tree
-in a forest, and is afterwards convicted, he shall pay the full fine
-of sixty shillings, for “Fire,” says the law-giver, “is a thief,” a
-secret, furtive creature that may do much mischief. But if a man goes
-boldly into the forest and cuts down trees for his own use, he shall
-be fined thirty shillings for the first tree so felled and so on up
-to ninety shillings, but no more, however extensive may have been his
-depredations, for “The axe is a tell-tale”. He could not have wielded
-it so long in the forest without a ringing sound which should have
-arrested the attention of the forester.
-
-Of course there was an exception to the general law of the mutability
-of holdings in the case of the house of the ceorl with the little bit
-of land surrounding it. This, which we should call a homestead, was
-called in Anglo-Saxon a _weorthig_, and the fortieth law (already
-quoted) warned the ceorl that this must be kept always well fenced
-winter and summer, and that if any gaps were left in the hedge
-surrounding it he would have no claim against a neighbour for any
-damage that might be done by that neighbour’s beast rushing in through
-the opening.
-
-The whole of the labour on the land of a ceorl who had the normal
-holding of a hide would certainly not be performed by himself and his
-family. We have frequent references in the laws to a servile class,
-generally known as _theows_, but sometimes--chiefly in the laws of
-the Kentish kings--as _esnes_. We may conjecture that this class was
-originally formed for the most part out of vanquished Britons spared
-by their conquerors; probably also from among the descendants of yet
-earlier strata of population, enslaved by the Britons themselves. It
-was certainly recruited by the so-called _wite-theows_, men probably
-originally of the class of ceorls, who having committed some crime
-and being unable to pay the pecuniary penalty for their offence were
-condemned to penal servitude, and in such a case generally forfeited
-the freedom of their descendants as well as their own. Probably the
-larger number of theows were in bondage to land-owners of higher rank
-than the ceorl, but one of the laws of Ethelbert of Kent[101] shows
-that at any rate the possession of a slave by a ceorl was not a thing
-altogether unknown. Our information as to this servile class is,
-however, very imperfect, and relates chiefly to the floggings to which
-they may be subjected for various offences.[102]
-
-Though the position of the great body of the ceorls, if it has been
-rightly stated here, was that of partners in a free and independent
-agricultural community, it must be admitted, as previously said, that
-we have already in the laws of Ine traces of another, probably an
-increasing class of _gafol gelders_ or rent-payers. Land in these cases
-was held by free men under a lord, to whom payments had to be made in
-kind whenever the lord visited the tenant. In Saxon Britain, as in
-Frankish Gaul, the king and his chief nobles lived on the produce of
-their estates, not by drawing half-yearly rents and converting them
-into money, to be spent in their own distant palaces, but by moving
-about from _tun_ to _tun_, from _vill_ to _vill_, and calling upon
-their tenants for supplies of food which were consumed upon the spot
-by themselves and their retainers, doubtless with much wassail and
-jollity. From an estate of ten hides the lord was entitled to claim
-ten vessels of honey, three hundred loaves, twelve _ambers_ of Welsh
-ale, thirty _ambers_ of clear ale, two full-grown oxen or ten rams, ten
-geese, twenty hens, ten cheeses, a full _amber_ of butter, five salmon,
-twenty pounds weight of fodder, and a hundred eels.[103]
-
-From the consideration of the middle and lower classes of Anglo-Saxon
-society we ascend to consider the rather difficult questions connected
-with the higher ranks of that society, the thegns, the eorls, the
-ealdormen, about whom the Laws and the Chronicles inform us. In this
-examination we should be left in almost hopeless darkness were it
-not for two institutions both well known in all the collections of
-primitive Teutonic law, and both very repugnant to our modern ideas of
-justice, _wergild_ and (so-called) _compurgation_.
-
-The essential principle of the _wergild_ was compensation in money
-to the kindred of a murdered man, in order to induce them to abstain
-from righting or avenging themselves by force. Far back in the dimmest
-ages of the Teutonic foreworld the historical student discerns a
-period when all wrongs were avenged by the stroke of the broad-sword.
-The right, and more than the right, the sacred duty, of vengeance was
-handed on from father to son, and the circle widened from kinsman to
-kinsman, till the terrible blood-feud was like to destroy a tribe or
-even a nation. Then at some period far back in the ages, the idea was
-conceived of exorcising the spirit of revenge by the wand of pecuniary
-compensation. Let the relatives of a murdered man receive a _wer_, a
-payment in money, proportioned to his rank and position in the tribe,
-and, the family honour being thus satisfied, let them forego the right
-to revenge. If the injury were something less than death--if it were
-maiming, mutilation, the abduction of a wife, unprovoked words of
-insult--a proportionate payment in the nature of _wer_ was made to the
-sufferer himself. The _wer_ was purposely fixed high according to the
-value of money in those days, and if the offender were unable to pay
-it, he and sometimes his family with him became the bondslaves of the
-injured party. There was thus an element of prevention as well as of
-compensation in the punishment inflicted. But in all this we do not
-find any thought of punishment inflicted by the state to avenge the
-injured majesty of the law; nothing of that feeling which now makes the
-murder of the most degraded outcast a matter which must be inquired
-into with the utmost diligence by the police and punished by the hands
-of the executioner. This thought was indeed in some degree expressed by
-the _wite_ or fine for murder, breach of the peace and so on, which was
-paid to the king or to one of his officers, but this fine was generally
-less in amount and always less in importance than the venerable wergild
-payable to the kindred.
-
-The amount of _wergild_ was elaborately proportioned to the station in
-society of the injured party--twice as high for the nobleman as for the
-squire, three times as high for the squire as for the yeoman (if one
-may be permitted to use as a very rough approximation the terms current
-in modern society); but it is important to remember that obligation
-in this system of law went hand in hand with privilege. If the _wer_
-for an injured thegn was high, it was on the level of that wer that
-he would have to atone to the king for offences committed by him
-against the law of the land.[104] The _wergild_ tariff, however, though
-frequently referred to, is not regularly set forth in the laws either
-of Ethelbert or of Ine, an omission common to it with many of the other
-Teutonic codes, especially that of the Lombards. Probably the amount
-of _wer_ payable in each case was so well known through long usage
-that the legislator deemed it needless to set it forth anew, but it is
-possible also that there was a variable element left, in some cases, to
-be the subject of bargaining between the two kins of the injurer and
-the injured. Some broad lines of demarcation, however, may be clearly
-traced. We know that the ceorl was called a _twy-hynd_ man, because
-the ordinary compensation for his violent death was 200 shillings. A
-Welshman, however, who owned that single hide of land which seems to
-have been the normal property of the well-to-do ceorl, was entitled to
-a _wergild_ of only 120 shillings, but if he so prospered as to become
-the owner of five hides of English soil then his wergild rose to the
-proportionate amount of _600_ shillings.
-
-The class next above the ceorl, the class corresponding with the gentry
-of modern times, the large land-holders who do not happen to hold any
-official position at the king’s court, were in the ninth century spoken
-of as _thegns_; and that word may, for convenience, be used here,
-though it is perhaps doubtful whether it was yet used as the simple
-designation of a class. In the word thegn the thought of soldiership
-and of service to the king seem almost inseparably blended. In the
-poem of Beowulf thegns seems to be equivalent to warriors.; while in
-the charters of Anglo-Saxon kings the Latin equivalent of thegn is
-almost invariably _minister_. In the laws of Ine these men seem to be
-generally spoken of as _gesithcund_, men who by birth were entitled to
-be comrades and attendants of the king; and it is almost certain that
-they are identical with the _twelf-hyndemen_, their wergild being fixed
-at 1,200 shillings. Higher than this these laws do not enable us to go,
-but the tenor of later legislation supports the conjecture that the
-_wergild_ for an ealdorman or for a bishop was 4,800 shillings, for an
-archbishop or etheling (member of the royal house), 9,000 shillings,
-and for the king himself, 18,000 shillings.[105]
-
-It will be seen that the Ealdorman is here put on a level with the
-Bishop. At the point of West Saxon history which we have now reached,
-there seems to have been one ealdorman to every shire. He commanded the
-_fyrd_ of his shire in battle, he presided along with the bishop and
-the reeve in the shire-gemot, of which later laws than Ine’s inform us:
-and altogether his position may perhaps be best imagined by comparing
-it with that of a modern lord-lieutenant of a county.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Some further light on the ranks and orders in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
-is shown by the rather copious ordinances on the subject of that
-judicial process which is generally called compurgation. This name is
-not technically correct, as it is of ecclesiastical origin and belongs
-to later times than those with which we are now dealing; but we have
-not yet naturalised “oath-helping” as the Germans have naturalised
-_eid-hilfe_, and the word _ath-fultum_, occasionally used in the
-Anglo-Saxon laws, has not yet attained the same degree of currency as
-_wergild_. With the word “compurgation,” therefore, we must for the
-present rest satisfied.
-
-We first meet with this custom in the fourteenth law of King Ine, who
-says, “If any one be accused of brigandage he shall clear himself by
-120 hides or pay accordingly”. We naturally inquire what is meant by
-“clearing oneself by 14,400 acres,” and we receive further light on the
-question when we come to law 19 which tells us that “a king’s retainer
-(_geneat_) if his wer is 1,200 shillings may swear for 60 hides if he
-be a communicant,” on which the later Latin translator adds the gloss,
-“for 60 hides, that is for six men”.
-
-We now see more plainly the meaning of “swearing by 120 hides”. A
-man accused of such a grave crime against society as brigandage
-must, in order to prove his innocence, procure the attestation of
-at least two king’s tenants (each presumably holding sixty hides
-of land) or twelve land-owners (each owner of ten hides), and they
-must swear that they believe him innocent. This is “oath-helping” or
-“compurgation”. This swearing process is, as has been often pointed
-out, not in the least like our modern examination of sworn witnesses
-to fact, nor does it contain the promise of our modern trial by
-jury. It is much more akin to the privilege allowed to the defendant
-of “calling witnesses to character,” a privilege which, where the
-evidence is only circumstantial, often has an important influence on
-the verdict. It must be admitted that even with us the force of such
-evidence frequently depends in some measure on the social status of the
-witness-bearers, but we should shrink from making the bald statement
-that a man accused of murder must produce two persons paying income-tax
-on £10,000 a year, or twenty persons at £1,000 a year, to declare their
-belief in his innocence.
-
-The amount of “swearing power,” if it may be so called, belonging
-to each class of men is not very clearly stated. From the passage
-quoted above, with its Latin gloss, one is inclined to suppose
-that the ordinary ceorl swore for ten hides. It has been recently
-argued[106] that he swore only for five or perhaps six hides. There
-is, however, evidently something factitious in the ownership of land
-thus theoretically assigned to him. We may say, certainly, that the
-ordinary ceorl did not possess five, much less ten hides of land; nor
-were all thegns, who had probably the same swearing power as the king’s
-_geneat_, possessed of sixty hides, say 7,200 acres. We may therefore
-rather look upon the number of hides for which ceorl, thegn and king’s
-thegn were entitled to swear as a conventional mode of stating for the
-guidance of the judge, the weight that was to be attached to their
-testimony when they gave it on behalf of a man accused of crime.
-Perhaps also there was in this curious tariff of credibility an attempt
-to ascertain the extent to which the belief of the vicinage could be
-relied on in the prisoner’s behalf. The ordinary ceorl, cultivating
-perhaps only one hide, but mingling with a certain number of his fellow
-ceorls in the exercise of his daily toil, might vouch for the opinion
-of the owners of ten hides; while the king’s retainer, from his wider
-field of observation, could vouch for the belief of a district six
-times as large.
-
-From a consideration of the laws of Ine and other nearly contemporary
-sources, we may, perhaps, safely arrive at the following general
-conclusions as to the nature of the social edifice in the eighth
-century. At the summit of that edifice we find, of course, the
-king. He is king as yet of only a few English shires, a monarch of
-far less importance than the Frankish kings before they sank into
-inefficiency, yet a much greater man than many who had borne the same
-title in preceding centuries. In the early history and charters of the
-Anglo-Saxons we are struck with the large number of persons who bear
-the title of _cyning_ or _rex_. Edwin slays five kings when fighting
-against the Saxons. Four kings were reigning at the same time in
-Sussex, three in Essex. There were kings of the Hwiccas (Worcestershire
-and Warwickshire) and a separate kingdom of the Middle Angles and
-of Lindsey, all of which vanished leaving no trace in the so-called
-“Heptarchy” of later historians.[107]
-
-All this, though partly accounted for by the tendency to treat the
-kingdom as a family estate and to divide it up at the king’s death
-among his surviving sons, shows also that there must have been a strong
-movement in the opposite direction, a tendency towards unity and
-consolidation to produce the three comparatively large and powerful
-kingdoms of Mercia, Wessex and Northumbria, which are practically all
-that are of historic importance in the eighth century.
-
-It may have been partly on account of the increasing majesty of the
-royal name that the nobility (if we may thus speak of the classes
-reaching from the throne down to the lowest stratum of thegn-hood)
-became, what perhaps they had not been originally, a class of
-_ministri_ and _milites_, servants to the king in peace and in
-war. Writers on the early constitution of the Germanic states are
-accustomed to dwell on the distinction between the primeval “nobility
-by birth” and its successor, “nobility by service”. Without denying the
-probability that nobles of the first kind existed among the invaders of
-England, we must admit that in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms as we know them
-it is the second species, “nobility by service,” in the king’s court
-with which we find ourselves chiefly brought in contact. When the king
-takes counsel with his _witan_ it is with the archbishop and bishops,
-with the ealdormen, the king’s thegns and the “exalted councillors”
-(_gethungenan witan_) in their various degrees that he deliberates,
-with their concurrence that he makes laws for the welfare of the realm,
-and by their cross-made signatures that his charters granting land
-are attested. We do not appear to have any accurate information as to
-the time of meeting of the _witan_ (_witenagemot_). Nor was the place
-of meeting by any means always the same even for each Saxon kingdom,
-though Winchester, Kingston, and in later times London, were frequent
-homes of the West Saxon _witenagemot_.
-
-The functions of this great council of the wise men of the realm, the
-degree to which they shared or controlled the royal power in matters
-of legislation, of finance, of the defence of the country, are better
-learned by watching the course of national history than from any
-attempt to frame a definition of that which was essentially vague,
-fluctuating and incoherent. The relation between the _witenagemot_
-and the medieval parliaments of the Plantagenets must be felt to be
-only one of rather faint analogy. In some respects the contemporary
-ecclesiastical councils of Visigothic Spain, at any rate in their later
-phases, present a much closer correspondence of type. It certainly
-seems, from the language of the Chronicle, that the English witan,
-like those councils, had a powerful voice in the election of the king,
-though, unlike the Spanish councillors, the Wise Men of Wessex were, in
-their choice, for the greater part of the time confined to one royal
-line, the men “whose descent goeth unto Cerdic”.[108]
-
-
-NOTE ON ANGLO-SAXON MONEY.
-
-To understand properly the information about wergilds supplied to
-us by the Anglo-Saxon laws, we must devote a little attention to
-the Anglo-Saxon currency. Our ancestors a thousand years ago used
-for the most part the same pecuniary language that we use to-day.
-They generally spoke of pounds, shillings and pence; and the clerkly
-ecclesiastics who had to translate these words into Latin employed the
-_Libra_, _Solidus_ and _Denarius_, which have given us the well-known
-symbols £ s. d. This translation, however, into the terms of Roman
-currency has done nothing but confuse our own monetary history. _Libra_
-as the translation of pound is unobjectionable, but _solidus_--the only
-coin of that name that obtained wide currency, the _solidus aureus_ of
-Constantinople--was a gold coin of which 72 went to the pound of gold,
-and was in intrinsic value equal to about thirteen shillings of our
-present money. No _scilling_ that any Anglo-Saxon legislator ever dealt
-with had any such intrinsic value as this. Similarly the _denarius_,
-the true denarius of the republic and of the early empire, was a silver
-coin intrinsically worth about eightpence of our present currency. No
-penny in any Anglo-Saxon coinage ever approached this value; and the
-translation of denarius by penny has introduced confusion even into
-some well-known passages of the English Bible. Let us, therefore,
-for the sake of clearness, wholly disregard the pretended Roman
-equivalents, and confine our attention to the true, long-enduring Saxon
-denominations, the _pund_, the _scilling_ and the _penig_.
-
-1. The _pund_ meant a pound’s weight of silver. It was purely a “money
-of account,” as no coin representing this value was ever struck by any
-Anglo-Saxon king. According to the present value of metals, it would be
-worth intrinsically somewhat less than £2 sterling.
-
-2. The _scilling_ was also only a money of account, represented by no
-actual coin. Its derivation (from _scylan_, to divide) seems to point
-to the fact that it was originally a portion of a silver ornament,
-probably a torque or an armlet broken off and cast into the scale, for
-payment by weight of the trader’s demand. Even so, as we may remember,
-St. Oswald ordered his beautiful silver dish to be broken up and
-distributed to the starving crowd, who would take these _scyllingas_
-into the market and exchange them there for the needed food. At a later
-time the _scilling_ acquired a definite value, which, however, varied
-much in the different English kingdoms. The Kentish _scilling_ was
-one-twelfth of a pound; the Wessex _scilling_, one-forty-eighth; and
-the Mercian, one-sixtieth.
-
-3. But however much the _scilling_ might vary, the penny (_pending_,
-_pening_ or _penig_) seems in all the English kingdoms to have ever
-borne the same proportion to the pound which it bears at present,
-namely, as 1 to 240. This enables us to state the varying values of the
-_scilling_ in the following manner:--
-
- The _scilling_ of Kent = 20 peningas.
- Do. Wessex = 5[109] „
- Do. Mercia = 4 „
-
-Here at last, in this lowest and humblest denomination, we get
-something which is not a mere “money of account”. The silver pennies
-of the Anglo-Saxon kings, which reach from the middle of the eighth
-century right down to the Norman conquest, and whose successors formed
-practically the only money of the country until the reign of Edward
-III., are the glory of the numismatic collector, but suggest strange
-thoughts as to the stage of civilisation reached by a country whose
-only coin was a little bit of silver, one-twentieth of an ounce in
-weight.
-
-A few words must be said (1) as to the intrinsic value, and (2) as to
-the purchasing power of these moneys.
-
-(1) As to the first question we are met by the practical difficulty
-of deciding what is the present value of silver. Not thirty years ago
-silver was worth fully 4s. 6d. an ounce, or £2 14s. a pound; now it
-fetches about half that price. But if we take, for convenience, the
-larger quotation, representing the old-fashioned ratio between gold and
-silver of 15½ to 1, we get roughly the following results:--
-
-The _pund_ = £2 14s. in intrinsic value.
-
- _Scilling_ of Kent = 1/12 of a pound = 4s. 6d. in intrinsic value.
- Do. Wessex = 1/48 „ = 1s. 1½d. „
- Do. Mercia = 1/60 „ = 10⅘ pence „
- The _penig_ = about two pence and three farthings „
-
-(2) The “purchasing power” of money in those days is of course a
-different and a far more difficult question. As every one knows,
-since the discovery of America and the opening up of enormous fresh
-sources of supply of the precious metals, prices have been altogether
-revolutionised, and the “purchasing power” of an ounce of gold or
-silver has been enormously lessened.
-
-The following are a few indications given us by the laws of Ine and
-some of his successors as to the prices prevalent in his time:--
-
- 1. An ewe with one lamb, 1 scilling (= 1s. 1½d.).
- Present value, £2 10s. Ratio 1 to 44.
-
- 2. Maintenance of a peasant’s child, 6 scillings (6s. 9d.) per
- annum _plus_ a cow in summer and an ox in winter.
- Equivalent to our time to about £6. Ratio 1 to 17.
-
- 3. A peasant’s blouse was worth 6 peningas (1s. 4d.).
- This was probably a rather elaborate affair, and if
- hand-worked might be worth at the present time £1 10s.
- Ratio 1 to 22.
-
- 4. A sheep’s fleece, 2 peningas (5½d.).
- Present price, 7s. Ratio 1 to 15.
-
-From the laws of Athelstan:--
-
- 5. A good horse, 24 scillings (£1 7s.).
- Present price, £40. Ratio 1 to 30 nearly.
-
- 6. A sheep, 1 scilling (1s. 1½d.).
- Present price, £2. Ratio 1 to 35.
-
-From the law concerning the Dunsaete (Welsh mountaineers) (tenth
-century):--
-
- 7. A mare, 20 scillings (£1 2s. 6d.).
- Present price, £25. Ratio 1 to 22.
-
- 8. A “swine,” 1⅗ scilling (1s. 10d.).
- Present price, £1 10s. Ratio 1 to 16.
-
- 9. A sheep, 1 scilling (1s. 1½d.).
- Present price, £2. Ratio 1 to 35.
-
- 10. A goat, ⅖ of a scilling (5½d.).
- Present price, 15s. Ratio 1 to 33.
-
-It will be seen from the above rough calculations how impossible it is
-to get any fixed proportion between the purchasing power of money in
-Anglo-Saxon times and in our own. As to one very important element,
-the price of grain, we have no satisfactory information; but from the
-records of later centuries (from the thirteenth onwards) it seems
-probable that, with frequent and violent fluctuations, it generally
-ruled relatively higher than the price of cattle.
-
-On the whole, for historical purposes, if the reader mentally
-translates the scilling of Wessex into the pound sterling of our own
-day he will probably not go far wrong.
-
-It may be well to add a few other monetary terms belonging chiefly to
-the later centuries of Anglo-Saxon history.
-
-1. The _Mancus_ was one-eighth of a pund: or 30 penings. The name is
-said to be derived from the Arabic. The Mancus in the time of Athelstan
-was the standard price of an ox.
-
-2. The _Thrymsa_ of Mercia was originally a gold coin (derived from the
-Roman _tremissis_), but afterwards the word was used to denote a unit
-of value, the equivalent of 3 penings.
-
-3. The _Sceatt_ was very nearly equivalent to the pening; but 250 not
-240 went to the pund.
-
-4. The _Mark_, a Danish word, denotes the equivalent of half a pound.
-
-5. The _Ora_ was the eighth part of a mark. It was held to be
-equivalent to 2½ scillings of Wessex, but there is some difficulty
-in the equation of these Danish and Saxon currencies. According to
-_Domesday Book_ the Ore contained 20 pence, and accordingly the
-Mark would be equal not to 120 but to 160 pence. On the other hand,
-Ethelred’s laws, iv., 9, say that the pound contained 15 ores. This
-would make the Mark if it was half a pound equivalent to 7½ ores.
-
-(See Chadwick, _l.c._, chapter i., for a discussion of this perplexing
-question.)
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV.
-
-THE EIGHTH CENTURY.
-
-
-The eighth century was in many ways a memorable one for Europe and
-Asia. In the east it was the period of the greatest splendour of the
-Caliphs of Baghdad; at Constantinople it saw the rule of the strong,
-stern iconoclastic emperors who set the spiritual authority of the
-popes at defiance; in Italy it beheld the downfall of Lombard rule, in
-Spain the subjection of nine-tenths of the country to the domination of
-the Moors.
-
-Even more important than any of these events were the changes which
-were going forward in the wide regions subject to the dominion of
-the Franks. Here the star of the great Austrasian house, which was
-represented by Charles Martel, Pippin and Charlemagne, was steadily
-rising. In this century they shouldered aside the last feeble
-representative of the Merovingian race, and seated themselves visibly
-on that Frankish throne behind which they and their sires had stood
-so long as mayors of the palace; and in the end, aspiring yet higher,
-at the very end of the century the greatest of the race received the
-imperial crown and was hailed as Carolus Augustus by the people of Rome
-in the city of the Cæsars.
-
-In this last series of events, as it happened, Englishmen self-exiled
-from their country took a prominent part. Willibrord, the apostle
-of the Frisians, baptised Pippin and foretold the exaltation of
-his house. Wynfrith, otherwise known as Boniface, following in his
-footsteps, persuaded or compelled Frisians, Thuringians and Hessians
-to embrace that religion which his own forefathers had accepted only
-three generations before, and with the religion induced them to accept
-also the ecclesiastical discipline of Rome. In his later missionary
-operations, gentle or forcible, he was strongly supported by the
-Austrasian Pippin, whom he repaid for that support by crowning him
-King of the Franks just half-way through the century. Moreover, it was
-another Englishman, the Northumbrian Alcuin, head of the great school
-for ecclesiastics attached to the church of York, who towards the
-close of the century accepted Charlemagne’s invitation to take up his
-abode at the Frankish court; became, so to speak, his literary prime
-minister, and being full himself of the memories of classical Rome, had
-no inconsiderable share in persuading his patron to revive the glories
-of the great world-empire, to pass from the condition of a mere King of
-the Franks into that of Roman Emperor.
-
-Thus, in this eighth century the Anglo-Saxon race was in various ways
-making its mark on Europe; and in our own island its literary history
-during this period is not without interest; but politically the century
-is one of the most sterile in all our annals. It was an age of little
-men, of decaying faith, of slumberous inaction, or else of sanguinary
-and chaotic strife. Northumbria especially, during this period, was
-falling fast and far from her former high estate. Mercia and Wessex
-were engaged in perpetual objectless war, not ennobled by any great
-names or chivalrous deeds. Yet possibly even this dreary time was
-looked back upon in the next century as a golden age, for it was,
-almost till its close, unmarked by foreign invasion. In the year 793
-a new and more disastrous chapter was opened by the appearance on the
-horizon of the ships of the Vikings.
-
-The unsatisfactory character of this portion of English history is
-no doubt partly due to the fact that at an early stage we lose the
-guidance of that great writer to whom we are indebted for almost all
-that gives freshness and life to the preceding narratives. Bede, the
-father of English history, finished his great work in 731, and died
-four years later, in 735. Hitherto he has been speaking to us about
-the lives of other men; it is now time to listen to what his disciples
-have told us concerning his own. Born about the year 672, soon after
-the death of Oswy, Bede was taken as a child of seven years old to the
-newly founded monastery of Monkwearmouth, and there or in the sister
-monastery of Jarrow he passed the rest of his life. He was thus not
-only the child of the convent but in a pre-eminent degree the spiritual
-heir of Benedict Biscop, the nobly born and cultured Northumbrian,
-who had founded these two monasteries, had built in their precincts
-two stately stone churches “after the manner of the Romans which he
-always loved” (far superior doubtless to the uncouth wooden churches
-which satisfied most of the Anglo-Saxon builders), had enriched their
-libraries with precious manuscripts and pictures--the trophies of
-five journeys to Rome--and had imported artisans from Gaul to teach
-the Anglo-Saxon the hitherto unknown mystery of the manufacture of
-glass. It is an interesting fact that of both these two foundations of
-Benedict Biscop some vestiges still remain, almost unique specimens
-of early Anglo-Saxon art. In the porch of the parish church of
-Monkwearmouth are some cylindrical “baluster-shafts,” and some slabs
-covered with beautiful Anglo-Saxon knot-work. In the parish church
-of Jarrow, surrounded as it now is by smoking furnaces and clanging
-steam-hammers, there are portions of a wall undoubtedly anterior to the
-Norman conquest, and possibly belonging to the very fabric which, as
-an inscription tells us, was dedicated in the fifteenth year of king
-Egfrid and the fourth year of abbot Ceolfrid (probably 685). Under this
-abbot, who ruled Wearmouth as well as Jarrow, Bede spent more than
-thirty years of his life, the years of boyhood, youth and early middle
-age. With him, according to the pathetic story already related, he
-probably sustained as a boy of fourteen the whole burden of chanting
-the antiphones, when all the rest of the choir were laid low by the
-terrible pestilence. By him doubtless his studies were directed in
-later life, when as a studious youth he entered the convent library and
-began to pore over the manuscripts, sacred and profane, the splendid
-copies of the Vulgate, the treatises of the Fathers, the poems of
-Lucretius, Horace, Ovid and Virgil, wherewith the literary enthusiasm
-of Benedict had enriched his monastery.
-
-In 716 the abbot Ceolfrid, in the seventy-fifth year of his age,
-resigned his office and started on a pilgrimage to Rome. He travelled
-slowly, and had only reached the city of Langres in Champagne, when the
-weakness of age conquered him, and he lay down and died. His attempted
-pilgrimage has, however, a special interest for us, since it has
-recently been discovered that one of the manuscripts which he took with
-him on his journey as an offering to the Holy Father was none other
-than the celebrated Codex Amiatinus, now preserved in the Laurentian
-Library, at Florence and, by the admission of all scholars, the chief
-authority for the text of Jerome’s great translation of the Scriptures.
-
-Bede survived his old preceptor nearly twenty years, following up with
-patient industry the literary career upon which Ceolfrid had started
-him. In 731 he completed the great work on _The Ecclesiastical History
-of the English Nation_, which has made his name immortal; but besides
-this he wrote a vast number of treatises: on _The Interpretation of
-Scripture_, on _The Nature of Things_, on _Grammar_ and on _Astronomy_,
-and two chronological works entitled _De Temporibus_ and _De Temporum
-Ratione_. His books show an especial interest in the computation of
-time, the natural result of his study of the great Easter controversy,
-the echoes of which must have been still resounding in the days of
-his childhood. He was unquestionably the most learned man of his
-age, perhaps one might safely say the most learned man of the early
-Middle Ages. He was--what even the great Pope Gregory was not--a Greek
-scholar; and his Latin style, formed doubtless on a careful study of
-the classical authors in the library of the convent, is eminently pure,
-and free from turgidity and affectation. His history, in fact, comes
-as a delightful surprise to the student who has had to struggle with
-the barbarous Latinity of papal epistles, or the astounding grammatical
-blunders of Bede’s Frankish counterpart, Gregory of Tours. All this
-intellectual attainment on the part of the monk of Jarrow is the more
-surprising when we remember how short was the interval which separated
-him from actual barbarism. Bede’s father possibly, his grandfather
-almost certainly, were rude illiterate pagans; yet we find their near
-descendant writing Latin which might almost have passed muster at the
-court of Augustus, and by his saintly life and happy death illustrating
-the noblest qualities of the Christian character.
-
-Bede’s life ended on May 9, 735. Though the story of his death is one
-of the best known in English history, it may hardly be omitted here.
-For some months before the end he had suffered much from difficulty
-of breathing. The long and weary night watches were gladdened with
-psalmody; sometimes with the repetition of his own Anglo-Saxon verses,
-one of which may be thus translated:--
-
- Let not man take thought too deeply
- Ere his last and lonely journey.
- Ponder as he may, he knows not
- What of good and what of evil
- Shall befall his parting spirit.
-
-He wept with his weeping disciples; then he changed to rejoicing and
-gave thanks to God for all, even for his chastisements. “As Ambrose
-said, so can I say, too, ‘I have not so lived that I need be ashamed
-to abide longer with you; yet neither do I fear to die, for we have a
-good Lord’.” In the intervals of sacred song he continued his literary
-labours, dictating to a youth by his bedside a translation of the early
-chapters of John’s gospel, together with some extracts from a treatise
-by Isidore of Seville. This latter was probably one of the Spanish
-bishop’s scientific works, for Bede said: “I do not want my lads to
-read that which is false, nor that after my death they should spend
-fruitless labour on this thing”. The amanuensis said, “There is yet one
-chapter of the book which thou art dictating, but I think it too hard
-work for thee”; but Bede answered, “No, it is easy; take thy pen and
-write speedily”. When the dictation was all-but ended, he distributed
-his little treasures, spices, napkins and incense, among his friends in
-the monastery. Then said the scribe, “There is yet one more sentence
-not written down”. This was dictated. The scribe said, “It is done”.
-“Thou hast said truly,” answered Bede. “It is finished. Help me to sit
-in yonder place where I have been wont to pray, that sitting there I
-may call upon the name of the Father.” And thus, seated on the pavement
-of his cell and chanting with laboured breath the _Gloria Patri_, the
-father of English history passed away.
-
-In connexion with the name of Bede, allusion must be made to one or
-two of his contemporaries who made this period illustrious in the
-history of English literature. The herdsman-poet Caedmon has already
-been mentioned in connexion with the conference at Whitby. The date of
-his death is not recorded, but it probably occurred before the close
-of the seventh century. Though recent criticism has thrown some doubt
-on his authorship of the poems which were formerly attributed to him,
-there can be no doubt that his was a great name in the young literature
-of the Anglo-Saxon race, and if Bede, though writing in Latin, may be
-considered as standing by the fountain-head of English prose, Caedmon
-must be allowed to hold the same place in relation to English poetry.
-
-Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury and first bishop of Sherborne, was
-probably considered by his contemporaries the greatest scholar of
-his age. Like so many of the great ecclesiastics of this period,
-Aldhelm was of noble birth, a kinsman, said some, of King Ine himself.
-Trained in the monastic school of Hadrian at Canterbury he imbibed
-from his Italian instructors a large amount of classical learning,
-but not that purity of taste which caused his younger contemporary
-Bede to use his learning with discretion. Whatever may have been his
-literary failings, there was a fascination about his personal presence
-and an earnestness in his religious character which won for him a
-large number of loyal disciples, enabled him to develop the little
-community gathered by an Irish saint into the famous monastery of
-Malmesbury, and made him the literary apostle of Wessex. According
-to his great panegyrist, William of Malmesbury, he combined in his
-style the excellencies of various nations. Some fastidious readers
-in the twelfth century found his works heavy reading. “Unreasonable
-judges are they,” said William, “who do not know that every nation
-has its own different style of writing. For the Greeks write in an
-involved style, the Latins in a guarded one, the Gauls write with
-splendour, the English with pomp.... But if you will carefully read
-Aldhelm’s writings you will think him a Greek by the acuteness of his
-intellect, a Roman by his brilliancy, and an Englishman by his pomp.”
-The “pomposity,” or in other words, the turgidity of his style has been
-found quite intolerable by later scholars, but was probably considered
-an enviable gift by his countrymen, only just emerged from barbarism.
-At any rate even to the pompous and somewhat pedantic churchman much
-may be pardoned in consideration of the charming anecdote, related on
-the authority of King Alfred, that Aldhelm in his younger days seeing
-the “semi-barbarous” people accustomed, as soon as Mass was finished,
-to stream away to their houses without listening to the words of the
-preacher, took his station on the bridge by which they needs must
-pass and there sang merry ballads of his own composition, till he had
-gained the ear of the hurrying crowd, after which he changed his
-tune, gradually interwove with his song the words of Scripture, began
-to speak to them of serious things, and, in short, won back to sanity
-and devotion the citizens whom he might vainly have endeavoured to
-coerce by the terrors of excommunication. Aldhelm was chosen Bishop of
-Sherborne in 705 and died in 709.
-
-The names just mentioned are those of men of a somewhat earlier
-generation than Bede, and belong, in fact, rather to the seventh
-century than to the eighth. Not so with the last upon our list,
-Cynewulf, who was born not many years before the death of Bede and
-whose literary activity was displayed in the latter half of the eighth
-century. We have in this poet a remarkable instance of a man whose very
-existence had been forgotten by his countrymen, and whose name, till
-a few years ago, was absent from the most carefully written histories
-of our literature. In the year 1857, however, a German professor[110]
-discovered Cynewulf’s name in a charade prefixed to a collection of
-Anglo-Saxon riddles. The clue thus followed led to other discoveries,
-and now by the general consent of scholars many poems formerly
-attributed to Caedmon are reclaimed for his fellow-Northumbrian
-Cynewulf. The Riddles which are sometimes attributed to this poet
-are considered by those who have studied them to show, amid much
-misplaced ingenuity, considerable sensitiveness to the beauties of
-Nature, and some power of description of the battle and the banquet.
-It is interesting to observe how rapidly in these early Middle Ages a
-literary fashion spread from country to country over the whole west
-of Europe. Almost at the same time when the Northumbrian poet was
-composing his curious poetical riddles, Paul the Lombard and Peter of
-Pisa were discharging at one another acrostic riddles and enigmatic
-charades at the court of Charlemagne.
-
-The most important of all the poems which have been conjecturally
-assigned to this author is the beautiful “Vision of the Holy Rood,”
-some lines of which are carved upon the Ruthwell Cross still existing
-in Dumfriesshire. In this poem the author describes the appearance
-to him in a dream of the holy wood which had once been a tree in the
-forest, and was then cut down and fashioned into a cross for the
-punishment of criminals, but received with awe upon its arms the
-sacred body of the Lord of mankind. The Rood speaks:--
-
- Then the young hero, who was mightiest God,
- Strong and with steadfast mind,
- Up to the cross with steps unfaltering trod
- There to redeem mankind.
- I trembled, but I durst not fail,
- I on my shoulders bare the glorious King.
- They pierce my sides with many a darksome nail,
- And on us both their cruel curses fling.
-
-The death, the burial and the resurrection of the Lord are related in
-a similar strain of reverent compassion for the Almighty Sufferer, and
-the Rood finally charges the poet to reveal the vision to all men,
-inasmuch as the day is coming when Christ will ask who there is that
-for His name will taste of bitter death as He did on the cross.
-
-There is something which must needs move our sympathy when we see
-the passion of pitying love with which these simple-hearted sons of
-warriors received the story of the suffering Saviour. But, as has been
-already said, the tide of religious emotion which had flowed so freely
-in the seventh was already beginning to ebb in the eighth century. This
-decay of religious life in England, or at any rate in Northumbria, is
-vouched for in the memorable letter which Bede wrote shortly before
-his death to his friend Egbert, who had just been consecrated bishop
-and was shortly to become Archbishop of York. The letter itself is a
-model of wise exhortation, boldly but respectfully tendered by an aged
-saint to a man, his junior in years but his superior in ecclesiastical
-rank. Bede is evidently sure of the goodness of his pupil’s intentions,
-but anxious lest he should not have sufficient force of character to
-make head against the corruption of the times. Ever since the death of
-King Aldfrid, which happened thirty years before (705), the decline
-in morals had gone on at a rapid pace. He holds the bishops largely
-responsible for this degeneracy. They have insisted on retaining
-dioceses larger than any one man could possibly administer. They have,
-for filthy lucre, given their consent to all sorts of grants which
-should never have been made. They and their clergy have clutched
-eagerly at the shepherd’s hire, leaving the flock unfed. “There are,
-as we hear, many farms and villages on lonely mountains or in brambly
-wildernesses, in which for many years the face of a priest has never
-been seen, and neither baptisms nor confirmations are ever performed,
-and yet not one of the dwellers in such places is ever allowed to
-escape from the payment of church-dues.”
-
-But the greatest scandal of all in Bede’s day seems to have been the
-foundation of pseudo-monasteries by noble and wealthy laymen, who
-intended anything rather than the leading of a life of religious
-austerity. Intent apparently on securing the creature-comforts which
-a well-endowed monastery afforded; intent also on escaping under the
-pretence of a religious life the duties of military service for their
-king and country, these pseudo-abbots would obtain a large grant of
-land from the king, and would there rear their unholy convents, in
-which, freed from all laws, human or divine, they would live their
-lives of licentious ease, waited on by troops of menial monks, who had
-generally been themselves expelled from genuine monasteries, by reason
-of their irregular lives. Nay, sometimes these impostors would go even
-further, and persuade a foolish king to grant them a piece of land
-adjoining the first donation, and would there erect a nunnery in which
-their wives might, without taking any regular vows, pretend to be the
-guides and rulers of maidens vowed to Christ.
-
-These abuses had gone so far that the service of the state was
-seriously impaired thereby. The lavish grants of land, both to the
-genuine and the sham monasteries, had so impoverished the king that
-he had no reserve land, from which to reward the sons of his thegns
-or poor soldiers who had served him well in war. Hence these young
-men either sped across the seas to countries which held out the hope
-of a better career, or, being unable to marry, abandoned themselves
-to illicit love and sank down into the lowest depths of sloth and
-immorality. Bede’s recommendation was that as there were so many of
-these places which were profitable neither to God nor man, with no true
-service to God performed in them, and quite useless for the defence
-of the realm, they, or at any rate one of them, should be seized and
-converted into the seat of a new and much-needed bishopric. Such a
-deed, far from being blamable as sacrilege, would deserve the praise
-due to a most virtuous action. Subjection of all monasteries to some
-external supervision and control; the suppression of as many as
-possible of those nests of hypocrisy and vice, the sham monasteries;
-and the formation of many new bishoprics--these were the remedial
-measures which lay nearest to the heart of Bede. Whether Archbishop
-Egbert, a noble and pure-minded man, friend of one king (Ceolwulf) and
-brother of another (Eadbert), was able to carry into effect any of
-Bede’s reforms it is impossible to say; but the subsequent course of
-Anglo-Saxon history seems to point to a negative conclusion. It was,
-perhaps, partly in these paradises of sin, in the pseudo-monasteries
-of England, that the virility of the nation was sapped and the way
-prepared for so many a miserable surrender to the Danish invaders.
-
-In the general decline of morals during the eighth century NORTHUMBRIA
-was especially conspicuous, if we may draw any conclusion from
-its political history. In the course of that century fifteen
-kings swayed the sceptre, and of these, five were deposed, five
-murdered, two voluntarily abdicated the throne. It is no wonder that
-Northumbria, once so glorious, now became the basest of the kingdoms;
-that Charlemagne, on hearing of one of these murders, called the
-Northumbrian Angles “a perfidious and perverse nation, worse than the
-pagans, murderers of their lords”; or that the northern kingdom was
-found utterly unable to cope with the storm of Danish invasion when it
-beat upon its shores. It would serve no good purpose to give the names
-and dates of accession of all these kings, most of whom are to us mere
-names in an arid chronicle, but we may single out for special notice
-two who reigned in the first half of the century, Ceolwulf and Eadbert.
-
-Ceolwulf, a descendant of Ida but not of Oswald’s line, in the words
-of William of Malmesbury “mounted the trembling summit of the kingdom”
-in the year 729. He is memorable for us as the friend of Bede and
-the sovereign to whom he showed and dedicated his _Ecclesiastical
-History_; and for his liberality to the Church he was looked upon with
-much favour by ecclesiastics. But the throne did not cease to tremble
-when he ascended it. In 731 he was taken prisoner, no doubt, by some
-of his rebellious subjects, was forcibly tonsured and consigned to a
-monastery. He was, however, soon restored to his kingdom and reigned,
-it would seem, with comparative tranquillity for six years, during
-which time he must have received and may have read the _Ecclesiastical
-History_. In 737 “thinking it contrary to the gravity of the Christian
-character to be immersed in worldly affairs,” he abdicated the kingdom
-and became a monk at Lindisfarne. The abdication and the monastic
-profession were this time probably voluntary. The rare sanctity which
-he displayed in the convent procured for him the honour of burial near
-the tomb of St. Cuthbert and miracles were believed to be wrought at
-his grave.
-
-The chosen successor of Ceolwulf was his cousin Eadbert (737–58),
-a strong and strenuous ruler who once more pushed the Northumbrian
-border far into Scotland, adding a part of Ayrshire to his dominions,
-and so impressing the surrounding states with the terror of his name
-that the Angles of Mercia, the Picts, the Scots and the Britons of
-Strathclyde, all remained at peace with him during the greater part
-of his reign and delighted to do him honour. By a combination of
-circumstances, probably unique in English history, the brother of this
-powerful king was Egbert, archbishop of York (734–66), the prelate to
-whom Bede addressed the letter of counsel just quoted. Egbert’s tenure
-of the see was in itself memorable. He was the first occupant of that
-see after Paulinus to hold the rank of archbishop and to receive his
-_pallium_ from the pope. He did for the church library at York what
-Benedict had done for Jarrow and Wearmouth, obtaining for it large
-stores of precious manuscripts and laying the foundation of that great
-ecclesiastical school the glory of which culminated in Alcuin. As for
-his brother, King Eadbert, his fame spread far and wide, and in him the
-glory of Oswald and of Oswy seemed about to be revived. But towards
-the close of his reign his fortune changed. In the year 756, when he
-had been nineteen years on the throne, he, in alliance with the King
-of the Picts, led an army against the strong city of Alclyde, the
-modern Dumbarton, which was the capital of the kingdom of Strathclyde.
-The allied operations were at first successful. Alcuith surrendered
-on August 1, but only nine days later almost the whole of Eadbert’s
-army perished in its march through Perthshire. We have no hint of the
-cause of the disaster, but we may, if we like, imagine a well-planned
-ambuscade in some Perthshire glen, an anticipation by nearly a thousand
-years of the battle of Killiecrankie.
-
-Was it depression of spirits at this lamentable change in his
-fortunes, or was it merely that weariness of reigning which overcame
-so many Anglian kings, that drove Eadbert into the monastery? In the
-twenty-first year of his reign, notwithstanding the earnest dissuasion
-of his neighbour-kings, some of whom, we are told, offered to add
-part of their realms to his if he would continue to reign, Eadbert,
-“for the love of God, and desiring to take the heavenly country by
-storm, received on his head St. Peter’s tonsure,” and handed over his
-kingdom to his son Oswulf. He continued in his religious seclusion for
-ten years till his death in 768, and was buried at York in the same
-_porticus_ of the church which held his brother, the archbishop, who
-had died two years before him. There is some reason to suppose that
-after the unfortunate issue of Eadbert’s campaign in 756, the border of
-Bernicia being withdrawn a long way to the south, the capital of that
-kingdom was transferred from Bamburgh to Corbridge in the valley of
-the Tyne, some seventy miles south-west of Bamburgh. Corbridge was the
-Corstopitum of the Romans, a station on the northern Watling Street,
-and still shows some interesting relics of Roman occupation. About the
-same time we find indications that Cataractonium, now Catterick, the
-most northerly Roman station within the limits of Yorkshire, became a
-royal residence, perhaps as a supplemental palace to that at Eburacum.
-Thus we see that even four centuries after the departure of the legions
-the charm of Roman civilisation still lingered round the places where
-they had dwelt, though these are represented in our own day by villages
-whose very names are obscure except to antiquaries.
-
-In the latter half of the century the lawful line of Northumbrian
-kings, the sons of Ida, was frequently broken by usurpers of unknown
-lineage, chief among whom were a certain Ethelwald Moll and his son
-Ethelred. The latter, an _impiissimus rex_, in the language of the
-chronicler, reigned from 774 to 779, was expelled in the latter year,
-and returned in 790 to wreak vengeance on the princes of the lawful
-line. The two sons of his predecessor, when apparently little more than
-children, were lured from their sanctuary in the cathedral at York by
-promises of safety and protection, and were drowned in Windermere by
-order of the usurper. Their cousin Osred, who had for a short time
-worn the crown, was similarly enticed from the Isle of Man, captured
-and slain. Ethelred sought to strengthen himself by an alliance with
-Offa, the powerful King of Mercia, whose daughter Elfleda he married
-at Catterick in 792, the year of Osred’s murder. But for all his
-precautions he could not escape the usual fate of Northumbrian kings.
-In 796 he was slain “by his own people” at Corbridge.
-
-The man who sat upon “the trembling throne” at the end of the century
-was a certain ealdorman named Eardulf, who six years before his
-accession had had a narrow and, as some men thought, miraculous escape
-from death. The tyrant Ethelred, whose anger he had somehow incurred,
-ordered him to be executed outside the gates of the monastery of Ripon.
-The monks with solemn chants bore his body to the church for burial and
-left it for the night at the lych-gate. There soon after midnight some
-faithful follower found him still alive and helped him to escape. His
-resurrection seems to have been concealed from Ethelred, and, as has
-been said, the year 800 found him reigning as king over Northumbria.
-
- * * * * *
-
-From Northumbria we turn to the central kingdom of MERCIA. The eighth
-century was the time of the greatest glory of that kingdom, and for
-many years it seemed as if from that quarter rather than from Wessex
-would come the needed consolidation of England; as if Lichfield, rather
-than Winchester or even London, might be the destined capital of the
-country. It was chiefly under two kings, Ethelbald and Offa, whose
-united reigns occupied eighty years (from 716 to 796), that Mercia
-attained this high position. Penda’s grandson, Ceolred, King of Mercia,
-died insane in 716, being thus punished, according to St. Boniface,
-for the sins which he had committed in defrauding the Church of her
-possessions and making the vowed virgins of her convents minister
-to his lusts. He was succeeded by a remote relation, Ethelbald,
-who was not a lineal descendant of Penda, and whom, jealous of his
-great qualities, Ceolred had driven forth from his court. In his
-fugitive wanderings Ethelbald had visited more than once the far-famed
-sanctuary of Crowland,[111] where amidst the vast fens of Lincoln and
-Cambridgeshire, dotted over with desolate forest-islands, the holy
-man Guthlac, the Cuthbert of Mercia, had made for himself a hermit’s
-retreat, and, with only two servants for his companions in that
-infinite loneliness, had practised austerities surpassing those of
-the hermits of the Thebaid. Guthlac had the usual experiences of the
-fever-stricken solitary, being assailed at night by demons with great
-heads, hideous faces, long horse-like teeth and horrible harsh voices,
-which croaked forth temptation, in the language not of the Angle but of
-the Briton. This sorely buffeted but eminently holy man, who died in
-714 at the age of forty-one, and whose life in the wilderness lasted
-only fifteen years, had during that term acquired great renown as a
-saint. His fame spread far and wide through Mercia, and people of
-all ranks flocked to him for healing or for counsel. Among these was
-the outcast Ethelbald, to whom Guthlac predicted that he should soon
-without strife possess the Mercian throne, a prophecy which was shortly
-fulfilled when his cousin and enemy was stricken with madness, while
-sitting at the banquet with his _gesiths_ all round him.
-
-Ethelbald swayed the sceptre of Mercia for forty-one years (716–57).
-He was evidently a strong and strenuous, if somewhat unscrupulous
-ruler. In the early part of his reign he had so completely cowed Wessex
-and conquered the other four southern kingdoms, that Bede, writing
-the concluding paragraphs of his history in 731, could say: “All
-the southern provinces up to the boundary of the Humber, with their
-respective kings, are subject to Ethelbald, King of the Mercians”. In
-733 we find him capturing Somerton, the chief town of the Sumorsaetas;
-in 740 he turns his arms northwards and takes advantage of Eadbert’s
-absence on his Pictish campaign to ravage Northumbria. But in his
-last years fortune frowned upon him. In 750 Cuthred II., King of
-Wessex, apparently an active and valiant man, rose in rebellion, and
-in 752 won a great victory over Ethelbald at Burford on the slopes of
-the Cotswolds, putting him to ignominious flight. Never apparently
-did Mercia recover the supremacy over Wessex which she lost on that
-battlefield, and in 757 Ethelbald, who must have been an unpopular
-master of his household, perished by a night attack of his own guards.
-Notwithstanding his early friendship for St. Guthlac, Ethelbald was
-not a pious nor even a moral king. There is preserved a remarkable
-letter addressed to him by St. Boniface,[112] in which the apostle
-of Germany, while praising the vigour and justice of his government,
-rebukes him for his outrageous profligacy, and expresses his fear that
-some great national judgment, like the Moorish conquest of Spain,
-will fall upon the kings and peoples of England for their luxury and
-immorality--a remarkable prophecy, as it must have seemed to later
-generations, of the Danish ravages.
-
-After a short interval of unrest the Mercian throne was filled by
-Offa, a distant relation of Ethelbald, who reigned for nearly forty
-years (757–96), and who in some ways seems to deserve the title of the
-greatest of Mercian kings. The everlasting contest with Wessex was
-renewed, and Offa’s victory at Bensington in Oxfordshire (779) did
-something towards obliterating the disgrace of Burford and probably
-gave what is now the county of Oxford to the middle kingdom. From
-various causes Offa had now acquired so great a predominance that he
-was able to carry into effect a change in the ecclesiastical geography
-of England which was little less than a revolution. This was the
-creation of a new archbishopric for the Midlands. We may imagine that
-he reasoned in this wise: “Northumbria has now its archbishopric at
-York. The archbishop of Canterbury is too much overshadowed by the
-greatness of my rival of Wessex. Why should not I, the most powerful
-king in Britain, have an archbishop of my own here in Mercia?”
-This reasoning prevailed. In 787 a synod, ever after known as “the
-contentious synod,” was held at Chelsea, and thereat, we are told,
-seven out of the twelve dioceses of the southern province were
-placed under the archbishop of Lichfield, being rent away from their
-dependence on Canterbury. The meaning of this change is obvious. There
-were now three great English kingdoms: Northumbria, Wessex and Mercia,
-and three corresponding archbishoprics, York, Lichfield and Canterbury.
-The Thames was the boundary between the central and southern provinces,
-except that Essex with Middlesex was included in the latter. East
-Anglia was evidently, in ecclesiastical matters as well as in things
-political, subject to Mercia, a fact which accounts for the abrupt
-entry in the Chronicle for 792[113] (794): “Offa, King of the
-Mercians, ordered the head of Ethelbert, King [of the East Angles],
-to be struck off”. The new ecclesiastical arrangement lasted for only
-sixteen years. In 803 Offa’s successor Cenwulf voluntarily restored all
-the metropolitan rights of the see of Canterbury.
-
-There is one still existing memorial by which the name of Offa yet
-survives in the mouths of men. This is Offa’s Dyke (called by the Welsh
-_Clawdd Offa_), a great earthen rampart flanked by a ditch, which ran
-from the mouth of the Dee to the mouth of the Wye, a distance of some
-130 miles, and divided the territories of the Mercians from those of
-the Welsh. For a considerable portion of its course this rampart is
-still visible, in some places only as a low bank but in others showing
-a height of 30 feet to the summit of the mound from the bottom of the
-ditch on its western side. It nearly corresponds with the present
-boundary between England and Wales, except that it cuts off from
-England a portion of Hereford and the whole of Monmouth. In part of its
-course it is duplicated by another embankment called Wat’s Dyke, about
-three miles to the east of it, and this work also, in the belief of
-some antiquaries, belongs to the age of Offa. Though we are distinctly
-told, on good authority, that the object of this huge work was military
-defence, it is probable that, like the _Vallum_ in Northumberland and
-the _Pfahlgraben_ in Germany, it was also a geographical boundary, and
-served a useful purpose in time of peace, as marking the limit of two
-rival jurisdictions and clearly indicating to which of them pertained
-the duty of punishing robbery or murder committed on either side of the
-border. This dyke probably commemorates the result of the “Devastation
-of the southern Britons wrought by Offa” which is noted by the
-_Cambrian Annals_ under the years 778 and 784; and the effect of these
-campaigns seems to have been to push back the Welsh frontier from the
-Severn to the Wye--no unimportant augmentation of the Mercian kingdom.
-
-The diplomatic correspondence of the period shows us how large loomed
-the figure of Offa in the eyes of his contemporaries. Pope Hadrian I.
-in writing to Charlemagne calls him absolutely “rex Anglorum,” and
-at the same time earnestly expresses his disbelief in a rumour which
-had reached his ears that the two kings of the Franks and the Angles
-were plotting his own deposition from the papacy, and the appointment
-of a Frankish ecclesiastic in his place. This, however, was probably
-an idle rumour, set afloat by some of Hadrian’s enemies in order to
-work upon the fears of the elderly pontiff. Offa, himself, seems to
-have received the legates of the Holy See with reverence and to have
-availed himself of their help in regulating the affairs of his new
-archbishopric. Moreover, he ordained, probably as a thank-offering for
-the papal assistance in this matter, that his kingdom should send a
-yearly offering of 365 _mancuses_ (about £130), one for each day in the
-year, to the holy see.
-
-There were, however, some difficulties connected with the frequent
-English pilgrimages to Rome; too frequent according to Alcuin for the
-good repute of the Anglo-Saxon dames who engaged in them; and too
-frequent, as the tax collectors of Charles the Great considered, by
-reason of the number of merchants who, under the guise of holiness,
-transacted a profitable business in the transport of specie and
-merchandise. These difficulties were, however, set right by a friendly
-letter from Charles to the effect that true pilgrims should receive all
-due protection from him, but that merchants masquerading as pilgrims
-must pay the regular customs dues. This letter, written in 796, was
-accompanied by the present of a belt, a Hunnish sword and two silken
-vestments, part of the huge spoil taken in the previous year from the
-robber hold of the Avars. It seems to have healed an old estrangement
-between the two kings dating from 789, the result of the failure of
-matrimonial negotiations between them. Charles had solicited the
-hand of Offa’s daughter for his son and namesake, and Offa had been
-willing to consent, on condition that Charles’s daughter, Bertha,
-should become the bride of his son, Ecgferth. On this point, however,
-the negotiations broke down, owing to Charles’s well-known reluctance
-to part with any of his daughters. For a short time the relations
-between the two kingdoms were sorely strained, and decrees forbidding
-the entrance of merchants were issued by either angry sovereign, but
-gradually the dispute died down, perhaps partly owing to the mediation
-of Alcuin, who was English by birth and loyal to his English friends,
-but Frank by adoption and a true subject to Charles. At last, as
-we have seen, all wounds were healed by the application of an Avar
-baldric, a sword and two mantles.
-
-Offa died in 796, and his son and successor Ecgferth followed him to
-the grave in four months. This untimely death of a young and hopeful
-prince was, according to monastic writers, a punishment for the many
-crimes of his father, especially for the execution of the East Anglian
-Ethelbert. Cenwulf, who succeeded to the Mercian throne, was not of
-Offa’s line, though like him a collateral descendant of Penda. Of his
-reign, which lasted well on into the ninth century (796–821), nothing
-need here be said, save that in its third year he invaded Kent, which
-had revolted from his rule and set up a rival king named Edbert Pren,
-possibly a descendant of the old Kentish line. Edbert was defeated and
-taken prisoner by the soldiers of Offa, who, after cutting out his
-tongue and chopping off his hands, sent him as a prisoner into Mercia.
-With all its vaunted prosperity, the central kingdom does not seem to
-have made great progress in civilisation since the days of Penda.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Save for some conflicts with Wales, in which the Cymri appear generally
-to have been worsted, the history of the WEST SAXON kingdom in the
-eighth century consisted chiefly of that protracted struggle with
-Mercia which has been briefly sketched in the foregoing pages. But
-the story of the death of Cynewulf in 786 is told in the Chronicle
-with such vividness and in such detail that an attempt must be made to
-reproduce it here. Cynewulf, a kinsman of the victorious Cuthred, had
-expelled that king’s successor, Sigebert, and driven him into exile.
-After thirty years of reigning, Cynewulf had to meet the face of the
-avenger, Sigebert’s brother, Cyneheard, who is called in the Chronicle
-“the Etheling”. Learning that the king, slenderly guarded, was visiting
-a woman at Merton, Cyneheard with a band of his _gesiths_ surrounded
-the house and rode through the gate of the great courtyard to the
-door of the lady’s bower. Surprised and unable to summon his guards,
-the king rushed to the door, and in the narrow entrance defended
-himself bravely and with success till he caught sight of the Etheling.
-Then with a sudden burst of rage he dashed forward, sorely wounded
-his enemy, but was himself surrounded and slain by Cyneheard’s men.
-Meantime the lady’s cries aroused the king’s thegns who were in the
-great hall, ignorant of what had happened, and they hastened to the
-scene of tumult, each running as fast as he could. The Etheling, who
-had no quarrel with them, offered them quarter and money in return for
-peace, but they refused his terms and continued fighting, outnumbered
-as they were, till they were all slain but one man, “and he,” says
-the chronicler apologetically, “was [only] a Welshman, a hostage and
-already sorely wounded”.
-
-Next morning, when the main body of the king’s thegns, whom he had left
-behind when he rode to Merton, heard what had happened, they galloped
-to the house, headed by the Ealdorman Osric, but found the Etheling
-in possession and the gate of the courtyard closed against them. A
-parley was called, and Cyneheard offered the new-comers their own terms
-in money and land if they would join his party and win for him the
-kingdom, adding with uncomprehended irony: “There are kinsmen of yours
-now with me in the house, and they, I know, will never leave me”. “No
-kinsman,” answered the thegns, “can be dearer to us than our lord, and
-we will never follow his murderer.” The offer of quarter which they in
-turn made to the Etheling’s _gesiths_ was rejected with equal scorn.
-“We care no more for your offer,” said they, “than did your comrades
-for ours, and they”--now at last the truth came out--“were all slain
-with the king.” Then followed fierce fighting round the gates, till at
-last the king’s thegns, who were the stronger party, forced their way
-in and slew the Etheling and all the men with him, save one who had
-already received many wounds and was godson to Ealdorman Osric by whom
-his life was preserved. Once again we note the unshakable fidelity of
-the “comrades” to their lord.
-
-On the death of Cynewulf, Beorhtric (786–802), a distant kinsman,
-succeeded to the West Saxon throne. Royal genealogies were by this time
-in much confusion, and all that the chronicler could say concerning
-his descent was that “his right father’s kin goeth unto Cerdic”.
-Beorhtric’s reign, in itself unimportant, is chiefly interesting to
-us by reason of a certain competitor, for the time an unsuccessful
-competitor, for the crown. This was none other than a young man named
-Egbert, who, it was said, could trace his line back through a brother
-of King Ine to Ceawlin and so to Cerdic. His father, Ealhmund, had
-been under-king of Kent, whether under Mercia or Wessex it would be
-difficult to say; indeed the whole of Egbert’s early career is veiled
-in obscurity. All that seems to be certain is that he had pretensions
-of some kind to the kingship of Wessex, which made him obnoxious to
-Beorhtric and forced him to seek shelter at the Mercian court. Thence,
-however, he was driven in 789 when Beorhtric obtained in marriage the
-hand of Offa’s daughter, Eadburh. Ethelred of Northumbria having soon
-after married another daughter of the same house, there was evidently
-no safe resting-place in England for the fugitive prince, who betook
-himself to the court of Charles the Great and there abode for thirteen
-years till the death of his rival. In 802, Beorhtric died, and Egbert,
-returning to England, seems to have been without opposition raised to
-the West Saxon throne.
-
-According to Asser, the biographer of Alfred the Great, the death of
-Beorhtric was due to his wife. That daughter of Offa, if Asser may
-be trusted, as soon as she had established her influence in the West
-Saxon palace, “began in her father’s manner to act tyrannically”. She
-undermined to the utmost of her power the king’s best counsellors by
-slandering them to her husband, and those whom she could not thus
-displace she removed by poison. A draught of poison which she had thus
-prepared for a young man greatly beloved by Beorhtric was inadvertently
-tasted by the king and caused his death, which of course involved
-Eadburh’s downfall. Carrying with her great hoards of treasure, she
-sought the Frankish court where her husband’s rival, Egbert, had so
-lately been sheltered. As she stood in the hall of audience and offered
-rich presents to the emperor, Charles said to her, perhaps in jest:
-“Choose, Eadburh, which you will have, me or my son who stands here
-with me under the dais”. She thoughtlessly answered: “If I may really
-have my choice, I choose your son, inasmuch as he is the younger of the
-two”. Whereupon Charles answered with a smile: “If you had chosen me,
-you should have had my son, but now since you have chosen him you shall
-have neither”. An improbable story truly, but one which shows the sort
-of legend which already ere the end of the ninth century was springing
-up around the name of Charlemagne. Eadburh, however, received from
-the emperor the gift of a great abbey which she ruled for some time.
-Then, being convicted of unchastity, she was expelled from the convent,
-wandered over Europe, begging her daily bread, and died at last in
-misery at Pavia. Such was the end of the daughter of the mighty Offa.
-So detestable, says Asser, was the memory of Eadburh’s crimes that
-for generations the West Saxons would not allow the wife of one of
-their kings to be called queen, but would only allow her the title of
-consort.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV.
-
-EARLY DANISH INVASIONS--EGBERT AND ETHELWULF.
-
-
-Two entries which strictly belong to the eighth century have been
-reserved for this place, because they are rather foreshadowings of
-what was to befal in the years after 800, than characteristic of what
-was happening in the years preceding it. At some unnamed date in the
-reign of Beorhtric, King of Wessex, but probably about the year 790,
-the Chronicle tells us that “first came three ships of Northmen.[114]
-And then the reeve rode thereto and would fain drive them to the king’s
-vill, for he knew not what [manner of men] they were and there they
-slew him. These were the first ships of Danish men that sought the land
-of the English race.” This short but ominous entry is a tocsin ringing
-in 300 years of strife. The words of the Chronicle and of its copyist
-Ethelweard seem to suggest that the ships’ crews came with peaceful
-intent; that the king’s reeve--a man whose office was something like
-that of steward or bailiff--tried to exact some payment from them, and
-for that purpose to force them to enter some royal settlement, but
-found to his cost that these were no sheep that would stand quiet for
-his shearing, but fierce war-wolves, capable of turning upon him with
-hungry teeth and rending him in pieces.
-
-This first affray with the Danes evidently took place in Wessex; and,
-if we may believe the historian Ethelweard, the royal vill where the
-reeve resided was Dorchester. But the Scandinavians having seen, as the
-Saxons did before them, “the nothingness of the natives,” of course
-came again, and this time (793) to Northumbria. Dire presentiments had
-already cowed the hearts of the people; hurricanes blew and lightnings
-flashed, and (if we like to trust the chronicler) fiery flying serpents
-hurtled through the air. Then came a great famine, and then (June
-8) “the heathen men” [Danes] “miserably destroyed God’s church at
-Lindisfarne with rapine and slaughter”. The desecration of so holy
-a place shed horror through western Christendom. “It is now,” wrote
-Alcuin to the Northumbrian King Ethelred, “about 350 years that we and
-our fathers have dwelt in this most beautiful country, and never before
-has such a terrible thing befallen Britain as that which we have now
-suffered from the pagans. Nor was it, in fact, thought possible that a
-voyage of that kind could ever have been made”--a strange illustration
-of the lost seamanship of the Anglo-Saxons. “Lo now the church of
-St. Cuthbert is stained with the blood of the priests of God. It is
-despoiled of all its ornaments. The most venerable place in Britain has
-been given to pagan nations for a prey.”
-
-The ninth century, upon which we now enter, too truly verified the
-forebodings of the prophets of evil. It began indeed in glory, with
-Charles the Frank acclaimed at Rome as Augustus, and meditating the
-revival of the old Roman empire in all its splendour, the protection
-of the widow and the fatherless, the humbling of all lawless power,
-the foundation of St. Augustine’s City of God. But the new empire had
-scarcely been founded when it began to crumble; all through the middle
-years of the century it sank lower and lower into the morass. With the
-deposition of Charles the Fat in 887 and his death in 888 the last
-Carolingian emperor vanished from the scene. Saracen pirates ravaged
-the shores of the Mediterranean, besieged Rome (846), rifled the tombs
-of the apostles and hurled their lances at the mosaic picture of Christ
-in the apse of St. Peter’s. Ere the century was ended, Hungarian Arpad
-was renewing in Central Europe the ravages of Attila. Everywhere there
-was “distress of nations with perplexity”--perplexity made all the more
-terrible by the fact that the popes themselves, the men to whom Europe
-looked for counsel and for cheer, were throughout this century for the
-most part men of poor and feeble character. It was the age which saw
-the posthumous condemnation of Pope Formosus, the age in which the
-malevolent credulity of a later generation placed the fable of Pope
-Joan.
-
-But greater than all the other calamities which befel Europe during
-this period was unquestionably the misery caused by the raids of
-Scandinavian free-booters. A well-known story describes how Charles the
-Great saw the ships of the Northmen approaching the city in Provence
-where he then dwelt. As soon as the pirates perceived that they would
-have to deal with the great emperor himself, they sheered off in
-well-advised caution, but Charles stood at the eastern window of his
-palace gazing at their departing sails, and as he gazed he wept. None
-of his courtiers durst ask him the reason of his tears, but he himself
-deigned thus to explain them: “I weep for sorrow that they should have
-dared in my lifetime to approach this coast, and because I foresee how
-much misery they will cause to those who come after me”. Whatever may
-be the truth of this story, there is no doubt that Charles’s alleged
-prophecy was fatally verified. Engrossed as we generally are by the
-story of Danish ravages in England, we are apt to forget that, at least
-in the ninth century, France and Germany suffered nearly as much from
-the same calamity. All round the coast from Denmark to Spain, wherever
-a broad estuary invited their presence, there the Danish pirates
-entered and ravaged. The Elbe, the Rhine, the Seine, the Loire and
-the Garonne were all furrowed by their keels. Hamburg, Paris, Rouen,
-Bordeaux, Marseilles and countless other cities were sacked by them;
-some, especially Paris, more than once.
-
-A student of Scandinavian history may well inquire, not why the raids
-of the Northmen were terrible in the ninth and two following centuries,
-but why they had not begun long before. Here was a poor and hardy
-population, inhabiting a country so deeply indented by the sea that it
-was impossible for its sons to be mere landsmen; in fact a population
-which for more than a thousand years has been more enthusiastically
-seafaring than any other in the world. Within a few days’ sail of their
-homes were the shores of Britain and of Gaul, countries peopled by
-races which had lost their old love of the sea, and were for the most
-part sunk in swinish pleasures; rich countries, too, according to the
-estimate of that day, everywhere studded with convents in which pious
-women or unwarlike men were hoarding up gold and silver and jewels for
-the glory of the White Christ. There was yet no settled order in any
-of the Northmen’s own lands. The history of Denmark, Sweden and Norway
-in the seventh and eighth centuries is mere chaos. The title of king
-was easily earned and easily lost. In the sagas of the _Heimskringla_
-piracy is treated as the normal occupation of every young Northman
-of noble birth. “Eric’s sons warred much in the eastern lands, but
-sometimes they harried in Norway.” “There harried Olaf and slew many
-men, and burned some out of house and home, and took much wealth.”
-Entries such as these (though of a rather later date than we have yet
-reached) occur on almost every other page of the great Icelandic epic,
-and give us the impression that the young Scandinavian gathered ships
-together and “harried” the Baltic lands or the shores of the German or
-Atlantic Ocean, in the same way in which the young Englishman went the
-grand tour in the eighteenth century, or in the nineteenth became owner
-of a ranch.
-
-The ships of the vikings, if we may judge from the few specimens
-preserved in the museums of Denmark and Norway, though well built of
-their kind, were not much better than large open boats, undecked,
-averaging about seventy feet long, and drawing not more than four feet
-of water. They had only one mast with a square sail, and they trusted
-rather to rowing than to sailing for their progress. Except on the
-largest ships, about fifteen or sixteen men at a time, with a like
-number relieving them, and sixty or seventy fighting men, or a hundred
-in all, may have been the complement of a viking ship. There was no
-difference between prow and stern, and the vessel could be worked in
-either direction, the steering being managed by an oar at the side. The
-high-pointed prow at either end was often fashioned into the likeness
-of some animal, generally a dragon or a serpent. It is evident that
-such a craft as these, however well adapted for navigation in the long
-sheltered fiords of Norway, would not be very safe in an Atlantic
-storm.[115] It is probable, therefore, that the Northmen would be
-careful observers of the weather, and would generally choose a season
-of calm weather for slipping across the German Ocean. Once arrived at
-the English or Irish coast, they would choose some island near to the
-mainland and make it their lair, from whence they might issue forth
-to plunder and destroy. Especially convenient for their purpose, as
-for that of their Saxon predecessors, were such islands as Sheppey and
-Thanet, separated from fertile Kent only by narrow channels in which
-the dragon-ships could lie sheltered from winds and waves. Dear also to
-the heart of the Northman buccaneer were the estuaries of great rivers,
-Humber, Severn, Thames, Seine and Loire. Here they could collect their
-ships, scattered perchance in the course of their passage over the
-ocean, could watch the movements of the militia gathering for the
-defence of the country, and then at the right moment could row rapidly
-up the broad stream, capture and sack some unsuspecting city, and
-gather great store of gold and jewels from some rich cathedral. This,
-the collection of treasures from the more civilised lands of the south,
-was, after all, the chief incentive to the early vikings in their wild
-sea-rovings. Herein they were like the first generation of Elizabethan
-adventurers in the Spanish main, to whom the plunder of the Plate-fleet
-seemed the supreme object of desire, though with the viking, as with
-the buccaneer, thoughts of settlement and of conquest came later, and
-they who had come to ravage remained to rule.
-
-The _Here_,[116] the great Danish armament which appears and reappears
-so often in the pages of the Chronicle--one imagines the studious monk
-in his _scriptorium_ trembling as he writes the very word--seems to
-have been generally composed of foot soldiers hewing with swords or
-wielding their great two-handed battle-axes, armed with strong round
-shields and with byrnies or coats-of-mail, and beginning the fight by
-sending a cloud of javelins at their foes. Gradually, however, they
-learned the advantage of possessing a force of cavalry; and one of
-their first exploits on landing was to scour the country for horses,
-by means of which they could ravage the land far and wide where their
-ships could not carry them. They were, however, in strictness mounted
-infantry rather than cavalry. Their horses bore them swiftly to the
-battle-field. When they had reached it they dismounted and fought on
-foot.
-
-Not even the Icelandic Sagas with all their poetic fire can win us to
-unmixed admiration of the lives of these freebooters. They had some
-noble qualities, but notwithstanding these they were still barbarians.
-They were ancestors of the most chivalrous nations of Europe, and they
-possessed some of the qualities inherent in chivalry, such as courage,
-endurance, loyalty, honour to the women of their tribe. But on the
-other hand--if any reliance is to be placed on the statements of the
-Chronicle--they would often swear most solemnly to a treaty and then
-ride away and break it. They often tortured their captives; their hands
-were heavy on the weak, on little children and on women. This is the
-less to be wondered at, since owing to the poverty of their country
-they often left their own new-born children to perish. Their blows fell
-with especial ferocity on the churches and monasteries of Britain: a
-fact which may probably be accounted for by the fact that these were
-the chief treasure-houses of the invaded lands.
-
-The assaults of the Danes upon the Saxons, like those of the Saxons
-upon the Romanised Britons, fall naturally into three periods,[117] the
-first of robbery, the second of settlement, and the third of conquest.
-The chronological limits of these three periods may be approximately
-fixed as follows: pillage, from 790 to 851; settlement, from 851 to
-897; conquest (after a pause of nearly a century), from 980 to 1016.
-
-Terrible as were the ravages of the Scandinavian invaders, it is
-generally admitted that on the whole the benefit which resulted
-therefrom was greater than the suffering. That benefit was the
-consolidation of Anglo-Saxon England into one kingdom. In the
-thirty-seven years of the reign of Egbert of Wessex he attained, by
-steps which we are about to trace, to a supremacy which was probably
-wider than that of any of the Bretwaldas who had preceded him, and
-which in some degree justifies the popular conception of his position
-as founder of the English monarchy, though the unity of England was
-not in truth realised till a century later. But other Bretwaldas had
-been nearly as powerful as Egbert, and their overlordship in the hands
-of feeble descendants had melted away, while the “particularism” of
-the several lesser kingdoms had again successfully asserted itself.
-It may be doubted whether Egbert’s supremacy would not have gone the
-way of all the previous supremacies, but for that terrible series of
-Scandinavian invasions which seemed at the time to threaten not merely
-the prosperity but the very life of Anglo-Saxon peoples. For a century
-the terrible struggle continued and then ended for a time, to be
-renewed indeed with almost equal fury after an interval of rest; but
-the effect of that first fierce discipline was greatly to weaken if not
-altogether to destroy the spirit of particularism in the Anglo-Saxon
-states. After Athelstan’s death in 940 there was scarcely any serious
-thought of reestablishing Mercia or Northumbria as a separate kingdom
-from Wessex. Hard and cruel were the blows stricken by the hammer of
-Thor, but they had the effect of welding Angles, Saxons and Jutes into
-one people.
-
-The upward career of EGBERT of Wessex (802–839) must now be briefly
-described. As has been said, he returned from exile on the death of his
-foe, Beorhtric, and apparently without a contest was raised to the West
-Saxon throne. On the very day of his accession there was a great fight
-between the Mercians, commanded by the Ealdorman of the Hwiccas and
-the West Saxons under the generalship of the Ealdorman of Wilts. Both
-Ealdormen were slain, but victory is said to have rested with the men
-of Wiltshire. With this exception, the first thirteen years of Egbert’s
-reign passed in peace. Cenwulf of Mercia, whose dominions, including,
-as they did, Kent, Sussex, Surrey and Essex, wrapped Wessex all round
-to the east, was too powerful to be lightly assailed. When Egbert’s old
-patron, Charlemagne, died in 814, there was nothing to betoken that the
-exile whom he had befriended would achieve anything more than a petty
-and precarious West Saxon royalty. In the following year, however,
-the long-interrupted movement westward was once more resumed. Egbert
-“harried West Wales from east to west”; in other words, he overran
-Cornwall from the Tamar to the Land’s End. Though the process of
-subjugation was not yet complete, this was the beginning of the end of
-Cornish independence.
-
-In 821 Cenwulf, the powerful King of Mercia, died, and there were
-troubles in the palace at Lichfield. After the murder of his son,
-a child of seven years old, and the deposition of his brother, an
-usurper named Beornwulf obtained the crown. The discords thus caused
-gave Egbert the opportunity for which he had probably long waited. He
-declared war on Beornwulf, met him in battle at Ellandune, probably
-in the north of Wiltshire, and after a most bloody fight completely
-defeated him. Intent on gathering at once the most important fruits of
-victory, Egbert sent his son Ethelwulf to the region of Kent, where
-his own father had once held sway. Baldred, King of Kent, the vassal
-of Mercia, was expelled; the three south-eastern counties and Essex,
-which included the city of London, gladly accepted the rule of Egbert,
-who was represented by his son Ethelwulf as under-king, and the long
-struggle between Mercia and Wessex for the possession of that corner
-of England was at an end. East Anglia, with her bitter memories of
-Mercian perfidy, to which her King Ethelbert had fallen a victim thirty
-years before, now rose in rebellion, relying on the protection of
-Egbert, and succeeded in defeating and slaying the Mercian king (826?).
-After Beornwulf’s death Mercia could no longer offer any effectual
-resistance. Egbert was soon acknowledged as overlord, and thus by about
-the year 829 he had brought under his supremacy, though not under his
-personal rule, the whole of England south of the Humber, and acquired
-the mysterious title of Bretwalda, which (if the Saxon Chronicle may be
-trusted) had been borne by no other sovereign since the death of Oswy,
-a century and a half before.
-
-The conqueror next moved against Northumbria, whose king Eanred did not
-dare to accept the offer of battle. At Dore, among the hills of North
-Derbyshire, not far from Sheffield, “the Northumbrians met him and
-offered him obedience and peace, and with that they separated the one
-from the other”. This transaction undoubtedly meant the acceptance of
-Egbert as overlord, and his supremacy was thus at last assured over the
-whole English portion of the island. Nor did he rest content herewith,
-for in the next year “he led an army against the men of North Wales and
-reduced them to humble” (though not permanent) “obedience”.
-
-The last four years of Egbert’s life were disturbed by the raids of
-the Danish invaders. For forty-one years after the raids in which the
-Northumbrian sanctuaries were pillaged, the Northmen seem to have left
-England unmolested, but during this time they had been sailing round
-the north of Scotland, occupying the Hebrides and grievously harrying,
-all but conquering, Ireland. Now in 835 Egbert, already a man advanced
-in years, heard the grievous tidings that “heathen men were ravaging
-the Isle of Sheppey”. Thus the Danes, like the Jutes four centuries
-earlier, began their hostile operations with one of those curious
-semi-islands which clustered round the coast of Kent. Sheppey, however,
-was higher up the estuary of the Thames than Hengest’s Isle of Thanet.
-Next year the Danes appeared on the coast of West Dorset. The crews
-of thirty-five ships appeared off Charmouth, not far from Lyme Regis.
-Egbert himself led his men to battle; there was a terrible slaughter,
-in which two bishops and two ealdormen fell, and--ominous confession
-of the West Saxon chronicler--“the Danes held the place of slaughter”.
-Still, however, we have no hint of permanent occupation.
-
-Two years later, in 838, there was a perilous combination of Northman
-and Celt. “A mighty fleet” [evidently Danish] “came to West Wales and
-they” [Danes and Cornishmen] “made an alliance to fight against Egbert.
-When he heard that, he went forth and fought with them at Hengestdune,
-and there he put to flight both Welshmen [Cornishmen] and Danes.”
-At Hingston Down, a high moorland overlooking the Tamar, about four
-miles north of the place where the great Saltash bridge now spans the
-creek, this important victory was won. It was the last piece of work
-that the old warrior accomplished. In 839 he “fared forth,” surely not
-without some dark forebodings of the hard struggle that lay before his
-descendants; and ETHELWULF his son reigned in his stead. The new king
-seems to have ruled in person only over the ancestral Wessex, forming
-the recently acquired kingdoms in the south-east of the island into a
-dependency, of which his brother Athelstan was made under-king.
-
-The teacher to whom the education of Ethelwulf when a boy had been
-entrusted by his father, and who retained considerable influence over
-him in manhood, was an ecclesiastic of noble birth named Swithun, who
-is chiefly now remembered on account of the meteorological phenomena
-connected with the day devoted to him in the calendar (July 15,
-971).[118] The gentle and devout character of Ethelwulf seems to have
-retained through life the impress of the teaching of the unworldly
-St. Swithun, but he had also another counsellor by whom he was often
-braced to the performance of the difficult work of reigning. This was
-Ealhstan, a stirring warrior-prelate, who in 848 won a great and bloody
-victory over the Danes, at the mouth of the Parret, in Bridgwater
-Bay, fighting side by side with the ealdormen of Somerset and Dorset.
-Ealhstan was bishop of the great diocese of Sherborne (including the
-counties of Somerset and Devon), while Swithun in 852, towards the
-end of Ethelwulf’s reign, was enthroned in the more dignified see of
-Winchester.
-
-The influence, in some respects the diverging influence, of these two
-counsellors of the king is probably described with truth by the twelfth
-century historian, William of Malmesbury. “These two eminent bishops,
-seeing the king to be of somewhat dull and lethargic temperament,
-stirred him up by frequent admonitions to the performance of his kingly
-duties. Swithun, who looked on worldly things with disgust, moulded
-the mind of his lord to the love of things heavenly. Ealhstan, who
-thought that secular matters also should not be neglected, animated
-him to the war against the Danes, himself often furnishing money to
-the royal treasury, himself setting the battle in array. Any one who
-reads our annals will find that many such affairs were resolutely begun
-and gloriously ended by him.” The historian, however, remarks that he
-cannot give Ealhstan the unmingled praise which he would willingly
-offer, because of his unjust encroachments on the rights of the
-monastery of Malmesbury.
-
-Almost every year of Ethelwulf’s reign has its annal in the Chronicle,
-telling of Danish ravages. The storm beat most persistently on Wessex.
-Southampton (840), Portland (840), Charmouth (843), the mouth of the
-Parret (848), Wembury (?) (854), were all scenes of battle with the
-Danes, generally, but not always, disastrous for the English. The other
-parts of the country did not escape unharmed. In 841 Lindsey, East
-Anglia and Kent saw widespread slaughter. In 844 Redwulf, King of
-Northumbria, met his death at the hands of the invaders. In 851, three
-hundred and fifty ships came to the mouth of the Thames; their crews
-took Canterbury and London by storm, and put to flight the king of the
-Mercians who had advanced to meet them. There, however, their success
-ended. Crossing the Thames into Surrey, they were met by Ethelwulf
-and his eldest son Ethelbald leading the West Saxon _fyrd_. Battle
-was joined at Ockley, on the edge of the chalk downs which look into
-the adjoining county of Sussex, and there the West Saxon king in the
-words of the Chronicle, “made the greatest slaughter among the heathen
-army that we have heard of till this present day, and there gained the
-victory”.
-
-However complete the victory of Ockley might be, its importance is
-much diminished by the entry which precedes it in the Chronicle:
-“And the heathen men for the first time took up their quarters over
-winter in Thanet”. We thus enter on the second of the above-mentioned
-periods--the stage of settlement, that in which the Danes came to
-England, not merely to plunder and then depart, but to fix their abode
-permanently in the country. This choice of Thanet as their winter
-quarters must, to the men of Kent who knew anything of the history of
-their ancestors, have seemed an ominous recurrence to the strategy of
-Hengest and Horsa four centuries previously. There was trouble also
-from an older enemy. The men of Wales were now governed by one of
-the greatest of their early kings, Rhodri Mawr (Roderick the Great,
-844–77); and it seems that the distress of the Saxons under the Danish
-attacks gave the Welsh courage to rise against the traditional enemies
-of their race. In 853 Burhred, King of Mercia, acting by the advice of
-his _witan_, made formal application to Ethelwulf for help against “the
-men of North Wales”. The very fact that such an application was needed,
-and that it came from the king and council of the Mercian realm,
-shows how far England was from having yet attained to that complete
-unity which has been incorrectly associated with the name of Egbert.
-However, the expedition which Ethelwulf now undertook against the
-Cymri, in alliance with Mercia, seems to have been successful, and the
-marriage of Burhred to Ethelwulf’s daughter, celebrated at Easter-tide,
-doubtless cemented the alliance and may have been a step towards
-federation.
-
-Again in this year 853 there was fighting both by land and sea against
-the heathen in Thanet. Many men on both sides were slain and drowned.
-The two ealdormen who led the forces of Kent and Surrey were at first
-victorious, but--as often happened--let victory slip from their
-unskilful hands, and both fell on the field of battle. This and many
-similar entries bring vividly before us the typical Saxon ealdorman,
-leading the _fyrd_ or militia of his shire to battle, displaying plenty
-of courage and risking his life freely in the service of his country,
-but showing little skill in organising a campaign or even in grasping
-its fruits when they fell into his lap. On the other side we see the
-men of the Scandinavian islands and long fiords, children of the
-sea, equally ready to fight on it or on the land--artful, ruthless,
-courageous, and with a splendid ignorance of defeat. Such were the
-ravens who were now fixing their talons deep in our exhausted England.
-Our next entry is: “In this year” [855] “heathen men first remained
-over winter in Sheppey”.
