The history of England, from the earliest times to the Norman Conquest

by Thomas Hodgkin

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.

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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.

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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.

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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

“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.

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

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.
| | +------------+
| | | |
Ingild. INE,==Ethelburh. ETHELHEARD, [254]CUTHRED II., [254]CYNEWULF,
| †726. †740. †754. a kinsman of Cuthred II.,
| †786.
Eoppa. N.
| +-----------+-----------+
Eaba. | |
| [254]SIGEBERT, Cyneheard,
EALHMUND, †757. the Avenger.
sub-King of Kent.
|
EGBERT. [254]BEORHTRIC,
†802.