FOOTNOTES:
[1] London, St. Albans, Colchester.
[2] Comes Littoris Saxonici.
CHAPTER II.
THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH.
In the early half of the fifth century it seemed likely that Britain would become the prey of its old enemies the Picts and Scots, rather than of the more distant Saxons. But the wild tribes of the North came to plunder only, while the pirates from the Elbe and Eider had larger designs.
The conquest of Britain by the Angles and Saxons differed in every way from that of the other Western provinces of the Roman empire by the kindred tribes of the Goths, the Franks, and the Lombards. The Goths and the Franks had dwelt for two hundred years on the borders of the empire; they had traded with its merchants, served as mercenaries in its armies, and learnt to appreciate its luxuries. Many of them had accepted Christianity long before their conquest of the provinces which they turned into Teutonic kingdoms. But the Saxons were plunged in the blackest heathendom and barbarism, dwelling as they did by the Elbe and Eider, far at the back of the tribes that had any touch with or knowledge of the empire and its civilization. The Goth and the Frank came to enslave, and to enjoy; the Angle and the Saxon were bent purely on a work of destruction. Hence it came that, instead of contenting themselves with overthrowing the provincial government, and enthralling the inhabitants of the land, they swept away everything before them, and replaced the old civilization of Britain by a perfectly new social organization of their own.
Hengist and Horsa, 449.—Kingdom of Kent.
If the Welsh legends speak truly, the first settlement of the Saxons on British soil was caused by the unwisdom of the native kings. We are told that Vortigern, the monarch who ruled Kent and south-eastern Britain, was so harried by the Picts and Scots that he sent in despair to hire some German chiefs to fight his battles for him. The story may be true, for in the decaying days of the Roman empire the Cæsars themselves had often hired one barbarian to fight another, and the British king may well have followed their example. The legend then proceeds to tell how Vortigern's invitation was accepted by Hengist and Horsa, two chiefs of Jutish blood, who came with their war-bands to the aid of the Britons, and drove away the Picts and Scots. But when the king of Kent wished to pay them their due and get them out of the country, Hengist and Horsa refused to depart: they seized and fortified the Isle of Thanet, which was then separated from the mainland by a broad marshy channel, and defied the Britons to drive them away (449). Then began a long war between the two sea-kings and their late employer, which, after many vicissitudes, ended in the conquest of the whole of Kent by Hengist. Horsa had been slain in the battle of Aylesford, which gave the invaders full possession of the land between the forest of the Weald and the estuary of the Thames. Hengist was saluted as king by his victorious followers, and was the ancestor of a long line of Kentish monarchs.
We cannot be sure that the details of the story of the conquest of Kent are correct, but they are not unlikely, and it is quite probable that this kingdom was the first state which the Germans built up on British ground.
Aella, 477.—Kingdom of the South Saxons.
Hengist and Horsa's warriors were not Saxons, but members of the tribe of the Jutes, who dwelt north of the Saxons in the Danish peninsula, where a land of moors and lakes still bears the name of Jutland. But the next band of invaders who seized on part of Britain were of Saxon blood. An "alderman" or chief called Aella brought his war-band to the southern shore of Britain in 477, and landed near the great fortress of Anderida (Pevensey), one of the strongholds that had, in old days, been under the care of the Roman "count of the Saxon shore." The followers of Aella sacked this town, and slew off every living thing that was therein. They went on to conquer the narrow slip of land between the sea and the forest of the Weald, as far as Chichester and Selsea, and made the chalky downs their own. Settling down thereon, they called themselves the South Saxons, and the district got from them the name of Sussex (Suth Seaxe). There Aella reigned as king, and many of his obscure descendants after him.
Cerdic, 495.—Kingdom of the West Saxons.