-
-It might have been supposed that the West Saxon king would need all
-his energies to put his kingdom in an adequate state of defence and
-to organise all round the coast an efficient system of resistance
-to the all-penetrating Northmen. Instead of this we find him, with
-some surprise, in this very year 855, “going to Rome with much pomp,”
-remaining there for a twelve-month, visiting the Frankish court on his
-way back, and returning, elderly widower that he was, with a bride
-thirteen years old. This strange episode of the pilgrimage was the
-fulfilment of a long-cherished design, and may have been partly due to
-the pious counsels of St. Swithun, but certainly does not raise our
-opinion of the king’s wisdom, while the marriage adventure looks like
-mere fatuity. Before Ethelwulf’s departure he made that celebrated
-donation to the Church which used to be considered as the introduction
-of the tithe-system into England, but which was really “the devotion of
-a tenth part of his private property to ecclesiastical purposes”.[119]
-He took with him his youngest and favourite son Alfred, who though
-still but a little child had already, two years before, made the same
-pilgrimage. Travelling through France he was received with royal
-honours by Charles the Bald, king of that country, and escorted by
-him to the boundary of his kingdom. He perhaps arrived in Rome in time
-to see the pontiff Leo IV., who on Alfred’s previous visit had laid
-his hands in benediction on the head of the child. On July 17, however
-(855), the old pope died, and Ethelwulf and his boy must have witnessed
-the tumultuous proceedings which followed, and the state of practical
-civil war between the Lateran and St. Peter’s which filled the streets
-of Rome with clamour, till at last about the end of September the
-iconoclast anti-pope Anastasius was finally overthrown and Benedict
-III. took his seat on the chair of St. Peter. It is a curious fact,
-but probably a mere coincidence, that precisely at this point of papal
-history the romancing chroniclers of the Middle Ages have inserted the
-fable of “Pope Joan,” the learned and eloquent Englishwoman who, as
-they averred, came to Rome in male attire, habited as an ecclesiastic,
-was unanimously chosen pope and wore the tiara for some months or even
-years, till her sex was unfortunately disclosed in the midst of a
-public procession. If any further proof were needed of the absurdity of
-this story (which is no Protestant invention but passed current through
-many medieval centuries), it might be furnished by the absolute silence
-of the English chroniclers, some of whom may well have conversed with
-members of the retinue of the West Saxon king.
-
-Ethelwulf’s devout liberality is recorded by the contemporary papal
-biographer, though his Italian ear has failed to catch or to retain his
-barbarous name: “At this time a king of the Saxons named ... leaving
-his goods and his own kingdom, came for prayer with a multitude of
-followers to the thresholds of the Apostles Peter and Paul in Rome. And
-he gave to St. Peter a crown of pure gold weighing four pounds; vessels
-of pure gold weighing two pounds; a sword bound with pure gold; two
-smaller images of pure gold; a paten of silver gilt, Saxon work, four
-pounds; a vestment of purple with a golden border; a white surplice
-all of silk, embroidered and gold bordered; two large curtains of gold
-tapestry.[120] Then the Saxon king, on Pope Benedict’s request that he
-would employ the gold and silver [which he had brought with him] in
-giving largesse to the people in St. Peter’s church, dispensed gold
-to the bishops, presbyters, deacons and all the rest of the clergy
-and chief men of Rome, but he gave small silver coins to the common
-people.”[121]
-
-A more obviously useful exercise of Ethelwulf’s liberality was
-connected with the Schola Saxonum, which is said to have been founded
-by his predecessor, Ine, or by the Mercian Offa. In this schola
-(something probably between a convent and an academic hostel) young
-Anglo-Saxons destined for the ecclesiastical profession probably dwelt
-for months or years, learning the Latin of the missal and the tones
-of Gregorian plain-song. Its memory even yet lingers in Rome, for the
-Church of the Holy Spirit in “the Leonine city” having been placed
-near the school of the Saxons still bears the name of “San Spirito _in
-Sassia_”. The schola had, however, been unfortunately destroyed by fire
-in the year before Ethelwulf’s visit, and patriotism as well as piety
-prompted him to spend on its restoration some part of the treasure
-which he had brought from England.[122]
-
-After a year’s residence in Rome, Ethelwulf returned to England,
-visiting on the way the court of his much younger contemporary, Charles
-the Bald,[123] whose daughter Judith, a young girl of thirteen, he
-brought home with him as his wife, much to the astonishment, doubtless,
-of his subjects and to the annoyance of his sons by his first marriage.
-Though it is nowhere distinctly so stated, it seems probable that this
-extraordinary second marriage of Ethelwulf had some connexion with
-an event which clouded the last years of his life, the rebellion of
-his eldest son Ethelbald. This young man had probably exercised some
-of the functions of a regent during his father’s absence, and now
-stood arrayed in arms to repel him from his kingdom. The fact that he
-was abetted by the energetic Bishop Ealhstan and by the ealdorman of
-Somerset, who had helped Ealhstan to win his great victory over the
-Danes in Bridgwater Bay, suggests the possibility that this rebellion
-may not have been due merely to the ambition of an undutiful son, but
-may have been prompted by a patriotic desire to wrest the helm of the
-state from the hands of an inefficient pilot. Happily, though Ethelwulf
-had many partisans, shocked by what they deemed the unnatural conduct
-of Ethelbald, civil war was avoided. The gentle old man agreed without
-much difficulty to an arrangement whereby the western portion of the
-kingdom, the richer and fairer part, was handed over to his son, he
-himself retaining the eastern portion. The young Queen Judith, who had
-been crowned before her departure from France, now took her place on
-the royal throne side by side with her husband, notwithstanding the
-“infamous custom” of Wessex which, as has been said, on account of the
-evil example of the daughter of Offa, forbade the consorts of West
-Saxon kings to sit on the throne or to bear the name of queen.
-
-Less than two years after his return from Rome, on January 13, 858,
-Ethelwulf died. His will was much talked of and was considered by his
-biographers a model for all future generations. After directing how
-his kingdom and his property should be divided between his sons, he
-ordained that throughout his dominions one man in ten, whether a native
-or a foreigner, should be supplied with meat, drink and clothing by
-his successors until the Day of Judgment, always supposing “that there
-should still be men and cattle in the land and that the country should
-not have become quite desolate,” a striking evidence of the anxieties
-caused by the Danish invasions. True to the last to his affection for
-Rome, he left a hundred mancuses (twelve and a half pounds of silver)
-to buy oil for the lights of St. Peter’s, the same sum for the lights
-of St. Paul’s (outside the city), and another hundred for the apostolic
-pontiff’s own private use. It does not seem possible to accept the
-theories of some recent writers who would fain represent Ethelwulf as a
-wise and capable statesman, the deviser of large continental alliances
-for defence against the Northmen. On the contrary, he was probably a
-man of slender intellect and feeble will, but devout, unworldly and
-affectionate, by no means the least lovable of Anglo-Saxon sovereigns.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI.
-
-ETHELWULF’S SONS--DANISH INVASIONS TO THE BAPTISM OF GUTHRUM.
-
-
-During the twenty years which followed the death of Ethelwulf four
-of his sons successively filled the West Saxon throne, namely,
-Ethelbald, Ethelbert, Ethelred, and Alfred. As the last named is to us
-incomparably the most interesting figure, it will be well to insert
-here some particulars relating to his childhood which were purposely
-omitted from the preceding chapter. For these particulars, as for
-almost all that makes the great king a living reality to us, we are
-indebted to the little book _De Rebus Gestis Aelfredi_, written by the
-Welsh ecclesiastic, Asser.[124]
-
-The question of the date of Alfred’s birth is beset with some
-difficulty, but on the whole it seems safest to assign it to the year
-848. The place of his birth was undoubtedly Wantage in Berkshire,
-about twenty-five miles from Reading. Throughout his life his chief
-exploits had reference to the valley of the middle Thames, and if any
-one county more than another may claim an interest in his glory, it
-is that county which, as Asser says, “has its name from the wood of
-Berroc, where the boxtree grows most plentifully”. The mother of Alfred
-was Osburga, whom Asser describes as “a very religious woman, noble of
-intellect and noble by birth, daughter of Oslac, the renowned butler of
-King Ethelwulf, and descended from the old Jutish kings of the Isle of
-Wight”.
-
-In 853, when Alfred was only four or five years old, he was sent by his
-father to Rome “with an honourable train of nobles and others”. The
-Chronicle says that Pope Leo “anointed him as king and adopted him as
-his godson”. The pope himself, in a still extant letter to Ethelwulf,
-tells the king that he has “invested his son with the girdle, insignia
-and robes of the consulate after the manner of Roman consuls”. It is
-difficult to suppose that Ethelwulf, who had four strong sons older
-than Alfred, can have wished the little five-year-old child, much as he
-loved him, to be anointed as king. It has been suggested as a possible
-explanation of the ceremony that some of the West Saxon retinue, who
-saw the child invested in the splendid _trabea_ of the consul, and
-were told that these were the robes once worn by the men who wielded
-kingly power in Rome, attached to the ceremony a political importance
-greater than was its due. Two years later the boy again went to Rome,
-accompanying his father on the visit already described. He returned
-with him through France, and doubtless witnessed the marriage ceremony
-which gave him a step-mother six years older than himself.
-
-It is probably to the interval between his first and second visits
-to Rome that we must refer the episode of the ballad-book prize, the
-best-known story of Alfred’s childhood. That story must be told in
-Asser’s own words:--
-
-“His father and mother loved him greatly, more than all his brethren;
-and so, too, did all men in his father’s court, in which he was ever
-nourished. As infancy grew into boyhood, he appeared more comely than
-all his brethren and pleasanter in countenance, in speech and in
-manners. From his very cradle, notwithstanding the practical bent of
-his disposition, his intellect, noble as his birth, inspired him with
-an earnest desire for wisdom, but, sad to say, through the shameful
-neglect of his parents and guardians, he remained unlettered till the
-twelfth year of his age or even later. He was, however, both by night
-and day an earnest and frequent listener to the recitation of Saxon
-poems, and being an apt pupil he easily retained them in his memory....
-
-“Now one day his mother showed to him and his brothers a certain Saxon
-book of poetry which she had in her hand, and said: ‘Whoever shall
-soonest learn this _codex_ to him will I give it,’ at which word he,
-being urged by some Divine inspiration, and also attracted by the
-beauty of an initial letter in the book, anticipating his brothers
-(older than he in years but not in grace) answered his mother thus:
-‘Will you really give that book to him who shall soonest understand
-and repeat it to you?’ ‘Yes, I will,’ said she with a happy smile.
-Hereupon he at once took the book from her hand, went to a master and
-read it,[125] and having read it he took it back to his mother and
-recited it to her.” It is probable that Asser here intended only to
-describe the quickness of the child’s apprehension and the strength of
-his memory. The story has nothing really to do with Alfred’s learning
-to read, which, as we are told, did not take place till his twelfth
-year or even later. He took the book to his master, learned the
-contents from him and repeated them accurately to his mother. The words
-“and read it,” which are the sole stumbling-block to those who would
-thus understand the narrative, are possibly due to some slip of the
-copyist[126] or to the confused way in which Asser tells his tale.
-
-From the story of Alfred’s childhood we return to the main stream of
-Anglo-Saxon history. As has been said, Ethelwulf died in the beginning
-of 858. His second son, Ethelbert, probably succeeded him in the
-eastern half of his kingdom, while ETHELBALD, the eldest, and possibly
-the over-lord, reigned in the west. The only notable fact, and that a
-disgraceful one, in Ethelbald’s reign was his marriage to his father’s
-young widow, Judith of France. Though the first marriage was perhaps
-one only in name, the unlawful union excited the disapprobation of
-all Western Europe, and the premature death of Ethelbald in 860 was
-probably regarded as a Divine judgment on the sinner. Soon after her
-second husband’s death Judith returned to France, and having after two
-years eloped with her father’s handsome forester, Baldwin, obtained
-with difficulty the paternal forgiveness, and permission to contract
-lawful wedlock with her lover. Baldwin, who received a grant of the
-borderland of Flanders with the title of count or marquis, was the
-ancestor by Judith of a long line of Baldwins, who gave to their
-dominions the name of Baldwinsland, and one of whom in 1204 donned
-the imperial buskins and was crowned by his fellow-crusaders at
-Constantinople Emperor of Rome. From the same romantic union of Baldwin
-and Judith sprang also in the seventh generation Matilda, the wife of
-William the Conqueror.
-
-ETHELBERT, the second son of Ethelwulf, who succeeded to the throne and
-reigned for six years (860–66), probably added the western half of the
-kingdom to the eastern, and thus ruled over the whole country south of
-the Thames. He held it, says the chronicler, “in good agreement and
-much peacefulness,” but already upon his reign was cast the shadow
-of coming calamity. “In his days,” says the Chronicle, “there came a
-great fleet to land and broke down Winchester.” It is true that the
-invaders were afterwards defeated and put to flight by the ealdormen of
-Hampshire and Berkshire, but it is alarming to see the facility with
-which they gained possession of the capital of Wessex. No doubt this
-was owing to the fact that the English had made no systematic attempt
-to keep up the great fortresses which they had inherited from the
-Romans and which they themselves in their earlier invasion had laid in
-ruins.[127] All this was to be altered ere the end of the century by
-the fortifying hand of Alfred.
-
-On the death of Ethelbert the third brother, ETHELRED, mounted the
-menaced throne and reigned for five troublous years (866–71). He was
-assisted in the labour of governing and fighting by his brother Alfred,
-who bore the title, unique in Anglo-Saxon history, of _Secundarius_.
-Apparently he and Alfred were fonder of one another than any others
-of the royal brethren, and had it not been for his early death he had
-perhaps achieved renown as enduring as that of his successor. The West
-Saxon was indeed a menaced throne. Already a year before the death of
-Ethelbert the fiercest of all the Scandinavian storm-winds had begun to
-blow. The Danes were now bent upon settlement, not merely on pillage.
-In 865 “the heathen army encamped in Thanet and made peace with the men
-of Kent, who promised them money therefor, and under cover of the peace
-and the promised money, the army stole away by night up country and
-harried all Kent eastwards”. Thus was set the fatal precedent of the
-payment of ransom. We hear with no surprise that next year there came
-a mighty heathen army to England and took up their winter quarters in
-East Anglia. There the sailors supplied themselves with horses and made
-peace--such peace as it was--with the inhabitants.
-
-Next year (867) the heathen host moved northwards, crossed the Humber
-and made for York. The affairs of Northumbria were in their usual
-confusion. Osbert, the lawful king, had been driven out, and another
-king of non-royal blood named Ella had grasped the reins of power.
-This is that Ella to whom, in sagas, is assigned the possession of the
-pit full of serpents into which was thrown the viking Ragnar Lodbrog.
-Late in the year the two rivals agreed to join their powers and march
-against “the army”. Having mustered a large force, they marched to
-York, already occupied by the Danes, and took the city by storm. Some
-of the Northumbrians, too confident of victory, entered the city. The
-walls which were still standing severed their army in twain. A terrible
-slaughter was made of them, “some within and some without”. Both the
-rival kings were slain and the miserable Northumbrian remnant made
-peace with “the army”. In the next year, 868, the Danes, who had now
-no thought of returning home, invaded Mercia and took up their winter
-quarters at Nottingham. Burhred, King of Mercia, by the advice of his
-_witan_ called on his West Saxon brothers-in-law for help. They marched
-with the _fyrd_ of Wessex to Nottingham, but finding the Danes strongly
-entrenched durst not attack them. “There was no serious fighting
-there”; the men of Mercia had to make their own peace, and the West
-Saxon _fyrd_ returned inglorious to their homes.
-
-In 869 “the army” remained quartered in York, doubtless strengthening
-their hold on Deira, which was rapidly becoming a mere Danish province.
-But next year (870) witnessed an event, one of the most memorable
-in the whole story of Scandinavian invasion, an event which led to
-the canonisation of an English prince, and called into existence the
-stateliest but one of English monasteries. The king of East Anglia at
-this time was a young man named Edmund, of pure and noble character.
-The legends of later centuries have been busy with the story of his
-boyhood, representing him as a native of Nuremberg, chosen as his heir
-by an East Anglian king as he went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, sent to
-England, and after many romantic adventures, obtaining the kingdom of
-his patron. Though this traditional history be set aside as altogether
-untrustworthy, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that there was
-some strain of foreign blood in King Edmund’s ancestry, regal though
-it seems to have been.[128] However this may be, all the authorities
-agree in fixing his accession to the throne at a very early period of
-his life, and it is probable that, though he had already reigned for
-about sixteen years, he was not much past the thirtieth year of his
-age when in 870 the Danes, under the command of two brothers named
-Inguar and Ubba, leaving Mercia, invaded East Anglia and took up their
-winter quarters at Thetford. Battle was joined on November 20, and
-the invaders won a decisive victory, of which they made use to spread
-themselves over the country and destroy all the monasteries which
-abounded in that pious land.
-
-Both the Chronicle and Asser seem to imply that King Edmund, “fighting
-fiercely,” was slain on the field of battle; but it is hardly
-possible altogether to reject another widely credited version of the
-story, according to which the young king was taken prisoner on the
-battle-field; was offered his life by Inguar on condition of renouncing
-his faith and accepting the heathens as his over-lords; steadfastly
-refused in any way to compromise his profession of Christianity; was
-tied to a tree and made a target for the Northmen’s arrows; till at
-last the Danish leaders took pity on his sufferings and ordered the
-executioner to strike off his head. This story, which is said to have
-been often told by Dunstan, who had it from Edmund’s armour-bearer, was
-universally believed two generations after his death, and procured for
-the East Anglian king the title of saint and the crown of martyrdom.
-
-The battle in which St. Edmund was defeated was fought at Hoxne, about
-twenty miles east of Thetford. The martyr’s body, according to the
-legend, was found miraculously guarded by a wolf, and after an interval
-of thirty-three years was transferred to the town of Beadoricesworth,
-about ten miles south of Thetford, where, in the course of time, the
-magnificent abbey of Bury St. Edmund’s rose above the relics of the
-saint. Strange to say, the Danish King Canute was the most enthusiastic
-of the earlier benefactors of this monastery and ever professed an
-especial reverence for the memory of the martyred king. St. Edmund
-soon became one of the most popular of English saints, a popularity
-sufficiently attested by the ancient churches, between fifty and sixty
-in number, distributed throughout more than half the counties of
-England from Durham to Devonshire, which are still dedicated to his
-memory.[129]
-
-In the course of the same campaign, Inguar and Ubba came to
-Peterborough, then called Medeshamstede; and, as a monk of that abbey
-pathetically relates, “they burned and brake, slew abbot and monks, and
-so dealt with what they found there, which was erewhile full rich that
-they brought it to nothing”. And thus ended the year 870.
-
-The year 871, a famous date in English history, “the year of battles,”
-the date of Alfred’s accession, now dawned upon the distracted
-land.[130] Berkshire was the great battle-ground which was invaded in
-January by a Danish host fresh from the slaughter of St. Edmund and his
-East Anglians. They came to “the royal town which is called Reading,”
-situated on the southern bank of the Thames, took it and entrenched
-a camp on its southward side between Thames and Kennet. A party of
-plunderers headed by two _jarls_[131] rode westwards as far as the
-little village of Englefield, about six miles from Reading, where they
-were stopped by Ethelwulf, ealdorman of Berkshire, who had taken up a
-position on a hill overlooking the valley of the Pang. In the encounter
-which followed, the Danes were defeated, one of the jarls named Sidroc
-was slain, and the scanty remnant of his troops crept back to the
-Danish camp at Reading. Four days after this engagement, the royal
-brothers Ethelred and Alfred, having mustered the troops of Wessex,
-came to Reading, cut off many of the straggling plunderers, and tried
-to storm the Danish camp. But the heathen made a fierce sally; the
-Christians were repulsed; the brave ealdorman Ethelwulf was slain, and
-the enemy held the field of slaughter.
-
-Emboldened by this victory the Danes again sped westward, possibly
-intending to harry Somerset and Wiltshire, and occupied Aescesdune,
-which Asser translates “the hill of the ash,”[132] and which has
-been generally identified with what are now known as the Downs or as
-Ashdown Hills. These are a chalk ridge some 600 or 700 feet in height,
-which runs for about ten miles east and west through the northern part
-of Berkshire and divides the valley of the Thames from that of the
-Kennet. The Saxons marched after the enemy in haste and both nations
-arrayed themselves for battle. The Danes held the higher ground: the
-centre of their army being commanded by their two kings, Halfdene,
-brother of Inguar, and Bagseg; while the wings were under the command
-of the numerous jarls who followed their standard. On the Saxon side
-it was arranged that Ethelred should encounter the kings and Alfred
-the jarls. But when the heathens began to march down the hill, and the
-Saxons should have received the word to spring forward to meet them,
-that signal was not given from the royal tent. There knelt Ethelred,
-listening to Mass, and refusing to stir till the rite was ended. “He
-would not,” he said, “abandon the service of God for that of men.” On
-Alfred, therefore, rested the responsibility of assuming the chief
-command and leading the whole army to battle. It is probable, though
-not distinctly so stated by Asser, that Ethelred, against whose
-personal courage no imputation is made, soon emerged from his tent and
-hastened after his fighting “_fyrd_” men. A single stunted thorn-tree,
-still standing apparently when Asser wrote, marked the spot where the
-clash of the opposing armies was deadliest and where the battle-shouts
-were heard the loudest. Long and desperate was the encounter, but at
-last, near night-fall, the Saxons prevailed and the heathens fled in
-utter confusion, leaving dead on the field Bagseg, the king, five
-jarls and many thousands of the rank and file, whose bodies covered the
-whole broad ridge of Ashdown.
-
-It was a great victory, certainly, but like so many other battles
-in this strange campaign it was utterly indecisive. The Danes who
-had succeeded in reaching their stronghold, now marched southward,
-apparently threatening Winchester: Ethelred and Alfred followed them,
-and after another tough fight were defeated at Basing, near to the
-site of that far-famed “Loyalty House” which eight centuries later was
-held so gallantly and so long by the Marquis of Winchester for Charles
-I. against the army of the Parliament. The Danish victory at Basing,
-however, was, as we are expressly told, “a victory without spoils”. The
-invaders seem to have renounced their intended attack on Winchester
-and turned back to their entrenched camp at Reading. Two months pass,
-during which some of the nameless battles that bring the tale of this
-year’s conflicts up to nine, may have been fought. When the veil again
-lifts we find the Danes apparently attempting to turn the English left,
-marching the whole length of Berkshire to Hungerford, and seeking
-to penetrate into Wiltshire. The next battle was fought on the edge
-of Savernake Forest; Ethelred and Alfred each put their enemies to
-flight, “and far into the day they had the victory,” but after many
-had fallen on either side, the Danes held the field of slaughter. The
-chronicler’s entry is extremely enigmatical, and we are perhaps allowed
-to conjecture that in the moment of victory Ethelred received a mortal
-wound which changed the fortunes of the day, for our next entry is as
-follows: “And the Easter after King Ethelred died, having reigned five
-years, and his body lieth at Wimborne”. As we are told at the same
-time that “a mickle summer army came to Reading,” we may consider that
-two events stand out clearly in these April days of 871, the arrival
-from over-seas of a great fresh body of troops, who had not wintered
-in England, to reinforce their countrymen at Reading; and the death of
-King Ethelred, whose body was not taken to be buried in his own city of
-Winchester, but, probably owing to the disturbed state of the country,
-had to be interred in the nearer minster of Wimborne in Dorsetshire.
-There his epitaph (not contemporary) records that he died “by the hands
-of the pagans”.
-
-The accession of ALFRED to the throne, in 871, on his brother’s death,
-seems to have passed almost unnoticed in the deadly earnestness of
-the great encounter. There were battles at Reading and at Wilton, in
-which, as usual, the Saxons seemed to be on the point of winning when
-the Danes, turning at the right moment on their disorderly pursuers,
-changed defeat into victory, and kept possession of the battle-field.
-They were, however, by this time as much wearied and wasted by the
-events of this awful year as the Saxons themselves, with whom they now
-made peace, a peace which, as the historian remarks with surprise, they
-kept for four years unbroken.
-
-During these years, however, from 872 to 875, they were greatly
-strengthening their hold on the northern kingdoms. After besieging
-London and putting it to a heavy ransom, they marched through Mercia,
-occupied successively Torksey on the Trent and Repton in Derbyshire,
-dethroned Alfred’s brother-in-law, Burhred (874), and set up in his
-stead “a foolish thegn named Ceolwulf,” who bound himself by oaths and
-hostages to hand Mercia back to his new lords whenever they should
-demand it. Burhred, heart-weary of the strife and the toil of his
-twenty-two years of reigning, went to the paradise of Anglo-Saxons,
-Rome, died there and was buried in the new church of St. Mary which
-Pope Leo IV. had built in the precincts of the Saxon school.
-
-In the next year, 875, while part of the Danish force went to Cambridge
-and took up their quarters there, a vigorous detachment, headed by
-the fierce Halfdene, crossed the Tyne and invaded Bernicia, whose
-inhabitants had driven out a puppet-king named Egbert, reigning there
-as vassal of the Danes. This spasmodic stroke for liberty was cruelly
-avenged by the ravage of the till then unharried province. It was
-probably at this time that the Christian civilisation of Northumbria,
-such as we find it in the pages of Bede, received its death-stroke.
-Under the leadership of Halfdene, as Symeon of Durham informs us, the
-Danish army indulged in a wild revel of cruelty, first mocking and then
-slaying the servants and handmaidens of God, and in short spreading
-murder and conflagration from the eastern to the western sea. The
-devastation was not confined to the Anglian kingdom; the Picts on the
-north and the Britons of Strathclyde on the north-west shared in the
-general ruin.
-
-This invasion of Halfdene’s set in motion a pilgrimage which was full
-of significance for the ecclesiastical history of Northumbria, the
-memorable migration of the body of Saint Cuthbert. Now, at last, under
-the terror of the pagan hosts, the little isle of Lindisfarne, which
-for 240 years had been the spiritual capital of Bernicia, relapsed
-into its pristine loneliness. Seeing the widespread ravage wrought by
-the heathen men, bishop Eardulf resolved on flight, but could not bear
-to leave behind the uncorrupted body of the patron saint. He called
-into council Edred, abbot of St. Cuthbert’s monastery at Carlisle,
-who reminded him of the saint’s own words: “Dig ye up my bones and
-find a home elsewhere as God may direct you, rather than consent to
-the iniquity of the schismatics”. St. Cuthbert’s forebodings perhaps
-pointed to a recrudescence of the Easter controversy, but the churchmen
-rightly held that they were applicable to the far more terrible
-invasion of the Danes. Accordingly they took up the body of the
-saint (still incorrupt, according to the legend): they took also its
-companion relics, the head of St. Oswald, some bones of St. Aidan and
-of the three bishops who followed him; and provided with these precious
-talismans they set forth on their first great pilgrimage. For eight
-years they wandered: at first like sheep over the moors of Northumbria;
-then they came down to the western coast at Workington, and were on the
-point of setting sail for Ireland when a wind which sprang up, as if by
-miracle, drove them back upon the shore. In the hurry of the abortive
-embarkation they dropped into the sea the precious and beautifully
-illuminated _Lindisfarne Gospels_, but miraculously recovered the
-treasure after many days. This manuscript is still preserved in the
-British Museum, showing stains as if of sea-water on its pages.
-
-At last, in 883, five years after the peace which will mark the
-conclusion of this chapter, the uncorrupted body and its weary
-guardians found rest at the old Roman station of Chester-le-Street,
-eight miles south of Newcastle, under the shelter of the rule of a
-converted Dane, Guthred, son of Harthacnut. “He gave them,” says
-the chronicler, “all the land between Wear and Tyne for a perpetual
-possession, and ordained that the church which they were about to
-build should be constituted a sanctuary, that whosoever for any cause
-should flee to the saint’s body should have respite for thirty-seven
-days from his pursuers.” Such were the magnificent possessions and
-privileges bestowed on the minster which now rose at Chester-le-Street
-by the old Roman highway, and which, after a little more than a
-century, were to be transferred in 995 to the more famous sanctuary at
-Durham.
-
-The year 876 marked the end of the truce and the renewal of the Danish
-attacks on Wessex. Three Danish kings, one of whom was the famous
-Guthrum, after wintering in Cambridge, stole past the West Saxon
-_fyrd_, and apparently by a series of night marches succeeded in
-reaching Wareham. Here, surrounded by the rivers Piddle and Frome, they
-could feel themselves as secure as in the islands of Thanet or Sheppey.
-Worsted, however, by blockade rather than by battle, the Danish kings
-came to terms with Alfred. They gave hostages once more of their most
-honourable men and swore upon a certain sacred armlet--an oath, says
-the chronicler, which they had never given to any other people--that
-they would truly depart out of the kingdom. Not all of “the army,”
-however, kept this solemn compact. Hostages and oath notwithstanding,
-the mounted men rode off to Exeter and entrenched themselves there.
-King Alfred’s pursuit with the infantry of the _fyrd_ was vain.
-Fortunately, however, the fleet which should have co-operated with
-the Danes was overtaken by a fierce storm, and 120 ships filled with
-warriors were dashed to pieces on the rocks of Purbeck. Disheartened by
-this calamity, the Northmen at Exeter once more swore great oaths, gave
-hostages and marched forth from Wessex to their own now vassal kingdom
-of Mercia.
-
-This happened in the autumn of 877. Soon after Twelfth night, at the
-beginning of 878, another gang of plunderers came suddenly to the
-“royal villa” of Chippenham, probably hoping to capture the king
-himself. With a small band of followers Alfred escaped to the woods and
-morasses of Athelney in Somerset; but though they thus missed their
-chief prize, this invasion of Wessex, for some reason unknown to us,
-came nearer to success than any which had preceded it. From Chippenham
-as a centre the Danes harried the country far and wide; they drove
-many of the inhabitants across the sea; those who remained had to
-accept them as their lords; it seemed as if Wessex would have to follow
-the example of Mercia and Northumbria, and bow its neck to the Danish
-yoke. Meanwhile Alfred, in the little island of Athelney--an island
-then, because surrounded on all sides by marshes, but an island now
-no longer--was gathering his faithful followers round him and quietly
-preparing for the recovery of his throne.[133] The little band of
-his followers wrought at the construction of a rude fortress, which
-was finished by Easter, and which proved impregnable by the heathen
-assailants. Behind this earthwork the West Saxon king “greatly stood
-at bay,” and from hence he and the men of the Somerset _fyrd_, who
-gathered round him under their ealdorman Ethelnoth, made several
-successful sallies against the enemy.
-
-Ere long there came to cheer them the tidings of a great victory gained
-by the men of Devon, near Bideford Bay, over a Danish army which
-seems to have been commanded by Ubba, the murderer of St. Edmund.
-After wintering in South Wales, Ubba had crossed the Bristol Channel,
-landed in Devonshire and besieged the soldiers of the _fyrd_ in a
-poorly fortified stronghold which they had constructed and which was
-called Cynuit.[134] The fort had no spring of water near it, and the
-victory of the invaders seemed assured, but despair gave courage to the
-besieged, who sallied forth at dawn, took the besiegers by surprise,
-and slew of them eight hundred. Only a scanty remnant escaped to their
-ships; the great raven standard, the flapping of whose wings betokened
-victory, was taken, and Ubba himself was among the slain. The death of
-the royal martyr of East Anglia was thus at length avenged.
-
-At last, close upon Whitsuntide, Alfred emerged from the forest of
-Selwood, which seems to have hitherto served him as cover, collected
-round him at “Egbert’s Stone” the men of three counties, Somerset,
-Wilts and Hants (who, as the chronicler beautifully says, “were fain
-of their recovered king”), and by two days’ marches came up with the
-Danish army at Ethandune.[135] Here he won a crushing victory. The
-Danes fled to their fortified camp, probably at Chippenham; Alfred
-pursued them, shut them up in their stronghold and besieged it for a
-fortnight. Then came offers of submission, and a promise to withdraw
-from Wessex. Hostages and oaths were again offered to the conqueror,
-and--what was more significant--“the army promised that their king,
-Guthrum, should receive the rite of baptism”.
-
-Alfred returned to the neighbourhood of Athelney, and there waited for
-the pagan chief’s fulfilment of his promise. He was not disappointed;
-Guthrum came with thirty of his chiefs to Aller, near Athelney, was
-baptised and received in rising from the font the Saxon name of
-Athelstan. It is probable, though not expressly stated, that his thirty
-warriors were baptised with him. The two kings then went together
-to Wedmore, a royal vill under the Mendips, where Alfred for twelve
-nights gave the new convert hospitable entertainment. Guthrum-Athelstan
-laid aside the white robes of the catechumen at the end of a week,
-and departed laden with gifts by his spiritual father. “The army”
-cleared out of Wessex and marched to Cirencester. The most dangerous
-of Alfred’s wars with the Danes was ended, and the land had rest for
-fourteen years.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII.
-
-ALFRED AT PEACE.
-
-
-The fourteen years which followed the Peace of Wedmore (878 to 892)
-were, as has been said, in the main years of peace, and may be
-considered to justify the heading of this chapter; yet that peace
-was not all unbroken, nor was Alfred’s Danish godson always a placid
-and peaceful Christian. There were still some slight heavings of the
-barbarian sea, which must be shortly described before we turn to the
-much more interesting subject of Alfred’s peaceful labours. The main
-condition of the Peace of Wedmore was that the Danes should evacuate
-Wessex. The agreement that the Watling Street should be the boundary
-between the two nations cannot be stated to have been one of the
-conditions of the peace now concluded. We have, in fact, no accurate
-information as to the territorial arrangements of 878. The extremely
-interesting document called _Aelfredes and Guthrumes Frith_ (the peace
-of Alfred and Guthrum) must belong to some later year than the meeting
-at Wedmore, and the course of the history seems to justify us in
-assigning it to the year 885 or thereabouts.[136]
-
-After Guthrum and his men had lingered for some time in the
-neighbourhood of Cirencester, they marched across England to East
-Anglia (879), and made a permanent settlement there, “occupying and
-dividing the land”. This probably means that they exchanged the
-destructive excitement of the life of the viking for the peaceful
-existence of the husbandman. But when, five years later, in 884, a
-division of “the army” which had been ravaging Gaul came to Kent and
-besieged Rochester, the sight of their fellow-countrymen, harrying on
-the other side of the Thames estuary, seems to have been too much
-for Danish self-control. Guthrum “broke peace with King Alfred,” and
-probably sent some of his men to help in the siege. Alfred, however,
-set to work to besiege the besiegers, who had “wrought another fastness
-round themselves,” and in the end forced them to abandon their
-enterprise, leave their horses as the prize of victory, and depart over
-seas. He then proceeded to chastise the East Anglian Danes for their
-breach of faith, sending a fleet against them from Kent which won a
-signal victory. Notwithstanding a subsequent defeat, his operations
-must have been on the whole successful, for he rescued London from the
-Danish yoke and concluded, probably in 885, that treaty with Guthrum
-which as before said is still extant, bearing the title of Alfred’s and
-Guthrum’s _frith_.
-
-If the provisions of Wedmore had made the Watling Street the boundary
-between the two nationalities, which is doubtful, the treaty now
-concluded was certainly more favourable to the English. It went from
-the Thames northwards “up the Lea to its source, then straight on to
-Bedford, and then up along the Ouse to the Watling Street,” which
-throughout a large part of its further course became practically the
-boundary of the two nations. This line gave to the English king London,
-previously abandoned to the Danes, and with London the region round it
-north of the Thames and west of the Lea, which had previously formed
-part of the kingdom of Essex, but which now, perhaps, received a
-special organisation of its own, and the name that it has since borne
-for ten centuries, Middlesex. It also gave to Alfred the larger and
-fairer half of Mercia, being in fact all that portion of the midland
-counties which lies south and west of the London and North Western
-Railway,[137] together with half of Hertfordshire and two-thirds of
-Bedfordshire. But then, on the other hand, it is true that the rest of
-Mercia, East Anglia, Essex (mutilated) and Northumbria were practically
-handed over to the Danes, either as personal rulers or as over-lords.
-This surrender has often been treated as a wise and politic act of
-self-sacrifice on Alfred’s part, a view which was the natural result
-of the historical teaching which spoke of Egbert and his descendants as
-unquestioned monarchs of all Anglo-Saxon Britain. Now, however, that we
-see what a precarious and shadowy thing was the supremacy of the ninth
-century Kings of Wessex over northern and midland England, a supremacy
-which under a feeble king like Ethelwulf perhaps almost vanished into
-nothingness, we can see that the settlement which generally (though
-incorrectly) goes by the name of the Peace of Wedmore was not so great
-a sacrifice on Alfred’s part as we used to imagine. Bitter doubtless it
-was to Alfred as to every patriotic heart among the “Angel-cyn” to see
-the Dane so firmly rooted in the north and east of England, but that
-was the actual position of affairs, and he, as a statesman, was bound
-to recognise it. On the other hand, the larger half of Mercia now came
-under Alfred’s personal rule and was irrevocably joined to his realm,
-and this great new kingdom was now preparing to enter the lists against
-the Scandinavian invaders with a fairer prospect of success than could
-ever have been entertained by the disunited, mutually suspicious states
-of the “Heptarchy”. As has been already pointed out, the Dane was the
-real though involuntary creator of a united England.
-
-It is worth our while to notice the language of the great _frith_
-which thus settled the boundary of the two races. It professes to be
-concluded “between Alfred, king, and Guthrum, king, and all the _witan_
-of the English kinship, and all the folk that is in East Anglia, for
-themselves and for their offspring”. “If any man be slain, as we hold
-all equally dear, both Englishmen and Danes, the penalty shall be eight
-half-marks of pure gold,[138] but if he be a _ceorl_ or freed-man on
-_gafol_ [rented] land, the penalty shall be 200 scillings.” “And we all
-agreed on this day when men swore their [mutual] oaths that neither
-bond nor free shall fare unto the [Danish] army without leave, nor
-shall any one of them come to us. Should it happen that one of them
-wishes to have business with us, or one of us with them, in respect of
-land or cattle, that is to be permitted only on condition of his giving
-hostages for the observance of the peace and as a testimony that he
-has a clean back,” in other words, that his past record is that of a
-peaceable neighbour.
-
-Evidently the continuance of friendly relations between the two races,
-parted only by two small streams and the old Roman road, was felt to be
-precarious, and both rulers agreed that the less they mingled with one
-another the better.
-
- * * * * *
-
-It is pleasant to turn from the monotonous story of the conflict with
-the Danes to the subject of Alfred’s family life. In 868, three years
-before “the year of battles” and his own accession to the throne, he
-married a noble Mercian lady named Ealhswith, daughter of Ethelred,
-ealdorman of the Gaini(?), and descended on her mother’s side from the
-royal family of Mercia. By this lady (who survived him three years)
-Alfred had five children who grew up. The eldest, Ethelfled, when
-little more than a child, was given in marriage to Ethelred, ealdorman
-of the Mercians, and became, after her father’s death, a personage of
-great importance, ruling her mother’s country with spirit and success
-under the proud title of “Lady of the Mercians”. The next child,
-Edward, who was eventually his father’s successor, had for his especial
-companion his sister Elfrida. “When he was not hunting or engaged in
-other manly exercises, he was with her learning the psalter or books
-of Saxon poetry, showing affability and gentleness towards all, both
-natives and foreigners, and ever in complete subjection to his father.”
-In after life the two playmates were widely separated. The boy became
-Edward the Elder, one of the greatest of English kings; the girl was
-sent across the seas to become the wife of Baldwin II. of Flanders, son
-of Judith of France, and her husband the handsome forester. After more
-than two centuries the brother and sister playmates were once more to
-meet in the persons of their progeny, when Elfrida’s descendant Henry
-Beauclerk, son of Matilda of Flanders, married Matilda of Scotland,
-descended in the seventh degree from Edward the Elder. Of the two
-other children of Alfred, we know only that Ethelgiva was early
-dedicated to the monastic life, becoming Abbess of Shaftesbury; and
-that Ethelweard, the youngest of the family, was a pupil in a court
-school founded by his father, probably in imitation of the similar
-institutions founded by Charlemagne, in which the sons of the nobility
-and some others were taught to read books both Latin and Anglo-Saxon,
-and also learned to write. Ethelweard (who must not be confounded with
-his kinsman of the same name, author of a chronicle) seems to have
-specially profited by this training, and was probably the most learned
-member of his family.
-
-An obscure statement of Asser’s with reference to Alfred’s marriage
-reveals to us the fact that the great king’s life was in some
-mysterious way one long battle with disease. From early boyhood he
-suffered from some malady which caused him grievous pain. In his
-twentieth year, just about the time of his marriage, this malady left
-him, but was succeeded by another which caused him at intervals yet
-sharper pain, and always kept him in terror of its recurrence. This
-affliction endured from his twentieth till his forty-fifth year, if not
-longer.[139] These hints, obscure as they are, heighten our admiration
-of the heroic spirit with which Alfred, often suffering from acute
-bodily pain, with the ever-present fear of attacks either by disease or
-by the Danes, set himself to fulfil his duties towards his subjects in
-the wide and comprehensive sense in which he understood them. Of his
-wisely planned and efficient schemes for the defence of his realm from
-hostile invasion something will be said in the next chapter. We are
-now concerned with his earnest endeavours to dispel the intellectual
-darkness which brooded over his country, yet of which only the king
-himself and a few chosen friends were fully conscious.
-
-It is clear that in the course of the century which elapsed between the
-death of Bede and the birth of Alfred, the intellect of England had
-suffered a terrible relapse into ignorance and barbarism. It was not
-the inroads of the Northmen alone which had brought about this result,
-though, of course, the ruin of so many Northumbrian monasteries and the
-destruction of so many manuscripts were influences unfavourable to the
-cause of learning. But independently of Scandinavian ravages, England
-herself was becoming barbarised. In Northumbria the beacon light of
-Christianity and culture, which had once shone so brightly, was
-quenched in the blood of her kings, murdered and murderers. In Mercia
-there was a little more interest in literary pursuits, but apparently
-there only; East Anglia and Wessex were intellectually dead. As Alfred
-himself says, in the preface to his translation of Pope Gregory’s
-_Regula Pastoralis_: “Even before all this burning and ravaging [by
-the Danes in the reigns of Ethelwulf and his sons], when the churches
-were still filled with books and sacred vessels, and God’s servants
-abounded, yet they knew very little of the contents of their books,
-because they were not written in their own idiom”. “Formerly men came
-from beyond our borders, seeking wisdom in our own land; now, if we
-are to have it at all, we must look for it abroad. So great was the
-decay of learning among Englishmen that there were very few on this
-side Humber, and I ween not many north of it, who could understand the
-ritual [of Mass] or translate a letter from Latin into English. No,
-I cannot remember one such, south of the Thames, when I came to the
-throne.”
-
-To help him in the arduous task of once more bringing the English race
-under the influence of literary culture, nay, rather to teach him who
-yearned to be the teacher of his people, Alfred sought the aid of
-learned ecclesiastics beyond his own borders. With much earnestness he
-invited the Welshman Asser, his future biographer, to repair to his
-court. From Mercia he imported Plegmund, who became in 890 archbishop
-of Canterbury, and Werferth, who eventually returned to the midlands as
-bishop of Worcester. From St. Omer came Grimbald, who was consecrated
-abbot of the new minster founded by Alfred at Winchester; and from
-the lands near the mouth of the Elbe came John the Old Saxon, whose
-ancestors had probably fought hard for heathenism against Charlemagne,
-but who was himself a learned ecclesiastic. He helped Alfred much
-in his literary work, and was made by him abbot of his monastery at
-Athelney; an uneasy post, for two of his monks contrived a villainous
-plot against his life and his reputation, but were foiled by the
-vigorous resistance made by the stalwart Old Saxon, who had been a
-warrior in his youth, when the would-be murderers set upon him by night
-in the lonely convent church.
-
-These were the chief of Alfred’s literary assistants, and with their
-help he enriched his people with translations of some of the most
-highly prized works which the dying Roman world had bequeathed to
-Teutonic Europe.
-
-1. The passage quoted above concerning the decay of learning in
-England comes from the king’s translation of Pope Gregory’s _Regula
-Pastoralis_, or as Alfred calls it his _Herd-book_. In this book
-the great pope to whom England was so largely indebted for her
-Christianity, gave many excellent hints as to the character, duties
-and special temptations of the Christian pastor. In his preface, King
-Alfred explained the reasons which had moved him to undertake the
-work of a translator. He marvelled that none of the good and wise men
-who had been in England before him had anticipated him in the work,
-but concluded that this was because they expected that learning would
-flourish yet more instead of decaying, and that another generation
-would be so familiar with Latin as to need no translations. Then on
-the other hand he remembered how the Old Testament itself had been
-translated from the Hebrew, first into Greek and then into Latin, and
-from thence, at any rate in part, into the languages of the other
-Christian nations of Europe; and on this precedent he resolved to act.
-“For it seems to me desirable,” he said, “that we should turn some of
-the books which all men ought to know into that language which we can
-all understand, and so bring it to pass (as we certainly may do if we
-only have rest from our enemies) that all the free youth of England,
-sons of men of substance, shall devote themselves to learning in their
-early years before they are fit for other occupations; that they shall
-first learn to read English writing, and then if they are still willing
-to continue as pupils and desire to rise to the higher ranks of the
-state, that they shall be taught the Latin language.”
-
-The king then proceeds to describe his mode of translation: “sometimes
-word for word and sometimes meaning for meaning; as I learned the sense
-from Plegmund, mine archbishop, and Asser, my bishop, and Grimbald and
-John my mass-priests”. He describes the measures which he has taken to
-supply every see in his kingdom with a copy of the book, enriched with
-an _aestel_ (clasp or book-marker?) worth 300 scillings, and commands
-in God’s name that no man shall take the _aestel_ from the book or the
-book from the minster. “Thank God! we have now abundance of learned
-bishops, but we know not how long this may continue; and I therefore
-ordain that each book be always kept in the place to which now I send
-it, unless the bishop himself desire to borrow it, or give a written
-order for its loan to another.”
-
-2. In order that his subjects might have some knowledge of the history
-of that great and splendid Roman past which lay in ruins behind
-them, Alfred, always with the help of his ecclesiastic friends,
-translated the seven books of the _History of Paulus Orosius against
-the Pagans_. The selection was in many respects an excellent one, for
-Orosius, a Spanish ecclesiastic of the fifth century and a friend of
-St. Augustine, has here set forth, in a concise manner and fairly
-interesting style, all that his contemporaries knew of the history
-of the world from the building of Babylon to Alaric’s capture of
-Rome. He was credulous and inaccurate, and his work, except for the
-events of his own age, has no scientific value, but as a manual of
-ancient history for the young Anglo-Saxon nobleman it could hardly
-have been surpassed. Both Alfred, however, and his readers must have
-been somewhat unnecessarily depressed by its perusal; for as the book
-had a polemical bearing, _adversus Paganos_, and was intended to show
-that the calamities which were befalling the Roman empire in the fifth
-century were not due to its adoption of the Christian faith, its author
-was naturally led to exaggerate the misery of the world in preceding
-ages. While enumerating, therefore, all the murders, pestilences and
-earthquakes of which he could find mention in the 5,617 years that had
-elapsed since the creation of the world, he omits to notice the long
-interspaces of quiet happiness which there had been in some ages and
-some countries of the world, and he has no praise for the progress
-which Humanity had made in some departments of life from Sardanapalus
-to Constantine.
-
-King Alfred and his teachers were evidently sometimes at a loss to
-understand the meaning of their author, and it is amusing to see the
-ingenious arts by which in such cases they evaded the difficulty. They
-decided, no doubt wisely, that the unabridged history would be too long
-for their Saxon students, and therefore practised severe compression.
-Unfortunately for us this compression applies much more to the later
-portions of the history, where Orosius’s testimony is valuable, and
-where his translators might have added something of importance, than
-to the earlier books where neither he nor they have anything to say
-that we care to hear. The long account of Cæsar’s campaign in Gaul is
-reduced within the limits of a single sentence, and even the story of
-his British campaigns is shortened, though here we derive from the
-translation the fact that in Alfred’s opinion the site of Cæsar’s third
-battle was “near the river that is called Thames, near the ford that is
-called Wallingford”.
-
-Incomparably the most interesting, however, of Alfred’s interpolations
-is made at the very beginning of the history, in the long geographical
-description which Orosius thought it his duty to prefix to his work.
-In translating this chapter the king has allowed himself very great
-freedom and sometimes has not improved upon his author; as when
-he volunteers a statement, borrowed doubtless from some classical
-geographer, that Scotland (by which, of course, he means Ireland) lies
-over against the Wendel Sea (or Mediterranean) at its western end.
-But when he comes to speak of the Teutonic and Scandinavian lands, he
-breaks quite away from Orosius and gives us a detailed ethnological
-description of Northern Europe, which, though in some of its details
-not easy of interpretation, is far more valuable than the meagre
-Orosian sentences for which it is exchanged. And then, suddenly,
-without any pretence of following his author’s guidance, he introduces
-the weather-beaten forms of two Norwegian pilots, Ohthere and Wulfstan,
-and imparts to his subjects and to posterity the information which they
-had given him as to their voyages in the North Sea and the Baltic.
-
-Of these two men Ohthere, “who dwelt northmost of all the Northmen,”
-was the most adventurous. He told how he had sailed northward as far as
-any of the whale-hunters go, keeping the waste land on his right and
-the wide sea on his left hand. Then, leaving even the whalers behind,
-he had sailed northward for three days more, at the end of which time
-he found the coast turning suddenly to the east and then to the south.
-After this he had anchored his ship at the mouth of a great river. In
-other words, this bold seaman had doubled the North Cape, entered the
-White Sea, and probably cast anchor at the mouth of the river Dwina,
-somewhere near the site of the modern Archangel. The conversation of
-this old salt concerning the whales and walruses of the Polar Sea, the
-Fins and their reindeer, their accumulated skins of martens and bears,
-and feathers of sea-birds, which constituted the sole wealth of those
-desolate regions, evidently made a deep impression on the mind of “his
-lord King Alfred”. Though we may be inclined to smile at the naïve
-literary device which introduced all these details into the history of
-a Spanish presbyter who lived some five centuries earlier, we must be
-grateful to the king who preserved for us this record of the exploits
-of the Franklins and the Nansens of that long-vanished age.
-
-3. It was not, however, only the history of the Biblical and classical
-ages which Alfred desired to render accessible to his people. He knew
-that the deeds of their own forefathers since they had entered the
-land of Britain, were worthy of their remembrance, and he rightly
-judged that the great struggle with the Danes, in which he was himself
-engaged, would soon be History, as memorable as anything that was
-recorded in the pages of Orosius. With this view, as Geoffrey Gaimar,
-a historian of the twelfth century, says, “He caused to be written an
-English book of adventures and of laws of the land and of the kings
-who made war”. In other words, Alfred’s orders brought into being the
-_Saxon Chronicle_. As its latest editor[140] says: “The popular answer
-is in this case the right one. The Chronicle is the work of Alfred the
-Great. The idea of a national chronicle, as opposed to merely local
-annals, was his, and that this idea was realised under his direction
-and supervision, I most firmly believe. And we may, I think, safely
-place in the forefront of the Chronicle the inscription which encircles
-Alfred’s jewel [found at Athelney in 1693 and now in the Ashmolean
-Museum at Oxford], AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN, ‘Alfred ordered me to be
-made’.”
-
-4. In further pursuance of the same plan a translation of Bede’s
-_Ecclesiastical History_ from Latin into Anglo-Saxon was made, as
-we have reason to believe, either by Alfred’s own hand or under his
-immediate supervision. As this book had become a kind of classic among
-churchmen, Alfred allowed himself here less liberty than in some of
-his other translations. Some letters, epitaphs and similar documents
-are omitted, and there is an almost complete erasure of the chapters
-relating to the wearisome Paschal controversy. In other respects the
-king’s translation seems to be a fairly accurate reproduction of the
-original work.
-
-5. Last, and in some ways most interesting of all the literary labours
-of Alfred, comes his translation of the _Consolation of Philosophy by
-Boethius_. This is a book which, after enjoying during the early Middle
-Ages a popularity perhaps somewhat greater than its merits, has fallen
-since the revival of learning into much less deserved oblivion. In it
-Boethius, a Roman nobleman who was cast into prison and eventually
-executed by order of the Gothic king Theodoric, sets forth the comfort
-which came to him in his wearisome imprisonment by meditations
-on Divine Philosophy. The problem which perplexed him and which
-Philosophy, the spiritual companion of his solitude, sought to solve,
-was the world-old one, “Why do the wicked flourish and why are the
-righteous afflicted?” Strange to say, though Boethius was a Christian,
-and was even in a certain sense a martyr for the Catholic faith, the
-Christian solution of the problem is kept almost entirely out of sight,
-and the answers suggested are such as might have been given by Socrates
-or Epictetus. Boethius believes in a Divine Ruler of the universe,
-and the general tendency of the book is towards the strengthening of
-belief, but it is belief rather of a theistic than of a definitely
-Christian type. However with all its defects and all its strange
-silences, the book was one which had a great attraction for many of
-the noblest minds of a bewildered Europe, and not least for the great
-West Saxon king, who, struggling against the depressing influences of
-disease, and ever dreading a fresh outburst of the Danish volcano,
-felt that he, too, like the author, had much need of “the Consolation
-of Philosophy”. In his other translations he had been working for his
-people; in this, which was probably executed towards the close of his
-reign, he was, perhaps, working rather for himself, for the solace and
-fortification of his own troubled spirit.
-
-We have seen that Alfred did not take a slavish view of the duties
-of a translator; and in his _Boethius_ he is more lordly than ever,
-omitting, adding, altering with a sublime contempt for mere verbal
-accuracy. It is, however, these very changes which make the book
-so precious to a student of Alfred’s own character. We see therein
-what were the thoughts which were most akin to his nature; we learn
-something of the secret springs of his actions; we can almost listen
-to the conversations which he held with his bishops and thegns in the
-great wooden palace at Winchester.
-
-In the first place, he gives to the whole inquiry a more religious turn
-than he found in the original. For “Nature” he substitutes “God”; he
-sometimes introduces the name of Christ; he speaks of the Judgment-day,
-and his language has throughout that distinctly religious tone which is
-so strangely absent from the meditations of Boethius. He takes us into
-his royal council and tells us the principles upon which he has sought
-to administer the state, using for his instruments three sorts of
-ministers, men of prayer, men of war, and men of work, for all of whom
-suitable maintenance must be found out of the land. He expands a slight
-sentence of Boethius in praise of friendship into a noble passage, in
-which he declares that true friendship is not an earthly but a heavenly
-blessing; that all other objects of desire in this world are sought
-after in obedience to some selfish motive, but a true friend we love
-for love’s own sake and because of our trust in his truth, hoping for
-no other return. “Nature joins friends together and unites them with an
-inseparable love, whereas by our worldly goods and the wealth of this
-life we more often make foes than friends.”[141]
-
-Boethius puts into the mouth of Philosophy some words deprecatory of
-too great regard for noble birth; but Alfred says boldly on his own
-account that “true high birth is that of the mind not of the flesh,” a
-memorable utterance in the mouth of the man whose lineage “went unto
-Cerdic” and who according to the songs of Saxon bards was descended
-from Woden. There are also in this most interesting translation many
-passages which show Alfred’s keen perception of the beauties of Nature,
-his unfailing interest in geography, and his knowledge of Saxon
-folk-lore (as illustrated by his allusion to the bones of Weland the
-Smith), besides some which reveal his naïve ignorance of well-known
-facts of ancient history, as when he describes the _sella curulis_ as a
-kind of carriage, or when he tells us that Cassius was another name for
-Brutus. One sees with pleasure that the wise king had a certain gift
-of humour, and that he could at times be even sarcastic. He alone,
-not his author, is responsible for the following remark attributed to
-Philosophy: “Two things honour and power can do, if they fall into the
-hands of a fool: they can cause him to be respected and even revered by
-other fools”. Whosoever would get at the heart of this great man, the
-true founder of the English kingdom, and discover his inmost thoughts,
-should carefully study Alfred’s translation of Boethius, and observe
-where he neglects and where he reinforces from his own experience the
-maxims and arguments of the Roman statesman.
-
-To the interval of comparative peace with which we are now dealing
-we may probably assign the reorganisation of the royal household.
-Apparently service in the palace was conducted on parallel lines with
-service in the army, being performed in both cases by men who had
-houses of their own to govern and lands of their own to cultivate. The
-king, therefore, ordained that the household should be divided into
-three portions, each of which should take palace-duty (“night and day,”
-says the biographer) for one month, and then, being relieved by another
-detachment, return home for two months’ furlough. The same principle of
-threefold division prevailed partially in the simple budget of Alfred’s
-exchequer. He divided, says Asser, all the revenue which was yearly
-collected by his officers into two parts, one of which was devoted
-to secular and the other to religious uses. Of the secular portion
-one-third was paid to the household, according to their respective
-dignities and special services; one-third to the workmen of various
-nationalities whom he had gathered about him for his great works of
-building and restoration; and one-third to the foreigners--probably for
-the most part scholars or professors of some liberal art--who flocked
-in great numbers to his court. Of the religious half of his revenue,
-one-quarter went to the poor, one-quarter to the two new monasteries
-founded by him at Winchester and Athelney, one-quarter to the court
-school, and the remainder promiscuously to the various monasteries in
-Wessex and Mercia, and the needy churches in Britain and even in Gaul
-and Ireland.
-
-One of the most extraordinary of the king’s benefactions, one which we
-might well have doubted had it not been vouched for by the contemporary
-evidence of the Chronicle, is thus described therein: “And that same
-year [883 for 882] Sighelm and Athelstan carried to Rome the alms which
-he had vowed to send thither when he was fighting the [Danish] army at
-London: and also to India to St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew”. Of the
-campaign before London in the course of which this vow was made we have
-no more definite information. The sending of alms to Rome is easily
-understood, but the mission of West Saxon almoners to “St. Thomas’s
-Christians” in India is indeed a marvellous fact if true. Unfortunately
-the tendency of modern criticism is somewhat unfavourable to the
-genuineness of the entry.[142]
-
- * * * * *
-
-Though we know not the exact year when Alfred’s Dooms were compiled,
-this will be the best place for a brief statement of the legislative
-work of the great king.
-
-“These are the dooms which Alfred the king chose, in order that no
-man should deem them otherwise than according to his will.” Such is
-the opening sentence of the laws. Then follows an elaborate table of
-contents including Ine’s laws as well as his own; and then, strangely
-enough, we have almost the whole of four chapters of the book of Exodus
-(xx.-xxiii.), containing the Ten Commandments and the Mosaic code of
-civil law in all its archaic simplicity and with all its Draconian
-sternness: the principle of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
-tooth”; “whosoever doeth this or that he shall surely die,” the keynote
-of the whole. Then, however, comes a reference to the mission of “the
-Lord’s Son, our God, who is Jesus Christ, who came into the world, not
-to destroy the law but to fulfil it, and to increase it with all good
-things. With mild-heartedness and humility did He teach.”
-
-Thereupon follows a description of the Council of Jerusalem as given in
-the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, and a rehearsal of
-its decrees about “abstaining from fornication, from things offered in
-sacrifice to idols, from things strangled and from blood”. The acts of
-this council end with the Golden Rule (omitted from the manuscripts on
-which the Received Text of the New Testament is founded, but inserted
-in _Codex Bezae_ and several early authorities), “And that which ye
-will that other men should not do to you, do not ye to other men”.
-“On this one doom,” says the king, “let each man meditate that he may
-judge each one rightly; nor needs he any other law-book. Let him seek
-for no other doom upon his neighbour than he would be willing to have
-pronounced upon himself.”
-
-But, as Alfred proceeds to show, since the conversion of many nations
-to Christianity, synods have been held at which bishops and other
-distinguished _witan_ have been present, and these assemblies, for
-the sake of the “mild-heartedness” which Christ taught, have commuted
-the death-penalty for the offences named in the Mosaic law to money
-payments on the scale set forth by them; and such payments may,
-therefore, without sin be taken by the secular lords to whom they are
-made payable. Only, there is one crime for which no money payment must
-be suffered to atone; and that is treason against a man’s rightful
-lord, because Almighty God ordained no remission of punishment to those
-who despised Himself, nor could His Son give any such remission to the
-traitor who delivered Him to death; and He ordered that a man should
-love his lord even as himself.
-
-These passages give us an interesting glimpse of the mental process
-which governed the compilation of Alfred’s law-book. In the same spirit
-in which he translated Orosius and Gregory for his subjects’ benefit,
-he sets before them what he considers the source of all legislation,
-the divine ordinances given amidst the thunders of Sinai. He then shows
-how that law was modified by the teaching of Christ; he rehearses the
-several points of the decree of the Council of Jerusalem, and thence
-glides by an easy transition to that tariff of compensations and fines
-(payment of _wergild_ and _wite_) by which, in his day, atonement might
-be made for all offences, with the one exception here so emphatically
-insisted on, the crime of treason against a man’s natural lord. Of
-course, modern historical science cannot concede to Church synods the
-credit of this great change, which we believe to have been wrought
-possibly through long ages in the forests of Germany--namely, the
-change by which the blood feud slowly gave place to the exacted _wer_:
-but doubtless Christian ecclesiastics accepted the principle, perhaps
-in many instances regulated its application; and King Alfred was so
-far right in claiming the authority of the Church for the practice of
-money compensation instead of the relentless severity of some of the
-ordinances of Exodus. The conclusion of Alfred’s Prologue is important
-as indicating what was the legislative competence of the king and how
-he shared it with the witan.
-
-“I then, King Alfred, gathered these laws together and caused them
-to be written down, selecting many which pleased me from among those
-ordained by my predecessors. And many of those which I liked not I
-abrogated by the counsel of my Witan, ordaining some different way for
-the future. For I did not dare to set down in writing many of my own
-suggestions, not knowing how they would be liked by those who should
-come after. But whenever I found in the laws passed in the days of my
-kinsman Ine, or of Offa, King of Mercia, or of Ethelbert, the first
-English convert to Christianity, anything that seemed to me to be most
-justly decided, such laws I gathered in and the others I left out.”
-
-Generally speaking, Alfred’s laws differ from those of Ine, and still
-more from those of Kentish Ethelbert, in the direction of greater
-leniency, the amount of fine payable for injuries to the person being
-almost always considerably reduced. This tendency, when we compare
-Alfred’s and Ethelbert’s laws, is at first sight obscured by the fact
-that the fines imposed by the latter are expressed in terms of the
-Kentish scilling, which was worth four times as much as that of Wessex,
-but when we have made the necessary correction for this difference, it
-comes out very clearly. Thus the fine for cutting off the thumb was in
-Ethelbert’s code the equivalent of 80 shillings of Wessex, while under
-Alfred it was only 30. For the like injury to the middle finger it was
-respectively 32 and 15 shillings; for the “gold” or ring finger, 24 and
-17.
-
-This remarkable diminution in the scale of pecuniary punishments was
-probably due, not simply to “mild-heartedness” on the part of the king
-and his _witan_, but also to the economic effect of the Danish ravages.
-So much of the portable wealth of the country had been carried off
-from hall and monastery to the homesteads of Scandinavia, that the
-value of gold and silver remaining in the land was sensibly increased,
-and a fine which was reasonable at the beginning of the eighth
-century became exorbitant at the close of the ninth. This abatement
-of pecuniary penalty is modified in a singular way in the case of
-forest trespass. It may be remembered that by the laws of Ine, a man
-going into a forest and felling timber for his own use was liable to
-a fine of 30 scillings for each tree so felled, up to three, but that
-90 scillings was the maximum penalty. Now, by the laws of Alfred the
-penalty for each tree so felled was only 5 scillings, but there was no
-maximum. A forest-thief, therefore, who cut down twenty trees would
-fare worse under the new law than under the old. One would like to
-know what were the developments in English forestry which led to this
-singular modification of the law.
-
-Our attention begins to be directed to the public assemblies for
-the transaction of business, the local _moots_ which, as we know
-from other sources, had judicial as well as administrative duties to
-discharge, arranging the levy of men for the _fyrd_ and raising money
-for the equipment of ships, as well as settling important questions of
-inheritance and disputes about property. It was important that such
-meetings should not be disturbed by the brawls of unruly partisans of
-the litigants, and accordingly we find it enacted that “if any man
-fight before the king’s ealdorman in the _gemot_ (meeting), he shall
-pay his _wer_ and _wite_ as the law ordains for any assault that he
-may have committed, and in addition shall pay a fine (_wite_) of 120
-scillings to the ealdorman”.
-
-Law 42 in Alfred’s code illustrates in an interesting manner that
-gradual transition from the blood-feud to the law-suit which was
-perhaps the most important conquest of Teutonic civilisation. By
-the various sections of this law it is provided that no man who has
-a grievance against another shall fight his foe until he has first
-demanded justice of him. That done, however, and justice denied, he
-may, if he have a sufficiently strong body of friends to back him,
-besiege the defendant for seven days. Should that blockade bring about
-a surrender and a disarmament, he must keep his adversary in custody
-for thirty days, sending word to his kinship that they may come and
-pay the mulct for which the prisoner is liable. What is to happen if
-the surrender does not take place at the end of the seven days, or the
-payment at the end of the thirty, we are not informed, but it seems
-to be implied that the claimant may then fight and even slay his enemy
-without guilt. If the plaintiff have not sufficient power to besiege
-his foe, he must ride to the ealdorman and demand his aid. Failing
-that, he must seek redress of the king, before he takes it upon himself
-to fight his foe. Moreover, a man might always fight for his lord or
-his kinsman without incurring the penalties of blood-guiltiness, and
-so too he could wage “lawful war” with the seducer of his wife, his
-sister, or his mother. We see that the ideas of the old blood-feud and
-of the so-called “Fist-right” still lingered in the mind even of so
-wise and religious a legislator as Alfred. Redress of wrongs by the
-action of courts of law might be the ideal, but in the actual Saxon
-world private warfare must still be allowed, and all that the king
-could hope to accomplish was to confine it within narrow bounds and
-regulate its procedure.
-
-On the condition of the servile class, the _theows_ and _esnes_, in
-the time of Alfred, not much light is thrown by Alfred’s Doom-book.
-We learn, however, that there was already a large class of free-men
-working for wages, for whose holidays, amounting in all to about
-thirty-six days in the year, the forty-third of Alfred’s laws made
-provision. From this enactment the _theows_ and _esnes_ are expressly
-excluded, but it is provided that all men in servile condition shall
-have the four Wednesdays in the Ember-weeks, on which days they are
-graciously permitted to make a present of their labour to any one who
-may have helped them in God’s name, or even to work for themselves.
-There is also a curious provision (law 20) exempting from liability the
-lord of a monk who has received money on deposit which he has failed to
-restore. This passage coincides with some others which seem to indicate
-that owing to the ruin of the monasteries wrought by the Danes, many of
-the monks, in order to keep body and soul together, accepted a servile
-position on the estate or in the house of some great landowner.
-
-There are other indications that during the two centuries which had
-elapsed since the legislation of Ine, the tendency which was even
-then observable, towards the formation of large landed estates and
-the lessening of the number of free and independent ceorls, had been
-going forward. One cause which probably contributed to this result
-was the conversion of Folkland into Bookland: two terms which, after
-puzzling a whole generation of English historians, have at last,
-it may be hoped, yielded up their secret to the patient research
-of a foreign student of our institutions.[143] Folkland, it seems
-now safe to say, was “family land held by common right and without
-written evidence”.[144] Bookland was, as it is called by a Latin
-interpreter,[145] _terra testamentalis_, land over which the owner
-had full power of disposition by will, and his right to which rested
-on some “book” or written document, not on folk-right and immemorial
-custom. A striking illustration of the difference between the two kinds
-of property is afforded by the will of a certain ealdorman Alfred who
-was a contemporary of his great namesake the king.[146] This nobleman
-leaves the bulk of his large property, which is expressly stated to be
-bookland, to his widow and “our common bairn” Aldryth: but there is
-also a son, probably not born in wedlock, for whom he wishes to make
-provision. After leaving him a certain small “bookland” property, he
-adds: “If the king will let him have the folkland in addition to this
-bookland, then let him have and enjoy it”; if not, the widow is to
-convey to him certain other bookland estates. It is argued with much
-force that here we have the case of a nobleman owning large properties
-which have been conveyed to him by perhaps recent “books,” written
-instruments of purchase and sale, royal donations and the like. But he
-has inherited also another, probably smaller, property which has been
-in his family from time immemorial, is his by folk-right, and is called
-folkland. But this property is held subject to certain customary laws
-of inheritance, and is perhaps liable to reversion to other members
-of the kinship in default of male heirs. The ealdorman hopes for the
-king’s intervention on behalf of his son should any difficulty be made
-about his succession to the folkland, and, failing that, desires that
-the loss shall be made up to him out of the bookland estate, over which
-his disposing power is incontestable.
-
-If, as there is reason to believe, the cases of conversion of folkland
-into bookland were frequent throughout the later Saxon centuries, if
-the slumbering rights of succession of distant members of the kinship
-were being barred by “books” granting the land to members of the royal
-household, to convents and churches, or simply confirming ordinary
-commercial transactions of sale and exchange, it is easy to see that
-the class of “twy-hind” ceorls would be sensibly diminished and the
-possessions of the “twelf-hynd” man, the thegn or the king’s retainer
-visibly increased. All these causes would augment the number of poor
-and struggling freemen who, especially in times of war and invasion
-during “the clash of mighty opposites,” were glad to sacrifice some
-part of their precarious independence by “commending” themselves to the
-protection of some powerful landowner.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII.
-
-ALFRED’S LAST DAYS.
-
-
-From the peaceful labours which had occupied him for the last seven
-years, Alfred was recalled to the weary work of war by tidings of the
-return of the dreaded _here_ to the English coast. During those seven
-years the chronicler had been nervously noting the deeds of “the army”
-beyond seas. They had been fighting chiefly in the north of Gaul,
-pressing up the rivers Somme, Seine and Marne, and even laying close
-siege for ten months (November, 885, to September, 886) to the city of
-Paris itself, a siege which the Emperor Charles the Fat had raised, not
-by arms but by the ignominious payment of tribute. It is easy to trace
-a connexion between these vehement attacks on Frankish territory and
-the resistance which, in our own country, from Athelney onwards, had
-been so valiantly offered by Alfred. But now the process was reversed,
-and the Northmen, severely handled by a Frankish king, were thrown back
-upon England. In the year 887 Charles the Fat, who had disgusted his
-subjects by his ignominious treaty with the Danes, was deposed from
-his imperial dignity, and Arnulf, his nephew, was chosen king by the
-Franks east of the Rhine, by whose aid he won for himself, nine years
-after, the grander title of emperor. In 891 he won a great victory over
-the Danes near the modern city of Louvain. Hereupon the Scandinavians,
-recognising that “Francia” was for the present closed against them by
-the might of this new German king, decided to try their fortune once
-more on the other side of the channel.
-
-The operations of the five years that followed (892–896[147]) are
-described by the Chronicle in great detail and with unusual vividness
-and vigour. A recent editor[148] calls the six or seven pages devoted
-to these campaigns “the most remarkable piece of writing in the whole
-series of chronicles”. It is allowable to conjecture that such a
-narrative, if not from Alfred’s own pen, comes from some person in the
-immediate neighbourhood of the king. Fresh and vivid, however, as the
-narrative is, it is not easy to discover therefrom the precise sequence
-of events. Different bands of Danes are seen to be operating in
-different parts of the kingdom, and the difficulty which they probably
-felt in combining their efforts meets also the historian who seeks to
-combine their narratives. Here it will be sufficient to indicate some
-of the principal stages of the contest.
-
-The invasion of 892 seems to have been made by two bodies of Danes,
-acting to some extent independently of each other. “The great army”
-which had been defeated by Arnulf at Louvain, went westwards from
-Flanders to Boulogne, embarked from the latter port “with horses and
-all” in a fleet of 250 ships, and sailed across to the Kentish coast.
-According to their usual custom they made use of a river channel to
-penetrate into the interior; but the river up which they fared and
-which probably entered the sea at Lymne, has long since disappeared
-in that region of silted-up streams. Up the river they towed their
-ships for four miles, and there they found a “work” half finished and
-defended by a few rustics. Their capture of this work well illustrates
-a remark of Asser’s that “of the many forts which Alfred ordered to
-be built, some were never begun and others, begun too late, were not
-finished when the enemy broke in upon them by land and sea,” causing
-tardy repentance and shame on the part of the disobedient builders.
-The Danish army then constructed for themselves a “work” at Appledore,
-some twenty miles west of Hythe. The nature of these “works,” of which
-we hear so much at this point of the history, is explained to us by
-the Frankish chronicler who describes the Emperor Arnulf’s victory in
-891, and who tells us that the Northmen “had according to their usual
-manner fortified themselves with wood and heaped-up earth”.[149] The
-description points to a mound crowned with a palisading, such as the
-Romans had used to protect their encampments.
-
-Meanwhile another horde, not so large as the first, and fleeing,
-not so much from the conquering sword of Arnulf, as from the famine
-which waited upon their own destructive footsteps, having crossed the
-channel with eighty ships, had entered the Thames and made a “work”
-in Kent near the Isle of Sheppey. The leader of this band was the
-far-famed Haesten or Hasting, a pirate who had sailed up the Loire to
-ravage Central Gaul in the year 866, and in the twenty-six years which
-followed had not often rested from the work of devastation. Between
-these two invading armies Alfred took up a position (893) in the great
-Andredesweald which stretched along the whole length of Kent and Sussex
-dividing the two counties, and from thence or from the _burhs_ or
-fortresses which he had erected, forays were constantly made with some
-success on the unwelcome visitors. So things seem to have remained
-through the winter. At Easter the larger host, having broken up from
-Appledore, wandered through Hants and Berks, ravaging as they went.
-The young “Etheling” Edward, son of Alfred, being informed of their
-movements, and having collected his troops, pursued the spoil-laden
-plunderers and came up with them at Farnham. He fought them and gained
-a complete victory; the booty was all recovered and the robbers in
-their desperation swam the Thames without waiting to find a ford, and
-made their way up the little stream of the Hertfordshire Colne to the
-river island of Thorney. There apparently Edward was forced to leave
-them, for the _fyrd_ was divided into two parts, each bound to serve
-for six months only. The time for relieving guard had now arrived,
-and while one half was marching “thitherward” (to the front) and the
-other half homeward, the favourable moment passed away for pursuing the
-Danes, whose king had been wounded in the late encounter. Some of the
-enemy penetrated to the coast, collected a hundred ships and sailed
-westward to make a raid on Devonshire, whither Alfred was forced to
-follow them.
-
-Leaving “the great army” for a time, we turn to follow the fortunes
-of Hasting. It seems that he had pretended to imitate the example of
-Guthrum (who had died three years before, at peace with Alfred), and
-had expressed his willingness to become a Christian. He gave hostages,
-swore oaths of peace and friendship, and was probably baptised along
-with his two sons, the godfathers being Alfred and his son-in-law
-Ethelred of Mercia, his stout ally in all these campaigns. But some
-turn in the fortunes of war, perhaps the disloyal attitude of the
-Danes of Northumbria and Mercia, who were hungering for war, sent
-Hasting again into armed opposition. He made a “work” at Benfleet in
-the south-east corner of Essex, and as soon as it was finished he
-began, as the chronicler says with indignation, to harry that realm
-of Mercia which Ethelred, his godfather, was bound to defend. Alfred,
-who had been summoned to Exeter by the tidings of another Danish raid,
-now returned rapidly to London where a strong _burh_ had been built, a
-stout-hearted body of citizens having been sworn to defend it. Marching
-forth with these and with his own troops, he assailed the “work” at
-Benfleet and carried it by storm. Great spoil was found there as well
-as many women and children--a sure token that the Northmen had come
-to settle in the land. All the treasure was gathered within the safe
-shelter of London-burh, but Alfred, recognising the obligations of
-spiritual kindred, though Hasting had so soon forgotten them, restored
-to the old pirate his wife and her two sons. After this the two Danish
-armies seem to have united and to have made a great “work” at Shoebury
-in Essex, not far from the abandoned Benfleet. Hasting henceforward
-fades out of the narrative, possibly unwilling to continue to fight
-against his generous foe.[150]
-
-The avowed union of all the men of the “Danelaw” (as the district
-settled by the Danes was now called), both in East Anglia and
-Northumbria, gave a new character to the war. It was no longer a
-mere descent of sea-rovers on Kent or Devonshire; it was a terrible
-internal struggle, and all along the Watling Street, the boundary
-between the two kingdoms, the shuttle of war flew swiftly. Leaving
-their camp at Shoebury, the Danes marched up the valley of the Thames
-and across the country to the Severn. But now the whole forces of the
-kingdom were collected for the contest. Not only Ethelred of Mercia
-but “the Ealdormen of Wilts and Somerset and such of the king’s thegns
-as were then at home at the works, gathered together from every town
-east of the Parret, from both sides of Selwood, from the north of
-the Thames and the west of the Severn, and with them came also”--a
-memorable addition--“some part of the North Welsh race”. Evidently
-the Welshmen had learned by experience that there were worse enemies
-than the Saxons, and probably also the righteous rule of Alfred had
-won their confidence. The army thus collected marched after the Danes
-and came up with them at a place called Buttington on the Severn. For
-many weeks the two armies sat watching each other, the river flowing
-between them. At last, after the Danes had eaten most of their horses,
-they sallied forth and crossed the river to fight. The battle which
-followed was a bloody one, many of the king’s thegns falling; but the
-slaughter on the Danish side was greater, and victory remained with
-the English. Back into Essex fled the beaten remnant of the army, but
-having ere winter gathered to them many helpers from the Danelaw, and
-having entrusted ships and wives and property to the care of the East
-Angles, they once more followed the Watling Street into Cheshire, which
-for some reason or other (possibly connected with the Danish conquest
-of Ireland) they persistently made the objective of their campaign.
-Day and night they marched, till they came to the estuary of the Dee.
-Here, still surrounded by its grass-grown walls, lay the silent and
-ruined city which had for near four centuries resounded to the shouts
-of the twentieth legion, “Valerian and Victorious”. In its desolation
-it yet bore the name of “the camp of the legions” (_lega-ceaster_), but
-it was “a waste Chester”. A Chester it is still, by its picturesque
-medieval architecture pre-eminent above all others of its kind, but
-happily no longer waste. The _fyrd_ hastened with all speed after the
-_here_, but failed to overtake them ere they had taken refuge in the
-ghostly city. They had, therefore, to be satisfied with destroying
-all the cattle and corn in the neighbourhood, slaying some straggling
-Danes and leaving nought but a hungry wilderness round the survivors.
-The blockade of Chester (894) was not a strict one; before long the
-Danes, urged by famine, broke out of the city, and escaping into the
-friendly Danelaw marched across the country to the island of Mersea at
-the mouth of the Blackwater, not far from their old winter quarters in
-Essex. At the same time the invaders who had been troubling Devonshire
-sailed homeward, but on their way harried the west of Sussex, until the
-_burg-ware_ (townsfolk) of Chichester issued forth to battle, routed
-them, slew many hundreds, and captured some of their ships. Throughout
-this second Danish war, the martial ardour of the inhabitants of the
-_burhs_ built or refortified by the king is very conspicuous.
-
-It was now apparently 895, the fourth year since the great _scip-here_
-had appeared off the coast of Kent. The Danes who had wintered in
-Mersea, still hankering doubtless after the spoil of London, sailed
-round to the estuary of the Thames and towed their ships up the
-sluggish waters of the Lea, which now forms the boundary between Essex
-and Middlesex. Here, about twenty miles above London--that is, probably
-in the neighbourhood of Bishop Stortford--they wrought a “work,” and
-remained encamped for six months. When summer came a multitude of the
-_burg-ware_ of London marched forth to storm the Danish work. This
-time, unfortunately, civic valour did not triumph. The _burg-ware_ were
-put to flight, and four of the king’s thegns, who had been acting as
-their leaders, were slain.
-
-Autumn was now approaching and it was important that the men of Essex
-should not be attacked while they were gathering in their harvest.
-Accordingly Alfred encamped in the neighbourhood of London. One day he
-rode up the Lea to reconnoitre the Danish position, and something in
-the course of the river suggested to his mind, fertile in expedients
-and enriched by the study of ancient historians, that it might be
-possible so to obstruct it as to hinder the escape of the Danes. The
-scheme ripened; he set two bodies of troops to erect works above and
-below the station of the ships. Ere the works were finished the Danes
-saw that their position was being made untenable; they abandoned the
-ships--probably by night--and marched off, still no doubt through the
-friendly Danelaw, till they came to Bridgnorth on the Severn, where
-they again wrought a work and fixed their winter quarters. While the
-_fyrd_ rode after them towards the north, the men of London-burh came
-out and captured the ships, some of which they broke up and others,
-the more serviceable, they towed down stream to London. Such was the
-strange campaign of the Lea. Any one who knows the Lea in its present
-conditions, who has seen the sleepy bargemen gliding along from lock to
-lock, the anglers sitting all day on the banks which Izaak Walton has
-made classic ground, all the indescribable restfulness and tranquillity
-of the scene, will feel the contrast between this peaceful Present
-and the days when Alfred’s men were toiling at their noisy labours
-and when the heathens howled forth their execrations on finding their
-passage barred by the Saxons.
-
-In the following summer (896) “the _here_ went some to East Anglia,
-some to Northumbria, and those who were moneyless got them ships and
-fared over sea to the Seine. Thus had the army,” says the chronicler,
-“not utterly broken all the English race. But they were more fearfully
-broken during those three years by pestilence both of cattle and of
-men, especially because the most eminent of the king’s thegns died in
-those three years.” The chronicler then gives the name and rank of the
-chief victims of the plague: the bishops of Rochester and Dorchester,
-the ealdormen of Kent, Essex and Hants, a king’s thegn of Sussex, the
-town-reeve of Winchester, a grand constable (king’s horse-thegn) and
-many others.
-
-Though the great land invasion was thus defeated, the king had still
-to deal with a harassing swarm of sea-pirates, whose long ships named
-“ashes,” built of the wood of the ill-omened ash tree, were constantly
-appearing off the southern coast, often manned by insurgent Danes from
-East Anglia and Northumbria. In order to grapple with these pestilent
-enemies Alfred turned shipbuilder. He may have already taken some steps
-towards this end, but the following entry in the Chronicle for the
-year 897 (= 896) is the earliest definite information that we receive
-as to the beginnings of England’s navy: “Then King Alfred bade build
-long ships against the ashes; they were full nigh twice as long as the
-others. Some had sixty oars, some more. They were both swifter and
-steadier and eke higher than the others. They were not built on Frisian
-nor yet on Danish lines, but as he himself thought that they might be
-most serviceable.”
-
-An engagement of no great importance, which is, however, described in
-great detail by the chronicler, took place between the pirates and nine
-of the new ships which had been despatched by Alfred to stop their
-depredations, and had sealed them up in some estuary or land-locked
-bay (such as Brading harbour) in the Isle of Wight. While the tide was
-high the crews of the big English ships captured and slew to their
-hearts’ content, but when the tide ebbed they were left aground, as the
-chronicler says, “very inconveniently” half on one side of the estuary
-and half on the other, with the Danish ashes, also aground, between
-them. At dead low water the shore was firm enough for the Danish
-pirates to climb down out of their ship, paddle across the sands and
-challenge a fight with the crews of the three English ships nearest to
-them. For such small contending forces the battle seems to have been a
-bloody one. One hundred and twenty Danes fell and sixty-two English,
-but among these latter were many men of high rank, a king’s reeve and a
-king’s companion (_geneat_), and also many of the Frisian captains and
-sailors whom Alfred, knowing their nautical skill, had attracted to his
-service. When the battle was ended, in came the flowing tide, on which
-the Danish ships could float out to sea while the larger ships of the
-new navy were still lying “very inconveniently aground”. So the three
-pirate ships escaped for the time, but they were sorely strained and
-damaged, so that they could not all sail round the coast of Sussex. Two
-were wrecked on that coast, and their crews being brought to Winchester
-and led into the king’s presence, were ordered by him to be hanged.
-This order was not like the usual clemency of the king, but he probably
-felt that it was necessary to repress with a strong hand movements
-which were now no longer warfare but mere brigandage. The third ship
-escaped both the winds and the English pursuers, and landed her crew, a
-troop of sore-wounded and weary men, on the East Anglian coast.
-
-Not more than four years of rest seem to have been granted to Alfred
-after the repulse of this last invasion before death ended his labours.
-There can be little doubt that some part at least of that plentiful
-literary harvest which was described in the preceding chapter belongs
-to these closing years. Especially interesting is it to note that,
-according to the judgment of the most careful modern inquirers,
-the king’s metrical translation of Boethius should be referred to
-this period. The proem to that translation alludes to “the manifold
-worldly cares that oft troubled him both in mind and body” when he was
-turning it from Latin into English prose, and then again to the cares,
-apparently the yet heavier cares, “that in his days came upon the
-kingdom to which he had succeeded,” but which did not prevent him--so
-high was his value for the great _Consolatio_--from “working it up once
-more into verse” as the reader may now behold it. All these cares were
-now at an end, and ended, too, all his noble toil for the defence, the
-enlightenment and the guidance of his people. He died on October 26,
-900,[151] in the fifty-third year of his age, and was buried in St.
-Swithun’s monastery at Winchester. In 903, however (according to the
-legend told by William of Malmesbury), as “the delirious fancies of
-the canons” declared that the king’s ghost, resuming possession of his
-corpse, wandered at night through their cells, the royal remains were
-transferred to the New Minster, founded by his son in fulfilment of a
-plan which Alfred himself had formed and had confided to his friend and
-spiritual adviser, Grimbald the Frank. In the reign of Henry I. the
-monks of New Minster migrated from their narrow domain within the city
-to a large and convenient site called Hyde Mead, on its northern side,
-and in their migration they took with them the body of the king. At the
-suppression of the monasteries Hyde Abbey fell into decay, and near the
-close of the eighteenth century the Hampshire magistrates purchased the
-site for the purpose of erecting thereon a county jail. The tombs were
-ruthlessly opened, the stone coffins were turned into horse troughs,
-the lead which covered a coffin, presumably Alfred’s, was sold for
-two guineas, and apparently the dust of the great king himself was
-scattered to the winds. No leader of the Danish army could have shown
-greater zest in the work of desecration. This New Minster at Winchester
-was consecrated by one of Alfred’s friends, Archbishop Plegmund, and
-numbered another of his friends, Grimbald, as first on its list of
-abbots. Its records, known as the _Liber Monasterii de Hyda_, furnish
-us with some valuable information concerning the reigns of Alfred and
-his sons.
