His strength was quickly consumed in this struggle against human weakness. When scarcely fifty-two years of age, Alfred was dying. He sent for his son Edward: "Come and stand beside me," he said; "I feel that my last moment is near; we must part. I am going to another world, and you will be alone with all my riches. I beg you, for you are my beloved child, strive to be a good master and a father to your people. Relieve the poor, support the weak, and apply yourself with all your might to the redress of wrongs. And then, my son, govern yourself according to your own laws; then the Lord will help you and will grant you His supreme reward. Invoke Him that He may advise and direct you in your difficulties, and He will help you to accomplish as well as possible your designs." It was in the same manner that, three hundred and fifty years later, when dying upon the shore at Tunis, St. Louis recommended his son to France. Great kings and great Christians both, although very different in character and ideas, Alfred and St. Louis both deserved the name of "pastors" of their people, which the gratitude of Englishmen has accorded to Alfred.
He died on the 20th of October, 901, after having reigned twenty-nine years, and he was interred at Winchester, in the monastery which he had founded there. It is not there, but at Wantage—at the spot where he was born—that the grateful memory of England caused the celebration of the jubilee on the occasion of the thousandth anniversary of the birthday of Alfred the Great. On the 25th of October, 1849, a vast concourse of people went to Wantage to do honor to the memory of a king so much beloved. The assemblage decided on the publication of his complete works, a monument less durable than the gratitude graven by his deeds on the heart of his people.
Chapter IV.
The Saxon And Danish Kings.
The Conquest Of England By The Normans (901-1066).
One hundred and sixty-five years elapsed between the death of Alfred and the Invasion of England by William the Conqueror. Two dynasties reigned during that period in England: first, the Saxon, which numbered ten sovereigns, and secondly, the Danish, which was represented by four princes. The first of the Saxon kings, Edward, the son of Alfred, did not enjoy a very brilliant reign, but contrived to make his authority recognized, with the help of his sister Ethelfleda, widow of Ethelred, the viceroy of Mercia. He drove back the Danes into their territory, a portion of which he conquered, and, at the death of his sister, he annexed Mercia to his states, which he left thus augmented, to his son Athelstan, when he died, in 925.
This young prince was brave as well as able. He placed the Welsh tribes, always ripe for revolt, under subjection, and imposed upon them an annual tribute of gold, silver, and cattle; he repelled the people of Cornwall, who had never been thoroughly subjected by Alfred. But the Danes had not accepted their defeat. King Olaf, who was established in Northumbria, and who had recently pushed his conquests so far in Ireland as to capture the town of Dublin, ascended the Humber with more than 600 vessels: the Scots at the same time attacked the frontiers, and the Britons from Wales once more revolted. So many enemies rising suddenly did not daunt Athelstan. He triumphed over his opponents: five Danish kings remained on the soil, as well as the king of Scotland's son. They all retired into their territories, there to remain until the end of the reign of Athelstan, whose court attained a degree of luxury hitherto unknown to the Saxon kings. It was there that Louis d'Outre-Mer took refuge when driven from France, and it was thence that he was recalled to the throne at the death of Charles the Simple. All England recognized the laws of Athelstan, and he had taken the title of king of the Anglo-Saxons, instead of the less assuming one of king of Wessex, when he died in 940, at the age of forty-seven years, leaving the throne to his brother Edmund. The reign of the latter, like that of his brother Edred, presents nothing remarkable with the exception of a series of battles with the Danes, who were sometimes daring and victorious, and sometimes beaten and repulsed. At the death of Edred, in 955, the Danes of Northumbria were apparently almost entirely subjected; their chiefs had lost the title of kings, and their territory was governed by an earl chosen by the Saxons. The progress had been great since the time of Alfred.
Young Edwy, the son of Edmund, was only fifteen years of age when he succeeded to the throne. The Danes left him in peace; but he commenced a struggle against the clergy of his kingdom, enemies more powerful than the "Sea-Kings." He had married Elgiva, a young and beautiful princess whose family was related to his own within the degree of kinship prohibited by the Church, and he refused to abandon his wife, as also to submit to be reproved by the archbishop of Canterbury, Odo, who was supported by the famous abbot of Glastonbury, Dunstan, renowned throughout England for his austere mode of living. On the occasion of the coronation of the young king, Dunstan, being annoyed, retired during the banquet. Edwy flew into a passion, and threats were so quickly followed by action, that Dunstan was obliged to make his escape and was immediately pursued by the emissaries of the king, who were instructed to burn out his eyes.
Archbishop Odo, however, had remained in England at the head of the austere party of the Church. The disagreement between the king and the clergy was growing more and more serious, when a revolt of the Danes took place in Northumbria and extended into Mercia. Soon afterwards Edgar, a younger brother of Edwy, until then king of Mercia, was declared the independent sovereign of the two provinces. Family afflictions assailed the young king at the same time: his wife had been seized in one of his castles by a wandering band of soldiers, and carried to Ireland, where her beautiful face had been disfigured by red-hot irons. Dunstan had just reappeared in England after a short period of exile, at the time when the young queen, who had been tended and looked after by the friends whom she had made in Ireland, and had now recovered from the effects of her disfigurement, was returning to England to rejoin her husband. She was stopped, however, near Gloucester by her implacable enemies, who no doubt credited her with a fatal influence over her husband. She was so cruelly mutilated by them that she died a few days afterwards. Edwy survived her but a short time, and died at the age of nineteen in 958 The beauty of his personal appearance had gained him the title of Edwy the Beautiful.
When Edgar ascended the throne of his brother Edwy, Dunstan shared it with him, and whatever may have been the part played by him in the events of the last reign, the authority of the king bore, in the hands of the monk, the fruits of order and justice. The Danes, attached to young Edgar, who had been brought up amongst them, submitted voluntarily to his authority. Their territory was divided and placed under the rule of several earls; the fleet, greatly augmented, kept the "Sea-Kings" in constant fear, and the young sovereign of England, assisted by his able minister, who had become archbishop of Canterbury, traversed his state every year, presiding at courts of justice and gathering around him the principal chiefs of each province. Ardent and ambitious, Dunstan was at the same time of a firm disposition and character; his practical knowledge was as conspicuous as his religious zeal. He was one of that great race of priests, whose influence, preeminent in the middle ages, was the source of much good and evil alike, until the period when the magnitude of their pretensions and the abuse of their power brought about the great revolt of the Reformation. It was under King Edgar that the Welshmen saw their annual tribute of gold and silver commuted for an annual presentation of three hundred wolves' heads, a measure which insured the destruction of these ferocious animals, who were very numerous in England.