Twenty years later, another band of Saxon adventurers, led by the alderman Cerdic, landed on Southampton Water, west of the realm of Aella (495), and, after a hard fight with the Britons, won the valleys of the Itchen and the Test with the old Roman town of Venta (Winchester). Many years after his first landing, Cerdic took the title of king, like his neighbours of Kent and Sussex, and his realm became known as the land of the West Saxons (Wessex). Gradually pushing onward along the ridges of the downs, successive generations of the kings of Wessex drove the Britons out of Dorsetshire and Wiltshire till the line of conquest stopped at the forest-belt which lay east of Bath. Here the advance stood still for a time, for the British kings of the Damnonians, the tribes of Devon and Cornwall, made a most obstinate defence. So gallant was it that the Celts of a later generation believed that the legendary hero of their race, the great King Arthur, had headed the hosts of Damnonia in person, and placed his city of Camelot and his grave at Avilion within the compass of the western realm.
Kingdom of the East Saxons.
While Cerdic was winning the downs of Hampshire for himself, another band of Saxon warriors had landed on the northern shore of the Thames, and subdued the low-lying country between the old Roman towns of Camulodunum and Londinium, from the Colne as far as the Stour. This troop of adventurers took the name of the East Saxons, and were the last of their race to gain a footing on the British shores.
Kingdom of East Anglia, 520.
North of Essex it was no longer the Saxons who took up the task of conquest, but a kindred tribe, the Angles or English, who dwelt originally between the Saxons and the Jutes, in the district which is now called Schleswig. They were closely allied in blood and language to the earlier invaders of Britain, and very probably their chiefs may have aided in the earlier raids. About the year 520 the Angles descended in force on the eastern shore of Britain, and two of their war-bands established themselves in the land where the Celtic tribe of the Iceni had dwelt. These two bands called themselves the North Folk and South Folk, and from them the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk get their names. The kingdom formed by their union was known as that of the East Angles.
The Northumbrian kingdoms, 547-550.
Still further to the north new Anglian bands seized on the lands north of the Humber, whence they obtained the name of Northumbrians. They built up two kingdoms in the old region of the Brigantes. One, from Forth to Tees, was called Bernicia, from Bryneich, the old Celtic name of the district. It comprised only a strip along the shore, reaching no further inland than the forest of Selkirk and the head-waters of the Tyne; its central stronghold was the sea-girt rock of Bamborough. The second Northumbrian kingdom was called Deira, a name derived, like that of Bernicia, from the former Celtic appellation of the land. Deira comprised the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire, and centred round the old Roman city of Eboracum, whose name the Angles corrupted into Eofervic. The origin of Bernicia and Deira is ascribed to the years 547-550, so that northern Britain was not subdued by the invaders till a century after Kent had fallen into their hands.
The kingdom of Mercia.
Last of the English realms was established the great midland state of Mercia—the "March" or borderland. It was formed by the combination of three or four Anglian war-bands, who must have cut their way into the heart of Britain up the line of the Trent. Among these bodies of adventurers were the Lindiswaras—the troop who had won the old Roman city of Lindum, or Lincoln,—the Mid-Angles of Leicester, and the Mercians strictly so-called, who held the foremost line of advance against the Celts in the modern counties of Derby and Stafford. The Britons still maintained themselves at Deva and Uriconium (Chester and Wroxeter), two ancient Roman strongholds, and the Mercians had not yet reached the Severn at any point.
The Britons in the west.
About 570, therefore, after a hundred and twenty years of hard fighting, the Angles and Saxons had conquered about one-half of Britain, but they were stopped by a line of hills and forests running down the centre of the island, and did not yet touch the western sea at any point. Behind this barrier dwelt the unsubdued Britons, who were styled by the English the "Welsh," or "foreigners," though they called themselves the Kymry, or "comrades." They were, now as always, divided into several kingdoms whose chiefs were perpetually at war, and failed most lamentably to support each other against the English invader. The most important of these kingdoms were Cumbria in the north, between the Clyde and Ribble, Gwynedd in North Wales, and Damnonia in Devon and Cornwall. Now and again prominent chiefs from one or other of these three realms succeeded in forcing their neighbours to combine against the Saxon enemy, and styled themselves lords of all the Britons, but the title was precarious and illusory. The Celts could never learn union or wisdom.