-
-As for the great king himself, several of the chroniclers, especially
-his kinsman, Ethelweard, and Florence of Worcester, have celebrated his
-praises in fitting terms, but his best epitaph is contained in three
-simple words of an unknown scribe of the twelfth century, “Alfred,
-England’s Darling”. His fame and the glory of his noble character have
-grown brighter as the centuries have rolled by, and at this day he is
-really nearer to the hearts of Englishmen than all, save one, of his
-successors.
-
-
-NOTE.
-
-ON THE EXTENT OF THE DANELAW.
-
-The political boundaries of the Danish state recognised after the
-Peace of Wedmore have been sufficiently indicated by historians, and
-it may be said that for all practical purposes they nearly coincide
-with the old Roman road called the Watling Street, the sphere of
-Danish influence lying to the north and east, that of Saxon influence
-and rule to the south and west of that line, which, as previously
-remarked, coincides very nearly with the line of the London and North
-Western Railway. There is, however, another question both interesting
-and important: “To what extent did the Danish population fill up the
-district thus assigned to them?” In other words, “How far did the
-ethnological coincide with the political boundary?” This is a question
-which we have not as yet sufficient materials to answer fully or
-accurately. Much study and much patient research on the part of our
-local antiquaries, study of dialects and research in sepulchral tumuli,
-will probably be needed before we can say with certainty: “Here the
-old Anglian population remained preponderant, and here the Danish or
-Norwegian immigrants so filled the land as to make it practically a
-Scandinavian district”. But in the meantime some help is gained from a
-consideration of the place-names in the several districts of England;
-only we must beware of looking at the conclusions thus arrived at as
-final and irreversible.
-
-Broadly, however, we may say with some confidence that place-names
-ending in _ton_, _ham_, _yard_ and _worth_ are Saxon or Anglian;
-those ending in _by_, _thorpe_ and _toft_ are Danish; in _thwaite_,
-_garth_, _beck_, _haugh_, and _fell_, Norwegian; in _borough_, probably
-Anglian; in _wick_ or _wich_, if inland, Saxon, if near the sea-coast,
-Danish. Applying these tests we find evidence of considerable Danish
-settlements, but no Danish preponderance, in Norfolk and Suffolk. The
-great fen district round Peterborough seems to have been an impassable
-barrier, and we find no Danish names to the west of it; on the other
-hand, the Humber and the Wash must have been constantly visited by the
-ships of the vikings, for their shores swarm with Danish names. As has
-been said by Mr. Isaac Taylor,[152] “A district in Lincolnshire, about
-nine miles by twelve, between Tattersall, New Bolingbroke, Horncastle
-and Spilsby, would appear to have been more exclusively Danish than
-any other in the kingdom. In this small space there are some forty
-unmistakably Danish village names, such as Kirby, Moorby, Enderby,
-etc., all denoting the fixed residence of a Danish population.” “The
-Danish local names radiate from the Wash.[153] In Leicestershire,
-Rutland, Northamptonshire and Yorkshire the Danish names preponderate
-over those of the Anglo-Saxon type; while Cambridgeshire,
-Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire and the adjacent counties, protected by
-the fens, present scarcely a single Danish name.” There can be no more
-striking proof of the absolute preponderance of the Danish element
-in the north-east corner of Yorkshire (where probably the influence
-of the invaders radiated from the estuary of the Tees) than the fact
-that Streanæshalc itself, the Anglian sanctuary, home of St. Hilda and
-meeting-place of the great Paschal Synod, meekly bowed its head to the
-alien yoke and accepted the Danish name of Whitby.
-
-In the midland counties the most striking proof of the numerical
-superiority of the Danes was exhibited by the powerful confederation of
-the five boroughs, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, Stamford and Derby.
-It is true that only one of these bore an unmistakably Danish name,
-but the part which they played politically, their strong offensive and
-defensive alliance, seems to confirm the generally accepted conclusion
-that the five boroughs were essentially a Danish confederation. Going
-further north we find very slight indications of Danish settlement in
-Durham and Northumberland. This part of Northumbria the invaders seem
-to have visited only for ravage, not for settlement, being satisfied to
-leave it under the rule of some subservient earl, who might or might
-not be of their own race. Further north still, across the Scottish
-border, Danish names die out altogether; but when we go far enough
-we find abundant traces of the other great stream of Scandinavian
-invasion, the Norwegian, and about this a few words must be said in
-reference, not to Scotland (Shetland, Orkney, Hebrides, etc.), but to
-the western coast of England.
-
-The place-names of Cumberland and Westmorland must always have arrested
-the attention of careful philologists. While the names of mountains
-and rivers, such as Helvellyn, Blencathra, Glaramara, Derwent, are
-for the most part of Celtic origin, we find a great number of names
-of villages and some also of hills and streams which evidently are
-Scandinavian rather than Celtic. Such are all the multitudinous
-_thwaites_ and _ghylls_, the _garths_ and _haughs_, and the frequently
-recurring _beck_ for a stream, and _fell_ for a high hill. Mr. Robert
-Ferguson called attention to the fact that this multitude of non-Celtic
-terminations--so remarkable in a country which actually bears the name
-of the Cymri--pointed to a large immigration of Scandinavians, not,
-however, of the Danish but of the Norwegian type. Of such immigration
-we have scarcely a hint in the chroniclers, but the philological
-evidence adduced by Mr. Ferguson[154] is so strong that his conclusion
-has been generally accepted by ethnologists. As to the date of this
-migration, his theory is that after the Saxon king Edmund in 945
-had overrun the district of Cumbria and had left it wasted and bare
-of people, the Norwegians from their stronghold in the Isle of Man,
-discerning their advantage, covered the Solway with their ships, and
-pouring into that land of mountains and lakes and long stream-watered
-valleys--a land so like their fatherland--settled there and made it
-their own. This migration he would therefore place in the latter part
-of the tenth century, between the just mentioned Cumbrian campaign of
-Edmund (945) and the similar campaign of Ethelred (1000) which was
-undertaken, Henry of Huntingdon says, against “the Danes” yet involved
-the ravaging of Cumberland.
-
-However this question of the date may hereafter be settled, there can
-be little doubt that the race which peoples these two most picturesque
-counties of England is pre-eminently of Norwegian origin. There seems
-to have been two other settlements of Scandinavians which deserve
-remark. One was in that curious peninsula of Cheshire, called the
-Wirral, between the estuaries of Dee and Mersey, a region which teems
-with Norse names; and the other, an exceptional instance of a Norse
-settlement south of the Watling Street, was in the promontory of
-Pembrokeshire, where a number of towns and villages, of which the best
-known is the watering-place of Tenby, attest by their names their
-Danish origin.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX.
-
-EDWARD AND HIS SONS.
-
-
-With the death of Alfred and the accession of his son EDWARD (called
-in later times “the Elder,” to distinguish him from his descendants,
-“the Martyr” and “the Confessor”) we enter upon a new century. Like
-its predecessor, the tenth century was for Europe generally a time of
-gloom, dismay and depression. The break-up of the empire of Charlemagne
-went on with increasing rapidity, the imperial title itself becoming
-the prize of obscure Italian princes until, about the middle of
-the century, the great Otto I. of Saxony (962–73) did something to
-restore its lustre and to bring back the Italian peninsula within the
-sphere of the imperial unity. In some measure, too, he succeeded in
-rehabilitating the office of the papacy, cruelly discredited by the
-intrigues of two profligate women, Theodora and Marozia, who had placed
-their lovers, their husbands and their young and licentious sons on
-the most venerated throne in Christendom. In France the Carolingian
-line was yielding to the same process of decay which had destroyed
-its Merovingian predecessor; and thirteen years before the end of the
-century Hugh Capet followed the example of Pippin and, thrusting the
-descendants of Charlemagne into the background, became the acknowledged
-king of the diminished territory of France; a position in which he was
-somewhat overshadowed by the greatness of his nominal vassals, the
-Norman dukes descended from Rollo. For France and Germany it is true
-that the invasions of the Northmen had practically ceased, but the
-ravages of the Hungarians during the first half of the century were a
-terror to Europe. In England, however, this age was not nearly so dark
-a time as many of its predecessors. In fact the tenth century saw the
-Anglo-Saxon monarchy attain its highest point of power and prosperity,
-though it also before its close saw it sink to the lowest depths of
-misery and degradation.
-
-The first five years of Edward’s reign[155] were disturbed by the
-rebellion of his cousin Ethelwald, son of Ethelred. According to the
-theories of strict hereditary succession which have since prevailed,
-Ethelwald’s title as representative of an elder son was incontestable,
-and in fact Alfred himself according to these theories was but a
-usurper, yet it need hardly be said that these theories had no place in
-the Anglo-Saxon polity. The son, if a minor, or for any other reason
-unsuitable, had no indefeasible right to wear his dead father’s crown.
-Among the Saxons, as with most of the other Teutonic nations, the two
-principles of inheritance and election were closely, we are inclined to
-say illogically, blended. The new king must be of the royal race; in
-the case of Wessex his line must “go unto Cerdic”; but he must also be
-“chosen and raised to be king” by the _witan_, the wise men or senators
-of the kingdom. This ceremony had been duly complied with at Edward’s
-accession, and therefore he was rightful king though sprung from a
-younger branch of the royal house. Moreover it was a matter of reproach
-against Ethelwald that he had “without the king’s leave and against the
-bishop’s ordinance married or cohabited with a woman who had before
-been hallowed as a nun”. Yet for all this he did not lack adherents,
-some of whom probably held that he was wrongfully excluded from the
-throne.
-
-Ethelwald’s rebellion was announced to the world by his occupation of
-a royal vill at Badbury in Dorsetshire, near his father’s sepulchre
-at Wimborne. Thither rode the new king with a portion of the local
-_fyrd_, but found all the approaches to the place blocked by order
-of the insurgent Etheling. It was rumoured that Ethelwald had said
-to his followers, “Here will I die or here will I lie”: nevertheless
-his heart failed him when it came to the pinch, and he stole away by
-night to Northumbria, vainly pursued by the men of King Edward. The
-Danish army in the northern realm accepted him for their king; the men
-of East Anglia joined them, and after three years all marched through
-Mercia, ravaging as they went, as far as Cricklade in Wiltshire. At
-the approach of Edward with his _fyrd_, the insurgents moved rapidly
-northwards with the spoil which they had gathered. Edward pursued,
-and ravaged all their land between the Cambridgeshire dykes and the
-river Ouse, as far northward as the fens. He then sounded a retreat,
-but the men of Kent, eager for the fight, though seven times ordered
-to withdraw, continued to face the enemy. The battle which ensued was
-evidently a defeat of the Saxons, and cost the lives of two ealdormen
-and many distinguished nobles of Kent. Practically however it was as
-good as a victory, since Ethelwald, “who enticed the Danes to that
-breach of the peace,” lay dead upon the field. Peace seems naturally to
-have followed upon his death, and thus was ended in 905 what might have
-been a dangerous civil war.
-
-The chief work of Edward’s reign was the conquest of the new
-Danish kingdoms of East Anglia, Essex and the remainder of Mercia.
-The settlement which followed the Peace of Wedmore, a wise and
-statesmanlike compromise at the time, had ceased to be applicable to
-the existing state of affairs. At every serious crisis of the West
-Saxon state the Danes beyond Watling Street at once broke the _frith_,
-and their dreaded “army” crossed the Saxon border. It was time that
-this intolerable state of things should be brought to an end, and to
-its termination Edward, himself “a man of war from his youth,” and
-with an army of Saxon veterans at his back, now successfully devoted
-himself. We hear of him in 910 beating the Danes at Tettenhall in
-Staffordshire; in 911, at some place unnamed, winning a great victory
-over the Northumbrian Danes--a victory in which two kings, many _jarls_
-and _holds_ (earls and chief captains) and thousands of soldiers of
-meaner rank were slain. Then, in 912, he “took possession of London
-and Oxford, and all the lands thereto belonging”. This however was
-apparently no fresh conquest, but only a peaceful resumption of
-territories previously appertaining to Mercia. In 913 he fortified
-Hertford, encamped at Maldon in Essex, and received the submission of
-the greater part of that kingdom. In 914 and 915 the chief victories
-seem to have been won not by the king in person, but by the warlike
-energies of the local militia. In the former year they defeated a
-plundering host of Northamptonshire and Leicestershire Danes at
-Leighton Buzzard, and stripped them of their accumulated spoil. In the
-latter, operations after a long interval were begun anew by marauders
-from beyond sea. A _scip-here_, or naval armament, from the coast of
-Brittany, made its unwelcome appearance at the mouth of the Severn
-and captured a Welsh bishop whom Edward ransomed for forty pounds
-(of silver); and then the men of Hereford, of Gloucester and of all
-the nearest _burhs_ came out against them, slew one of the two jarls
-who commanded them and the brother of his colleague, and drove them
-into a “park” or enclosed space, which the men of the _fyrd_ beset
-so closely that the Danes were forced to give hostages for their
-peaceable departure from the country. Apparently, however, they broke
-their promises, stole away by night and made two hostile descents on
-the coast of Somerset, one at Watchet and one at Porlock, both of
-which were successfully repulsed. After betaking themselves to the
-two islands of Flatholme and Steepholme, in the middle of the Bristol
-Channel, and seeing many of their number die of sheer starvation on
-those desolate islands, the remnant departed, first to South Wales and
-then to Ireland, and were heard of no more.
-
-The largest share of the credit for the conquest of Danish Mercia
-must be given to Edward’s manlike sister, Ethelfled, “lady of the
-Mercians”. Daughter herself of a Mercian princess and married to a
-husband (Ethelred) who was probably related to the royal line of Offa,
-she seems after her husband’s death in 911 to have still commanded, to
-an extraordinary degree, the love and loyalty of the Mercian people,
-and to have wielded the warlike resources of the Midland kingdom
-with wonderful energy and success. Each year she struck a heavy blow
-either at the men of the Danelaw, on her right, or at the Welsh of
-Gwynedd--now no longer friendly to the Saxon--on her left. With her,
-as with her brother, the plan of campaign, generally centred round
-some _burh_ which the English ruler built in the hostile territory and
-defended against all comers. After Chester had been repaired, probably
-by Ethelred, the chief fortresses built and defended by his widow were
-Bromesberrow, near Ledbury in Herefordshire, Shrewsbury, Bridgnorth,
-Stafford, Eddisbury in the forest of Delamere, Warwick, Chirk in
-Denbighshire, Warburton and Runcorn in the south of Lancashire. While
-some of these forts were within, most of them were decidedly beyond
-the Watling Street line, and their erection betokened the recovery for
-the English of an important portion of the Danelaw. The Denbighshire
-fort is evidence of the determination of the high-hearted “lady of the
-Mercians” to reduce her Welsh neighbours to obedience; a determination
-which was shown still more plainly when in June 19, 916, she sent the
-Mercian _fyrd_ into South Wales, took Brecon by storm and captured the
-wife of the Welsh king with thirty-four other persons, probably nobles
-of his court.
-
-By this time, however, the conquering career of Ethelfled was drawing
-to a close. Towards the end of July, 917, she “with the aid of God
-obtained the _burh_ which is called Derby, with all pertaining
-thereto”. The victory, however, was not bloodless. “There were slain
-within the gates four of her thegns, of those who were dearest unto
-her.” The next year by the same Divine aid “she gained peaceable
-possession of the _burh_ of Leicester and subdued to herself the
-largest part of the _here_ that owned allegiance thereto. Also the men
-of York promised obedience, and some gave bail, while others confirmed
-with oaths their covenant to be under her rule.” Apparently the Lady
-of Mercia was destined to become also Lady of Northumbria. Not so,
-however. “Very swiftly after this covenant was made, twelve nights
-before midsummer (918) she died at Tamworth, in the eighth year that
-she had held power with right lordship over the Mercians. And her body
-lieth at Gloucester in the east porch of St. Peter’s Church.” From this
-entry it appears probable that Tamworth was the favourite residence of
-the Lady of the Mercians as it had been of her royal predecessors.[156]
-What was the precise nature of the political relation between
-Ethelfled and her royal brother, it is perhaps impossible to discover.
-Clearly the status of Ethelred and his wife was not kingly. He is
-correctly spoken of as _ealdorman_ and as _hlaford_ (lord), while she
-is described as _hlæfdige_ (lady); yet in all her actions, in her
-military movements, her sieges and her treaties, she seems to act as
-independently as Penda or Offa. Probably the term which is sometimes
-used in the Chronicle, _mund-bora_ (protector), most fittingly
-expresses the relation which during Ethelfled’s lifetime Edward held
-toward his sister. She is not absolutely independent, yet she governs
-her subjects, marches her armies about, and promotes her well-beloved
-thegns to honour, as seems meet to her. She is a subject-ally, most
-faithful and most valiant of all allies, and he, should she ever need
-to call upon him for help, will not fail as her “protector”.
-
-Whatever may have been the precise nature of the peculiar relation
-between Wessex and Mercia, it came to an end soon after the death of
-Ethelfled. She left, indeed, a daughter named Elfwyn, who seems for
-about eighteen months to have wielded her mother’s authority, but in
-919, “three weeks before mid-winter,” she was deprived of all power
-over the Mercians and led away into Wessex. There are some slight
-indications in the Chronicle that this obliteration of Mercia as a
-semi-independent state was not altogether acceptable to the people of
-the middle kingdom. However this may have been, Edward, now sending
-forth into the field the united armies of Wessex and Mercia, carried
-forward with irresistible might the process of the unification of the
-kingdom. The _burhs_ which he erected between 913 and 924 rounded
-off the work of Ethelfled. These were Hertford, Bedford, Huntingdon
-and Towcester in the East Midlands, Maldon and Colchester in Essex,
-Stamford in Lincolnshire, Nottingham and Bakewell in the country of the
-Peak, Thelwall in Cheshire, and Manchester, the last being expressly
-stated to have been “in Northumbria”. The work of subduing and
-over-aweing the Welsh was not forgotten. In 921 Edward built a _burh_
-at Wigmore in Herefordshire, in sight of the long range of Radnor
-Forest, and another at the mouth of the Cleddau in Pembrokeshire, a
-proof that his arms had penetrated as far as to Milford Haven.
-
-Round all these newly built _burhs_ the tide of battle fiercely ebbed
-and flowed ere the people whom they were meant to hold down patiently
-submitted to their domination. Thus we hear of an unsuccessful assault
-by “the army” of East Anglia and Mercia on the _burh_ at Wigmore;
-of “the army” breaking the _frith_ and marching against Towcester.
-“And they fought against it all day and thought to carry it by storm,
-but the folk that were therein defended it till help came, whereupon
-they departed ravaging as they went.” In consequence of this attack,
-unsuccessful as it was, Edward surrounded Towcester with a stone wall
-which it had not previously possessed. The enemy vainly endeavoured
-to imitate Edward’s castle-building policy. The Danes of Huntingdon
-and East Anglia built a great fort at Tempsford on the river Ouse (a
-little south of St. Neots), “and thought that they should therefrom
-with battle and un-peace win back to themselves more of this land”. But
-they were disappointed, for the people from the nearest _burhs_ having
-gathered themselves together, fought against Tempsford and overthrew
-it, slaying the Danish king and two of his jarls, and all who were
-found fighting therein.
-
-The year which is marked in the chief manuscript of the Chronicle as
-921 but which probably was in truth 918, saw the full tide of English
-successes, and in consequence we now hear of the complete submission
-of East Anglia and Essex to the rule of Edward. “To him submitted much
-folk both of the East Angles and the East Saxons, who had been erewhile
-under the Danish power, and all the ‘army’ in East Anglia swore to
-oneness with him, that they would all will that which he willed, and be
-at peace with those with whom he was at peace, whether by sea or land.
-And the _here_ that belonged to Cambridge chose him specially for lord
-and protector (_mund-bora_) and confirmed this by oaths as he commanded
-them.” In 919, the year after the death of Ethelfled, three kings of
-North Wales and all the North Welsh kin sought Edward to be their lord.
-His conquest of Nottingham followed, and here we observe with interest
-that he garrisoned the newly captured fort with Danes as well as with
-Englishmen; also that all the folk that were in Mercia submitted to his
-rule, whether they were Danes or Englishmen.
-
-Thus then we now have Edward not wielding the shadowy power of a
-Bretwalda, but actual king, personally ruling over all the lands south
-of the Humber, acknowledged as over-lord by North Wales, probably
-also by Northumbria. Did his overlordship extend yet farther north?
-Did Scotland recognise him as supreme king? That question seems to be
-answered decisively in the affirmative by the celebrated entry in the
-Chronicle for the year 924 which probably should be corrected to 921.
-After describing Edward’s operations in the midlands, his building a
-bridge over the Trent between the two _burhs_ of Nottingham, his going
-from thence into the Peak country and ordering a _burh_ to be built as
-near as possible to Bakewell, the chronicler thus proceeds: “Him chose
-as father and lord the Scottish king and all the Scottish people; and
-Raegnald, Eadulf’s son [king of Northumbria], and all the dwellers in
-Northumbria whether they were Englishmen or Danes or Northmen or any
-others, and eke the king of the Welsh of Strathclyde and all his people
-[did the like]”. The facts here related, as far as they concern the men
-of Strathclyde and Northumbria, are not seriously disputed, though one
-may note in passing the distinction now first met with between “Danes”
-and “Northmen” or Norwegians. But how as to Edward’s over-lordship
-of Scotland, which seems to be vouched for by the beginning of the
-sentence, and which was made, four centuries later by his namesake,
-Edward Plantagenet, the basis of a claim to exercise the rights of lord
-paramount? The answer to that question has involved historians on both
-sides of the Border in fierce debate. It is, of course, impossible here
-to do more than sketch the bare outline of the controversy, but so much
-as this must be attempted.
-
-The champions of the English claim to supremacy over Scotland[157]
-maintain that “in 921 Edward received--what no West Saxon king had
-ever before received--the submission of the Scots and the Strathclyde
-Welsh.... In the Latin phrase they _commended_ themselves to him; they
-promised him fidelity and put themselves under his protection.” “There
-was nothing strange or degrading in this relation; it was the relation
-in which in theory all other princes stood to the Emperor.”[158] “From
-this time to the fourteenth century the vassalage of Scotland was an
-essential part of the public law of the isle of Britain. No doubt
-many attempts were made to cast off the dependent relation which had
-been voluntarily incurred; but when a king of the English had once
-been chosen ‘to father and to lord,’ his successors never willingly
-gave up the position which had thus been bestowed upon them.”[159]
-On the other side, Scottish historians[160] naturally point to the
-fact that it is a Saxon chronicler who makes the statement from which
-such mighty consequences are deduced. The law does not allow a suitor
-to make evidence for himself; but here is an alleged “commendation”
-of which we have no hint in the records of the king and the nation
-by whom it is alleged to have been made; only in the chronicles of
-the pretended receiver. They further throw doubt on the genuineness
-of the passage and suggest that it may be a late interpolation. One
-argument against its genuineness is that it seems to represent the
-“commendation” as taking place in the heart of Derbyshire, whereas such
-a transaction would naturally have been performed on the boundary of
-the two kingdoms. Another and more serious objection is that Raegnald
-of Northumbria is here named as taking part in the “commendation”
-in the year 924, whereas “in the Irish annals, at this period most
-accurate and trustworthy authorities for all that relates to the family
-of Raegnald,”[161] the death of this chieftain is assigned to a date
-three years earlier, 921.
-
-The question at issue, now merely academic but once of vital
-importance to the two countries, has been much complicated by
-subsequent transactions, alleged cessions of Lothian and Strathclyde
-on terms of feudal dependence, homage rendered by Scottish kings for
-possessions in England and so forth. The allegation of fact made by
-the English chronicler seems entirely worthy of credit. Doubtless for
-polemical purposes such a statement if made by a Scottish authority
-would have been more valuable; but the writer of the Chronicle was a
-contemporary; his work though not very luminous and often careless of
-strict chronological accuracy, certainly impresses one’s mind with
-a general feeling of its honesty and good faith; there is no trace
-of interpolation in the manuscripts (which are all long antecedent
-to the reign of Edward I.); nor is there any very obvious reason why
-a monastic scribe writing at Winchester or Canterbury should have
-invented the transactions here detailed if they never happened. When
-the entry is carefully examined and compared with similar passages in
-the same Chronicle, it is seen that the writer is not committed to
-the statement that the interview took place at Bakewell. Nor will the
-objection drawn from the date of Raegnald’s death appear formidable
-to any one who knows how loose is the chronology of the Chronicle
-everywhere, but especially in this part of it, in which, for reasons
-quite unconnected with this controversy, its latest editor considers
-that all the events are post-dated by three years.
-
-If then we accept as probably true the statement that “the Scottish
-king [Constantine II.] and all the Scottish people chose Edward as
-father and as lord,” what does that statement imply? It is perhaps a
-mistake to introduce the word “commendation,” though that word may
-pretty nearly describe the nature of the transaction. But the word
-itself, though known to the Franks and occurring in the Bavarian
-law-book, does not seem to have been ever used by our Anglo-Saxon
-ancestors. The Teutonic word _mund-byrd_ (protection), which most
-nearly corresponds to it, is not used of the transactions of 921,
-though it is used shortly before concerning the men of Huntingdon
-who “bowed to King Edward and sought his _frith_ (peace) and his
-_mund-byrd_”. In such a difficult and obscure discussion, it is surely
-better to keep quite close to the original words of the historian,
-avoiding all mention of “commendation” and far more of “vassalage,”
-which last term, as all agree, does not correctly represent any
-relation established in Britain early in the tenth century. Let us
-repeat simply that the King of Scots “chose Edward as father and as
-lord”.
-
-What then was the meaning of that choice? Did it make “the vassalage of
-Scotland an essential part of the public law of the isle of Britain”?
-The word “vassalage” no one would insist upon; but may we not also
-demur to the expression “the public law of the isle of Britain” at this
-period of its history? Where is there a trace in that age of such a
-refined juristic conception? Is not everything in the relation between
-the races and kingdoms of Britain vague, ill-defined, anarchic? The
-Danes make a _frith_ and break it; the West Saxons establish some kind
-of supremacy over the Mercians; Edward’s personal rule is advanced as
-far as the Humber; he becomes thereby undoubtedly the most powerful
-man in Britain; Scots, Northumbrians and Britons of Strathclyde take
-note of the fact and desire to become allies--we may safely say
-subject-allies--of so mighty a prince, whom they accordingly take
-“as father and as lord”. That is all that has yet happened. There
-was something here which on the one hand, as the current of the age
-swept on towards feudalism, might have been developed into lordship
-and vassalage, or, on the other, might have utterly disappeared. In
-the next reign the very districts which have thus acknowledged the
-superiority of Edward are found fighting against his son. Under such a
-weak king as Ethelred the germ involved in the transaction of 921 must
-have disappeared altogether. No one can suppose that the Redeless King,
-who could not defend his own throne against the attacks of the Danes,
-was in any sense “father and lord” of Scotland. Thus the question,
-which is academic to us now, was or should have been equally academic
-in the thirteenth century. Whatever other grounds Edward I. might have
-for claiming high-lordship over Scotland, the dead and buried rights or
-duties or courtesies of 921 ought not to have been imported into the
-controversy.
-
-Shortly after the events last described, at the end of 924 or the
-beginning of 925, King Edward died at Farndon[162] in Mercia. Only
-sixteen days after his death his son Elfweard died also, and father and
-son were both buried in the New Minster at Winchester. Edward, though
-one of the noblest of his race, was a man much less richly endowed
-with intellectual gifts than his father. We cease to hear of works
-undertaken for the instruction of his subjects, and the great Chronicle
-begins to languish in his reign. His character also seems to lack some
-of the beauty of his father’s; one can hardly imagine Alfred dealing
-with Ethelwald or with Elfwyn exactly in the same manner as his son.
-But he was essentially a soldier, probably a strict disciplinarian,
-and he, with the help of that Amazon, his sister, carried strongly
-and steadily forward the great work which their father had begun, the
-recovery of England for the English.
-
- * * * * *
-
-ATHELSTAN, who now succeeded to the throne, and who reigned, probably,
-from 924 to 940, was much the eldest of the remaining sons of Edward.
-The others were but children, while he was thirty years of age at his
-father’s death. Although he cannot have been more than six years old
-when Alfred died, we are told that his comely face and winning ways so
-endeared him to his grandfather that the latter made him “a premature
-soldier,” robing him in a scarlet mantle and girding him with a little
-sword, golden-scabbarded, and hung round his neck by a jewelled
-baldric. Moreover, Alfred is said to have prayed that the royal child
-might one day have a prosperous reign. It is not very easy to reconcile
-these stories with the fact, alleged by William of Malmesbury, that the
-stain of illegitimacy rested on his birth. The same authority tells
-us that he was the son of Egwinna, a noble lady, and then in another
-place describes her as the daughter of a shepherd, marked out by a
-dream for high destiny, and introduced to Edward by his old nurse, at
-whose cottage he was visiting. It is difficult entirely to reject the
-statement that there was something irregular about Athelstan’s birth
-which caused difficulties about his accession even in that age, not
-fastidious about the strict principles of legitimacy. There is also
-something slightly suspicious about the emphasis which the chroniclers
-lay on the premature death of his half-brother, Elfweard, as if, had
-that event not occurred, he would have been at least a partner in the
-throne, if not its sole occupant. We need not, perhaps, greatly concern
-ourselves with William of Malmesbury’s story of a certain Alfred, the
-rival of Athelstan, who opposed his elevation to the throne on the
-ground of his illegitimacy, went to Rome to state his case before the
-Pope and died in the act of taking an oath, presumably a false oath,
-in its support. All this, though it raises a suspicion that for some
-reason or other the accession of Athelstan was not wholly unopposed,
-is too doubtful and legendary to be made the ground-work of serious
-history. We can only say that Athelstan’s day was a glorious one,
-if there were some clouds which hung round its sunrise. It should,
-perhaps, also be mentioned that Athelstan when a boy had been entrusted
-by his grandfather to the care of Ethelred and Ethelfled, and seems
-before his accession to the West Saxon throne to have been specially
-connected with Mercia.
-
-The coronation of Athelstan took place at Kingston-on-Thames, which
-for the rest of this century was the chief crowning place of English
-kings. In the new king, whatever may have been the clouds overhanging
-his birth, or the difficulties attending his accession, we have a more
-splendid type of English royalty than has yet been displayed even by
-the great kings of Northumbria. By his family alliances, by the renown
-which he inherited from his father, and by that which he achieved
-for himself as the successful champion of his people, he obtained a
-commanding position among the rulers of western Europe, and he early
-assumed and not doubtfully vindicated for himself the proud title of
-“lord of the whole of Britain”.
-
-By the marriages of his half-sisters, the daughters of Edward,
-Athelstan was brought into close connexion with the most powerful
-rulers of France and Germany. Not powerful it is true, though highly
-placed, was his brother-in-law, the unfortunate Charles the Simple,
-King of France (893–929), who married Edgiva, was dethroned and died in
-a dungeon; but his son, Louis IV. (“_d’outre mer_”), after having been
-smuggled out of Laon in a truss of straw, was brought to England by his
-devoted mother; was reared at the court of Athelstan; recalled to his
-native country and played the part of the king of France not altogether
-unsuccessfully for eighteen years (936–54). A too powerful subject of
-these Carolingian kings, one whose greatness overshadowed their throne
-and whose son eventually succeeded in winning it for himself, was Hugh
-the Great, Duke of France. This nobleman sought another of Athelstan’s
-sisters in marriage, even the Lady Eadhilda, in whom as a chronicler
-says “all the elements of beauty which other women have in part,
-naturally flowed together in one”. The messenger who came to urge this
-suit, and who was himself Athelstan’s first cousin,[163] brought with
-him gorgeous gifts, precious relics, consecrated swords, lances and
-banners. Among the presents may be specially noted an onyx vase (surely
-of antique workmanship) so skilfully carved that on it you seemed to
-see the corn waving, the vines putting forth their shoots, the figures
-of men moving, and swift horses prancing in their golden trappings. The
-pleadings of the ambassador or the splendour of the gifts prevailed.
-The lovely Eadhilda became the wife of Hugh the Great, though not for
-her but for a successor was reserved the honour of being the mother of
-the new line of kings of France. When German Otto, the future Roman
-emperor, wished to wed one of the same royal sisterhood, he seems
-not to have proffered so humble a request, but in lordly fashion to
-have signified his pleasure that a princess should be sent unto him.
-Thereupon, Athelstan sent two of his sisters, Edgitha and Elfgiva,
-that Otto might choose between them. He chose Edgitha, whose marriage
-seems to have been a happy one, and who was much loved by the German
-people. Elfgiva, who remained on the continent, had to be satisfied
-with the humbler position of wife of a sub-Alpine prince.
-
-A striking feature of Athelstan’s policy was his friendship for the
-Scandinavian powers. He probably saw that notwithstanding all that
-England had suffered at the hands of the Danes, the Northmen were
-tending towards the condition of an organised state, and that it would
-be wise for “the lord of all Britain” to cultivate their friendship.
-His reign coincided with the last years of the long reign of Harold
-the Fair-haired, the first king of Norway, and the legend of the
-dealings of the two kings with one another, though probably untrue in
-the letter, may well illustrate the relations between the two kings as
-remembered by the people.
-
-“One day a messenger of Athelstan appeared at the court of Haarfager
-(the Fair-haired one) bearing a sword whose hilt was enwrought with
-gold and silver and set with most precious gems. The messenger said:
-‘Here is a sword which King Athelstan sendeth thee, bidding thee take
-it withal’. Harold grasped the sword, and the envoy completed his
-message thus: ‘Now hast thou taken the sword according to our king’s
-bidding. Henceforth thou must needs be his thegn.’ Harold dissembled
-his vexation and next year sent a ship to England under the command
-of his favourite champion, Hawk High-breech, into whose keeping he
-gave the little Hakon, the son of his old age by his bondwoman, Thora.
-Norseman Hawk was hospitably entertained by the king and bidden to
-a right worthy feast in the city of London. After due greetings
-interchanged, the old captain took the boy and set him on Athelstan’s
-knee. ‘Why dost thou do that?’ said the king. ‘Because King Harold thus
-ordereth thee to foster the child of his bondwoman,’ was the reply.
-The king was angry and began to feel for his sword, but the messenger
-said: ‘Thou hast set him on thy knee, and now thou mayest murder him
-if thou wilt, but not so wilt thou make an end of the sons of King
-Harold’.”[164] These sons were in truth an almost countless throng,
-and the wars and tumults of them, their sons and grandsons, kept
-Norway in an uproar for a century. The little lad, however, who sat on
-Athelstan’s knee at the great London banquet was actually reared at the
-English court and grew up to be King of Norway, being known as Hakon
-the Good, and endeavouring with no great success to convert his people
-to Christianity.
-
-The determination of Athelstan to be “lord of all Britain” naturally
-urged him northwards, since all the region south of the Humber was, or
-seemed to be, securely resting under the dominion of Wessex. Into the
-extremely difficult and obscure history of the Kings of Northumbria
-after the death of Guthred, the friend of the monks of St. Cuthbert,
-it is not necessary here to enter. A variety of Sihtrics, Anlafs and
-Godfreys flit across the scene, and the confusion is increased by the
-fact that there are generally two contemporaneous princes bearing
-the same name. It may be remarked in passing, however, that this is
-the period of Danish pre-eminence in Ireland (whose capital, Dublin,
-is a memorial of Danish rule), and that the fortunes of the two sets
-of invaders in Northumbria and in Ireland were almost inextricably
-intertwined. Also that we have traces of an Anglian dynasty still
-existing at Bamburgh, though probably owning the overlordship of Danish
-kings.
-
-Almost immediately after his father’s death, Athelstan had an
-interview at the Mercian capital, Tamworth, with Sihtric the Dane,
-King of the Northumbrians. Sihtric received Athelstan’s sister (his
-only sister of the full blood) in marriage, and probably agreed, as
-part of the compact, to embrace Christianity. Next year, however, he
-died, after having, according to some of the chroniclers, repudiated
-both his new wife and his new religion. Hereupon Athelstan marched
-northward (probably in 926), expelled Sihtric’s successor, Guthfred,
-and his son, Anlaf, from the country, and “assumed the kingdom of the
-Northumbrians,” thus for a time--it was only a short time--governing
-directly and not as overlord the whole of what is now England except
-Strathclyde.[165] The Chronicle adds that he subjugated all the kings
-who were in this island--Howel, King of the West Welsh (Cornishmen);
-Constantine, King of Scots; Owen, King of Gwent (North Wales); and
-Ealdred, son of Eardulf of Bamburgh. One of the conditions of the peace
-which was ratified (probably at Emmet in Holderness) on July 12, 926,
-was that all idolatry should be strictly forbidden. Possibly we have
-here a combination of the Christian powers in Britain; Saxon, Anglian
-and Celtic against the heathen Danes.
-
-If such a combination were formed, it did not long endure, for eight
-years later, in 934, we find Athelstan again moving northward to fight
-against the kings of Scotland and Strathclyde. The monk of Durham who
-records this fact takes care to mention that on his journey Athelstan
-presented the church of St. Cuthbert at Chester-le-Street with many
-costly ornaments and no fewer than twelve _vills_, and that he charged
-his brother, Edmund, in the event of his falling in battle, to bring
-his body back to St. Cuthbert’s minster and bury it there. “Having
-defeated the two kings both by sea and land, he subdued Scotland
-to himself,” says the same chronicler. This was certainly a most
-precarious subjugation if it ever took place, for after the lapse of
-three years, in 937, Athelstan had to face the mightiest combination
-of his foes that any English king had yet had to encounter; and the
-very soul and centre of that combination was the hoary Scottish king,
-Constantine, who had chosen Edward “to father and to lord,” and whom in
-this entry he is represented as having utterly subdued.
-
-The chief factors in this combination were besides Constantine, his
-son-in-law, Anlaf (son of the Northumbrian Sihtric), king of the Danes
-settled in Ireland; another Anlaf, cousin of the former, and also
-king of the Irish Danes; and Eugenius, king of Strathclyde. Such a
-formidable combination between two pagan and two Christian kings is in
-itself a proof of the fear inspired by the growing power of Athelstan.
-King Anlaf is said[166] to have owned 615 ships with which he sailed to
-join his allies of Scotland and Cumberland.[167]
-
-The great battle of Brunanburh, in which Athelstan defeated the
-confederate army, has been celebrated in a war-song which is in
-some respects the most interesting relic that has been preserved of
-Anglo-Saxon literature. Unfortunately a tantalising obscurity rests
-upon the site of the battle. Numerous identifications have been
-suggested, but without discussing or criticising these it may be
-allowable here to mention one, of which it may at least be said that it
-has not been proved to be impossible. On the coast of Dumfriesshire in
-Scotland rises a range of mountains which look across the sandy Solway
-to the mountains in Cumberland, and according to popular tradition have
-strange weather-sympathy with their Cumbrian brethren. Here is the high
-hill of Criffel, which whenever Skiddaw is wrapped in cloud, wears his
-cloud-cap likewise, and here is the long, flat-topped, altar-shaped
-hill of Burnswark which overlooks Annandale and once dominated the
-old Roman road, the northern continuation of the Watling Street. This
-road led in the second century from the wall of Hadrian to the wall of
-Antoninus, from Carlisle to the neighbourhood of Glasgow. The multitude
-of Roman camps which skirt this hill or are to be found in its near
-vicinity, show that it was once a most important military position,
-and such in some measure it may well have continued to be far on into
-Anglo-Saxon times; the Roman roads still, after the lapse of so many
-centuries, being the best, often the only, roads available for the
-march of armies.
-
-One of these Roman camps bears, and apparently has always borne since
-the Anglian occupation, the name of Birrens, which is evidently
-connected with the name Birrenswork or Burnswark given to the
-altar-shaped hill above it. Now the scene of the great battle was
-evidently close to some great hill-fortress. This is testified by the
-varying forms of the name, which is called by Ethelweard _Brunandune_,
-by Florence of Worcester _Brunanburgh_, by Symeon of Durham _Weondune_
-or _Etbrunnanwerc_ or _Brunanbyrig_, and by Geoffrey Gaimar (a twelfth
-century writer, but one who often gives us curious little scraps of
-valuable information) _Bruneswerce_ or _Burneweste_. It is evident
-that in these last forms the name approaches very near to the local
-form, Burnswark, which has finally prevailed. It seems probable that
-Athelstan, marching rapidly northward to meet the confederate hostile
-armies, met them in the great north-western road in Annandale, near
-the point where Anlaf Sihtricson had just landed his troops; that the
-battle raged, as the ballad tells us, _ymbe Brunnanburh_, all round
-the camp-scarred hill of Burnswark, and that when Anlaf fled “over the
-yellow sea” (_on fealene flod_) it was the sand-laden waters of the
-shallow Solway Firth that witnessed his ignominious flight.
-
-The ballad which is here inserted in the Chronicle, lightening up its
-dull pages with a gleam of Homeric brilliance, is familiar to every
-English student,[168] and it will therefore not be necessary to do more
-than to gather up the information--not very copious or minute--which
-is vouchsafed to us by the minstrel in his rushing career of song. The
-two chief English heroes were King Athelstan himself, “liberal bestower
-of bracelets,” and his half-brother Edmund Atheling, a youth about
-seventeen years old. Under their guidance the men of Wessex and Mercia
-broke down the stubborn shield-wall of the confederate army. The battle
-began at sunrise and lasted as long as the daylight.
-
- Five young kings put asleep by the sword-stroke,
- Seven strong earls of the army of Anlaf
- Fell on the war-field, numberless numbers
- Shipmen and Scotsmen.
-
-The Danish leader was hard pressed by the victorious army; with few
-followers he escaped to his warship and saved his life by a scurrying
-voyage “over the fallow flood”. Especially does the minstrel triumph
-over the humiliation of the old Scottish king, Constantine, the same
-who thirteen years before had chosen Athelstan’s sire “to father and to
-lord”.
-
- Also the crafty one, Constantinus,
- Crept to his North again, hoar-headed hero.
- Slender reason had _he_ to be glad of
- The clash of the war-glaive--
- Traitor and trickster and spurner of treaties,--
- He nor had Anlaf
- With armies so broken a reason for bragging
- That they had the better in perils of battle
- On places of slaughter,--
- The struggle of standards, the rush of the javelins,
- The crash of the chargers, the wielding of weapons,
- The play that they played with the children of Edward.
-
- * * * * *
-
- Never had huger slaughter of heroes
- Slain by the sword-edge, such as old writers
- Have writ of in histories,
- Happed in this isle, since up from the East hither
- Saxon and Angle from over the broad billow
- Broke into Britain with haughty war-workers who
- Harried the Welshman, when Earls that were lured by the
- Hunger of glory gat hold of the land.
-
-The Anglo-Saxon Tyrtaeus in this shrill song of triumph naturally makes
-no mention of the losses on his own side, but we learn from another
-source[169] that two of Athelstan’s cousins, Elwin and Ethelwin,
-fell “in the war against Anlaf,” which probably means at Brunanburh.
-However, one-sided as all our information is about the great battle,
-it cannot be doubted that it was a real and important victory for the
-English.
-
-The campaigns in Northumbria were apparently the most memorable events
-in the reign of Athelstan, but we hear also of his forcing the king of
-Wales to pay him tribute, of his visiting Cornwall, probably in hostile
-guise, of his expelling the “West Welsh” from Exeter and turning it
-into a purely Saxon city. He thus fixed the Tamar as the limit against
-the old British population in the south of England, as the Wye had been
-fixed further north.[170] It is clear that he came somewhat nearer than
-any of his predecessors to the position which would have been described
-in feudal times as lord paramount over the whole island. It is not only
-that he is generally described in the charters, which he granted with
-lavish hand to the monasteries, as _rex totius Britanniæ_, sometimes
-substituting for Britannia the half-mythical word Albion, which he must
-have learned from his ecclesiastical friends. Nor is it only that he
-first uses of himself the Greek word _Basileus_, which was regarded
-with awe throughout Western Europe as expressing the mysterious majesty
-of the Cæsars at Constantinople. These titles might be regarded as only
-the ornaments of style affected by the clerks of this period, or as the
-pompous assumptions of regal vanity; but when we find the meetings of
-the _witan_ attended, and Athelstan’s charters signed, by Welsh kings
-(Howel, Juthwal and Morcant) who are styled _sub-reguli_; when we
-find, even at a meeting of the _witan_ held as far south as Buckingham
-(in 934), the attesting signature of “_Ego Constantinus subregulus_,”
-and when we know that this is Constantine II., King of Scots (900–43),
-we feel that there was something real in Athelstan’s claim to be lord
-of all Britain; and the story of Constantine’s commendation of himself
-to Edward the Elder becomes decidedly more probable, even though “that
-old deceiver” did afterwards break his _frith_ and stand in arms
-against his patron on the field of Brunanburh.
-
-Athelstan does not seem to have ever married, and we may perhaps
-conjecture that he purposely abstained from leaving issue who might
-contest the claims of the legitimate descendants of his father. With
-one doubtful exception his relations with all his half-brothers and
-sisters seem to have been not only friendly but affectionate. That
-exception relates to his half-brother Edwin, as to whom the Chronicle
-for the year 933 simply asserts: “Now the Etheling Edwin was drowned in
-the sea”. Symeon of Durham, however, or rather the Cuthbertine annalist
-from whom he quotes,[171] has this ugly entry under the same date:
-“King Athelstan ordered his brother Edwin to be drowned in the sea”.
-This annal grew by the time of William of Malmesbury into a long and
-fanciful narrative, which William himself only half believed, and which
-connected the death of Edwin with some opposition to Athelstan at the
-time of his accession to the throne, on the ground of his illegitimacy.
-This evidently legendary story need not weigh greatly with us, and
-is at least balanced by the statement of Henry of Huntingdon, that
-Athelstan “was moved to tears by the news of the drowning of his
-brother, a youth of great vigour and of fine disposition”.[172]
-
-The person and character of Athelstan are painted in bright colours
-by later historians; his manly stature, his yellow hair interwoven
-with threads of gold, his free and easy manner of joking with laymen,
-while meek and reverent towards ecclesiastics, his majestic deportment
-towards the nobles of his realm, and his condescension to the poor;
-qualities all of which so endeared him to his subjects that we should
-probably not err in calling him the most popular of all the West Saxon
-kings. He was a most generous giver to the Church, and his martial
-piety, as displayed in the curious document[173] called the Prayer of
-Athelstan, breathes a spirit not unworthy of a David or a Joshua. He
-died in the prime and vigour of his life, in the forty-seventh year of
-his age, October 27, 940, three years after the battle of Brunanburh,
-and he was succeeded by his half-brother Edmund. He was buried in the
-abbey of Malmesbury, where, by his order, the bodies of his two young
-cousins who fell at Brunanburh had already been laid.
-
-Athelstan was succeeded by EDMUND, who reigned from 940 to 946, and he
-by Edred, who reigned from 946 to 955. The reigns of these two young
-kings, sons of Edward the Elder, will be best considered together, as
-they make but one act in the drama, the struggle with Danish revolts
-in the northern kingdoms. The personal history of the two brothers,
-as far as we know it, is soon told. Edmund, “the dear deed-doer” of
-Anglo-Saxon minstrelsy, who had already fought well at Brunanburh, was
-eighteen years old when he came to the throne. He was twice married:
-his first wife, Elgiva, who after her death was recognised as a saint,
-bore him two sons, Edwy and Edgar, both of whom reigned after him. His
-second marriage was childless. Edmund was evidently a man of much force
-of character, and if his policy in some respects differed from that of
-his predecessor--the _Heimskringla_, contrasting him with Athelstan,
-says that “he could not away with Northmen”--still, had his reign been
-prolonged for the thirty or forty years which might reasonably have
-been expected, he might have rivalled the glories of Edward or of
-Athelstan. In fact, however, it was prematurely cut short by a felon
-stroke, the story of which gives us a strange picture of life in the
-West Saxon court. It was the feast of St. Augustine, May 26, 946; the
-king and his thegns were banqueting at the royal vill at Pucklechurch
-in Gloucestershire. A robber named Liofa, who six years before had
-been banished for his crimes, entered the hall, and striding up to an
-ealdorman to whom the king had just sent a dish from the royal table,
-sat himself down beside him. The guests, deeply drinking, did not
-notice the intrusion, but the king’s dish-thegn bade him begone and
-was at once assaulted by the robber. Enraged at the man’s insolence
-the king leaped up from his seat, grasped Liofa by the hair and hurled
-him to the ground. Hereupon the robber unsheathed a dagger and drove
-it with all his force into the king’s heart. The royal servants rushed
-upon him, and after receiving many wounds, succeeded in tearing him
-limb from limb. But the robber had dealt a mortal stroke. The valiant
-deed-doer, Edmund, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, was laid in
-the tomb at Glastonbury, near the flowering thorn of St. Joseph of
-Arimathea, and Edred, his brother, reigned in his stead.
-
-EDRED, who was probably about twenty-three when he was solemnly
-crowned at Kingston-on-Thames, suffered from chronic dyspepsia and
-died when but little over thirty. Thus his reign, like that of his
-great ancestor, Alfred, was one long battle with disease, but he seems
-to have followed that ancestor’s example and not to have neglected
-his kingly duties for all his sufferings. He came much under the
-influence of the rising churchman Dunstan, and was also in some
-measure guided by the counsels of his mother, the widowed Edgiva.
-Faint as are the colours of Edred’s portrait, he seems to have been
-not the least deserving of the princes of his line. The attitude of
-these two brothers towards the other rulers of Britain is somewhat
-less lordly than that of Athelstan. The proud claim to be “King of
-all Britain” disappears almost entirely from their charters, and is
-generally replaced by the more modest title “King of the English,”
-to which, however, is often added “governor and ruler of the other
-nations round about”. Thus the claim to predominance in Britain
-is not wholly dropped, but it is put in a somewhat less offensive
-form than by the victor of Brunanburh. The Greek word “Basileus,”
-doubtless attractive by reason of its very strangeness, still sometimes
-makes its appearance; but Edmund’s favourite epithet for himself is
-“Industrious,” probably a translation of the Saxon “_daed-fruma_”
-(deed-doer), by which the minstrels of the people sang his praises. In
-a world which had seen, not long before, the degenerate race of the
-_fainéant_ kings of France, deed-doer was an epithet full of meaning.
-
-Let us pass to the history of Danish revolts and their suppression.
-From the short and often obscure statements of the chroniclers, it is
-hard to discover what amount of permanent success resulted from the
-victories of even the most prosperous kings. It certainly seemed as
-if Athelstan had made himself undisputed King of Mercia and overlord
-of Northumbria, yet, if we may trust Symeon of Durham, Edmund at the
-very outset of his reign had once more to accept the Watling Street
-as the boundary between himself and a Danish ruler, that ruler being
-apparently Anlaf Sihtricson who had been defeated at Brunanburh, but
-who now reappeared in Northumbria and fixed his capital at York. In the
-next year (942) a fragment of ballad assigns to “the dear deed-doer”
-the deliverance of the Five Boroughs (Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham,
-Stamford and Derby) from Danish thraldom. But these very five boroughs,
-though undoubtedly containing a large Danish population, were expressly
-or by implication included in the conquests of Edward and Ethelfled.
-Evidently much is left unwritten of this portion of English history.
-It seems probable that at the coming of Anlaf there had been a general
-rising of the Danelaw, and that the suppression of this revolt, being
-more complete than the earlier conquest, took a stronger hold on the
-popular imagination. Hence it was that the poet chronicler of Edmund’s
-reign attributes to him, not to his predecessors, the deliverance of
-the native population:--
-
- Under the Northmen need-constrained
- In heathen bondage long time chained.
-
-The result of Edmund’s Mercian campaign seems to have been a treaty of
-peace, negotiated by the two archbishops Oda and Wulfstan on the lines
-of the peace between Alfred and Guthrum. Anlaf and his brother-king
-Raegnald were baptised, Edmund acting as their sponsor; and the Watling
-Street was again made the boundary between Englishman and Dane. The
-peace thus concluded lasted but a year. In 943 Anlaf and his Danes
-were again in Mercia, and--ominous conjunction--Wulfstan, Archbishop
-of York, was abetting the invaders. They stormed Tamworth, they took
-much spoil and great was the slaughter, but on Edmund’s approach
-they retired to Leicester where they were besieged by the king.
-Notwithstanding the escape of Anlaf and the rebel archbishop, Edmund
-was victorious, and next year (944) he invaded Northumbria and drove
-out his two rebellious god-sons, who appear no more upon the scene.
-
-In the following year, 945, Edmund ravaged all “Cumbraland,” a
-region which probably included all that was left of the old kingdom
-of Strathclyde south of the Solway, the northern portion having
-been gradually appropriated by the Scottish kings. We now come to
-another of the great academic battlefields between English and
-Scottish historians. We are told by the chronicler that having
-ravaged Cumberland, “he let it all to Malcolm, King of Scotland, on
-condition that he should be his fellow-worker both on sea and land”.
-What was the relation thus established between Edmund and Malcolm I.
-who had succeeded “the hoary old deceiver” Constantine? Of course
-a feudal lawyer of the twelfth century pondering these words would
-discover in them a regular case of the relation of lord and vassal.
-But they do not in themselves seem to imply more than friendship and
-alliance, and it is admitted that the fully developed feudal theory
-was not yet known in England. As with the “commendation” of 921, we
-may probably conclude that the transaction would mean anything or
-nothing according to the after course of events, and the shifting of
-the centre of gravity between the two contracting parties. In itself
-this “cession of Cumberland” was probably a politic measure, as it
-enlisted the sympathies of the Scottish “fellow-worker” on the English
-side and interposed a barrier between the vikings of Dublin and their
-Northumbrian fellow-countrymen.
-
-On the assassination of Edmund in 946, Edred seems to have taken up the
-endless task and laboured at it successfully. “He took to the kingdom
-and soon subdued all Northumbria to his power, and the Scots swore to
-him oaths that they would do all his will.” Wulfstan, the turbulent or
-patriotic archbishop of York, plays a prominent and singular part in
-Northumbrian politics during the reign of Edred; and princes of the
-royal houses of Norway and Denmark also bear a hand in the perplexing
-game. One such was Eric Blood-axe, son of fair-haired Harold of Norway,
-who when driven forth from his kingdom by Hakon the Good, Athelstan’s
-foster-son, sailed for the Orkneys, ravaged Scotland and the northern
-parts of England, but on receiving a message from Athelstan, who
-reminded him of the old friendship between himself and his father,
-made peace, consented to be baptised along with his wife and children,
-and became for a time the peaceful under-king of Northumbria. This
-settlement had endured during the life of Athelstan, but on Edmund’s
-accession, Eric, knowing that he was not beloved of the new king, and
-hearing a rumour that he would set another king over Northumberland,
-renounced his allegiance to Winchester, resumed his viking life,
-gathered together a new “_scip-here_,” chiefly from among the Irish
-Danes, harried Wales and all the southern coasts of England, but ere
-long fell in battle against the English.
-
-Another Eric, the son of another Harold, then appeared upon the
-scene. This was the son of Harold Blue-Tooth, King of Denmark. In
-948 the _witan_ of Northumbria, headed by Archbishop Wulfstan, chose
-this Danish prince for their king, though but a year before they
-had solemnly plighted faith to Edred. Enraged hereat the Saxon king
-marched northwards and “harried over all Northumberland”. So ruthless
-or so careless was the work of destruction that even Wilfrid’s famous
-minster at Ripon perished in the flames. During Edred’s homeward march
-the Danish garrison of York sallied forth, and overtaking the rear of
-his army at Chesterford[174] inflicted upon it grievous slaughter.
-Exasperated by the defeat, Edred, whose weak health perhaps made him
-exceptionally irritable, meditated a second ravage of Northumbria,
-but consented to forego his revenge when the _witan_ of the northern
-kingdom expelled Eric and paid compensation for the injury which had
-been inflicted by their countrymen. We need not follow minutely the
-fortunes of King Eric. Expelled and restored twice, if not thrice,
-in the anarchy of Northumbria, he is said to have perished in 954,
-“deceitfully slain” (according to Roger of Wendover) “with his son
-and his brother in a lonely place which is called Stainmoor, by the
-treasonable contrivance of Earl Oswulf”. This event is memorable as
-finally closing the book of Northumbrian royalty. Oswulf of Bamburgh
-succeeds to the chief place in the northern province with the title of
-earl, and henceforth we hear no more of kings in Northumbria.
-
-The strange career of the rebel archbishop, Wulfstan, came speedily
-to an end. In 952 Edred ordered him to be imprisoned in a fortress
-“because he had been often accused to the king,” or according to
-William of Malmesbury, “because he meditated desertion to his
-countrymen”. Probably the phrase “his countrymen” means merely the men
-of Northumbria. It is, however, possible that Wulfstan may have been of
-Danish descent. We have clearer information as to the Danish descent
-of his contemporary Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury. It certainly throws
-a strange light on the relation of the two races, as well as on the
-ecclesiastical history of the period, that the first and possibly the
-second of the highest places in the English Church should have been
-filled by scions of that still barely Christianised stock. In 954,
-the year of the extinction of the Northumbrian kingdom, Edred thought
-himself safe in giving to Wulfstan the Mercian bishopric of Dorchester,
-where, three years after, he died. The only other noteworthy event
-in the reign of Edred was “a great slaughter” which in his usual
-passionate way he ordered to be made among the inhabitants, probably
-the Danish inhabitants, of Thetford in East Anglia in revenge for their
-murder of the abbot Eadhelm (952). Three years after this, on Nov.
-23, 955, Edred died at Frome in Somerset and was buried in the old
-monastery at Winchester. No nightly appearances in his case, as in that
-of his great ancestor, seem to have troubled the repose of the dwellers
-in the convent.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XX.
-
-EDGAR AND DUNSTAN.
-
-
-“On the death of Edred, EADWIG [or EDWY] succeeded to the kingdom. Two
-years afterwards, his younger brother Edgar succeeded to the kingdom of
-the Mercians.”
-
-“In 958, Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury, separated King Edwy from his
-wife Elfgyfu, because they were too near akin.”
-
-“In 959, King Edwy died on the 1st of October, and Edgar his brother
-succeeded to the kingdom as well of the West Saxons as of the
-Northumbrians and Mercians, being then about sixteen years old.”
-
-Such is the only information (with one important exception) vouchsafed
-us in the Chronicle concerning the short reign of the unfortunate
-Edwy, who when about fifteen years of age succeeded his father Edmund.
-These sentences suggest much--internal discord, fraternal rivalry,
-a matrimonial union condemned by the Church, the early death of a
-broken-hearted husband--but they tell us nothing as to the causes of
-these events. Later historians have believed that they found the clue
-to the mystery in the one sentence which has not yet been quoted. “And
-in the same year [957] Abbot Dunstan was driven away over sea.” However
-this may be, the story of Edwy’s reign is so inextricably intertwined
-with the life of this man, the most famous English saint between
-Cuthbert and Becket, that for a little space history must give place to
-biography.
-
-Dunstan was born about the year 925, near the commencement of the reign
-of Athelstan. His birthplace was in the immediate neighbourhood of
-the great Abbey of Glastonbury; his parents must have belonged to the
-higher ranks of Anglo-Saxon society, since he numbered two bishops and
-certain members of the royal household among his near kinsmen and was
-in some way related to a niece of Athelstan’s. Glastonbury was probably
-the only great sanctuary in which the religious life of the Celt had
-flowed on without interruption into a Teutonic channel; and it may
-have been on account of its old British traditions that it became the
-resort of “certain Irish pilgrims who looked on that place with great
-affection, especially on account of their reverence for the younger
-Patrick, who is said to be there resting in the Lord”.[175] Taught by
-these men, the boy early acquired great familiarity with Scripture;
-he received the tonsure and performed some of an acolyte’s duties in
-the church of the Virgin, but was not as yet definitely vowed to a
-religious life. He seems to have been admitted as a lad to some place
-about the court of King Athelstan, who probably often visited the
-royal estate of his own great ancestor at Wedmore, a few miles from
-Glastonbury. But the future archbishop’s experience of court life was
-not a pleasant one. He was evidently a lad of quick intelligence with
-a nervous and sensitive frame, a soul much exercised by the joys and
-the terrors of the world of spirits. He had already seen some visions,
-and in the delirium of fever had climbed to the roof of the church at
-Glastonbury, his safe descent wherefrom was accounted a miracle. His
-young kinsmen, the pages of the court, with their rough and fleshly
-natures, could not tolerate this pale and pious playfellow, and they
-treated him as bullying schoolboys in later generations have often
-treated an unpopular comrade. At last, by an accusation of extracting
-from Latin books a knowledge of unholy arts, they obtained an order for
-his expulsion from court, which they emphasised in their own brutal way
-by throwing him into a marshy pool, and then trampling him down into
-the stinking mud. The poor victim escaped to the neighbouring house of
-one of his friends, but on arriving there was set upon by the dogs,
-who in his besmirched figure scarcely recognised a human being, much
-less one of their master’s friends. When they heard his voice, however,
-they at once gave him a warm canine greeting, whereupon the young saint
-wept at the contrast between the friendliness of the dog and the cruel
-animosity of man.
-
-At this point Dunstan had come to the parting of the ways. “The
-ancient enemy of mankind,” says his biographer, “sorely tempted him
-with suggestions of the delightfulness of family life, and the love
-of woman,” but, on the other hand, his kinsman, Elphege, Bishop of
-Winchester, strongly urged him to become a monk, and to this advice he
-yielded after a sharp attack of some sickness, in the nature of bubonic
-plague, from which he was like to have died. It was no doubt the great
-monastery of Glastonbury in which he made his profession. Near to
-that monastery was the dwelling of an elderly lady named Ethelfled, a
-relative and patroness of Dunstan. The saint in his old age sometimes
-told the story of the barrel of mead which in answer to Ethelfled’s
-prayers was miraculously replenished, when a sudden visit from her
-uncle Athelstan found her without sufficient provision of liquor for
-all his thirsty courtiers. He told too of the white dove which he
-saw alighting on the roof of the blessed matron’s house when she lay
-a-dying, and of the converse which on his entering her room he found
-her holding with an invisible heavenly visitor.
-
-In Dunstan’s monastic life, both now and later on when he had attained
-to high office in the Church, there was always room left for other
-occupations besides prayer and psalmody. We are told that “in the
-intervals of his study of sacred literature, he diligently cultivated
-his talent for playing on the harp, as well as for painting, and that
-he became a skilful judge of all articles used in the household”.
-At the request of a devout lady who was his friend, he sketched out
-for her a design for a stole with various kinds of patterns, which
-she could afterwards embroider with gold and gems. A bell was long
-preserved at Canterbury fashioned by the saint’s own fingers; and late
-in life he presented to Malmesbury Abbey an organ, bells and stoup for
-holy water, all of his own manufacture.
-
-After the accession of Edmund, Dunstan, who was still but a youth,
-was recalled to court, and probably on account of his literary
-qualifications “was numbered among the royal chiefs and princes of
-the palace”. What precise official rank these words betoken it would
-be difficult to say; but whatever it may have been, he soon lost it
-through the machinations of his enemies, who probably again whispered
-in Edmund’s ear the old accusation, “Dunstan traffics with the powers
-of darkness”. Bowing his head to the storm, Dunstan prepared to quit
-the realm, and taking advantage of the presence at court of certain
-messengers from “the eastern kingdom,” he begged them to procure him
-an asylum in that land. What is the meaning of these words “the eastern
-kingdom” is by no means clear. Germany has been suggested, but on the
-whole it is perhaps slightly more probable that the biographer--not a
-very accurate writer--means by these words to describe East Anglia.
-That region, though not strictly a kingdom, was still bound by a
-somewhat loose tie to Wessex, and was at this time ruled by a great
-noble named Athelstan, who, though properly speaking he was only an
-ealdorman, was known in the common speech of men as “the half-king”.
-
-Whatever may have been the exact name of Dunstan’s intended place
-of refuge, it was not, in fact, necessary for him to betake himself
-thither. The court was at this time staying at Cheddar, that well-known
-and beautiful village at the foot of the Mendips, where steep cliffs
-and stalactite caves attest the wonder-working presence of the
-limestone formation. One day Edmund, while hunting, became separated
-from his companions, and found himself following the hounds and the
-stag alone. In its desperation the hunted animal made for the cliffs,
-leaped from the top and was dashed to pieces. The hounds followed, and
-the king followed also, pulling in vain at the bridle of a hard-mouthed
-horse, and seeing a terrible death immediately before him. In that
-moment Edmund reviewed his past life, and thought with satisfaction:
-“I do not remember to have ever wittingly injured any man”. But then
-Dunstan’s name came into his mind. “Too true! I have injured Dunstan.
-O God, if Thou wilt preserve my life, I will be reconciled to Thy
-servant.” The horse stopped, on the very edge of the precipice, and the
-king’s life was saved.
-
-Meanwhile, however, the first act of the delivered king was to send for
-Dunstan, provide him with a horse and ride with him to Glastonbury.
-After offering prayer, the king took the monk’s right hand, gave him
-the kiss of peace, led him up to the abbot’s chair and seated him
-thereon, saying: “Be thou occupant of this seat and a faithful abbot
-of this church. Whatever may be lacking for the performance of divine
-service and the due observance of your holy rule, I will supply it
-from my royal bounty.” Thus was Dunstan, still in very early manhood,
-installed as abbot in the great historic house of Glastonbury. The
-Benedictine rule, if it had been adopted in this monastery, had become
-much relaxed, but Dunstan at once set to work to restore the discipline
-of the brotherhood. He enlarged the buildings, and collected round
-him a crowd of young followers, whom he instructed in Holy Scripture,
-so that from this monastery, as from a school of the prophets, many
-deans, abbots, bishops, even some archbishops went forth to guide and
-govern the English Church. At this point of the story we hear much
-of Dunstan’s conflicts with the Powers of Darkness, conflicts which
-were believed to endure throughout his monastic life. Now the Evil
-One appeared to him in the form of a bear, now as a dog, now as a
-fox, shaking his tail in terror and shrinking from the keen glance of
-the holy man. All these appearances and others like them, which later
-ages delighted to record and to magnify, belong to the intellectual
-pathology of the cloister and are not to be specially attributed to the
-spiritual discernment or the cerebral excitability of this particular
-recluse, though we may be permitted to observe that they occupy a more
-prominent place and are of a more grotesque character in the authentic
-Lives of Dunstan than in the pages of Bede. Unfortunately they have, by
-their frequent repetition, somewhat obscured the real greatness of the
-alleged devil-fighter, both as ecclesiastic and as statesman.[176]
-
-After the death of Edmund (of which the saint is said to have had
-supernatural warnings) his successor Edred took Dunstan into high
-favour and committed to him the charge of his treasure and of many of
-the deeds relating to his various estates, besides the precious things
-accumulated by the old kings his predecessors. All these were deposited
-at Glastonbury. Moreover, Edred desired to make his friend bishop of
-Crediton, but Dunstan refused, nor could even the entreaties of the
-king’s mother, Edgiva, though she had great influence with him, prevail
-upon him to consent to take the nominal charge of so distant a diocese.
-When Edred’s long struggle with disease was nearing its end, he
-ordered Dunstan to bring to him the treasures committed to his charge
-that he might make a death-bed division of them among his kinsfolk.
-The saint complied with the order, visited Glastonbury and had gone
-several stages on the return journey, when he heard a voice from heaven
-saying: “Behold! now King Edred has departed in peace”. A yet greater
-marvel! his horse, hearing the same voice and “being unable to bear the
-presence of the angelic sublimity,” fell down and died on the road.
-When Dunstan reached the palace he found that his patron’s death had
-taken place at the very same hour at which he had received the heavenly
-communication.
-
-We have now reached the same point in Dunstan’s life at which we had
-already arrived in the history of the kingdom. Edred dead, and the
-boy-king Edwy seated on the throne (955), we come to the well-known
-scene at the coronation banquet. Dunstan’s biographer tells us that
-after the great ceremony had been performed, when according to the
-unanimous choice of all the English nobles, Edwy had been anointed and
-hallowed as king, he suddenly leaped up and left the merry banquet and
-the company of his own nobles, whom he forsook for the companionship
-of two high-born dames, Ethelgiva and her daughter Elfgiva. These
-ladies were of royal descent, Edwy’s near relations; and it is a
-plausible conjecture, though only a conjecture, that the elder lady
-may have acted as foster-mother to the king, who had lost his own
-mother in childhood. It was natural, if not politic, for the boy-king
-(still scarcely fifteen years of age) to leave the company of the grim
-warriors and hoary churchmen who composed his _witan_, and to refresh
-himself with the livelier talk of his child-sweetheart and her mother.
-But the nobles of the _witan_ felt themselves insulted by the king’s
-departure, and Oda, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had Danish blood
-in his veins, in a loud and angry voice gave utterance to the general
-discontent. “Let some one,” he said, “be chosen who shall bring back
-the king to take his place, as is fitting, at our merry banquet.” All
-others refused, not liking to face the women’s wrath, but at last Abbot
-Dunstan and his relative Kinsige, Bishop of Lichfield, were chosen for
-the disagreeable task. When they entered the royal apartment they found
-the crown cast carelessly on the ground and the king seated on a couch
-between the two ladies. “We are sent,” said they, “by the nobles to
-beg you to return at once to your fitting place at the board and not
-to disdain to mingle in the joyous feast of your _thegns_.” The boy at
-first refused and the women scolded, but Dunstan raised the king from
-the couch, put his crown becomingly on his head and led him back, an
-obviously reluctant banqueter, to the company of his nobles. Such was
-the scene, natural and intelligible enough and worth studying for the
-sake of the light thrown by it on the habits of our forefathers in the
-tenth century, but by no means justifying either the praise or the
-blame which have been bestowed on the chief actors therein, especially
-the foul imputations which the monkish biographer has cast upon the
-characters of “the two she-wolves,” as he terms them, the ladies
-Ethelgiva and Elfgiva.[177]
-
-Dunstan’s intervention at such a time was not likely to recommend
-him to royal favour, and it is with no surprise that we read the
-Chronicle’s entry for the year 957: “In this year abbot Dunstan was
-driven away over sea”. Even his own friends were partially alienated
-from him, for his biographer lays the blame of his banishment and
-the confiscation of his goods not only on “the impudent virago, that
-Jezebel,” Ethelgiva, but also on “the secret machinations of his own
-disciples, whom he himself had nurtured in their tender years with
-the nectareous sweetness of his teaching”. This is one of several
-indications that the struggle, a very obscure one and difficult to
-understand, which took place during Edwy’s short reign, was not, as
-was formerly supposed, a struggle between the boy-king on the one
-hand and an arrogant and united Church-party on the other. There were
-ecclesiastics on both sides, and Edwy, at any rate, was no declared
-enemy of the Anglo-Saxon Church. There are in the Saxon Cartulary
-copies of grants made by him to Glastonbury, to Bath, to Worcester, to
-Abingdon and many other monasteries. But there are also grants made by
-him in surprising numbers to the thegns of his court, and this lavish
-generosity looks like a sign of weakness and may have had something to
-do with the revolt against his authority.[178]
-
-Notwithstanding the uproar at Edwy’s coronation, the lady Elfgiva, who
-was one of the persons blamed for his absence from the feast, became
-soon afterwards his wife. To one document which is assigned to the
-year 956 the names of Elfgiva, “king’s wife,” and Ethelgiva, “king’s
-wife’s mother,” are attached as witnesses. It was not till two years
-after this time that, according to the Chronicle, “Oda, Archbishop of
-Canterbury, separated King Edwy from his wife Elfgiva because they
-were too near akin” (958). At this point Edwy’s wife and her mother
-disappear from authentic history. Writers of little judgment, the
-earliest of whom lived a century and a half after the event, tell us
-distressing stories of the branding of Elfgiva’s face with a hot iron,
-of her or her mother’s flight into Ireland, return and miserable death
-under the cruel operation of ham-stringing. The authority for these
-tales is poor, their style legendary, the confusion which they make
-between Ethelgiva and Elfgiva an additional reason for distrust. On
-the whole, though a painful suspicion may rest on our minds that there
-was some basis of fact underlying these ghastly traditions, we are not
-bound to accept them as history. In any case no one has a right to
-impute these cruelties, if ever committed, to Dunstan, who was almost
-certainly still in exile at the alleged date of their infliction.
-
-The cartularies further show us that under the reign of Edwy his
-venerable grandmother Edgiva, widow of Edward the Elder, was deprived
-of some portion of her property, which she recovered after the
-accession of Edgar. It is evident, from this and other indications,
-that many personal and political questions were involved in the
-revolution which has next to be described; and it is probable that
-the great ecclesiastical controversy which sounded so loud through
-the next twenty years had no connexion therewith. Of that revolution
-itself we have most scanty details. The chiefs of the realm, we are
-told, dissatisfied with Edwy’s government, proclaimed as king his
-brother EDGAR, a boy of some thirteen years old. We hear of no battles.
-A compromise was soon arranged, by the terms of which Edgar reigned
-in the lands north of the Thames, and Edwy south of that boundary. We
-may probably trace here some remains of the old jealousy between the
-kingdoms. Edwy retained the allegiance of loyal Wessex, while Mercia,
-glad of any pretext for recovering her lost independence, rallied
-round the standard of his brother and was joined by East Anglia,
-under whose “half-king” Athelstan and his wife Elfwen, Edgar had
-been reared from infancy. This compromise was arranged in 957, and
-in the following year, or in 959, Edwy died and Edgar reigned alone
-over the whole kingdom. There is no suggestion of foul play, but it is
-natural to conjecture that Edwy’s early death was caused by worry and
-disappointment at the unfortunate turn which his affairs had taken both
-in his household and in his kingdom.
-
-The accession of Edgar to the Mercian throne was speedily followed by
-the recall of Dunstan from exile.[179] When the young abbot was sent
-away “over-sea” by the offended Edwy, he sought shelter in Flanders,
-then ruled by a grandson of Alfred the Great, Count Arnulf the Old.
-His temporary home was the great monastery of St. Peter’s at Ghent,
-and his observation of the strict discipline there maintained by the
-abbot doubtless stirred his emulation to begin similar reforms in the
-monasteries of England. On his return from banishment he was promoted
-to the office of bishop of the Mercian see of Worcester. To Worcester
-in 959 the see of London was added, a strange instance of plurality
-but probably a temporary expedient resulting from the determination of
-the old queen Edgiva and the other advisers of Edgar that the highest
-place in the English Church should eventually be filled by the great
-reformer. The old Danish archbishop Oda died, probably in 958. His
-immediate successor, Elfsige, of whom it was related that he spake
-vaunting and contemptuous words of the late archbishop, striking with a
-staff insultingly on his grave, was soon punished for his irreverence.
-On his way to Rome to receive the pallium, he caught so severe a chill
-in the snows of St. Bernard that he died in the land of the stranger.
-A second successor, Beorhthelm, was appointed in 959, immediately
-before Edwy’s death, but was unceremoniously deposed by Edgar in the
-following year to make room for Dunstan. This great saint, who had
-now reached the zenith of his orbit, ruled the Church of England with
-eminent wisdom and success for twenty-eight years, from 960 to 988,
-but evidently his sphere of action was not confined to the Church. It
-is probable that much of the success of the undoubtedly successful
-reign of Edgar was due to the advice of Dunstan, and if the saint’s
-biographers would but have retrenched one half of the miracles which
-they have recorded in his honour, and would have described some of the
-affairs of state which he guided to a right issue, they would have
-conferred a great benefit on history, and they would probably have
-placed their favourite’s name high beyond the reach of doubt among the
-Christian statesmen of England. At present that reputation, great as
-it is and much as it has grown of recent years, is rather a matter of
-highly probable inference than of actual proof.
-
-Politically the reign of Edgar the Peaceful, as we know it, is somewhat
-barren of events and seems to have been characterised by almost
-unbroken tranquillity. Save for the facts that in 966 “Thored son of
-Gunner harried Westmorland,” and that three years later “King Edgar
-commanded the land of Thanet to be ravaged,” no military operations are
-recorded in the Chronicle; and so great is the obscurity that we do not
-even know whether the first operation was undertaken in obedience to,
-or in defiance of, the orders of the king. Nor can we tell whether the
-ravage of the Isle of Thanet was a penalty for some movement of revolt
-or a precaution against its occupation by the Danes. On the whole, the
-latter hypothesis is perhaps somewhat the more probable.
-
-But by far the most memorable event in Edgar’s reign, and the event
-with which his name and Dunstan’s are chiefly connected, was of an
-ecclesiastical kind, the famous monastic reform. This movement was
-not, as it used sometimes to be considered, primarily a struggle
-like Hildebrand’s on behalf of the celibacy of the clergy: it was
-essentially a struggle for the reform of the relaxed discipline of
-the convents, and the restoration to monks, strictly so called, of
-houses and lands which had been gradually filched from them by the
-hybrid order of _canonici_. These men may be considered as occupying
-a half-way position between the parish priest and the professed monk.
-Following the _canon_, the rule framed by Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz,
-in the latter part of the eighth century, these _canonici_, priests
-leading a collegiate life, were bound to chastity and obedience but
-not to the renunciation of all private property. Thus their standard
-was in some respects lower than that of the regular monks, and if
-their rivals are to be trusted--which is perhaps doubtful--they fell
-far below even that lowered standard. The staid and decorous William
-of Malmesbury laments that his beloved monastery had been turned into
-“a stable of clerics”. Florence of Worcester says that Edgar “cast out
-from the convents the impostures of clerics,” and many similar passages
-might be quoted, in which the monks speak with the utmost bitterness of
-their _canonical_ rivals.
-
-The great reform, however, with which the names of Edgar and Dunstan
-are associated, consisted not merely in the casting forth of the
-canons and the restoration of Benedictine regulars to their homes.
-It was also part of a great general movement for the purification of
-conventual life and the uplifting of the standard of morals in the
-whole Christian community; a movement which began in Eastern France,
-spread thence over Flanders, Germany and Italy, and will be for ever
-associated with the venerable name of the monastery of Cluny, founded
-in 910 by William, Duke of Aquitaine. In the monastery of Cluny and the
-religious houses which followed its example, the rule of St. Benedict
-was restored in more than its old strictness. The chanting of the whole
-Psalter every twenty-four hours; silence so nearly total that the monks
-almost lost the habit of speech; the entire prohibition of the flesh of
-four-footed animals for food; coarse clothing of a dun colour; absolute
-obedience to the ecclesiastical superior, and the entire prohibition of
-private property; these were the chief points of the restored monastic
-discipline which Dunstan brought back with him from the Continent.
-
-Three other ecclesiastics besides Dunstan threw their weight into
-the reforming scale. The first was the venerable archbishop, Oda the
-Dane, who, however, died in 958 or 959 while the movement was still
-in its infancy. His nephew Oswald, who was consecrated bishop of
-Worcester in 961, and who eleven years later received in addition to
-that dignity the archiepiscopal mitre of York, was after Dunstan the
-most eminent churchman of the age, and zealously seconded the efforts
-of his brother of Canterbury. The most active, however, as well as the
-harshest and most unpitying of the reformers, was Ethelwold, Bishop
-of Winchester, who was, like his teacher Dunstan, of noble birth and
-had served as a lad in Athelstan’s palace. He was also like Dunstan
-skilful with his hands, and left behind him bells and other implements
-of religious service, the products of his own cunning handicraft.
-After ruling the monastery of Abingdon he was, in 963, consecrated to
-the see of Winchester, where he carried out the work of reform with a
-high hand. Both the Old and New Minsters at Winchester had been filled
-with _canonici_ many of whom were married. To all Ethelwold offered
-but one choice: “Assume the monastic habit or depart hence”. All but
-three departed, and Chertsey and Milton Abbas in Dorsetshire were then
-similarly purged. The last monastery was situated without the bounds
-of Ethelwold’s diocese, but he seems to have held from the king a kind
-of roving commission to rebuild and reform monasteries wherever he
-would. In pursuance of this commission Ethelwold next visited the great
-monasteries of the fen country, Ely and Medeshamstede (now known as
-Peterborough). In their most flourishing time these monasteries must
-have worn a somewhat desolate appearance, standing as they did in the
-midst of the waste of waters which then covered half Cambridgeshire. Of
-Peterborough the chronicler expressly tells us that owing to its having
-been “fore-done by heathen folk, Ethelwold found nothing but old walls
-and wild woods”. Here then no extrusion was necessary; all that the
-reformer had to do was to rebuild the fabrics and once more to instal
-in the restored abbeys the industrious monks, who would again make
-these oases in the fen lands to blossom as the rose.
-
-The Abingdon chronicler tells us of these good deeds of Ethelwold,
-naturally magnifying the glory of his convent’s most famous abbot.
-Strangely enough we do not hear of any actual foundation of a new
-monastery at Canterbury, or expulsion of _canonici_ from the precincts
-of the old one, by Dunstan himself, though we know that he was heart
-and soul with the new movement. In fact, Dunstan’s tolerance of the
-canons, even at Canterbury, and his abstention from deeds of violence
-in furtherance of the reform, are singularly at variance with the
-character for persecuting harshness which he has somehow acquired in
-English history. So, too, his fellow archbishop, Oswald, far gentler
-than Ethelwold, if a little more energetic than Dunstan, seems always
-to have preferred persuasion to force. At Worcester, instead of
-expelling the canons from the cathedral church of SS. Mary and Peter,
-he founded a new monastery which he attached to a new cathedral, and
-these younger institutions gradually supplanted the old in popular
-favour.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Next to ecclesiastical affairs the pageants of the peaceful king’s
-reign seem most to have attracted the attention of his contemporaries.
-When he had been already reigning as sole king for more than thirteen
-years and had attained the thirtieth year of his age, he was solemnly
-“hallowed” as king on Whitsunday in the old Roman city of Bath (973).
-The reason for this long delay in the king’s coronation is not
-obvious, but possibly, as the words of the coronation service seem
-to have expressly hailed him as “King of the Saxons, Mercians and
-Northumbrians,”[180] the ceremony may have been postponed till some
-unrecorded transactions, peaceful or warlike, with the chiefs of the
-Danelaw secured their presence at the pageant and showed that the words
-of the coronation service were not an idle vaunt. “And straightway
-after the hallowing,” says the Chronicle, “the king led all his naval
-force to Laegeceaster [Chester], and there came unto him six kings
-to meet him, and all plighted faith with him that they would be his
-fellow-workers on sea and on land.” This is that celebrated meeting
-of Edgar with his British under-kings of which later chroniclers
-are so proud. Both Florence of Worcester and William of Malmesbury,
-writing in the early part of the twelfth century, record that _eight_
-kings were constrained by Edgar to come to his Witenagemot, to bind
-themselves to him by an oath of perpetual fidelity, and then to row
-him in solemn pomp upon the river Dee, while he sat in the barge’s
-prow in regal magnificence. “He is reported to have said that now at
-last his successors might boast that they were truly kings of the
-English since they would inherit the honourable precedence which was
-thus accorded him.” The two historians give us the names of these
-eight kings: Kenneth of Scotland, Malcolm of Cumberland, Maccus, “the
-archpirate” (that is, the Viking), “king of many islands” (possibly Man
-and the Hebrides), and five Welsh kings whose names need not here be
-recorded, especially as one at least of them is incorrectly reported.
-It is interesting, however, to find this act of vassalage admitted by
-a Welsh annalist, though the scene of it is transferred, with much
-probability, from Chester to Caerleon-upon-Usk--much nearer than the
-former city to the scene of Edgar’s coronation. “And five kings from
-Cymry,” says the _Brut-y-Tywysogion_, “Edgar compelled to come to his
-court, and in Kaerllion-ar-Wyse he commanded them to row him in a bark
-while he himself sat at its prow.” Upon the whole, this celebrated
-water procession seems to be attested upon sufficient and trustworthy
-authority.[181]
-
-In this connexion a romantic legend may be related which meets us in
-the pages of William of Malmesbury. He tells us that Edgar, though
-strong and wiry, was of small stature, and that this caused Kenneth
-of Scotland to remark that he marvelled why such great territories
-should be willing to be subject to such a pigmy of a king. The saying
-was carried by tale-bearers to Edgar, who sent for Kenneth as if he
-were about to consult him on some most important secret of state.
-He drew him apart into a lonely wood, offered him his choice of two
-swords which he had brought with him, and called upon him to prove
-his strength in a hand-to-hand encounter. “For it is a base thing for
-a king to babble at a banquet and not be willing to prove his words
-in fight.” Hereupon Kenneth fell at Edgar’s feet and implored his
-forgiveness for words which, as he protested, had only been spoken in
-jest.
-
-From the same source--one, it must be admitted, of secondary
-authority--we derive the well-known story of the yearly tribute of 300
-wolves’ heads which he imposed on the Welsh king, Juthwal, a tribute
-which is said to have been paid for three years and then of necessity
-discontinued because the breed of wolves was exterminated. Magnifying
-in similar fashion the resources and the renown of the peaceful king,
-Florence of Worcester tells us that he collected a fleet of 3,600
-strong ships, one-third of which, when Easter was past, were ordered
-to muster in the north of the island and sail to the Straits of Dover,
-one-third on the east for a voyage to the Land’s End, and one-third
-on the west which sailed to Cape Wrath. Thus was the whole island
-circumnavigated and safeguarded against invasion by a foreign foe.
-There is probably some historic fact at the bottom of this story, but
-no one need accept the enormous numbers vouched for by Florence.
