“In like manner he sent gifts to King Æthelred and his episcopal sees. But, alas for the grief! when the gifts and the letters were in the hands of the messengers, the sad news came from those who had returned from Scotia[111] by way of you, that the nation had revolted and the king [Æthelred] was killed. King Charles withdrew his gifts, so greatly was he enraged against the nation—‘that perfidious and perverse nation,’ as he called them, ‘murderers of their own lords,’ holding them to be worse than pagans. Indeed, if I had not interceded for them, whatever good thing he could have taken away from them, whatever bad thing he could have contrived for them, he would have done it.
“I was prepared to come to you with the king’s gifts, and to go back to my fatherland.” This was from three to four years later than his latest visit to our shores. “But it seemed to me better, for the sake of peace for my nation, to remain abroad. I did not know what I could do among them, where no one is safe, and no wholesome counsel is of any avail. Look at the very holiest places devastated by pagans, the altars fouled by perjuries, the monasteries violated by adulteries, the earth stained with the blood of lords and princes. What else could I do but groan with the prophet,[112] ‘Woe to the sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers; they have forsaken the Lord, and blasphemed the holy Saviour of the world in their wickedness.’ And if it be true, as we read in the letter of your dignity, that the iniquity had its rise among the eldermen, where is safety and fidelity to be hoped for if the turbid torrent of unfaithfulness flowed forth from the very place where the purest fount of truth and faith was wont to spring?
“But do thou, O most wise ruler of the people of God, most diligently bring thy nation away from perverse habits, and make them learned in the precepts of God, lest by reason of the sins of the people the land which God has given us be destroyed. Be to the Church of Christ as a father, to the priests of God as a brother, to all the people pious and fair; in conversation and in word moderate and peaceable; in the praise of God always devout; that the divine clemency may keep thee in long prosperity, and may of the grace of its goodness deign to exalt, dilate, and crown to all eternity, with the benefaction of perpetual pity, thy kingdom—nay, all the English.
“I pray you direct the several Churches of your reverence to intercede for me. Into my unworthy hands the government of the Church of St. Martin has come. I have taken it not voluntarily but under pressure, by the advice of many.”
Offa died in the year in which this letter was written, and his death brought great changes in Mercia. Excellent as Offa had in most ways been, we have evidence that the Mercian people were by no means worthy of the fine old Mercian king. In reading the letter which contains this evidence, we shall see that Offa had a murderous side of his character. In those rude days, chaos could not be dealt with under its worse conditions by men who could not at a crisis strike with unmitigated severity.
CHAPTER VI
Grant to Malmesbury by Ecgfrith of Mercia.—Alcuin’s letters to Mercia.—Kenulf and Leo III restore Canterbury to its primatial position.—Gifts of money to the Pope.—Alcuin’s letters to the restored archbishop.—His letter to Karl on the archbishop’s proposed visit. Letters of Karl to Offa (on a question of discipline) and Athelhard (in favour of Mercian exiles).
Before proceeding to examine Alcuin’s letter to a Mercian nobleman on the death of Offa and his son Ecgfrith, it should be remarked that we of the diocese of Bristol must not allow the mention of this poor young king Ecgfrith to pass without our acknowledgement for a deed of justice done. When Offa defeated the West Saxon king at Bensington, he took possession of a good deal of the border land, including two tracts of land which King Cadwalla of Wessex had given to Malmesbury, namely Tetbury in Gloucestershire and Purton in Wilts. William of Malmesbury naturally reports the iniquity of Offa in thus pillaging the abbey which was the home of William’s life and studies. Offa gave Tetbury to the Bishop of Worcester. Purton was the subject of a deed by Ecgfrith during his reign of a few months. The deed has remarkable interest for us in this diocese, in that it is doubly dated; first as in the seven hundred and ninety-sixth year from the Incarnation, and next, with a very interesting recognition of our own Aldhelm, due to the fact that the theft had been from Aldhelm’s own Malmesbury, “in the eighty-seventh year from the passing of father Aldhelm.” The deed restores land of thirty-five families at Piritune, on the east side of Braden Wood, to the abbat and brethren of Malmesbury, for the repose of the soul of his father Offa who had taken it from them, and in order that the memory of Ecgfrith might always be preserved in their prayers. As a sort of unimportant afterthought he adds that the abbat and brethren have given him two thousand shillings of pure silver, probably as many pounds of our money. The deed was signed by Athelhard of Canterbury, not by Lichfield. The reason no doubt is that Tetbury and Purton are south of the Thames, and so outside the Province of Lichfield and within the diminished Province of Canterbury.
When the death of Offa’s son, the youthful Ecgfrith, king of Mercia, occurred in this same year 796 in which year his father Offa had died,[113] and a distant cousin Kenulf succeeded, Alcuin, as has been said, wrote a very serious letter to one of the chief officers of Mercia.