LIMIT OF THE ENGLISH CONQUESTS,
About A.D. 570.
Battle of Deorham, 577.
The line of the British defence was at last broken in two points, and the Saxons and Angles pushed through till they touched the Irish Sea and the Bristol Channel. The first of the conquerors of Western Britain was Ceawlin, king of Wessex. After winning the southern midlands by a victory at Bedford in 571 he pushed along the upper Thames, and attacked the Welsh of the lower Severn. At a great battle fought at Deorham, in Gloucestershire, in 577, he slew the kings of Glevum, Corinium, and Aquae Sulis (Gloucester, Cirencester, and Bath). All their realms fell into his hands, and so the West Saxons won their way to the Severn and the Bristol Channel, and cut off the Celts of Damnonia from the Celts of South Wales.
Battle of Chester, 613.
A generation later, in the year 613, Aethelfrith the Northumbrian, king of Bernicia and Deira, made a similar advance westward. In a great battle at Deva (Chester) he defeated the allied princes of Cumbria and North Wales. This fight was long remembered because of the massacre of a host of monks who had come to supplicate Heaven for the victory of the Celts over the pagan English. "If they do not fight against us with their arms, they do so with their prayers," said the Northumbrian king, and bade his warriors cut them all down. The city of Deva was sacked, and remained a mere ring of mouldering Roman walls for three centuries. The district round it became English, and thus the Cumbrians were separated from the North Welsh by a belt of hostile territory.
The battles of Chester and Deorham settled the future of Britain; the Celts became comparatively helpless when they had been cut into three distinct sections, in Cumbria, Wales, and Damnonia. The future of the island now lay in the hands of the English, not in that of the ancient inhabitants of Britain.
The invaders and the natives.
The states which the invaders had built up were, as might have been inferred from their origin, small military monarchies. The basis of each had been the war-band that followed some successful "alderman," for the invaders were not composed of whole tribes emigrating en masse, but of the more adventurous members of the race only. The bulk of the Saxons and Jutes remained behind on the continent in their ancient homes, and so did many of the Angles. When the successful chief had conquered a district of Britain and assumed the title of king, he would portion the land out among his followers, reserving a great share for his own royal demesne. Each of the king's sworn companions, or gesiths as the old English called them, became the centre of a small community of dependents—his children, servants, and slaves. At first the invaders often slew off the whole Celtic population of a valley, but ere long they found the convenience of reducing them to slavery and forcing them to till the land for their new masters. In eastern Britain and during the first days of the conquest the natives were often wholly extirpated, but in the central and still more in the western part of the island they were allowed to survive as serfs, and thus there is much Celtic blood in England down to this day. But this native element was never strong enough to prevail over and absorb the conquerors, as happened to the Goths of Spain and the Franks of Gaul, who finally lost their language and their national identity among the preponderant mass of their own dependents.
As the conquest of Britain went on, many families who had not been in the war-band of the original invader came in to join the first settlers, and to dwell among them, so that the king had many English subjects besides his original gesiths. Some of the villages in his dominions would therefore be inhabited by the servile dependents of one of these early-coming military chiefs, others by the free bands of kinsmen who had drifted in of their own accord to settle in the land. When we see an English village with a name like Saxmundham, or Edmonton, or Wolverton, we may guess that the place was originally the homestead of a lord named Saxmund, or Eadmund, or Wulfhere, and his dependents. But when it has a name like Buckingham, or Paddington, or Gillingham, we know that it was the common settlement of a family, the Buckings or the Paddings or the Gillings, for the termination -ing in old English invariably implied a body of descendants from common ancestors.
Administration—Aldermen and shire-reeves.
The early English states were administered under the king by aldermen, or military chiefs, to each of whom was entrusted the government of one of the various regions of the kingdom, and by reeves, who were responsible for the royal property and dues, each in his own district. The larger kingdoms, such as Wessex, were soon cut up into shires, each with its alderman and shire-reeve (sheriff), and many of these shires exist down to our own day.