-
-The chief characteristic of Edgar’s reign was the peace which he
-maintained in the land and which contrasted so painfully with the
-troubled reign of his son. Hence, doubtless, was derived the surname
-of the Peaceful, which is that by which he is known in the pages of
-Florence of Worcester There was something brilliant and attractive
-in his personality, and the staunch support which he gave to the
-victorious party in the Church was sufficient guarantee that his good
-deeds would not be forgotten. Yet even the monastic chronicler, as an
-honest man, could not dissemble the fact that the bright and comely
-little king was no saint. He quotes from a poem which after praising
-the piety of Edgar and magnifying his power “before whom mighty kings
-and earls gladly bowed” concludes thus:--
-
- But one misdeed he did, aye all too oft,
- The evil customs of strange folk he loved,
- And heathen manners into this our land
- Too fast he brought,
- And hither introduced outlandish men
- And hurtful people drew unto the realm.
-
- But God’s grace grant him that his well-done deeds
- Weigh heavier in the balance than his sins,
- And guard his soul upon the longsome road.
-
-It will be seen that the poet speaks of introducing foreign vices and
-hurtful heathenish customs, but does not distinctly charge Edgar with
-personal immorality. Later historians, more out-spoken, tell a story,
-which seems to have some foundation in fact, about his seduction of
-a novice named Wulfthryth, whom he is said to have carried off from
-the abbey of Wilton, and by whom he had a daughter named Edith, who
-took the vows of a nun and died an abbess. The long delay of Edgar’s
-coronation (which happened, as we have seen, in the fourteenth year of
-his reign) has been connected by later writers with this intrigue, and
-with an alleged penance inflicted on the king by Dunstan, who is said
-to have forbidden him to wear his crown for seven years. Chronological
-arguments, however, prove the untruth of this theory.[182] Edgar’s
-first wedded wife was apparently Ethelfled the Fair, who was known
-also by the epithet of “the Duck”. She was the daughter of a certain
-Ordmaer whom Edgar seems to have ennobled by bestowing upon him forty
-hides of land at Hatfield, thus giving him the appanage of an earl,
-though his birth would appear to have been insufficient to qualify him
-for exalted office.[183] By this lady Edgar was the father of a son
-known in English history as Edward the Martyr. The married life of
-the beautiful Ethelfled, however terminated, whether by her death or
-divorce, must have been a short one, for in 964 Edgar married another
-woman celebrated for her beauty, Elfthryth or Elfrida, daughter of the
-Earl Ordgar, who became ealdorman of Devon and possibly of the two
-adjoining counties of Somerset and Dorset.[184] Elfrida, however, had
-been previously married, her first husband being Ethelwold, ealdorman
-of East Anglia and son of “the half-king” Athelstan. Elfrida exercised
-undoubtedly a baneful influence on English history throughout the
-closing years of the tenth century; and arguing perhaps from these
-known tendencies of her character and from Edgar’s evil record for
-sexual immorality, later writers, especially the poetical historian,
-Geoffrey Gaimar, have constructed a long and unsavoury romance,
-according to which Ethelwold, having first deceived his master as to
-Elfrida’s beauty and thus secured her for himself, was afterwards
-murdered like Uriah the Hittite in order to make way for his royal
-rival. This story, also, though long accepted by historians, vanishes
-at the touch of criticism which clearly shows that Elfrida’s first
-husband died at least two years before her marriage with Edgar.[185]
-But however innocent may have been the story of the peaceful king’s
-courtship of his second wife, there can be no doubt that when she was
-once seated in the palace her influence on the lives of its inmates was
-disastrous.
-
-Edgar survived his coronation but two years. He died in the
-thirty-third year of his age, July 8, 975, and was buried in the Abbey
-of Glastonbury, which he and his father had so highly favoured.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXI.
-
-EDWARD THE MARTYR--OLD AGE OF DUNSTAN--NORMANS AND NORTHMEN.
-
-
-Of the two sons left by Edgar, one, EDWARD, son of “Ethelfled the
-Duck,” was about thirteen years old, and the other, Elfrida’s son,
-Ethelred, was but seven at the death of their father. This being so, it
-is surprising that there should have been any debate as to which son
-should succeed to the vacant throne. Possibly the kinsfolk of Elfrida,
-a powerful clan, may have raised doubts as to the regularity of Edgar’s
-marriage to Ethelfled, or they may have insisted on the superior
-position of the child Ethelred as the son of a queen, for Elfrida,
-first of all royal consorts since Judith, wife of Ethelwulf, had been
-permitted to bear that envied name.[186] The debate was, however,
-decided, apparently by the united influence of the two archbishops,
-Dunstan and Oswald, in favour of Edward, upon whose head the crown of
-England was placed by the kindly hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
-
-The politics of the short reign of Edward, which lasted barely four
-years, are as obscure and difficult to trace as the cause of its
-premature close. It is clear, however, that immediately on the death of
-Edgar there was a certain reaction against that king’s monastic policy.
-It was in Mercia that this reaction was most powerful, and the leader
-in the movement was the ealdorman Elfhere, “enemy of the monks,” as the
-Chronicle calls him; “most wicked of consuls,” as he is styled by the
-classically minded Henry of Huntingdon. There was a certain Oslac, earl
-of Northumbria, who was driven into banishment by Elfhere, and from
-the way in which his name is mentioned we are led to conjecture that he
-was a partisan of the monks.
-
- Then was in Mercia’s land, as I have heard,
- Widely and everywhere the Maker’s praise
- Laid low on earth; then many were out-driven,
- God’s learned ministers. Then much must mourn
- The man who in his breast bore burning love
- To God who made him. Then the Glorious King,
- The Lord of Victories, Who the heavens doth rule,
- Was too much scorned, and shattered were His rights,
- Then forth was driven the hero bold of mood,
- Oslac, the hoary-headed veteran,
- The wise, the eloquent. He forth must fare,
- Forth from the land, over the billow’s roll,
- Over the gannet’s bath, the whale’s domain.
- Yea, o’er the water’s throng, bereft of home.
- Then too was seen, high in the firmament,
- That star appearing, which brave men of old,
- Men wise of soul and skilled interpreters,
- Widely denoted by the comet’s name;
- Thus through the nations was the Ruler’s wrath
- Broadly proclaimed and Famine marked its path.
-
-Thus sings the monk of Winchester. He of Peterborough, after also
-deviating into verse, adds in quiet prose: “In this year (975) there
-were great disturbances throughout England; and Elfhere the ealdorman
-ordered the demolition of many monasteries which king Edgar had
-erewhile ordered the holy bishop Ethelwold to establish. And at the
-same time the great earl Oslac was banished from England.”
-
-There are hints, especially in the life of St. Oswald of York, that
-Elfhere’s anti-monastic policy was connected with a certain amount of
-spoliation of the abbey lands, which were probably in some measure
-distributed among his followers. On the other hand, we hear that
-Ethelwin, Ealdorman of East Anglia, son of “half-king” Athelstan and
-brother-in-law of Elfrida, zealously opposed Elfhere’s policy and
-championed the cause of the monks. A yet more strenuous defender of
-the order was his brother, Alfwold, who slew a certain man accused by
-him of fraudulently obtaining some of the abbey lands of Peterborough.
-Desiring to obtain absolution for the deed he went to Winchester to beg
-it of bishop Ethelwold. In his penitence and remorse, Alfwold in his
-hostel unloosed his shoes and went, humble and barefooted, to meet the
-great bishop. But Ethelwold, knowing in whose cause he had stricken
-the blow, would have none of such needless humiliation. He went forth
-clad in full vestments, with holy water, cross and thurible to meet
-“the general and defender of the Church”. Prayers were offered, the
-acolytes replaced the shoes on the feet of the Church’s champion,
-and the rest of the day was spent in rejoicings. “Thus did the pious
-chieftain of the East Angles defend all the possessions of the
-monasteries with great honour, wherefore he was called the Friend of
-God.”
-
-Concerning the actual cause of the struggle we are very imperfectly
-informed. The East Anglian chiefs were joined by Brihtnoth, ealdorman
-of Essex, brother-in-law of “the half-king,” and for some time it
-seemed as if the dispute would have to be settled by force of arms.
-Happily this was averted, and in three meetings of the _witan_, held
-probably in three successive years, 977, 978 and 979 (the last after
-the death of Edward), it was perhaps arranged that the two parties
-should compromise on the basis of _uti possidetis_, the monasteries
-in East Anglia and Essex not being disturbed, but those in Mercia not
-being restored to the monks, at any rate during the lifetime of Elfhere.
-
-At the first of these Witenagemots, which was held at Kirtlington,
-in Oxfordshire, Sideman, the aged Bishop of Crediton, who had been
-the young King Edward’s teacher and guide, suddenly expired. At the
-second, which was held in an upper chamber at Calne, in Wiltshire,
-the floor suddenly gave way and “all the chief witan of the English
-race” were precipitated into the room below. Some were killed and
-many suffered grievous bodily harm. Apparently almost the only one
-who escaped quite unhurt was the Archbishop Dunstan, “who stood up
-upon a beam”. Naturally, so remarkable an escape brightened the halo
-which shone round the archbishop’s name. In later legends the accident
-was magnified into a kind of heavenly judgment between the monks and
-their opponents; while some modern historians, remembering Dunstan’s
-great mechanical skill, have seen in it a cunning device for ridding
-himself of his enemies. Happily we are not constrained to adopt either
-hypothesis, and the last suggestion is certainly inadmissible. It would
-probably tax the ingenuity of the ablest engineer of modern times to
-contrive such an apparent accident so as to kill part of the assembly.
-Miracle and fraud may therefore both disappear from the discussion. The
-event, which undoubtedly happened, is only one of several indications
-of the unsoundness of Anglo-Saxon building. There seems reason to
-suspect that in the tenth century the political and the domestic
-architecture of England were both equally insecure, and that the
-apparent glory of the reign of Edgar the Peaceful rested on many rotten
-timbers which made easy the collapse of the kingdom under Ethelred the
-Unready. Perhaps, also, we may conjecture that the deaths of so many
-of England’s chief men and wisest counsellors left the field open for
-meaner, weaker, more treacherous statesmen.
-
-In the same year (978) Edward’s short reign came to a bloody end.
-The circumstances of his death are somewhat obscure, though there
-can be no doubt that he was foully murdered on March 18 at Corfe in
-Dorsetshire. We have no contemporary evidence directly connecting his
-step-mother with the crime, but this silence, as all chroniclers for
-the next thirty years would be somewhat in fear of Elfrida and her
-son, cannot be counted strong evidence in her favour. On the other
-hand, there is some evidence that Corfe, the scene of the murder, was
-the place where Elfrida was at the time dwelling with her boy, and
-all the later historians speak unhesitatingly as to the quarter from
-which the blow came, though, unfortunately (as we so often find to be
-the case), the further removed they are from the date of the event,
-the more they profess to know about its details. Thus the biographer
-of St. Oswald, who wrote about thirty years after the murder, tells us
-that a conspiracy was formed against the king by Ethelred’s thegns,
-and carried into effect when the young king, “desiring the consolation
-of fraternal love,” paid an evening visit to the house where his
-brother was residing with the queen. The partisans of Ethelred gathered
-round Edward, who was alone and unguarded. The butler came forward
-“ready to serve in his lowly office”; one of the thegns seized the
-king’s right hand as if to kiss it; another grasped his left hand and
-inflicted on him a mortal wound. The king called out in a loud voice:
-“What are you doing, breaking my hand,” and then fell dead from his
-horse, which was also mortally wounded by the conspirators. “No chant
-was raised; no proper rites of burial performed; the renowned king
-of the whole country lay covered with a cheap garment, awaiting the
-resurrection day. After the lapse of a twelvemonth, the glorious duke
-Elfhere [of Mercia] came to Wareham, found the body lying there naked
-but incorrupt, and transferred it to Shaftesbury, where it received
-honourable burial.” This account looks a little more like a political
-conspiracy and less like a mere private assassination than the story
-told in the twelfth century by William of Malmesbury, according to
-which the kingly boy returning from the chase, tired and thirsty,
-called at his step-mother’s abode, asked for wine, and while drinking
-the stirrup-cup was treacherously stabbed by one of Elfrida’s henchmen;
-fell from his horse, and with one foot in the stirrup was dragged along
-by the frightened steed, a long track through the forest being marked
-by the blood of the dying king. This, which is in some respects the
-more romantic version of the story, is that which has found its way
-into the received text of English history. The feelings of the people
-concerning this tragedy may be gathered from the ballad which was
-embodied in the Chronicle.
-
- Never was worse deed done by Englishmen
- Than this, since first they sought the British land.
- Men murdered him, but God him magnified.
- In life Eadward was an earthly king;
- Now after death he is a saint in heaven.
- His earthly kinsmen durst not him avenge,
- But grievous vengeance wrought his Heavenly Sire.
- On earth his foes his memory would efface,
- But the Supreme Avenger spread abroad
- In earth and heaven remembrance of that crime.
- They who in life refused him reverence,
- Now bow on bended knee before his bones.
- Thus may we see how wisdom of mankind,
- Their clever counsels, their persuasive words,
- Are but as nothing ’gainst the thought of God.
-
-Here we can perceive, deep in the heart of the writer, a smouldering
-fire of indignation against some persons highly placed and beyond the
-reach of man’s revenge, by whom the deed of wickedness was wrought.
-The misery which fell upon the nation in the long and dreary reign of
-Elfrida’s son is heaven’s answer to the cry of the innocent blood.
-Without the Church’s sanction, without any strict warrant for the
-epithet, the instinct of the people gave to the victim of Corfe the
-name which he has ever since borne in history, “Edward the Martyr”.
-
-The new king, ETHELRED, a boy of ten years old, was crowned at
-Kingston-on-Thames a fortnight after Easter, the two archbishops and
-ten bishops taking part in the ceremony. Dunstan addressed to him, as
-he had done to his father before him, a sermon on the duties of his
-kingship, and is said, but on somewhat doubtful authority, to have
-uttered at the same time foreboding words as to the calamities coming
-upon the kingdom, in punishment for the crime which had given Ethelred
-the crown. It seems clear that he withdrew more and more from a share
-in the civil, perhaps even in the ecclesiastical, government of the
-realm, and spent the ten years of life which yet remained to him
-chiefly in religious retirement; in preaching to the crowd of unlearned
-persons, lay and clerical, male and female, who gathered round him “to
-be fortified day and night with the heavenly salt”; in practising those
-mechanical arts which he had loved from boyhood; and in sitting on a
-bench in the _scriptorium_ correcting some of the manuscripts which
-formed part of the treasure of Canterbury.
-
-In the year 986, however, Dunstan was roused from his meditations by
-the extraordinary conduct of young Ethelred, who “on account of certain
-dissensions besieged Rochester, and being unable to take it, invaded
-and laid waste the patrimony of St. Andrew”. Some light is thrown on
-this remarkable entry by a document[187] issued twelve years later, in
-which Ethelred laments that his youthful simplicity was imposed upon
-by a certain Ethelsin, an enemy of God and man, and that by his advice
-he violently abstracted from the church of Rochester a rural property
-at Bromley, which he now restores. Dunstan, we are told, warned the
-king of the punishment which waited on such crimes, and eventually
-induced him by a ransom of 100 pounds of silver to raise the siege of
-Rochester. Hereupon he prophesied that “such a king who preferred money
-to God, silver to the apostle, the gratification of his avarice to the
-earnestly expressed desire of his spiritual father, would draw down on
-himself and on his kingdom such calamities as the English nation had
-never yet experienced. But he himself, as he had been told by the mouth
-of the Lord, should not live to see this righteous retribution.” And so
-it proved. Two years later, on May 19, 988, Dunstan expired, probably
-in the sixty-fourth year of his age.
-
-That Dunstan was a great saint and a great statesman cannot be doubted.
-No small man could have produced the impression which he produced
-on his own and on later generations. But what were his own actual
-achievements in Church and State it is not easy to discover through
-the veil of turgid obscurity woven by his biographers, who are more
-intent on recording childish miracles than on painting for us a
-truthful and vivid portraiture of the great archbishop. Doubtless the
-alleged miracles of the saint were not all the accumulation of later
-ages. Partly on account of his mechanical skill and partly from the
-peculiarities of his own temperament, a certain thaumaturgic atmosphere
-seems to have surrounded Dunstan even in his lifetime. With this we
-can now dispense; but while we closely study his life, some of the old
-misconceptions as to his character fall away. He was evidently not
-the grim and crafty ecclesiastic whom in our childish days we used to
-fancy him. On the contrary, with all his enthusiasm for monkhood, his
-influence was in fact a moderating one on the party of monastic reform.
-Far from being of a cruel nature, he seems, from such indications as
-are furnished us, to have been a man of genial and lovable disposition.
-He is now generally regarded as a great administrator, and a man of
-wide and statesmanlike views; though, as was before remarked, strict
-proof of this has hardly yet been adduced. But he seems also to have
-been through life a man of nervous, perhaps even of hysterical,
-temperament, renowned and envied for his power of shedding copious
-floods of tears; a man who saw visions and dreamed dreams; and, above
-all, a man who believed himself to be engaged in a perpetual personal
-encounter with the Prince of Darkness, who was to him as real and
-familiar a presence as the ealdorman of Mercia or the _canonici_ of
-Glastonbury.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Before entering on that dreary period of Danish desolation which now
-lies before us it will be well to say something as to certain events
-which had been happening in France, Denmark and Norway, and which
-were about to exercise an enormous influence on the next stages of
-development of the English nation. The dukes of Normandy, the French
-kings of the race of Capet, the Angevin ancestors of our Plantagenet
-monarchs, all date their origin, or at least their greatness, from
-the tenth century, from the period between the death of Alfred and
-the accession of Ethelred. It is necessary also to take note of
-the immediate ancestors of the Danish kings who were about to make
-themselves actual sovereigns of England.
-
-The Scandinavian invasions, which tended indirectly towards the
-consolidation of England, wrought powerfully towards the disintegration
-of the Frankish empire. The ignominious treaty which the last emperor
-of the direct line of Charlemagne, his great grandson Charles the Fat,
-made with the Danes to induce them to desist from the siege of Paris,
-and which had to be paid for by a large ransom, was one of the causes
-which led to his deposition from the imperial throne (887). A younger
-branch of the Carolingian house continued for just a century longer to
-wear the title of Kings of Francia, but their personal domain became
-gradually restricted to a little tract of territory surrounding the
-city of Laon, and they were ever more overshadowed by the greatness of
-the family of Robert, rightly called the Strong, who, though himself a
-Saxon alien of somewhat obscure origin, had shown conspicuous valour
-in the Danish wars, and whose two sons, Odo and Robert, both crowned
-as Kings of France, were the heroes of the mighty siege of Paris. For
-thirty-three years (923–56) Hugh the Great, son of this second Robert
-and grandson of the first, was far the most powerful man in France:
-Duke of Francia, Burgundy and Aquitaine, Count of Paris and Orleans,
-Lay Abbot of St. Martin of Tours. But though a kingmaker, son and
-nephew of kings, he always refused to be king himself. His son, Hugh
-Capet, more ambitious or less scrupulous, in 987 pushed aside the
-last powerless descendant of Charlemagne, and ascended that glorious
-throne which was uninterruptedly occupied by his descendants, Valois,
-Plantagenet, Bourbon, till the awful day of August, 1792, when the
-Swiss Guards fell fighting in front of the Tuilleries.
-
-The Norman dukes, who also in this tenth century climbed up into
-all but regal state, bore an important part in this revolution. The
-hitherto received story of the settlement of the Northmen under their
-leader Rolf or Rollo in the fair province to which they gave their
-name has been subjected of late to much adverse criticism,[188] and
-has been so seriously shaken that hardly anything but the bare fact
-survives indubitable, that there was such a settlement in the early
-part of the tenth century; that either in 911 or, as is rather more
-probable, in 921, Rolf “commended” himself to the French king Charles
-the Simple; and that he became his “man” in return for the cession of
-a large district on the Lower Seine. This transaction resembled in
-some respects the arrangement made a generation before, between Alfred
-and Guthrum. It was the surrender of part of the kingdom to ensure the
-safety of the remainder, the change of a pertinacious enemy into a
-fairly faithful friend. The cession of Normandy to Rolf was, however,
-in some ways a more signal success than Alfred’s cession of East Anglia
-to Guthrum. Though the Frankish historians persisted for generations in
-calling Rolf’s people pirates, the new-comers soon assimilated all and
-more than all the civilisation of their Frankish neighbours; and Norman
-literature, Norman chivalry, Norman architecture became the envy of
-Europe.
-
-On Rolf’s death or abdication in 927 his son, William Longsword, became
-duke and reigned for fifteen years. He was a man of keen and polished
-intellect, with many noble, even with some holy, aspirations, but with
-a strange duality in his nature, perhaps the result of the mingled
-strain of Viking and Romanised Frank that was in his blood, for his
-mother is said to have been a Frankish lady of noble birth. A conflict
-had begun between two sections of his subjects, between the men of
-Rouen and its neighbourhood, who were fast becoming Frenchmen, and
-the men of the district round Bayeux, who remained obstinate Danes;
-and in this conflict William veered first to one side, then to the
-other. Moreover in the confused welter of French politics he played
-an eminently inconsistent and unwise part, showing that amidst the
-intriguing, grasping but adroit counts of Northern Gaul he never felt
-himself completely at home, but was uneasily conscious that he was
-still looked upon by them as _dux piratarum_. He would fain have been
-faithful to the royal line, to which his father owed his legalised
-position in the country; and in 936 he heartily co-operated with Hugh
-the Great in bringing back Athelstan’s nephew, Louis IV. d’Outremer,
-from his English exile and crowning him king; but, changeable as
-a weather-cock, he was almost as often found among the enemies
-of Louis IV. as in the ranks of his friends. Unfaithfulness begat
-unfaithfulness; the man who had been on each side in every quarrel
-made himself enemies all round, and in 942, having been treacherously
-invited to a conference on an island in the Somme, he was there foully
-murdered by a band of noble conspirators, among whom we regret to find
-Arnulf of Flanders, grandson of our own Alfred, first and foremost.
-
-On the death of William Longsword, his little son Richard, though
-not born in lawful wedlock--this was almost the rule in the Norman
-line--was unanimously accepted as his successor. The boy, only ten
-years old, was soon plunged into a whirlpool of troubles, from
-which even his father’s old and faithful counsellors could hardly
-have extricated him, had he not himself shown that cool, patient,
-self-sustained courage which earned for him his historical surname,
-“the Fearless”. Though the Norman historians may have somewhat
-embroidered the romantic history of his captivity and escape, there can
-be little doubt that two dangerous neighbours, King Louis IV. and Count
-Hugh the Great, coveted the orphan boy’s inheritance; nor that, but for
-the loyalty of the Norman warriors to the son of their dead chieftain,
-and the astute management of two or three of his father’s old friends,
-they would have succeeded in making it their own. Soon after the death
-of William Longsword King Louis came to Rouen, ostensibly as the
-friend and protector of the little duke. He seems, however, to have
-practically taken the government of the country into his own hands,
-while the boy Richard, who was transferred to the court of Laon “that
-he might be there educated as beseemed a Christian prince,” found the
-school of knighthood every day becoming more like a prison. However,
-Richard’s faithful guardian, Osmund, succeeded in smuggling him out
-of the castle, according to the legend, “in a truss of hay”. The
-Normans, tired of the financial exactions of the ministers of Louis,
-rose in open revolt and gathered round their just recovered prince; the
-invasion of Louis with a formidable army was neutralised by that of
-Harold, a chieftain from Scandinavia, who, in 945, on the urgent appeal
-of Richard came to the help of his brother-Northmen. A battle followed,
-the battle of the Dive, in which Louis was utterly defeated, and he was
-soon after taken prisoner. Thus were the tables now turned, Louis who
-was of late the jailer being now the captive; nor did he regain his
-liberty till he had surrendered the rock fortress of Laon, almost his
-last remaining possession, to the omnivorous Count Hugh the Great, and
-had--so say the Norman writers--formally released Duke Richard from all
-ties of feudal dependence. Whether this be literally true or not, there
-is no doubt that Richard “commended” himself to the count of Paris.
-Thus even before Hugh Capet became King of France, the duke of Normandy
-was already his most powerful vassal. This fact, coupled with the
-steady and effectual help which Richard gave to the younger Hugh in his
-patient upward progress to the throne, deserves to be remembered when
-in later ages we have to deal with the relations, more often hostile
-than friendly, between the Norman-English vassal and the French lord
-paramount.
-
-At the period which we have reached in English history, the date of
-the death of Dunstan (988), Richard the Fearless was a middle-aged man
-of fifty-five years. He had been reigning for forty-five years, and
-was the father of a numerous progeny--not born in wedlock--by a Danish
-woman named Gunnor, whom he married after the death of his lawful wife
-Emma, sister of Hugh Capet. His marriage with Emma was childless. In
-the year 996 he died and was succeeded by his son Richard the Good.
-
- * * * * *
-
-The origin of the house, which in after ages bore the name of
-Plantagenet and which held in the tenth century the countship of Anjou,
-is hidden in clouds of legend; but the legend itself does not dare to
-say that their forebears were always noble, nor to assign to them, as
-to so many of their princely contemporaries, a descent from the great
-Emperor Charles. The legendary ancestor of the Counts of Anjou is a
-certain Tortulf or Tertullus, a Breton forester to whom a doubtful
-Carolingian king, probably Charles the Bald, is said to have assigned
-a woodland district known as the Blackbird’s Nest (Nid de Merle), on
-condition of repelling the Danish attacks on the valley of the Loire.
-The special interest attaching to the history of the Angevin counts,
-in addition to the fact that they were the ancestors of so many of
-our English sovereigns, lies in the tenacity of purpose with which
-they pursued their policy of aggrandisement, gradually converting
-their little marchland on the east of Brittany, a small and precarious
-possession, into an extensive and powerful state in one of the fairest
-regions of France. With their Breton neighbours on the west, with Maine
-and Normandy on the north, they were frequently at war, but their
-most bitter and enduring conflicts were with the Counts of Blois on
-the east, and it was at their expense that the most important of the
-Angevin conquests was effected. This is a fact which it will be well to
-bear in mind when we find Henry of Anjou and Stephen of Blois, heirs of
-a feud which had already lasted in France for two centuries, contending
-on English soil for the crown of England.
-
- * * * * *
-
-The history of Denmark during the first century and a half of the
-Viking raids is involved in great obscurity; but about the time when
-Edward the Elder was reigning in England we emerge into clearer light,
-and find a king named Gorm the Old reigning over a united Denmark,
-with, however, some obligations of vassalage towards the German king,
-Henry the Saxon. On his death or abdication towards the middle of the
-tenth century began the long and prosperous reign of Harold Blaatand
-(Blue-Tooth), which lasted for about fifty years and was the great
-period of consolidation for the Danish kingdom. In 977 Harold, in
-conjunction with two Norwegian allies, made an expedition to Norway by
-which he obtained possession of a considerable part of that country and
-acquired a sort of feudal supremacy over the whole. In his relations
-with the German emperors Harold was less fortunate. He was apparently
-compelled to submit to Otto I., and as one of the conditions of peace,
-he and his son Sweyn were forced to receive Christian baptism. The
-conversion of the son at any rate was not sincere, and dissensions
-broke out between him and his father. The old king was defeated and
-fled the country. He was restored for a short time, again attacked by
-Sweyn, and died of his wounds received in battle.
-
-Thus, in the fourteenth year of Ethelred’s reign, the throne of Denmark
-was occupied by the stern pagan Swegen or Sweyn. No tenderness will
-he show to Christian churches or monasteries in any land that he may
-invade; and any king or people that shall do him wrong may expect to
-receive terrible retribution.
-
-The early, doubtless in large measure legendary, history of Norway,
-as told in the _Heimskringla Saga_, is full of romantic interest, but
-is beside our present purpose. The great unifier of the Norwegian
-kingdom was Harold Fair-hair, whose long reign ended before the
-middle of the tenth century. In the eleventh year of his age he found
-himself lord of a small kingdom between Lake Wener and the Dovrefield
-Mountains. When he came to manhood he wooed the fair Gytha for his
-wife, but the damsel declared that she would marry no man who did
-not rule the whole of Norway, as Gorm ruled all Denmark and Eric
-the whole of Sweden. Hereupon Harold, having vowed not to cut his
-hair till he had accomplished the prescribed task, began a series of
-expeditions northwards, which did in the course of years make him
-master of the whole of what we now call Norway. He married Gytha,
-but she was only one of many wives and concubines by whom he begat
-countless children, whose wars and alliances, whose rivalries and
-reconciliations, fill Norwegian history in the tenth century as English
-history in the fifteenth is filled by the broils of the Plantagenets.
-This is that Harold who sent the infant Hakon to be educated at the
-court of Athelstan; and Hakon, as has been said, having been educated
-by his great foster-father in the Christian religion and trained in
-all arts that became a Saxon Etheling, went back to his fatherland,
-reigned there after his father’s death as Hakon the Good, and vainly
-endeavoured to Christianise his people. Another Harold and another
-Hakon followed in quick succession, sometimes owning, sometimes
-rejecting, the over-lordship of Denmark. At the period which we have
-now reached, the rising star is that of Olaf Tryggvason, great-grandson
-of Fair-hair, not yet king of Norway but a great and popular Viking,
-whose name will be heard with terror in Essex and in Kent, in Sussex
-and in Hampshire.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXII.
-
-ETHELRED THE REDELESS.
-
-
-The story of the long reign of Ethelred consists of little else than
-the details of Danish invasions, large payments of ransom to the
-raiders, and the king’s dealings with the Dukes of Normandy, at whose
-court he was at last obliged to take refuge.
-
-Though many historical verdicts have been reversed in our day, Ethelred
-the Redeless, the man devoid of counsel--this rather than “the Unready”
-is the best translation of his distinguishing epithet--still remains
-unchampioned under the stigma of incompetence as great as was ever
-displayed by any occupant of the English throne. When we read the
-record of his disastrous reign, when we see how systematically he left
-undone the things which he ought to have done, and did, with fitful
-and foolish energy, the things which he ought not to have done, we
-are inclined to ask, “Was this man bereft of reason?” If he had been
-absolutely insane we should probably have had a distinct statement
-to that effect in the Chronicle, but it may, perhaps, be suggested
-that there was some hereditary weakness in his family which in his
-case affected the fibre of his brain. Royal families not renewed by
-any admixture of plebeian blood have sometimes shown a tendency to
-become worn out. We must remember that the descendants of Cerdic had
-now been reigning for five hundred years. As compared with the young
-and _parvenus_ dynasties which were coming up into power from the
-ranks of sailors and huntsmen and tillers of the soil; as compared
-with the Norman dukes, the Capetians and the Angevins, the Kings
-of Wessex were an old and apparently a weakening stock. There was
-certainly brain-power enough in an Alfred, an Edward and an Athelstan,
-but perhaps even with them physical hardly kept pace with mental
-energy. Alfred the Great was a life-long sufferer from disease. If
-he and his son completed each his half century of life, that was more
-than was attained by most of their immediate descendants. Athelstan
-lived but to the age of forty-six; Edred, a chronic invalid, died at
-thirty; Edwy probably under twenty; even Edgar, whose reign seemed a
-long one, at thirty-two. Edmund and Edward the Martyr died violent
-deaths, and therefore they do not come into this calculation. Ethelred
-himself, though he lived long enough to inflict untold misfortunes
-on his country, died at the age of forty-eight. All this looks like
-a decay of physical power in the house of Cerdic, which may in some
-degree account for the fatal “redelessness” of Ethelred. It is true
-that there was a revival of the old heroic energy in his son Edmund
-Ironside, but even that is coupled with a very short life (we cannot
-be sure that his death was due to foul play); and in his half-brother,
-Edward the Confessor, though he lived to the age of sixty-two, there is
-a sort of anæmic saintliness which marks him out as the fitting son,
-intellectually though not morally, of his “redeless” father.
-
-The story of the reign of Ethelred is given us in the Chronicle with
-a minuteness of detail such as we have not found there since the days
-of Alfred. It is evidently the work of a contemporary, of one who
-saw and groaned over the calamities of his people, and who was moved
-to passionate indignation by the mingled folly and wickedness of the
-rulers of the land. This part of the Chronicle is then a document of
-the highest value for the historian, and yet it is one which requires
-to be used with some caution on account of the motive by which it is
-unconsciously inspired. That motive is the strong tendency which always
-leads a beaten army or a beaten nation to argue that the enemy did
-not fight fairly, or that “the pass was sold” to them by some traitor
-in the camp. It is quite possible that all the accusations brought by
-the chronicler are true, especially that the inexplicable treasons
-of Elfric and Edric were as monstrous as he describes them; but it
-is also possible that they may have been magnified by a patriotic
-scribe, looking round for some scapegoat to bear his people’s sins;
-and in any event what we have to remember is that we are here reading
-what are virtually the articles of an opposition journalist. It is
-just possible, therefore, though hardly probable, that in some cases
-Ethelred’s ministers and generals, or even Ethelred himself, if they
-could be heard in their own defence, might somewhat mitigate the
-severity of the sentence passed upon them. A few of these criticisms
-are here inserted, but even these will hardly give a sufficient idea
-of the tone of condemnation which pervades the whole long reign of
-Ethelred in the pages of the Chronicle.[189]
-
-998. “The Danes came to the mouth of the Frome and ravaged Dorset at
-their will. The _fyrd_ was often gathered together against them, but
-as soon as they should have all got together, then ever for some cause
-was flight determined on, and so the Danes in the end always got the
-victory. So they quartered themselves for the second time in the Isle
-of Wight, drawing their provisions from Hampshire and Sussex.”
-
-999. “The army again came round into the Thames and moved thence up
-the Medway to Rochester. Then came the Kentish _fyrd_ against them and
-there were they firmly locked in fight. But, alas! the Kentish men too
-quickly gave way and fled, because they were not supported as they
-ought to have been. Thus the Danes held the place of slaughter, and
-took horse and rode far and wide as they chose, and ravaged well-nigh
-the whole of West Kent. Then the king took counsel with his _witan_,
-and decided that they must go against the enemy with ship-_fyrd_ and
-also with land-_fyrd_. But when the ships were ready, then some one
-delayed from day to day and harassed the poor folk who were on board
-the ships, and ever, when things should have been forwarder they were
-later, from one time to another, and so they let the army of their
-enemies grow, and they were always retiring from the sea and the
-Danes were ever following hard after them. Thus at the end the great
-ship-_fyrd_ accomplished nothing but oppression of the people and waste
-of money and the emboldening of their foes.”
-
-1006. “The Danish fleet came to Sandwich, and the crews did as they had
-ever done, harrying, burning, murdering wheresoever they went. Then the
-king called out all the people of Wessex and Mercia, and they lay out
-all the autumn, arrayed against the enemy, but all availed nothing as
-so often before; for in spite of all this the Danish army marched just
-where they pleased, and the _fyrd_ itself did the country folk every
-harm, while neither the home army (_inn-here_) nor the foreign army
-(_ut-here_) did them any good. As soon as the weather grew wintry, the
-_fyrd_ went home, and the Danish army after Martinmas, November 11,
-came to their resting-place in the Isle of Wight and helped themselves
-to all that they wanted from every quarter. Then in mid-winter they
-sallied forth through Hants and Berks to their comfortable quarters at
-Reading, and there did as they pleased, kindling their beacons [blazing
-villages] wherever they went. Thus fared they to Wallingford which they
-burned down, and they then went along Ashdown to Cwichelms-law,[190]
-and there abode, out of pure bravado, because it had been often said
-that if once they got to Cwichelms-law they would never get back to the
-sea. They then went home by another way. The _fyrd_ was assembled at
-Cynete (?), and they there joined battle, but soon was that [English]
-army put to flight, and afterwards they carried their booty down to
-the sea. Then might the people of Winchester see the invading army,
-insolent and fearless, marching past their gates to the sea; and they
-spread over fifty miles from the sea, gathering food and treasure.”
-
-It would be tedious to follow the chronicler’s example and relate in
-detail all the events of these successive raids, which recur with
-melancholy monotony through thirty years. The reader is therefore
-referred to the accompanying table for the list of the districts
-successively ravaged by the invaders.
-
- Year.
- 982 Portland, by three ships’ crews landing in Dorsetshire.
- (London burnt; possibly an accidental fire.)
-
- 988 Watchet in Somerset. Goda, a Devonshire thegn slain.
-
- 991 Ipswich ravaged. Battle of Maldon. Brihtnoth slain. First
- payment of _gafol_ (tribute) to the Danes.
-
- 993 Bamburgh stormed. Great booty taken. Both banks of the Humber
- ravaged.
-
- 994 Brave defence of London, attacked by Olaf and Sweyn. Essex,
- Kent, Sussex, Hampshire. Second payment of _gafol_.
-
- 997 Cornwall, Devon, Wales, Watchet, Lydford, Tavistock.
-
- 998 Mouth of the Frome, Dorset, Isle of Wight. Sussex and Hants
- forced to supply provisions.
-
- 999 Rochester: Kent.
-
- 1001 Battle at Alton in Hampshire. Devonshire. Taunton burnt.
- Exmouth defended. Penhoe and Clist (in Devon). Bishops
- Waltham in Hampshire burnt.
-
- 1002 Marriage of Ethelred with Emma of Normandy. Massacre of St.
- Brice’s Day. Third payment of _gafol_.
-
- 1003 Exeter stormed and looted. Wilton, Sarum.
-
- 1004 Norwich, Thetford. Brave defence of Norfolk by Ulfkytel.
-
- 1005 Great famine throughout England.
-
- 1006 Sandwich, Isle of Wight, Reading, Wallingford, Cwichelms-law.
-
- 1007 Fourth payment of _gafol_.
-
- 1008 Ships ordered to be built all over England.
-
- 1009 Failure of the new navy. Canterbury, Isle of Wight, Sussex,
- Hants, Berks, both banks of the Thames, Oxford. London vainly
- attacked. Local payment of _gafol_ by East Kent.
-
- 1010 Ipswich, Thetford, Cambridge, Oxfordshire, Bucks, Bedford,
- Tempsford (in Bedfordshire), Northampton, Canning Marsh (in
- Somerset).
-
- 1011 Canterbury.
-
- 1012 Martyrdom of Archbishop Alphege. Fifth payment of _gafol_.
-
- 1013 Mouth of the Humber, Gainsborough. King Sweyn at Sandwich.
- Northumbria and all the country north of Watling Street
- submit to him. Oxford, Winchester, Wallingford, Bath, Devon
- and London submit to Sweyn. Flight of Ethelred and his family
- to Normandy.
-
- 1014 Death of Sweyn (Feb. 3), Ethelred recalled. Canute, son of
- Sweyn, King of the Danes, occupies Lindsey. Mutilation of
- Northumbrian hostages by Canute. Sixth payment of _gafol_.
-
- 1015 Dorset, Wilts, Somerset ravaged.
-
- 1016 Warwickshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire;
- along the fens to Stamford. Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire,
- York, submission of Northumbria, London repeatedly attacked.
- Death of Ethelred (April 23). Edmund Ironside king. Battle
- of Assandune. The kingdom divided between Canute and Edmund.
- Death of Edmund Ironside (Nov. 30). Canute sole king.
-
-Dreary and depressing as is the general course of the narrative of
-these successive invasions, we have in the early years of the war, not
-from the chronicler but from an unknown contemporary poet, a graphic
-account of a battle in which the Northmen were valiantly met and all
-but defeated. The hero of the battle was Brihtnoth, ealdorman of Essex,
-brother-in-law of the half-king Athelstan, and champion of the monks
-against Elfhere of Mercia. The scene was laid at Maldon in Essex,
-where the dark stream of the Blackwater begins to discharge itself
-into its broad tidal estuary. The date was 991, the thirteenth year of
-Ethelred. The poet brings before us the ealdorman Brihtnoth arraying
-his men-at-arms on the shore of the Blackwater. He rides up and down
-their ranks, bidding them hold their shields with firm grasp and fear
-naught. He alights from his horse and stands beside “his friends, his
-own hearth-warriors,” of whose staunch service he has often made proof.
-While he is standing on the bank a Viking herald shouts forth his
-threatful message: “The bold sailors have sent me to thee to say that
-thou must forthwith send to them a ransom of golden rings. It will be
-for your profit by this payment to forego the flight of spears; and you
-shall then have peace with the men of the sea.” At this Earl Brihtnoth
-gripped tight his shield and shook his slender ashen spear and poured
-forth his words of wrath: “The tribute we will give you is naught but
-flying spears, the edge of deadly iron, the old and trusted sword. Go
-back and tell the folk who sent thee, that here stands an earl with his
-warriors who will defend this country, the land of noble Ethelred, to
-the uttermost. Now that you have visited our land you shall not depart
-all softly to your homes bearing no marks of battle on your bodies.
-Rather shall point and edge settle our differences: grim will be the
-sword-play ere we pay you tribute.”
-
-After this interchange of defiances, the troops on either side were
-drawn up in battle array, but it was some hours before they could close
-in conflict. The estuary of the Blackwater was still filled by the
-flowing tide, and one bridge over the narrower part of the stream, by
-which the enemy might have crossed, was valiantly defended by three
-Saxons. “Finding these bridge warders all too bitter,” the Northmen
-moved up stream to find a ford. The earl, in the pride of his soul,
-allowed many of the hateful people to come to land, shouting aloud:
-“Listen, warriors! Free space is now granted you to come quickly to us.
-Come as warriors to the war. God only knows who shall hold the field of
-slaughter.” “The wolves of rapine” tramped through the water, holding
-high their shields over their heads, and found, when they reached
-the shore, Earl Brihtnoth waiting to receive them. He had bidden his
-men “to weave the war-hedge with their shields” (that is to make the
-shield-wall) and hold it firmly against the foe. Then rose high the war
-of battle, the ravens gathered together at the sound, and with them
-came the eagle, greedy for his prey.
-
-With true Homeric fervour the poet describes the incidents of the
-battle that followed. Brihtnoth was wounded early in the fight by the
-spear of a Viking, but succeeded in giving his antagonist a death-wound
-by his javelin.
-
- Blithe was then the chieftain,
- Laughed the moody man: “I thank Thee, Lord of heaven,
- For this glorious day’s work Thou to me hast given”.
-
-Soon, however, he received another more deadly wound from a Norse
-arrow, and though for a little space he still fought on, ere long “to
-earth fell the golden-hilted sword, nor might he longer hold the hard
-knife or wield the well-loved weapon”. But still the hoary warrior bade
-the youths fight on and show a bold front to the foe, and as he lay he
-looked toward heaven and said:--
-
- Thankful I remember, Lord of Nations,
- All the joys I in this world have tasted.
- Now this one thing do I crave in dying
- From Thy hands, O merciful Creator!--
- That Thy grace be on my parting spirit,
- That my soul in peace to Thee may journey,
- To Thy presence, O Thou Lord of Angels,
- And that of the Hell-crew none may harm her.
-
-Uttering these words he died, and his corpse was barbarously hacked
-by the bands of the heathen. Soon were his two squires, Elfnoth and
-Wulfmaer, lying dead beside him, having freely given their lives for
-their lord. And now was seen the difference between the brave men and
-the infamous (_nithings_). Now fled from the battle those who loved
-it not. First in flight was Godric, to whom his good lord had in past
-days given many a noble steed, but who now leapt on his master’s horse
-and fled fast from the battle, spreading panic among the soldiers,
-who thought when they saw the well-known steed that it was Brihtnoth
-himself who was thus fleeing from the encounter. Offa, a thegn of
-Brihtnoth, upon whom the command of the remnant of the army seems now
-to have devolved, had said only the day before when they were holding
-_gemot_ (whereat Godric had probably been speaking loud and boastful
-words):--
-
- Many speak valiant words in council hall,
- Who in the time of need from honour fall.
-
-And now Godric’s cowardice made vain his words. Then did a young
-warrior named Elfwine, grandson of an ealdorman of Mercia, speak
-heart-cheering words to his fellows, reminding them of all the brave
-old times that they had shared together in Brihtnoth’s banquet-hall,
-drinking mead and talking of hard-won victories.
-
- Now shall not the brave thegns, my countrymen, upbraid me,
- That I from this day’s fighting have shamefully departed,
- And sought my home unwounded, when there my chieftain lieth,
- Hacked by the hostile broadswords. That were my worst disaster.
- Alas! that there my kinsman, my dead lord, lies before me.
- Then many of the sailor host Offa laid low in battle,
- But all too soon the chieftain brave himself received his
- death-blow,
- Redeeming thus the promise he to his lord had given,
- “Either we twain to castle triumphant ride together
- Safe to our homes, or elsewise we both in battle perish,
- Sore wounded, life out-bleeding upon the field of slaughter”.
- So lay the noble Offa all thegn-like by his master.
-
-The poem both begins and ends abruptly, and is evidently a fragment,
-but we know from the Chronicle that the valour of Brihtnoth’s henchmen
-was vain to restore the battle, and that Maldon was a Northmen’s
-victory. The chief interest of the poem lies in the fact that it so
-vividly brings before us the devotion of the thegns to their “dear
-lord” (_wine drihten_), reminding us forcibly of the words of Tacitus
-concerning the ancestors of these men nine centuries before. “The man
-is disgraced for the rest of his life who leaves the battle-field
-having survived his chief. The chiefs fight for victory, the
-‘companions’ for their chief.” Also, unfortunately, the poet reveals
-to us the existence of treachery and cowardice in the Saxon host.
-We shall soon come upon notorious instances of men who imitated the
-panic-breeding flight of the base Godric rather than the noble stand of
-Brihtnoth and his henchmen.
-
-We may gather from the lay of Brihtnoth some notions of the manner
-of fighting in use among the Saxons. The battle was evidently fought
-on foot, horses being merely used to convey some of the warriors to
-the field of battle. The chief weapon seems to be the spear (_gar_
-or _franca_), and next to it the dart (_dareth_), though of course
-the sword (_sweord_) and dagger or knife (_mece_) are also used. The
-use of the bow and arrow (_boga_ and _flan_) seems still to be rather
-exceptional, at any rate on the Saxon side. The chief arms of defence
-are the _byrne_ or ringed coat of mail and the _bord_ or shield made
-of linden wood. To “weave the war-hedge” (_wyrcan thone wighagan_)
-with closely interlocked shields is the first duty of an army on the
-defensive; to break the shield-wall (_brecan thone bordweall_) is the
-highest act of assailant valour.
-
- * * * * *
-
-At the outset of the battle of Maldon we heard the messenger of “the
-sea men” suggesting the terms on which they were ready to sell an
-ignominious immunity from ravage. It was in 991, the very year of that
-battle, that the first payment of what is generally called Danegeld
-was made.[191] “And in that year,” says the chronicler, “it was first
-decided that men should pay _gafol_ to the Danish men on account of the
-many terrible things which they wrought on the sea coast. That was at
-first 10,000 pounds. This was the counsel of Archbishop Siric” (Sigeric
-of Canterbury, 990–94).[192] Of course this easy and ignominious remedy
-for the miseries inflicted by the invaders was only a palliative, not a
-cure, and the short breathing-time purchased by the payment not having
-been utilised as it was by Alfred to put the country in a better state
-of defence, when the importunate beggars came again, they had to be
-bought off at a higher figure. The following table shows the dates and
-amounts of the successive payments of _gafol_:--
-
- 991 | First payment | 10,000 pounds (of silver)
- 994 | Second „ | 16,000
- 1002 | Third „ | 24,000
- 1007 | Fourth „ | 36,000 (in two MSS. 30,000)
- 1009 | Local payment, East Kent | 3,000
- 1012 | Fifth „ | 48,000
- 1014 | Sixth „ | 21,000
- |--------
- | 158,000 pounds of silver.
- |--------
-
-This sum, if we take the pound weight of silver at fifty-four
-shillings, would be equivalent in intrinsic value to £426,600 sterling,
-or if we take the “purchasing power” of money in the tenth century at
-twenty times its present amount, it would be equivalent to a drain of
-£8,532,000 from a thinly peopled and exhausted country. Probably, as
-the drain went on, the purchasing power of the silver that remained
-would be enormously increased and the above estimate may therefore
-be too small. The chronicler in most cases simply records the fact
-that the king and his _witan_ promised _gafol_ to the army (sometimes
-_gafol_ and food) on condition that they should cease from evil; but
-under the year 1011, after enumerating the districts of England,
-equivalent to sixteen of our present counties, all of which they had
-ravaged in that one year, he adds: “All these misfortunes befel us
-through evil counsel (_un-raed_) because people did not choose either
-to pay them _gafol_ in time or else to fight with them; but when they
-had done about as much evil as they could possibly do, then people made
-truce and peace with them.... And nevertheless for all this truce and
-peace and payment of _gafol_, they went everywhere in bands and harried
-the country and captured and slew our poor people.”
-
-In order to meet these terrible demands upon the treasury, Ethelred
-imposed the tax called Danegeld, which was possibly the first tax paid
-in money and not in kind. The amount of this tax in Saxon times does
-not seem to be clearly stated. Abolished by Edward the Confessor in
-1052, it was revived and made much more oppressive by the Conqueror
-long after all fear of Danish invasion had ceased, and though its
-discontinuance was frequently talked of, it does not finally disappear
-from the treasury rolls till the year 1163.[193] So persistent is the
-clutch of the tax-gatherer when he has once fastened his claws upon his
-victim.
-
- * * * * *
-
-In 992 we have the first of the long series of “inexplicable
-treasons”[194] of Elfric, ealdorman of Hampshire and Berkshire. The
-king and all his _witan_ had decided that all the ships that were of
-any value should be collected in London. The command of this naval
-armament was entrusted to Ealdorman Elfric, with three colleagues,
-two of whom were bishops, and they were ordered to intercept the
-invading host while still upon the high seas. But Elfric gave private
-warning to the Danish leaders, and on the evening before the day on
-which the battle was to have been fought, he stole away by himself
-from the _fyrd_, to his great disgrace. The result was that the Danish
-fleet escaped, all save one ship, the crew of which was slain; and
-the Danes in their turn caught the ships of East Anglia and London at
-a disadvantage, and wrought a mighty slaughter among them, capturing
-the very ship, all armed and equipped, in which Elfric had been. As
-a punishment apparently either for this or for yet another treason,
-his son Elfgar was next year blinded by order of the king. And yet
-ten years later (1003), when a great _fyrd_ had been collected out of
-Wiltshire and Hampshire, Ealdorman Elfric was again placed in command
-of it. “But,” says the chronicler, “he was again at his old tricks. As
-soon as the two armies were so near together that they could look into
-one another’s faces, he feigned himself sick and began retching and
-spewing, and called out that he was suddenly taken ill. Thus did he
-betray the folk that he should have led to battle. For when the general
-is cowardly, then is all the army terribly hindered.” This is the last
-time that Elfric is mentioned as in command of an army; but we hear of
-him (or another ealdorman of the same name) thirteen years later (1016)
-falling at the battle of Assandune. We may, perhaps, doubt whether he
-was really a deep-dyed traitor or only a man of weakly and nervous
-constitution, unable to face “the flight of spears” and quite unfit to
-be put in command of the smallest detachment of soldiers.
-
-In 994 a united effort for the conquest of England was made by a
-Norwegian and a Danish chieftain. The Norwegian was Olaf Tryggvason,
-great grandson of Harold Fair-hair, hero of a hundred romantic stories,
-“fairest and strongest of all men and in prowess surpassing all men
-talked of by the Northmen”. He had already visited England as a foe and
-had borne a chief part in the battle of Maldon. The Dane was Sweyn, son
-of Harold Blue-tooth, whose early career has been already described.
-In the autumn of 994 the two comrades with ninety-four ships sailed up
-the Thames and fiercely attacked the city of London on September 8, the
-Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, thinking to set it on fire.
-“But there,” says the Chronicle, “God be thanked, they experienced
-more harm and mischief than they ever thought that any citizens should
-do unto them. For the holy mother of God showed her mild-heartedness
-unto those burghers and delivered them from their enemies.” The
-marauding bands then departed and “wrought the most ill that any man
-could do in burnings and harryings and man-slayings by the sea coast
-of Essex, in Kent, in Sussex and in Hampshire,” and after “they had
-worked indescribable evil,” the king and his _witan_ decided to make
-the second great _gafol_ payment of £16,000, and “the army” after
-once mustering at Southampton, was billeted through the whole land of
-Wessex while the silver was being collected. The terms of peace being
-thus settled, Ethelred sent a solemn embassage to Olaf, consisting of
-Elfheah and Ethelweard. Both these were in their different ways men
-worthy of note. Elfheah or Alphege, who was at this time bishop of
-Winchester, became twelve years later archbishop of Canterbury, and
-as we shall see suffered cruel martyrdom at the hands of the Danes.
-Ethelweard, an ealdorman of Wessex, seems to be clearly identified with
-the chronicler generally known as Ethelweard, who was of royal blood
-(being descended from Alfred’s elder brother, Ethelred I.), and whose
-turgid and obscure narrative occasionally sheds a glimmer of light
-on the dark places of Anglo-Saxon history. The English ambassadors
-conducted Olaf to Andover; and there he was led “with much worship”
-into the presence of Ethelred, who bestowed upon him kingly gifts and
-received him from the bishop’s hands, when the baptismal rite had been
-performed. Under the spell of these new religious influences, Olaf
-promised that “he would never again come against the English race in
-unfriendly guise,” a promise which, as the chronicler says, he well
-fulfilled. Next year (995) he made himself master of the Norwegian
-kingdom, and succeeded in inducing all the Norwegian chiefs, north and
-south, to become converts to Christianity. After a reign of five years
-full of romantic adventures,[195] the Norwegian hero fell in a great
-sea-fight against the combined forces of his former ally, Sweyn of
-Denmark, and his namesake, Olaf of Sweden. For fourteen years (1000–14)
-Norway lay under the yoke of the confederate kings. The increase of
-power thus obtained by Denmark may have had something to do with the
-success of Sweyn’s schemes for the conquest of England.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Powerless as Ethelred was to defend our island from her foes, he could
-at least imitate their ravages in that portion of it which was not
-under his immediate rule. “In the year 1000 he marched into Cumberland
-and harried very nearly the whole of it.” Even here, however, his
-unrivalled genius for failure showed itself. His ships--the remnant
-probably of those collected in the previous year--were to have met him
-at Chester and co-operated in his campaign. This they failed to do, but
-“they sailed to the Isle of Man and ravaged there”. These last words
-throw a little light on what is otherwise not only an obscure but an
-utterly purposeless proceeding. We know from other sources that Man was
-an island stronghold of the Norse pirates, and there are, as we have
-seen, indications that from thence a stream of Scandinavian settlers
-passed into Cumberland towards the close of the tenth century. It is
-true that Norse rather than Danish seems to have been the character of
-the settlement in the Isle of Man, but as the Scandinavian sea-rovers
-were still acting generally in concert against the English, this fact
-need not prevent us from seeing in this Cumbrian raid an act of energy
-on Ethelred’s part against the Danish invaders.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Two strangely contrasted events, a marriage and a massacre, fill up
-the record for 1002. There had been apparently some desultory warfare
-between Ethelred and Richard the Good, son of Richard the Fearless,
-duke of Normandy. An expedition against the Cotentin, the western
-horn of Normandy, had proved, like many of Ethelred’s undertakings,
-unsuccessful, and now the English king, his first wife being dead,
-in order to strengthen himself by a foreign alliance, sued for and
-obtained the hand of Richard’s sister Emma in marriage. The bride was
-brought over to England with much pomp in the spring of 1002 by the
-magnates of the realm who had been sent to escort her. An attempt was
-made to change her name to the Saxon Aelfgyfu (Elgiva), but the Norman
-“Emma” is that by which she has ever been known in history. She bore
-to Ethelred two sons, Alfred and Edward (the Confessor). Queen Emma,
-who was known as the “_gemma Normannorum_,” was probably beautiful
-after the fair type of her Scandinavian ancestors, but her character
-is not an attractive one, and indirectly her connexion with the royal
-family of Wessex wrought much harm to England. Henry of Huntingdon
-(writing of course after the Norman conquest) makes the extraordinary
-statement that “from this union of an English king with the daughter
-of a Norman duke, the Normans justly, according to the law of nations,
-challenged and obtained possession of the English land”. He goes on to
-say, however, that a certain man of God had prophesied that because
-of the enormous crimes of the English people, their addiction to
-murder, treason, drunkenness, and neglect of the house of the Lord, “an
-unlooked-for dominion should come upon them from France, and even the
-nation of the Scots, whom they held most vile, should also rule over
-them to their deserved confusion”.
-
-After narrating the payment of the third _gafol_ to the Danes (24,000
-pounds), the chronicler proceeds: “In that year the king ordered all
-the Danish men who were in England to be slain on St. Bricius’ Day,
-November 13, because the king was informed that they wished to plot
-against his life and afterwards against the lives of all his _witan_,
-and so to have the kingdom easily for themselves”. A most extraordinary
-statement is this, describing an event even more unintelligible than
-the other events in this inexplicable reign. The alleged murder of
-all Danish men reminds us of the Sicilian Vespers, but the historical
-parallel may be deceptive. The Chronicle speaks only of the murder of
-“Danish men”; the statements of later Chronicles extending the massacre
-to women and children are probably oratorical amplifications. Henry of
-Huntingdon gives us an interesting personal touch when he says: “In
-our boyhood we heard from some very ancient men that the aforesaid
-king sent letters to each city, according to which the English on the
-same day and hour, either hewed down the unsuspecting Danes with their
-swords or, having suddenly arrested them, burned them with fire”.
-Notwithstanding statements like this, it may be safely asserted that
-all the thousands of Danish men who were scattered over England, in
-the Danelaw and elsewhere, did _not_ perish on St. Brice’s Day. Nor is
-this probably the Chronicle’s meaning. We learn from another version
-of the Chronicle that in the previous year (1001) Pallig, whom we
-know to have been a Danish jarl and brother-in-law of King Sweyn,
-“fell off from Ethelred, contrary to all the assurances that he had
-given him, although the king had well gifted him with villages and
-gold and silver”; and that he had joined the Danes who were invading
-Devonshire. On the somewhat doubtful authority of William of Malmesbury
-we are assured that this Pallig, his wife and child were killed in
-the massacre. This may suggest to us that the real character of the
-event of St. Brice’s Day was a kind of _coup d’état_; the summary and
-treacherous execution of all the Danes who of recent years had flocked
-into Wessex and taken service in the court and camp of Ethelred. Even
-so, the deed was sufficiently atrocious, but not impossible, as the
-murder of all the Danes on English soil would certainly have been.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Passing over some important events, among them the brave defence of
-East Anglia by its ealdorman Ulfcytel (“No worse hand-play did the
-Danes ever meet with from Englishmen than that which Ulfcytel gave
-them”), we come to the year 1008, for which the Chronicle gives us
-the following important but perplexing entry: “Now the king bade that
-through all England men should regularly build ships, that is for 300
-hides ... and for 10 hides a skiff, and for 8 hides a helmet and coat
-of mail”.
-
-There is evidently something omitted in this sentence, and it is
-generally agreed that the “Worcester” version of the Chronicle
-which fills up the lacuna with the words “one great ship” has much
-to recommend it, though the scribe himself may not have understood
-correctly the meaning of the passage. We may perhaps draw from it this
-conclusion, that in each county every unit of three hundred hides was
-called upon to furnish one large warship; the owner of ten hides (1,200
-acres?) a light skiff not much bigger than a boat, the owner of eight
-hides (960 acres?) a helmet and a coat of mail. Whatever difficulty
-there may be in this obscure passage, it is interesting to note that
-we have here the origin of “ship-money”. The great case of Rex _v._
-Hampden in the Exchequer Chamber was connected by a distinct chain of
-causation with the Danish sea-rovers’ movements in the early years
-of the eleventh century. As usual, these large preparations came to
-nothing, although (says the chronicler) “as the books tell us, never in
-no king’s day were so many ships seen in England as were now gathered
-together at Sandwich”. But domestic dissension and one man’s treachery
-ruined all (1009).
-
-The new traitor who now emerges from obscurity, and for the next ten
-years exercises a malign influence on England’s fortunes, is Edric
-Streona, who was in 1007 set over Mercia as ealdorman. Florence
-of Worcester ascribes to him the murder of Elfhelm, ealdorman of
-Northumbria, in a forest near Shrewsbury, and thus draws his general
-character: “The aforesaid Edric, son of Ethelric, was a man of low
-origin, whose tongue had procured for him riches and rank, clever in
-wit, pleasant in speech, but one who surpassed all the men of his time
-in envy, faithlessness and cruelty”. We have here a more dangerous type
-of man than his predecessor Elfric; a man who will not be afraid to
-lead armies to battle, though it may be to their deliberately planned
-ruin; a man who will have the courage to plot and execute crimes which
-would have been too much for the delicate digestion of Elfric. Edric
-had a large band of brothers, who no doubt shared the profits and
-the enmities which attended his sudden elevation. One of these named
-Brihtric accused a nobleman named Child Wulfnoth to the king, evidently
-hoping to profit by the forfeiture of his estates. Thus driven into
-rebellion, Wulfnoth took to piracy, persuaded twenty ships’ crews out
-of the king’s fleet to join him, and ravaged the southern coast like a
-Dane. Brihtric with eighty ships went forth against him, boasting that
-he would bring back Wulfnoth, alive or dead, but he was overtaken by a
-terrible storm which battered and thrashed the ships and drove many of
-them on shore. These Brihtric burned; the others were with difficulty
-conveyed up the Thames to London. Thus, through the intrigues of one
-man, Edric’s brother, did the great naval force waste its energies on
-an inglorious civil war, “and we had not,” says the chronicler, “the
-happiness nor the honour that we hoped to derive from an efficient navy
-any more than in previous years”. Of course now, when “the immense
-hostile army came to Sandwich, there were no ships to meet it”. The
-Danes landed in Kent, besieged Canterbury, were bought off by a
-special local _gafol_ of 3,000 pounds, and marched on into Berkshire,
-harrying and burning. For once Ethelred showed some energy, made a
-levy _en masse_ of his people, outmarched the Danes and was on the
-point of cutting off their retreat to their ships. The English peasant
-soldiers of the _fyrd_ were keen to attack them and avenge the burning
-of their homesteads and the slaughter of their brethren, “but it was
-all hindered, now as ever, by Edric the ealdorman”. In November the
-invaders took up their winter quarters in Kent, drawing their supplies
-from the counties on both sides of the Thames, “and many a time they
-attacked the town of London. But God be thanked, she yet stands sound
-and well, and they have ever fared ill before her walls.”
-
- * * * * *
-
-The years 1011 and 1012 were made sadly memorable by the successful
-siege of Canterbury and the murder of its archbishop. The siege lasted
-from September 8 to 29, and it is hinted that it would not so soon have
-ended but for the treason of Elfmaer, Abbot of St. Augustine’s, whose
-life had once been saved by the archbishop whom he now betrayed. This
-archbishop was Elfheah or Alphege, whom we met with seventeen years
-before when he was sent, as bishop of Winchester, to negotiate with
-Olaf Tryggvason. He had been for six years archbishop of Canterbury,
-when he had to witness the capture of the hitherto inviolate city
-of St. Augustine by the pagans. Besides the archbishop, other great
-persons, a king’s reeve, a bishop and an abbess were taken prisoners,
-but these latter seem to have been allowed to ransom themselves. “Abbot
-Elfmaer”--significant entry--“was suffered to depart.” The Danes
-searched the city through and through; and the spoil collected and the
-ransoms paid doubtless made this raid one of the most profitable of
-their speculations. The archbishop, however, was a perplexing prize.
-His captors had formed extravagant ideas of what an archbishop’s ransom
-ought to be, and when they named their price, the archbishop would
-not hear of his flock being subjected for his sake to such a terrible
-exaction; and not only would do nothing himself, but positively forbade
-all the faithful to take any steps towards procuring his ransom.
-
-Seven months was the venerable captive kept in the Danish camp, while
-the fruitless negotiations went on. At last on April 19, 1012, when
-the Danes were all excited by the arrival of the largest _gafol_ that
-Ethelred had yet paid them, a _gafol_ amounting to 48,000 pounds weight
-of silver; and when their hearts were also merry with wine brought from
-the shores of the Mediterranean, the archbishop was brought forth from
-his prison. The rude tribunal before which he was brought bore a name
-long afterwards well known in England: it was called “the hustings”.
-The time was Saturday evening, the eve of the first Sunday after
-Easter; the scene strangely dissonant with the many peaceful vespers
-of the archbishop’s past. The drunken barbarians, singing perchance
-some of their fathers’ rude war-songs, began to pelt the aged prisoner
-with the bones left over from their banquet, with the skulls of the
-oxen which they had slaughtered. Even so in Valhalla, according to
-the Viking mythology, had the gods amused themselves by pelting the
-invulnerable Balder with stones and other missiles, until the blind
-Hoder, inspired by mischief-working Loki, hurled the fatal mistletoe,
-which alone had power to deprive him of life. The brutal game went on
-and the air was filled with the drunken laughter of the barbarians at
-the old man’s misery. At last one of their number named Thrum, who had
-been confirmed by the archbishop only the day before, with kind cruelty
-clave his head with a battle-axe. “He fell down dead with the blow and
-his holy blood was spilled upon the earth, but his saintly soul went
-forth into God’s kingdom.” The martyrdom, for such in truth it was,
-took place at Greenwich. Next day the barbarians suffered the saint’s
-body to be removed to London, where it was received with all reverence
-by the bishop and burghers of the city, as well as by the bishop of
-Dorchester, and by them deposited in St. Paul’s cathedral. “And
-there,” says the Chronicle, “does God now show forth the wonder-working
-power of the holy martyr.” The translation of the remains to Canterbury
-will be described in a future chapter. Under the altered form of
-Saint Alphege, the name of the murdered archbishop still appears in
-the calendar of the English Church, which commemorates the day of his
-martyrdom, April the 19th.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Up to this point the Danish invasions of this period have been mere
-plundering and blackmailing raids, apparently with no thought of
-permanent conquest. Had that been the aim of the sea-rovers, all this
-cruel burning and slaughtering would have been beside the mark: for why
-should a conqueror utterly ruin a land which he meant to rule? In 1013,
-however, a change came over the character of the invasions. They became
-part of a regular scheme of conquest; and the old Danish king who
-brought with him Canute,[196] his son, determined to make the country
-his own. Sweyn landed in the estuary of the Humber: Northumbria,
-Lindsey and the Five Boroughs submitted to him and gave him hostages,
-whom he sent to the ships to be kept under his son’s guardianship. He
-ordered the inhabitants to feed and mount his soldiers; he restored the
-full Danish dominion over all the country beyond the Watling Street as
-it existed in the darkest years of the ninth century. He then crossed
-the Watling Street, harrying the midland counties. Oxford submitted,
-so did Winchester. He marched against London, losing many of his
-foolhardy soldiers in crossing the Thames. London as usual made a brave
-defence. Ethelred was there, and with Ethelred a strange ally, none
-other than Thurkill the Dane who had commanded the invading army in
-1009. It was Thurkill’s men who had captured Canterbury and murderously
-pelted the holy Elfheah; but according to one contemporary authority
-Thurkill himself had tried to save him, offering the murderers all his
-treasures, “except only his ship,” if they would but be merciful.
-Possibly the remembrance of that scene, or some lessons in Christianity
-which he may have learned from the captive archbishop, induced him now
-to lower the Raven-banner and take service under Ethelred. Possibly,
-too, it was this notable defection which caused Sweyn to come over in
-person and pluck the ripe fruit, lest it should fall into the hands of
-one of his subjects.
-
-The Danish king next moved westward to Bath, and received the
-submission of that ancient city and of all the western thegns, each
-one of whom had to give hostages, who were sent like the others to the
-Humber to be kept under Canute’s guardianship. Even the brave citizens
-of London saw that it was useless further to prolong the contest.
-They submitted, gave hostages and joined with the rest of England in
-acknowledging Sweyn as “full king”. There are indications that this
-great revolution was prompted not merely by the desire to end in any
-manner the dreadful period of Danish ravagings, but also by utter
-disgust at the character of Ethelred, who seems to have been not merely
-incapable but also lustful and cruel. In the years which we have been
-traversing, there are some strange entries in the Chronicle recording
-executions, blindings, confiscations, no doubt inflicted at the command
-of Ethelred; and William of Malmesbury, in quoting a letter from
-Thurkill to Sweyn, makes him thus describe the condition of England and
-her king. “The land is a fair land and a rich, but the king snores.
-Devoted to women and wine, he thinks of everything rather than war, and
-this makes him hateful to his subjects and ridiculous to foreigners.
-The generals are all jealous of one another: the country-folk are weak,
-and fly from the field at the first crash of battle.” This letter is
-probably not authentic, but its words show what was the traditional
-character of “the redeless king”.
-
-Recognising that his sceptre was broken, Ethelred sent the Lady Emma
-and her two sons across the sea to her brother in Normandy. He himself
-lingered for a while, first on shipboard in the Thames; then in the
-Isle of Wight, where he seems to have spent his Christmas; and then
-he too escaped to “Richard’s Land,” as the chroniclers call the duchy
-of Normandy. Thus then had Sweyn, the heathen and the parricide, king
-of Denmark by inheritance and of England by conquest, reached the
-summit of his earthly ambition: and having reached it, he was speedily
-removed by death. According to the legend related by Symeon of Durham,
-his death was a punishment for his contemptuous behaviour towards St.
-Edmund of East Anglia. Often had he spoken in a disrespectful manner
-of this martyred king, declaring that his saintship was an idle tale;
-and, what was more serious, he had announced to the monks of St.
-Edmundsbury that unless by a certain day a heavy tax which he had laid
-upon their monastery was paid, he would march thither with his men,
-give the sanctuary to the flames and put its inmates to death with a
-variety of torments. On the very day before his threatened expedition
-he was sitting on his horse at Gainsborough surrounded by the armed
-assembly of his warriors. Suddenly he cried out, “Help me, comrades!
-help! yonder is Saint Edmund who is coming to slay me”. While he was
-thus speaking, an unseen hand transfixed him with a spear: he fell
-from his war-horse and died at nightfall in great agony. Such is the
-legend. The Chronicle records only the simple fact that “at Candlemas
-on February 3, 1014, Sweyn ended his days, and all the fleet chose Cnut
-for their king”. The dead monarch seems to have reigned as “full king”
-over England for barely a month after the flight of Ethelred. His death
-led to a sudden shifting of the scene.
-
- * * * * *
-
-“Then all the _witan_, lay and clerical, resolved that they would send
-for King Ethelred, and they said that no lord should be dearer to them
-than their natural born lord, if only he would govern more righteously
-than he had done aforetime. Then the king sent hither his son Edward
-with his messengers, and bade greeting to all his people, and said that
-he would be to them a gracious lord and would amend all the things of
-which they complained, and that everything which they had done or said
-against him should be forgiven, on condition that they would all firmly
-and loyally adhere to him. Thus was full friendship made fast between
-them with word and pledge on either side; and they pronounced every
-Danish king outlawed from England for ever. Then came King Ethelred in
-spring-tide home to his own people, and gladly was he received by all
-of them.”
-
-It was an easy matter for the _witan_ to declare every Danish king an
-outlaw; to expel the young and vigorous Canute from the kingdom was a
-very different affair. At this time the Dane’s strongest position was
-in Lincolnshire, his naval base of operations being still doubtless
-the estuary of the Humber. The men of Lindsey had resorted to him at
-Gainsborough, and had undertaken to supply him with horses and to go
-forth together with him and harry. But now when Ethelred with “a full
-fyrd” appeared in Lincolnshire, Canute who was not ready for fight,
-stole away to his ships and sailed forth from the Humber, leaving “the
-poor folk whom he had deceived” to their king’s vengeance. Ethelred
-then “harried and burned and slew every man who could be got at”.
-Evidently the long years of war had thoroughly brutalised both the
-combatants. Canute, enraged probably by the proceedings of the _witan_,
-sailed round to Sandwich, and there landed the luckless hostages who
-had been delivered to his father by the northern shires in 1013. He
-chopped off their hands and noses and then, apparently, let them
-return to their homes. This savage mutilation is the greatest piece of
-barbarity that stands recorded against him. Meanwhile the portion of
-the fleet which Thurkill commanded lay at Greenwich, and from thence,
-though professing to support the cause of Ethelred, ravaged the country
-as much as they pleased. Thus for the unhappy peasants there was little
-to choose between Thurkill and Canute.
-
-In the following year, 1015, there was a great meeting of the _witan_
-at Oxford, and here Edric, of whose treasons we have lately heard but
-little, distinguished himself by a characteristic piece of villainy.
-There were two thegns, probably brothers, named Sigeferth and Morcar,
-men with large estates and holding highest rank in the Five, or as they
-were now called, the Seven Boroughs (York and Chester were perhaps
-the two new additions to the old group). These men Edric, when he
-met them at the _witenagemot_, invited into his chamber and there he
-treacherously slew them. According to the somewhat doubtful story of
-William of Malmesbury, he had first made their henchmen drunk, and then
-when they, too late, sought to avenge their lords, Edric’s followers
-overpowered them, chased them into the church of St. Frideswide and
-slew them there. The king was evidently consenting to the death of
-these men, and purposed to bestow their broad lands on their murderer.
-But now came a strange overturn. Sigeferth’s widow had been by royal
-order conveyed to Malmesbury, probably with the intention of immuring
-her in the convent. Thither also, after a short interval, went the
-king’s son, the Etheling Edmund Ironside, whom we now hear of for the
-first time, but who was to be the protagonist in the next two years’
-combat. He wooed the widow of Sigeferth; he perhaps promised to take
-vengeance on her husband’s murderers; he married her, contrary to the
-king’s command, and then early in September he marched to the Seven
-Boroughs, presented himself as the avenger of the murdered thegns and
-the heir of one of them, made himself master of all their domains and
-received the submission of their people.
-
-The king was now lying at Cosham,[197] stricken with mortal sickness,
-and could exercise little influence on the course of events. The hopes
-of the nation must have all rested on Edmund, who certainly showed in
-these two years courage and activity, though he may have inherited some
-of his father’s incapacity for reading the characters of men. Thus,
-notwithstanding the breach between them, which he should have known to
-be deadly, he accepted the offered help of Edric Streona who repaired
-to his standard in the north, only to exercise his usual paralysing
-influence on the army, and then deserted to Canute, inducing the crews
-of the forty ships at Greenwich to follow his example.
-
-England was now, in 1016, divided in a fashion not seen before. All
-Wessex was submissive to Canute and gave him horses and hostages,
-while the district of the Seven Boroughs and probably the whole of
-Northumbria went with Edmund, heir by marriage of the influence of
-Sigeferth. He summoned the Mercian _fyrd_ to his standard, but the
-men replied, curiously enough, that “it did not please them to go
-forth, unless the king were with them, and they had the support of the
-burgesses of London”. Apparently the Etheling Edmund was more than
-half suspected of being a rebel against his father, and in the strange
-confusion of the strife the approval of the brave citizens of London
-was the only irrefragable sign and seal of rightful lordship. With some
-difficulty the sick king was brought from London, where he then abode,
-to the northern _fyrd_, but being alarmed by rumours of a conspiracy
-against his life, he quitted the camp and returned to London. “Thus
-the summoning of the _fyrd_ availed nothing more than it had ever done
-before.”
-
-The junction of Edmund’s forces with those of Uhtred, earl of
-Northumbria, might seem to promise more effectual resistance to the
-foreigner. Practically, however, it resulted in nothing more than a
-series of harryings in Shropshire, Staffordshire and Cheshire, from
-which Uhtred was suddenly recalled by the tidings that Canute had
-marched northwards and was already nearing York. Uhtred abandoned his
-harrying and hastened to meet the enemy, but in presence of Canute’s
-superior force was obliged to submit, acknowledge the Dane as his
-king, and give hostages. The submission availed him naught. After this
-surrender he and another powerful Northumbrian named Thurcytel were
-put to death by Canute. This crime also was attributed to the malign
-influence of Edric Streona. The struggle now centred round London.
-There was the sick king; thither his son Edmund went to meet him.
-Thither was Canute sailing with his ships, but ere he arrived, an enemy
-stronger than he had found entrance. On April 23, 1016, King Ethelred
-died, and this dreariest of all English reigns came to an end. Old
-as Ethelred seems to us by reason of the evils which he had so long
-inflicted on his country, he was still only in the forty-ninth year of
-his age.
-
- * * * * *
-
-“After the death of Ethelred, all the _witan_ that were in London and
-the citizens chose EDMUND for king, and he boldly defended his kingdom
-while his time was,” which was only for seven months. Canute, who was
-obstinately set on the conquest of London, made a canal on the south
-side of the Thames and passed his ships through it, so as to bring them
-into the main stream above the strongly defended bridge. After two
-battles in Somerset and Wilts the English king came to the help of the
-citizens and defeated the Danes at Brentford. His army, however, was
-somewhat lacking in discipline, for “many English folk were drowned in
-the river through their own carelessness, pushing on beyond the main
-body of the _fyrd_ in the hope of taking booty”. In the battles which
-followed on the Orwell, in Mercia, in the island of Sheppey, Edmund
-was generally victorious; but all such success was counterbalanced by
-the disastrous return of Edric to the English army and by Edmund’s
-acceptance of his help. “Never was worse counsel adopted than that.”
-The last and greatest of the long series of battles was fought at
-Assandune, in the flats of Essex between the Thames and the estuary
-of the Crouch. Here, after a long and fierce encounter, victory fell
-to the Danes, it is said through the treachery of Edric, who was the
-first to take flight and who spread panic through the English ranks
-by displaying a severed head, which, he shouted, was the head of
-Edmund Ironside. In this battle fell the old traitor Elfric and a very
-different man, the brave East Anglian Ulfcytel, besides many other
-thegns. There, in fact, fell the flower of the English manhood.
-
-It seemed clear that neither of the opposing forces could utterly crush
-the other. By the mediation of Edric a meeting was arranged between the
-two kings at Olney, an island in the Severn not far from Gloucester. A
-payment, we are not told of what amount, was made to the Danish army,
-and the kingdom was divided between the combatants, Wessex to Edmund,
-Mercia and Northumbria to Canute. London, faithfully following the
-house of Cerdic, was included in the peace, and the now reconciled
-Danish mariners were allowed to take up their winter quarters in the
-city by the Thames. A peculiar relation, somewhat embellished by the
-fancy of later historians, seems to have been established between the
-two young partners in the kingdom. Brotherhood in arms was perhaps
-sworn to between them; it is alleged that the survivor of the twain
-was assured of the inheritance of his partner. Whatever may have been
-the precise nature of the tie, it was soon dissolved. On November 30,
-1016, Edmund Ironside “fared forth,” and was buried by the side of his
-grandfather, Edgar, at Glastonbury. He was only about twenty-three
-years of age. A death so opportune for the purposes of Canute and
-his followers naturally arouses suspicion. Later historians had no
-hesitation in making Edric the murderer. There is also something in
-the after-life of Canute which looks like remorse for some great
-crime committed against his brother-king. On the other hand it is but
-justice to say that there is no hint of foul play in any contemporary
-authority; and the death of the young king may perhaps be accounted for
-by the fearful labours and anxieties of his last two years of warring
-and reigning.
-
-The period which we have lately traversed is one of those dreary times
-which a patriotic historian would gladly blot out from the annals of
-England, and one is half inclined to resent the exceptional fulness of
-detail with which it is treated in the Saxon Chronicle. Yet it is a
-time which the student of our social history cannot afford to overlook.
-If the thirty years’ war in the seventeenth century left deep scars
-on the face of Germany, which were still visible after the lapse of
-two hundred years, we must surely believe that the wounds inflicted by
-the incessant ravages and harryings of the Danes for more than thirty
-years were also deep and long lasting. The utter demoralisation of king
-and people, the apparent rottenness of the body politic, as manifested
-in the course of the struggle, abate much of our first feeling of
-patriotic regret for the Norman conquest, suggesting as they do the
-reflection that these Saxons, if left to themselves, would never have
-made a strong and stable nation. Much as we condemn the conduct of
-Ethelred, we may be inclined to conjecture that all the mischief was
-not wrought in his reign. We should perhaps do wisely in mistrusting
-a good deal that is told us about the glory and the greatness of the
-reign of Edgar. After all, it was in that king’s days that traitors
-such as Elfric and Edric were growing up into maturity. Had Edgar left
-the country a really strong, well-organised state, it could hardly have
-gone down so speedily before the assaults of the sea-rovers. Probably
-the new and nobler life breathed into the Saxon people by the great
-Alfred lasted during the reigns of Edward and Athelstan and not much
-longer.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIII.
-
-CANUTE AND HIS SONS.
-
-
-When in 1016 Edmund Ironside died, there could be little question
-that CANUTE must be sole King of England. It was true that Edmund
-had left two sons, Edmund and Edward, but they were mere babes and
-it was no time for a protracted regency. In the older generation,
-of the numerous progeny of the redeless Ethelred (nine sons and six
-daughters), there were still left only three whose claims could deserve
-consideration. These were Edwy, the son of his first marriage, and two
-boys, Alfred and Edward, sons of Emma. These latter, however, besides
-the disadvantage of their youth--they cannot have been more than twelve
-years of age--were still absent from England, at the court of their
-uncle Richard, Duke of Normandy. They seem therefore to have been left
-altogether out of the reckoning at this juncture, though one of them a
-generation later was to ascend the throne of England, and to be known
-under the name of Edward the Confessor. There remained, therefore, as
-claimant, of the immediate family of Ethelred, only his elder son,
-Edwy, who was probably in his twentieth year, or thereabouts, but who
-seems to have borne a high character for wisdom and prudence. But there
-was another shadowy competitor for the crown who also bore the name of
-Edwy, with the strange epithet, “King of the Churls”. In our complete
-ignorance of this man’s previous history we can only guess from whence
-he emerged. One such guess is that he claimed to be descended from his
-namesake, the brother of Edgar, and that, having put himself forward
-as champion of the free tillers of the soil (a class doubtless sorely
-suffering from thirty years of anarchy), he was called in derision
-“King of the Ceorls”. However this may be, neither Edwy could stand for
-a moment against the might of the young Dane, already the acknowledged
-sovereign of all England north of the Thames, and with the terrible
-“army” at his back, ready at the giving of a signal to break loose from
-their winter quarters and resume their terrible harryings of the land.
-Canute had apparently no difficulty in decreeing that both the Edwys
-should be banished the realm, nor shortly after in putting the son of
-Ethelred to death.
-
-The two infant sons of Edmund Ironside were sent by Canute to the King
-of Sweden, it is said with a request that they might be quietly put out
-of the way. The Swedish king, however, declined to make himself the
-Dane’s executioner, and passed the children on to the King of Hungary.
-Forty years after our present date, one of them having returned to
-England became, not indeed himself a king, but father of a Scottish
-queen, and ancestor, through her, of many generations of English
-sovereigns. As to the manner in which Canute acquired the power of
-dealing thus summarily with the descendants of Cerdic, there is some
-uncertainty. One version of the Chronicle says that he was “chosen to
-be King of all England,” and so far confirms the elaborate account of
-Florence of Worcester. This author says that there was a great meeting
-of the _witan_ in London, and that Canute interrogated them as to
-the nature of the agreement made between him and Edmund Ironside at
-Olney, whereof they had all been witnesses. “Was anything then said
-about the right of brothers or sons to succeed Edmund in Wessex, if he
-should die in Canute’s lifetime?” Thus interrogated, they said that
-they knew for certain that Edmund destined no portion of his kingdom
-for his brothers, either in his lifetime or after his death, but that
-he looked to Canute as the future helper and protector of his sons
-till they should reach the age of kingship. “But herein they called
-God to witness of a lie,” hoping to win the king’s favour thereby.
-According to this story, Canute’s election to the throne by the _witan_
-of London was the result of hard swearing; but the Scandinavian
-authorities assert, and some modern historians believe, that the
-exclusion of Edmund’s brothers from the succession was really part of
-the compact of Olney. The question must probably be left unsettled.
-What is not doubtful is the full and undisputed power which the young
-Danish conqueror ever thereafter wielded in England, and the peace and
-comparative prosperity which for near twenty years she enjoyed under
-his sway. Wisely distrustful of his own ability to direct personally
-the details of government throughout the whole kingdom, Canute at once
-divided it into five districts, four of which he placed under rulers
-with delegated power. East Anglia he placed under the government of
-Thurkill the Dane, once the ally of Ethelred, but now his own henchman.
-What was once Deira was assigned to Yric or Eric, also a Dane, who
-seems, as before, to have made York his capital. In old Bernicia
-English lords of the family of Uhtred still held sway. Mercia was
-handed over to the notorious Edric Streona, while Wessex, the heart and
-centre of Anglo-Saxon monarchy, was reserved for Canute’s own especial
-rule. Here, and not in any of the Scandinavian lands across the sea,
-he resolved to make his home for the remainder of his life. All these
-great lords-lieutenant (as we should call them) were probably called
-earls, a title copied from the Danish _jarl_ which was now gradually
-supplanting the old English ealdorman.
-
-Two of these newly appointed earls did not long enjoy their dignities.
-In 1017 the old traitor Edric Streona was put to death by Canute:
-“most justly,” says the latest recension of the Chronicles. Florence
-of Worcester asserts that “Canute ordered him to be killed within the
-palace, because he feared that he might one day be circumvented by his
-plots, as had often been the fate of his former lords, Ethelred and
-Edmund”. He may have been, as he is depicted in the Chronicle, one of
-the vilest of men, or he may have been merely a great opportunist,
-the Talleyrand or the Sunderland of a shifting and difficult period;
-but even so, it is hard for a man of that stamp to convince his new
-employer that he has really changed front for the last time. Thurkill
-of East Anglia fell into disgrace in 1021 and was banished. After two
-years he was restored to favour, yet not brought back to England, but
-entrusted with the regency of Denmark. There is some evidence that he,
-like Edric, had married a daughter of Ethelred; and there is reason to
-suppose that not only the sons, but even the sons-in-law, of the late
-king were viewed with suspicion by Canute.[198]
-
-In the first year of his reign, on July 31, 1017, the young Danish
-king, now about twenty-two years of age, took to wife Emma of Normandy,
-widow of Ethelred, and probably thirteen years his senior. As to the
-motives for this somewhat surprising marriage we have no sufficient
-information. It may have been due to a politic desire to secure the
-friendship of Normandy; it may have been Canute’s wish to present to
-his English subjects an appearance of continuity in the domestic life
-of the palace of Winchester; or there may have been--who knows?--a
-romantic passion engendered when the future bride and bridegroom met
-during the negotiations after the siege of London.[199] The new queen
-certainly seems to have faithfully complied with the spirit of the
-Scriptural precept about the bride’s forgetting of former ties, but
-need she also have forgotten the children of her former marriage? The
-son whom she bore to Canute, and who was named Harthacnut, was the
-object of her fondest affection. Canute evidently ousted the memory of
-the inglorious Ethelred, whose sons Alfred and Edward lingered on at
-their uncle’s court, apparently forgotten by their mother, and with no
-effort on her part to bring about their return from exile.
