Secondly, he always calls the Anglo-Saxons as they called themselves, "English;" the idea prevalent some time since, and which even finds its place in the matchless story of Ivanhoe, or in that striking novelette by Charles Mackay, "The Camp of Refuge," that they called themselves or were called "Saxons," is now utterly exploded among historians. It is true the Welsh, the Picts, and Scots called them by that designation, and do still; {[iii]} but they had but one name for themselves, as the pages of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle make manifest--"Englishmen." Nor did their Norman conquerors affect to call them by any other title, although in their mouths the honoured appellation was, as we have said, but a term of reproach {[iv]}.
The author has chosen his two heroes, Wilfred and Etienne, if heroes they can be called, as types of the English and Norman youth of the period, alike in their merits and in their vices. The effects of adversity on the one, and of success and dominant pride on the other--happily finally subdued in each case beneath the Cross on Calvary--form the chief attempt at "character painting" in the tale.
It is not without a feeling of regret that he sends forth from his hands the last of these "Chronicles," and bids farewell to the real and imaginary characters who have seemed to form a part of his world, almost as if he could grasp their hands or look into their faces.
They are interwoven, too, with many treasured remembrances of past days, of the listening crowd of boys, now scattered through the world, and lost to the sight of the narrator, but who once by their eager interest encouraged the speaker, and at whose request the earliest of these tales was written. Happy indeed would he be, could he hope the written page would arouse the same interest, which the spoken narrative undoubtedly created, or the tales had never been published.
And now the writer must leave his tale to speak for itself, only taking this opportunity of assuring old friends, whose remembrances of a vanished past may be quickened by the story, how dear the memory of those days is to him; and to show this, however feebly, he begs leave to dedicate this tale to those who first heard it, on successive Sunday evenings, in the old schoolroom of All Saints' School, Bloxham.
A. D. C.
[CHAPTER I]. THE ANGLO-SAXON HALL.
It was the evening of Thursday, the fifth of October, in year of grace one thousand and sixty and six.
The setting sun was slowly sinking towards a dense bank of clouds, but as yet he gladdened the woods and hills around the old hall of Aescendune with his departing light.
The watchman on the tower gazed upon a fair scene outspread before him; at his feet rolled the river, broad and deep, spanned by a rude wooden bridge; behind him rose the hills, crowned with forest; on his right hand lay the lowly habitations of the tenantry, the farmhouses of the churls, the yet humbler dwellings of the thralls or tillers of the soil; the barns and stables were filled with the produce of a goodly harvest; the meadows full of sheep and oxen--a scene of rich pastoral beauty.