The king and the witan.
The supreme council of the realm was formed by the king, the aldermen, and a certain number of the greater gesiths who served about the king's person. The king and great men discussed subjects of national moment, while the people sat round and shouted assent or dissent to their speeches. The king did not take any measure of importance without the advice of his councillors, who were known as the Witan, or Wise-men. When a king died, or ruled tyrannically, or became incompetent, it was the Witan who chose a new monarch from among the members of the royal family, for there was as yet no definite rule of hereditary succession, and the kingship was elective, though the Witan never went outside the limits of the royal house in their nominations.
The shire-moot and tun-moot.
The smaller matters of import in an old English kingdom were settled at the shire-moot, or meeting of all the freemen of a shire. There, once a month, the aldermen and reeve of the district called up the freeholders who dwelt in it, and by their aid settled disputes and lawsuits. Each freeman had his vote, so the shire-court was a much more democratic body than the Witan, where only great lords and officials could speak and give their suffrages.
Matters too small for the shire-moot were settled by the meeting of the villagers in their own petty tun-moot, which every freeman would attend. Here would be decided disputes between neighbours, as to their fields and cattle. Such cases would be numerous because, in the early settlements of the English, the ploughed fields and the pasture grounds of the village were both great unenclosed tracts with no permanent boundaries. Every man owned his house and yard, but the pasture and the waste land and woods around belonged to the community, and not to the individual.
Gradual growth of towns.
The early English were essentially dwellers in the open country. They did not at first know how to deal with the old Roman towns, but simply plundered and burnt them, and allowed them to crumble away. They thought the deserted ruins were the homes of ghosts and evil spirits, and were not easily induced to settle near them. Even great towns like Canterbury and London and Bath seem to have lain waste for a space, between their destruction by the first invaders and their being again peopled. But ere long the advantages of the sites, and the abundance of building material which the old Roman buildings supplied, tempted the English back to the earlier centres of population. We can trace the ancient origin of many of our towns by their names: the English added the word -chester or -caster to the name of the places which were built on Roman sites—a word derived, of course, from the Latin castra. So Winchester and Rochester and Dorchester and Lancaster are shown to be old Roman towns rebuilt, but not founded by the new-comers.
Religion.
In religion the old English were pure polytheists, worshipping the ancient gods of their German ancestors, Woden, the wise father of heaven, and Thunder (Thor), the god of storm and strength, and Balder, the god of youth and spring, and many more. But they were not an especially religious people; they had few temples and priests, and did not allow their superstition to influence their life or their politics to any great extent. We shall see that in a later age most of them deserted their pagan worship without much regret and after but a short struggle. It was more a matter of ancestral custom to them than a very fervent belief. It is noticeable that very few places in England get their names from the old gods; but we find a few, such as Wednesbury (Woden's-burh) or Thundersfield, or Balderston, scattered over the face of the country.
CHAPTER III.
THE CONVERSION OF BRITAIN AND THE RISE OF WESSEX.
597-836.
After the battles of Deorham and Chester had broken the strength of the Britons, and all central Britain had fallen into English hands, the victorious invaders did not persevere in completing the conquest of the island, but turned to contend with each other. For the next two hundred years the history of England is the history of the conflict of the three larger kingdoms—Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex—for the supremacy and primacy in the island. First one, then the other obtained a mastery over its rivals, but the authority of an English king who claimed to be "Bretwalda," or paramount lord of Britain, was as vague and precarious as that of the Celtic chiefs who in an earlier age had asserted a similar domination over their tribal neighbours.
Both Ceawlin the victor of Deorham, and Aethelfrith the victor of Chester, were great conquerors in their own day, and are said to have claimed an over-lordship over their neighbours. But about the year 595, when the one was dead and the other had not yet risen, the chief king of Britain was Aethelbert of Kent, a warlike young monarch who subdued his neighbours of Sussex and Essex, and aspired to extend his influence all over the island.