-
-It was perhaps only a coincidence, though an unfortunate one, that the
-second marriage of Emma, like her first, was accompanied, if not by a
-massacre, by a considerable sacrifice of human life. In 1017 Canute
-ordered the execution not only of Edwy, of the seed royal, and of
-Edric the traitor, but of “Northman, son of Leofwine the ealdorman,
-and Ethelweard, son of Ethelmaer the Fat, and Brihtric, son of Elfheah
-in Devonshire”. The last name is for us meaningless: Ethelweard is
-interesting as denoting the grandson of Ethelweard the Chronicler,
-the “Patrician,” as he calls himself; the man of royal descent and
-of pompous diction. The name of Northman, son of Leofwine, deserves
-further notice as being our first introduction to a family which was
-to play an important part in the next half-century of English history.
-For five generations, since the very beginning of the eighth century,
-the family of Leofwine had borne a high place in the kingdom of
-Mercia. This Leofwine himself in 997 signed charters as _dux_, that is
-ealdorman, of the province of the Hwiccas. It was his son Northman who
-now, we know not on what pretext or under what cloud of suspicion, was
-put to death by Canute. The king’s wrath seems not to have extended
-to the other members of Northman’s family; for his father Leofwine at
-once received the earldom of Mercia, vacated by the death of Edric,
-and there are some indications that his son Leofric received a minor
-earldom, possibly that of Chester, which may have been previously held
-by the slain Northman.[200]
-
-About the same time as the family of Leofwine, a rival family,
-one which was to engrave its name yet more deeply on the pages of
-English history, begins to make its appearance, not yet indeed in
-the Chronicles, but in those invaluable charters which show us by
-the names of the attesting witnesses who at any given period were
-the most prominent personages in the English court. Godwine, son of
-Wulfnoth, is a man over whose ancestry there hangs a cloud of mystery,
-the result partly of the poverty of Anglo-Saxon nomenclature, which
-makes it often difficult to identify the particular Wulfnoth or Edric
-or Ethelweard of whom we are in quest. There are stories about him of
-a romantic kind, according to which he, as a cowherd’s son, had the
-good fortune to meet a king or an earl who had lost his way after one
-of the battles between Canute and Edmund; gave him a night’s shelter,
-and was rewarded by patronage which enabled the future Earl Godwine
-to get his foot planted on the first rung of the official ladder. For
-these stories, which we find chiefly in chroniclers of a much later
-age, there appears to be no sufficient foundation. On the whole it
-seems probable that he was the offspring neither of a _thegn_ nor of a
-_theow_, but sprang from some middle stratum of Anglo-Saxon society.
-Whatever his origin may have been, he was evidently a man of energy
-and capacity, and he rose rapidly in the favour of Canute, who was
-perhaps glad to obtain the services of new men, neither suspected of
-too strong an attachment to their former master, Ethelred, nor branded
-with the shame of his betrayal. Already, in 1018, he had the rank
-of earl, of what district we are not informed. He is said to have
-accompanied Canute in 1019 on a visit which he paid to Denmark; and
-to have distinguished himself in a war against the Wends, probably in
-Pomerania, and on his return to England he was raised to the high and
-novel position of Earl of the West Saxons. Up to this time the kings
-of Cerdic’s line, while ruling other parts of England by ealdormen or
-earls, had kept Wessex, the cradle of their dynasty, under their own
-personal control: and their example was followed by Canute himself at
-the beginning of his reign. He had now, however, by the death of his
-obscure and contemptible brother Harold (1016), become the wearer of
-the Danish crown; and possibly cherishing visions of other and more
-widely reaching Scandinavian conquests, he determined to keep his hands
-free from the mere routine of government even in royal Wessex, and
-therefore handed that province over to the administration of his young
-and loyal henchman, Godwine. About the same time he further secured the
-new earl’s attachment to the Danish dynasty by marrying him to Gytha,
-daughter of his cousin, Thurgils Sprakalegg, and sister of his own
-brother-in-law, Ulf the Jarl. Such a connexion brought the new man,
-Godwine, very close to Danish royalty. It is possible[201] that, during
-all the earlier part of his career, Earl Godwine seemed to the English
-people almost more of a Dane than a Saxon.
-
-The country was now so tranquilly settling down under Canute’s rule
-that he felt himself able to dispense with the presence of “the army”.
-To him, as the chosen and anointed ruler of England, the marches
-and counter-marches, the harryings and the burnings of these fierce
-“sea-people” would be as little agreeable as to Alfred or Ethelred.
-One last and fearfully heavy _gafol_, no less than 72,000 pounds of
-silver, the equivalent probably of £1,500,000 sterling in our day, had
-to be raised and paid them, besides a further sum of 10,500 pounds,
-paid by the citizens of London alone. The army then, in 1018, returned
-to Denmark, only forty ships and their crews remaining with their
-peacefully triumphant king. Everything showed Canute’s desire to banish
-the memories of rapine and bloodshed which for so many years had been
-gathering round his father’s name and his own. He is said by one writer
-to have erected churches on all his battle-fields: he certainly did so
-(in 1020) on the bloodiest of them all, on Assandune. Earl Thurkill
-(not yet fallen into disgrace) with the archbishop of York, and many
-bishops, abbots and monks, joined in hallowing the minster there
-erected, a ceremony in which some have seen not only a commemoration
-of Canute’s “crowning mercy” but also an act of reparation for some
-share, direct or indirect, in the death of his Iron-sided rival.
-Another object of his devotion was East Anglian Edmund, who had been so
-barbarously done to death by Ingwar and Hubba. To this saint, it may
-be remembered, old Sweyn was said to have had a particular aversion,
-and from his ghostly apparition he was believed to have received his
-death-stroke. To appease the spirit of this royal martyr was now one
-of Canute’s most cherished desires. He reverenced his memory with
-a devotion as especial as his father’s hatred, and he, apparently,
-first gave to the great monastery of St. Edmundsbury that character of
-magnificence which distinguished it for so many centuries and gave it a
-place in the foremost rank of English sanctuaries.
-
-In the seventh year of the new reign, 1023, Canute made the greatest
-of all reparations, that to the memory of the good archbishop whom
-drunken Danish seamen had brutally slain. The body of St. Alphege had
-been for some eleven years resting in St. Paul’s Church at London. It
-was more fitting that it should be laid in his own metropolitan church
-of Canterbury, and thither accordingly it was translated by the king’s
-orders. The delight with which Englishmen saw this tardy reparation
-to their dead countryman’s memory, rendered by a Danish king, shines
-forth in the enthusiastic pages of the Chronicle. The writer describes
-how “by full leave” of the king, archbishop Ethelnoth and Bryhtwine,
-bishop of Sherborne, took up the body from the tomb; how “the glorious
-king and the archbishop and suffragan bishops and earls and a great
-multitude, clerical and lay, carried on a ship St. Alphege’s holy body
-over the Thames to Southwark, and committed the holy martyr to the care
-of Ethelnoth and his companions, who then with a goodly band and with
-winsome joy bare him to Rochester. Then on the third day came the Lady
-Emma with her kingly bairn Harthacnut [aged five], and they all with
-great pomp and gladness and singing of psalms bare the holy archbishop
-into Canterbury.” The whole proceedings occupied seven days, and on
-June 15, 1023, the martyr’s body was finally deposited on the north
-side of the altar in Christ Church.
-
-In like manner as Canute had honoured the memory of St. Edmund of
-East Anglia and St. Alphege of Canterbury, is he said to have dealt
-with the sepulchre of Edmund Ironside at Glastonbury. Towards the
-end of his reign he determined (says William of Malmesbury in his
-classical style) “to visit the _Manes_ of him whom he was wont to
-call his brother Edmund. Having offered up his prayers, he placed
-upon the tomb a _pallium_ inwoven with divers colours, representing
-figures of peacocks, which may still be seen there.” By his side stood
-Ethelnoth, archbishop of Canterbury, the seventh monk who had gone
-forth from Glastonbury to preside over the English Church. Before
-leaving the venerable minster in which rested the bones of so many of
-his predecessors, Canute gave a charter confirming to the church of the
-Virgin Mary in Glastonbury all its previous privileges. This charter
-was said to be given “by the advice of Ethelnoth, the bishops and my
-nobles, for love of the heavenly kingdom, for the pardon of my crimes
-and the forgiveness of the sins of my brother King Edmund”.
-
-With the description of these expiatory rites our information as to the
-internal history of England under Canute comes to an end. This part of
-the Chronicle is extremely meagre, but probably its very sterility is
-partly an illustration of the proverb, “Happy is the nation that has
-no annals”. After all the agonies of the Danish invasions, now that a
-wise and masterful Dane sat upon the English throne, the land had rest
-for twenty years. In external affairs Canute played an important part,
-which we shall have to consider in relation to (1) Scotland, (2) the
-Empire and the Papacy, and (3) Norway.
-
-(1) Events of great and lasting significance took place on the Scottish
-border in the reign of Canute, but to understand them we must go back
-into the reign of his predecessor, and take up for the last time the
-story of the wanderings of the incorruptible body of St. Cuthbert. For
-112 years that precious relic had reposed at Chester-le-Street, but in
-995 Bishop Aldhun, who had for five years presided over the diocese
-which still bore the name of deserted Lindisfarne, filled with fear
-of Danish invasions and “forewarned by a heavenly oracle,” carried
-the body farther inland, to the abbey of Ripon. After four months it
-was considered safe to re-transport it to its former home; but when
-the bearers reached a certain place on the banks of the Wear, called
-Wrdelau, the holy body became immovable as a mountain and refused to
-be carried an inch farther. It was revealed to a monk named Eadmer that
-the neighbouring hill of Dunhelm, splendidly and strongly placed in the
-midst of a fruitful land, and overlooking the windings of a beautiful
-river, was meant to be the saint’s next and final resting-place.
-Thither accordingly, with joy and gladness, the holy body was carried.
-The little wattled church which was erected over it was the predecessor
-of a noble cathedral, the grandest specimen of Norman architecture that
-our country can boast: and Bishop Aldhun, who lived for twenty-four
-years after the translation, was the first of the long line of bishops
-of Durham.
-
-Almost at once we find the prelates of this see important factors in
-Northumbrian politics. Aldhun gave his daughter, Ecgfrida (born no
-doubt before he became an ecclesiastic), in marriage to “a youth of
-great energy and skilled in military affairs,” named Uhtred, who was
-practically taking the management of affairs out of the hands of his
-father, Earl Waltheof, as that aged man, self-immured in Bamburgh, was
-doing naught for the defence of his country. Thus, when in 1006 Malcolm
-II., King of Scots, taking advantage, doubtless, of the distracted
-state of England during the Danish invasions, collected the whole army
-of Scotland, entered Northumbria, laid it waste with fire and sword,
-and then besieged the new city of Durham, it was Uhtred who gathered
-troops together and went to the help of the bishop, his father-in-law.
-As old Waltheof still continued inactive he, on his own responsibility,
-summoned the _fyrd_ of Northumberland, joined it to that of the
-citizens of York, and with the large army thus collected fell on the
-Scottish besiegers of Durham and won a complete victory. King Malcolm
-only escaped with difficulty, and a multitude of his followers were
-slain. The anonymous chronicler[202] who relates these events, tells
-us that “the daintier heads of the slain, with their hair inwoven
-according to the then prevalent fashion, were by Uhtred’s orders
-carried to Durham, fixed on stakes, and placed at intervals round the
-circuit of the walls, having first been washed by four women, to each
-of whom he gave a cow as the reward of her labours”. That little detail
-concerning the women’s payment for their ghastly toil looks like a bit
-of genuine tradition.
-
-Such was the great English victory of 1006. Now for its fatal
-reversal twelve years later. The victorious Uhtred, who had become
-in the meantime Earl of Northumbria and son-in-law of Ethelred, was,
-as we have seen,[203] put to death by order of Canute, or rather
-perhaps assassinated at his instigation by a private enemy, just as
-the struggle between the Danish and English kings was coming to a
-crisis. The Danish earl, Eric, whom Canute had set over Deira, and the
-Englishman, Eadwulf Cutel, who had succeeded to some portion of his
-brother Uhtred’s power over Bernicia, were probably known by Malcolm to
-be inefficient men, not likely to combine for the common defence. In
-1018, having made his preparations and formed an alliance with Eugenius
-the Bald, King of the Cymri of Strathclyde, Malcolm crossed the Firth
-of Forth and marched through Bernicia as far as the Tweed. The men of
-Northumbria were already disheartened by the appearance of a comet
-which for thirty nights had been hanging, ominous, in the midnight sky;
-and too truly were their forebodings justified. At Carham, a place
-on the southern bank of the Tweed, a little above Coldstream, almost
-within sight of the future battlefield of Flodden, the two armies met
-in fight. “Then were the whole people” (says Symeon of Durham) “from
-Tees to Tweed on one side, and there was an infinite multitude of
-Scots on the other.” Malcolm’s victory on this occasion was far more
-decisive than his defeat had been twelve years earlier. “Almost the
-whole English force with its leaders perished.” To Aldhun, the aged
-Bishop of Durham, the tidings of this defeat--all the more bitter
-because sustained at a place which for three centuries had formed part
-of the patrimony of St. Cuthbert--came as an actual death-stroke. “Me
-miserable!” said he, “that I should have lived so long, to behold this
-lamentable slaughter of St. Cuthbert’s men. Now, O Confessor! beloved
-of the Lord, if I have ever done aught pleasing in thy sight, repay me,
-I pray thee, by not suffering me any longer to survive thy people.”
-His prayer was granted. After a few days he died: the first but not
-the last Bishop of Durham to have his life made burdensome by the
-incursions of the Scots.
-
-This battle of Carham, fought in the second year of Canute’s reign,
-deserves more attention than it has generally received from English
-historians. It was more important than Brunanburh, we might perhaps
-say only a little less important than Hastings, for by it the Border
-between England and Scotland, which had fluctuated through many
-centuries, was finally fixed at its present limitary streams and
-mountains. Edinburgh, it is true, seems to have been lost to the Scots
-some sixty years before the time that we have now reached,[204] but
-the rich and beautiful country of the Lothians was only now finally
-abandoned by the English, “surrendered” (says the anonymous chronicler)
-“by the very base and cowardly Eadwulf, who feared lest the Scots
-should revenge upon him the death of all the men of their nation who
-had fallen in battle against his brother. Thus was Lothian added to
-the kingdom of the Scots.” It was for us English a loss disastrous and
-irretrievable. Our only compensation is to be found in the fact that
-the large Anglian population thus transferred to the northern kingdom
-so leavened its speech, its institutions, its national character, that
-the Scotland of the Middle Ages was Anglian rather than Gaelic in its
-dominating tendencies.[205]
-
-Towards the end of his reign--in 1031 according to the authority, here
-somewhat doubtful, of the Saxon Chronicle--“Canute went to Scotland,
-and the Scots’ king Malcolm submitted to him and became his man,
-but that held only a little while. Also two other kings, Maelbaethe
-and Jehmarc.” Of the last of these two kings we know nothing.
-Maelbaethe seems to be the same person as the Macbeth of Shakespeare’s
-tragedy.[206] He was not yet a king, but obtained the Scottish crown in
-the year 1040 by slaying the young king Duncan, grandson and successor
-of Malcolm II. It will be seen that the chronicler says nothing about
-fighting on Canute’s part. Malcolm II. seems to have bowed to the
-inevitable and quietly acknowledged the claim of Canute as English
-king to the homage of his Scottish neighbour, a claim which might mean
-anything or nothing according to the characters of him who demanded
-that homage and him who rendered it. It is interesting to observe that
-the author of the _Heimskringla_, in his account of the negotiations
-between Canute and St. Olaf, King of Norway, puts into the mouth of
-the latter these words: “And now it has come to this, that Cnut rules
-over Denmark and over England, and moreover has broken a mickle deal of
-Scotland under his sway”. The parleyings here described are supposed
-to have taken place five or six years before 1031, the actual date of
-Canute’s Scottish expedition, but from traditional history such as this
-is, minute accuracy as to dates is not to be looked for.
-
-(2) Towards the end of the year 1026[207] Canute made his memorable
-pilgrimage to Rome, a journey which certainly was an important event in
-itself, and is almost unique in the history of English royalty. It is
-true that Ceadwalla, Ine and Ethelwulf had made the same pilgrimage,
-but after Canute the next crowned English king to visit Rome was His
-now reigning Majesty, Edward VII. We have, unfortunately, no details of
-Canute’s journey, but we know from foreign sources that he was present
-at a ceremony of high political importance, the crowning of the “Roman”
-Emperor Conrad II. and his Empress Gisela on Easter day, 1027.
-
-The line of Saxon emperors, made memorable by the great deeds of
-the three Ottos, came to an end in 1024 on the death of the ascetic
-emperor, St. Henry II. The dukes, counts and bishops of the empire,
-assembled under the open sky on the meadows of Kamba, after some debate
-chose as his successor Conrad the Salic, a nobleman of Franconia, that
-beautiful land watered by the Main which now forms the northern half
-of the kingdom of Bavaria. The dynasty inaugurated by his election
-lasted for another century (1024–1125), and then gave place to the
-nearly allied Hohenstauffens of Swabia. This Franconian dynasty it was
-which, under three emperors bearing the name of Henry, fought with
-the Papacy the stubborn fight of the Investitures, which “went to
-Canossa” and warred with Hildebrand. Conrad, the new emperor, was a
-strong, masterful, knightly man. The pope who crowned him and before
-whom Canute kneeled in reverence, was John XIX., one of the series
-of cadets of the house of Tusculum whom the counts of that little
-hill-fortress intruded for half a century on the chair of St. Peter.
-But though this pope’s elevation was sudden and irregular--the same day
-saw him a layman, prefect of the city, and pope--he seems to have borne
-a respectable character, quite unlike that of his nephew and successor,
-the dissolute lad who took the name of Benedict IX. (1033–1046). No
-doubt the aristocratic count-pope bore himself with becoming dignity in
-the solemn ceremony of the emperor’s coronation, which was graced by
-the presence of two sovereign princes, our own Canute (the splendour of
-whose retinue and the liberality of whose almsgiving excited general
-admiration) and Rudolf III., descendant of Charlemagne and last king of
-Burgundy. There were, however, troubles and disorders in the somewhat
-anarchic capital of Christendom. The archbishops of Milan and Ravenna
-had a dispute about precedence, which ended in a street-brawl between
-their followers and in the flight of him of Ravenna. Worse still, the
-German soldiers of the emperor had a fight with the people of Rome, in
-which many lives were lost, and by which Conrad’s wrath was so fiercely
-kindled that it could only be appeased by the appearance of the Roman
-citizens barefooted and disarmed before the German Augustus, abjectly
-entreating his forgiveness. All this Canute must have witnessed, but
-nothing seems to have weakened the impression of awe and reverence for
-the apostolic city, made by his residence in Rome.
-
-In a letter to his people, written from Rome and preserved for us by
-two of the twelfth century historians, William and Florence, Canute
-sends greeting to the two archbishops, the bishops and nobles, and
-all the English people, gentle and simple. He informs them that
-his long-cherished desire to visit Rome, there to pray for the
-forgiveness of his sins and the welfare of his people, has at length
-been gratified. He has visited the sepulchres of Peter and Paul and
-every other sanctuary within or without the city. At the great Easter
-festival he has met not only Pope John and the Emperor Conrad, but
-all “the princes of the nations,” from Mount Garganus (in Apulia) to
-the Tyrrhene Sea, and has received gifts from all, especially from
-the emperor; vessels of silver and gold, mantles and robes exceeding
-precious. Further, from the emperor and from King Rudolf, he has
-obtained an assurance that none of his subjects, whether English or
-Dane, shall any longer be harassed with the heavy payments at the
-mountain passes or the exorbitant customs-duties with which they have
-been hitherto afflicted. Nor shall future archbishops, visiting Rome
-in quest of the _pallium_, pay the immense sums which have heretofore
-been demanded of them. Finally, the king assures his loving subjects
-of his desire to administer equal justice to all. Let no _shire-reeve_
-or bailiff think to curry favour with him by the oppression of his
-subjects. “I have no need that money be accumulated for me by unjust
-exactions.” “But let all the debts which according to ancient custom
-are due from you [to the Church] be regularly paid; the penny for every
-_carucate_ ploughed; the tithe of the increase of your flocks and your
-herds; the penny for St. Peter at Rome; the tithe of corn in the middle
-of August, and the _Church-scot_ at the feast of St. Martin. If all
-these dues are not regularly paid, I shall on my return to England
-execute unpitying justice on the defaulter.”
-
-The new emperor was evidently struck by the statesmanlike character
-of the Anglo-Danish king, and thought it good policy to draw closer
-the relations between them. Canute’s daughter, Gunhild, was betrothed
-to Conrad’s eldest son, and in 1036, when she had attained a suitable
-age, the marriage was consummated. She died, however, after two years
-of wedlock, leaving an infant daughter who afterwards became Abbess of
-Quedlinburg. A year after her death her husband ascended the imperial
-throne under the title of Henry III. Conrad the Salic also ceded to
-Canute such rights--perhaps even then vague and ill-defined--as the
-empire claimed to possess over the frontier province of Sleswick,
-thus making the river Eider the acknowledged boundary between Germany
-and Denmark. Hence, and from the later union between the provinces
-of Sleswick and Holstein, sprang in the course of ages that bitter
-controversy which was cruelly solved in our own day (1864) by the
-cannonade of Düppel.
-
-(3) The pilgrimage to Rome came midway between two expeditions to
-Norway, one, a failure, in 1025–1026, the other, in 1028, triumphantly
-successful.
-
-The most renowned King of Norway in Canute’s time, and the great
-champion of her newly recovered independence, was that strangely
-compounded man who was known by his contemporaries as Olaf the Thick,
-but whom after ages have reverenced as Saint Olaf (1015–1031). “In
-stature scarce of the middle height, but very thick-set and strong
-of limb: with light-red hair, broad-faced, bright and ruddy of
-countenance, fair-eyed and swift-eyed, so that it was terrible to look
-him in the face when he was angry,” this energetic descendant of Harold
-Fair-hair, after many reverses, succeeded in establishing himself on
-the throne of Norway, and at once set to work to destroy the lingering
-remains of heathenism in the north of his kingdom, smashing idols,
-making diligent inquiry into the secret “blood-offerings” of horses and
-oxen, slaying, banishing, fining all who still persisted in idolatrous
-practices. To strengthen himself against the inevitable revival of
-the Danish claim of sovereignty, Olaf wooed the elder, and married
-the younger daughter of his namesake the King of Sweden, and formed a
-fairly stable alliance with that neighbour state. In the early years
-of his reign, according to the story of the _Heimskringla_ (in which
-much fiction is, doubtless, blended with fact), Canute the Rich sent an
-embassy to Olaf, calling upon him peacefully to submit to his claims,
-to become his man, and thus save him the necessity of coming with
-war-shield to assert his right. To this demand Olaf sent an indignant
-negative. “Gorm the Old thought himself a mighty king, ruling over
-Denmark alone. Why cannot his descendant be satisfied with Denmark,
-England and a mickle deal of Scotland? Is he minded to rule alone over
-all the Northlands, or does he mean, he alone, to eat all the kale in
-England?”
-
-For the time Canute had to be satisfied with this bold reply; but in
-1025 he set forth with a great naval armament from England. A great
-battle followed, at the mouth of the Holy River, at the extreme south
-of what is now Sweden.[208] Here, by a clever manœuvre of the allied
-Kings of Norway and Sweden, Canute’s great ship, _The Dragon_, was
-caught in mid-stream and well-nigh sunk by an avalanche of suddenly
-unloosed floating timbers. He was delivered by the timely appearance of
-Jarl Ulf with his squadron of ships, but the battle was lost. “There
-fell many men,” says the Chronicle, “on the side of King Canute, both
-Danes and Englishmen. And the Danes held the place of slaughter.”
-
-Soon after this unsuccessful expedition came the event which has left
-perhaps the deepest of all the stains on the memory of Canute, the
-murder of his brother-in-law and deliverer, Jarl Ulf, “the mightiest
-man in Denmark after the king”. At a noble banquet which Ulf had
-prepared for his kinsman, the king sat scowling gloomily. To lighten
-his mood Ulf suggested a game of chess, in the course of which one of
-the king’s knights was placed in jeopardy. “Take back your move,” said
-Canute, “and play something else.” Indignant at this style of playing,
-Ulf knocked over the chess-board and rose to leave the room. “Ha!” said
-the king, “runnest thou away now, Ulf the Craven?” He turned round in
-the doorway and said: “Craven thou didst not call me when I came to thy
-help at the Holy River, when the Swedes were barking round thee like
-hounds”. Night fell: both slept: but next morning Canute said to his
-page: “Go to Jarl Ulf and slay him”. The page went, but returned with
-bloodless sword, saying that the Jarl had taken refuge in the church of
-St. Lucius. Another man, less scrupulous, slew him in the church-choir
-and came back to boast of the deed. After this desecration the monks
-would fain have closed their church, but Canute insisted on their
-singing the Hours of divine service there, as if nothing had happened.
-As usual, his penitence took the form of liberality. So great were the
-estates with which he endowed the church, that far and wide over the
-country-side spread the fame of St. Lucius.
-
-When Canute recommenced operations in 1028 after his pilgrimage to
-Rome, not war but internal revolution gave him the victory. He seems
-to have had a superiority in naval forces over both the allied kings.
-The Swedes, being home-sick, scattered back to their own dwellings.
-Olaf fled to Russia, and a _Thing_, summoned by Canute at Trondhjem,
-proclaimed him king over all the land of Norway. It is evident that
-Olaf’s forceful, sometimes even tyrannical, proceedings had alienated
-many of his subjects; but moreover Canute the Rich had, we are told,
-for years been lavishing gifts on the Norwegian nobles. “For it was
-indeed the truth to say of King Cnut that whenever he met with a
-man who seemed likely to do him useful service, such a man received
-from him handfuls of gold, and therefore was he greatly beloved. His
-bounty was greatest to foreigners, and especially to those who came
-from furthest off.” This description, given us in the _Heimskringla_,
-of Canute’s practisings with the subjects of St. Olaf, suggests the
-question whether similar arguments had not been used with Edric
-Streona, and whether the decision of the Saxon _Witenagemot_ in
-Canute’s favour may not have been bought in the same manner as that of
-the Norwegian _Thing_.
-
-We must not further follow in detail the fortunes of the dethroned
-King of Norway. Two years after Olaf’s expulsion from the kingdom he
-returned (1030), but fell in battle with his own hostile countrymen.
-When the inevitable reaction in favour of his memory set in, his
-body was carried to Trondhjem and buried under the high altar of the
-cathedral church. Miracles soon began to be wrought by his relics:
-there was a tide of pity and remorse for their fallen hero in the
-hearts of his people, who found themselves harshly dealt with by their
-Danish rulers. Before long Norway recovered her independence, and then
-Olaf was universally recognised as not only patriot but saint. The
-Church gave her sanction to the popular verdict, and St. Olaf, or St.
-Olave, as he was generally called in England, was accepted as one of
-the legitimate saints in her calendar, July 29 being set apart for
-his honour. Though not to be compared for holiness of character with
-our own St. Oswald, or even with Edwin of Deira, he soon became an
-exceedingly popular saint, especially with his old Danish antagonists.
-More than a dozen churches were dedicated in his name in England,
-chiefly in the district where Danes predominated. The most celebrated
-of these was St. Olave’s in Southwark, which gave its name, corrupted
-and transformed, to the “Tooley Street” of inglorious memory.
-
-Of the closing years of the reign of Canute little is recorded. There
-are stories, uncertain and mutually contradictory, of hostilities
-between England and Normandy, arising out of Duke Robert’s championship
-of the claims of the English Ethelings, sons of his aunt Emma. Whatever
-truth there may be in these narratives, they must be referred to
-the latter part of Canute’s reign, as Duke Robert did not come into
-possession of the duchy till 1028. We may, if we please, assign to
-the same period the well-known story of his vain command to the sea
-to retire, a story which is told us for the first time by Henry of
-Huntingdon, about 120 years after the death of Canute. As Henry tells
-it, the courtiers, the blasphemous flatterers of the monarch, disappear
-from the scene, and it almost seems as if Canute himself, in one of
-those attacks of megalomania to which successful monarchs are liable,
-really thought that he could command Nature as if she were one of his
-own thegns. Learning better doctrine from the voice of the sea, he
-thenceforth abjured the vain ensigns of royalty and hung his crown on
-the cross of the Redeemer. To the same peaceful years we may assign the
-equally well-known incident of Canute being rowed in his barge over the
-fens in the cold days of early February, and hearing the song of the
-monks of Ely as they celebrated the Purification of the Virgin Mary:--
-
- Cheerly sang the monks of Ely
- As Cnut the king was passing by.
- “Row to the shore, knights!” said the king,
- “And let us hear these churchmen sing,”
-
---an interesting ditty for us, as showing that the word “knights”
-still kept that meaning of “servants” or “retainers” which it had when
-the New Testament was translated into Anglo-Saxon. In the Gospels the
-disciples of Christ are always called His “_leorning-cnichtas_”.
-
-King Canute died at Shaftesbury on November 12, 1035, and was buried at
-Winchester in the Old Minster where rested so many of the descendants
-of Cerdic. Owing to his early appearance on the scene and the various
-parts which he had played, we unconsciously attribute to him a greater
-age than he actually attained. He was probably little, if at all, over
-forty years of age when he died. The transformation of character which
-he underwent, from the hard, unscrupulous robber chieftain to the wise,
-just and statesmanlike king, is one of the most marvellous things in
-history. Perhaps the nearest approach to it is to be found in the
-change wrought in the character of Octavian. Both Canute and Augustus
-were among the rare examples of men improved by success.
-
-He left four children, Sweyn and Harold Harefoot by a wife or concubine
-named Elgiva of Northampton; Harthacnut and Gunhild by Emma of
-Normandy. The gossip of the day alleged that Sweyn and Harold were
-not really Elgiva’s children, but the sons of ignoble parents foisted
-by her on her credulous husband. This tale, however, though echoed by
-the Chronicle, may have been an invention of the partisans of their
-rivals. What is certain is that both Elgiva and Emma survived Canute.
-Either, therefore, the former was no legally married wife, or else she
-was divorced to make room for the Norman “Lady”. But the marriages
-of these Scandinavian princes, Norse and Norman, were regular only in
-their irregularity.
-
-Whatever may have been the testamentary intentions of the dying Canute,
-the practical result of his death was to divide his great empire in
-the following manner: Norway to Sweyn (who died a few months after his
-father), Denmark to Harthacnut, and England to HAROLD HAREFOOT. Of the
-latter, the Peterborough text of the Chronicle says: “Some men said
-that Harold was son of King Canute and Elgiva, daughter of Ealdorman
-Elfhelm; but this seemed very incredible to many men”. Of the two
-surviving sons of Canute who now for a few years fill the chief place
-in English history, it must be said that they represent only the first
-and worst phase of their father’s character, displaying none of the
-nobler, statesmanlike qualities of his later years. We sometimes see
-in modern life a man who has struggled upwards from the lowest ranks
-of society, acquiring a refinement and a culture which he fails to
-transmit to a wealthy but coarse-fibred son. So was it with the sons of
-Canute, two dissolute young barbarians who degraded by their vices the
-ancient throne which they were permitted to occupy.
-
-The events which immediately followed the death of Canute, obscure
-in themselves, are variously stated by our different authorities;
-but it seems clear that the old division between Mercia and Wessex
-again made itself manifest and was connected with another division,
-that between the two great houses of Godwine and of Leofwine. An
-assembly of the _witan_ was held at Oxford, at which “Earl Leofric
-(son of Leofwine) and nearly all the thegns north of the Thames and
-the sailors in London, chose Harold as king over all England,” leaving
-to Harthacnut the rule over Denmark, in which country he was then
-living and reigning. There was apparently no talk of a reversion to
-the old line, to the sons of Ethelred or Edmund. The dynasty of Canute
-represented peace with the Danes, a respite from the terrible ravages
-of the previous generation; and it was probably valued and clung to for
-this reason, even as, 500 years later, English parliaments clung to
-the house of Tudor, notwithstanding all the flaws in their title, as a
-security against the revival of the Wars of the Roses.
-
-This conclusion, however, was not unanimous. The _witan_ at Oxford
-had to reckon with the opposition of Wessex, under its powerful earl
-Godwine, with that of “the Lady” Emma, surrounded by a strong body of
-her dead husband’s _house-carls_ or body guards (an organisation of
-which the Chronicle now first makes mention); and with such force as
-the lad Harthacnut from distant Denmark might be able to bring to bear
-for the vindication of his claims. A compromise was arranged, which
-amounted in substance, though perhaps not in form, to a division of
-the kingdom. “It was decided that Emma, Harthacnut’s mother, should
-sit at Winchester with the house-carls of the king, her son, and hold
-all Wessex under his authority, and Earl Godwine was her most devoted
-servant.”
-
-This arrangement had in it no element of permanence and might at any
-moment be upset by the arrival of Harthacnut. He was, however, but a
-lad of eighteen, much involved apparently in the cares of his Danish
-kingdom. To Harold Harefoot, the Norman exiles, sons of Ethelred and
-Emma, full-grown men, with a hope of possible support from their
-cousin, the great Duke of Normandy, might well seem the most dangerous
-competitors for his crown. In order to entice these rivals into his
-power, Harold is said to have caused a letter to be forged, purporting
-to come from “Queen Emma, a queen only in name,” and complaining of
-the daily growing strength of the usurper, “who is incessantly touring
-about among the cities and villages, and by threats and prayers making
-for himself friends among the nobles”. “But they would much rather,”
-said the letter, “that one of you reigned over them, than he to whom
-they yield enforced obedience. Wherefore I pray that one of you will
-come to me swiftly and secretly to receive wholesome counsel from me,
-and to learn in what way the thing upon which I have set my heart can
-be accomplished.”[209] On the receipt of this message Alfred, the
-younger of the two brothers, betook himself to the friendly coast
-of Flanders and thence to England, accompanied by a small band of
-followers, recruited from among the inhabitants of Boulogne, instead
-of the large body of troops which Baldwin of Flanders offered him.
-Finding one part of the coast occupied by a hostile force, he sailed
-to another, probably nearer to Winchester; and set forth to meet his
-mother, thinking that he had now escaped from all danger. He had not
-reckoned, however, with the astute Earl Godwine, who was now no longer
-the zealous adherent of the queen-dowager, but was prepared to make his
-peace with Harold by the sacrifice of her son.[210] He met the young
-Etheling, swore to become his “man,” guided him to Guildford, billeted
-his followers about in various inns, caused them to be supplied with
-meat and drink--especially the latter--in great abundance, and so left
-them, promising to return on the morrow.
-
-That night, while they were all sleeping the deep sleep of well-plied
-banqueters, the men of Harold came upon them, stealthily removed their
-arms, and soon had them all fast in handcuffs and fetters. The cruel
-vengeance which followed, taken upon disarmed and helpless prisoners,
-excited the deep indignation of Englishmen, and found vent in a ballad,
-some lines of which have made their way into that manuscript of the
-Chronicle which is attributed to Abingdon:--
-
- Some they blinded; some they maimed;
- Some they scalped, some bound with chain;
- Some were sold to grievous thraldom;
- Many were with tortures slain,
- Never was a bloodier deed done
- Since to England came the Dane.
-
-There is a persistently repeated story that a cruel parody of the
-Roman decimation was inflicted on these unfortunates. By that old
-custom lots were cast, and every tenth man so selected was handed
-over to the executioner. Now nine out of ten were slain and only
-the tenth survived, nor was even he certain of life; for after the
-massacre it seemed to the tyrant’s agents that too many still survived
-and the sword devoured anew. As for the unhappy Etheling himself,
-he was taken round by sea to the Isle of Ely and there imprisoned.
-An order having been received for his blinding, he was held down by
-four men while the cruel deed was done. He seems to have survived
-for some weeks or months, and moved about, a saddening figure, among
-the once cheery monks of Ely; but ere long he died, either from the
-shock of the operation, or, as one author hints, from insufficiency
-of food. It seems clear that these cruelties were not perpetrated by
-Godwine himself, who judiciously disappeared as soon as he had left
-the slenderly guarded prince at his supper table at Guildford; but
-neither the judgment of his contemporaries nor that of posterity, with
-one eminent exception,[211] has acquitted the great Earl of Wessex of
-complicity in the crime.
-
-The abortive expedition of Alfred, and the defection of Earl Godwine,
-left the dowager-queen in a precarious position. Moreover, the hearts
-of Englishmen had begun to turn away from Harthacnut who, as they
-thought, tarried too long in Denmark, and towards Harold, who was,
-after all, the son of a Saxon mother (whether gentle or base born),
-and who, notwithstanding the cruelty and craft which he had shown in
-the affair of the Etheling Alfred, had qualities of physical strength
-and fleetness which gained for him a sort of rude popularity with his
-subjects. Thus it came to pass that in 1037 “Queen Emma was driven out
-of the country,” as the chronicler laments, “without any tenderness
-of heart, against the raging winter”. She went to the court of the
-hospitable Baldwin, her nephew by marriage, who assigned to her a
-dwelling in the city of Bruges and a princely maintenance. Of this,
-however, she took only a small part, sufficient for her absolute needs,
-and gratefully refused the rest, saying that she could do without it.
-So says the Flemish priest, who doubtlessly met her about this time,
-and who, in gratitude for favours received, composed the _Encomium
-Emmæ_, on which, in the absence of better sources, we have to rely for
-many details of her history.
-
-The election of Harold as king of the whole of England, which now
-took place, did not pass without some opposition, especially from
-the archbishop of Canterbury, Ethelnoth. When ordered to perform the
-ceremony of consecration, he flatly refused, declaring that at Canute’s
-command he had vowed to recognise only Emma’s son as his lawful
-successor. He would not presume to keep, in defiance of the king, the
-crown and sceptre, which had been committed to his charge, but, laying
-them on the altar he left them to Harold to deal with as he would,
-only declaring that none of his suffragan bishops should presume, on
-pain of excommunication, to crown this king or to grant him episcopal
-benediction. How the dispute ended Emma’s partisan does not inform us.
-Probably Harold, like Napoleon, crowned himself; but we are told that
-the refusal of the episcopal benediction so rankled in the young king’s
-breast that he relapsed into something like paganism. When others in
-Christian fashion were silently gliding into church for Divine worship,
-he (the swift-footed hunter) would be surrounding the woods with his
-dogs and cheering them on to the chase, or sometimes indulging in less
-innocent occupations. Clearly, here was a monarch who had little love
-for the Church, and whose character may therefore have been painted a
-little too darkly by ecclesiastical chroniclers.
-
-After making an ineffectual appeal for help to Edward, her surviving
-son by Ethelred, Emma at last succeeded in inducing Harthacnut to leave
-his beloved Denmark and attempt the invasion of England. He arrived at
-Bruges, probably towards the end of 1039, with sixty-two ships, and
-having no doubt made other large preparations for a hostile expedition,
-but none of these were needed. Harold Harefoot died on March 17, 1040,
-and was buried at Westminster. On his death a deputation was sent
-to Bruges to invite HARTHACNUT to assume the crown, “and men deemed
-that they did well in doing so”. Sore, says the encomiast, was the
-lamentation of the widows and orphans of Bruges, who deemed that by the
-departure of the Lady Emma they were losing their best friend; but she
-of course accompanied her son.
-
-Too soon the men of both nations found that they had not done so well
-as they supposed, in inviting the lad from Denmark to reign over them.
-The crews of his ships were clamouring for money, and to appease them
-the new king laid upon his subjects a heavier Danegeld than had been
-exacted all through the reigns of Canute and Harold. Then the Danegeld
-had been for sixteen ships, at the rate of eight marks for each rower;
-now Harthacnut claimed the same rate of pay for his whole fleet of
-sixty-two ships. It was indeed “a stern geld,” and the attempt to
-levy it caused violent popular commotions. A terrible hurricane had
-blown the previous year, probably injuring the harvest, and the high
-price of corn resulting therefrom caused the _gafol_ to be felt the
-more bitterly. “Thus all men that had before yearned after Harthacnut
-became unfriendly to him. He devised no kingly deed during all his
-reign, and he caused the dead body of Harold to be taken up and shot
-into the marsh.” Worse than this, he took a cruel revenge on the whole
-of Worcestershire for the murder of two of his house-carls whom he
-had sent to exact the “stern geld” from the citizens of Worcester.
-An insurrection had broken out; the house-carls had taken refuge in
-a turret of the minster, but had been discovered, dragged forth and
-slain. Hereupon, the enraged king ordered Godwine, Leofric and all the
-great earls, to assemble their forces; and sent them, six months after
-the murder, with orders to harry both city and shire. The inhabitants,
-forewarned, took refuge on an island in the Severn, and made so
-vigorous a defence that their lives were of necessity spared; but the
-minster was burnt, the country was laid waste and the house-carls of
-the king, with the followers of the earls, returned laden with booty to
-their homes.
-
-Now at last, during the short reign of Harthacnut, a brighter day
-dawned for the banished son of Ethelred. Edward was invited over from
-Normandy and was “sworn in as king”; that is, probably, associated
-in some way with Harthacnut as ruler of the land, and recognised as
-his destined successor in the event of his early death, which seems
-to have been considered not improbable. The only other event recorded
-of the reign of Harthacnut, “the king who devised nothing kingly,” is
-his complicity in the murder of Eadwulf,[212] earl of Bernicia, who
-had possibly made himself conspicuous as one of Harold’s partisans.
-He seems to have been invited to court that he might be formally
-reconciled to the new king, but on his way he was murdered by his
-nephew, Siward the Strong, who was already earl of Deira, and now,
-receiving as the reward of his crime his victim’s earldom of Bernicia,
-ruled once again as the kings of Northumbria had ruled aforetime, over
-the whole wide region from Humber to Tweed.
-
-Harthacnut’s end was worthy of his life. On a day of June, 1042, a
-great feast was given by a Danish nobleman, Osgod Clapa, in honour of
-the marriage of his daughter. To this banquet the king was, of course,
-invited, and “as he stood at his drink he suddenly fell to the ground
-and was seized with dreadful convulsions. Those who were near took
-him up, but he never after spake a word. He died on the 8th of June,
-and all the people accepted Edward as their king, as was his right.”
-Harthacnut died in the twenty-fifth year of his age, having not quite
-completed the second year of his reign. Like the old Saxon kings, and
-like Canute his father, he was buried in the Old Minster at Winchester.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIV.
-
-LEGISLATION OF THE LATER KINGS.
-
-
-In the period which followed the Norman Conquest “the laws of good King
-Edward” was a phrase often on the lips of Englishmen; yet it was but
-a phrase, for Edward the Confessor, on the threshold of whose reign
-we are now standing, added, as far as can be ascertained, no laws to
-the Anglo-Saxon collection. Danish Canute, on the other hand, holds an
-honourable place in our legal history; for his Dooms, which fill one
-hundred pages in Liebermann’s volume, show somewhat of the instinct of
-a codifier as well as a genuine desire to deal equal justice to the
-Danish and the English inhabitants of the land.
-
-From the death of Alfred--the last king whose laws have been specially
-dealt with--till the death of Canute, an interval elapsed of more than
-130 years or about four generations, and in almost every reign some
-fresh Dooms received the sanction of the reigning king and his _witan_.
-It will be well for us briefly to survey the course of this legislation
-and to see what light it throws on the social condition of the country,
-and what changes it reveals in political institutions. When we consider
-the laws of this period from a social and economic point of view, one
-fact stands out at once in strong relief. The immense majority of
-these laws relate to one crime, theft, and to one form of that crime,
-the theft of cattle. We have before us a population of herdsmen and
-sheep-masters whose chief concern it is to guard their live stock from
-the sly, roving cattle-lifter, and to recover them when thus purloined.
-Herein these tenth-century laws bear a striking resemblance to the
-border laws,[213] the code according to which, in the fourteenth,
-fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, rough justice was administered
-between cattle owners and cattle raiders on both sides of the Scottish
-border.[214] Sometimes, too, the grievances which we hear of in these
-laws and the rough redress of those grievances which they contemplate,
-seem to carry us into the same world of which we have read in stories
-of the Wild West of America only one generation ago. It seems probable
-that the immense importance thus assigned to the possession and the
-theft of cattle is partly due to the fact that, owing to the settlement
-of Danes on the north-east of the Watling Street, a large part of
-England had now become like Northumberland and Roxburgh, a “border
-country,” and was subject to all the insecurity of that position.
-
-In order to give greater assistance to the owner of cattle, Edward
-the Elder ordained that every landowner should have men in readiness
-on his land to guide those who were seeking to recover their lost
-property; and these men were straitly warned not for any bribe to
-divert the owner from his quest, nor give shelter to any convicted
-thief. Athelstan directed that if any one claimed a beast as his
-rightful property, he should get one out of five persons nominated by
-the judge to swear “that it is by folk-right his”; and the defendant
-must get two out of ten persons similarly nominated, to swear the
-contrary. But, perhaps, the most interesting of all this class of
-ordinances is that contained in the _Judicia Civitatis Lundoniæ_,
-framed by the chief officers of Church and State, the bishops and
-reeves (or representatives of the king), not without the consent of
-all the citizens. We have in these ordinances, under the sanction
-of Anglo-Saxon royalty, some wonderfully modern devices for the
-interposition of the community, to lessen the loss inflicted by robbery
-on the individual.
-
-The document begins: “This is the decision which the bishops and the
-reeves who belong to London, have made and secured with pledges in
-our peace-guild, whether of nobles or of commonalty” (_eorlisce_ or
-_ceorlisce_), “to supplement the enactments made at various meetings of
-the _witan_”. The first chapter ordains that the punishment of death
-shall be inexorably inflicted on any thief over twelve years of age
-stealing goods to the value of more than twelve pennies, and that any
-one endeavouring by force of arms to rescue a thief shall pay a fine of
-120 shillings to the king.
-
-The second chapter introduces us to a curious arrangement between the
-citizens, in the nature partly of a Trade Protection Society and partly
-of a Society for Mutual Insurance against Theft. “Each one of us shall
-pay four pennies to a common stock within twelve months, in order to
-indemnify the owner for any animal which may have been stolen after
-that time, and we will all join in the quest after the stolen animal.
-Every one who has a beast worth thirty pennies shall pay his shilling,
-except poor widows who have no patron or land.” It may be said, Why
-is the prescribed payment four pennies at the beginning of the law
-and a shilling at the end? The answer no doubt is that London still
-adhered to the currency of Mercia, in which only fourpence went to the
-shilling. The contributors were to be arranged in ten groups of ten
-each, the oldest of whom was to serve notices and keep the accounts;
-and these ten seniors with “an eleventh man” whom they were to choose,
-were to form a sort of governing board, keeping the money and deciding
-as to contributions into, and payments out of, the common fund. Every
-man who heard the summons must join in the quest after the stolen
-animal so long as the trace remained. The quest was to be continued
-either on the northern or southern march till every member of the guild
-who had a horse was riding it. He who had no horse of his own must go
-and work for a lord who should ride in the quest instead of him. Then
-comes the question at what rate were the stolen beasts to be valued.
-The ordinary tariff of compensation is as follows:--
-
- For a horse 10 shillings.
- „ an ox 30 pennies or 7½ „
- „ a sheep 5 „ or 1¼ „
- „ a stolen slave (_theow_), half a pound = 30 shillings.
-
-Apparently if the thief was captured and compelled by a court of law to
-refund a higher price than any of the above, if, for instance, he was
-made to pay for a valuable ox ten shillings instead of seven shillings
-and a half, the surplus was divided among the members of the guild,
-the owner receiving only the sum to which he was entitled under the
-tariff.
-
-The ordinance continues: “Whosoever takes up that which is the
-common cause of all of us shall be our friend. We will all be one,
-in friendship and in enmity. The first man to strike down a thief
-shall receive twelve pennies from the common purse for having made so
-good a beginning. The owner of a stolen animal is not to relax his
-diligence” (because of the insurance), “but must pursue it to the end,
-and he shall be reimbursed for the expenses of his journey out of the
-common fund.... We will meet once a month if we have leisure ... with
-filling of casks and everything else that is suitable, and we must then
-see which of our decisions have been complied with, and the twelve
-men shall have their food together, and eat as much as seems good to
-themselves and dispose of the food that is left [to the poor] according
-to the will of God.”
-
-The state of society here presented to us is one of peculiar interest.
-We seem to see these cattle-owning citizens of London, whose flocks
-and herds were grazing outside the walls of the city in Smithfield
-or Moorfields. They follow the track of their stolen beasts across
-the wilds of Middlesex or Surrey (“the Northern and the Southern
-March”). When the cattle are caught, fierce vengeance is taken on
-the depredator. If the pursuit fails, the luckless owner can, after
-all, console himself with the tariff price which he receives from the
-guild treasury. And then once a month they meet to settle the affairs
-of their guild, “with filling of casks and everything else that is
-suitable,” and so a vista is opened, at the end of which after the
-lapse of centuries, we behold the stately banquets of the Guild-hall of
-London.
-
-It is possible that to this need of grappling with agrarian crime we
-owe the institution of the Hundred which was a prominent feature in the
-organisation of medieval England, after as well as before the Conquest,
-and exists, though now little more than a survival, even in our own
-day. It is at least worthy of notice that the first clear mention of
-the Hundred-court, which is in the reign of Edgar, occurs in close
-connexion with the theft of cattle, and we might almost be justified in
-saying that this is the main business which in those beginnings of its
-existence was thought likely to come before it.
-
-There has been much discussion as to the kind of unit, five-score of
-which made up the Anglo-Saxon Hundred, but on the whole the prevailing
-opinion seems to be that it was composed, in theory at least if not
-invariably in practice, of a hundred hides or households.[215] The
-charter, if we may so call it, of the Hundred-court is furnished us
-by a document which is believed to date from the reign of Edgar and
-which begins: “This is the arrangement, how men shall hold the Hundred.
-First, that they always gather themselves together once in four weeks:
-and that each man shall do right to the rest. Second, that they set
-forth to ride after thieves. If occasion arise, let a man [whose beast
-has been stolen] give notice to the Hundreds-man, and he then to the
-Tithing-men, and let them all fare forth as God shall point the way,
-that they may arrive there [at the place where the beast is hidden].
-Let them do justice on the thief as was before ordained by [King]
-Edmund, and hand over the price to him who owns the animal and divide
-the rest [of the fine] half to the Hundred and half to the lord.”
-
-We observe that we have here a regular local court, armed with very
-summary powers and able to inflict fines, probably heavy fines, after
-it has restored the value of the stolen property to the rightful owner.
-Of these fines, however, the Hundred-court may retain for itself only
-half, the other half going to “the lord”. The assumption that there
-will be in every case a lord, who will thus share in the profits of the
-criminal jurisdiction exercised by his neighbours of the Hundred, seems
-to mark a step towards the manorial jurisdiction of later centuries and
-strikes a somewhat different note from that sounded in the laws of Ine.
-It would seem that there was a tendency among powerful and lawless men
-to treat the Hundred-court with contempt and ignore its jurisdiction.
-“If any one shall put difficulties in the way and refuse to obey the
-decision of the Hundred and this is afterwards proved against him,
-he shall pay 30 pennies to the Hundred: and for a second offence 60
-pennies, half to the Hundred and half to the lord. If he do it the
-third time he shall pay half a pound (120 pennies), and for the fourth
-offence he shall forfeit all that he has and be outlawed, unless the
-king allow him to remain in the land.” By the time that Canute took the
-matter in hand[216] sharper remedies had been found to be necessary.
-He who refused the judgment of the Hundred was fined--apparently for
-the first offence--30 shillings, not pennies. For a similar contempt of
-the Earl’s court he had to pay a fine of 60 shillings, and twice that
-amount for despising the judgment of the king.
-
-Before passing from the subject of the Hundred, it should be observed
-that the corresponding institution in most of the Danish counties of
-England was called the _wapentake_, a name which is said to be derived
-from that clashing together of their weapons whereby the Scandinavians,
-like their Teutonic predecessors in the days of Tacitus, were wont
-to signify their assent to the propositions laid before them by the
-masters of their assemblies. The counties in which the Wapentake
-generally took the place of the Hundred were York, Lincoln, Nottingham,
-Derby, Leicester and Rutland.[217]
-
-“And let men seek the Hundred-gemôt in such manner as was arranged
-aforetime, and three times in the year let them hold the Burh-gemôt
-and twice the Shire-gemôt, and there let the bishop of the shire and
-the ealdorman be present, and there let both of them expound God’s
-law and the world’s law.” By these words of King Edgar[218] we are
-brought into contact not only with the Hundred, but also with two other
-organisations still very prominent in the political life of England,
-the Borough and the Shire.
-
-The _Burh_ or _Burg_, in the sense of a fortified town, first comes
-into notice about the beginning of the tenth century and is evidently
-the offspring of the Danish invasions. Not that the word was not before
-that time in familiar use among the Anglo-Saxons,[219] but that it
-seems rather to have denoted the walled enclosure round the dwelling
-of a great landowner, than the close-packed streets of a medieval
-borough. The breaking of such a _burh_ (_burh-bryce_), the forcible
-entry into the precincts of a dwelling, was punished by the laws of
-Ine and Alfred with fines carefully graduated according to the rank of
-the owner. “A king’s _burh-bryce_ is 120 shillings; an archbishop’s,
-90; another bishop’s or an ealdorman’s, 60; a _twelf-hynd_ man’s, 30;
-a _six-hynd_ man’s, 15 shillings. The breaking down of a ceorl’s hedge
-(_edor-bryce_) is 5 shillings.”[220] The meaning of the law evidently
-is, that “the man whose _wer_ is 600 shillings will probably have some
-stockade, some rude rampart round his house; he will have a _burh_,
-whereas the ceorl whose _wer_ is 200 shillings will not have a _burh_,
-but will only have a hedge round his house”.[221]
-
-It was into a country full of unwalled _tuns_ or villages, and
-scattered country houses calling themselves _burhs_, but poorly
-protected by moat and stockade, that the Danes came pouring in the
-reigns of Egbert, Ethelwulf and Alfred. Winchester itself, as we have
-seen, was “broken down” by them. York and London were taken, and
-apparently in this, the first stage of their invasion, no town which
-they seriously attacked was able to resist their onslaught. But then
-the invaders gave their victims a lesson in self-defence. As soon
-as they had taken up a position in town or country they fortified
-themselves by erecting a strong “work” (the word is of constant
-occurrence in these pages of the Chronicle), and the hardest part of
-Alfred’s task was often the capturing of these hastily reared Danish
-fortifications. In the years of peace between the invasions of Guthrum
-and of Hasting, Alfred, imitating his opponents, reared many _burhs_
-which he filled with armed men. The establishment of these forts which
-stood up as islands out of the hostile sea, had evidently much to do
-with the deliverance of the land from the flood of Danish invasion in
-the terrible years between 892 and 896. The entry of the Chronicle for
-the year 894 tells us how a portion of the invading army was attacked
-“by bands of Englishmen, almost every day and night, both from the
-_fyrd_ and also from the _burhs_; for the king had divided his _fyrd_
-into two parts so that they were always half at home and half out,
-except the men whose duty it was to hold the _burhs_”. And a little
-farther on we hear of the valorous deeds of the _burh-ware_ of Chester
-and of London, which had an important influence on the successful issue
-of the war.
-
-We have seen, in a previous chapter, how the stalwart brother and
-sister, Edward and Ethelfled, reconquered central England for the
-English, and how they secured their conquests by the great line of
-forts which they planted everywhere along and sometimes far within
-the frontier which had divided the two nations. Chester, Shrewsbury,
-Bridgnorth, Stafford, Warwick, Bedford, Huntingdon, Manchester and
-many more, were _burhs_ which owed their foundation or renewal to the
-stout-hearted Lady of the Mercians and her brother. It must not be
-forgotten, however, that the bulk of the population around, and even in
-some of these _burhs_, must have remained Danish. Leicester, Stamford
-and Nottingham are included in the list of forts founded by Edward
-and his sister, yet they with Lincoln and Derby made up that Danish
-confederation of the Five Boroughs with which Edmund had to fight in
-942 and which went over so readily to Sweyn in 1013.
-
-In the main, however, we may no doubt consider these new, strongly
-fortified _burhs_ or, as we may now venture to call them, “boroughs” as
-the homes of loyal Englishmen, keen for resistance to an invading foe,
-but also keen for commercial enterprise. Very early the kings perceived
-the importance of insisting on internal peace and orderly life within
-the limits of the borough. Thus Edmund claims for it the same right of
-inviolate sanctuary as for the church itself. “If any man seek refuge
-in a church or in my _burh_ and any one thereafter assault him or
-treat him ill, he who does this shall be liable to the same punishment
-as is aforesaid.” Where security was thus provided for, against
-external enemies by thick walls and deep ditches, against internal
-strife and anarchy by the proclamation of the king’s peace, wealth was
-sure to accumulate. Markets were fixed in boroughs, and in order to
-guard against the ever-dreaded theft of cattle it was ordained with
-increasing stringency that purchases and sales should take place within
-their limits. By a law of Edgar[222] it was directed that in every
-[large] borough thirty-three men should be chosen as “witnesses”;
-in the smaller boroughs and the hundreds twelve would suffice; and
-from these we must suppose a smaller number were chosen to attest the
-validity of every sale by which cattle changed hands. Judging from
-the example of Londonburh, the greatest of all the boroughs, we may
-conclude that in these trading, fighting, debating communities much
-of the most vigorous life of England was to be found in the tenth and
-eleventh centuries.
-
-We have to note in passing that the obligation to assist in the
-maintenance and repair of these national defences was one of those
-which pressed upon all free Englishmen. _Fyrd-fare_, _burh-bote_ and
-_bridge-bote_, the duty of serving in the national army, the duty
-of building or repairing fortresses, and the like duty in respect
-of bridges, constituted the triple obligation, the often-mentioned
-_trinoda necessitas_, from which no estate of thegn or of ceorl, with
-whatever other immunities it might be favoured, was ever, except in
-very rare cases, allowed to be exempt.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Returning to the consideration of King Edgar’s law about local
-government we observe that it ordains that the _shire-gemôt_ shall
-be held twice a year under the presidency of the bishop of the shire
-and the ealdorman. The question of the origin of the existing forty
-counties into which England is divided is an extremely interesting one,
-but it can hardly yet be said to have received its final solution. We
-can see at a glance that some of our counties such as Kent, Essex,
-Middlesex, Sussex, Surrey, represent old kingdoms or sub-kingdoms of
-the early “Heptarchic” period. Norfolk and Suffolk are but the two
-divisions of East Anglia. Yorkshire and Northumberland may stand fairly
-well for Deira and Bernicia, the generous endowment of St. Cuthbert’s
-tomb being interposed between them in the shape of the county of
-Durham. The formation of the three counties of Cumberland, Westmorland
-and Lancashire out of Celtic Strathclyde and its adjoining territory is
-a late and somewhat obscure piece of history; while on the other hand
-the emergence of Cornwall, Devon, and perhaps we may add Somerset, out
-of the former kingdom of West Wales, is pretty easily understood by
-what the Chronicle tells us of the successive victories of West Saxon
-kings. Wessex itself, as we see from the Chronicle, must have been at
-an early period, at any rate in the course of the eighth century,
-divided into its four often-mentioned shires, Hampshire, Berkshire,
-Wiltshire and Dorset. When, however, all these older counties have
-been dealt with, there yet remains before us an interesting question
-as to the formation of the counties which are still known colloquially
-as “the shires,” the score of counties which lie between the Thames
-and the Humber, between Wales and East Anglia, and which evidently
-represent pretty fairly the old kingdom of Mercia. These, as a rule,
-cluster each one round some borough which has given its name to the
-county. One half of these are called after strong places which, as
-we are distinctly told, owed their foundation or their renewal to
-Edward and Ethelfled; these ten being Cheshire, Shropshire,[223]
-Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Huntingdonshire,
-Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Warwickshire and Herefordshire, and we
-may reasonably conjecture that the remaining shires were carved out
-nearly at the same time and on a similar plan. There is a great and
-obvious distinction between all these midland shires named after one
-central _burh_, and counties which recall the name of a tribe such as
-the Sumorsaetan or the South Saxons. The reason for that distinction
-is evidently that the Mercian shires were made as part of a definite
-political organisation, after the repulse of the Danish invaders by
-whom many of the old landmarks had been overthrown.[224] It is probable
-that many territorial divisions which would have become counties, had
-Mercia kept the peaceful tenor of her way through the ninth and tenth
-centuries, districts such as those of the Pecsaetan in the county of
-the Peak and the Gyrwas in the county of the Fens, may have disappeared
-from the map of central England owing to the ravages of the Danes. That
-map is in fact, as remarked by Maitland, a palimpsest, under whose
-broad black county-names many erased characters lie hidden.[225]
-
-We have seen that a law of King Edgar’s ordains that the ealdorman
-shall sit by the side of the bishop at the meeting of the shire, and
-shall expound worldly law while the bishop gives utterance to the
-divine. In the early period of the West Saxon monarchy, when there
-was an ealdorman to every shire, this enactment causes no difficulty;
-but it is clear that during the course of the ninth century there was
-a constant tendency to lessen the number of ealdormen and increase
-the size of their dominions, and we can then no longer say that every
-shire had its own ealdorman. Some men like Ethelred, brother-in-law of
-Edward the Elder, ealdorman of Mercia; like Athelstan the half-king
-of East Anglia; and like all the later Northumbrian earls, ruled over
-territories as large as the old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. In the reign
-of Canute we have seen that three earls--as the ealdormen were now
-called--ruled over three-fourths of England. If the law of Edgar still
-continued in force, we must imagine these great officials travelling
-from shire to shire, and holding the _gemôt_ in each. It is a probable
-suggestion, however, that when the power of the ealdorman was thus
-widely extended, new officers, the shire-reeves, from whom our modern
-sheriffs derive their title, were called into being, in order to
-administer the counties under the ealdorman. This suggestion can
-hardly, however, be yet spoken of as more than a conjecture.[226]
-
-The ealdorman, as was just now remarked, changed his title in the
-eleventh century for that of earl. There can be no doubt that this
-change was due to Danish influence and was an imitation of the word
-_jarl_, by which the chiefs of the Danish host were often designated.
-Eorl was, however, also a word known to the Anglo-Saxons, and by
-its use in the laws of Ine and elsewhere it seems to have been very
-nearly equivalent to thegn. In the laws of Ethelred of Kent, of
-Alfred and of Athelstan, it is frequently used as the antithesis to
-ceorl, “no man whether eorl or ceorl” being used in the same way that
-“gentle or simple” was used in the middle ages. Between this generic
-use of the word, however, and the title of powerful rulers like
-Leofric and Godwine there was a wide and important difference; and
-to avoid confusion it seems better to use the word earl only in its
-later signification, in which it replaces the term ealdorman and is
-equivalent to the Danish _jarl_ and the Latin _comes_. One important
-point to notice is that never before the Norman Conquest does the title
-of earl become absolutely hereditary, though there are certain great
-families which seem to have had practically an overwhelming claim to
-share the earldoms among them. No earl, however, even in the latest
-days of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, seems to have had a recognised right
-of transmitting his earldom to his son.[227]
-
-We have several incidental evidences of the social changes wrought by
-the two unquiet centuries between Egbert and Canute. The tendency of
-all those marches and counter-marches, those harryings and hardly held
-“places of slaughter,” to depress the peaceful cultivator and raise the
-mere fighting man, is shown by a curious document called “The Northern
-People’s Laws” (North-leoda laga) and supposed to date from the tenth
-century. In this document we have the most complete table of wergilds
-that is anywhere to be found in Anglo-Saxon law.[228] In the following
-table they are, for convenience of comparison, converted into West
-Saxon shillings of five penings each:--
-
- The Wergild for the king is 18,000 shillings.
- Archbishop and Etheling 9,000 „
- Bishop and ealdorman 4,800 „
- _Hold_ and king’s high-reeve 2,400 „
- Mass-thegn (priest) and secular thegn 1,200 „
- Ceorl 160 „
-
-Here we see that the ceorl, the free agriculturist, has sunk in the
-social scale. He was a two hundred, he is now only a hundred and
-sixty man. The wergilds in the upper ranks of society are, perhaps,
-unaltered, but, as before remarked, we have very imperfect information
-about these till we come to this very document. The important thing
-to observe is the position of the _hold_. This is a Danish word and
-signifies properly a fighting man. Here, however, this simple Danish
-warrior, possibly without any large landed possessions, has only by his
-sword carved his way up into a position in which he boasts a wergild
-fifteen times as great as that of the honest Saxon ceorl. He is half
-as big a man as a bishop or ealdorman, and twice as big as an ordinary
-thegn.[229]
-
- * * * * *
-
-Another interesting document which dates probably from the reign
-of Canute is that which is called the _Rectitudines singularum
-personarum_,[230] and is a compendium of the whole duty of man, or at
-least of the services which he is bound to render to those above him
-in the social order. The thegn has his obligations--in the language of
-a much later age, “property has its duties as well as its rights”--he
-must be “worthy of his book-right,” that is, observe the conditions
-of his charter and do three things on account of his land, serving
-with the _fyrd_, _burh_-building and bridge-work. Also on many estates
-other obligations accrue at the king’s behest: such as making the
-fence for the game on the king’s demesne; the equipment of a war-ship;
-keeping watch on the coast, at the royal headquarters or in the _fyrd_;
-alms-giving; Church-scot, and many other payments of various kinds.
-
-The _Geneat_ seems to have belonged to a class dependent on a lord,
-but in a certain sense superior. He had “to pay rent (_land-gafol_) in
-money or in kind, to ride and guide, lead loads, reap and mow, cut the
-deer-hedge and keep it in repair, build and fence round the fortress,
-make new roads to the _tun_, keep ward and go errands far and near just
-as one may order him about”. It is evidently supposed, however, that he
-has a horse, probably several horses of his own, although he has to be
-thus submissive to the bidding of a lord. We may, perhaps, see in these
-_geneats_ the descendants of ceorls who, under the pressure of the
-times, have lost their absolutely independent position and have been
-fain to “commend” themselves to the protection of some great thegn or
-religious house.[231]
-
-The cottager (_cotsetla_) is personally free and does not pay rent,
-but he has to render a certain amount of service to his lord in return
-for his holding, the normal size of which is five acres. The amount of
-service varies according to the custom of different estates; but a very
-usual arrangement is that he shall work every Monday throughout the
-year for his lord and three days every week in harvest time.
-
-“The _Gebur’s_ duties,” says the document, “are various; in some places
-they are heavy, in others they are quite moderate.” He seems, however,
-to have somewhat less of personal freedom than the men belonging to
-either of the two previous classes. His minimum of work is for two days
-in the week; he has to put in three days, not only in harvest time,
-but from the beginning of February to Easter; and all the time from
-Martinmas (Nov. 11) till Easter he may be called upon, in rotation with
-his fellows, to lie out at night beside his lord’s fold keeping watch
-over the sheep. On some lands the _gebur_ pays _gafol_ of honey, on
-some of meat and on some of ale. The lord provides him with implements
-for his work and utensils for his house, but then, _per contra_, when
-his time has come to take the journey (of death) his lord takes all
-that he leaves behind. Evidently the _gebur_ is, if not yet actually a
-serf, in a condition much nearer serfdom than either the _geneat_ or
-the _cotsetla_.
-
-After this follow descriptions of the duties of the bee-keeper, the
-pork-butcher, the swine-herd, the sower, the shepherd, the wood-ward
-and many other agricultural labourers; the whole forming a most
-interesting picture of a large and well-managed English estate in the
-eleventh century.
-
- * * * * *
-
-In studying the laws of Alfred’s successors throughout the tenth
-century, we are struck by the evident desire of the royal legislators
-to draw tighter the reins of government and to combat the tendencies
-towards disintegration and anarchy which they found in the body
-politic. Under Edward the Elder the great pact between Alfred and
-Guthrum was the corner-stone of the social fabric and to deal out equal
-justice between Englishman and Dane was the chief aim of a righteous
-ruler, but, unfortunately, the king found that he had much cause to
-complain of timid, corrupt and inefficient servants. The offence of
-_oferhyrnesse_, contempt of the royal word and commandment, is one
-which is now first mentioned, and of which we often hear afterwards
-from Edward and his descendants. Of this offence, punishable by a fine
-of 120 shillings, any _gerefa_ (“reeve” or magistrate) was guilty who
-failed to administer justice according to the testimony of the sworn
-witnesses, or to hold his _gemot_ once in every four weeks for the
-administration of justice. _Oferhyrnesse_ was also the offence of any
-person who presumed “to cheapen except in a port,” that is, to conduct
-any process of bargain and sale except within the limits of a market
-town and in the presence of a _port reeve_, to whose testimony he could
-afterwards appeal to prove that he was not dealing in stolen goods.
-
-Strong and vigorous ruler as _Athelstan_ was, he needed to put forth
-all his powers in order to repress the growing tendency to anarchy and
-injustice. “If any of my _gerefan_,” says he, “disobey this edict or be
-more slack concerning this matter than I have ordained, he shall pay
-the penalty of his _oferhyrnesse_, and I will find some one else who
-will attend to what I say.... I have learned that our peace is worse
-held than I like, and my _witan_ say that I have borne it too long. I
-have therefore ordered that all such peace-breakers shall get out of my
-kingdom with wives and children, and all that they have, and shall go
-whither I direct. If they return to this realm they shall be treated
-like thieves caught in the act.” King Athelstan’s influence, however,
-was not always exerted on the side of increased severity. The citizens
-of London record that he conveyed to the archbishop his opinion, that
-it was a lamentable thing that so young a man as one between the ages
-of twelve and fifteen should be put to death for any offence, or any
-man for stealing a chattel of less value than twelve pennies, and that
-he altered the law accordingly, raising the limit of age and of value
-in both cases.
-
-In order to make the punishment of crime, especially of the one most
-common crime, cattle-stealing, more certain, it was ordered by Edward
-the Elder[232] that every man should have his _geteama_, a person
-doubtless of known character and position, who would act as his
-advocate or guarantor in any transactions of purchase and sale. It
-was probably a development of the same idea when Edgar ordained as
-follows: “This then is what I will, that every man shall be under a
-_borh_ whether he be within boroughs or without them and that witnesses
-be appointed in every borough and in every hundred”.[233] The law was
-repeated and strengthened by Canute who thus announced his decision:
-“And we will that every free man if he be over the age of twelve years
-shall be included in a hundred and a tithing, that he may have right
-to clear himself from accusation and right to receive _wer_ if any one
-assail him. Otherwise he shall have none of the rights of a free man
-be he householder (_heorth-faeste_) or follower. Let every one then be
-brought into the hundred and have a _borh_, and let the _borh_ hold
-him and bring him at all times to judgment. Many a powerful man wishes
-by hook or crook to protect his man and thinks that he can easily
-do it, whether he be free or _theow_. But we will not tolerate this
-injustice.”[234]
-
-Of this institution of the _tithing_, whereby the poorer class of
-free men were grouped together in clusters of ten, we heard among the
-citizens of London in the reign of Athelstan. That grouping was for
-purposes of mutual protection; this seems rather to be in order to
-enforce mutual responsibility. It is not to be wondered that organisms,
-so low down in the social system, have not made much mark in the
-Anglo-Saxon law-book; but it seems to be generally agreed that from
-them was derived that institution of frank-pledge which, under the
-Norman kings, was so efficient a machine for the repression of disorder.
-
- * * * * *
-
-In the laws of the later Anglo-Saxon kings we seem to hear less about
-oath-helping and much more about ordeals than we heard in the laws of
-their predecessors. Does this change betoken the growth of superstition
-or a decay of honesty and public spirit and a diminished confidence
-in the veracity of the oath-helpers? The chief modes of ordeal among
-the Anglo-Saxons were three, and an accused person seems to have had
-his right of choosing between them. In all there was a direct appeal
-to the Almighty to show by the ordeal the innocence or guilt of the
-accused; and the Church by solemn services, prayers and fastings gave
-her sanction to the appeal. (1) If the ordeal was by cold water, the
-accused person was hurled into a vessel of water, after a prayer had
-been uttered that “the creature, water” might reject this person if
-he were guilty or receive him if innocent, according to the course of
-nature, into her bosom. In this ordeal to float was fatal, to sink was
-salvation. (2) In the ordeal of fire the accused must carry a mass of
-red-hot iron weighing one pound a distance of nine feet, or must plunge
-his hand up to the wrist into a vessel of boiling water to pick out
-of it a stone. After either of these trials the hand was bandaged and
-sealed up. If, after the lapse of three days, when the bandages were
-removed, there was raw flesh visible, the man was guilty, if the hand
-showed clean skin he was innocent. If the crime laid to his charge were
-that of conspiring against the king’s life, then the ordeal must be
-of threefold severity; the mass of hot iron must weigh three pounds,
-or the arm of the accused must be plunged in up to the elbow. (3) The
-ordeal of the test-morsel (_corsnaed_) was chiefly practised upon
-ecclesiastics and consisted in the obligation to swallow a piece of
-bread or cheese upon which a solemn anathema had been pronounced for
-any but an innocent partaker. As Ethelred said in one of his laws:[235]
-“If an accusation is laid against a servant of the altar who has no
-friends and who cannot call upon any oath-helper, let him go to the
-_corsnaed_ and there fare as God shall will”.
-
- * * * * *
-
-The judicial processes even in the ordinary courts of the realm
-certainly seem to us sufficiently blundering and barbarous; but at the
-end of the period which we are now considering, other courts of private
-jurisdiction were coming into being, and whether they administered
-better or worse justice who shall say? In the reign of Canute we first
-find a clear case of a grant of _sake_ and _soke_ to the Archbishop
-of Canterbury, a kind of grant which was given with lavish hand by
-the king whose reign lies next before us, Edward the Confessor.[236]
-Without entering upon the question whether the Danish king was really
-the first to bestow this special privilege upon his courtiers, lay or
-ecclesiastical, we may safely assert that, at any rate in the eleventh
-century, our kings were freely attaching judicial functions to the
-ownership of lands. For this is, undoubtedly, what is meant by these
-words _sake_ and _soke_, or _sac_ and _soc_. The first probably means
-a “matter” or “cause”;[237] the second, “a seeking out” or “inquiry”.
-The meaning in any case is clear. The abbot or wealthy thegn who “had
-sake and soke” had, merely in right of the king’s grant, and generally
-as appurtenant to the land which the king had given him, the right to
-try causes of dispute arising in his district. Apparently that right
-included both what we should call civil and criminal causes; and,
-of course, the right must have carried with it power to enforce his
-decisions, and also--no unimportant matter--the right to receive the
-fines and other profits arising from the administration of justice.
-
-What may have been the limits of this jurisdiction--for there must
-surely have been some causes too grave for any mere holder of _sake_
-and _soke_ to meddle with--and how it may have impinged upon the
-sphere in which _shire-mot_ and _burh-mot_ exercised their powers, are
-questions the answer to which is not yet before us. It is evident,
-however, that we have here judicial tribunals which might very easily
-grow into the manorial courts which flourished under the Norman
-and Plantagenet kings and the survivals of which exist among us to
-this day. And altogether the whole effect produced on our minds by
-a comparison of the laws of these later kings with the laws of the
-heptarchic kings is, that during the three centuries which elapsed from
-Ine to Canute the distinction between classes had been growing broader,
-that the eorl was mightier and the ceorl much weaker than in that
-older stratum of society; that, though certainly feudalism was not yet
-materialised in England, the spirit which prompted it was in the air;
-and that, possibly, even without any Norman Conquest, something like
-the Feudal System might have come, by spontaneous generation, in our
-land.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXV.
-
-EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.
-
-(1042–1066.)
-
-
-EDWARD, son of Ethelred, last visible scion of the old royal West
-Saxon stock, seems to have succeeded, on Harthacnut’s death, without
-opposition, to the throne of his forefathers. If the most powerful man
-in the kingdom, Earl Godwine, had any reason to fear the accession of
-the brother of the murdered Alfred, he determined to run all risks,
-and by actively co-operating in the new king’s election to establish
-a claim on his gratitude which might outweigh the remembrance of the
-deeds done by the zealous adherent of Harold Harefoot. The large
-influence of Godwine in the king’s counsels did not imply, as it
-would have done some years before, the continuance in power of the
-king’s mother. On the contrary, in the very next year after Edward’s
-accession, and seven months after his coronation at Winchester, the
-king, with his three most powerful subjects, Godwine, Leofric and
-Siward, rode from Gloucester to Winchester (November 16, 1043), and
-coming suddenly upon “the Lady” Emma, deprived her of all the vast
-treasures that she had accumulated, “her lands, her gold, her silver
-and her precious things untellable,” and ordained that she should
-live thereafter, unimprisoned indeed, but deprived of all her ancient
-state, in the royal city of Winchester. Thus she lived on for eight
-years longer, till her death on March 14, 1052; but in all the stirring
-scenes which preceded that event the busy, managing “Old Lady”[238]
-seems to have taken no part. Her party, if she had one, struck down
-by that hasty ride of the king and his three nobles, never after
-raised its head. The reason assigned by the chronicler for this harsh
-procedure toward the widow and mother of two kings, seems to bear the
-stamp of truth. “This was done,” he says, “because she was, before,
-very hard on the king her son, and she did less for him than he
-would, both before he was king and afterward,” meaning no doubt both
-before and after his association with Harthacnut. In other words, the
-queen-dowager, who evidently disliked her first husband and gave all
-her pent-up love to her second, had become so complete a Dane at heart
-that she would not lift a finger to help the surviving son of Ethelred,
-and for this unfriendliness she was sorely punished when he had power
-to avenge his wrongs.
-
-Soon after Emma’s downfall, the place of “Lady” in the palace of
-Winchester was again filled, by the marriage of Edward to Edith,
-daughter of Earl Godwine (January 23, 1045). It was a marriage only
-in name; for the king, to the admiration of his monastic biographers,
-retained through life the virgin purity of his saintliness; but the
-daughter of Godwine undoubtedly exercised some influence on the
-counsels of her royal spouse, though in what direction that influence
-was exerted is one of the not fully solved riddles of this difficult
-reign. The reign is difficult, chiefly because of the singular nullity
-of the sovereign’s character. Religious and kindly natured, Edward (who
-received after his death the half canonisation conveyed in the title of
-“Confessor”) seems to have had scarcely a will or mind of his own. He
-is always under the dominion of some stronger nature, Saxon earl, or
-Norman bishop, or wedded queen: and it is rarely possible to discover
-what were his own true sympathies and antipathies. We have constantly
-to guess to which of his councillors we must attribute the praise or
-the blame of the actions which were nominally his own.
-
-To avoid confusion, it will be well to describe the events of this
-reign under four heads: foreign relations; internal troubles; wars with
-the Scots; and wars with the Welsh.
-
-To us, who judge after the event, the dissolution of the splendid
-Anglo-Scandinavian Empire of Canute seems a natural and inevitable
-consequence of the death of its founder; but in all likelihood it was
-not so regarded by contemporary observers. Both Magnus of Norway and
-Sweyn of Denmark may well have aspired to rule England as heirs or
-quasi-heirs of Canute the Rich, and in order to guard against their
-attacks, the new King of England was compelled to keep a large fleet in
-readiness, which was generally assembled at Sandwich.
-
-Magnus of Norway was a bastard son of St. Olaf’s, whose very name bore
-witness to the irritable temper of his father. His mother, Alfhild,
-when in travail, was brought nigh unto death, and when the child was
-born the by-standers were for long in doubt whether it were alive. But
-the king was asleep, had given strict orders that he should never be
-roused from his slumbers, and none, not even his favourite minstrel
-Sigvat, dared to disobey. Fearing lest the child, dying unbaptised,
-should become “the devil’s man,” a priest hastily baptised it, the
-minstrel standing god-father, and giving it the name Magnus in honour
-of Carolus Magnus, “the king whom he knew to be the best man in all
-the world”. (And this was full two centuries after the death of
-Charlemagne.) The anger of the awakened king, when he learned what had
-happened during his slumbers, was charmed away by the smooth-tongued
-Sigvat. Thus did the name Magnus enter not only into the dynastic
-lists, but into the common family nomenclature of Norway and Iceland.
-
-The child Magnus, grown to man’s estate and succeeding to his father’s
-kingdom, vindicated the unconscious prophecy of his name, and was for
-a time the greatest monarch of the North. Whereas in the previous
-generation, Denmark had conquered Norway, it now seemed probable that
-Norway would conquer Denmark, so hard was the king of the latter
-country pressed by Magnus. This Danish king was Sweyn, not, of
-course, the son of Canute, who had died some years before, but Sweyn
-Estrithson, son of the murdered Ulf (of the overthrown chess-board) and
-of Canute’s sister, Estrith. As Ulf’s sister was Gytha, wife of Earl
-Godwine, Godwine’s many sons and daughters were of course first cousins
-to the King of Denmark.
-
-In the year 1047 Sweyn Estrithson, vigorously attacked by Magnus, sent
-an earnest petition to England that fifty ships might be despatched to
-his succour. “But this seemed an ill counsel to all people, because
-Magnus had great sea-power, nor was it adopted.” Unhelped, Sweyn
-was expelled from his kingdom. The Danes had to pay money to their
-conquerors--a new and bitter experience for them--and to own Magnus for
-their king. There, however, the career of Norwegian conquest stopped.
-In that very year, Magnus, when riding through the forest, was thrown
-violently by his shying steed against the trunk of a tree and received
-an injury from which he died. His uncle, Harold Hardrada, who succeeded
-him, and who will be heard of again in the history of England,
-could not prevent Denmark from reverting to its former ruler, Sweyn
-Estrithson, who founded there a dynasty which endured for 300 years.
-
-Though schemes of conquest, such as are attributed to Magnus, died with
-him, there was some renewal of the old piratical raids. In 1048 two
-Norse buccaneers came with twenty-five ships to Sandwich, were repelled
-from Thanet, but successfully raided Essex, and sailing thence to
-“Baldwin’s land” (Flanders), found there a ready market for the fruits
-of their cruel industry. The shelter given by Flanders to these and
-other depredators, induced Edward to acquiesce the more willingly in a
-proposal made to him by his kinsman, the Emperor Henry III., that he
-should help to guard the narrow seas against Baldwin, who had broken
-out into rebellion against the empire, had demolished the palace reared
-by Charlemagne at Nimeguen, and had done many other ill turns to his
-sovereign lord. To punish these despites Henry had gathered a large
-army, and Edward helped him by keeping guard with a fleet at Sandwich.
-No naval engagement followed, but the pressure thus effected by land
-and sea was effectual, and before long “the emperor had of Baldwin all
-that he would”.
-
-The Emperor Henry III., who thus drew Edward into the circle of
-European politics, was chiefly memorable for the beneficial influence
-which he exerted on the papal court, procuring the election of bishops
-of high character, generally Germans, instead of the dissolute lads who
-had been too often of late intruded into the papacy. One of the best of
-Henry’s German popes was Bruno of Toul, who ruled as Leo IX. from 1048
-to 1054. To him in the year 1049 Edward, by the advice of his _witan_,
-sent as ambassadors the Bishops of Sherborne and Worcester, to pray for
-absolution from a vow of pilgrimage to the Holy Land, which he had made
-in his years of poverty and apparently hopeless exile. The Witenagemot
-represented to him with good reason that the fulfilment of such a vow
-would now be inconsistent with his higher duties to his country and
-his subjects; and the aid of the pope was sought to cut the casuistic
-knot. In the following year the two bishops returned, bringing the
-papal absolution from the vow of pilgrimage, coupled, it is said,
-with an injunction to build or restore a monastery in honour of St.
-Peter, and fill it with monks who should spend their days in prayer
-and psalmody. The condition was one in itself delightful to the heart
-of the pious king. From the unfulfilled vow of pilgrimage, from the
-journey of the two bishops to Rome, and from the reply of the venerable
-Leo, sprang that noble sanctuary, the name of which will endure as long
-as men speak the English language, the great Abbey of Westminster.
-
- * * * * *
-
-The internal history of England during the twenty-two years of Edward’s
-reign is chiefly a record of the struggles of two or three great nobles
-for supremacy in his councils. It is true that some measures were taken
-for lightening the burdens of the people. “In the year 1049,” says the
-Abingdon chronicler, “King Edward paid off nine ships and they went
-away with their ships and all: and five ships remained, and the king
-promised them twelve months’ pay. In the next year he paid off all
-the shipmen.” The result is told us by his brother chronicler: “In
-1052 [1051] King Edward took off the army tax (_here-gyld_) which King
-Ethelred formerly instituted. It was thirty-nine years since he began
-it: and this _gyld_ oppressed the English people during all that time.
-This tax ever claimed priority over all the other _gylds_ by which the
-people were in various ways oppressed.” As has been pointed out,[239]
-the tax here spoken of is not the Danegeld, a levy of money to be paid
-as blackmail to foreign invaders, but it is _here-gyld_, “army tax,”
-or rather, in strictness, “navy tax,” a levy of money to be paid to
-the naval defenders of the country, an imposition therefore which
-may be fittingly compared to the ship money of the Middle Ages. But
-the previously quoted entry concerning the exactions in the reign of
-Harthacnut shows how easily the _here-gyld_ might be increased till it
-became an intolerable burden, and we can thus the better understand the
-joy of the nation at its removal.