Augustine, 597.—Conversion of Kent.
To the court of this King Aethelbert there came, in the year 597, an embassy from beyond the high seas, which was destined to change the whole course of the history of England. It was led by the monk Augustine, and was composed of a small band of missionaries from Rome, who had set out in the hope of converting the English to Christianity. Twenty years before there had been a pious abbot in Rome named Gregory, who had earnestly desired to go forth to preach the gospel to the English. The well-known legend tells how he once saw exposed in the market for sale some young boys of a fair countenance. "Who are these children?" he asked of the slave-dealer. "Heathen Angles," was the reply. "Truly they have the faces of angels," said Gregory. "And whence have they been brought?" "From the kingdom of Deira," he was told. "Indeed, they should be brought de ira Dei, out from the land of the wrath of God," was the abbot's punning rejoinder. From that day Gregory strove to set forth for Britain, but circumstances always stood in his way. At last he became pope, and when he had gained this position of authority, he determined that he would send others, if he could not go himself, to care for the souls of the pagan English.
So in 596 he sent out the zealous monk Augustine, with a company of priests and others, to seek out the land of England. Augustine landed in Kent, both because King Aethelbert was the greatest chief in Britain, and because he had taken as his queen a Christian lady from Gaul, Bertha, the daughter of Charibert, king of Paris. So Augustine and his fellows came to Canterbury to the court of the king, and when Aethelbert saw them he asked his wife what manner of men they might be. When she had pleaded for them, he looked upon them kindly, and gave them the ruined Roman church of St. Martin outside the gates of Canterbury, and told them that they might preach freely to all his subjects. So Augustine dwelt in Kent, and taught the Kentishmen the truths of Christianity till many of them accepted the gospel and were baptized. Ere long King Aethelbert himself was converted, and when he had declared himself a Christian most of his gesiths and nobles followed him to the font. Then Augustine was made Archbishop of Canterbury, and his companion Mellitus Bishop of Rochester, and the kingdom of Kent became a part of Christendom once more.
Ere very long the kings of the East Saxons and East Angles, who were vassals to Aethelbert, declared that they also were ready to accept the gospel. They were baptized with many of their subjects, but Christianity was not yet very firmly rooted among them. When King Aethelbert died, and was succeeded by his son, who was a heathen and an evil liver, a great portion of the men who so easily accepted Christianity fell back into paganism again. They had conformed to please the king, not because they had appreciated the truths of the gospel. East Anglia and Essex relapsed almost wholly from the faith, and had to be reconverted a generation later; but in Kent Augustine's work had been more thorough, and after a short struggle the whole kingdom finally became Christian.
Conversion and prosperity of Eadwine of Northumbria.
From Kent the true faith was conveyed to the English of the North. Eadwine, King of Northumbria, married a daughter of Aethelbert and Bertha. She was a Christian, and brought with her to York a Roman chaplain named Paulinus, one of the disciples of Augustine. By the exhortations of this Paulinus, King Eadwine was led toward Christianity. He was a great warrior, and while he was doubting as to the faith, it chanced that he had to set forth on an expedition against his enemy, the King of Wessex. Then he vowed that if the God of the Christians gave him victory and he should return in peace, he would be baptized. The campaign was successful, and Eadwine went joyfully to the baptismal font. It was long remembered how he held council with his Witan, urging them to leave darkness for light, and doubt for certainty. Then, because they had found little help in their ancient gods, and because the heathen faith gave them no good guidance for this life, and no good hope of a better life to come, the great men of Northumbria swore that they would follow their king. Coifi, the high priest, was the first to cast down his own idols and destroy the great temple of York, and with him the nobles and gesiths of Eadwine went down to the water and were all baptized (627).
For some time King Eadwine prospered greatly; he became the chief king of Britain, and made the East Angles and East Saxons his vassals. He destroyed the Welsh kingdom of Leeds, and added the West Riding of Yorkshire to the Northumbrian kingdom. He also smote the Picts beyond the Forth, and built a fleet on the Irish sea with which he reduced the isles of Man and Anglesea.
Defeat and death of Eadwine.—Reaction against Christianity.
Eadwine's conquests roused all his neighbours against him, and in their common fear of the Northumbrian sword, English and Welsh princes were for the first time found joining in alliance. Penda, King of Mercia, an obstinate heathen and a great foe of the gospel, leagued himself with Cadwallon, King of Gwynedd, the greatest of the Christian chiefs of Wales. Together they beset the realm of Eadwine, and the great King of Northumbria fell in battle with all his host, at Heathfield, near Doncaster (632).
The Welsh and Mercians overran Northumbria after slaying its king, and Cadwallon took York and burnt it. The Northumbrians thought that Eadwine's God had been found wanting in the day of battle, and most of them relapsed into paganism in their despair. Paulinus, who had become the first Bishop of York, had to flee away into Kent, the only kingdom where Christians were safe for the moment.
The Irish missionaries.—Columba.
But ere very long the Northumbrians were saved from their despair. Eadwine and the ancient stock of the kings of Deira were swept away, but there were two princes alive of the royal house of Bernicia. Their names were Oswald and Oswiu, and during Eadwine's reign they had been living in exile. Their abode had been among those of the Scots who had crossed over from Ireland and settled on the coast of northern Britain, in the land which now bears their name. There the two brethren had fallen in with the disciples of the good Abbot Columba, the founder of the great monastery of Iona, and from them they had learnt the Christian faith. Columba, whose successors were to convert all the north of England, had been a man of great mark. He was an Irish monk who had left his own land in self-imposed exile, because he had been the cause of a tribal war among his countrymen. Crossing to the Argyleshire coast, he built a monastery on the lonely island of Iona, and from thence laboured for the conversion of the Picts and Scots.
Oswald, King of Northumbria.—Christianity restored.
When Oswald heard of the desperate condition of Northumbria after Eadwine's death, he resolved to go to the aid of his countrymen against the Welsh and Mercians. So he went southward with a few companions, and raised the Bernicians against their oppressors, setting up as his standard the cross that he had learnt to reverence in Iona. His effort was crowned with success, and at the Heavenfield, near the Roman wall, he completely defeated the Welsh and slew their king Cadwallon. Penda the Mercian was driven out of Northumbria also, and for eight years (634-642) Oswald maintained himself as king of all the land between Forth and Trent. He used his power most zealously for the propagation of Christianity. He sent to Iona for two pious monks, Aidan and Finan, who were successively bishops of York under him, and by their aid he so drew his people toward the faith of Christ that they never swerved from it again, as they had done after the death of Eadwine. Oswald also encouraged missionaries to go into the other English kingdoms. It was by his advice that Birinus went from Rome to Wessex, where he converted King Cynegils, and founded the bishopric of Dorchester-on-Thames.
Penda, King of Mercia.—Battle of Maserfield, 642.
But Oswald was not strong enough to put down his heathen neighbour, Penda, the King of Mercia, a mighty warrior who united all the English of central Britain under his sceptre, slaying the kings of the East Angles, and tearing away Gloucester and all the land of the Hwiccas[3] from the kings of Wessex. Penda and Oswald were constantly at war, and at last the Mercian slew the Northumbrian at the battle of Maserfield, in Shropshire, near Oswestry (642).
Oswiu, King of Northumbria.—Conversion of Mercia.
But the good King Oswald left a worthy successor in his brother Oswiu, as zealous a Christian and as vigorous a ruler as himself. Oswiu defeated Penda at the battle of the Winweed, and by slaying the slayer became the over-king of all England. He conquered the Picts between Forth and Tay, made the Welsh and the Cumbrians pay him tribute, and annexed northern Mercia, giving the rest of the kingdom over to Peada, Penda's son, only when he became a Christian. It was all over with the cause of heathenism when Penda fell, and the Mercians and their king bowed to the conquering faith, and listened to the preaching of Ceadda, one of the Northumbrian monks who had been taught by the Irish missionaries Aidan and Finan.