-
-The position of Edward appears during the whole of his reign to have
-been not unlike that of the later kings of the two first Frankish
-dynasties. If he were not a mere _roi fainéant_, a puppet in the
-hands of an all-powerful Mayor of the Palace, he was at any rate like
-a Carolingian Louis or Lothair, with large theoretical claims, with
-little real power, and quite overshadowed by a few great earls, who had
-not indeed yet made their offices hereditary; who were still in theory
-removable officers of the crown; but who ruled wide provinces, raised
-considerable armies among their own _house-carls_, and above all,
-possessed wealth probably much exceeding any that could be found in the
-treasure-house of the king. One of these great French nobles, Hugh the
-Great, had so played his cards as to prepare the way for the elevation
-of his own son to the actual seat of royalty, when the time should come
-for its relinquishment by the descendants of Charlemagne. It seems
-not improbable that the example of Hugh the Great was much before the
-eyes of Godwine, and that through life he kept steadily in view the
-possibility that sons issuing from his loins might one day sit upon the
-English throne, now after five centuries about to be left vacant by the
-dying dynasty of Cerdic.
-
-Godwine, Leofric and Siward: these were the three greatest names in the
-English Witan when Edward came to the throne, and all three should be
-still memorable to Englishmen; Godwine, by reason of his great place in
-history, and the other two by reason of their renown in English poetry;
-Leofric being commemorated in the Godiva of Tennyson, and Siward in the
-Macbeth of Shakespeare.
-
-The kingdom of England, imperfectly welded together by Egbert and
-Alfred, and since then modified by the large infusion of Scandinavian
-blood into its northern and eastern districts, showed throughout
-this period a strong tendency to split up again into its three old
-divisions, Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex. Northumbria, as we have
-seen, was reconstituted as one earldom by the bloody deed of Siward the
-Strong, who slew his uncle Eadwulf, and so joined Bernicia to Deira. A
-strong, stern, unscrupulous Dane, whose martial character is attested
-by the well-known story of his death (hereafter to be related), he
-nevertheless seems to have ruled well his great province and was
-apparently a loyal subject of King Edward.[240]
-
-Leofric, son of Leofwine, was sprung, as has been said, from a family
-which for more than two centuries had been eminent in Mercia, and it
-is probable that he and his offspring bore with unconcealed dislike
-the overshadowing competition of the great upstart house of Godwine.
-He is often spoken of as Earl of Mercia, and perhaps had some sort
-of pre-eminence over other earls in that district, but his immediate
-jurisdiction seems to have been confined to the three counties of
-Cheshire, Shropshire and Staffordshire. Godwine’s nephew by marriage,
-Beorn, son of Ulf and Estrith, was quartered on his eastern flank in
-Derby, Nottingham, Leicester and Lincoln. Sweyn, Godwine’s eldest
-son, ruled the Mercian counties of Hereford, Gloucester and Oxford,
-besides a part of Wessex. Well might the proud Mercian noble feel that
-his title was but a mockery, while such large slices of Mercia were
-given to his rivals. Both Leofric and his wife Godiva were munificent
-benefactors to the Church. Whatever may be the foundation for the
-beautiful legend of Godiva’s absolute surrender of herself for the
-lightening of her people’s burdens, we certainly should not, from
-his record in history, have inferred that her husband Leofric was an
-avaricious or close-fisted lord.
-
-We turn to the earldoms which throughout the greater part of Edward’s
-reign were subject to the family of Godwine. He himself held, of
-course, that great and enriching office, the earldom of Wessex, which
-had been long ago conferred upon him by Canute, and which practically
-included all the lands south of the Thames; excepting that Somerset and
-Berkshire appear to have been carved out of them, to form what in later
-times would have been called an appanage for his eldest son, Sweyn, in
-addition to the three Mercian counties which, as we have already seen,
-were included in his earldom. His second son, Harold, called Earl of
-the East Angles, ruled not only the two strictly East Anglian shires,
-but also Huntingdon, Cambridge and Essex, which probably included
-Middlesex.[241] The three sons who came next in order, Tostig, Gyrth
-and Leofwine, were but boys at the time of Edward’s accession and were
-as yet unprovided with earldoms; but even so, it is evident if we look
-at the map, that more than half, and that the fairest half, of England
-was subject to Earl Godwine and his family.
-
-Of the character of this man, certainly the most powerful and probably
-the ablest Englishman of his time, very varying judgments were formed,
-even in his lifetime; and after his death the antipathy of the Norman
-and the regretful sympathy of the Saxon writers, naturally led to
-very divergent estimates concerning it. Nor is the controversy even
-yet ended; for the enthusiastic championship of the great historian
-of the Norman Conquest has not unnaturally provoked an equally
-vigorous storm of censure. To the present writer he does not appear a
-high-minded patriot, nor yet, considering the age in which he lived,
-a detestable villain. Hard, grasping, capable, remorseless, intent on
-the aggrandisement of his family, and by no means successful in forming
-their characters, he nevertheless may be credited with a certain amount
-of love for his country, and for the Anglo-Danish race which now
-peopled it. Himself English by birth and Danish by marriage and by all
-his early official training, he was determined that, if he could help
-it, no third element should be imported by the Norman sympathies of the
-king, to oppress the common people and to snatch away the prizes of
-government from the nobles. It is when he risks life and dearly loved
-treasure in maintaining this contention, that he seems to us almost a
-patriot.
-
-The first shock to the stately edifice of Godwine’s power was given by
-the disordered passions of his eldest son. In 1046, after a successful
-campaign in Wales, “when Sweyn was on his homeward journey, he ordered
-that the Abbess of Leominster [named Edgiva] should be fetched unto
-him, and he had her as long as he pleased and afterwards let her go
-home”. Such is the short dry record by the chronicler, of a deed which
-shocked the not too sensitive conscience of the eleventh century,
-and which appears to have led to the dissolution of the nunnery of
-Leominster, the outlawry of Sweyn and the allotment of his earldom
-to others. It seems, however, from later allusions to the matter,
-that it was not the forcible abduction but the lascivious seduction
-of a consecrated virgin of which the son of Godwine was guilty.
-Sweyn betook himself in 1047 to that refuge of all English outlaws,
-“Baldwin’s land,” and from thence after a time went to Denmark, where
-by some crime or immorality of the nature of which we are not informed,
-he “ruined himself with the Danes”. In 1049 he returned to England,
-and began to hover about the coasts of Kent and Sussex, off which the
-king was lying with a fleet, operating against Baldwin of Flanders and
-watching the proceedings of another outlaw, Osgod Clapa. This man, who
-had once been in high favour at the English court, had held the office
-of Staller or Chamberlain, and had been honoured by the presence, the
-ill-omened presence, of Harthacnut, at his daughter’s marriage feast,
-but had now fallen into disgrace, and led for some years the life of
-a buccaneer, imitating the ravages of the old Vikings and requiring
-the manœuvres of a royal fleet to keep him at bay. The Chronicle has
-much to tell us about Osgod Clapa’s and his wife’s movements, but he
-possesses for us no political significance, and we have only to note
-his death which happened “suddenly in his bed,” as the chronicler tells
-us, in the year 1054.
-
-Returning to the tempestuous career of the outlawed Sweyn, we find
-that his petition for forgiveness was at first rejected by the king,
-influenced as it was supposed by the criminal’s brother and cousin,
-Harold and Beorn, who were averse to surrendering his forfeited
-earldom. Then some change seems to have come over the more generous
-Beorn, who, on Sweyn’s entreaty that he would intercede for him to
-the king, consented to do so, and set off with him to march along the
-Sussex shore, making for the king’s station at Sandwich (1049). Many
-were the oaths which Sweyn had sworn to him, and “he thought that for
-his kinship’s sake he would not deceive him.” Thus beguiled he fared
-forward, putting himself ever more completely in the outlaw’s power;
-and even when his cousin proposed that instead of journeying eastwards
-to Sandwich, they should go westwards to the little town of Bosham, a
-favourite haunt of the Godwine tribe, off which his ships were lying
-at anchor, the unsuspecting earl consented. “For my sailors,” said
-Sweyn, “will desert me, unless I show myself speedily among them.” But
-when they had reached the place and Sweyn proposed that they should go
-together on board of his ship, Beorn, whose suspicions were by this
-time aroused, stoutly refused to do so. Resistance was now too late.
-Sweyn’s sailors forcibly laid hold of Beorn, threw him into the boat,
-and tightly bound him. They then rowed him to the ship, spread sail,
-and ran before the wind to Exmouth, where the prisoner was slain and
-buried in a deep grave, from which his friends afterwards lifted his
-body, that they might carry him to Winchester and bury him beside his
-uncle, King Canute. After such an atrocious and dastardly crime, one
-would have expected that Sweyn, if he could not be laid hold of and
-brought to justice, would at least have been banished from the society
-of all honourable men. And for the moment, though he escaped as usual
-to Baldwin’s land and dwelt at Bruges, he was solemnly proclaimed a
-_nithing_ or vile person (the most ignominious term in the Teutonic
-vocabulary) by the whole host, with the king, his brother-in-law, at
-their head. Yet with that fatuous facility in wrong-doing which seems
-to mark the conduct of all leading Englishmen in this bewildering
-century, by the mediation of Ealdred, Bishop of Worcester (afterwards
-Archbishop of York, and by no means the worst of the ecclesiastics
-of the period), Sweyn was brought back from his exile in 1050, his
-outlawry reversed, and his old earldom, which involved the rule over
-five counties, restored once more to his own keeping. The only thing
-that can be said in his favour is that he does seem to have felt some
-remorse for his many crimes. When next year he shared the general
-downfall of his house and was once more driven into banishment, instead
-of scheming for his return and restoration to power, he went on
-pilgrimage to Jerusalem, visited the sacred shrines, and died on his
-homeward journey at Constantinople (Michaelmas, 1052).
-
-The history of the Godwine family is now modified by events at King
-Edward’s court, which gave them the opportunity of assuming the
-character of national champions against the dominion of foreigners. We
-hear a good deal about the Norman favourites who flocked to Edward’s
-court, but it is not easy to ascertain how numerous these were, or
-how far a king, all whose nearest relations were Normans, and who had
-spent the best years of his life in a foreign land, exceeded the limits
-of moderation and good policy in bestowing lands and offices on his
-friends of foreign birth. Among these were the kinsfolk of his own
-sister, Godiva, whom it would be hard to blame him for having invited
-to his court, though one of them, her second husband, Eustace, Count
-of Boulogne, when he came sorely offended the Saxons by his insolent
-demeanour. Another, Ralph, sometimes called Ralph the Timid, Godiva’s
-son by her first husband, was entrusted by his uncle with the earldom
-of the Magasaetas, corresponding to the modern county of Hereford. A
-feebly arrogant man, he too probably added not a little to Edward’s
-unpopularity, and he appears to have gathered round him a number of his
-countrymen, whom the Chronicle calls sometimes Frenchmen (_Frencysce_)
-and sometimes Welshmen.[242] These men seem to have been already
-anticipating the baronial oppressions of a later century, and building
-their strongholds to overawe the common folk. Of one such fortress the
-patriotic chronicler writes that the foreigners had erected a castle in
-Herefordshire in the district of Earl Sweyn, and there wrought all the
-harm and disgrace that they could do to the king’s men.
-
-The ecclesiastically minded Edward, however, seems to have chosen his
-chief friends from among the Franco-Norman churchmen whom he had known
-in his youth. Chief among these was Robert Champart, formerly Abbot of
-Jumièges on the Lower Seine, whom Edward made Bishop of London near the
-beginning of his reign, and who, according to an often-quoted story,
-obtained such an ascendency over the feeble mind of his patron that “if
-he said that a black crow was white, the king would rather trust his
-mouth than his own eyes”. Owing to the feeble health of the Archbishop
-of Canterbury, Robert of London probably had from the first a
-controlling voice in the affairs of the southern province, and when at
-last, in October, 1050, the aged Eadsige was gathered to his fathers,
-Edward desired to make his favourite ecclesiastic archbishop. There
-was, however, an undercurrent of opposition; the chapter met in haste
-without the royal mandate and elected one of their number, Aelfric,
-archbishop. The monastic candidate was a relation of Earl Godwine’s,
-who put forth all his influence to procure the confirmation of his
-election, but in vain. The Norman’s power over the king was too great;
-at the Witenagemot held in London at Midlent, 1051, Robert Champart
-was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. He went speedily to Rome and
-returned with the indispensable pallium. This rebuff to Earl Godwine
-was perhaps the first indication of the precarious tenure of his power.
-At any rate from this time onward, if not before, the influence of the
-king’s clerical master was thrown heavily into the scale against him.
-
-Such apparently was the state of affairs at the English court, and such
-the smouldering fires of jealousy and distrust, when in the summer of
-1051 Eustace of Boulogne came on a visit to his brother-in-law. The
-visit paid, he and his retinue took the homeward road through Kent,
-and after baiting at Canterbury, made for Dover as their resting-place
-for the night. When the little troop were still some miles short of
-Dover, he and his men dismounted, put on their coats of mail and thus
-rode on, martial and menacing. When they reached Dover they showed at
-once their intention to take up their quarters wherever it pleased
-them. They were probably not without some legal justification for what
-seems to us a somewhat high-handed procedure, for Count Eustace was
-son-in-law and brother-in-law of English kings, and royal personages
-in the west of Europe seem to have possessed in the eleventh century
-some rights of compulsory hospitality similar to those of which we
-hear so much in later centuries under the name of “purveyance”. It
-was therefore probably not so much the claim itself as the insolent
-manner in which it was urged by armed foreigners, which exasperated the
-citizens of Dover. A quarrel arose between one of the Frenchmen and
-the householder upon whom he was quartered. The householder received
-a wound which he repaid by a mortal blow. Thereupon the count and his
-men mounted their horses, and attacked the householder, whom they
-slew on his own hearthstone. A general _mêlée_ followed, the result
-of which was that twenty of the citizens were slain, and nineteen of
-the strangers, many of whom were also wounded. Count Eustace, with the
-survivors of his train, made his way back to the king, and in angry
-tones, concealing his own followers’ misconduct, called for vengeance
-on the men of Dover. Hereupon Earl Godwine was summoned to the royal
-presence and ordered to execute the king’s wrath against the citizens.
-This command he absolutely refused to obey. The men of Dover belonged
-to the county which he had longest ruled and with which he was most
-closely connected,[243] and he would have nothing to do with that which
-he considered to be their unjust chastisement. It was then decided
-(apparently under the Norman archbishop’s influence) that a Witenagemot
-should be held at Gloucester, at which the old charge of complicity in
-the death of the Etheling Alfred was to be brought against Godwine. The
-great earl, moreover, had at this time on foot an expedition against
-the “Wealas” (that is Frenchmen), who were distressing the inhabitants
-of Herefordshire, from the castle which they had there erected. That
-matter, and the counter-accusations brought by the “Wealas” against
-Godwine, were apparently to be also discussed at the Gloucester meeting
-of the _witan_.
-
-Things seemed to be gathering up towards a civil war, in which Godwine
-and his sons would have had against them, not only the king and his
-French favourites, men like Robert of Jumièges and Ralph the Timid,
-but also Siward of Northumberland and Leofric of Mercia, who were
-hastening with their armies to the help of the king. This last fact
-seems to show that the tyrannical conduct of Edward’s Norman kinsmen
-was not the sole question at issue in this summer of 1051. Jealousy and
-dread of the overmastering power of the house of Godwine also had their
-share in the great debate, nor perhaps were the old rivalries between
-the one southern and the two northern kingdoms altogether absent. It
-seemed as though a collision between the _fyrds_ of Northumbria and
-Mercia, and those of Wessex and East Anglia was inevitable; but even
-at the eleventh hour wiser counsels prevailed. To some of the leaders
-on the king’s side the thought occurred, that the impending battle
-would be a grievous mistake, “inasmuch as almost all that England had
-of noblest was in the two armies, and a battle between them would
-but bring one common ruin and leave the land open to invasion by the
-enemies of both”. On Godwine’s side also there was great unwillingness
-“to be compelled to stand against their royal lord”. Thus a peace--as
-it proved only a precarious peace--was patched up, and all subjects in
-dispute were referred to a great national meeting of the _witan_, which
-was to be held in London at Michaelmas.
-
-By consenting to this delay, and by changing the venue from Gloucester
-to London, the Godwine party seem to have thrown away their chances.
-The earl and his sons came to his dwelling at Southwark with a great
-multitude of West Saxons, “but his army ever waned, and all the more
-the longer he stayed”. The magic of the king’s name was still too
-mighty to be resisted. The thegns who were in subjection to Harold
-were told to transfer their allegiance to the king himself; Sweyn the
-seducer was once more outlawed; the negotiations soon became a mere
-desperate appeal from the Godwine party for hostages and safe conduct,
-and at last they received the royal ultimatum: “Five days in which to
-clear out of the country, or judgment against you,” probably on the old
-charge of complicity in the murder of Alfred, combined with new charges
-of treachery against the king. Hereupon the whole family took their
-departure. Godwine with his wife and three of his sons, Sweyn, Tostig
-and Gyrth, went to the patrimonial Bosham, “shoved out their ships,
-betook them beyond sea, and sought the protection of Baldwin, with
-whom they abode the whole winter”. There was especial fitness in those
-exiles seeking shelter in “Baldwin’s land,” for immediately before
-the downfall of the Godwine family Tostig had become the bridegroom
-of Judith, sister of Baldwin V., the reigning Count of Flanders. The
-other two sons, Harold and Leofwine, rode hard to Bristol, vainly
-pursued by Ealdred, Bishop of Worcester, whom the king had ordered to
-capture them. Much buffeted by storms, they beat out from Avonmouth,
-and at last arrived on the coast of Ireland, where they spent the
-winter as guests of Diarmid, King of Leinster. To complete the ruin of
-the family, Godwine’s daughter Edith, “who had been hallowed to Edward
-as queen, was forsaken by him; all her property in land, in gold, in
-silver and in all things was taken from her,” and she was committed
-to the care of her husband’s half-sister, the Abbess of Wherwell in
-Hampshire. Well may the chronicler who records these events say: “It
-must have seemed a wonderful thing to any man that was in England, if
-any man had said beforehand that so it should happen, inasmuch as he
-was so high uplifted that he ruled the king and all England, and his
-sons were earls and the king’s darlings, and his daughter [now sent to
-a nunnery] was wedded and married to the king”.
-
-Soon after the expulsion of Godwine and his sons a memorable event
-occurred: the landing in England of William the Norman, who came on a
-visit to the king in 1051. In 1035, the year of the death of Canute,
-Robert Duke of Normandy, King Edward’s first cousin, had died at Nicæa
-in Bithynia on his way home from the Holy Land. Before starting on this
-pilgrimage he had presented to the nobles of Normandy his illegitimate
-son, William, child of Herleva, the daughter of a tanner of Falaise,
-and called upon them to recognise him as his successor. The child was
-only about seven years old, but as his father said, “He is little but
-he will grow, and if God please he will mend”. Moreover, his lord
-paramount, the King of France, had promised to maintain him in his
-duchy. The nobles were loath to accept as their future ruler one whose
-illegitimacy for various reasons was considered more disgraceful than
-that which tarnished the shield of many of his ancestors, but being in
-some degree constrained, perhaps surprised, by the sudden action of
-their masterful duke, they consented and acknowledged themselves the
-“men” of the little bastard. When the tidings of Duke Robert’s death
-in the distant Orient arrived, no rival candidate was set up, and the
-plighted faith of the Norman nobles was not formally violated, but
-there seems to have been a general relapse into anarchy. Private wars
-between noble and noble were waged continually. Three guardians of the
-boy-duke were slain, one after another, and two attempts were made
-to kidnap, perhaps to murder him. But out of this welter of warring
-ambitions and treasons sometimes fomented by the liege-lord in Paris
-who had sworn to protect him, the young duke gradually grew up a bold,
-athletic, soldierly man; chaste and clean-living, though himself the
-child of illicit love; devout, though when occasion arose he could defy
-the thunders of the Church; beyond everything self-centred and capable
-of holding on through long years to an ambitious project once formed
-with infinite patience, and of carrying it into bloody effect without
-a shadow of remorse. Four years before his visit to England, in 1047,
-William, with the help of his liege-lord, Henry of France, had defeated
-the rebellious nobles of his duchy in the great battle of Val-es-dunes,
-a few miles east of Caen. In 1048 he took the two strong castles of
-Domfront and Alençon on the frontier between Normandy and Maine, thus
-preparing the way for the conquest of the latter country which followed
-six years later (1054), and which made him without question the most
-powerful of all the vassals of the French king.
-
-Even as it was, however, he was already a mighty prince when he came,
-probably in the autumn of 1051, to visit his elderly cousin, a man in
-all respects as utterly unlike himself as it is possible to imagine. A
-fateful visit indeed was that, though its details are passed over in
-provoking silence by all the chroniclers and biographers both of host
-and guest. When we remember that the man who thus came as a visitor to
-our land was he from whose loins have sprung all the sovereigns who
-have ruled over us for eight centuries, how gladly would we have heard
-some circumstances of this peaceful invasion: of his first sight of the
-white cliffs of Dover; his voyage up the Thames; his intercourse haply
-with some of the merchants of the rising city of London; his talks with
-his temporarily widowed cousin in his palace in the west of London,
-near the island of Thorney; but for all this we have only imagination
-to draw upon. The strangest thing is that though during this visit
-some promise was almost certainly made, or some expectation held out
-by Edward, that William should be the heir of his kingdom, even this
-though constantly alluded to by the Norman writers is never by them
-definitely connected with this visit. Of one thing we may be tolerably
-sure that the visit indicates the high-water mark of Norman influence
-at Edward’s court. Robert of Jumièges, the all-powerful archbishop
-of Canterbury; William, the king’s chaplain, bishop of London; Ulf,
-another chaplain, and a scandal to his profession, bishop of the vast
-diocese of Dorchester--all these were Normans, while Godwine, the
-Englishman, and his progeny of earls were all absent from the kingdom.
-Are we wrong in conjecturing that but for that absence the visit had
-never been paid? However, after a stay probably of a few weeks, William
-returned to his own land, and shortly after another member of his
-house, that one to whom all his claims to interfere in English politics
-were indirectly due, set forth on a longer journey. “On March 14, 1052,
-died, the Old Lady, mother of King Edward and Harthacnut, named Imme
-[Emma], and her body lies in the Old Minster [Winchester] with King
-Canute.”
-
-There can be no doubt that dislike of the arrogance of Edward’s Norman
-favourites was one cause, though possibly not the sole cause, of the
-remarkable revolution which took place in the year 1052. All through
-the winter of 1051–52 Godwine in “Baldwin’s land” and Harold in Ireland
-were preparing their forces, in order to compel a reversal of the
-decree of exile against them. Edward’s counsellors were also on the
-alert, and prepared at Sandwich a fleet of such strength that when
-Godwine with his ships issued forth at midsummer from the neighbourhood
-of Ostend he found the royal armament too strong for him and declined
-battle. Then followed three months of indecisive action, in which,
-curiously enough, the chief events recorded are the raiding expeditions
-against certain districts of England, made by the men who professed to
-come as her deliverers. “Earl Godwine hoisted sail with all his fleet
-and went westwards right on to Wight and harried the country there so
-long until the people paid them as much as they ordered them to pay.”
-This sounds more like Vikings extorting _gafol_ than like the patriot
-statesman coming to deliver his country from foreign oppression. “Then
-did Harold return from Ireland with nine ships and landed at Porlock,
-and much folk was there gathered against him, but he did not shrink
-from procuring him food. He landed and slew a good lot of people[244]
-and helped himself to cattle and men and property as it came handy,”
-and then sailing round the Land’s End, joined his father at the Isle
-of Wight, and so they sailed together to Pevensey. Meantime the royal
-fleet was weakened by continual desertion. The old Kentish loyalty to
-Earl Godwine revived in full force, and “all the _butse-carlas_ (common
-sailors) of Hastings and all along by that coast, all the east end of
-Sussex and Surrey and much else thereabouts came over to Godwine’s side
-and declared that they would live and die with him.”
-
-Thus Godwine’s fleet rounded Kent, reached the northern mouth of
-the Stour and sailed up towards London; some of the ships, however,
-improving the occasion by sailing inside the Isle of Sheppey and
-burning the town of King’s Milton. On September 14 Godwine was at his
-old home at Southwark, his troops drawn up in array on the Surrey
-bank of the Thames, his ships waiting for a favourable tide to pass
-through the bridge and encompass the king’s dwindling fleet. Battle,
-however, between Englishmen and Englishmen, now as in the previous
-year, was felt to be a terrible thing. The men of London were decidedly
-favourable to the cause of the banished earls, and when their humble
-petition to the king for the renewal of his favour to them met with
-stern refusal, it was all that Godwine could do to prevent the popular
-discontent from breaking out into some sudden act of mutiny. This
-state of tension did not last long. The foreign favourites saw that
-their cause was lost; they scattered, some to the west, some to the
-north; Robert of Canterbury and Ulf of Dorchester rode out of the
-eastern gate of the city, and after slaying and otherwise maltreating
-many young men (who probably sought to stay their flight) reached the
-Naze in Essex and there got on board a crazy ship, which crazy as it
-was, seems to have borne them in safety over to Normandy. “Thus,”
-says the chronicler, “did he, according to the will of God, leave his
-pallium here in this land, and that archiepiscopal dignity which _not_
-according to God’s will he had here obtained.”
-
-The Frenchmen gone, peace was easily negotiated between the cipher-king
-and his powerful ministers. To Earl Godwine, his wife, his sons and
-his daughter, full restitution was made of all the offices and all the
-property of which they had been deprived. “The Lady” was fetched back
-from her convent and again installed in the palace. “Friendship was
-made fast between Godwine’s family and the king; and to all men good
-laws were promised, and outlawed were all the Frenchmen who before
-perverted law and justice,[245] and counselled ill-will against this
-land, save those (few) persons whom the king liked to keep about him,
-because they were loyal to him and to his people.” At a great meeting
-of the _witan_, held outside of London, Earl Godwine appeared and made
-his defence, clearing himself, we are told, before his lord King Edward
-and before all the people of the land, of all the things that were laid
-to his charge and to that of his sons.
-
-The chief agent in these negotiations was Stigand, Bishop of
-Winchester, a very noticeable figure in the ecclesiastical history of
-the times, a busy, diplomatising person who had been a keen partisan
-of the Lady Emma’s; had shared her downfall and had afterwards been
-appointed to the bishopric of Winchester, which he now exchanged
-for the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury, practically, though not
-canonically, vacant by the flight of Robert of Jumièges. His position,
-which was already in the eyes of strict churchmen a doubtful one so
-long as his predecessor lived, was not improved by his tardy journey
-to Rome in the year 1058 in quest of his pallium, for he had the
-misfortune to receive it from the hands of a Pope, Benedict X.,
-who, though apparently chosen in a regular manner, did not second
-Hildebrand’s reforms, and being deposed in favour of Nicholas II.,
-bishop of Florence, figures in ecclesiastical history as an anti-pope.
-A pallium conferred by such hands was held to bring with it no
-blessing; on the contrary, by committing the English metropolitan to
-the losing party, which opposed the famous Gregory VII., it had a very
-important influence on subsequent events, and gave to the buccaneering
-expedition of William the Bastard something of the character of a
-religious crusade.
-
-To the great earl himself the revolution of 1052 brought no long
-enjoyment of power. Godwine fell sick soon after his landing in
-England, and though he recovered for a time, his health was evidently
-much shaken. In the following year, when King Edward was keeping
-Easter at Winchester with Godwine, Harold and Tostig for his guests,
-as they sat at meat, the earl “suddenly sank down by the king’s
-footstool, bereft of speech and strength. They carried him into the
-king’s bower, hoping that the attack would pass off, but it was not
-so. He continued so, speechless and powerless, from Easter Monday
-till the following Thursday [April 15, 1053], when he died. He lieth
-there within the Old Minster; and his son Harold took to his earldom
-(Wessex), resigning that which he had hitherto held (East Anglia),
-which was given to Elfgar,” son of Leofric and Godiva. In the face of
-this perfectly straightforward and circumstantial account given by
-the Saxon chronicler, of the death of an elderly statesman, after a
-hard and laborious life, from a stroke of apoplexy or paralysis, it
-is unnecessary to reproduce the idle legends of Norman historians two
-generations later, who represented that death as the fulfilment of a
-blasphemous imprecation of the divine vengeance on himself if he had
-had part or lot in the murder of the Etheling Alfred.
-
-Earl Harold succeeded not only to the earldom but also to the political
-predominance of his father, and for the remaining thirteen years of
-Edward’s reign we may safely consider him as the real ruler of the
-kingdom. Only it must be observed that though Harold was the king’s
-efficient man of business, the chosen companion of his sports and
-of his leisure was another brother, Tostig, who in the year 1055
-received the earldom of Northumbria. This peculiar position of favour
-in the palace and absenteeism from his province led to complications
-which will be related hereafter. For the present our notice of the
-internal affairs of the kingdom may close with the fact that in the
-year 1057 the Etheling Edward, son of Edmund Ironside, came to England
-accompanied by his wife, Agatha, a kinswoman of the Emperor Henry
-III., and by what a Saxon ballad-maker quaintly calls “a goodly team
-of bairns”. Probably it was the intention of the older Edward that his
-namesake should succeed him on the throne, though he may have at times
-vacillated between the more remote but known kinsman in Normandy and
-the nearer stranger from Hungary. But whatever the king’s intentions
-may have been, they were foiled by sickness or some less innocent
-agency. “We know not,” says the chronicler, “for what cause that was
-done that he might not see his kinsman, King Edward. Woe was that
-wretched mishap, and harmful to all this people that he ended his life
-so soon after he came to England, for the unhappiness of this poor
-folk.” There is a mystery in all this which it is vain now to try to
-penetrate. Only one cannot help again remarking the lack of virility in
-these latest scions of the house of Cerdic. Assuredly neither William
-the Bastard nor Harold Godwineson, would have been content to linger
-out forty years of life in exile, nor when returned to their native
-land would have been so easily snuffed out of existence as was this
-prince, the descendant of fifteen generations of West Saxon kings.
-
- * * * * *
-
-We pass from the internal affairs of England to the notices, scanty,
-but possessing for us a peculiar interest, concerning wars with
-Scotland in the reign of Edward. We have seen that in 1018 the Scottish
-king, Malcolm II., by his victory at Carham wrested from Northumbria
-all its territory north of the Tweed. This king died in 1034, the
-year before the death of Canute. His own death seems to have been a
-violent one, but he had certainly murdered the man who, according to
-the complicated law of succession then prevailing, had the best right
-to succeed him on the throne, and had thus secured the succession for
-his grandson, a lad named Duncan. The short reign of this young man--it
-lasted only six years--was marked by some exciting events. In the year
-1035 he led “an immense army” across the Border and laid siege to the
-new city of Durham. The siege lasted a long time, but in a successful
-sally of the besiegers the greater part of the Scottish cavalry was
-destroyed, and in the disordered flight of the army the infantry were
-also cut to pieces, and their heads being collected and brought within
-the walls were stuck upon stakes to adorn the market place of the
-city of St. Cuthbert. Then followed war, on the whole unsuccessful
-war, between Duncan and his cousin Thorfinn, the Scandinavian earl
-of Orkney and Caithness. Duncan was driven southward, and in August,
-1040, he was murdered by the general who had hitherto been fighting
-his battles, Macbeth, Mormaer or Earl of Moray. There was nothing in
-this event to take it out of the ordinary category of royal murders in
-Scotland at this time. It took place not under Macbeth’s own roof but
-on neutral ground, at a place called Bothgowanan or the Smith’s bothie;
-the victim was not the venerable greybeard whom Tragedy brings before
-us, but a young man still “of immature age,” whose grandfather had not
-many years before killed the brother of Macbeth’s wife and ousted her
-family from the royal succession. In fact, we may almost say, looking
-to the vicissitudes of the two families who at this time alternately
-ruled Scotland, that it was Duncan’s turn to be murdered. Macbeth,
-who reigned from 1040 to 1058, seems to have been on the whole a good
-king, though reigning by a more than doubtful title. It is possible
-that he imitated his contemporary Canute by going on pilgrimage, as a
-chronicler tells us that in the year 1050 Macbeth, king of Scotland,
-scattered silver broadcast among the poor of Rome.
-
-Such was the man against whom, in 1054, Siward the Strong, earl of
-Northumbria, moved with a large army accompanied by a fleet. Siward
-being himself brother-in-law of the murdered Duncan was uncle of the
-young Malcolm Canmore, who was now seeking to recover his father’s
-throne. We have also a hint from a later historian that there were
-Normans in the Scottish army. It is suggested, on rather slender
-evidence, that these were some of Edward’s favourites, displaced by
-the revolution of 1052, who had taken refuge at the court of Macbeth;
-and it is possible that their presence there may have had something
-to do with Siward’s expedition. However this may be, it is clear
-that a battle was fought on July 27, in which the Northumbrian earl
-was victorious, but at a heavy cost. His own son, Osbeorn, was slain
-(“with all his wounds in front,” as his father rejoiced to hear), and
-his sister’s son, Siward, as well as many of his own and the king’s
-_house-carls_. Some of these _house-carls_, we are expressly told,
-were Danes as well as Englishmen. There was a great and unprecedented
-capture of booty, but Macbeth himself escaped. He reigned, though
-probably with broken power, for four years longer, till 1058, in which
-year he was finally defeated and slain by Malcolm III. This prince, who
-is generally known by his epithet of Canmore (the Large-headed), is he
-who by his marriage with Margaret, daughter of the Etheling Edward,
-brought the blood of the old Saxon kings into the veins of the royal
-family of Scotland and indirectly into that of England also. Matilda,
-wife of Henry Beauclerk, daughter of Malcolm Canmore and Margaret, is
-the link which connects the Saxon with the Norman dynasty, Alfred with
-Victoria.
-
-The year after his invasion of Scotland (1055) old Siward the Strong
-died of dysentery. Of him is told the well-known story that when he
-found his death drawing nigh, he said: “What a shame it is that I, who
-could not find my death in so many battles, should now be reserved
-for an inglorious death like that of a cow. At least arm me with
-coat of mail, sword and helmet: place my shield on my left arm, my
-gilded battle-axe in my right hand, that I, who was strongest among
-soldiers, may die a soldier’s death.” His command was obeyed, and thus
-honourably clad in armour he breathed out his soul. The great earldom
-of Northumbria, made vacant by the death of Siward, was bestowed on
-the king’s favourite brother-in-law, Tostig, who, however, held it not
-for long. Siward’s son, Waltheof, seems to have been little more than
-a child at his father’s death, but, though now passed over in the
-distribution of earldoms, he received, ten years after, the earldom
-of two southern counties, Northampton and Huntingdon, which had once
-formed an outlying portion of his father’s dominions, and he had a
-great share in the events which followed the Norman Conquest.
-
- * * * * *
-
-The affairs of Wales, during the reign of Edward the Confessor, centred
-chiefly round the person of Griffith ap Llewelyn, “the head and shield
-and defender of the Britons,” as he is called by a Welsh chronicler; a
-terrible thorn in the side of England, as he must have appeared to his
-Saxon contemporaries. This man, whose father, Llewelyn, died in 1021,
-soon after achieving the supremacy in Wales, had been for sixteen years
-throneless and probably an exile. In 1039 Griffith slew the King of
-Gwynedd (North Wales), and being himself of a North Welsh house became
-practically supreme over all the Britons. And not over the Britons only
-did he win victories. “During his whole reign,” says the _Chronicle of
-the Princes_, “he pursued the Saxons and the pagan nations and killed
-and destroyed them and overcame them in a multitude of battles.” The
-life of a Welsh king at this time was necessarily one of continual
-turmoil. There was the ever-present rivalry between Gwynedd and Dyved
-(North and South Wales), barely held in check from time to time by the
-strong hand of such an one as Griffith. There were “the pagans,” the
-Danes of Dublin and Wexford, always ready to cross the narrow seas and
-harry the Welsh coast. Apparently the Christian Irish must sometimes
-have shared in these raids, for “the Scots” (which doubtless still
-means the Irish) are frequently alluded to as enemies of Griffith. In
-addition to this there was the long feud with Mercia, which had lasted
-for so many centuries, but which was now occasionally interrupted when
-it served the purpose of both Wales and Mercia to combine against
-Wessex.
-
-In 1039, in the first year of Griffith’s reign, he won a great victory
-over the Mercians at “the Ford of the Cross” by the river Severn,
-slaying Leofric’s brother, Edwin, “and many good men besides,” as the
-Saxon chronicler admits. Then there was a check to Griffith’s career
-of victory. In 1042 he was taken prisoner by the pagans of Dublin,
-but two years later we find him at the head of his forces, defeating
-the Danish invaders with great slaughter. A namesake and rival,
-Griffith, son of Rhyddarch, whose father had reigned in South Wales,
-stirred up rebellion against him in 1046, but he was defeated by a
-joint expedition of Griffith, son of Llewelyn, and Earl Sweyn, son of
-Godwine. This co-operation of Wales and Mercia is memorable for more
-reasons than one, since it was on his return from this expedition that
-Sweyn Godwineson sinned that great sin with the Abbess of Leominster
-which ruined his career and, for a time at least, blighted the fortunes
-of his father.
-
-There were some smaller skirmishes between Welshmen and Englishmen,
-but, omitting these, we pass on to the year 1055, when a war broke
-out which was partly caused by the discords and rivalries of English
-nobles. Godwine was now dead, and Harold was all-powerful. Leofric of
-Mercia, Godiva’s husband, still lived, but must have been an old man,
-since we find his grandsons, only ten years later, men in the vigour
-of manhood. For some reason or other--it is difficult not to see the
-hand of the great rival family in the affair--a charge of treason
-was brought against Leofric’s son, Elfgar, who had, we may remember,
-received the earldom of East Anglia when it was resigned by Harold on
-succeeding to Wessex. A general Witenagemot was now summoned to London,
-before which “Earl Elfgar was charged with being a traitor to the king
-and to all the people of the land, and he confessed this before all
-who were gathered there, though the words shot forth from him against
-his will”. So says the Peterborough chronicler, a strong partisan of
-the Godwine family. The Abingdon chronicler, who disliked them, says
-that “The Witenagemot in London outlawed Earl Elfgar without any guilt
-on his part”. The Worcester chronicler vacillates and says, “almost
-without guilt of his”. It is hopeless now, after the lapse of eight
-centuries and a half, to retry a cause which excited such differences
-of opinion among contemporaries. What is undoubted is that Elfgar’s
-earldom was given to Tostig Godwineson, who had just received the great
-earldom of Northumberland, and that the outlawed Elfgar betook himself
-to Ireland, raised there a fleet of eighteen ships and sailed across to
-Wales, where he threw himself on the hospitality and help of Griffith
-ap Llewelyn. With a great force of Irishmen and Welshmen Griffith
-marched against Ralph, the timid Earl of Hereford. This man, the king’s
-nephew, had collected a large number of the militia, but, in order
-probably that he might follow the French fashion of fighting, had
-mounted them on horses, the consequence of which was that “ere a single
-spear had been thrown, the English people fled, forasmuch as they had
-horses, and a good lot of them were slain, about four or five hundred,
-and not one on the other side”. Thus was Hereford laid at the mercy
-of the invaders, among whom there were probably some of the “pagans”.
-They carried the city by storm, burned both it and the minster, thereby
-breaking the heart of the good Bishop Athelstan, its builder; slew the
-priests in the minster and many others besides, and carried off all the
-treasures.
-
-A proclamation went throughout almost the whole of England for the
-gathering of a _fyrd_ at Gloucester, and Harold took the command.
-But then “people began to speak about peace”: a conference was held
-at Billingsley in Shropshire; and, as the Worcester chronicler
-sarcastically remarks, “when the enemy had done all the harm that
-was possible, then people took counsel that Earl Elfgar should be
-inlawed again and receive once more his earldom”. But though peace and
-friendship were supposed to have been “fastened” at Billingsley, war
-with Wales broke out again next year (1056), apparently in part owing
-to the martial ardour of Harold’s mass-priest, Leofgar, who succeeded
-the good old Athelstan as Bishop of Hereford. This extraordinary
-person, to the amazement of the chronicler, had worn his moustaches
-all through his priesthood until he was bishop;[246] and now “he
-abandoned his chrism and his rood, his ghostly weapons, and took to his
-spear and his sword after he had become bishop and so joined the army
-against the Welsh king, and was there slain and his priests with him;
-Elfnoth the sheriff also and many other good men; and the others fled
-away” (June 13, 1056). A dreary campaign followed, with much waste of
-horses and men, but at last old Leofric, with Harold and the universal
-pacificator, Bishop Ealdred, succeeded in making a peace, one of the
-conditions of which was Griffith’s oath that he would be King Edward’s
-loving and loyal under-king. Two years after, however, Elfgar, now
-Earl of Mercia and the head of his family (old Leofric having died
-the year before), was again expelled and again restored by the help
-of his Welsh friend, co-operating apparently with a certain Magnus,
-who brought ships from Norway, but about whom our information is very
-unsatisfactory.
-
-It was probably about this time that the union between Wales and
-Mercia was made yet closer by the marriage of Griffith to Aldgyth, the
-beautiful daughter of Elfgar. His career, however, was drawing to a
-close. Successful as his expeditions had generally been, his people
-seem to have grown tired of the constant fever of strife with their
-neighbours. In 1063 war again broke out, and this time Harold was
-determined to deal a crushing blow. A sudden march to Griffith’s castle
-at Rhuddlan, on the north coast of Wales, failed to accomplish the
-arrest of the king, but was marked by the burning of the town and all
-the ships in the harbour with their tackle. In May, Harold sailed from
-Bristol all round Wales, receiving hostages and promises of obedience
-from the people; and Tostig meanwhile operated with a land force in the
-interior of the country. On August 5 Griffith was slain by some of his
-own followers, “because of the war which he waged against Earl Harold,”
-and his head, with the prow of his ship and the ornament thereon, was
-brought as a trophy to the conqueror. Thus, as a Welsh chronicler says,
-“The man who had been hitherto invincible was now left in the glens of
-desolation, after taking immense spoils and after innumerable victories
-and taking countless treasures of gold and silver and jewels and purple
-vestures”.
-
-The kingdom was handed over to two brothers of Griffith on the usual
-conditions of oaths of fealty, hostages and tribute: but how little
-such promises availed in the disordered condition of the country,
-was seen two years after when a hunting lodge, which Harold, hoping
-to have the king there as his guest, began to build at Portskewet in
-Monmouthshire, was destroyed (August 24, 1065) by Caradoc, son of
-another Griffith, who was ruling in South Wales. Nearly all the men
-who were engaged on the work were slain, and the ample stores there
-collected were carried away. “We do not know who first counselled this
-piece of folly” (the building of a hunting-lodge in an enemy’s country)
-is the dry remark of the Worcester Chronicle.
-
- * * * * *
-
-From these border wars we must now return to watch the course of
-events at Edward’s court during the closing years of his reign. The
-year 1064, which is an absolute blank in the Saxon Chronicles, is
-generally chosen for an event, undated, perplexing and mysterious,
-namely, Harold’s visit to the court of William the Norman, and his
-oath of fealty to that prince. About this oath, his subsequent breach
-of which figured so largely in the indictment preferred against him on
-the battlefield of Hastings, Norman writers have much to say, Saxon
-writers nothing, nor does the witness even of the Normans always agree
-together. It is impossible to doubt the truth of the main outlines
-of the story, but unfortunately it is equally impossible to fill in
-the details. Did Harold go to Normandy with express purpose to assure
-William of his nomination by Edward as the successor to his throne?
-Did he go thither in order to obtain the liberation of two of his
-kinsmen, hostages once given to the English king and transferred to
-the keeping of the Norman duke? Or was his visit to Rouen involuntary
-and accidental, the result of shipwreck and felonious detention by a
-lawless count? All of these versions of the story have been given, and
-though the last is the one which is generally received and on the whole
-the most probable, to speak with any certainty on the question seems
-impossible. All that will be attempted here will be to describe some
-of the chief scenes of the fatal journey as they are depicted in that
-all-but contemporary record, the Tapestry of Bayeux.
-
-We see Harold taking leave of the aged king who, white-bearded, and
-adorned with crown and sceptre, is seated on his throne. With hawk on
-hand, preceded by his dogs and followed by his squire, Harold rides to
-the family property at Bosham and enters the church at that place to
-worship. He embarks, and crosses the channel with a favouring breeze
-filling his sails. There is no suggestion in the pictures of storm or
-shipwreck, though these seem to be almost required by the course of
-events. Whatever the cause may have been, Harold, when he lands in
-the territory of Guy, Count of Ponthieu, is arrested by the count’s
-orders, and is conducted, still with the hawk on his hand, but with
-dejected countenance and with spurless heels, to Beaurain, where he
-is imprisoned. Parleys (no doubt as to the amount of ransom demanded)
-follow with his captor: but at this point William of Normandy’s
-messengers arrive, who vigorously plead the cause of Harold and press
-for his liberation. The result of the negotiations and of the payment
-by the Norman duke of a heavy ransom (as to this the Tapestry is
-silent) is that Guy conducts his prisoner to William, who receives
-him in his palace as an honoured guest. William and Harold undertake
-together a campaign in Brittany under the shadow of Mont St. Michel.
-The soldiers are seen crossing the river Couesnon (the boundary between
-Normandy and Brittany), and holding high their shields above their
-heads as they wade the water breast-high. Some of the men are in danger
-of being swallowed up by the quicksands, from which they are drawn
-by the strong arm of the tall-statured Harold. At the close of this
-campaign Harold is knighted by Duke William, who with one hand places
-the helmet on his head, and with the other fastens the straps of his
-coat of mail.
-
-Then follows at Bayeux the fateful scene of the oath-taking. The duke,
-attended by his courtiers (a full assembled parliament according to the
-poet Wace), sits on his throne, and Harold stands before him between
-two great coffers, which (as we know from other sources) were filled
-with the bones of some of the greatest saints in Normandy. He puts a
-hand on each coffer-lid and swears; but what is the purport of the
-oath? The Tapestry itself simply says that he makes his oath to Duke
-William. Of the Norman writers some represent him as swearing that he
-will marry William’s daughter, Adela (a little damsel not half his
-age); others, as becoming in the fullest sense of the word William’s
-vassal; others as undertaking to hand over to him the Castle of Dover;
-but almost all give us the impression that in some way or other Harold
-was cognisant of William’s determination to assert his claim as heir
-to his cousin of England, and promised to aid him therein when the
-occasion should arise. What burden an oath thus exacted under duress
-should have laid upon the conscience of the swearer, and how the
-contract was affected by the undoubted fact that the consent of the
-_witan_ was necessary for any disposal of the crown either by Edward or
-by Harold, are questions of casuistry on which much has been said, but
-which need not be discussed here. We note, however, that the Tapestry
-gives no support to the often-repeated story that Harold was beguiled
-into taking the oath on relics of greater and more awful sanctity than
-he was aware of. Whether the whole episode were mere misadventure or
-the failure of some cunningly devised scheme on Harold’s part, one
-cannot but marvel at the lightness of heart with which he threw himself
-into the power of the most dangerous of all his rivals, at a time when
-he needed all his vigilance and all his ability in order to secure the
-splendid prize for which he had so long been labouring.[247]
-
-The year following that usually assigned to Harold’s visit to Normandy
-(1065) witnessed another revolution in the fortunes of one member of
-the Godwine family. Tostig, Earl of Northumbria, was, as has been
-said, an especial favourite at court, and seems to have been the best
-beloved brother of the royal “Lady,” Edith. He was, not, however, by
-any means equally popular with the men of his own Northumbrian earldom,
-who seem to have complained both of his frequent absences and of the
-stern, almost bloodthirsty, character of his government when he did
-appear among them. There was a general rising of all the thegns in
-Yorkshire and Northumberland; they decreed in some tumultuous assembly
-the outlawry of their earl, then hunting in Wiltshire with the king;
-they massacred all the men of his household, whether English or Danes,
-upon whom they could lay their hands, and seized his weapons stored up
-in the arsenal at York, his gold, his silver and all his money about
-which they could obtain information. These massacres and robberies seem
-to have taken place both at York and Lincoln; and the insurgent thegns
-then proceeded to elect a new earl to reign over them. This was the
-young Morkere, grandson of Leofric. Elfgar, the twice-banished Earl
-of Mercia, was now dead; his eldest son, Edwin, had succeeded him in
-Mercia, and to Edwin’s younger brother, Morkere, was given the splendid
-but difficult office which had been wrested from Tostig. In support of
-their rebellious acts--for they were nothing less--the northern thegns
-marched to Northampton, where Morkere was joined by his brother, Edwin,
-at the head of the Mercian _fyrd_ and--ominous conjunction---of many
-Welsh auxiliaries. Once more civil war seemed inevitable, but the good
-offices of Harold were sought for as mediator between the insurgents
-and the king. He failed, however, to reconcile the Northerners and his
-brother; and after two _gemots_ held at Northampton and at Oxford
-the negotiations ended in an entire surrender to all the demands of
-the rebels (October 28, 1065). The outlawed Tostig went over sea with
-his wife and followers to his brother-in-law, Count Baldwin; the
-grant of his earldom was confirmed to Morkere, and the insurgent army
-at last returned northward, not, however, till they had so wasted
-Northamptonshire with fire and sword and carried off such quantities
-of cattle that it was years before that county recovered from their
-ravages.
-
-What was the precise part taken by Harold in this revolution, which
-implied in some degree the depression of the house of Godwine and the
-elevation of the rival house of Leofric, it is very difficult now
-to discover. Everything that he did may be fully accounted for and
-justified by a patriotic abhorrence of civil war, a recognition of the
-fact that his brother’s government had been arbitrary and unpopular,
-and a noble willingness to place the welfare of England before the
-private advantage of his own family. On the other hand, there are
-curious traditions as to an enmity subsisting from boyhood between the
-two brothers, Harold and Tostig, and some even of their contemporaries
-averred that the whole revolution was planned by Harold for the
-overthrow of his brother. This suggestion seems most improbable, but it
-is evident that, whether as a cause or consequence of the disgrace of
-Tostig, Harold does from this time forward unite himself more closely
-to the house of Leofric, whose granddaughter, Aldgyth, widow of the
-Welsh king, Griffith, and sister of Edwin and Morkere, he seems to have
-married about this time. This marriage, which rendered it impossible
-for him to fulfil one at least of the articles of his covenant with
-William of Normandy, may have been the first intimation to his great
-rival that Harold regarded the promise made to him as of none effect.
-
-Whatever may have been Harold’s feelings as to his brother’s disgrace,
-there can be no doubt that it cut King Edward to the heart, and
-probably, as one of his biographers hints, hastened his end. He was now
-apparently a little over sixty years of age, a man of moderate stature,
-with milk-white hair and beard, with broad and rosy face, white and
-slender hands and a certain royalty of aspect. Already perhaps that
-belief in the healing efficacy of his touch had begun to spread among
-the multitude, which engendered the mass of miracles wherewith his
-memory was afterwards loaded. These miracles being strangely supposed
-to be in some way specially connected with the royal office, led to the
-practice of “touching for the King’s evil,” which was continued till
-the reign of the last Stuart.
-
-Through all these later years of his reign he had been intently
-watching the progress of his great church in the Island of Thorney by
-the Thames. Its foundations of large square blocks of greystone, its
-apsidal end, its central tower and two towers at the west end with
-their beautiful bells, and the long rows of its columns with their
-richly adorned bases and capitals, are enthusiastically described by
-his biographer. He came to Westminster on December 21, 1065, “and
-caused the minster to be hallowed which he had himself built to the
-glory of God and St. Peter and all God’s saints, and the hallowing of
-this church was on Childmass day” (December 28), but he was not himself
-present at the hallowing, and his death took place on Twelfth night
-(January 5, 1066).
-
-The death-bed sayings of the old king, as reported by his biographer,
-are perhaps best known in Tennyson’s poetical version of them, but
-have, even unparaphrased, a poetical beauty of their own. After
-describing the vengeance of God which was coming upon England for her
-sins, and his pitiful prayer to the Most High that this punishment
-might not endure for ever, he repeats the words which he has heard
-from the saints whom he has seen in vision: “The green tree which
-springs from the trunk, when it has been severed thence and removed
-to a distance of three acres, shall return to its original trunk and
-shall join itself to its root whence first it sprang. Then shall the
-head again be green and bear fruit after its flower; and then may you
-certainly hope for better times.” Most of the bystanders listened with
-awe and wonder to the dying king’s prophecy, but Archbishop Stigand,
-with his hard worldly wisdom, said: “The old man is in his dotage”.
-
-But Edward not only uttered this perplexing prophecy; he also, there
-can be little doubt, uttered some words which amounted to a bequest of
-his crown, as far as he had power to bequeath it, not to William but to
-Harold. There seems no reason why we should reject the story told in
-the quaint verses of the Chronicle--
-
- Nathless, that wisest man, Dying made fast the realm
- To a high-risen man, Even to Harold’s self,
- Who was a noble earl: He did at every tide
- Follow with loyal love All of his lord’s behests,
- Both in his words and deeds: Naught did he e’er neglect
- Whate’er of right belonged Unto the people’s king.
-
-“And now was Harold hallowed as king, but little stillness did he there
-enjoy, the while that he wielded the kingdom.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVI.
-
-STAMFORD BRIDGE AND HASTINGS.
-
-
-Upon the death of Edward the Confessor the election and coronation of
-HAROLD, son of Godwine, followed with the briefest possible interval.
-No serious notice seems to have been taken, at the time, of any claim
-to the crown which might be made on behalf of Edgar the Etheling,
-grandson of Edmund Ironside, the undoubted heir, on what we call
-legitimist principles, of the house of Cerdic. Though the year of
-Edgar’s birth is doubtful, he was certainly little more than a boy
-at his great-uncle’s death, and it is probable that the ascertained
-weakness of his character made the Wise Men of the kingdom unwilling to
-entrust even the nominal government of England at such a critical time
-to his nerveless hands.
-
-The election of Harold was undoubtedly contrary to all the traditions
-of West Saxon royalty, but there are some considerations which may
-have made it seem a less revolutionary proceeding, and the new king
-somewhat less of an upstart, than they have appeared to later ages. Let
-the cloud which rests over Godwine’s birth and parentage be admitted,
-but it must be remembered that Harold was on his mother’s side a near
-kinsman of Canute, that in his veins flowed the blood of Gorm the Old
-and Harold Bluetooth, kings of Denmark in the preceding century, and
-that the then reigning King of Denmark was his own first cousin. As
-has been already said, Godwine and his tribe must have always appeared
-half-Danish to the Saxon people, and though the claims of the house
-of Cerdic were disregarded by his election they had been equally
-disregarded by the elections of Canute, Harold and Harthacnut of whom
-Harold Godwineson may have seemed in some sort the natural successor.
-
-But that this view of the case would not be accepted in Normandy,
-all men knew full well, and none better than the new king himself.
-The Bayeux Tapestry, almost immediately after its picture of
-Harold enthroned, represents “an English ship coming to the land
-of Duke William”. Whatever this may mean, whether the flight of
-some Norman favourite to his native land, or a desperate attempt at
-self-exculpation and reconciliation on the part of Harold, it is
-followed with ominous rapidity by the picture, “Here William orders
-ships to be built,” in which the axes of the woodmen are felling the
-trees of the forest; that again by a picture, “Here they drag the
-ships to the sea,” and that by a lively scene, “These men carry arms
-to the ships and here they drag a cart with wine and arms”. After
-this in a scene which is not pictorially represented and at a date of
-which we are not accurately informed, William assembled his barons at
-Lillebonne and endeavoured to obtain from them a vote in favour of an
-expedition for the assertion of his rights to the throne of England.
-The expedition, however, appeared to the Norman nobles too dangerous,
-the naval power of England too great to give a hope of success, and
-notwithstanding the eloquent pleadings of William’s trusty henchman,
-William Fitz Osbern (son of one of the murdered guardians of his
-childhood), the assembly broke up in confusion without giving the
-desired promise of support. The assent, however, which he had been
-unable to obtain from the united baronage of the duchy, he succeeded in
-winning by entreaties and promises from the barons singly in private
-conference. The contingents of men, the numbers of ships which each
-baron undertook to furnish, were all set down in a book, in which were
-found the names not only of William’s own subjects but of volunteers
-from the neighbouring provinces of Brittany, Maine and Anjou. It was,
-so to speak, the memorandum of a great Joint Stock Company of conquest,
-which was entered in that “Domesday Book of the Conquerors,”[248]
-and though the precise rate of dividend was not there set down, it
-is evident that the lordships and estates in the doomed land, which
-William promised to his shareholders, bore some definite relation to
-the size of their contributions.
-
-It remained only, according to medieval ideas, to get the blessing of
-heaven’s representative on the great spoliation. William had himself
-in his earlier days all-but brought an interdict on his realm by his
-marriage with Matilda of Flanders who, for some reason not very clearly
-explained, was held to be canonically unfitted to be his wife. But that
-breach with the Holy See had been healed through the mediation of the
-great churchman Lanfranc, Prior of the Abbey of Bec; and Lanfranc’s
-influence may probably now have been employed to obtain from Pope
-Alexander II. a formal approval of the invasion of England. The oath of
-Harold, so solemnly taken and so flagrantly broken, and his marriage
-to Aldgyth, after having promised to marry William’s daughter Adela,
-may possibly have been pressed against him at the court of Rome and may
-have helped towards the composition of the bull which was now issued
-denouncing Harold as a usurper and proclaiming William as Edward’s
-rightful heir. It is probable, however, that in the mind of Hildebrand,
-the master-spirit of the papal court, though not yet actually Pope,
-the independent attitude which the English Church had sometimes
-assumed, and notably the unfortunate fact that Archbishop Stigand had,
-during the lifetime of his own predecessor, received his pallium from
-the anti-pope Benedict X., were the chief reasons for the Church’s
-enthusiastic partisanship on the Norman side. The word Crusade was not
-yet heard in the Christian world, nor was it to be heard till near
-thirty years later, when Peter the Hermit at the Council of Clermont
-was to utter his fiery declamation against the misbelievers; but a
-virtual crusade was preached against Harold and his adherents, and all
-Europe knew that whenever William’s shipbuilding should be ended and
-he should be ready to sail, his troops would march to battle under the
-protection of a banner consecrated by the successor of St. Peter.
-
-The Norman preparations, begun in the early months of 1066, lasted on
-through the summer and almost up to the autumnal equinox. Meanwhile, a
-portent in the heavens and the attacks of another foe were depressing
-the spirits of Englishmen. Soon after Easter “the comet star which some
-men call the hairy star,” which had for some time been creeping nearer
-to the sun, unnoticed in the early morning hours, began to blaze forth
-in the north-west in the evening sky. From April 24 till May 1 was the
-period of its greatest brilliancy, and it probably disappeared early in
-June. In the Tapestry we see six men pointing fearful fingers towards
-a star which trails a rudely drawn streamer of light behind it, and we
-are informed that “These men are marvelling at the star”. The comet
-here depicted is now known to be one which regularly returns to our
-firmament at intervals of some seventy-five or seventy-six years. Its
-return in 1758 verified the prediction of the astronomer Halley, then
-no longer living, and it is expected that once more in the year 1910
-Englishmen will be gazing upwards, and with less fearful hearts than of
-old, will “wonder at the star”.
-
-The less shadowy terror of the spring of that year came from the king’s
-banished brother Tostig, who now by right or wrong was determined to
-win back his lost earldom. He had gathered a considerable force of
-ships and men, no doubt chiefly in “Baldwin’s land,” among the subjects
-of his brother-in-law; and he had probably already made overtures of
-alliance to the Duke of Normandy and the King of Norway. He came,
-however, unaccompanied by allies “from beyond sea into Wight with as
-large a fleet as he could procure and there people paid him both money
-and provisions; and he went thence and did all the harm that he could
-along the sea-coast until he came to Sandwich”. The naval armament
-which Harold had collected in anticipation of the Norman attack availed
-to keep the southern coasts clear from further ravages by Tostig, who
-took on board a large number of _butse-carlas_, some willingly and some
-unwillingly, and steering northwards entered the Humber, and began
-to ravage Lincolnshire. The two northern earls, Edwin and Morkere,
-however, having summoned the _fyrd_ succeeded in driving him out of the
-country. Most of his _butse-carlas_ took the opportunity to desert,
-and with a dwindled force of twelve smacks he sailed for the Forth.
-The Scottish King, Malcolm Canmore, took him under his protection and
-helped him with provisions, and there he abode all summer.
-
-The delay of these summer months, during which invasion was impending
-from two quarters at once, was disastrous for England. When Harold
-had collected his fleet and army, “such a land force both by land and
-sea as no king of the land had ever gathered before,” he went to the
-Isle of Wight and there lay at anchor all the summer, keeping the
-land force always close beside him on the coast. Had William made his
-invasion then, it may fairly be conjectured that he would never have
-sat on the throne of England. But when the day of the Nativity of St.
-Mary (September 8) was come, the men’s provisions were exhausted, and
-it was impossible to keep them longer under the standards. They were
-accordingly allowed to go home, and the king rode up to London, while
-his fleet sailed round to the Thames, and meeting unfortunately with
-bad weather, many of the ships perished ere they reached their haven.
-
-If Harold thought that peril from either of his foes was over for that
-year he was terribly mistaken. Even while the fleet and army were
-scattering from the Isle of Wight, the whole aspect of affairs in the
-north was being changed by the sudden and unexpected arrival off the
-northern coast of Harold, King of Norway, with an immense fleet of
-more than three hundred ships. This Harold, surnamed Hardrada (the
-man of hard counsel), was, even if we may not believe all that the
-saga-men told concerning him, one of the most romantic figures of the
-time. A half-brother of the sainted Olaf, by whose side he fought when
-but fifteen years old at the fatal battle of Stiklestadt, he appears,
-after some four or five years of a fugitive existence, as one of the
-chiefs of the Varangian soldiery at the court of Constantinople. The
-tall statured Scandinavian--his height is said to have been nearly
-seven feet--rose rapidly in the Byzantine service, and it was hinted
-that the inflammable Empress Zoe would have gladly welcomed him as
-one of her numerous husbands or lovers. The life of a soldier was,
-however, more to his taste than the dissipations of a luxurious court.
-He wrought great deeds in the eastern waters and shared with the
-veteran Byzantine general, George Maniaces, the glory of a temporary
-re-conquest of Sicily. Even then, however, that element of keen egotism
-in his character which won for him his title of Hardrada made itself
-visible; and his country’s _skalds_ delighted to tell of the clever but
-dishonourable stratagem by which he out-witted his brother general when
-they were casting lots for choice of quarters. Strange to say, one of
-the most interesting memorials of this Norwegian chief is still to be
-seen amid the lagunes of Venice. There, in front of the noble gateway
-of the arsenal, sit two great marble lions, brought by the Venetian
-general Morosini from the Piraeus, trophies of that fatally memorable
-expedition in which he converted the Parthenon into a ruin. On the
-flanks of one of these lions is a nearly effaced Runic inscription,
-recording the conquest of the port of Piraeus by three chieftains with
-Scandinavian names. “These men,” says the inscription, “and Harold
-the Tall, laid considerable fines on the citizens because of the
-insurrection of the Greek people.” With difficulty Harold escaped from
-the prison in which he was confined by the jealous caprice of Zoe, and
-after charging over the great chain which was stretched across the
-Bosphorus, sailed out into the Euxine and thence up one of the great
-rivers into the heart of Russia. The king of Novgorod gave him his
-daughter Elizabeth to wife, and in the year 1045 Harold reappeared
-laden with treasure in his native Norway. He was sometimes the ally,
-sometimes the foe of his nephew Magnus the Good, on whose premature
-death in 1047 he succeeded peaceably to his throne. For fifteen years
-he waged almost incessant, generally successful, war with the King of
-Denmark, but in 1062 he concluded a treaty with that prince, which left
-him free to attempt the larger and more daring enterprise to which he
-was tempted by the example of Canute and the overtures of Tostig, even
-the conquest of England.
-
-Harold made first for the Orkneys, then under the rule of the sons of
-the Norseman, Earl Thorfinn. From thence he sailed along the coast of
-Scotland, till, either in the Forth or the Tyne, he met his promised
-ally, Tostig, who “bowed to him and became his man”. They went both
-together, landed in Cleveland, which they harried; set fire to
-Scarborough; and at last reaching the mouth of the Humber, sailed with
-all their enormous fleet up that river and the Ouse, and landed near
-York. The Earls Edwin and Morkere came forth to meet them with as large
-a force as they could muster, but were utterly defeated in a great
-battle fought at Fulford, two miles from York, on September 20, 1066.
-The two earls escaped alive from the field, but were unable to make any
-further opposition to the invaders, who entered York in triumph and
-received the submission of the city. “Then after the fight came Harold
-and Tostig into York with as many people as to them seemed good, and
-they took hostages from the city and also received provisions, and so
-went thence to their ships, having agreed to full peace, that they [the
-people of York] might all go south with them and conquer this land.” It
-was to be an expedition of Northumbrians, Scots and men of Orkney, as
-well as Norsemen, under the command of Harold Hardrada, against Harold
-Godwineson and the men of Mercia and Wessex.
-
-The invaders had in this instance reckoned without their host. They
-thought they had only the young and somewhat inefficient sons of Elfgar
-to deal with, whereas the namesake of Hardrada, “Harold our king” (as
-one of the chroniclers calls him), had heard the unwelcome news of
-their presence in his kingdom, and with almost Napoleonic swiftness of
-decision, was bearing down upon them. It was only on September 8 that
-he had dismissed his fleet and army in Hampshire. His journey to London
-may have occupied a day or two, and we know not how soon the tidings
-of the invasion reached him; but already on September 24, with all the
-_fyrd_ that he could assemble in the south, he was at Tadcaster, and on
-the following day he marched through York. Hardrada and Tostig, whom he
-had perhaps hoped to surprise cooped up within the city, had marched
-eastwards some seven or eight miles to Stamford Bridge, on the river
-Derwent, where they expected to receive the hostages whom Yorkshire was
-to offer for her fidelity. Against them marched the English Harold, so
-suddenly, and with such successful precautions against their obtaining
-information of his movements, that at first when Hardrada saw afar off
-the steam of the horses and thereunder fair shields and white byrnies
-(coats of mail), he asked Tostig what host that might be. Tostig
-answered that they might be some of his kinsmen coming in to seek the
-king’s friendship, but that he feared it meant “unpeace,” and so it
-proved. The host drew nearer and nearer, and like the flashing of the
-sunlight reflected from a glacier was the gleam of their weapons.[249]
-
-There was a short parley ere the armies closed. English Harold sent
-to offer his brother a third of his kingdom, that there might be
-peace between them. “’Tis pity,” said Tostig, “that this offer was
-not made last winter. Many a good man had then been living who now is
-dead, and better had it been for the whole realm of England; but if
-I accept these terms, what shall Harold of Norway have in return for
-his labour?” Then came the celebrated answer (and it is worthy of note
-that the Norse story-teller has preserved it): “Seven foot’s room, or
-so much more as he may need, seeing that he is taller than other men”.
-Tostig honourably refused to make any peace by the sacrifice of his
-ally; and the battle was joined, a terrible battle which lasted all
-day long and wrought great slaughter. The English at last succeeded in
-breaking the invaders’ shield-wall, and, surrounding them on all sides,
-poured their missiles upon them with deadly effect. Mad at this breach
-in his ranks, Hardrada leapt in front of his men and made a clear space
-round him, hewing with both his hands, but he was at last wounded in
-the throat by an arrow and fell dead upon the field. There was a little
-lull in the conflict, and Harold Godwineson offered peace to Tostig
-and the surviving Northmen, but they all whooped out with one voice
-that they would rather fall each one across the other than take peace
-of the Englishmen. Tostig seems to have fallen in this second battle.
-Then another pause, and a host of men, well-armed but breathless, came
-rushing up from the Norwegian ships in the river. They wrought great
-havoc in the English ranks, and had well-nigh turned the fortune of
-the day; but it was not to be. The new-comers were so spent with their
-march, that at last they threw away their “byrnies” and so fell an
-easier prey to the English axes.
-
-So ran the story of the fight of Stamford Bridge as told by the
-descendants of the Norsemen. The English chronicler, with much less
-detail, describes Harold Godwineson’s unlooked-for attack upon the
-Scandinavians. According to him, the bridge itself was the key of
-the position and victory was impossible for the English until it was
-crossed. In its narrow entrance one Norwegian long held the English
-host at bay: an arrow availed not to dislodge him, but at length one
-of Harold’s men crept under the bridge and pierced him through the
-corselet. Then the king of the Englishmen came over the bridge and
-the victory was won. Great slaughter was made both of the Norsemen
-and Flemings, but Olaf, the son of Harold Hardrada, was left alive.
-With him, with a certain bishop who accompanied him, and with the Earl
-of Orkney, the English Harold made terms. “They all went up to our
-king,” says the chronicler, “and swore oaths that they would ever keep
-peace and friendship with this land; and the king let them depart with
-twenty-four ships. These two folk-fights [Fulford and Stamford Bridge]
-were both fought within five days” (September 20 to 25, 1066).
-
-Short time had Harold for rest at the great northern capital, York. It
-was probably in the earliest days of October that news was brought to
-him that on September 28 William of Normandy had landed at Pevensey.
-Let us hear the story of what happened from that day to the fatal
-October 14 in the few simple words which are all that the only Saxon
-chronicler (he of Worcester) can bring himself to devote to the
-subject. “Then came William, Earl of Normandy, into Pevensey, on the
-eve of St. Michael (Sept. 28), and as soon as his men were fit [a
-possible allusion to sea-sickness which they had endured], they wrought
-a castle at Hastings-port. Tidings of this were brought to King Harold,
-and he gathered then the great host and came towards him at the Hoar
-Apple Tree, and William came against him at unawares ere his people
-were mustered. But the king nevertheless withstood him very bravely
-with the men who would follow him, and there was a mighty slaughter
-wrought on both sides. There was slain King Harold and his brothers,
-the Earls Leofwine and Gyrth, and many good men, and the Frenchmen held
-the place of slaughter.”
-
-“He dies and makes no sign.” This is all that the Saxon chroniclers,
-whose guidance we have followed through six centuries, or any native
-English historians have to tell us of the death of the Saxon monarchy.
-One is half disposed to leave the matter there, and not to repeat
-the stories, many of them, as we may suspect, falsely coloured or
-absolutely untrue, and often quite inconsistent with one another, with
-which the Norman chroniclers and poets have enriched their jubilations
-over England’s downfall. But as this can hardly be, an attempt will
-be made to present only the broad outlines of the story, omitting
-all reference to recitals obviously fictitious, and for brevity’s
-sake declining to enter into any of the controversies which have been
-fiercely waged round certain parts of the narrative.
-
-By about the middle of August William’s preparations were completed,
-and his fleet, collected near Caen at the mouth of the river Dive,
-was ready to sail. For a whole month the wind was contrary to them--a
-fateful month during which, as we know, but as William possibly did
-not know, Harold’s crews were being paid off and his army disbanded.
-A slight westward veering of the wind enabled the ships to creep a
-hundred miles up the Norman coast to St. Valery, at the mouth of the
-Somme. Some vessels seem to have been lost by storm, but at last,
-after a fortnight’s further detention at St. Valery, a favourable
-breeze blew--men said as the result of the exhibition of the relics
-of the saint and prayers for his intercession--and on the night of
-September 27 the fleet set forth on the great expedition. Though one
-chronicler puts the number of ships as high as 3,000, we are informed
-on what seems to be good authority[250] that they were 696. William’s
-own ship, named the _Mora_, the fastest of the fleet, had a lantern
-at the mast-head to serve as a signal to her consorts, a vane above
-the lantern to show the direction of the wind, and on the prow a
-bronze figure of a child with bow and arrow aiming for England. When
-dawn was breaking the _Mora_ found herself alone, having outsailed
-all the others. A sailor sent to the mast-head reported that he saw
-nothing but sky and sea. The duke cast anchor, told his companions not
-to lose heart, and cheered them and himself with a mighty breakfast,
-accompanied with copious draughts of wine. On a second journey to the
-mast-head the sailor reported that he saw three or four ships; on a
-third, that the whole fleet were in sight and approaching rapidly. By
-nine o’clock in the morning, September 28, 1066, the fleet was all
-assembled off the coast of Sussex, a few miles north-east of Beachy
-Head, and the landing, absolutely unopposed, was effected without
-difficulty on the long flat shore of Pevensey, in sight of the ruins of
-Roman Anderida.
-
-The most notable incident of the landing, if true, is the well-known
-story of William’s fall. It is said that he, being first to spring to
-land, stumbled and fell with both his hands on the shore, that all
-round him raised a cry: “A bad omen is that,” but he with a loud voice
-said: “Lords, by the splendour of God, I have taken seizin of this land
-with my two hands. No property was ever let go without a challenge.
-Now all that is here is ours.” From Pevensey the army marched eastward
-to Hastings (a distance of about fifteen miles), and there entrenched
-themselves in a strong camp with high earthen ramparts, fosse and
-palisades. They also began to ravage the country for some miles round
-Hastings, a fact which is attested both by the entries in Domesday
-Book and by a picture in the Bayeux Tapestry, “Here a house is being
-burnt”. The tidings of William’s landing, however swiftly carried to
-York, can hardly have reached Harold before October 1. They, of course,
-necessitated another forced march back to London, so rapidly had the
-shuttle to fly backwards and forwards in the loom of war. Harold
-reached London probably about October 6, and waited there for a short
-week, expecting the arrival of the troops whom he summoned from all
-quarters for the defence of the country. This summons seems to have
-been well responded to from the home counties and East Anglia; and
-some fighters came, we are told, from Lincoln and Yorkshire. But Edwin
-and Morkere, the Earls of Mercia and Northumbria, are accused of not
-having rallied as they should have done to the support of the king,
-who had saved them from utter destruction at the hands of Hardrada.
-The accusation which comes to us on the authority of so well-informed
-and generally so impartial an historian as Florence of Worcester, is
-one which cannot be passed over in silence. At the same time it is but
-fair to observe that the troops of the two northern earls had suffered
-severely at Fulford, and that there was very little time to collect new
-levies and bring them into the field from Northumberland and Cheshire
-before October 14. The impression left on one’s mind by the conduct of
-these two young earls, is rather one of inefficiency than of deliberate
-treachery. At the same time it must be admitted that when Harold broke
-with Tostig, perhaps also with his sister Edith, and allied himself
-with the house of Leofric, he adopted a policy which brought him little
-help abroad or happiness at home.
-
-On October 12--after a hasty visit to Waltham where he had built a
-great minster in honour of the Holy Rood--Harold marched southward
-and took up a position on the last spur of a low range of Sussex
-hills, about seven miles to the north-west of Hastings. He is said to
-have been earnestly entreated by his younger brother, Gyrth, Earl of
-East Anglia, to adopt a more cautious line of policy, to anticipate
-William’s ravages of Sussex and Surrey by ravaging them himself, and
-to force the Norman to advance through a wasted land and attack him
-in the strong position of London. The advice would seem to have
-been wise; and surely a fortnight’s delay would have given Harold a
-better fighting instrument than the hasty levies which reinforced the
-war-wearied and march-wearied men of Stamford Bridge. But Harold was
-exasperated by the ravages which William had already begun in the
-country round Sussex. He patriotically refused to imitate those ravages
-in counties which had ever shown a special affection for him and for
-his father’s house. There are also some slight indications that he
-somewhat under-rated the strength of William’s army, and hoped by a
-sudden stroke like that at Stamford Bridge to sweep it into the sea.
-
-However this may be, on the morning of Saturday, October 14, Harold’s
-army was drawn up in line on the ridge now crowned by the abbey and
-town of Battle, and William’s army, having marched forth that morning
-from Hastings, confronted them on the hill which now bears the name of
-Telham. As for the battlefield itself, the chronicler, as we have seen,
-calls it “the Hoar Apple Tree”; one Norman historian, Orderic, calls it
-Senlac or Epiton, but it will probably always be best known by the name
-which is, of course, only approximately correct, the battlefield of
-Hastings. There is no evidence that there was even a village there when
-the battle was fought. The position of Harold’s army was on a hill of
-moderate height, 260 feet above the sea level, so surrounded by narrow
-valleys, which might almost be called ravines, as to make it singularly
-difficult of approach by cavalry. In order to render it yet more secure
-against such an attack, Harold had, according to one writer,[251]
-strengthened it by a fence or palisade as well as by a fosse drawn,
-perhaps somewhat lower down, right across the field.
-
-As to the numbers engaged on each side we have no information that is
-worth anything, only absurd and exaggerated estimates, especially on
-the part of the Norman writers concerning the size of the English army.
-As a mere conjecture, founded on the dimensions of the battlefield,
-there is something plausible in the suggestion[252] of 10,000 to 15,000
-as the number of William’s soldiers, and the same or a little less
-for those of Harold. There cannot be much doubt that the quality of
-the invading troops was superior to that of the defenders. William’s
-men were Normans, trained and seasoned by twenty years of fighting,
-supplemented by brave adventurers, with whom war was probably a regular
-profession, drawn from all parts of France. The backbone of Harold’s
-army was doubtless his bodyguard of house-carls, terribly thinned by
-the fierce fight at Stamford Bridge, and these were reinforced by the
-peasants of the _fyrd_, brave men but little used to arms and hastily
-summoned from the neighbouring counties. Still they had the advantage,
-such as it was, of standing on the defensive in a position which had
-evidently been chosen with considerable military skill.
-
-The chief weapon of the Normans was the sword, of the English the
-great two-handed battle-axe, the use of which was borrowed from their
-Danish antagonists. Both sides seem to have been armed with lances,
-and the best troops in both armies were clothed in long coats of mail,
-which were wanting, however, to the peasants of the English _fyrd_.
-The long kite-shaped shield, covering the greater part of the person,
-was carried by both nations, but the English were perhaps superior in
-the defensive tactics of the shield-wall, formed by men standing close
-together, shoulder to shoulder, and locking their shields into what
-the classically educated Norman writers called a _testudo_. On the
-other hand, William was evidently much the stronger in archers and in
-cavalry, and it was this superiority which eventually won for him the
-victory. The Normans fought of course under the standard blessed by
-the Pope, the Saxons under the well-known Dragon-banner of Wessex, and
-another which was perhaps of Harold’s own devising and which bore the
-likeness of a full-armed fighting man. On the English side we hear of
-no leaders besides Harold and his two brothers, Gyrth, Earl of East
-Anglia, and Leofwine, Earl of Essex and Kent, both of whom seem to
-have fallen early in the battle. The lack of a strong lieutenant, who
-could have taken the direction of the defence when the king fell, had
-probably something to do with the issue of the fight. On the Norman
-side, as we might expect, the names of many leaders are given us, but
-we need only notice here William’s half-brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux
-(son of the tanner’s daughter), who salved his episcopal conscience
-by fighting with a heavy mace instead of with a sword, thus hoping to
-avoid the actual shedding of blood; Count Eustace of Boulogne, the hero
-of the flight from Dover; and William Fitz-Osbern, the faithful friend
-of the Norman duke as his father had been before him.
-
-We may pass over the account of the messages which are said to have
-been exchanged between the two rival chiefs, including a proposition by
-Duke William that, to save the effusion of Christian blood, they should
-settle their differences by single combat; and we may also pass over
-the story of the diverse ways in which the two armies spent the night
-before the battle, the English in song and revelry, crying “Wassail”
-and “Drink to me”; the Normans in confessing their sins and receiving
-absolution from the numerous priests who accompanied the army. Thus we
-come to the morning of Saturday, October 14, at nine A.M., when, as
-before said, the two armies stood fronting one another in battle array.
-As to the positions of the various divisions of the English army, we
-have no sufficient indication, except that we are told that the men of
-Kent claimed the right to march in the van, and strike the first blow
-in the battle, and that the Londoners made a similar claim to guard
-the person of the king, being grouped round his standard which was
-planted in the centre of the ridge. As to William’s army, we are told
-that he put in his first line his archers (apparently light armed), in
-his second his mail-clad infantry, and in a third, behind them all, he
-ranged his cavalry. Moreover, there was in each of these lines another
-threefold division according to nationalities: the Normans in the
-centre, the Bretons on the left, and the Frenchmen (the men from the
-central regions of France) on the right.
-
-The prelude to the battle was a romantic incident which showed that the
-day of chivalry had dawned. A minstrel--or as one narrator calls him,
-an actor--named Taillefer craved of Duke William the boon of striking
-the first blow. He had sung on the march some staves of the great Song
-of Roland, describing the death of that hero and of Olivier in the
-gorge of Roncesvalles, and now he pranced forth before the duke--
-
- On the rough edge of battle ere it joined.
-
-He took his lance by the butt-end as if it had been a truncheon, threw
-it in the air and caught it by the head. Three times he did this and
-then he hurled it into the hostile ranks and wounded an Englishman.
-Then, after repeating this performance with his sword, while the amazed
-English looked on as at a feat of conjuring, he set spurs to his horse
-and galloped fiercely towards the ranks of the foe. One Englishman he
-sorely wounded and one he slew, and then a cloud of darts and javelins
-was hurled at him and the bold minstrel fell down dead.
-
-For six hours the battle which was now joined raged with nearly equal
-fortune on both sides. No doubt the first rank of light-armed archers
-discharged their missiles, and the mailed foot-soldiers pressed forward
-to take advantage of any impression which they may have made on the
-hostile ranks; but also (if we may trust the Tapestry) even at this
-early period of the battle the cavalry were charging (uphill, of
-course) and dashing themselves against the English shield-wall. So
-far, on the whole, they dashed themselves in vain, though already thus
-early in the fight Gyrth and Leofwine seem to have fallen. At length
-the Norman horsemen, recoiling from a fruitless charge, tumbled into
-a fosse, ever after known as the Malfosse, which they had scarcely
-noticed in their advance, and rolled over and over in dire confusion,
-hundreds of them lying a crushed and helpless mass on the plain. Some
-of the English who were pursuing shared the same fate; and one of the
-most spirited pictures in the Tapestry shows how “Here the English and
-French fell together”. This disaster had very nearly proved the ruin
-of the invading army, for the large body of varlets or camp followers
-stationed in the rear to guard the harness, or stores and baggage of
-the troops, seeing what had befallen their masters, were about to quit
-the field in headlong flight, and such a movement might well have
-spread panic through the ranks of the army. But then Bishop Odo of
-Bayeux, wielding his big mace, and with a coat of mail over his alb,
-shouted out words of encouragement and reproof, and stayed the panic of
-the varlets. About the same time apparently, and under the influence
-of the same panic-fear, a rumour spread through the ranks that William
-himself was slain. He had indeed three horses killed under him in the
-long and dreadful struggle, but, as far as we know, he received no
-wound at any time, and now lifting up the nose-piece of his helmet he
-showed his full face to his followers whose confidence was at once
-restored.
-
-As has been said, for six hours the battle hung doubtful. From three
-o’clock onwards victory began to incline to the Norman side, chiefly
-owing to two manœuvres, the credit of both of which is assigned to
-William personally. In the first place, finding himself otherwise
-unable to break the terrible shield-wall, he took a hint from the
-disaster of the Malfosse itself, and ordered his followers to feign
-flight. After men have long stood on the defensive, galled by missiles
-from afar, the temptation to believe that the victory is won and that
-they may charge a flying foe is doubtless immense. At any rate Harold’s
-troops yielded to it, apparently more than once, and each time when
-pursuers and pursued had reached the plain, the Normans turned and
-their cavalry encircled and destroyed numbers of the English. The other
-manœuvre was, we are told, an order given to the archers to shoot high
-up into the sky, so that their arrows might fall from on high on some
-unshielded part of their enemies’ persons. Perhaps we have here another
-illustration of the fact that, for a conflict with missile weapons, it
-is not all gain to occupy a position on a hill. This is what the Scots
-learned to their cost in 1402 at Homildon Hill and the English in 1881
-at Majuba. At any rate it seems to have been by this change of tactics
-that the decisive blow was struck. It was by an arrow falling from on
-high that Harold’s right eye was pierced. The wound was mortal and the
-king fell to the ground. Whatever life may have been left in him was
-extinguished by four Norman knights (one of them the hateful Eustace of
-Boulogne) who not only slew but mutilated their fallen foe.
-
-The English seem still to have fought on for some time after the
-death of their king, but without purpose or discipline. The Normans
-were not disposed to give quarter, and apparently the greater number
-of the mail-clad house-carls fell where they had been fighting. The
-lighter-armed men of the _fyrd_ fled, and, according to one account,
-their pursuers followed them into a part of the field where, from the
-broken nature of the ground and the abundance of ditches, their own
-ranks--they were evidently mounted warriors--fell into some confusion,
-and seeing this the fugitives made a rally. Owing probably to the
-fading light William and his comrades believed this to be a movement
-of fresh troops brought up against them. They halted, and Eustace of
-Boulogne counselled retreat, but a blow between the shoulders dealt
-suddenly from behind caused him to fall to the ground, while William
-pressed on undaunted and found that the victory was indeed his, and in
-the old Saxon phrase the Normans “held the place of slaughter”. The
-Norman duke caused his Pope-blessed standard to be planted on the brow
-of the hill in the same place where Harold’s banner had floated. After
-rendering thanks to God for his great victory, he ordered his supper to
-be prepared on the battlefield in the midst of the thousands of corpses
-of both armies, whom the survivors all through the following Sunday
-were busily engaged in burying, or in removing from the field that they
-might be carried to their homes for burial.
-
-The body of Harold himself, grievously disfigured, but recognised,
-according to a well-known story, by his lady-love, “Edith with the
-swan’s neck,” is said to have been given by the Conqueror to William
-Malet, a nobleman half Norman and half English, and a kinsman of the
-house of Leofric, with instructions that it should be buried under a
-great cairn on the coast of that Sussex which he had vainly professed
-to guard. According to one story, Gytha, Godwine’s widow, vainly
-offered to buy her son’s body back from his foe at the price of his
-weight in gold; but it is probable that William before long relented
-and allowed the body of his fallen rival to be disinterred and buried
-with befitting solemnity in the great minster of the Holy Rood at
-Waltham.