Dissensions of Irish and Roman clergy.—Council at Whitby, 664.
Mercia and Northumbria, therefore, owed their conversion to the disciples of Columba, and looked to the monastery of Iona as the source of their Christianity, while Kent and Wessex looked to Rome, from whence had come Augustine and Birinus. Unhappily there arose dissension between the clergy of the two churches, for the converts of the Irish monks thought that the South English paid too much deference to Rome, and differed from them on many small points of practice, such as the proper day for keeping Easter, and the way in which priests should cut their hair. King Oswiu was grievously vexed at these quarrels, and held a council at Whitby, or Streonshalch as it was then called, to hear both sides state their case before him. He made his decision in favour of the Roman observance, and many of the Irish clergy withdrew in consequence from his kingdom, rather than conform to the ways of their Roman brethren. This submission of the English to the Papal see was destined to lead to many evils in later generations, but at the time it was far the better alternative. If they had decided to adhere to the Irish connection, they would have stood aside from the rest of Western Christendom, and sundered themselves from the fellowship of Christian nations, and the civilizing influences of which Rome was then the centre (664).
Archbishop Theodore.—Unification of the Church in Britain.
The English Church, being thus united in communion with Rome, received as Archbishop of Canterbury a Greek monk named Theodore of Tarsus, whom Pope Vitalian recommended to them. It was this Theodore who first organized the Church of England into a united whole; down to his day the missionaries who worked in the different kingdoms had nothing to do with each other. But now all England was divided into bishoprics, which all paid obedience to the metropolitan see of Canterbury; and in each bishopric the countryside was furnished with clergy to work under the bishop. Some have said that Theodore cut up England into parishes, each served by a resident priest, but things had not advanced quite so far by his day. Under Theodore and his successors the bishops and clergy of all the kingdoms frequently met in councils and synods, so that England was united into a spiritual whole long before she gained political unity. It was first in these church meetings that Mercian, West Saxon, and Northumbrian learnt to meet as friends and equals, to work for the common good of them all.
Prosperity of the Church.—Winfrith.—Baeda-Alcuin.
The English Church was vigorous from the very first. Ere it had been a hundred years in existence it had begun to produce men of such wisdom and piety, that England was considered the most saintly land of Western Christendom. It sent out the missionaries who rescued Germany from heathenism—Willibrord, the apostle of Frisia ; Suidbert, who converted Hesse ; above all the great Winfrith (or Boniface), the first Archbishop of Mainz. This great man, the friend and adviser of the Frankish ruler Charles Martel, spread the gospel all over Central Germany, and organized a national church in the lands on the Main and Saal, where previously Woden and his fellows alone had been worshipped. He died a martyr among the heathen of the Frisian Marshes in 733.
Nor was the English Church less noted for its men of learning. Not only were they well versed in Latin, which was the common language of the clergy all over Europe, but some of them were skilled in Greek also, for the good Archbishop Theodore of Tarsus had instructed many in his native tongue. Among the old English scholars two deserve special mention: one is the Northumbrian Baeda (the Venerable Bede), a monk of Jarrow, who translated the Testament from Greek into English, and also wrote an ecclesiastical history of England which is our chief source for the knowledge of his times (d. 735); the second was another Northumbrian, Alcuin of York, whose knowledge was so celebrated all over Europe that the Emperor Charles the Great sent for him to Aachen, the Frankish capital, and made him his friend and tutor; for Charles ardently loved all manner of learning, and could find no one like Alcuin among his own people.
Reign of Ecgfrith.—Decline of Northumbria.
As long as Oswiu and his son Ecgfrith lived, Northumbria held the foremost place among the English kingdoms, and its rulers were accounted the chief kings of Britain. Ecgfrith conquered Carlisle and Cumbria from the Welsh, and even invaded Ireland, but in an attempt to add the highlands beyond the Forth to his realm, he was slain in battle by the Picts at Nechtansmere (685). With his death the greatness of Northumbria passed away, for his successors were weak men, and after a while grew so powerless that the kingdom was vexed by constant civil wars, and became the prey of its neighbours, the Mercians on the south, and the Picts and Scots on the north.