-
-William himself, in fulfilment of a vow made on the eve of the contest,
-founded on the field of slaughter a stately abbey which bore the name
-of Battle, and in which masses were long said for the repose of the
-souls of those who had fallen in the fight, whether conquerors or
-conquered. The building of the abbey with all its dependencies must
-have done much to alter the face of the battlefield; and now for near
-four centuries the abbey itself has been hidden and changed by the
-manor house reared within its precincts, in Tudor style, by the family
-to whom it was granted on the suppression of the monasteries. Change
-upon change has since befallen the noble dwelling-house which still
-bears the name of Battle Abbey; and its gardens and groves, its tall
-yew hedges and terraced lawns, though all most beautiful, make it hard
-to reconstruct with the mind’s eye the eleventh century aspect of “the
-place of slaughter”. Only the well-ascertained site of the high altar
-of the Abbey Church on the crest of the hill enables us to say with
-certainty, in the language of the Bayeux Tapestry--
-
- HIC HAROLD REX INTERFECTUS EST.
-
-With the battle of Hastings ends the story of England as ruled by
-Anglo-Saxon kings. The causes of the change, so full of meaning for
-all future years, which transferred the English crown from the race of
-Cerdic to the race of Rollo, cannot be dwelt upon here: perhaps some of
-them have been sufficiently indicated in the course of the preceding
-narrative. It is enough to say that a great and grievous transformation
-had come over the Anglo-Saxon character since the days of Oswald
-and even since the days of Alfred. The splendid dawn of English and
-especially of Northumbrian Christianity in the seventh century had
-been early obscured. The nation had lost some of the virtues of
-heathendom and had not retained all that it had acquired of the virtues
-of Christianity. Of its political incapacity the whole course of its
-history during the last century before the conquest is sufficient
-evidence; and it is probably a symptom of the same general decay that
-for two centuries after the death of Alfred no writer or thinker of any
-eminence, with the doubtful exceptions of Dunstan and Elfric, appears
-among his countrymen. A tendency to swinish self-indulgence, and the
-sins of the flesh in some of their most degrading forms, had marred
-the national character. There was still in it much good metal, but if
-the Anglo-Saxon was to do anything worth doing in the world, it was
-necessary that it should be passed through the fire and hammered on the
-anvil. The fire, the anvil and the hammer were about to be supplied
-with unsparing hand by the Norman conquerors.
-
-
-
-
-APPENDIX I.
-
-AUTHORITIES.
-
-
-All that portion of archæological science which deals with prehistoric
-man is of recent origin, and the conclusions arrived at as to our
-own island, even by the most careful inquirers, must be accepted
-provisionally, as liable to much modification by the labours of future
-students. Meanwhile the results generally accepted by scholars may be
-found well stated by Professor BOYD DAWKINS (_Early Man in Britain_,
-1880), by Dr. JOHN BEDDOE (_The Races of Britain_, 1885), and by the
-Rev. Canon GREENWELL and GEO. ROLLESTON (_British Barrows_, 1877).
-All these authors deal chiefly with the results of excavation in the
-caves and sepulchral barrows of Britain. The measurement of the skulls
-disinterred from thence and the character of the vessels found in
-proximity to the bodies, are the chief criteria by which they decide
-on the racial character of the occupants. Professor JOHN RHYS (_The
-Early Ethnology of the British Isles_, 1890, and _Celtic Britain_, 2nd
-edit., 1884) approaches the subject of British ethnology rather from
-the side of early traditions and the evidence, somewhat meagre and
-unsatisfactory, of Celtic annalists, but with much help from philology.
-
-Passing from the consideration of prehistoric man to the notices of
-Britain furnished by the writers of classical antiquity we come first
-to the Greek and Roman geographers. The chief Greek writers are Strabo
-and Ptolemy. STRABO, who was a native of Asia Minor, lived at the
-Christian era, and may be considered a slightly younger contemporary of
-Augustus. His colossal work on geography was written in his old age,
-and was probably finished about A.D. 19. Though he was an extensive
-traveller, he never visited Britain: his knowledge of our island seems
-to be chiefly derived from Cæsar, and he is altogether wrong as to its
-geographical position, believing it to lie alongside of the coast of
-Gaul from the Pyrenees to the mouths of the Rhine. He imagined Ireland
-to be entirely north of Britain.
-
-PTOLEMY, who was a native of Egypt, was a contemporary of the Antonine
-emperors, and probably wrote about A.D. 150. He was essentially an
-astronomical geographer, whose object was to fix the latitude and
-longitude of every place of which he took note. His industry was
-extraordinary, and his scientific conceptions were somewhat in advance
-of his age; but owing to the inaccurate information upon which he had
-often to rely, his results are sometimes very far from correct. Thus,
-though he gets England and Ireland almost into their true position,
-correcting the errors of Strabo concerning them, he pulls Scotland so
-far round to the east that it is at right angles to England, and its
-northernmost point almost touches Denmark.
-
-PLINY, who was born in A.D. 23 and perished in the great eruption of
-Vesuvius in A.D. 79, is the only Latin geographer who tells us much
-about Britain, and his descriptions do not add much to our knowledge,
-but relate chiefly to natural history and to the cultivation of the
-soil.
-
-For the Roman conquest of Britain our chief authorities are, of course,
-CÆSAR and TACITUS. The former, in the fourth and fifth books of his
-history of the _Gallic War_, describes in a few brief, soldier-like
-sentences the incidents of his two invasions, hardly attempting to
-conceal their ill-success. The latter, in the fourteenth book of his
-_Annals_, gives us the story of the insurrection of the Britons under
-Boudicca and its suppression by Suetonius Paulinus. An earlier book in
-the same series undoubtedly gave the history of the conquest of Britain
-under Claudius, but this is unfortunately lost. He gives us, however,
-in his _Life of Agricola_, a pretty full account of the events which
-signalised the command of his father-in-law, Julius Agricola (A.D.
-78–84), and a slight notice of some events which occurred under his
-predecessors. Unfortunately Tacitus, superb as he is in delineation of
-character and scornful summaries of palace intrigues, fails grievously
-as a military historian, which happens to be his chief function when
-he is concerned with the history of Britain. Mommsen (bk. viii., chap.
-5) says: “A worse narrative than that of Tacitus concerning this war
-(Paulinus against Boudicca) is hardly to be found even in this most
-unmilitary of authors”.
-
-To make up for the loss of the earlier books of Tacitus’s Annals we
-have the history of DION CASSIUS, a Greek rhetorician who wrote his
-_Roman History_ about A.D. 222. Though a useful compiler, Dion is, of
-course, no contemporary authority for the conquest of Britain under
-Claudius. Such as he is, however, we have to depend on him almost
-entirely for our knowledge of that event.
-
-After we lose the guidance of Tacitus, our information as to Roman
-Britain becomes excessively meagre. Even the work of Dion Cassius
-after A.D. 54 is lost in the original, and only exists for us in an
-epitome--a tolerably full one, it must be admitted--made in the twelfth
-century by XIPHILINUS, an ignorant and careless monk of Constantinople.
-In addition to this, however, we receive a feeble and flickering light
-from the collection of memoirs called the HISTORIA AUGUSTA. This book,
-the result of the joint labours of some five or six authors whose very
-names are a subject of controversy, relates in clumsy and uncritical
-fashion the chief events in the lives of the Roman emperors during
-the second and third centuries. Poor as is the performance of these
-authors, and though they were probably separated by an interval of one
-or two centuries from the events which they record, we have reason
-to be grateful to them for the information which they supply to us,
-especially as to our two most illustrious conquerors, Hadrian and
-Severus. For the reign of the latter emperor we may also glean a few
-facts from the work of the Greek historian HERODIAN.
-
-The story of the imperial pretenders, Carausius and Allectus, and of
-the suppression of their independent royalty, is told in a certain
-fashion by two panegyrists, called MAMERTINUS and EUMENIUS, in their
-orations before the triumphant emperors; but it is hard to extract
-solid history out of their windy rhetoric.
-
-A historian to whom we owe much, and should doubtless owe far more if
-a perverse literary fate had not deprived us of nearly half of his
-work, is the life-guardsman AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, who lived in the
-latter half of the fourth century and wrote the history of the Roman
-empire from A.D. 99 to 378. As it is, possessing only those books which
-tell of the years from 353 to 378, we derive from him some valuable
-information as to the British campaigns of the elder Theodosius. If we
-possessed the earlier books of his history, we should almost certainly
-know much more than we do as to the appearance of Roman Britain in
-the second century and the mode of life of its native inhabitants,
-for Ammianus is fond of showing off his geographical knowledge, and
-resembles Herodotus in the interest which he takes in the manners and
-customs of half-civilised races. His Latin style--he was a Syrian Greek
-by birth--is extraordinarily affected and often obscure, but for all
-that, few literary events could be more gratifying to the historical
-student than the recovery of the lost books of Ammianus.
-
-For the social, military and religious life of the Romans in Britain
-an invaluable source of information is contained in the inscriptions
-which are collected in the seventh volume of the _Corpus Inscriptionum
-Latinarum_ (Berlin, 1873). Many of the most important will be
-found in the _Lapidarium Septentrionale_, edited by Dr. Bruce
-(Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1875). Inscriptions discovered more recently
-must be looked for in the volumes of the _Ephemeris Epigraphica_,
-published by the _Academie der Wissenschaften_ at Berlin, or in the
-_Archæological Journal_ and the proceedings of local antiquarian
-societies.
-
-OROSIUS, a disciple of St. Augustine, has done something to lighten the
-darkness which hangs over the end of Roman rule in Britain. In the last
-book of his _Histories_, which were meant to show that the calamities
-of the empire were not due to the introduction of Christianity, he
-tells us with some little detail the story of the military revolt
-of the year 406, of which we also learn some details from the Greek
-historian Zosimus. A chronicler who generally bears the name of another
-friend of St. Augustine’s, PROSPER TIRO, but who was evidently a
-theological opponent of that saint, and whose personality is really
-unknown, inserts in his Chronicle two all-important dates for the Roman
-evacuation of Britain and for the Saxon invasions. The contemporary
-poet, CLAUDIAN, writing in 403, also gives us in a few lines some
-important information as to the former event. This is practically the
-last trustworthy notice as to our island that we find in the works of
-any classical writer. Henceforth our history for many centuries is
-written for us entirely by ecclesiastics, and this must be the modern
-historian’s excuse for the strongly ecclesiastical colour which he is
-obliged to give even to a political narrative. One such ecclesiastical
-authority is _The Life of Germanus_ by the presbyter CONSTANTIUS, as
-has been previously said. This _Life_ has suffered much from later
-interpolations. See an elaborate analysis of it by Levison in the
-_Neues Archiv_, vol. xxix.
-
-The next writer who lifts any portion of the pall which hides the
-history of our island in the fifth and sixth centuries is GILDAS,
-the author of the _Liber Querulus_ “concerning the ruin of Britain”.
-Rightly is the book called querulous, for it is one long drawn out
-lamentation over the barbarities of the Saxon invaders and the
-irreligion of the Britons which had brought this ruin upon them. If
-Gildas, who wrote probably between 540 and 560, had chosen to tell
-us simply all that he had seen or heard from men of the preceding
-generation concerning Saxon raids and Cymric resistance, his work
-would have been one of the corner-stones of English history. As it
-is, we have to be thankful for the few facts that he imparts to us
-between sob and sob over the wickedness of the world. A critical
-edition of this author by Mommsen will be found in vol. xiii. of the
-_Auctores Antiquissimi_ in the _Monumenta Germaniæ Historica_. An
-excellent edition with notes by the Rev. Hugh Williams, Professor of
-Church History at the Theological College, Bala, is now in course of
-publication for the Hon. Society of Cymmrodorion.
-
-More perplexing, but fuller of matter, good, bad and indifferent, is
-the work of the much later Welsh ecclesiastic, NENNIUS, who lived about
-two centuries and a half after Gildas. This author exhibits a degree
-of ignorance and puzzle-headedness which gives one a very unfavourable
-idea of the intellectual condition of a Welsh monastery about the year
-800. His chronology is wildly incorrect, and he intermingles with
-solemn history stories of dragons and enchanters worthy of the _Arabian
-Nights_; but he has inserted into the middle of his book extracts from
-the work of a much earlier author (probably a Northumbrian Celt living
-under Anglian rule) who described the contests of English and Welsh
-between 547 and 679. This part of the book (to be found in chapters 57
-to 65 of Nennius) has probably a real historic value. It is important
-to note that it is in this portion that the name of King Arthur is
-found. As already mentioned (p. 100) we are much indebted to the
-labours of Prof. Zimmer (_Nennius Vindicatus_) with reference to this
-important but most provoking writer.
-
-Turning from the Welsh to the English authorities we come to the
-illustrious name of BEDE, the greatest scholar of his age and the best
-historian whom any European country produced in the early Middle Ages.
-His main work, the _Historia Ecclesiastica_, was finished in the year
-731, about four years before his death. There is an excellent edition
-of this book and of some of the smaller historical works of Bede by the
-Rev. Charles Plummer (2 vols.: Oxford, 1896). The historical importance
-of this work begins with its account of the conversion of England to
-Christianity; and, for all the events of the seventh century and the
-early part of the eighth, it is priceless. As to the events which
-marked the Roman occupation of Britain, Bede probably had no other
-sources of information than those which we also possess. For the two
-centuries of darkness between the departure of the last Roman soldier
-and the arrival of the first Roman missionary he had evidently very
-scanty sources to draw from, and in fact he springs, almost at one
-bound, from the year 450 to 596.
-
-For the closing years of the seventh century we have another valuable
-authority in the _Life of Wilfrid_, written by his contemporary,
-EDDIUS (_Historians of the Church of York_, edited by J. Raine, Rolls
-Series): and this is the more important as, for some reason or other,
-Bede shows sometimes a curious reticence as to Wilfrid’s career. There
-is a very careful comparison of the two narratives, that of Bede
-and that of Eddius, by Mr. B. W. Wells in the sixth volume of the
-_English Historical Review_ (1891), pp. 535–50. His conclusions are not
-favourable to Eddius’s veracity.
-
-In the eighth century, after we have lost the invaluable guidance of
-Bede, we may derive some help from the letters of two great Churchmen,
-BONIFACE and ALCUIN, both published in _Monumenta Germaniæ Historica_
-(_Epistolae_, vols. iii. and iv., 1892 and 1895).
-
-For the whole period from the Saxon invasion onwards we rely with
-increasing confidence on the great historical document, or collection
-of documents, which is sometimes called the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
-but which, following Freeman’s example, we generally designate by the
-simple but sufficient name of _The Chronicle_ (Plummer, 2 vols., 1892).
-The reason for introducing the notice of it here is that, according to
-the opinion of its latest editor, we arrive, in the ninth century, at
-the time of the first compilation of this work, so all-important for
-the students of our national history. If he is right in thinking that
-the impulse toward the commencement of this great undertaking was given
-by King Alfred--a belief which seems to be shared by Mr. Stevenson,
-the editor of Asser--it cannot have begun to assume its present shape
-till near the year 900. Some materials, however, for the building of
-such an edifice must have been gradually accumulating for at least two
-centuries; in what shape, of what kind, of what degree of historical
-trustworthiness, we shall, perhaps, never be able to determine. There
-were probably rhythmical pedigrees of the kings and some stories of
-their exploits handed down through generations of minstrels; and, at
-any rate since the introduction of Christianity, some simple annals
-such as that to which Bede alludes when he says that 634, the year
-of the reign of two apostate Northumbrian kings, was, “by those who
-compute the times of kings,” taken away from them and included in the
-reign of their pious successor Oswald. This hypothesis, however, will
-not help us much when we come to consider how Alfred’s literary friends
-could recover accurate dates and details of events during the preceding
-150 years of darkness, and we must probably admit that for that period
-there may have been a good deal of imaginative chronology of the kind
-suggested by Lappenberg, as already stated on p. 87. Thus all this
-earlier portion of the Chronicle has to be used with caution, and we
-dare not lay any great stress upon the historical character of its
-statements; only let not its authority be unduly decried, seeing that
-for a good part of the road it is the only light that we have.
-
-Even after we emerge into the fuller light of the seventh century, and
-when we have no reason to doubt the truly historical character of the
-Chronicle, we cannot award it the praise of minute accuracy in matters
-of chronology. Continually historians have found it necessary to
-correct its dates by one, two, or three years; and even the foundation
-date of Egbert’s accession, which used to be given on the authority of
-the Chronicle to 800, has had to be shifted to 802.
-
-The Chronicle, if begun under the influence of Alfred (probably
-at Winchester), was continued in various monasteries on somewhat
-independent lines, and thus, as its latest editor points out, “instead
-of saying that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is contained in seven MSS.,
-it would be truer to say that those MSS. contain four Anglo-Saxon
-Chronicles”. These are represented by the four chief MSS. which are now
-known to scholars by the four letters A, C, D, E. The first of these
-MSS. is at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, the second and third in
-the British Museum, and the fourth in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
-Very briefly stated, the distinguishing characteristics of these four
-MSS. are as follows:--
-
-A (sometimes marked by an Anglo-Saxon letter in order to distinguish it
-from a later and unimportant manuscript to which also that initial has
-been given) is also called, from its former owner, Archbishop Parker’s
-manuscript, or the Winchester Chronicle. There can be little doubt that
-this manuscript was originally a native of Winchester, and began to be
-compiled there in Alfred’s reign. A Winchester book it continued till
-the year 1001, after which it seems to have been transferred to Christ
-Church, Canterbury, where it was probably lying at the time of the
-suppression of the monasteries. This manuscript, in many respects the
-most valuable of all, ends with the year 1070.
-
-C is associated on good authority with the monastery of Abingdon. “Its
-language [says Professor Earle] is of the most ripe and polished kind,
-marking the culmination of Saxon literature.” It closes in 1066, but
-a short postscript has been added in the Northumbrian dialect. One
-important feature in this manuscript is its inclusion of what is called
-“The Mercian Register,” describing the great deeds of the Lady of
-Mercia from 902 to 924. In the next century it is distinguished by the
-hostile tone which it adopts towards Earl Godwine and his family.
-
-D, which is generally called the Worcester Chronicle, but which seems
-to have a closer connexion with Evesham, is, in its present shape, a
-late compilation, none of it probably being of earlier date than 1100.
-It seems to be closely allied to C, but differs from that manuscript by
-its friendlier attitude towards Godwine. It is the only version which
-gives us any account of the battle of Hastings. It ends thirteen years
-after the Conquest.
-
-E, the Laud manuscript or Peterborough Chronicle, is of great
-importance, inasmuch as it alone continues the history down to so late
-a date as 1154, and its great variety of style makes it a leading
-authority for the history of the English language. In its present shape
-it is emphatically a book of the Abbey of Peterborough, and loses no
-opportunity of glorifying that religious house. It probably owes its
-origin to a disastrous fire which happened at Peterborough in 1116, in
-which all the muniments of the abbey perished. A manuscript akin to D
-seems to have been then brought thither from some other monastery, and
-this copy of it, with sundry interpolations, has been made to replace
-the perished Chronicle. A and E are the two Chronicles which Plummer
-and his predecessor Earle have chosen as the corner-stones of their
-editions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, but passages are inserted from
-C and D where these authorities give us important variations.
-
-For the personal history of Alfred the Great and some information
-as to the events of his reign, we have the very important treatise
-by his contemporary, ASSER, _De Rebus Gestis Aelfredi_ (Stevenson,
-1904). Asser was a Welsh ecclesiastic, belonging to the diocese of
-St. Davids, who came about the year 880 to the court of King Alfred,
-seeking protection from the tyranny of his native sovereigns, sons
-of Rhodri Mawr. That protection was freely accorded, and the king,
-perceiving Asser to be a learned man, stipulated that he should spend
-at least half of every year in the land of the Saxons. Eventually he
-became bishop of Sherborne, and no doubt ceased altogether to reside
-in Wales. He died apparently in 910, about ten years after his patron.
-Asser’s _Life of King Alfred_ which ends practically with the year 887,
-giving no account of the last thirteen years of his reign, is a very
-inartistic work, containing annalistic notices, taken apparently from
-the Chronicle, strangely jumbled up with those interesting personal
-details as to the character and habits of the great king which give
-it in our eyes all its value. It has been singularly unfortunate in
-its transmission, since the only copy of which we have any certain
-knowledge perished in the great fire at the Cottonian Library in 1731.
-Happily, it had been already printed three times, but unfortunately
-those three editions all contained several large interpolations made by
-its first editor, Archbishop Parker, from a mistaken desire to round
-off its information by extracts from other authors. Partly owing to
-these interpolations, its genuineness has been subjected to severe
-attacks, which have sometimes seemed likely to be successful. Its
-character, however, has been triumphantly vindicated by its latest
-editor, Mr. W. H. Stevenson, who has succeeded in separating the
-original text of the _Life_ from the interpolations of its editors, and
-thus presenting it with all its naïve charm, often also, it must be
-admitted, with all its provoking verbiage and obscurity, to the lovers
-of the greatest Anglo-Saxon king. In the same volume Mr. Stevenson
-has printed the _Annals of St. Neot’s_, which were formerly, without
-justification, ascribed to Asser, and from which some of the worst
-interpolations into his real work were derived. It is an important
-testimony to the authentic character of Asser’s work that large
-extracts have been made from it by so judicious a compiler as Florence
-of Worcester.
-
-For the reconstruction of English history in the tenth century our
-materials are very unsatisfactory. The impulse given by Alfred to the
-composition of the Chronicle seems to have soon exhausted itself, and
-for fifty years after the death of his son (925 to 975) it is, as Earle
-has said, “wonderfully meagre: a charge which is often unreasonably
-alleged against these Chronicles in the most undiscriminating manner,
-but which may be justified here by a comparison with the historical
-literature of two earlier generations”. Its aridity is in some degree
-atoned for by the ballads, such as that on the battle of Brunanburh,
-which are inserted at intervals in its pages; but with all the poetic
-interest attaching to these pieces they can hardly be considered a
-satisfactory substitute for history. In these circumstances we have to
-be thankful for such help as can be derived from biographies of the
-saints; especially from the nearly contemporary _Life of Dunstan_,
-by an anonymous Saxon priest who is known only by his initial B.
-(_Memorials of St. Dunstan_, edited by Stubbs, Rolls Series), and the
-similar anonymous but contemporary _Life of Oswald_, Archbishop of York
-(_Historians of the Church of York_, edited by J. Raine, Rolls Series).
-The later lives of Dunstan, by Adelard, Osbern and Eadmer (all included
-in Stubbs’s _Memorials of St. Dunstan_), soon fade off into legend, and
-must be used with caution.
-
-We ought to have been greatly helped at this period by the work of
-ETHELWEARD the historian (_Monumenta Historica Britannica_, Petrie,
-1848), who was of royal descent, was apparently for a time Ealdorman
-of Wessex, and wrote near the end of the tenth century. Unfortunately
-the basis of his work seems to have been the Chronicle itself, and when
-he has any additional facts to communicate, his style is so pompously
-obscure that it is difficult to make out what he means. In default,
-therefore, of adequate contemporary authorities, the historian is
-obliged to lean more than he has yet done on the compiling historians
-who wrote in the century which followed the Norman Conquest. Of these,
-happily, there is a goodly number, and they are on the whole very
-favourable specimens of their class.
-
-(1) FLORENCE OF WORCESTER (edited by B. Thorpe, English Historical
-Society, 1848–49), a monk of whom we know nothing save that he died in
-1118, having earned a high reputation for acuteness and industry, took
-as the staple of his narrative the work of an Irish monk named Marianus
-Scotus, who was settled at Mainz and composed a World-Chronicle
-reaching down to the year 1082. With the material thus furnished him
-Florence interwove extracts specially relating to English history from
-Bede, Asser and the Chroniclers, bringing down his recital to 1117,
-the year preceding his death. His work was almost entirely that of
-a compiler, but it was conscientiously and thoroughly done, and its
-chief value for us is that though his story approaches most nearly to
-that told in the Worcester Chronicle (D), it is not a mere transcript
-of that work, and he evidently had access to some manuscript of the
-Chronicle which is now lost. The important position which he holds in
-relation to Asser has already been described.
-
-(2) Some important facts concerning Northumbrian history may be gleaned
-from the ill-arranged pages of SYMEON OF DURHAM (edited by T. Arnold,
-Rolls Series, 2 vols., 1882–85). This author, who was born a few years
-before the Conquest, became a monk at Durham about the year 1085, and
-spent probably the rest of his life by the tomb of St. Cuthbert. Soon
-after 1104 he wrote a _History of the Church of Durham_, which supplies
-some valuable information not to be found elsewhere, as to the history
-of events in the north of England during the thirty years following the
-Danish invasion of 875. In his old age Symeon began, but apparently
-did not finish, a _History of the Kings_, which in its present state
-is a piece of patchwork put together from various sources, and in its
-chaotic condition corresponds only too closely with the reality of
-Northumbrian history during that dismal period. Its chief value for
-the historian is that it incorporates an old Northumbrian Chronicle by
-an anonymous writer (perhaps called _Gesta veterum Northanhymbrorum_)
-describing the chief events which happened in that part of the country
-from the end of Bede’s history to the accession of Egbert (731–802).
-For a full discussion of the materials used by Symeon in this work the
-reader is referred to Mr. Arnold’s preface and to Stubbs’s preface to
-Roger Hoveden. It cannot be said that even his explanations make the
-matter very clear. An interesting tract, _De Obsessione Dunelmi_,
-which has been attributed on insufficient evidence to this author, is
-bound up with his works.
-
-(3) HENRY OF HUNTINGDON (edited by T. Arnold, Rolls Series, 1879) was
-born about eighteen years after the Conquest and died soon after the
-accession of Henry II. He was an archdeacon in the diocese of Lincoln,
-and composed at the request of his bishop a _History of the English_,
-of which various editions were published in his lifetime, the first
-probably about 1130, and the last soon after 1154. Henry relies chiefly
-on the Peterborough Chronicle, but he seems also to have possessed
-some other manuscript, of which he occasionally gives indications.
-Unfortunately he relies not only on manuscripts and Chronicles, but
-also to a large extent on his own imagination. From materials not
-much ampler than those which we possess, he is fond of constructing a
-rhetorical narrative with many details, for which it is almost certain
-that he had no authority. Occasionally there seems reason to believe
-that he is repeating popular traditions or fragments of popular songs,
-but upon the whole it is safer not to rely greatly on his facts, where
-these are not corroborated by other historians.
-
-(4) A much greater historian than Henry was his slightly younger
-contemporary, WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY (edited by Stubbs, Rolls Series,
-2 vols., 1887–89), who was probably born about 1095 and died, or at
-any rate discontinued his literary labours, soon after 1142. For an
-elaborate discussion of these dates see Bishop Stubbs’s preface. As he
-remarks, William “deliberately set himself forward as the successor
-of the Venerable Bede: and it is seldom that an aspirant of this sort
-came so near as he did to the realisation of his pretensions”. His
-most important work for our purpose is the _Gesta Regum_, but from
-his _Gesta Pontificum_ (Hamilton, Rolls Series, 1870) some facts
-relating to civil history may be gleaned. He is especially minute in
-all points connected with his own monastery of Malmesbury and with that
-of Glastonbury, in which he seems to have been for some time a guest.
-He has a wide outlook over continental affairs, and though he has been
-convicted of many inaccuracies and is unfortunately not sufficiently
-careful as to the authenticity of the documents quoted by him, we must
-admit his claim to be considered a really great historian. The _Gesta
-Regum_ became at once a popular and standard history, and was the
-source from which a crowd of followers made abundant quotations.
-
-(5) A great patron of learned men, and especially of historians, was
-Robert, Earl of Gloucester, natural son of Henry I. To him William
-of Malmesbury dedicated his chief historical works, and it was from
-materials contained in his library that GEOFFREY GAIMAR (edited by
-Hardy and Martin, Rolls Series, 2 vols., 1888–89) wrote his _Estorie
-des Engles_. Scarcely anything is known about the author, except that
-he wrote before 1147, the date of the Earl of Gloucester’s death, and
-that he was probably an ecclesiastic and a Norman. His history is a
-rhymed chronicle in early French, and is to a large extent based on the
-English Chronicle; a proof that he understood Anglo-Saxon, though it
-was not his native tongue. He evidently, however, had access to other
-sources of information now closed to us, and this gives his _Estorie_
-a certain value, notwithstanding the author’s occasional tendency to
-glide off into unhistorical romance, as for instance in the long and
-legendary story which he tells about Edgar’s marriage with Elgiva. His
-geographical indications are sometimes worthy of special notice.
-
-For sixty years after 982 the fortunes of England were so closely
-intertwined with those of Denmark and Norway that it is impossible
-wholly to overlook the contributions which Scandinavian authors have
-made to our national history. These consist chiefly of the great
-collection of Icelandic Sagas popularly known as the _Heimskringla_,
-and formerly made accessible to the English reader only by LAING’S
-_Sea-Kings of Norway_, now in much completer form in the Saga Library
-of MORRIS and MAGNUSSON. Three volumes of the Heimskringla have been
-published: the fourth is still to appear. For a full and exhaustive
-account, however, of the rich Dano-Icelandic literature of which the
-so-called Heimskringla is only a portion, we must turn to the noble
-work of VIGFUSSON and POWELL, the _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_ (two vols.,
-Oxford, 1883), and to _Vigfusson’s_ Prolegomena to the _Sturlunga Saga_
-(Oxford, 1879). It is shown by these authors that while the name of
-Snorri Sturlason is rightly venerated as that of the chief literary
-preserver of these sagas, an earlier Icelandic scholar named Ari,
-born in the year after the Norman Conquest, was the first to bring
-them into some sort of relation with exact chronological history. The
-narratives seem to be wonderfully true in feeling but often false in
-fact. Probably a good deal of rather tedious critical work has yet to
-be done before the Heimskringla can be definitely and safely correlated
-with the Saxon Chronicle, but we may safely go to that collection of
-sagas and to the literature of which it forms part, the true Iliad
-and Odyssey of the Scandinavian peoples, for a picture of the manner
-of life, the characters and the ideals of those Danish and Norwegian
-sea-rovers who were the terror of Angle and Saxon, but from whom we
-ourselves are largely descended.
-
-For the reign of Canute and his sons we are sometimes placed under
-obligation by the author of the _Encomium Emmæ_ (_Monumenta Germaniæ
-Historica_, vol. xix., 1866), a panegyric on the widow of Ethelred and
-Canute, written apparently by an ecclesiastic of Bruges, who had shared
-her bounty when she was living in exile. The author sometimes deviates
-in the most extraordinary way from historic truth, but he seems to have
-been well acquainted with the facts, though he dishonestly concealed
-them to please his patroness.
-
-With the extinction of the Danish dynasty and the revival of West
-Saxon royalty we enter upon a new period, in which our historical
-literature assumes a controversial character which it has not hitherto
-possessed. In previous centuries there has been no practical danger
-in speaking of _The Chronicle_, the amount of matter common to the
-various copies being so large and the divergencies between them so
-comparatively unimportant. Now, however, it is necessary to speak of
-_The Chronicles_ in the plural, since they often give us absolutely
-different versions of the same event. The Abingdon Chronicle, as before
-remarked, is hostile to Godwine, while Worcester (or Evesham) and
-Peterborough generally favour his cause. Winchester is almost silent
-for this period. There is a nearly contemporary _Life of Edward the
-Confessor_ in Latin by an unknown author (printed at the end of the
-volume, _Lives of Edward the Confessor_, in the Rolls Series, 1858),
-from which some noteworthy facts may be collected, but the value of the
-work is lessened by the writer’s evident determination to praise to the
-uttermost Godwine and all his family, in order to recommend himself to
-Edward’s widow Edith, daughter of Godwine, to whom this _Vita Edwardi
-Regis_ is dedicated. In comparison with his wife’s family the king
-himself comes off rather poorly.
-
-The life of the Confessor was soon caught up into the region of
-hagiological romance, and loses historical value accordingly. It does
-not seem possible to build any solid conclusions on the _Vita Edwardi
-Regis_ by Aelred, itself borrowed from the twelfth-century biographer
-Osbert, still less on the curious and interesting _Estoire de Seint
-Ædward le Rei_, a French poem written about 1245 and dedicated to
-Eleanor, queen of Henry III. (_Lives of Edward the Confessor_).
-
- * * * * *
-
-The Norman historians, who now of course become of first-rate
-importance for the history, are fully described in the second volume.
-It will be sufficient here to mention the names of the most important:
-WILLIAM OF POITIERS, WILLIAM OF JUMIÈGES (both contemporaries of the
-Conqueror), ORDERICUS VITALIS (a generation later) and WILLIAM WACE,
-author of two French metrical Chronicles, the _Roman de Brut_ and
-the _Roman de Rou_. The latter poem describes with much detail and
-some poetic power the events of the Norman invasion of England, but
-its author wrote about a century after the event, and the degree of
-reliance which may be placed on his statements, where not supported
-by more strictly contemporary authority, is still a subject of debate
-among historians. Editions by Pluquet (1826) and Andresen (1877–79)
-are mentioned with commendation, but the most convenient edition
-for an English student is that prepared by Sir Alexander Malet with
-a tolerably close translation of Pluquet’s text into English rhyme
-(London, 1860).
-
-The other all-important document for the story of the Conquest, the
-BAYEUX TAPESTRY, has been reproduced in facsimile, with a valuable
-illustrative commentary, by F. R. Fowke (London, 1875, reprinted in
-abridged form in the Ex Libris Series, 1898). Discussing the date and
-origin of this celebrated work, he rejects the traditional connexion
-of the Tapestry with Queen Matilda, but believes it to be strictly
-contemporary with the Conquest, having been “probably ordered for his
-cathedral by Bishop Odo and made by Norman work-people at Bayeux”.
-Refer also to Freeman’s _Norman Conquest_, vol. iii., note A, for a
-discussion of the authority of the Tapestry.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Of the Welsh authorities for this period contained in this volume the
-present writer cannot speak with confidence. The chief appear to be (1)
-the _Annales Cambriæ_, supposed to have been compiled in the year 954
-and afterwards continued to 1288.
-
-(2) The _Brut y Tywysogion_, or Chronicle of the Princes, which
-begins in 680 and ends with 1282. It is thought to be based on a
-Latin chronicle written in the middle of the twelfth century by a
-Pembrokeshire monk named Caradog of Llancarvan.
-
-(3) The _Brut y Saesson_, or Chronicle of the Saxons (800–1382), seems
-to be chiefly founded on the last-named work, but with some additions
-from English sources; of no great value, at any rate for pre-Conquest
-history.
-
-It is to be wished that some scholar would carefully sift the Welsh
-chronicles and poems, and tell us what are the solid historical facts
-that may be gathered from their pages.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Without attempting to give a list, however imperfect, of modern books
-dealing with the early history of England, it may be permitted to
-mention a few of the chief land-marks.
-
-The history of Roman Britain has yet to be written. Every year
-excavations, inscriptions, coins add a little to our knowledge of
-these tantalisingly obscure centuries. Perhaps the best short sketches
-to which the student can be referred are the chapter on Britain in
-MOMMSEN’S _Provinces of the Roman Empire_ (translated by Dickson:
-London, 1886), and a similar chapter in EMIL HÜBNER’S _Römische
-Herrschaft in West Europa_ (Berlin, 1890). Both these scholars are
-complete masters of all that epigraphy has to tell concerning the Roman
-occupation of Britain. In the early chapters of various volumes of the
-_Victoria County History of England_, Mr. F. HAVERFIELD is bringing the
-Roman archæology of the counties there described thoroughly up to date.
-It is to be hoped that these may all before long be combined by him
-into one great work on _Britannia Romana_.
-
-For Anglo-Saxon history perhaps LAPPENBERG’S _Geschichte von England_
-(translated by B. Thorpe: London, 1881) is still the most trustworthy
-guide; but the _Making of England_ and the _Conquest of England_ by
-JOHN RICHARD GREEN have all the characteristic charm of that author’s
-historical work; perhaps also it should be said, his characteristic
-tendency to translate a brilliant hypothesis into historical fact. The
-truly monumental history of _The Norman Conquest_ by E. A. FREEMAN
-will assuredly always remain the great quarry from which all later
-builders will hew their blocks for building. Even those who differ
-most strongly from his conclusions must bear witness to his unwearied
-industry and single-minded desire for historical accuracy, whether
-he always compassed it or not. One of Freeman’s antagonists, C. H.
-PEARSON, offers some useful suggestions in his _History of England
-during the Early and Middle Ages_; and the same author’s _Historical
-Maps of England during the First Thirteen Centuries_ contain an immense
-amount of carefully collected geographical material, and deserve to be
-more widely known than they are at the present time. Another doughty
-combatant, J. H. ROUND, in _Feudal England_ (London, 1895), has set
-himself to demolish Professor Freeman’s theories as to the battle of
-Hastings and some other matters.
-
-SIR JAMES RAMSAY’S _Foundations of England_ (1898) is an extremely
-careful digest of all the authorities bearing on the subject.
-
-W. BRIGHT’S _Early English Church History_, C. F. KEARY’S _Vikings in
-Western Christendom_ and C. PLUMMER’S _Life and Times of Alfred the
-Great_ are all helpful books.
-
-Where English and Scottish history touch one another the works of E. W.
-ROBERTSON, _Scotland under Her Early Kings_ and _Historical Essays_;
-W. F. SKENE, _Celtic Scotland_, and ANDREW LANG, _History of Scotland_,
-will be found useful, and should be consulted in order to see the
-arguments of the champions of Scottish independence.
-
-For the history of institutions reference should be made to Bishop
-STUBBS (_Constitutional History_); F. W. MAITLAND (_Domesday Book and
-Beyond_); H. M. CHADWICK (_Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions_);
-J. M. KEMBLE (_The Saxons in England_); F. PALGRAVE (_The Rise and
-Progress of the English Commonwealth_); H. C. COOTE (_The Romans of
-Britain_--worth studying, with distrust, as an extreme statement of the
-survival of Roman customs in Britain); F. SEEBOHM (_The English Village
-Community_); and P. VINOGRADOFF (_Villainage in England_, _The Growth
-of the Manor_ and an essay on “Folkland” in the _English Historical
-Review_ for 1893, which has been generally accepted as containing the
-true explanation of that much-discussed term of Anglo-Saxon law).
-
-A good edition of the Anglo-Saxon Laws was prepared in 1840 by BENJAMIN
-THORPE and published by the Record Commission. A more complete edition,
-with full commentary, was made by REINHOLD SCHMID and published in
-Leipzig in 1858. Even this is now being surpassed by the work of
-FELIX LIEBERMANN (Halle, 1898–1903), who has published an excellent
-text, but whose commentary on the laws has yet to appear. For the
-charters and other similar documents of the Anglo-Saxon kings we may
-refer to KEMBLE’S _Codex Diplomaticus_ (6 vols., 1839–48); BIRCH’S
-_Cartularium Saxonicum_ (3 vols., 1885–93), and HADDAN and STUBBS’S
-_Councils_ (3 vols., 1869–78), which are splendid collections of this
-kind of material for the historical student. As convenient manuals,
-_Diplomatarium Anglicum Aevi Saxonici_ by BENJAMIN THORPE (1845);
-STUBBS’S _Select Charters_ (1895), and EARLE’S _Handbook to the Land
-Charters_, will be found useful.
-
-For a much more detailed list of authorities than can here be given
-the reader is referred to the excellent manual on _The Sources and
-Literature of English History_ by Dr. CHARLES GROSS of Harvard
-University (1900).
-
-
-
-
-APPENDIX II.
-
-GENEALOGY OF NORTHUMBRIAN KINGS.
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
- _DEIRA._ _BERNICIA._
- Yffi.
- |
- +------------+---------------+
- | |
- Elfric. AELLE, IDA,
- | †588. †560.
- | | |
- | | ETHELRIC,
- | +-----------------+-----------------------+ †593.
- | | | | |
- OSRIC, N. Cwenburh,==EDWIN,==Ethelburga, Acha.==ETHELFRID,=Bebba.
- †634. | daughter | †633. | daughter of | †617.
- | | of King of | | Ethelbert, |
- | | Mercia. | | King of Kent. |
- | | | +------------+ +----------------------+---------------------+
- | | | | 3.| 2.| 1.|
- OSWIN, Hereric. Osfrid. 2° Eanfled.==OSWY,==1° Riemmelth, OSWALD,==Cyneburga, EANFRID,
- †651. | | | †671.| perhaps a †642. | daughter of †634.
- Hilda, Yffi. | | British | Cynegils,
- abbess of | | princess. | King of
- Whitby. +---------------------------+ | | Wessex.
- | +--------------+ |
- | | | |
- ALDFRID, EGFRID, ALCHFRID, Alchfleda, ETHELWALD,
- brother or nephew married King of Deira, married Penda, King of Deira,
- of Egfrid, 1° Etheldreda, married son of Penda. †soon after 655.
- †705. daughter of Anna, Cyneburga,
- | King of East daughter of
- OSRED, Anglia, Penda, King
- †716.[253] 2° Ermenburga, of Mercia,
- †685. †664 (?).
-
-
-
-
-APPENDIX III.
-
-GENEALOGY OF WEST SAXON KINGS BEFORE EGBERT
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
- CERDIC, †534.
- |
- CYNRIC, †560.
- +---------+------------------------+
- | |
- CEAWLIN, †593. Cutha (or Cuthwulf).
- | +------+-------------------------------------------+
- | | |
- Cuthwine. CEOLRIC, CEOLWULF,
- +-------------+ †597(?) †611.
- | | | |
- Cuthwulf. Ceadda. CYNEGILS, †641(?). Cuthgisl.
- | | +-------+--+-------------+------------------+ |
- | | | | | | |
- Ceolwald. CENBERHT, CWICHELM, CENWALH, CENTWINE, Cyneburga, Cenfrith.
- | †661. †636. †672. married the sister of married |
- | +--------+ | Ermenburga, Queen Oswald, Cenfus.
- | | | | of Northumbria, King of |
- Cenred. CADWALLA, Mul, CUTHRED I., †685. Northumbria. AESCWINE,
- | †689. burnt 687. †661. †676.
- |
- |
- | A descendant of
- +-+----+ Cerdic.
- | | +------------+
- | | | | [A] [A]
- Ingild. INE,==Ethelburh. ETHELHEARD, CUTHRED II., CYNEWULF,
- | †726. †740. †754. a kinsman of Cuthred II.,
- | †786.
- Eoppa. N.
- | +-----------+-----------+
- Eaba. [A]| |
- | SIGEBERT, Cyneheard,
- EALHMUND, †757. the Avenger.
- sub-King of Kent.
- | [254]
- EGBERT. BEORHTRIC,
- †802.
-
-
-
-
-FOOTNOTES.
-
-
-[1] Geikie, _Prehistoric Europe_, p. 13.
-
-[2] Geikie, p. 119.
-
-[3] Bunbury (_History of Ancient Geography_, i., 591) disputes this
-translation, and contends that Pytheas only said that he travelled (not
-necessarily on foot) over such parts of the island as were accessible.
-
-[4] See Note at the end of this chapter.
-
-[5] Pre-eminently of Sir John Evans, on whose great work on ancient
-British coins this chapter is founded.
-
-[6] In B.C. 34, 27 and 25 (Dion Cassius, xlix., 38; liii., 22 and 25).
-
-[7] The popular form of this prince’s name, Caractacus, is not
-justified by the MSS., but one would not think it necessary to restore
-the true form by the omission of one letter, were it not that the
-correct spelling brings us nearer to the Welsh equivalent, Caradoc.
-
-[8] That these four legions took part in the Plautian conquest of
-Britain is undoubted. It may perhaps, however, be questioned whether
-all sailed with Aulus Plautius at the very outset of the expedition.
-The fact that the army was divided for the purpose of the crossing into
-three portions looks rather as if it consisted of three legions: and
-the fourth might form the nucleus of the reinforcements which came with
-the Emperor Claudius.
-
-[9] _Agricola_, xiv.
-
-[10] The name of this tribe is doubtful.
-
-[11] For the reasons in favour of the date 60 instead of 61 (given by
-Tacitus), see Henderson, _Life and Principate of Emperor Nero_, p. 477.
-
-[12] Her name seems to have been really Boudicca, meaning the
-Victorious. The form Boadicea rests on no authority and conveys no
-meaning, but it is now too late to change it.
-
-[13] Several names of British gods begin like Andraste. A little
-farther on Dion speaks of the sacred grove of Andate or Victory; and we
-find dedications to Ancasta, Anociticus, and Antenociticus.
-
-[14] From a misreading of this name is derived the modern Grampian.
-
-[15] These sentences are quoted from Prof. Pelham’s paper on “The
-Roman Frontier System” (_Transactions of Cumberland and Westmorland
-Antiquarian Society_, xiv., 170–84), in which the reader will find an
-admirable statement of the object of the Roman frontier defences and
-the manner of their construction.
-
-[16] Equivalent to seventy-three and a half English miles: the distance
-from Wallsend to Bowness.
-
-[17] The term “Menapian” may apply to either country.
-
-[18] Notwithstanding the positive statement of the panegyrist that
-the victory over Allectus was won by Constantius in person, the merit
-of it is assigned by some of the historians to the Prætorian Prefect
-Asclepiodotus. It is, perhaps, impossible to frame a satisfactory
-narrative out of the very fragmentary materials at our disposal.
-
-[19] It has been shown by Mr. Haverfield that Britannia Prima included
-Cirencester (_Arch. Oxon._, p. 220).
-
-[20] They were Branodunum (Brancaster in Norfolk), Gariannonum
-(Caistor, near Yarmouth), Othona (at the mouth of the Blackwater in
-Essex?), Regulbium (Reculver in Essex), Rutupiæ (Richborough), Dubræ
-(Dover), Lemannæ (Lymne), Anderida (close to Beachy Head), Portus
-Adurni (not yet identified).
-
-[21] Epist. viii. 6.
-
-[22] 2 Kings xvii. 27.
-
-[23] See _English Historical Review_, xi., 420, for a list of these
-evidences of Christianity in Britain, drawn up by Mr. Haverfield.
-
-[24] Quotation from Haverfield, _Victoria History of Norfolk_, i., 282.
-
-[25] See Stevenson’s _Asser_, p. 166, for reasons against it.
-
-[26] Possibly their name may be connected with that of the Eudoces,
-a tribe mentioned by Tacitus as neighbours of the Angli. But that
-identification, if confirmed, would not add much to our knowledge.
-
-[27] It is conjectured, but only conjectured, that it took place at
-Maes Garmon (the field of Germanus?), near Mold in Flintshire.
-
-[28] It will be observed that this date is eight years later than that
-given by Tiro. It is probably derived from Bede (i., 15), who, however,
-does not seem to have had any definite information as to the exact year
-of the first invasion, though he certainly places it in the reigns of
-the Emperors Marcian and Valentinian III., that is (according to his
-inaccurate reckoning) somewhere between 449 and 455.
-
-[29] The site of Fethan-lea is not ascertained. Dr. Guest’s
-identification of it with Faddiley in Cheshire, and the large
-consequences thence deduced by him (_Origines Celticæ_, ii., 287–309),
-can hardly survive the strenuous attack made on them by Mr. Stevenson
-in the _Eng. Hist. Rev._, xvii., 637.
-
-[30] Probably in Wiltshire (_ibid._, 638).
-
-[31] “Forwurdon,” not the usual peaceful and beautiful “forth-ferdon”
-(fared forth).
-
-[32] Or Agitius, as Gildas calls him.
-
-[33] The name of Vortigern, inserted here in Gale’s edition, is absent
-from the best, though found in a few manuscripts.
-
-[34] Isaiah xix. 11.
-
-[35] Nennius makes such a muddle of his chronology that he virtually
-asserts that Christ was born A.D. 183; and he accepts the idle tales
-about Brutus, ancestor of the Britons, and descendant of Aeneas,
-which had been apparently fabricated by Irish students of Virgil two
-centuries before he wrote.
-
-[36] _Sed ipse erat dux bellorum._
-
-[37] This may be either Chester or Leicester.
-
-[38] Ep. i., 7. This is a very important passage, as showing at what an
-early date British refugees were settled near the mouth of the Loire
-in such numbers as to be an important element in Gaulish politics.
-Arvandus, once Prætorian prefect of Gaul, was accused before the
-Emperor of high treason because he had corresponded with the King of
-the Visigoths, inviting him to attack “the Britons situated on the
-Loire,” who were evidently loyal to the empire. In another letter of
-the same writer (Ep. iii., 9) we find him pleading with his friend
-Riothamus, a Breton chief (or king), for the restoration of some slaves
-who have been coaxed away from a friend of his by “Britannis clam
-sollicitantibus”. This same Riothamus, described by Jordanes as “rex
-Brittonum,” fought with Euric, King of the Visigoths, on behalf of the
-empire (_Jord. de rebus Geticis_, xlv.).
-
-[39] _Excerpta e Prisci historia_, p. 199 (ed. Bonn).
-
-[40] _De Bello Gothico_, ii., 6.
-
-[41] _De Bello Gothico_, iv., 20.
-
-[42] Between 575 and 578, or possibly between 585 and 590.
-
-[43] This story is told in similar but by no means identical words in
-an early life of Pope Gregory, probably written by a monk of Whitby
-who was a contemporary of Bede’s, and discovered by Paul Ewald: _Hist.
-Aufsätze an G. Waitz gewidmet_. It has been suggested that Bede copied
-from this biography. To me it seems more probable that Bede and the
-biographer, independently of one another, repeated the common _traditio
-majorum_.
-
-[44] Benedict I., if the earlier date is correct; otherwise Pelagius
-II. On the fourth day of Gregory’s journey a grasshopper alighted on
-the page of the Bible which he was reading during the noontide halt.
-“_Ecce locusta_,” he said, and interpreted the sign as meaning _Loco
-sta_, “Stay where you are”. In that hour arrived the papal emissary
-commanding him to return to Rome.
-
-[45] “Inter Langobardorum gladios”: a favourite expression of Gregory’s.
-
-[46] Bede, _Hist. Eccl._, i., 25. Evidently the defeat sustained
-(according to the Chronicle) in 568 at the hands of Ceawlin, king of
-Wessex, had been more than made good.
-
-[47] This follows from the date of St. Martin’s death, which was about
-402.
-
-[48] Archiepiscopus genti Anglorum ordinatus est (_Hist. Eccl._, i.,
-27). Observe that Bede without hesitation uses the word _Angli_ to
-denote the whole Anglo-Saxon-Jutish nationality.
-
-[49] See Kemble, _The Saxons in England_, i., 148.
-
-[50] In the county of Flint about ten miles south of Chester: not to be
-confounded with Bangor on the Menai Straits or with the Irish monastery
-of Bangor in County Down.
-
-[51] See H. A. Wilson in Mason’s _Mission of St. Augustine_, pp. 248–52.
-
-[52] As in the case of the _stigmata_ of St. Francis, modern science
-has shown that it is possible to accept the historic truth of this
-narrative without admitting the hypothesis, either of miracle or of
-fraud.
-
-[53] That of Richard of Hexham (_circa_ 1141. Prologue to his
-_History_). Simeon of Durham (_circa_ 1104) says that “all the country
-between Tees and Tyne was then [in the seventh century] a waste
-wilderness, the habitation of wild animals, and therefore subject to no
-man’s sway” (_Vita Oswaldi_, cap. i.).
-
-[54] “_Ond rixode twelf gear, ond he timbrode Bebbanburh, seo waes
-aerost mid hegge betyned, ond aefter mid wealle_.” Mr. Bates, whose
-_History of Northumberland_ is a most helpful guide to this part of our
-history, reminds us that this “hackneyed passage is an interpolation
-of a Kentish scribe in the eleventh century”. Still, though we may not
-quote it as a first-rate authority, there seems no reason for rejecting
-it altogether.
-
-[55] _Hist. Eccl._, i., 34.
-
-[56] Or as the Saxon chronicler quaintly puts it, “that if Welshmen
-would not be kith and kin (sibbe) with us they should by Saxon hands
-perish”.
-
-[57] We may probably conjecture that the rapid far-reaching campaigns
-of early English kings, such as Ethelfrid, were rendered possible by
-the still solid condition of the great Roman roads, which in the Middle
-Ages fell grievously into decay. Thus even the civilisation of the
-Roman empire fought for the barbarians.
-
-[58] This remark was made by Professor Freeman.
-
-[59] In telling this story Bede hints that Paulinus received by
-supernatural means the particulars of an earlier supernatural
-appearance; but he does not put forward this theory very confidently,
-and we may, perhaps, sufficiently account for the incident if we
-suppose that Paulinus himself, unknown at that time to Edwin, was the
-chief actor in the first scene, the memory of which he revived at an
-opportune time to strengthen the wavering faith of the king.
-
-[60] It must be remembered that this is the Anglian version of the
-story, possibly unjust to Cadwallon, and that the Britons had the
-wrongs of two centuries to avenge.
-
-[61] Skene, _Celtic Scotland_, ii., 89.
-
-[62] By Skene, _u.s._, ii., 63.
-
-[63] Nennius (_Hist. Brit._, § 64) says “in bello Catscaul”. _Cat_
-is an old English word for battle; _caul_ is probably corrupted from
-_guaul_, the word elsewhere used by Nennius for the Roman wall (_cf._
-§§ 23 and 38).
-
-[64] _Brut y Tywysogion_, _s.a._, 681.
-
-[65] “Urbs regia” (Bede, iii., 6); “urbs munitissima” (Simeon of
-Durham, _Historia Regum_, § 48).
-
-[66] Generally identified with Oswestry (Oswald’s tree) in Shropshire.
-
-[67] By Freeman: _Norman Conquest_, i., 36 (3rd ed.).
-
-[68] Except parts of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire surrounding
-Dorchester.
-
-[69] “A viro gentili nomine Ricberto” (Bede, _Hist. Ecc._, ii., 15).
-
-[70] In some way which is not explained, Ethelhere was himself “the
-author of the war”. Possibly as suggested by Mr. Bates (_Archæologia
-Aeliana_, xix., 182–91), his marriage with a great niece of Edwin gave
-him some claim to the throne of Deira.
-
-[71] That of Swithelm.
-
-[72] The whole of this story about the so-called Dalfinus, Archbishop
-of Lyons, as related by Wilfrid’s biographer is encompassed with
-historical difficulties. See Bright’s _Early English Church History_,
-pp. 218 ff. (3rd ed.).
-
-[73] An attempt to arrange the recurrences of Easter in a cycle of 19
-years.
-
-[74] The southern Irish conformed in 634; the northern Irish in 692;
-the northern Picts, 710; the monks of Iona, 716; the Britons in Wales,
-768.
-
-[75] Chiefly Celtic. See Bright’s _Early English Church History_, p.
-237, n. 2.
-
-[76] For the reasons for dating Oswy’s death in 671 rather than a year
-earlier according to the text of Bede, see Plummer’s note on _H. E._,
-iv., 5.
-
-[77] Hagustald.
-
-[78] In Hrypum.
-
-[79] This is Eddius’ account of the transaction. According to Bede a
-dispute arose between Egfrid and Wilfrid. The latter was deposed and
-then his diocese was divided.
-
-[80] Site not known.
-
-[81] P. 174.
-
-[82] The identification of this place with Wanborough, near Swindon, is
-disproved by Stevenson (_Eng. Hist. Rev._, xvii., 638).
-
-[83] _Gesta Regum Anglorum_, i., 35 (first recension).
-
-[84] Weorthige.
-
-[85] Gaers-tun.
-
-[86] Gedal-land. Mr. Seebohm translates “land divided into strips”.
-
-[87] There is evidently an omission of some such words.
-
-[88] Vinogradoff, _The Growth of the Manor_, p. 150.
-
-[89] The nature of the difference between the tun and the ham has
-perhaps yet to be discovered. For brevity’s sake the former word only
-will be used in the following discussion. Neither “town” nor “township”
-is a quite satisfactory translation.
-
-[90] The theory that place-names containing the element _ing_
-necessarily points to a settlement by a community, though generally
-accepted, is contested by Prof. Earle and Mr. Stevenson, who consider
-that _ing_ is sometimes merely the equivalent of the genitive singular
-(_Eng. Hist. Rev._, iv., 356).
-
-[91] Such as those in Seebohm’s _Village Community_.
-
-[92] By Vinogradoff, _l.c._, 176; compare also Maitland, _Domesday Book
-and Beyond_, p. 337.
-
-[93] _Germania_, xxvi.
-
-[94] From _caruca_, a plough. There is a general correspondence between
-the two terms hide and carucate, but it would not be safe to treat them
-as always precisely equivalent to one another.
-
-[95] The size of a hide might partly depend on the nature of the soil.
-Obviously in some soils a team of six oxen would accomplish a much
-larger day’s work than in others. Kemble, _The Saxons in England_, i.,
-101, argues for a hide of about 33 acres.
-
-[96] From _virga_ = a yard.
-
-[97] For convenience of reference the following table is appended,
-but it must be remembered that these are rather average results than
-scientifically exact formulæ. See Vinogradoff, _Villainage in England_,
-p. 239, for varying sizes of Hides, Virgates and Bovates.
-
- 1 Bovate or Ox-gang = 15 acres.
- 2 Bovates = 1 Virgate or Yard-land = 30 acres.
- 8 Bovates or 4 Virgates = 1 Carucate or Hide = 120 acres.
-
-[98] As alleged by Mr. Seebohm.
-
-[99] The laws of Ine which speak of the subjection of a free man to a
-lord are 3, 21, 27, 39, 67 and 74.
-
-[100] Law 43.
-
-[101] Law 16. _Ceorles birele_ evidently means a ceorl’s female slave.
-
-[102] Vinogradoff (_Growth of the Manor_, 202) minimises the element
-of personal slavery in the early Anglo-Saxon community: “Even in the
-earliest stage of English life it could not be said that English
-society was a slave-holding one.... Slavery turns out not to be a
-fit economic and social basis for a primitive, half-agricultural,
-half-pastural society: the slaves are difficult to keep and awkward to
-deal with.... They are mostly provided with small households of their
-own and used as coloni.”
-
-[103] Ine, 70. The _amber_ is said to have contained four bushels, but
-Maitland (_Domesday Book_, etc., p. 440, n. 6) doubts its having been
-so large.
-
-[104] Ine, 11, 12.
-
-[105] There seems to have been a tendency as legislation advanced to
-increase the distance in respect of _wergilds_ between the king and his
-subjects.
-
-[106] Chadwick, _Anglo-Saxon Institutions_, pp. 144–48.
-
-[107] See Chadwick, chapter viii., for references on this point.
-
-[108] Chadwick (_Excursus_, iv.) takes a different view and practically
-denies the elective power of the _witan_.
-
-[109] There are some indications that in early times the shilling of
-Wessex may have contained only 4 peningas.
-
-[110] Heinrich Leo.
-
-[111] This name, or rather Cruland, was afterwards corrupted into
-Croyland.
-
-[112] Ep. 73 (Mon. Hist. Germ., Epist. iii., 340).
-
-[113] It is now recognised that the dates in the Chronicle from 754 to
-851 are two, or in some cases three years behind the true dates.
-
-[114] The words from Haerethaland which follow in the text are thought
-by Steenstrup (_Normannerne_, ii., 15–20) to be an interpolation. In
-the following chapters the example of the Chronicle will generally be
-followed, in calling the Scandinavian invaders Danes, without entering
-on the debated question which of them came from Denmark proper and
-which from Norway.
-
-[115] See Keary, _The Vikings in Western Christendom_, pp. 139–42.
-
-[116] _Here_ is simply the Anglo-Saxon equivalent for army; but in the
-Chronicle it almost invariably means the Danish army, while _fyrd_ is
-the word used for the English troops, which were in the nature of a
-militia.
-
-[117] This fact has been especially emphasised by Freeman, _Norman
-Conquest_, i., 43–45.
-
-[118] This date, as will be seen, is not that of his original burial,
-which probably took place near the beginning of July, 862, but the
-date of the “translation” of his remains to the cathedral, which was
-accomplished more than a century later.
-
-[119] Stubbs, _Const. Hist._, i., 249, and 258.
-
-[120] The translation of some of the terms used is conjectural.
-
-[121] _Liber Pontificalis_, ii., 148 (ed. Duchesne).
-
-[122] This restoration of the Schola Saxonum rests only on the
-authority of William of Malmesbury, and is doubted, but hardly
-disproved, by Mr. Stevenson in his edition of Asser, pp. 245–46.
-Notwithstanding the high authority of Monseigneur Duchesne, quoted
-by Mr. Stevenson, it does not seem to me probable that the _scholæ
-peregrinorum_ were essentially military establishments, though they may
-have assumed somewhat of that character under the stress of the Saracen
-invasions in the ninth century.
-
-[123] Charles the Bald was at this time thirty-two years of age.
-Ethelwulf cannot have been less than fifty and may have been
-considerably older.
-
-[124] The reader is referred to the Appendix for an account of the
-controversies which have arisen respecting this book. It is enough
-to say here that we seem to be justified in accepting it as a
-contemporary, and in the main a truthful account of the life of the
-great king. It ends, however, with the year 887.
-
-[125] Tunc ille statim tollens librum de manu sua magistrum adiit et
-legit. Quo lecto matri retulit et recitavit.--Asser, _De Rebus Gestis
-Aelfredi_, § 23.
-
-[126] As Mr. Stevenson suggests, if _et_ be a copyist’s mistake for
-_qui_ (both represented by contractions), the difficulty would vanish.
-
-[127] This is pointed out by Mr. Oman in “Collected Essays” in _Alfred
-the Great_.
-
-[128] Florence of Worcester’s words (borrowed from St. Edmund’s
-earliest biographer Abbo), “Ex antiquorum Saxonum prosapia oriundus,”
-seem, according to the usage of the time, to refer to the Old Saxons
-of the continent. If he had meant merely to say “from an old Saxon
-family,” he would probably have said “antiqua” rather than “antiquorum”.
-
-[129] _Studies in Church Dedications_ (ii., 327), by Miss
-Arnold-Forster.
-
-[130] In describing the events of this year the writer follows the
-guidance of the late Mr. W. H. Simcox, who personally identified most
-of the battle-sites, and the results of whose investigations are
-contained in an excellent paper in the _English Historical Review_, i.,
-218–34.
-
-[131] The title of the Danish battle leaders, next in rank to the king.
-
-[132] On philological grounds Mr. Stevenson disputes the propriety of
-this translation and asserts that Aesc must be the name of a person.
-The present appearance of Ashdown Hills seems, however, to correspond
-admirably with Asser’s description. It is better not to complicate the
-discussion by an argument derived from the strange figure of a White
-Horse (so-called) cut upon their northern side, as that figure, with
-all its picturesque interest, is not a safe guide to a historical
-identification.
-
-[133] At this point the _Chronicle of St. Neots_, a late and
-untrustworthy authority written perhaps early in the twelfth century,
-inserts the well-known story of the burning of the cakes, which does
-not form part of the genuine text of Asser’s _Life_.
-
-[134] The site of this fortress has been much discussed but is not yet
-satisfactorily settled. See Stevenson’s _Asser_, p. 262.
-
-[135] Edington in Wiltshire, a little east of Westbury. Near this place
-is another White Horse, at Bratton Castle, but we have not sufficient
-evidence to connect this with Alfred’s victory.
-
-[136] This was pointed out half a century ago by Dr. Reinhold Schmid,
-the accurate German editor of the Anglo-Saxon laws.
-
-[137] It is interesting to note that the Watling Street is still the
-chief boundary between the counties of Warwick and Leicester. Through a
-large part of its course the London and North Western Railway so nearly
-coincides with this old Roman road that the traveller faring northwards
-may consider himself to be looking forth from the right-hand window
-over the “Danelaw” and from the left over “Saxony”.
-
-[138] The value of the mark of pure gold is not yet clearly
-ascertained. Mr. Chadwick (_Studies in Anglo-Saxon Institutions_,
-p. 50) argues from this passage that a single mark of gold = 300
-scillings, and that the fine hereby imposed was 1,200 scillings, equal
-to the wergild of a West Saxon noble. But in that case one would
-have expected to have some more distinct indication of rank than is
-contained in the words “gif man ofslagen weorthe”.
-
-[139] For some valuable suggestions on the mysterious subject of
-Alfred’s diseases see Plummer’s _Life and Times of Alfred the Great_,
-pp. 28, 214.
-
-[140] Plummer, _Two Saxon Chronicles_, ii., civ.
-
-[141] Quotations are given from Mr. Sedgefield’s translation, which
-has the great merit of distinguishing Alfred’s interpolations by a
-different type from the original text.
-
-[142] Against the genuineness of the passage are its omission from Ã,
-the earliest and best MS. of the Chronicle, from Asser, and from the
-original text of Florence of Worcester. See Stevenson, _Asser_, pp.
-287–90.
-
-[143] Professor Vinogradoff in his essay on Folkland contributed to the
-_English Historical Review_, vol. viii.; further illustrated by his
-_Growth of the Manor_.
-
-[144] “Terra popularis, communi jure et sine scripto possessa.” This
-was Spelman’s definition (1626), and Vinogradoff shows good ground for
-reverting to it with a slight modification, instead of adopting Allen’s
-theory that the folkland was land owned by the nation like the _ager
-publicus_ of Rome.
-
-[145] See Cnut’s laws, ii., 13.
-
-[146] Kemble, _Codex Diplomaticus_, No. 317; Birch, _Cartularium
-Saxonicum_, No. 558.
-
-[147] Not 893–97 as Chronicle.
-
-[148] Earle, _Two Saxon Chronicles_ (1865), p. xvi.
-
-[149] _Reginonis Chronicon_, _a._ 891.
-
-[150] In _Eng. Hist. Rev._ (1898), xiii., 444, Mr. W. C. Abbott argues
-that Hasting is possibly identical with Hásteinn, one of the first
-settlers of Iceland.
-
-[151] Probably; but the Chronicle gives the date 901, and Mr.
-Stevenson, _Eng. Hist. Rev._ (1898), xiii., 71, argues strongly for 899.
-
-[152] _Words and Places_, pp. 175–76.
-
-[153] Might it not be added “and from the Humber?”
-
-[154] _The Northmen in Cumberland and Westmorland_ (1856).
-
-[155] Edward’s reign probably lasted from 900 to 924, but owing to
-discrepancies between the MSS. of the Chronicles no date in the reign
-can be stated with certainty, the differences varying from one to three
-years.
-
-[156] Offa calls it his _palatium regale_ in one of his charters
-(Birch, _Cart. Sax._, 240).
-
-[157] Especially Freeman, whose words are quoted in the rest of this
-paragraph. But see also for a later vindication of the correctness of
-the chronicler’s statement, Plummer, _Saxon Chronicles_, ii., 131.
-
-[158] _Historical Essays_, i., 60, 62.
-
-[159] _Norman Conquest_, i., 59.
-
-[160] Robertson, Skene and Lang.
-
-[161] Robertson, _Scotland under her Early Kings_, ii., 397.
-
-[162] It was pointed out in the _Athenæum_ for Nov. 4, 1905, that
-this place rather than Farringdon, in Berkshire, corresponds with the
-Farndune of the Chronicle.
-
-[163] Adolf, son of Baldwin of Flanders.
-
-[164] Heinskringla, _Story of Haarfager_, 41 and 42.
-
-[165] It was probably at this time that Athelstan, as we learn from
-William of Malmesbury, rased to the ground the fortress which the Danes
-had aforetime built in York, “that there might be no place in which
-these perfidious ones could take refuge,” and generously divided among
-his men the vast booty which he found there.
-
-[166] By Symeon of Durham, not by the Chronicle, which here is
-singularly barren of information except such as is contained in the
-“Lay of Brunanburh”.
-
-[167] The twelfth century chronicler, Florence of Worcester, says
-that with these ships he entered the Humber; and this statement has
-been frequently copied by later historians. It is not, however, to be
-found in any contemporary or nearly contemporary record, and it is
-now generally regarded with suspicion, for the obvious reason that an
-invader, coming from Ireland with the intention of co-operating with
-the Kings of Cumberland and Scotland, would be more likely to land on
-the western than on the eastern coast of Britain.
-
-[168] Especially since it was turned into spirited yet closely literal
-English verse by Tennyson, from whose poem a few passages are here
-quoted.
-
-[169] William of Malmesbury, _Gesta Regum_, ii., 135.
-
-[170] _Ibid._, 134.
-
-[171] Probably of the tenth century, therefore nearly contemporary.
-
-[172] See Plummer, _Saxon Chronicles_, ii., 137, and Freeman, _Hist.
-Essays_, i., 10–15, for a full discussion of the question.
-
-[173] See Birch, _Cartularium Saxonicum_, 656.
-
-[174] Possibly Chesterfield.
-
-[175] _Life of Dunstan_, by B. (a Saxon monk, nearly contemporary).
-
-[176] The celebrated story of the Devil and the hot tongs is not told
-by any contemporary of Dunstan’s, but by the much-romancing Osbern
-about 130 years after his death. The identical pair of tongs with which
-the saint is said to have seized the Devil’s nose is still shown at the
-priory of Mayfield in Sussex.
-
-[177] An excellent summing up of the whole case will be found in E. W.
-Robertson’s _Historical Essays_, p. 192.
-
-[178] The short reign of Edwy furnishes 150 pages to the _Cartularium
-Saxonicum_.
-
-[179] The Chronicle and the biographers agree in postponing Dunstan’s
-return till after Edgar’s accession to the undivided realm, but his
-signatures to charters seem to require an earlier date.
-
-[180] See Robertson’s, _Historical Essays_, p. 211.
-
-[181] As pointed out by Mr. W. H. Stevenson in the _English Historical
-Review_ (1898), xiii., 506, an important attestation to the meeting
-of the kings (though not to the water procession) is furnished by the
-ecclesiastical author Elfric, himself a contemporary of Edgar and a
-pupil and friend of bishop Ethelwold. In his poetical _Life of St.
-Swithin_, written about 996, he contrasts the happy days of Edgar with
-the disastrous reign of his son, and says: “All the kings of this
-island of Cymri and of Scots, eight kings, came to Edgar once upon a
-time on one day and they all bowed to Edgar’s government”.
-
-[182] Robertson’s _Historical Essays_, p. 203.
-
-[183] _Ibid._, p. 169.
-
-[184] As stated by Robertson, _ibid._, p. 168.
-
-[185] See Freeman’s _Historical Essays_, first series, 15–25, for a
-refutation of the legend of Elfrida’s marriage.
-
-[186] See Robertson’s _Historical Essays_, pp. 166–71. There is no
-evidence that Elfrida shared her husband’s coronation, but she is the
-first king’s wife after Judith to sign charters as _Regina_.
-
-[187] Kemble’s _Codex Diplomaticus_, 700.
-
-[188] Especially by Sir H. Howorth, _Archæologia_, xlv., 235–50.
-
-[189] The following passages are almost all taken from the Peterborough
-version of the Chronicle which was based for this part of the narrative
-on a Canterbury Chronicle. Hence, doubtless, the fulness of the entries
-relating to Kent.
-
-[190] Now corrupted into Skutchamfly Barrow, eight and a half miles
-from the White Horse in Berkshire.
-
-[191] The term Danegeld seems to be properly applicable to the tax
-imposed on the king’s subjects in order to provide for the payment
-to the Danes. The payment itself is generally called _gafol_ in the
-Chronicle.
-
-[192] It is stated in Ethelred’s Treaty with Olaf (Liebermann, i.,
-220–228) that the sum promised to the invaders was “22,000 pounds of
-gold and silver”. The document is, on other grounds, an interesting
-one, as it seems to show a serious effort to secure permanent peace
-between the two nations.
-
-[193] Stubbs’ _Constitutional History_, i., 118, 623.
-
-[194] Freeman, _Hist. of Norm. Conq._, i., 279.
-
-[195] Admirably told to English-speaking readers in Longfellow’s “Saga
-of King Olaf,” which is, in fact, a paraphrase of this part of the
-_Heimskringla_.
-
-[196] The name of this well-known historical personage was undoubtedly
-Knut or Cnut. It is so written both in the Scandinavian _Sagas_ and in
-the English Chronicle. But the Latinised form Canutus preserves the
-remembrance of a helping vowel which may have been often used, even by
-contemporaries, at least in England. At this day the Danish name Knothe
-is always pronounced Kinnoté in Northumberland. The important point is
-to remember that the accent is on the last syllable: Canúte, not Cánute.
-
-[197] In Hampshire, near Portsmouth.
-
-[198] This is Freeman’s suggestion, _Norman Conquest_, i., 415.
-
-[199] This also is Freeman’s suggestion (_u.s._, i., 411).
-
-[200] See Freeman, _u.s._, i., 737–40.
-
-[201] As suggested by J. R. Green, _Conquest of England_, 479.
-
-[202] Author of the tract, _De Obsessione Dunelmi_, added to the
-history of Symeon of Durham.
-
-[203] See _supra_, p. 396.
-
-[204] In the reign of Indulph (954–962) according to a Pictish
-chronicle quoted by Skene, _Celtic Scotland_, i., 365.
-
-[205] It does not appear necessary to discuss the previous question of
-the alleged “cession of Lothian” by Edgar, the evidence for which is
-very slender.
-
-[206] As to this identification, see Skene, _Celtic Scotland_, i., 397,
-405–6.
-
-[207] Certainly not 1031, as stated in the Chronicle. Canute’s presence
-at Conrad’s coronation makes this date impossible. So considerable an
-error throws doubt on the chronological accuracy of, at any rate, this
-part of the Chronicle.
-
-[208] In Scania, which then belonged to Denmark.
-
-[209] This story of the forged letter is taken from the author of
-the _Encomium Emmæ_, who, as a contemporary, and as one who actually
-conversed with Queen Emma, seems to be entitled to credence,
-notwithstanding some strange misstatements, due, perhaps, rather to
-insincerity than to ignorance.
-
-[210] Mr. Plummer (_Saxon Chronicles_, ii., 210–15) argues that
-Godwine’s hostile action towards the Etheling was taken in the interest
-not of Harold but of Harthacnut.
-
-[211] Freeman, _Norman Conquest_, i., 489–501 and 779–87.
-
-[212] Son of Uhtred and nephew of Eadwulf Cutel.
-
-[213] Or _Leges Mar chiarum_, a digest of which was published in 1705
-by William Nicolson, Bishop of Carlisle (a later edition in 1747).
-
-[214] It is perhaps not a mere coincidence that some even of the
-special terms of the _Leges Marchiarum_ are also to be found in the
-laws of Edgar and Ethelred. Such are _foul_ or _ful_ for “guilty,” and
-_trod_ for the track of a stolen beast.
-
-[215] Compare Vinogradoff, _The Growth of the Manor_, p. 144; Chadwick,
-_Anglo-Saxon Institutions_, 239–48, and the remarkable article by Mr.
-W. J. Corbett in vol. xiv. of _Transactions of the Royal Historical
-Society_, N.S., on the “Tribal Hidage”.
-
-[216] Cnut, ii., 15 (in Liebermann, i., 320).
-
-[217] Rutland was not, however, formed into a separate county till
-after the Norman Conquest.
-
-[218] Edgar, iii., 5 (_ibid._, 202).
-
-[219] _Burg_ is, of course, one of the best-known words of the common
-Teutonic stock. It is enshrined in Luther’s hymn “Ein’ feste Burg ist
-unser Gott,” and in hunting for the traces of Roman encampments in
-Hesse and Nassau, I have found that the name by which they are best
-known in the countryside is “Die alte Burg”.
-
-[220] Ine, 45 (Liebermann, i., 108); Alfred, 40 (_ibid._, 72).
-
-[221] Maitland, _Domesday Book_, etc., p. 184.
-
-[222] IV., 2, 4 and 5 (Liebermann, i., 210).
-
-[223] If Ethelfled’s fortress of Scergeat may be identified with
-Shrewsbury.
-
-[224] As Freeman puts it: “I believe the cause of this distinction
-[between Somerset and Northamptonshire] to be that West Saxon England
-was made only once, while Mercian England had to be made twice” (“The
-Shire and the Gâ” in _English Towns and Districts_, p. 124).
-
-[225] Some of these names are probably contained in that curious
-document, the Tribal Hidage, on which Mr. Corbett has commented in
-_Transactions of the Royal Historical Society_, vol. xiv., N.S.
-
-[226] See Chadwick, _Anglo-Saxon Institutions_, 262.
-
-[227] If any exception is to be made to this statement it will be with
-reference to the half-independent earls of Bamburgh.
-
-[228] The _wers_ are calculated in the Scandinavian or, perhaps,
-Northumbrian money, the _thrymsas_, each equivalent to three penings.
-
-[229] See Vinogradoff (_The Growth of the Manor_, p. 131) on this
-illustration of “the arrogant superiority of the Danish conquerors”.
-He remarks on the growth of the pretensions of the invaders since the
-treaty between Alfred and Guthrum which put the Northmen warriors only
-on the same level as the twelf-hyndmen, or ordinary thegns.
-
-[230] Schmid, p. 371; Liebermann, p. 444.
-
-[231] This is Professor Vinogradoff’s view, _Growth of the Manor_, p.
-233.
-
-[232] Edward, i., 1 (Liebermann, i., 138).
-
-[233] Edgar, iv., 3 (Liebermann, i., 210). This law is important as it
-helps us clearly to distinguish between _burh_, a borough, and _borh_,
-an association for mutual defence and for the enforcement of mutual
-responsibility.
-
-[234] Cnut, ii., 20 (_ibid._, i., 322).
-
-[235] Ethelred, viii., 22 (Liebermann, i., 266).
-
-[236] See Maitland, _Domesday Book_, etc., p. 260. He thinks it
-probable that many grants of similar privileges of an earlier date have
-perished.
-
-[237] The German _sache_, preserved in our expression “for God’s sake,”
-and the like (Maitland, _Domesday Book_, etc., p. 84).
-
-[238] _Sco ealde Hlaefdige_ is the term used in the Chronicle to
-describe the queen-dowager. It will be remembered that there was in
-Wessex a peculiar distaste to the title “Queen”.
-
-[239] By Freeman, _Norman Conquest_, ii., 124–25 and 615.
-
-[240] For some years the county of Huntingdon was strangely added to
-Northumbria as a portion of his earldom. For the complicated question
-of the limits of the earldoms under Edward, see Freeman, _Norman
-Conquest_, vol. ii., note G.
-
-[241] Freeman, _u.s._
-
-[242] _Welisce menn._--Of course the word Wealas and its derivations
-meant simply non-Teutonic and had no necessary connexion with the
-British population of what we now call Wales.
-
-[243] Some doubt has been thrown on the early connexion of Godwine with
-Kent.
-
-[244] “_Mycelne ende thes folces_,” says the Peterborough chronicler;
-“thirty good thegns,” say the Abingdon and Worcester chroniclers,
-“besides other folk.”
-
-[245] Literally “had raised up un-law and deemed un-dooms”.
-
-[246] This is Mr. Plummer’s excellent suggestion for the interpretation
-of a passage in the Chronicle which had previously baffled the
-commentators.
-
-[247] It must always be remembered that we have nothing but bare
-conjecture to go upon for the date of Harold’s visit to Normandy. There
-are some reasons for placing it much earlier than 1064.
-
-[248] Freeman, _Norman Conquest_, iii., 300.
-
-[249] The following description of this battle is taken for the most
-part from the Saga of Harold Hardrada in the Heimskringla, and has no
-doubt a good deal of the character of fiction.
-
-[250] Wace (ed. Malet, p. 60), who gives the number on his father’s
-report.
-
-[251] Wace, author of the _Roman de Rou_. The question of the existence
-of this “palisade” has been discussed at great length by Mr. Round who
-denies, and by Mr. Archer and Miss Norgate who affirm, its existence
-(see _English Historical Review_, vol. ix., 1894). The question remains
-full of difficulty, the doubt being whether to attach most weight to
-the obscure utterance of one writer or to the silence of many. The
-conclusion to which the present writer is disposed to come is that
-there was some sort of hastily constructed fence, meant as a protection
-against cavalry, but that in the actual battle, which was waged chiefly
-between opposing bodies of infantry, it played an unimportant part and
-may have been soon thrust out of the way, as much by the defenders as
-by the assailants of the position.
-
-[252] Made by Baring, _Eng. Hist. Rev._, vol. xx., 1905.
-
-[253] After the death of Osred in 716 the genealogy of the Northumbrian
-kings becomes uncertain.
-
-[254] The pedigree of all these kings is uncertain. All that can be
-said of them is that “their right ancestry goeth to Cerdic”.
-
-
-
-
-INDEX.
-
-
- Abercorn (Aebbercurnig), 192.
-
- Abingdon, monastery at, 355, 419.
-
- Acha of Deira, wife of Ethelfrid, 133, 153.
-
- Adamnan, Abbot of Iona, 148, 151, 157.
-
- Adela, daughter of William the Norman, 469, 476.
-
- Adminius, son of Cymbeline, 28.
-
- Adolf, son of Baldwin of Flanders, 330.
-
- Ad Murum, royal villa at, 169, 175.
-
- _Aelfredes and Guthrumes Frith_, 286–288.
-
- Aelfric, Archbishop of Canterbury, 452.
-
- Aelle, King of Deira, 94, 115, 133, 135, 171.
-
- Aelle, King of Sussex, 89, 90, 110, 126.
-
- Aesc, King of Kent, 88, 89.
-
- “_Aestel_,” clasp or bookmarker? 292.
-
- Aetius, 96, 97.
-
- Agatha, wife of Etheling Edward, 461.
-
- Agatho, Pope, 203.
-
- Agilbert, Bishop, 182, 183, 193, 196.
-
- Agricola, Calpurnius, 58.
-
- Agricola, Gnæus Julius, conquers Ordovices, 47;
- fortifies North of England, 50;
- his Caledonian campaign, 50;
- recalled to Rome, 50.
-
- Aidan, King of the Scots, 133, 134, 148.
-
- Aidan, missionary bishop, 155–169, 181, 182, 198.
-
- Albinus, Abbot of Canterbury, 86.
-
- Albinus, British usurper defeated at Lyons, 59.
-
- Albion, 6, 9.
-
- Alchfleda, daughter of Oswy, 168.
-
- Alchfrid, son of Oswy, 168, 170–172, 180, 182, 183.
-
- Alclyde. See Dumbarton, 130, 246.
-
- Alcuin, Northumbrian scholar, 237, 252, 258, 498.
-
- Aldfrid the Learned, 208.
-
- Aldgyth, daughter of Elfgar, 467, 471.
-
- Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury, 178, 241.
-
- Aldhun, Bishop of Lindisfarne, first Bishop of Durham, 406–408.
-
- Alexander II., Pope, blesses Norman invasion, 476.
-
- Alfhild, mother of Magnus of Norway, 444.
-
- Alfred the Great, King of the English, birth (in 848?) at Wantage,
- 272;
- journey to Rome (in 853), 272;
- (in 855), 268, 273;
- story of the book of poetry given to him, 273;
- “secundarius” under his brother Ethelred, 275;
- fights with the Danes at Ashdown, 279;
- his accession to the throne (871), 281;
- in hiding at Athelney, 283;
- conquers the Danes, peace with Guthrum, 285;
- renewed fighting and peace with Guthrum, 287;
- family life, 289;
- feeble health, 290;
- literary culture, 291;
- translation of the _Regula Pastoralis_, 292;
- of Orosius, 293;
- his connection with the _Saxon Chronicle_, 295;
- translation of Bede’s _Ecclesiastical History_, 295;
- of Boethius, 296;
- expenditure, 298;
- mission to India? 299;
- laws, 299–395;
- last wars with the Danes (892–896), 306–313;
- death, 314;
- buried in the New Minster, 314.
-
- Alfred, an ealdorman, 304.
-
- Alfred, son of Ethelred the Redeless, 386, 392, 418–420.
-
- Alfwin, King of Deira, 191, 202.
-
- Alfwold, defender of monks, 361.
-
- Allectus, assassinates Carausius, 65;
- slain by Constantius Chlorus, 66.
-
- Aller, Guthrum baptised at, 285.
-
- Alphege (or Elfheah), Archbishop, 384, 389, 390.
-
- _Amber_, a measure, perhaps four bushels, 226.
-
- Ambrosius, Aurelianus, 98, 99, 102, 103, 107.
-
- Ammianus Marcellinus, historian, 52, 72, 73, 495.
-
- Anastasius, anti-pope, 269.
-
- Anatolius, cycle of, 185.
-
- Anderida (Andredesceaster), 89, 110, 138, 483.
-
- Andover, treaty with Danes at, 384.
-
- Andraste, Celtic goddess, 40.
-
- Andredesleag, or Andredesweald, forest of, 89, 177, 308.
-
- Angles, 79–81, 114, 157.
-
- Anglesey, or Mona, 35, 38, 47, 131, 138.
-
- _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, 87–94, 245–482 _passim_, 498–500, 505.
-
- Anglo-Saxon money, 232–235.
-
- Anjou, origin of Counts of, 370.
-
- Anlaf, King of Irish Danes, 333.
-
- Anlaf, son of Guthred, 332.
-
- Anlaf, son of Sihtric, 333, 340.
-
- Anna, King of East Anglia, 162–164, 174, 176.
-
- _Annales Cambriæ_, 100, 506.
-
- Antoninus Pius, Emperor, builds a wall of turf, 58, 94, 334.
-
- Apollinaris Sidonius, Bishop of Clermont, 71, 84, 106.
-
- Appach, on Cæsar’s British Expeditions, 24.
-
- Appledore, Cæsar’s landing-place? 24;
- Danish attacks, 307, 308.
-
- Arcadius, Emperor, 72.
-
- Archbishop of Mercia at Lichfield, 250.
-
- Ari, an Icelandic scholar, 504.
-
- Armorica. See Brittany.
-
- Arnulf, King of the Franks, 306.
-
- Arnulf the Old, Count of Flanders, 352, 369.
-
- Arpad the Hungarian, 258.
-
- Arthur, or Artorius, 104, 105, 107, 132.
-
- Asclepiodotus, Pretorian Prefect, 66 n.
-
- Ashdown (Aescesdune), 178, 278.
-
- “Ashes,” Danish ships, 312.
-
- Assandune, battle of, 383, 397.
-
- Asser, Alfred’s biographer, 255, 272, 277, 284 n., 291, 292, 500.
-
- Athelney, island of, 283, 284, 291, 295.
-
- Athelstan, son of Edward the Elder (924–940), 328;
- connection with rulers of France and Germany, 330;
- friendship with Scandinavian powers, 331;
- “lord of all Britain,” 332, 333;
- battle of Brunanburh, 334–336;
- his person and character, 337;
- prayer of, 338;
- death and burial, 338;
- laws of, 425, 438.
-
- Athelstan, Bishop of Hereford, 466.
-
- Athelstan, son of Egbert, 265.
-
- Athelstan, the half-king, 347, 352.
-
- Athelstan, West Saxon almoner, 299.
-
- _Ath-fultum_, or oath-helping, 229.
-
- Atrebates, British tribe, 10.
-
- Attacotti, allies of Picts and Scots, 68.
-
- Attila, his raids a possible cause of Saxon migration, 97, 107, 109,
- 112.
-
- Augustine, his mission, 118–125.
-
- Augustine’s Oak, conference at, 123.
-
- Avonmouth, 455.
-
- Aylesbury (Aegelesburh), 92.
-
- Aylesford, battle of, 88.
-
- Avalon, vale of, 178.
-
- Axminster (Ascanmynster), 74.
-
-
- Badbury (Baddanburh), Ethelwald’s rebellion begins at, 319.
-
- Badon. See Mount Badon.
-
- Bagseg, Danish king, 279.
-
- Bakewell (Badecanwiellon), 323, 326.
-
- Baldred, King of Kent, 264.
-
- Baldwin I. of Flanders marries Judith, widow of King Ethelbald, 274.
-
- Baldwin II. of Flanders marries Elfrida, daughter of Alfred, 289.
-
- Baldwin V. of Flanders, 418, 420, 450, 455, 471.
-
- Baldwin’s land, 445, 450, 451, 455, 458, 477.
-
- Bamburgh (Bebbanburh), built by Ida, 94, 132, 133, 153, 154, 175,
- 247, 281, 332, 408.
-
- Bangor, monastery in Flint, 122, 124, 135.
-
- Barbury (Beranbyrig), battle of, 91.
-
- Bardney (Beardanig), monastery of, 159, 173.
-
- _Basileus_, Athelstan’s title, 336, 339.
-
- Basing, Danish victory at, 280.
-
- Bass, a thegn of Edwin, 145.
-
- Bates, Cadwallader J., 132, 170 n.
-
- Bath (Bathanceaster), 92, 356, 392.
-
- Battle Abbey, 490, 491.
-
- Bayeux, Tapestry of, 468, 475, 484, 469, 488, 491, 506.
-
- Beaurain, Harold, imprisoned at, 468.
-
- Beddoe, Dr. John, 493.
-
- Bede, the Venerable, 82, 85, 86, 88 n., 90, 114, 117 n., 120, 125,
- 133, 141 n., 156, 187, 189, 237–240, 497.
-
- Bedford (Bedcanford), 92, 323.
-
- Belgæ, a British tribe, 10, 91.
-
- Belisarius, scoffing allusion to Britain, 113.
-
- Benedict Biscop, 237, 238.
-
- Benedictines, 115, 148, 155, 195, 354.
-
- Benedict III., Pope, 269.
-
- Benfleet (Beamfleot), Danish fort at, 309.
-
- Bensington, Offa’s victory over Wessex at, 250.
-
- Beorn, son of Ulf, 448, 450, 451.
-
- Beorthelm, Archbishop, 352.
-
- Beorhtric, King of Wessex, 254.
-
- Beornwulf usurps the throne of Wessex, 264.
-
- Beowulf, poem of, 228.
-
- Bericus, an exiled British prince, 30.
-
- Berkshire, the wood of Berroc, 272.
-
- Bernhaeth, a leader of the Picts, 191.
-
- Bernicia, kingdom of, 80, 94, 130–132, 134, 137, 160, 171, 179, 247,
- 281, 332, 408, 422.
-
- Bertha, daughter of Charlemagne, negotiations for her marriage with
- Ecgferth, son of Offa, 252.
-
- Bertha, wife of Ethelbert of Kent, 117, 121, 127, 139.
-
- Berthfrid, regent of Bernicia, besieged in Bamburgh, 210.
-
- Bertwald, Archbishop of Canterbury, 211, 219.
-
- Bewcastle Cross, 172.
-
- Bideford Bay, Danes defeated at, 284.
-
- Billingsley, conference at, 466.
-
- Birinus, apostle of Wessex, 158, 161, 162, 179.
-
- Birch, _Cartularium Saxonicum_, 338 n., 508.
-
- Blois, Counts of, 370.
-
- Boadicea (Boudicca), Queen of the Iceni, 40, 42, 43.
-
- Boduni, a British tribe, 31.
-
- Boethius’ _Consolation of Philosophy_, translated by Alfred, 296, 297.
-
- Boniface, Archdeacon, Wilfrid’s teacher, 184.
-
- Boniface (Wynfrith), apostle of the Germans, 203, 236, 237, 248, 250,
- 498.
-
- Boniface V., Pope, 141.
-
- “Bookland,” 304.
-
- Border of Scotland fixed, 409.
-
- _Borh_, association, 439.
-
- Bosham, 450, 455, 468.
-
- Bothgowanan, Duncan murdered at, 462.
-
- Boulogne (Gesoriacum), 23, 64, 65, 67, 307, 418.
-
- Bovate or oxgang, 223.
-
- Brachy-cephalic or square-headed race, 7.
-
- Bradford-on-Avon (Bradanford), Cenwalh defeats “Walas” at, 178.
-
- Brandon Camp, perhaps the work of Ostorius, 35.
-
- Brecon stormed by the English, 322.
-
- Brentford (Bregentford), Danes defeated at, 396.
-
- Bretwaldas or Brytenwealdas, 126, 138, 157.
-
- Bridgnorth (Brycg), Danish “work” at, 311;
- Saxon “burh” at, 321.
-
- Brigantes, a British tribe, 35, 36, 46, 48.
-
- Bright, Dr., referred to, 188 n., 211, 507.
-
- Brihtnoth, hero of Maldon, 362, 378, 379.
-
- Brihtric, brother of Edric Streona, 388, 389.
-
- Bristol, 455, 467.
-
- Britain, Cæsar’s description of, 19.
-
- Britannia, Roman Diocese of, 70, 132.
-
- British coinage, 20.
-
- Brittany, 83, 106, 469, 475.
-
- Brochmail, a British king, 135.
-
- Bromesberrow, fortress built by Ethelfled, 321.
-
- Bromnis, royal city of, 204.
-
- Bronze Age, 5.
-
- Bruce, Dr., historian of the Roman wall, 55.
-
- Brude, a Pictish king, 148.
-
- Brunanburh (? Burnswark), battle of, 334–337.
-
- Brut, a fictitious king, 101 n., 105.
-
- _Brut-y-Saesson_, 506.
-
- _Brut-y-Tywysogion_, Welsh Chronicle quoted, 153, 357, 506.
-
- Bryhtwine, Bishop of Sherborne, 405.
-
- Brythons, 6, 108.
-
- Buckingham (Buccingaham), King of Scots at, 337.
-
- Bunbury, Mr., on Pytheas, 8.
-
- Burford, Mercians defeated at, 249.
-
- “Burg-ware,” 310, 311.
-
- _Burh_, _Burg_, Borough, 429–432;
- _Burh-bryce_, 430;
- burhs founded by Ethelfled and Edward, 431;
- _Burh-gemôt_, 429.
-
- Burhred, King of Mercia, 267, 276, 281.
-
- Bury St. Edmund’s (Beadoricesworth), abbey of, 277, 278, 393, 405.
-
- _Butse-carlas_, common sailors, 458, 477.
-
- Buttington, Danes defeated at, 310.
-
-
- Cadwalla, King of Wessex, 178, 214–216.
-
- Cadwallader the Blessed, 153.
-
- Cadwallon, King of Gwynedd, 144, 145, 151, 153, 154, 160.
-
- Cadvan, a Welsh king, 136, 144.
-
- Caedmon, a Northumbrian poet, 180, 240.
-
- Caer Caradoc, Caratacus defeated at, 35.
-
- Caerleon-upon-Usk (Isca), 41, 42, 55, 71, 74, 357.
-
- Cæsar, Gaius Julius, 9, 494;
- first invasion of Britain, 11–16;
- second invasion, 16–19;
- description of Britain, 19, 20;
- points of arrival and departure in expeditions to Britain, 23, 24.
-
- Caledonia, 60, 79, 132, 134.
-
- Caligula’s pretended conquest of Britain, 28.
-
- Calne, floor collapses at, 362.
-
- Cambridge (Grantanbrycg), Danes at, 281, 283.
-
- Camulodunum, a Roman colony, 28, 32, 39, 41, 76.
-
- Camulus, a Celtic war-god, 39.
-
- Caninus, British king, 99.
-
- Canonici, hybrid order of, 353, 355.
-
- Canute, King of England (1016–1035), lands with father, Sweyn, 391;
- mutilates hostages at Sandwich, 394;
- ruler of Wessex, 396;
- victory at Assandune, peace with Edmund Ironside and Danish
- occupation of London, 397;
- executes Edric Streona, 401;
- marries Emma of Normandy, 402;
- dismisses “the army,” 404;
- pilgrimage to Rome, 410;
- two expeditions to Norway, 412–415;
- death and burial, 416, 417, 420;
- laws of, 429, 434, 436, 439, 440.
-
- Canterbury (Durovernis, Cantwaraburh), 92, 118, 119, 122, 196, 267,
- 355, 389, 405, 453.
-
- Cantii, a British tribe, 10.
-
- Caracalla, 60–62.
-
- Caradoc of South Wales, 467.
-
- Caratacus, 29, 31, 33, 34;
- defeated by Ostorius, 35, 36;
- betrayed by Cartimandua and taken to Rome, 36.
-
- Carausius, Count of the Saxon shore, 64;
- Emperor of Britain and slain by Allectus, 65.
-
- Carham, English defeated at, 408, 461.
-
- Carisbrook (Wihtgarasburh), 91.
-
- Carlisle (Luguvallium), 207, 208, 282, 334.
-
- Cartimandua, Queen of the Brigantes, 36, 37.
-
- Carucate, defined, 222.
-
- Cassiterides or Tin Islands, 8.
-
- Cassivelaunus, a British chief, 17–19.
-
- Castra Legionis (Chester or Leicester), 104.
-
- Catgabail, a British king, 170.
-
- Catterick (Cataractonium), 143, 167, 247, 248.
-
- Catus Decianus, Roman procurator, 39, 41.
-
- Catuvellauni, a British tribe, 31, 32, 58.
-
- Ceadda. See St. Chad.
-
- Ceawlin, King of Wessex, 92, 93, 107, 108, 117, 126, 140.
-
- Cedd, a missionary, 175, 186, 188.
-
- Cedred, King of Mercia, 216.
-
- Celestine, Pope, 84.
-
- Celtic gods, 39, 40 n., 75.
-
- Celtic words in English, 111.
-
- Celts, 5.
-
- Cenred, father of King Ine, 219.
-
- Centwine, King of Wessex, 204.
-
- Cenwalh, King of Wessex, 162, 163, 177, 178, 180.
-
- Cenwulf, King of Mercia, 251, 253, 263.
-
- Ceol, brother of Ceawlin, 92.
-
- Ceolfrid, Abbot, 189, 238.
-
- Ceolred, King of Mercia, 212, 248.
-
- Ceolric, brother of Ceawlin, 92, 93.
-
- Ceolwulf, King of Northumbria, 245.
-
- Ceolwulf, King of Wessex, 93.
-
- Ceolwulf, puppet-king of Mercia, 281.
-
- _Ceorl_, his holding of land, 223;
- a _twy-hynd_ man, 228;
- gradual descent in the social scale, 441.
-
- Cerdic, founder of Wessex, 90, 91, 178.
-
- Cerdic, house of, its decay, 374, 461, 474.
-
- Cerdices ora, 90.
-
- Ceretic, an interpreter, 103.
-
- Chadwick, H. M., 230 n., 231 n., 232 n., 288 n., 428 n., 508.
-
- Champart, Robert, Abbot of Jumièges, Archbishop of Canterbury,
- 452–454, 457, 459.
-
- Charford (Cerdicesford), Cerdic defeats Britons at, 91.
-
- Chariots of the Britons, 15.
-
- Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, 251, 252, 255, 258, 259, 263, 290,
- 444, 445.
-
- Charles the Bald, King of the Franks, 268, 270, 370.
-
- Charles the Fat (do.), 258, 306, 367.
-
- Charles the Simple (do.), 330, 368.
-
- Charmouth (Carrum), battles with Danes at, 265, 266.
-
- Cheddar, King Edmund’s escape from death at, 347.
-
- Chelsea (Cealchyth), the contentious synod at, 250.
-
- Chertsey (Ceortesig) monastery purged, 355.
-
- Chester (Deva, Laegeceaster), 37, 41, 125, 135, 138, 144, 153, 310,
- 321, 356.
-
- Chesterford, Danes defeat Edred at, 342.
-
- Chester-le-Street (Cuncacestre), 282, 333, 406.
-
- Chichester (Cisseceaster), on site of Regnum, 90, 310.
-
- Chirk (Cyric), Ethelfled builds a fortress at, 321.
-
- Chippenham, royal villa at, 283, 285.
-
- Christianity in Roman Britain, 75, 76.
-
- Chronicle of St. Neot’s, 284 n., 501.
-
- Chrodegang, Archbishop of Metz, 353.
-
- Cirencester (Corinium, Cyrenceaster), 92, 161, 285.
-
- Cissa, King of Sussex, 89, 90, 110.
-
- Classicianus, Julius, Roman procurator, 44.
-
- Claudian, poet, 496.
-
- Claudius, Emperor, sends Aulus Plautius to Britain, 29, 31, 32.
-
- Cledemutha (mouth of river Cleddau), Saxon burh at, 323.
-
- Cluny, monastery of, 354.
-
- Clyde, Firth of, 50, 58.
-
- Codex Amiatinus, taken by Abbot Ceolfrid to Rome, 238.
-
- Coelius Roscius, legatus of twentieth legion, 45.
-
- Coenred represents Theodore at Rome, 203.
-
- Cogidubnus, inscription at Chichester about, 33.
-
- Coifi, a pagan priest, 141, 142, 151.
-
- Coinmail, a British king, 92.
-
- Coins, Macedonian, imitated by Britons, 20;
- of British chiefs, 26, 27;
- of Carausius, 65.
-
- Colchester, 76, 323.
- See also Camulodunum.
-
- Coldingham, monastery of, 199.
-
- Colman, Bishop of Lindisfarne, 182–187.
-
- Coloniæ, Roman, 76, 98.
-
- Colne, river, Hertfordshire, 308.
-
- Columba. See Saint Columba.
-
- _Comes Britanniæ_, 70.
-
- Commius, King of the Atrebates, sent by Cæsar to Britain, 10;
- imprisoned by Britons, 10–14;
- attempted assassination by Labienus, 25, 26;
- submits to Mark Antony, 26.
-
- Commius coins money in Britain, 26.
-
- Compurgation, 226.
-
- Condidan, a British king, 92.
-
- Conrad II., Emperor, 410.
-
- Constans I., Emperor, 68.
-
- Constans II., Emperor, 195.
-
- Constantine, Emperor, 67, 121.
-
- Constantine, British king, 99.
-
- Constantine, usurper, 72, 95.
-
- Constantine II., Scottish king, 327, 333, 337.
-
- Constantius, a presbyter, 83, 496.
-
- Constantius Chlorus, Emperor, 64–67.
-
- Coote, H. C., 508.
-
- Corbett, W. J., 428 n.
-
- Corbridge (Corstopitum), 247, 248.
-
- Corfe, murder of Edward the Martyr at, 363.
-
- Cornwall. See West Wales.
-
- _Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_, 495.
-
- Cosham, Ethelred the Redeless sick at, 395.
-
- _Cotsetla_ (cottager), 437.
-
- Counties of England, formation of, 432, 433.
-
- Coventina, goddess, 56.
-
- Crayford (Crecganford), Britons defeated at, 89.
-
- Cricklade (Cricgelad), Danes at, 320.
-
- Crida, death of, 93.
-
- Crowland or Croyland, sanctuary of, 248.
-
- Cuichelm, West Saxon prince, death of, 93.
-
- Cumberland (see also Strathclyde), 6, 108, 317, 341, 356, 385.
-
- Cunedag, King of North Wales, 102, 131.
-
- Cuneglas, a British king, 99.
-
- Cunobelinus (Cymbeline), a British king, 25, 28, 29, 32.
-
- Cutha, son of Cynric, 92, 93.
-
- Cuthbert. See St. Cuthbert.
-
- Cuthred, kinsman of Cynegils of Wessex, 177.
-
- Cuthred II., of Wessex, 247.
-
- Cuthwine, brother of Ceawlin, 92.
-
- Cwichelm, King of Wessex, 140, 161.
-
- Cymbeline. See Cunobelinus.
-
- Cymenesora, 89.
-
- Cymri, 6, 63, 93, 253, 267, 357, 408.
-
- Cyneberct, Abbot, 215.
-
- Cyneburga, daughter of Penda, 168, 172.
-
- Cynegils, King of the West Saxons, 140, 158, 161, 162, 177, 179.
-
- Cyneheard the Etheling, 253.
-
- Cyneswitha, name on Bewcastle Cross, 172.
-
- Cynewulf, King of Wessex, 253.
-
- Cynewulf, Saxon poet, 242.
-
- Cynewulf the Etheling, 217.
-
- Cynric, King of Wessex, 90–92, 100.
-
- Cynuit, fort at, 284.
-
-
- Dalfinus, of Lyons, 184 n.
-
- Dalriada, kingdom of, 134, 146, 148, 158.
-
- Danegeld, 381;
- table of payments of, 382;
- of Harthacnut, 421.
- See 446.
-
- Danelaw, 287, 309–311, 315–317.
-
- Danes, 257–262, 275–285;
- table of ravages of (982–1016), 376–378.
-
- Danish Here or Army, 261, 306, 321, 404.
-
- Danish pre-eminence in Ireland, 332.
-
- Dawkins, Professor Boyd, 493.
-
- Dawston Rigg (Degsastan), Aidan defeated by Ethelfrid at, 134.
-
- Deal, Cæsar’s landing-place? 23, 24.
-
- Decangi, a Welsh tribe, 35.
-
- Decurio, title of, 76.
-
- Deira, kingdom of, 80, 94, 115, 130–133, 137, 138, 160, 171, 180,
- 276, 401.
-
- Deorham, Ceawlin defeats Britons at, 92, 107.
-
- Denisesburn. See Heavenfield.
-
- Denmark, early history of, 371, 417, 418, 444, 445.
-
- Derby (Deoraby), 316, 322, 340.
-
- Derwent in Yorkshire, 140, 141, 480.
-
- Derwentwater, St. Herbert’s Isle, in, 208.
-
- Deusdedit, Archbishop, 188.
-
- Diarmid, King of Leinster, 455.
-
- Didius Gallus, Roman governor of Britain, 37.
-
- Diocletian, Emperor, 63;
- his prefectures and dioceses, 64;
- abdicates, 67.
-
- Dion Cassius referred to, 27 n., 30, 37, 40, 43, 52, 59, 494.
-
- Dive, Louis IV. defeated at the, 369;
- William’s fleet at, 482.
-
- Dolicho-cephalic or long-headed race, 7.
-
- Donation of Ethelwulf, 268.
-
- Dorchester in Dorset, 257.
-
- Dorchester in Oxfordshire, 162, 182, 343.
-
- Dore, conference at, 264.
-
- Dover (Dofere), 23, 24, 453, 469.
-
- Druids, 5, 10, 38.
-
- Dublin, 332, 341, 464.
-
- Dubnovellaunus, a British king, 26, 27.
-
- Dumbarton or Alclyde, 130, 246.
-
- Dunbar (Dynbaer), 204.
-
- Duncan, grandson of Malcolm II., 409, 462, 463.
-
- Dunstan, Lives of, by various authors, 501.
-
- Dunstan. See St. Dunstan.
-
- Dunwich, bishopric founded, 163.
-
- Durham (Dunhelm), St. Cuthbert’s body rests at, 407;
- Malcolm II. defeated at, 407;
- Duncan defeated at, 462.
-
- Durovernis. See Canterbury.
-
- _Duumvir_, title of, 76.
-
- _Dux Britanniarum_, 70, 138.
-
- Dyved, South Wales, 464.
-
-
- Eadbald, King of Kent, 127, 128, 139.
-
- Eadbert, King of Northumbria, 245, 246.
-
- Eadburh, daughter of Offa, wife of Beorhtric, 255, 256.
-
- Eadhelm, Abbot, murdered, 343.
-
- Eadhilda, daughter of Edward the Elder, marries Hugh the Great, 330.
-
- Eadmer, a monk, 407.
-
- Eadsige, Archbishop of Canterbury, 452.
-
- Eadulf, usurper, 210.
-
- Eadwulf Cutel, 408, 409.
-
- Eadwulf, nephew of Eadwulf Cutel, 422.
-
- Ealdbert rebels, 217.
-
- Ealdorman, office of, 90, 229, 268, 434–435.
-
- Ealdred (or Eldred), Bishop of Worcester, afterwards Archbishop of
- York, 451, 455, 466.
-
- Ealdred, son of Eardulf, 333.
-
- Ealhmund, King of Kent, 254.
-
- Ealhstan, Bishop of Sherborne, 289.
-
- Ealhswith, wife of King Alfred, 289.
-
- Eanfled, daughter of Edwin, 140, 145, 165, 167, 181, 182.
-
- Eanfrid, King of Bernicia, 151.
-
- Eanred, King of Northumbria, 264.
-
- Eardulf, Bishop, 282.
-
- Eardulf, King of Northumbria, 248.
-
- Eardulf of Bamburgh, 333.
-
- Earl and ealdorman, 434, 435.
-
- Earle, John, 221 n., 306 n.;
- land charters, 508.
-
- Earpwald, King of East Anglia, 163.
-
- East Anglia, 80, 126, 136, 139, 140, 158, 162–164, 174, 179, 324,
- 351, 448, 484.
-
- Easter, debates on true date of, 123, 179, 180–188.
-
- East Saxons, kingdom of, 80, 122, 127, 174–176, 180, 324.
-
- Eata, Bishop of Hexham, 184, 205, 207.
-
- Ebba, aunt of Egfrid, 199, 204.
-
- Ebbs-fleet (Ypwines-fleot), Hengest lands at, 88.
-
- Ebissa, a Jutish chief, 103, 131.
-
- Ebroin, Frankish mayor of the palace, 196.
-
- Eburacum (see also York), 46, 48, 54, 55, 62, 67, 94, 121, 138, 144,
- 247.
-
- _Ecclesiastical History_, Bede’s, 85, 86, 115–213 (_passim_), 295.
-
- Ecgferth, son of Offa, 252, 253.
-
- Ecgfrida, wife of Uhtred, 407.
-
- Edbert Pren, King of Kent, 253.
-
- Eddisbury, “burh” built at, 321.
-
- Eddius’ _Life of Wilfrid_, 203, 497, 498.
-
- Edgar Etheling, grandson of Edmund Ironside, 474.
-
- Edgar, the Peaceful, King of England (959–975), previously King of
- Mercia and East Anglia, 344, 351, 352;
- monastic reforms, 353–356;
- crowned at Bath (973), and rowed by eight kings on the Dee, 356;
- marries Elfrida, death and burial, 359.
-
- Edgitha, daughter of Edward the Elder, marries the German Otto, 331.
-
- Edgiva, daughter of Edward the Elder, marries Charles the Simple, 330.
-
- Edgiva, Abbess of Leominster, 449, 465.
-
- Edgiva, queen of Edward the Elder, 339, 348, 351, 352.
-
- Edinburgh, 140, 407.
-
- Edith, daughter of Godwine, wife of Edward the Confessor, 443, 455,
- 470, 484.
-
- Edith, daughter of King Edgar, 358.
-
- Edith with the swan’s neck, Harold’s lady-love, 490.
-
- Edmund Ironside, king (1016), son of Ethelred the Redeless, his
- battles with the Danes, 395, 396;
- recalls Edric Streona, defeated at Assandune, 397;
- conference with Canute at Olney, death, 397;
- suggestions of foul play in his death, 397, 405, 406.
-
- Edmund, King of East Anglia. See St. Edmund.
-
- Edmund, King of the English (940–946), son of Edward the Elder, at
- Brunanburh, 333;
- delivers the Five Boroughs from the Northmen, 340;
- ravages Cumberland, 317, 341;
- his relations with Malcolm I., 341;
- assassinated by Liofa at Pucklechurch and buried at Glastonbury,
- 339.
-
- Edmund, son of Edmund Ironside, 399.
-
- Edred, Abbot, 282.
-
- Edred, King of the English (946–955), crowned at Kingston-on-Thames,
- 339;
- his bad health, 339;
- subdues Northumbria, 341, 342;
- English defeated at Chesterford, 342;
- revenges the murder of Abbot Eadhelm at Thetford, 343;
- death at Frome and burial at Winchester, 343.
-
- Edric Streona, traitorous ealdorman, 388, 389, 394–398, 401.
-
- Edward, son of Edmund Ironside, 399, 461.
-
- Edward the Elder, son of Alfred, King of the West Saxons (900–924?),
- childhood, 289;
- accession, 318;
- suppresses rebellion of Ethelwald, 320;
- wars with the Danes, 320–324;
- builds fortresses in the Midlands, 323, 324;
- alleged supremacy over Scotland, 325–328;
- dies, 328;
- laws of, 437 n.
-
- Edward the Confessor (1042–1066), 386, 392, 393, 422, 423;
- son of Ethelred the Redeless, crowned at Winchester, 442;
- harsh treatment of his mother, 442;
- founds Westminster Abbey, 446;
- his Norman favourites, 451–453;
- fall of Godwine, 455;
- visit of William the Norman, 456, 457;
- return of Godwine, 458, 459;
- Scotch affairs, 461–463;
- Welsh affairs, 464–467;
- visit of Harold Godwineson to Normandy, 468, 469;
- Tostig outlawed, 470, 471;
- death at Westminster, 472;
- bequeathed crown to Harold, 473.
-
- Edward the Martyr, son of King Edgar (975–978), crowned by Dunstan,
- 360;
- murdered at Corfe, 363;
- buried at Shaftesbury, 364.
-
- Edwin, brother of Leofric, 464.
-
- Edwin, half-brother of Athelstan, drowned, 337.
-
- Edwin of Deira, 126, 135–144, 154.
-
- Edwin, son of Elfgar, Earl of Mercia, 470, 477, 479, 484.
-
- Edwy or Eadwig, King of the English (955–959), son of King Edmund,
- 344;
- scene at his coronation, 349;
- his lavish generosity, 350;
- marries Elfgiva, 351;
- kingdom divided with brother Edgar, 351;
- death, 352.
-
- Edwy, “King of the Ceorls,” 399.
-
- Edwy, son of Ethelred the Redeless, 399, 402.
-
- Egbert, puppet-king of Bernicia, 281.
-
- Egbert, Archbishop of York, brother of King Eadbert, 243, 245, 246.
-
- Egbert, King of Kent, 195, 196.
-
- Egbert, King of the West Saxons (802–839), early history and exile,
- 254, 255;
- accession, 263;
- overruns Cornwall, 263;
- victory over Mercia, 264;
- supremacy acknowledged by Northumbria, 264;
- battles with the Danes, 265;
- death, 265.
-
- Egbert’s Stone, 284.
-
- Egfrid, son of Oswy, 169, 172, 173, 190–193.
-
- Egric, King of East Anglia, 164.
-
- Egwinna, mother of Athelstan, 329.
-
- Eleutherus, Pope, 76.
-
- Elfgar, son of Elfric, 383.
-
- Elfgar, son of Leofric, 460, 465–467, 480.
-
- Elfgiva or Elfgyfu, daughter of Ethelgiva, wife of King Edwy, 344,
- 349–351.
-
- Elfgiva, daughter of Edward the Elder, 331.
-
- Elfheah, Archbishop. See Alphege.
-
- Elfhelm, father of Elgiva of Northampton, 417.
-
- Elfhelm, Ealdorman of Northumbria, murdered by Edric Streona, 388.
-
- Elfhere, Ealdorman of Mercia, leader of anti-monastic party, 360,
- 361, 364.
-
- Elfleda, daughter of Offa, wife of Ethelred, King of Northumbria, 248.
-
- Elfleda or Ethelfleda, daughter of Oswy, 180, 211.
-
- Elfmaer, Abbot of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, 389.
-
- Elfnoth, Sheriff, slain in battle with the Welsh, 466.
-
- Elfnoth, squire to Brihtnoth, 379.
-
- Elfric, traitorous ealdorman, 383, 388, 397, 398.
-
- Elfric, ecclesiastical author, 357 n., 358, 491.
-
- Elfric, father of Osric of Deira, 151.
-
- Elfrida or Elfthryth, wife of King Edgar, 359, 360, 363.
-
- Elfrida, wife of Baldwin II. of Flanders, 289.
-
- Elfsige, Archbishop of Canterbury, 352.
-
- Elfweard, son of Edward the Elder, 328, 329.
-
- Elfwen, wife of half-king Athelstan, 352.
-
- Elfwine at Maldon, 380.
-
- Elfwyn, daughter of Ethelfled of Mercia, 323.
-
- Elgiva or Aelgyfu, a name given to Queen Emma, 386.
-
- Elgiva, wife of King Edmund, 338.
-
- Elgiva of Northampton, wife of Canute, 416, 417.
-
- Ellandune, battle of, 264.
-
- Ella, King of Northumbria, 276.
-
- Elmet or Loidis, kingdom of, 131, 138.
-
- Elphege, Bishop of Winchester, 346.
-
- Elwin, cousin of Athelstan, fell at Brunanburh, 336.
-
- Ely, monastery at Isle of, 199, 355, 419.
-
- Emma, wife of Ethelred II. and Canute, 386, 392, 402, 405, 416, 418,
- 420, 421, 442, 443, 457.
-
- Emma, sister of Hugh Capet, 370.
-
- Emmet in Holderness, peace of, 333.
-
- _Encomium Emmæ_, 420, 505.
-
- Englefield, Danes defeated at, 278.
-
- Eobba of Bernicia, “the great burner of towns,” 132.
-
- Eoforwic. See York.
-
- Eomer, an assassin, 140.
-
- Eosterwine, coadjutor-abbot, 188.
-
- _Ephemeris Epigraphica_, 496.
-
- Epiton, one name of site of “battle of Hastings,” 485.
-
- Eppillus, a British king, 26.
-
- Erconbert, King of Kent, 176, 183, 188.
-
- Erconwald, Bishop, 216, 219.
-
- Eric Blood-axe, under-king of Northumbria, 341, 342.
-
- Eric or Yric, Earl of Deira, 401, 408.
-
- Eric, son of Harold Blue-Tooth, 342.
-
- Ermenburga, wife of King Egfrid, persistent enemy of Wilfrid, 199,
- 201, 203, 207, 208.
-
- Erming Street, 74.
-
- Esnes or _theows_, 225, 303.
-
- Essex. See East Saxons.
-
- Estrith, sister of Canute, 444.
-
- Ethandune, Danes defeated at, 285.
-
- Ethelbald, King of Mercia, 248, 249.
-
- Ethelbald, son of Ethelwulf, King of the West Saxons (856–860),
- fought at Ockley, 267;
- rebels against his father, 270;
- marries Judith, his father’s widow, 274;
- dies, 274.
-
- Ethelbert, King of East Anglia, 251.
-
- Ethelbert, first Christian King of Kent, 92, 97, 117, 122, 125, 126,
- 127, 139;
- his “dooms,” 218.
-
- Ethelbert, son of Ethelwulf, King of the West Saxons (860–866), 274,
- 275.
-
- Ethelburga, a Kentish princess, wife of Edwin of Deira, 139, 145.
-
- Ethelburga, wife of Ine, 217.
-
- Etheldreda, wife of King Egfrid, 199.
-
- Ethelfled, daughter of Alfred, Lady of the Mercians, 289, 321, 322,
- 329.
-
- Ethelfled, patroness of Dunstan, 346.
-
- Ethelfled the Fair, wife of King Edgar, 359.
-
- Ethelfrid or Ethelfrith of Bernicia, 94, 115, 133–138.
-
- Ethelgiva, daughter of Alfred, abbess of Shaftesbury, 289.
-
- Ethelgiva, mother-in-law of Edwy, 349–351.
-
- Ethelheard, King of Wessex, 217.
-
- Ethelhere, under-king of East Anglia, 169, 170.
-
- Ethelmaer the Fat, 402.
-
- Ethelnoth, Archbishop of Canterbury, 405, 406, 420.
-
- Ethelnoth, ealdorman of Somerset, 284.
-
- Ethelred, ealdorman of Mercia, 289, 308.
-
- Ethelred, ealdorman of the Gaini, 289.
-
- Ethelred of Mercia, 173, 191, 204.
-
- Ethelred, son of Ethelwulf (866–871), accession, 275;
- wars with the Danes, 276, 278–280;
- battle of Ashdown, 279;
- death, 280.
-
- Ethelred II., the Redeless, King of England (978–1016), 317, 328;
- son of King Edgar, crowned at Kingston-on-Thames, 365;
- Danish invasions, 375–396;
- Ethelred harries Cumberland, 385;
- marries Emma of Normandy, 386;
- massacre of St. Brice’s Day, 386, 387;
- Sweyn and Canute invade England, 391;
- London submits, 392;
- king escapes to Normandy, 392;
- recalled, 383;
- dies at London, 396.
-
- Ethelred, son of Ethelwald Moll, usurper in Northumbria, 247, 255.
-
- Ethelric, King of Bernicia and Deira, 94, 133.
-
- Ethelsin, evil counsellor of Ethelred, 365.
-
- Ethelwald Moll, usurper in Northumbria, 247.
-
- Ethelwald, son of Oswald, 169, 170, 171.
-
- Ethelwald, son of Ethelred I., rebels against Edward the Elder, 319.
-
- Ethelwalh, King of Sussex, 174, 204, 215.
-
- Ethelweard, the historian, 257, 334, 384, 501.
-
- Ethelweard, grandson of the historian, 402.
-
- Ethelweard, son of Alfred, 290.
-
- Ethelwin, cousin of Athelstan, fell at Brunanburh, 336.
-
- Ethelwin, officer of Oswy, 167.
-
- Ethelwin, son of half-king Athelstan, 361.
-
- Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, 354, 355, 361.
-
- Ethelwold, son of half-king Athelstan, husband of Elfrida, 359.
-
- Ethelwulf, ealdorman of Berkshire, 278, 279.
-
- Ethelwulf, King of the West Saxons (839–858), son of Egbert,
- under-king of Kent, 264;
- succeeds his father in Wessex, 265;
- his two counsellors Swithun and Ealhstan, 266;
- victory over the Danes at Ockley, 267;
- helps Mercia against the Welsh, 267;
- gives tithe to the Church, 268;
- journey to Rome, 268–270;
- marriage to Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald, 270;
- his will and death, 271.
-
- Etherius, Archbishop of Arles, 116.
-
- Etocetum, station on the Watling Street, 73.
-
- Eudoces, possibly Jutes, 80.
-
- Eugenius, King of Strathclyde, 333.
-
- Eugenius the Bald, King of Strathclyde, 408.
-
- Eumenius, panegyrist, 65, 495.
-
- Eustace, Count of Boulogne, 452, 453, 487, 489, 490.
-
- Evans, Sir John, on British coins, 25.
-
- Exeter (Isca Damnoniorum, Exanceaster), 74, 283, 326.
-
- Exmouth (Exanmutha), Beorn buried at, 451.
-
-
- Farinmail, a British king, 92.
-
- Farndon (Farndune), near Newark, Edward the Elder dies at, 328.
-
- Farne Islands, 154, 168, 206.
-
- Farnham, Danes defeated at, 308.
-
- Felix, Bishop of Dunwich, 163, 174.
-
- Fergna, Abbot of Iona, 150.
-
- Fethan-lea, battle of, 93.
-
- Finan of Lindisfarne, 169, 175, 182.
-
- Fitz Osbern, William, 475, 487.
-
- Five Boroughs, the, 316, 391, 394, 431.
-
- Flatholme, Island of (Brada Relice), Danes take refuge at, 321.
-
- Fleet, built by Alfred, 312; by Ethelred II., 387.
-
- Florence of Worcester, historian, 105, 277 n., 314, 333, 334, 354,
- 356, 357, 400, 484, 501, 502.
-
- _Fædus Anglorum et Danorum_, 381 n.
-
- Folkland, 303, 304.
-
- Fordheri, soldier of Edwin, stabbed, 140.
-
- Ford of the Cross, battle of, 464.
-
- Forth, Firth of, 49, 50, 58, 102, 132, 154, 157, 477, 479.
-
- Fosse Way, 74.
-
- Freeman, E. A., on virtual extermination of Britons, 110, 111;
- on capture of York, 138;
- on alleged English supremacy over Scotland, 325. Also quoted, 161,
- 262, 325 n., 337 n., 383 n., 401 n., 402 n., 403 n., 420 n.,
- 433 n., 448 n., 475, 507.
-
- Frisian Sea (Firth of Forth?), 103.
-
- Frisians in the Border country, 131.
-
- Frome, King Edred dies at, 343.
-
- Frome mouth of, Danish raid, 381.
-
- Frontinus, Julius, Roman governor of Britain, 46.
-
- Fulford, English defeated at, 479, 481, 484.
-
- Fursa, an Irish monk, missionary to East Anglia, 163, 174.
-
- _Fyrd_, or national militia, 223, 229, 261 n., 268, 302, 320, 376,
- 389, 396, 486, 489.
-
-
- Gabhran, Dalriadic king, 148.
-
- Gaels, 6.
-
- _Gafolgelders_, or rent payers, 226, 228.
-
- _Gafol_, tribute paid to Danes, 376, 381.
-
- Gaimar, Geoffrey, 295, 334, 359, 503.
-
- Gainsborough, death of Sweyn, 493.
-
- Galerius, Augustus, 67.
-
- Galgacus, Caledonian chief, 50.
-
- _Gebur_, 436.
-
- _Gedael_ land, 221.
-
- Geikie, Professor, 3 n., 4 n.
-
- _Gemot_, meeting, 302.
-
- Genealogies of the kings, Nennius, 101.
-
- _Geneat_, king’s retainer, 229, 230, 313, 436, 437.
-
- Geoffrey of Monmouth, 28, 105.
-
- Geraint, Welsh king, 216.
-
- Germanus. See St. Germanus.
-
- _Gesithcund_, comrades of the king, 228.
-
- Geta, son of Emperor Severus, 60, 62.
-
- _Geteama_, a warranter, 438.
-
- Gewissas, or men of Wessex, 128, 215.
-
- Gildas, Welsh ecclesiastic, author of _Liber Querulus_, 86, 95–100,
- 144, 496.
-
- Gilling, near Richmond, Oswin murdered at, 167.
-
- Glastonbury (Glaestingaburh), 178, 339, 344, 347, 359, 397, 406.
-
- Gloucester (Gleawanceaster), 76, 92, 322, 454, 466.
-
- Godiva, sister of Edward the Confessor, 452.
-
- Godiva, wife of Leofric, 447, 448, 465.
-
- Godric, his cowardice at battle of Maldon, 380.
-
- Godwine, son of Wulfnoth, ancestry, 403;
- made Earl of Wessex, 404;
- supports Harthacnut, 417, 418;
- supports Harold Harefoot and slays Alfred, son of Ethelred, 418,
- 419;
- his family, 447–451;
- opposes Norman influence, 451–454;
- exiled with family, 455;
- restored, 459;
- death and burial at Winchester, 460.
-
- Goidels, 6, 108.
-
- Goodmanham, site of heathen temple, 142.
-
- Gorm the Old, King of Denmark, 371, 413, 474.
-
- Gratian, a British usurper of Empire, 72.
-
- Gratian, Emperor, 68, 69.
-
- Green, J. R., 404 n., 507.
-
- Greenwell, Dr., on British barrows, 7, 493.
-
- Greenwich (Grenawic), 390, 394, 395.
-
- Gregory I., Pope, sends Augustine to convert the English, 114, 115,
- 120, 121, 139.
-
- Griffith ap Llewelyn, King of Wales, 464–466, 472.
-
- Griffith, son of Rhyddarch, revolts against the preceding, 465.
-
- Grimbald, Abbot, friend of Alfred, 291, 292, 304.
-
- Guaul, or Roman Wall, 103.
-
- Guest, Dr., on Cæsar’s landing-place, 24;
- on Fethan-lea, 93.
-
- Gross, Dr. Charles, _The Sources and Literature of English History_,
- 508.
-
- Guildford (Gyldeford), the Etheling Alfred arrested at, 419, 420.
-
- Guinnion, castle of, scene of one of Arthur’s battles, 104.
-
- Gunhild, daughter of Canute, wife of Emperor Henry III., 412, 416.
-
- Gunnor, wife of Richard, Duke of Normandy, 370.
-
- Guoyrancgon, King of Kent, 103.
-
- Guthfred, a later King of Northumbria, 332.
-
- Guthlac, hermit of Crowland, 249.
-
- Guthred, converted Danish chief, 282.
-
- Guthrum, Danish chief, Alfred’s foe, 283–287.
-
- Gwent, part of South Wales (Glamorgan and Monmouth), 333.
-
- Gwynedd (North Wales), 102, 321, 464.
-
- Gybmund, Bishop of Rochester, 219.
-
- Gyda, wife of Harold Fair-hair, 372.
-
- Gyrth, son of Godwine, 404, 444, 482, 484, 486, 488.
-
- Gyrwas, tribe in the Fens, 433.
-
- Gytha, wife of Godwine, 404, 444, 490.
-
-
- Haddan and Stubbs’s Councils, 508.
-
- Hadrian, Abbot of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, 195, 196, 241.
-
- Hadrian, Emperor, builder of the Roman Wall, 53.
-
- Hadrian I., Pope, 251.
-
- Hakon the Good, King of Norway, reared in England, 331, 332, 372.
-
- Halfdene, a Danish king, 279, 281.
-
- Hallelujah battle, 84.
-
- Harold, a Scandinavian chief, 369.
-
- Harold Blue-Tooth, King of Denmark, 371, 474.
-
- Harold, brother of Canute, 404.
-
- Harold Hardrada, King of Norway, 445, 477–481, 484.
-
- Harold Harefoot, son of Canute, King of England, 416–421.
-
- Harold II., son of Godwine, Earl of East Angles, 448;
- intercedes for Sweyn, 450;
- exiled with family, 455;
- in Ireland, 458;
- becomes Earl of Wessex, 460;
- real ruler of England, 461, 465;
- wars with Elfgar and the Welsh, 466, 467;
- visit to Normandy, and oath to William, 468–470;
- crowned king, 473, 474;
- defeats Tostig and Harold Hardrada at Stamford Bridge, 481;
- visits Waltham, 484;
- collects army near Battle, 485;
- battle of Hastings, 487–490;
- death, 482, 489, 490;
- burial at Waltham, 490.
-
- Harold the Fair-haired, King of Norway, 331, 372.
-
- Harthacnut, son of Canute, King of England, 402, 405, 416–418,
- 420–423, 450.
-
- Hartlepool (Heruteu), Hilda’s convent at, 180.
-
- Hasting or Haesten, Danish chief, 308, 509 n.
-
- Hastings, battle of, 485–490.
-
- Hastings, port, 458, 482, 484.
-
- Hatfield. See Heathfield.
-
- Haverfield, F., 70 n., 75 n., 77 n., 507.
-
- Heathfield, battle of, 144, 150, 151.
-
- Heavenfield, or Denisesburn, battle of, 151–154, 157.
-
- Hedde, Bishop of Winchester, 219.
-
- _Heimskringla_, the, 260, 338, 372, 385, 409, 480 n., 504.
-
- Helena, mother of Constantine, 66, 121.
-
- Hengest, King of Kent, 86, 88, 89, 91, 102–104, 132.
-
- Henry Beauclerk, 289, 314, 463.
-
- Henry of Huntingdon, 105, 337, 360, 386, 415, 503.
-
- Henry III., emperor, marries Gunhild, 412.
-
- Heptarchy, 231, 288.
-
- Herbert. See St. Herbert.
-
- _Here_ or army, Danish, 261, 306, 312, 321, 323.
-
- Hereford, 465, 466.
-
- _Here-gyld_, or war tax, 446.
-
- Herleva, mother of William the Norman, 456.
-
- Herodian, Greek historian, 495.
-
- Hertford (Heorotford), 323.
-
- Hexham (Hagustald), 62, 64, 195, 199, 209.
-
- Hiberni, 97.
-
- Hide of land, 148, 222.
-
- Hilda, Abbess of Whitby, 180.
-
- Hildebrand, Pope, 353, 476.
-
- Hingston Down (Hengestdune), battle of, 265.
-
- _Historia Augusta_, 494.
-
- _Historia Brittonum_, of Nennius, 101, 132.
-
- Hlothere’s and Eadric’s dooms, 218.
-
- Hoar Apple Tree, Harold II. at, 482, 485.
-
- _Hold_, a Danish title, 436.
-
- Holy Island, or Lindisfarne, 154, 155, 158, 182, 183, 188, 205, 207,
- 246, 258, 282.
-
- Holy River, Canute defeated at, 413.
-
- Holy Rood, Cynewulf’s poem on, 242, 243.
-
- Honorius, Emperor, 72, 82.
-
- Honorius, Pope, 161.
-
- Horsa, brother of Hengest, 86, 88.
-
- _House-carls_, or body-guard, 418, 422, 447, 463, 486, 489.
-
- Housesteads, Mithraic chapel at, 75.
-
- Howorth, Sir H., 367 n.
-
- Howell, King of Cornwall, 333, 336.
-
- Hoxne, St. Edmund defeated at, 277.
-
- Hübner, Emil, 507.
-
- Hugh Capet, King of France, 367.
-
- Hugh the Great, Duke of France, 330, 367, 369, 370, 467.
-
- Hundred and Hundred Court, 427–429.
-
- Huntingdon (Huntandun), _burh_ built at, 323.
-
- Hunwald betrays Oswin, 167.
-
- Hwiccas, tribe in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, 263, 402.
-
- Hyde Abbey, Winchester, 314.
-
- Hythe, 307;
- Cæsar’s landing-place? 24.
-
-
- Iceni, British tribe, 33–35;
- revolt of, 38–43.
-
- Ida, King of Bernicia, 94, 132.
-
- Idle, Ethelfrid defeated by Edwin, 137.
-
- India, alleged mission to, 299.
-
- Indulf, 408 n.
-
- Ine, King of Wessex, 134, 138, 147, 150, 154, 156, 178, 186, 216.
-
- Ine’s laws, 218–232.
-
- Inguar, Danish chief, 277–279.
-
- Inscriptions, Roman, 58, 74.
-
- Insurance against theft of cattle, 426.
-
- Iona, 134, 138, 147, 150, 154, 156, 180, 186.
-
- Ireland, 50, 79, 102, 144, 148, 182, 260, 294, 310, 332, 333, 442,
- 458.
-
- Isle of Man, 138, 248, 317, 356, 385.
-
-
- James, deacon, attendant on Paulinus, 143, 180, 182.
-
- _Jarls_, 278, 435.
-
- Jarrow (in Gyrwum), monastery at, 133, 189, 237.
-
- Jaruman, Bishop of Mercia, 176.
-
- Jehmarc, Scottish king, submits to Canute, 409.
-
- John XIX., Pope, visited by Canute, 410.
-
- John, the Old Saxon, friend of King Alfred, 291, 292.
-
- _Judicia Civitatis Londoniæ_, 425.
-
- Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald, wife of Ethelwulf, 270, 271,
- 274.
-
- Judith of Flanders, wife of Tostig, 455.
-
- Justus, Bishop of Rochester, 120, 122, 127, 128, 139.
-
- Jutes, 79, 80, 106;
- possible colony of, in Scotland, 103.
-
- Juthwal, Welsh king, 336;
- tribute of wolves’ heads, 357.
-
-
- Kemble, J. M., 77, 508.
-
- Kenneth, King of Scotland, 134, 356, 357.
-
- Kent, 79, 88, 89, 104, 106, 138, 140, 176, 179.
-
- Kent’s Cavern, 2.
-
- King’s Milton (Middeltun thaes cynges), 458.
-
- Kingston (Cyngestun), 232, 329, 339, 365.
-
- Kinsige, Bishop of Lichfield, 349.
-
- Kirtlington, Witenagemot at, 362.
-
-
- Lanfranc, Prior of Bec, 476.
-
- Lang, Andrew (_History of Scotland_), referred to, 326, 507.
-
- Laon, 367–370.
-
- _Lapidarium Septentrionale_, 496.
-
- Lappenberg, historian, 87, 507.
-
- Laurentius, Archbishop of Canterbury, 120, 125, 127, 128, 139.
-
- Lea (Lyge), river, 287, 311.
-
- _Leges Marchiarum_, 424, 425.
-
- Legions, Roman:--
- Second, 30, 33, 42, 43, 55, 71.
- Sixth, 54, 55, 71.
- Seventh, 11.
- Ninth, 30, 41, 42, 54.
- Tenth, 11.
- Fourteenth, 30, 42, 44.
- Twentieth, 30, 42, 45, 46, 55, 72, 310.
-
- Leicester (Ratae, Ligeraceaster), 316, 322, 340.
-
- Leighton Buzzard (Lygtun), battle at, 321.
-
- Leofgar, Bishop of Hereford, 466.
-
- Leofric, son of Leofwine, Earl of Mercia, 403, 417, 422, 442, 447,
- 448, 454, 465, 466.
-
- Leofwine, ealdorman of the Hwiccas, 402, 417.
-
- Leofwine, son of Godwine, 449, 455, 482, 486, 488.
-
- Leo, Prof. Heinrich, 242.
-
- Leominster, Abbess of, 449, 465.
-
- Leo IV., Pope, blesses Alfred, 269.
-
- Levison on _Life of Germanus_, 496.
-
- _Liber Pontificalis_, 270.
-
- Liebermann, Felix, on Anglo-Saxon laws, 508.
-
- Lilia, thegn of Edwin of Deira, 140, 161.
-
- Lincoln (Lindcylene), 37, 41, 76, 143, 316, 340, 470, 484.
-
- Lindisfarne gospels, 282.
-
- Lindisfarne. See Holy Island.
-
- Lindsey (Lindissi), 143, 173, 191, 192, 266, 391, 394.
-
- Liofa, murderer of King Edmund, 338.
-
- Lichfield, archbishopric of, 248, 250, 263.
-
- Liudhard, Queen Bertha’s chaplain, 117, 119.
-
- Loidis or Elmet, British kingdom of, 131, 138.
-
- Lombards, affinity with Anglo-Saxons, 81.
-
- London (Londinium, or Augusta, Lundonia, Lunden-burh), 41, 42, 66,
- 68, 73;
- early mention of, in the Chronicle, 89;
- bishopric founded at, 122;
- relapses into idolatry, 128;
- Sigebert, king in, 175;
- reconverted to Christianity, 176;
- diocese of, 250;
- capture by Danes (851), 267;
- besieged by Danes, 281;
- rescued by Alfred, 287, 299;
- _burh_ built at, 309;
- resumption from Mercia by Edward the Elder, 320;
- Dunstan, Bishop of, 352;
- defence against Danes, 376, 377;
- attack of Sweyn, 384;
- submits to Sweyn, 392;
- Ethelred II.’s illness and death at, 395, 396;
- faithful to house of Cerdic, 397;
- chooses Harold Harefoot as king, 417;
- _Witan_ held at, 454;
- Duke William’s visit to, 457;
- Earl Godwine’s defence before _Witan_ at, 459;
- King Harold II. at, 478, 480.
-
- Longfellow’s Saga of King Olaf, 385 n.
-
- Lothian, 102, 131, 326;
- lost by England, 409.
-
- Louis IV. of France reared in England, 330, 368, 369.
-
- Lucius. See St. Lucius.
-
- Lud, a fictitious King of Britain, 105.
-
- Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, 83.
-
- Lymne (Portus Lemanis), suggested as Cæsar’s landing-place? 24;
- Danes at, 307.
-
-
- Macbeth, or Maelbaeth, King of Scotland, 409, 447, 462, 463.
-
- Maccus, “arch-pirate,” rows in Edgar’s boat, 356.
-
- Mætæ, Caledonian tribe, 60, 62.
-
- Maelgwn, or Maglocunus, King of North Wales, 99, 102, 144.
-
- Magasaetas (Herefordshire), 452.
-
- Magnus I., King of Norway, 443–445.
-
- Magnus, a Norwegian, helps Earl Elfgar, 467.
-
- Maitland, F. W., 430 n., 433, 508.
-
- Malcolm I., King of Scotland (943–954), 341.
-
- Malcolm II., King of Scotland (1005–1034), 407–409, 461.
-
- Malcolm III. (Canmore), King of Scotland (1058–1093), 463, 477.
-
- Malcolm, King of Cumberland, 356.
-
- Maldon, _burh_ at, 323;
- battle of, 378, 379.
-
- Malet, William, 490.
-
- Malfosse, at battle of Hastings, 488, 489.
-
- Malmesbury, monastery of, 266, 338, 346, 395.
-
- Mamertinus, panegyrist, 65, 495.
-
- Man, Isle of, 138, 248, 317, 356, 385.
-
- Manau Guotodin (Lothian), 102.
-
- Manchester (Mancunium, Mameceaster) in Northumbria, 323.
-
- _Mancus_, value of, 235.
-
- Mandubracius, British chief, 18, 19.
-
- Marcellus, Ulpius, ascetic Roman general, 59.
-
- Marcian, Emperor, 88 n.
-
- Marcus Aurelius, Emperor, troubled by Britannic war, 58.
-
- Marcus, a military usurper, 72.
-
- Margaret, grand-daughter of Edmund Ironside, wife of Malcolm III.,
- 463.
-
- Mark, value of, 235.
-
- Maserfield or Oswestry, battle of, 158, 160.
-
- Matilda of Scotland, wife of Henry I., 289, 436.
-
- Matilda of Flanders, wife of William the Conqueror, 275, 289, 476.
-
- Maximian, Emperor, 64, 67.
-
- Maximus, usurper of the empire, 69, 95.
-
- Mearcredesburn, battle at, 89.
-
- Medeshamstede. See Peterborough.
-
- Mellitus, Archbishop of Canterbury, 120–122, 127, 129, 174.
-
- Melrose (Magilros), monastery of, 205.
-
- Menai Straits, 41, 47, 102.
-
- Meonwaras, district of, in Hampshire, 174, 178, 215.
-
- Mercia, 80, 108, 136, 144, 160, 173, 248, 289, 340, 344, 351, 448,
- 464.
-
- Merlin, 103.
-
- Mersea, island in Essex, 310, 311.
-
- Middle Anglians, 160, 169.
-
- Middlesex, 287, 448.
-
- Milton Abbas (Middeltun) monastery purged, 355.
-
- Mithras, worship of, 75.
-
- Mommsen, 507.
-
- Mona. See Anglesey.
-
- Money, Anglo-Saxon, 231–235.
-
- Monkwearmouth, monastery, 133, 237.
-
- Monothelite controversy, 196.
-
- Mons Graupius, 50.
-
- Moots, 302.
-
- _Mora_, Duke William’s ship, 483.
-
- Morcant, a Welsh king, 337.
-
- Morcar, murdered by Edric, 394.
-
- Morini, Gaulish tribe, 10, 16, 23.
-
- Morkere, son of Elfgar, 470, 471, 477, 479, 484.
-
- Mount Badon, battle of, 92, 99, 100, 104, 105, 107.
-
- _Mund-bora_ or protector, 322, 324.
-
- _Municipia_, 76, 151.
-
- Mul, brother of Cadwalla, burned by men of Kent, 215, 216.
-
-
- Natanleod, British king, slain by Cerdic, 90.
-
- Navy of Alfred, 312;
- of Edgar, 357, 358;
- of Edward the Confessor, 445.
-
- Naze, in Essex (Eadulfesnaess), 459.
-
- Nechtansmere (Dunnichen), King Egfrid defeated at, 192.
-
- Nennius, historian, 100–105, 131, 132, 152 n., 497.
-
- Neolithic man, 2–5.
-
- Nerthus, goddess of the Angles, 81.
-
- Netley (Natanleaga), scene of Cerdic’s victory, 91.
-
- New Minster, at Winchester, Alfred’s burial-place, 314, 328, 355.
-
- _Nithings_, 81, 380, 451.
-
- Nobility by birth and by service, 231.
-
- Normandy, early history of, 367–370.
-
- Normans, weapons of, 486.
-
- Northampton, 464, 470.
-
- Northman, son of Leofwine, put to death by Canute, 402.
-
- Northmen or Norwegians in Cumberland, 316;
- distinguished from Danes, 325;
- at Stamford Bridge, 481.
-
- Norway, 372, 417, 444, 478.
-
- Northumbria, 94, 130–173, 245–248, 325, 332, 341–343, 388, 395, 396,
- 406–408, 463, 470, 479.
-
- Nothelm, priest, friend of Bede, 86.
-
- _Notitia Imperii_, Army list of Roman Empire, 69, 70.
-
- Nottingham (Snotingaham), 276, 316, 323, 340.
-
- Nun, King of Sussex, 216.
-
-
- Ockley (Aclea), Danes defeated at, 267.
-
- Octha, son of Hengest, 103, 104, 131, 132.
-
- Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury, 340, 343, 349, 351, 352, 354.
-
- Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, 487, 488.
-
- Odo, King of France, 367.
-
- _Oferhyrnesse_, contempt of royal power, 438.
-
- Offa, King of Mercia, 248, 250–253, 255.
-
- Offa’s Dyke (Clawdd Offa), 251.
-
- Offa, thegn of Brihtnoth, 380.
-
- Ohthere, an Arctic explorer, 294.
-
- Olaf, King of Sweden, 385.
-
- Olaf, son of Harold Hardrada, 481.
-
- Olaf the Thick. See St. Olaf.
-
- Olaf Tryggvason, King of Norway, 372, 384, 385.
-
- Olney, in Gloucestershire (Olanig), conference at, 397.
-
- Oman, Professor, 275 n.
-
- Open field system of farming, 221.
-
- _Ora_, eighth part of a mark, 235.
-
- Ordeals, 439, 440.
-
- Ordericus Vitalis, 505.
-
- Ordgar, father of Elfrida, 359.
-
- Ordmaer, father-in-law of Edgar, 359.
-
- Ordovices, a British tribe, 35, 46, 47.
-
- Orosius, ecclesiastic and historian, 69, 86, 293, 498.
-
- Osbeorn, son of Siward, 463.
-
- Osbern, biographer of Dunstan, 348 n., 501.
-
- Osbert, King of Northumbria, 276.
-
- Osburga, mother of Alfred, 272.
-
- Osfrid, son of Edwin, 143, 144.
-
- Osgod Clapa, “Staller,” 412, 450.
-
- Oslac, Earl of Northumbria, 360, 361.
-
- Oslac, father of Osburga, 272.
-
- Osmund, Richard’s guardian, 369.
-
- Osred I., King of Northumbria, 210.
-
- Osred II. (do.), murdered, 248.
-
- Osric, ealdorman, 254.
-
- Osric, King of Deira, 151.
-
- Ossa Cyllelawr, Bernician king, 132.
-
- Osthryd, Queen of Mercia, 158, 191.
-
- Ostorius Scapula, Roman governor, 34;
- defeats Caratacus, 35.
-
- Oswald, King of Northumbria. See St. Oswald.
-
- Oswald, Bishop of Worcester, 354, 355, 360.
-
- Oswin, King of Deira, 160, 165, 171.
-
- Oswulf, King of Northumbria, 247.
-
- Oswulf, Earl of Northumbria, 342.
-
- Oswy, King of Northumbria, 126, 160, 161, 165, 171–173, 180–190.
-
- Oundle (Undalum), Wilfrid dies at, 212.
-
- Owen, King of Gwent, 333.
-
- Oxford (Oxnaford), 162, 320, 417, 473.
-
- _Ox-gang_, or _Bovate_, the eighth of a Hide, 223.
-
-
- Paga, king’s reeve, at Carlisle, 207.
-
- Palæolithic man, 2.
-
- Palgrave, Sir F., 508.
-
- Palisade at Hastings, 485 and n.
-
- Pallig, killed in massacre of St. Brice, 387.
-
- Pallium, sign of archbishop’s rank, 120, 121, 202, 252, 453, 459, 460.
-
- Papinian, Roman lawyer, 61.
-
- Parisii, a British tribe in Yorkshire, 10.
-
- Parret (Pedride), river, 178, 266.
-
- Paulinus, Bishop of York, 120, 139–143, 145, 154, 180.
-
- Paulinus, Suetonius, conquers Anglesey, 38;
- marches to London, 41;
- defeats Boadicea, 42;
- recalled, 44.
-
- Paulus Diaconus, historian of the Lombards, 81.
-
- Pavia, death of Eadburh at, 255.
-
- Peada, son of Penda, 168, 173.
-
- Pearson, C. H., 507.
-
- Pecsaetan, tribe in the Peak district, 433.
-
- Pelagian heresy, 76, 84.
-
- Pelham, Professor, quoted, 53 n.
-
- Pembrokeshire, Danish colony in, 317.
-
- Penda, King of Mercia, 144, 158, 160–173.
-
- Penny, Anglo-Saxon, 233.
-
- Peonnum (the Pens or Penselwood), 178.
-
- Perctarit, Lombard king, 203.
-
- Peter, sent to Pope Gregory, 120.
-
- Peterborough (Medeshamstede), sacked by Danes, 278;
- visited by Bishop Ethelwold, 355.
-
- Petillius Cerialis, commands ninth legion, 41;
- governor of Britain, 45.
-
- Pevensey (Pefenesea), 89, 458, 482, 483.
-
- Picts, 68, 79, 84–86, 93, 95, 97, 102, 103, 106, 134, 147, 157, 171,
- 191, 192, 281.
-
- Place-names as evidences of nationality of settlers, 315.
-
- Plague, 176, 188, 189, 238, 312.
-
- Plautius, Aulus, conquers southern Britain, 25, 30–32, 34.
-
- Plegmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, 291, 292, 314.
-
- Pliny, 494.
-
- Plummer, Chas., editor of Bede, 86, 190 n., 290 n., 295 n., 325 n.,
- 337 n., 419 n., 466 n., 497.
-
- Poenius Postumus, Roman officer, kills himself, 43.
-
- Polybius, historian, 8.
-
- Polyclitus, Nero’s freedman, 44.
-
- Porlock (Portloca), Danish raid on, 321;
- Harold Godwineson’s, 458.
-
- Port, mythic eponymous hero, 87, 91.
-
- Portland, Danes attack, 266.
-
- Portsmouth, legendary foundation of, 87, 91.
-
- Portskewet, Harold’s lodge at, 467.
-
- Portus Itius, 16, 23.
-
- Pound, Anglo-Saxon, 232.
-
- Prætenturæ, or stations on the Roman Wall, 56.
-
- Prasutagus, King of the Iceni, 33, 39.
-
- Prices, history of, 234, 426.
-
- _Prisci historia_, quoted, 109 n.
-
- Procolitia, station on the Roman Wall, 56.
-
- Procopius, historian, 112, 113.
-
- Prosper Tiro, chronicler, 82, 103, 496.
-
- Pseudo-monasteries, 244.
-
- Ptolemy, geographer, 80, 493.
-
- Pucklechurch, King Edward murdered at, 338.
-
- Purbeck, Danish fleet wrecked near, 283.
-
- “Purveyance,” 453.
-
- Pytheas, Greek geographer, 8.
-
-
- “Quarto-decimans,” 124, 181, 182, 193, 198.
-
- Quedlinburg, Canute’s grand-daughter Abbess of, 412.
-
-
- Radfrid, Frankish noble, escorts Theodore to England, 196.
-
- Raegenheri, son of Redwald, 137.
-
- Raegnald of Northumbria, 325–327, 340.
-
- Ragnar Lodbrog, the Viking, 276.
-
- Ralph the Timid, Earl of the Magasaetas, nephew of Edward the
- Confessor, 452, 454, 465.
-
- Ramsay, Sir J., 507.
-
- Reading, 278, 279, 281.
-
- _Rectitudines singularum personarum_, 436, 437.
-
- Redwald, King of East Anglia, 126, 136, 137, 139, 163.
-
- Redwulf, King of Northumbria, 266.
-
- Regni, British tribe, 10, 90.
-
- Regnum. See Chichester.
-
- _Regula Pastoralis_ of Pope Gregory, translated by Alfred, 291, 292.
-
- Repton (Hreopandun), occupied by Danes, 281.
-
- Rhuddlan, burnt by Harold II., 467.
-
- Rhys, Professor John, 493.
-
- Richard of Hexham, historian, 131 n.
-
- Richard I., Duke of Normandy, 369, 370.
-
- Richard II. (do.), 386, 399.
-
- Richborough (Rutupiæ), 71, 118.
-
- Ricula, sister of Ethelbert, 122.
-
- Ripon (_In Hripum_), 195, 199, 209, 342, 406.
-
- Robert, Duke of Normandy, 456.
-
- Robertson, E. W., historian, 326, 356, 359 n., 360 n., 507.
-
- Robert, King of France, 367.
-
- Robert the Strong, Duke of Francia, 367.
-
- Rochester (Durobrevi, Hrofaescaestre), 122, 145, 286, 365.
-
- Roderick the Great (Rhodri Mawr), Welsh king, 267.
-
- Roger of Wendover, 342.
-
- Rolf or Rollo, settles in Normandy, 367.
-
- Rolleston, Professor, on Neolithic man, 4, 493.
-
- Roman roads, 73.
-
- Roman Wall, between Firths of Forth and Clyde, 58, 103.
-
- Roman Wall, between Solway and Tyne, 52, 94, 146, 152;
- description of, 56;
- garrison of, 57.
-
- Romanus, Bishop of Rochester, 145.
-
- Round, J. H., 485 n., 507.
-
- Rowena, daughter of Hengest, 103, 109.
-
- Rowley Burn, Cadwallon’s death at, 153.
-
- Rufinianus, emissary to Rome, 120.
-
- Runcorn (Rumcofa), Saxon fortress built at, 321.
-
- Runic inscription on Bewcastle Cross, 172;
- about Harold Hardrada, 479.
-
- Ruthwell Cross, 242.
-
- Rutupiæ. See Richborough.
-
-
- Saberct, King of the East Saxons, 122, 127, 175.
-
- Sabinus, brother of Vespasian, 32.
-
- St. Aidan, 155–168, 181, 182, 187, 282.
-
- St. Alban, 27, 76, 84.
-
- St. Alphege (Elfeah),384;
- martyrdom of, 389, 390;
- translation of relics, 405.
-
- St. Augustine, Archbishop of Canterbury, 82, 112–125, 338.
-
- St. Boniface. See Boniface.
-
- St. Brice’s Day, massacre on, 386, 387.
-
- St. Chad (Ceadda), Bishop of York, 195;
- of Lichfield, 198.
-
- St. Columba, 134, 147–150, 154, 181, 182, 187.
-
- St. Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne, 130, 158, 192, 205, 208, 282,
- 406.
-
- St. Dunstan, early life, 344–348;
- Abbot of Glastonbury, 347;
- influence on Edred, 339;
- at Edwy’s coronation, 349;
- exiled, 350;
- Bishop of Worcester and London, 352;
- Archbishop of Canterbury, 352;
- share in monastic reform, 353–356;
- story of St. Edmund’s martyrdom, 277;
- crowns King Edward the Martyr, 360;
- escape at the meeting at Calne, 362;
- remonstrance with Ethelred, 365;
- death, 365;
- character, 360, 491;
- lives of, by various authors, 501.
-
- St. Edmund, 276–278, 393, 405.
-
- St. Frideswide, church of, at Oxford, 394.
-
- St. Germanus, 83–85, 102, 106.
-
- St. Guthlac, 249.
-
- St. Herbert of Derwentwater, 208.
-
- St. Jerome, 68.
-
- St. Joseph of Arimathea, 339.
-
- St. Lucius, King of Britain, 76, 414.
-
- St. Martin of Tours, 119, 146.
-
- St. Ninian, 146.
-
- St. Olaf, King of Norway, 410, 413–415, 444.
-
- St. Oswald, 126, 150–159, 171, 173, 179, 282.
-
- St. Patrick, 104.
-
- St. Paul, church in London dedicated to, 122, 391.
-
- St. Swithun, Bishop of Winchester, 265, 266, 357.
-
- St. Thomas, Christians of, in India, 299.
-
- Sake and Soke, 440, 441.
-
- Sandwich, 375, 388, 389, 394, 444, 445, 450, 458, 477.
-
- San Spirito in Sassia, church in Rome, 270.
-
- Sarn Helen, a Roman road, 74.
-
- Sarum, Old (Searoburg), battle of, 91.
-
- Savernake Forest, battle near, 280.
-
- _Saxon Chronicle._ See _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_.
-
- Saxon Shore in Britain, Count of, 70.
-
- Saxons, origin and appearance in Britain, 71, 79–81, 84, 104, 106.
-
- Scarborough burnt, 479.
-
- _Sceatt_, value of, 235.
-
- Schmid, Professor Reinhold, 286 n., 381 n., 508.
-
- _Schola Saxonum_, at Rome, 270.
-
- _Scilling_, value of, 232.
-
- _Scip-here_, Danish fleet, 311, 321, 342.
-
- Scotland, 134, 138, 192, 246, 324–328, 333, 335, 356, 357, 406–410,
- 461–464.
-
- Scots, 68, 79, 93, 95, 102, 103, 134, 148, 157.
-
- Sebbi, King of East Saxons, 175, 176.
-
- Sedgefield, W. J., translation of Alfred’s Boethius, 297 n.
-
- Seebohm, F., 77, 508.
-
- Seghine, Abbot of Iona, 154.
-
- Selsey, bishopric founded, 205.
-
- Selwood, Forest of, 284.
-
- Seneca, as money-lender in Britain, 39.
-
- Senlac or Epiton, site of “battle of Hastings,” 485.
-
- Seven Boroughs, 394, 395.
-
- Severus, Septimius, Emperor, 59–62, 90.
-
- Sexburh, Queen of Kent, 176.
-
- Shaftesbury (Sceaftesburh), 364, 416.
-
- Sheppey (Sceapig), Isle of, 265, 268, 308, 458.
-
- Sherborne (Scireburne), Bishopric of, 242.
-
- Ship-money, 388.
-
- _Shire and Shire Gemot_, 429, 432, 433.
-
- _Shire-reeve_ (sheriff), 434.
-
- Shoebury (Sceoburh), Danish fort at, 309.
-
- Shrewsbury (Scergeat, Scrobbesburh), “burh” built at, 321, 433 n.
-
- Sideman, Bishop of Crediton, 362.
-
- Sidroc, a Danish jarl, 278.
-
- Sigebert the Learned, King of East Anglia, 163, 164.
-
- Sigebert, King of the East Saxons, 175, 179.
-
- Sigebert, King of the West Saxons, 253.
-
- Sigeferth, thegn, murdered by Edric, 394.
-
- Sigeric, Archbishop of Canterbury, 381.
-
- Sighelm, West Saxon almoner, 299.
-
- Sighere, King of the East Saxons, 175, 176.
-
- Sigvat, minstrel to King Olaf, 444.
-
- Sihtric, Northumbrian king, 332.
-
- Silchester, Christian Basilica at, 75.
-
- Silures, a British tribe, 33–35, 37, 46.
-
- Silurians, 5.
-
- Simcox, W. H., on sites of Alfred’s battles, 278 n.
-
- Sinodun camp, 162.
-
- Siward the Strong, Earl of Northumbria, 422, 442, 447, 454, 462, 463.
-
- _Six-hynd_ men, 430.
-
- Skene, W. F., on Celtic Scotland, 148, 149, 326, 409 n., 508.
-
- Slavery, 114–116, 225, 226 n., 303.
-
- Snorri Sturleson, Icelandic scholar, 504.
-
- Somerton captured, 249.
-
- Southampton (Hamtun), Danes attack, 266.
-
- South Anglians, 160.
-
- Southwark (Suthgeweore), 455, 458.
-
- Spartianus, on the Roman Wall, 53.
-
- Stafford, “burh” built at, 321.
-
- Stamford (Steanford), 316, 323, 340.
-
- Stamford Bridge, battle of, 480–482, 485, 486.
-
- Stainmoor, King Eric slain at, 342.
-
- Steenstrup, J. C., 257 n.
-
- Steepholm (Steapa Relice), Danes at, 321.
-
- Stevenson, W. H., Editor of Asser, 221 n., 270 n., 274 n., 279 n.,
- 284 n., 299 n., 357 n., 359 n.
-
- Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, 459, 472, 476.
-
- Stilicho, Roman general, 72.
-
- Stonehenge, neolithic work at, 5.
-
- Stour, river, 117, 458.
-
- Strabo, geographer, 8, 27, 493.
-
- Strathclyde, kingdom of, 95, 108, 130, 144, 148, 153, 281, 325–327,
- 332, 333.
-
- Streanæshalch. See Whitby.
-
- Stubbs, Bishop, 268, 383 n., 508.
-
- Stuf, nephew of Cerdic, 91.
-
- Sumorsætas, 249.
-
- Sussex, kingdom of, 80, 89, 174, 176, 177, 194.
-
- Swearing power, scale of, 130.
-
- Sweyn Estrithson, King of Denmark, 443–445.
-
- Sweyn, or Swegen, King of Denmark, 371, 384, 385, 391–393.
-
- Sweyn, son of Canute, 416, 417.
-
- Sweyn, son of Godwine, 448–452, 455, 465.
-
- Swithelm, King of East Saxons, 175 n.
-
- Swithun. See St. Swithin.
-
- Symeon of Durham, historian, 131, 281, 333, 334, 337, 340, 393, 502.
-
-
- Tacitus, P. Cornelius, historian, 33, 35, 37, 41, 43, 46, 49, 50, 77,
- 81, 380, 494.
-
- Taillefer, minstrel, 487, 488.
-
- Tamworth (Tameweorthig), 322, 332, 340.
-
- Tanaus, river, position discussed, 49.
-
- Tasciovanus, British king, 27.
-
- Taunton (Tantun), fortress built by King Ine, 216.
-
- Taylor, Isaac, on distribution of Danes in England, 315, 316.
-
- Telham, hill of, 485.
-
- Tempsford (Temesanford), Danish fort at, 324.
-
- Tettenhall, Danes defeated at, 320.
-
- Teutonic conquest of England, 106–109.
-
- Teutons pressed westward by Huns, 109, 110.
-
- Thanet (Tenet), Isle of, 117, 118, 267, 268, 275, 353, 445.
-
- Thegn right, 223.
-
- _Thegns_, 228, 435.
-
- Thelwall, Saxon “burh” at, 323.
-
- Theodbald, brother of Ethelfrid, 134.
-
- Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, 195–209.
-
- Theodosius the Elder, 68.
-
- Theodosius I., Emperor, 68, 71, 72.
-
- Theodosius II. Emperor, 82.
-
- _Theows_, or _esnes_, 225, 303.
-
- Thetford, 277, 278, 343.
-
- Thora, mother of Hakon, 331.
-
- Thored, son of Gunnor, 353.
-
- Thorfinn, Earl of Orkney, 462, 479.
-
- Thorney Island (in Hertfordshire), 308.
-
- Thorney Island (at Westminster), 457, 472.
-
- Thorpe, Benjamin, 508.
-
- Three Field System of farming, 221.
-
- Thrum, gives _coup de grâce_ to Saint Alphege, 390.
-
- _Thrymsa_, value of, 235.
-
- Thurcytel of Northumbria, 396.
-
- Thurgils Sprakalegg, cousin of Canute, 404.
-
- Thurkill, Danish leader, 391, 392, 394, 401, 404.
-
- Tincommius, British king, 26.
-
- _Tithing_, 439.
-
- Titus in Britain, 33.
-
- Togodumnus, British chief, 29, 31.
-
- Tondheri, servant of Oswin, 167.
-
- Tonsures, Greek and Roman, 179, 186, 196.
-
- Torksey occupied by Danes, 281.
-
- Tortulf, or Tertullus, ancestor of Counts of Anjou, 370.
-
- Tostig, son of Godwine, 449, 455, 461, 463, 465, 467, 470, 471, 477,
- 479–481, 484.
-
- Towcester (Tofeceaster), relief and fortification of, 323, 324.
-
- Trebellius Maximus, Roman governor, 45.
-
- _Tributum_, Roman, 47.
-
- Trinobantes, British tribe, 17–19, 28, 40.
-
- _Trinoda necessitas_, 432, 436.
-
- Trondhjem, Canute declared King of Norway at, 414.
-
- Trumwine, Bishop of Abercorn, 192, 207.
-
- Tuda, Bishop of Lindisfarne, 188.
-
- _Tufa_ or _thuuf_ ornament on banner of Edwin, 143.
-
- Tunberct, Bishop of Hexham, 206.
-
- _Twelf-hynd_ man, 228, 305.
-
- Twyford (Alnmouth), synod at, 206.
-
- _Twy-hynd_ man, 228, 305, 430.
-
-
- Ubba, Danish chief, murderer of St. Edmund, 277, 278, 284.
-
- Uhtred, Earl of Northumbria, 396, 407, 408.
-
- Ulf, Bishop of Dorchester, 457, 459.
-
- Ulfcytel, ealdorman of East Anglia, 387, 397.
-
- Ulf the Jarl, brother-in-law of Canute, 404, 413, 414, 444.
-
- Utta, priest sent by Edwin to King of Kent, 165.
-
-
- Valens, Emperor of Rome, 68.
-
- Valentia, province of Britannia, 68.
-
- Valentinian I., Emperor of Rome, 68.
-
- Valentinian III., Emperor of Rome, 88.
-
- Valerius Maximus, historian, 13.
-
- Val-ès-Dunes, battle of, 456.
-
- Vallum runs parallel to Roman Wall, 152, 251.
-
- Veranius, Roman governor of Britain, 37.
-
- Verica, British king, 26.
-
- Verulamium (St. Albans), Britanno-Roman town, 27, 42, 76.
-
- Vespasian, officer under Aulus Plautius, afterwards Emperor, 32, 33,
- 45, 46.
-
- Vikings, 237, 260, 341, 456.
-
- Villa, Roman, 77.
-
- Vinogradoff, Professor Paul, 220 n., 221 n., 226 n., 304 n., 428 n.,
- 437 n., 508.
-
- Virgate, extent of, 223.
-
- Virius Lupus, Roman governor of Britain, 60.
-
- Vitalian, Pope, 195.
-
- Volusenus, 10, 12.
-
- Vortigern, British king, 86, 88, 97, 102–104, 106, 107.
-
- Vortimer, son of Vortigern, 103.
-
- Vortipor, British king, 99.
-
-
- Wace, William, 469, 483 n., 485 n., 505.
-
- Wales, 34, 35, 41, 47, 74, 101, 102, 108, 123, 131, 144, 158, 186,
- 253, 336, 342, 449, 464, 466.
-
- Wallingford, 376.
-
- Waltham, minster at, 484, 490.
-
- Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria, 407.
-
- Waltheof, son of Siward, 463.
-
- Wantage, birth-place of Alfred, 272.
-
- Wantsum, in Kent, 117.
-
- Wapentake, Danish equivalent for hundred, 429.
-
- Warburton (Weardburh), Saxon burh at, 321.
-
- Wareham (Werham), 283, 364.
-
- Warwick (Waerinewic), Saxon burh at, 321.
-
- Watchet (Wecedport), attacked by Danes, 321.
-
- Watling Street, 73, 287, 309, 324.
-
- Wat’s Dyke, 251.
-
- “Wealas,” Romanised Celts, 111.
-
- Wedmore, treaty of, 285.
-
- Weland the Smith, 287.
-
- Welsh. See also Cymri, 89, 90, 93, 177, 178, 309, 321, 356.
-
- Welsh Church, 123, 124, 197.
-
- Wembury (Wicganbeorg), Danes attack, 266.
-
- Wendel Sea, or Mediterranean, 294.
-
- _Wer_, 300, 302.
-
- Werferth, Bishop of Worcester, 291.
-
- _Wergild_, 226, 228, 229, 300, 435.
-
- Wessex, 158, 161, 179, 180, 448, 464;
- source of chronicle, 87, 88;
- foundation, 80, 90;
- its decline, 140, 177, 178;
- revival under Egbert, 263–265.
-
- Westminster Abbey, 446, 472.
-
- Westmorland, harried, 353.
-
- West Wales (Cornwall), 6, 34, 93, 108, 123, 265, 333, 336.
-
- Wherwell, abbess of, 455.
-
- Whitby (Streanæshalch), synod of, 180–188.
-
- White Sea, explored, 294.
-
- Whithern (Candida Casa), 146.
-
- Wictgils, father of Hengest, 86, 88.
-
- Wighard, candidate for archbishopric, 190.
-
- Wight, Isle of, 33, 66, 80, 91, 174, 178, 214, 215, 375, 392, 458,
- 477, 478.
-
- Wigmore (Wigingamere), burh built at, 323.
-
- Wihtgar in Isle of Wight, 87, 91.
-
- Wihtred’s laws, 218, 219.
-
- Wilfrid, his education, 183;
- at Ripon, 184;
- his arguments at Synod of Whitby, 185;
- elected Bishop of York, 193;
- Ceadda (St. Chad), appointed to same see, 195;
- dispute settled by Theodore of Tarsus, 198;
- builds Hexham Abbey, 200;
- his quarrels with Egfrid and Aldfrid, 202–212;
- his visits to Rome, 203, 209;
- death, 212.
-
- William, Bishop of London, 457.
-
- William Fitz Osbern, follower of William of Normandy, 475, 487.
-
- William of Jumièges, historian, 505.
-
- William Longsword, son of Rolf, 368, 369.
-
- William of Malmesbury, historian, 105, 241, 266, 336 n., 337, 342,
- 354, 356, 357, 364, 392, 394, 503.
-
- William of Normandy, 456, 457, 460, 461, 467–469, 471, 475–477, 482,
- 484–486, 489, 490.
-
- William of Poitiers, historian, 505.
-
- Willibrord, missionary to Germany, 203, 236.
-
- Wilton, Danish victory at, 281.
-
- Wimbledon (Wibbandune), battle of, 92.
-
- Wimborne (Winburne), Ethelred I. buried at, 280.
-
- Winchester (Venta Belgarum, Wintanceaster), 88, 90, 91, 182, 232,
- 275, 297, 314, 342, 343, 355, 416,418, 423, 451, 457, 460.
-
- Windermere, princes drowned in, 247.
-
- Winfrid, Bishop, 203.
-
- Winwaed, perhaps river Went, battle of, 170, 171.
-
- Wippedes-fleote, battle of, 89.
-
- Wissant, possible place of Cæsar’s embarkation, 23.
-
- _Wite_, 227, 300, 302.
-
- _Witenagemot_, 141, 232, 267, 301, 319, 336, 337, 356, 362, 452, 454,
- 455, 459, 465.
-
- _Wite-theows_, 225.
-
- Woden, 86, 90, 133, 141.
-
- Wodensburh (Wansborough?), 216.
-
- Wodnesbeorge, battle of, 93.
-
- Worcester (Wigraceaster), insurrection at, 422.
-
- Workington, Lindisfarne gospels at, 282.
-
- Wrdelau, St. Cuthbert’s body at, 406.
-
- Wulfhere, King of Mercia, 172, 173, 178, 191, 195.
-
- Wulfmaer, squire to Brihtnoth, 379.
-
- Wulfnoth Child, rebels against Ethelred, 388.
-
- Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, 340–342, 353.
-
- Wulfstan, Norwegian pilot, 294.
-
- Wulfthryth, a novice at Wilton, 358.
-
- Wuscfrea, son of Edwin, 145.
-
- Wynfrith. See Boniface.
-
-
- Xiphilinus, abbreviator of Dion Cassius, 495.
-
-
- Yard-land, extent of, 221, 222.
-
- Yeavering, palace of Edwin of Deira, 143.
-
- Yffi, son of Osfrid, 142, 145.
-
- York (Eburacum, Eoforwic), 67, 94, 121, 138, 141, 193, 198, 257,
- 276, 322, 332, 340, 342, 470, 479, 482, 484.
-
-
- Zimmer, commentator on Nennius, 100, 497.
-
- Zosimus, Greek historian, 83.
-
-
-
-
-THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED.
-
-[Illustration: ROMAN BRITAIN.
-
- GEORGE PHILIP & SON Ltd THE LONDON GEOGRAPHICAL INSTITUTE.
-
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-
-[Illustration: ENGLAND & WALES
-
-(ANGLO-SAXON)
-
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-
-_Longmans, Green & Co., London, New York & Bombay._]
-
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-
-
-Transcriber’s Notes
-
-
-Inconsistencies in hyphenation and spelling were not changed, except in
-a few cases where an Index entry was made consistent with the text on
-the page it referenced.
-
-Simple typographical errors were corrected.
-
-The index was not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page
-references.
-
-In the Genealogy charts, the dagger † apparently indicates the last
-year of the King’s reign.
-
-Footnotes, originally at the bottoms of pages, have been collected,
-resequenced, and positioned just before the Index.
-
-Page 68: A possibly unbalanced quotation mark has not been remedied.
-
-Page 87: For consistency with the text preceded by “(_a_)” on page
-85, the text beginning with “The _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_” on page 87
-perhaps should be preceded by “(_b_)”.
-
-The two illustrations just above this Note are maps.
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