ENGLAND
in the 8th Century.
Supremacy of Mercia, 675-796.—Reign of Offa.
The supremacy that had once been in the hands of the Northumbrians now passed away to the kings of Mercia, the largest and most central of the English kingdoms. Three great kings of that realm, Aethelred, Aethelbald and Offa, whose reigns occupied almost the whole of the period from 675 to 796, were all in their day reckoned as supreme lords of England. The rulers of East Anglia, Essex, and Kent were counted as their vassals, and they deprived Wessex of its dominions north of the Thames, and Northumbria of all that it had held south of the Trent and the Ribble. Offa pushed his boundary far to the west, into the lands of the Welsh; and, after conquering the valleys of the Wye and the upper Severn, drew a great dyke from sea to sea, reaching from near Chester on the north to Chepstow on the south; it marked the boundary between the English and the Cymry for three hundred years. Offa was the greatest king whom England had yet seen, and corresponded on equal terms with Charles the Great, the famous King of the Franks, who was his firm friend and ally (757-796).
Decline of Mercia.
Nevertheless, after Offa's day the sceptre passed away from Mercia, and his successors saw their vassal kings rebel and disown the Mercian allegiance. To maintain subject states in obedience was always a very hard task for the old English kings, because they had no standing armies, and no system of fortification. When a neighbouring realm was overrun by the tumultuary army of a victorious king, he had to be satisfied with the homage of its people, because he could not build fortresses in it, or leave a standing force to hold it down. The only way of keeping a conquest was to colonize it, as was done with the lands taken from the Welsh; but the English kings shrank from evicting their own kinsfolk, and seldom or never employed this device against them. Hence it always happened that, when a great king died, his vassals at once rebelled, and unless his successor was a man of ability he was unable to reconquer them.
Supremacy of Wessex.—Ecgbert, 800-836.
From Mercia the primacy among the English states passed to Wessex, a state which had hitherto kept much to itself, and had busied itself in conquering land from the Welsh of Damnonia, rather than in striving with its English neighbours for the supremacy in mid-Britain. Wessex, indeed, had lost to the Mercians all its territory north of the Thames, and was now a purely south-country state. Its borders reached to the Tamar and the Cornish moors, since the days when Taunton in 710 and Exeter in 705 had fallen into the hands of its kings.
The West-Saxon king who succeeded to the power of Offa was Ecgbert, the ancestor of all the subsequent monarchs of Britain down to our own day. [4] He was a prince who had seen many troubles in his youth, having been driven over sea by his kinsman and forced to take refuge with Charles the Great. He spent some years in the court and army of the Frankish monarch, but was called to the throne of Wessex in 800, on the death of his unfriendly cousin. In a long reign that lasted for thirty-six years, Ecgbert not only subdued the small kingdoms of Kent and Sussex, and made the Welsh princes of Cornwall do him homage, but he even dared at last to attack his powerful neighbours the Mercians. At the battle of Ellandun, in Wiltshire (823), he defeated and slew King Beornwulf, the unworthy heir of Offa's greatness. Shortly after Mercia did him homage, and the Northumbrians, sorely vexed by civil wars, soon followed the example of their southern neighbours.
Thus Ecgbert became over-lord of Britain, in the same sense that Eadwine and Offa had previously held the title. But the dominion of the kings of Wessex was destined to be of a more enduring nature than that of their predecessors. This was not so much due to their own abilities as to the changed condition of the state of England. Not only were there strong tendencies arising towards unity within the English realms—due most especially to the influence of their common Church—but pressure from without was now about to be applied in a way that forced the English to combine.
Before Ecgbert had come to the throne, and even before Offa was dead, the first signs had been seen of the coming storm that was to sweep over England in the second half of the ninth century. The Danes had already begun to appear off the coasts of the island.