“In the year of our Lord’s incarnation six hundred and sixteen, which is the twenty-first from that wherein Augustine and his comrades were despatched to preach unto the race of the Angles, Æðelberht, the king of the men of Kent, after a temporal reign which he had held most gloriously for six and fifty years, entered the eternal joys of the heavenly kingdom: who was indeed but the third among the kings of the Angle race who ruled over all the southern provinces, which are separated from those of the north by the river Humber and its contiguous boundaries; but the first of all who ascended to the kingdom of heaven. For the first of all who obtained this empire was Ælli, king of the Southsaxons: the second was Caelin, king of the Westsaxons, who in their tongue was called Ceaulin: the third, as I have said, was Æðilberht, king of the men of Kent: the fourth was Redwald, king of the Eastanglians, who even during the life of Æðilberht, obtained predominance for his nation: the fifth, Aeduini, king of the race of Northumbrians, that is, the race which inhabits the northern district of the river Humber, presided with greater power over all the populations which dwell in Britain, Britons and Angles alike, save only the men of Kent; he also subdued to the empire of the Angles, the Mevanian isles, which lie between Ireland and Britain: the sixth Oswald, himself that most Christian king of the Northumbrians, had rule with the same boundaries: the seventh Osuiu, his brother, having for some time governed his kingdom within nearly the same boundaries, for the most part subdued or reduced to a tributary condition the nations also of the Picts and Scots, who occupy the northern ends of Britain.”
Certainly, it must be admitted that the exception of the Men of Kent, in the case of Eádwini, is a serious blow to the Bretwalda theory. I have used the word predominance, to express the ducatus or leadership, of Beda, and it is clear that such a leadership is what he means to convey. But in all the cases which he has cited, it is equally clear from every part of his book, that the fact was a merely accidental one, fully explained by the peculiar circumstances in every instance: it is invariably connected with conquest, and preponderant military power: a successful battle either against Kelt or Saxon, by removing a dangerous neighbour or dissolving a threatening confederacy, placed greater means at the disposal of any one prince than could be turned against him by any other or combination of others; and he naturally assumed a right to dictate to them, iure belli, in all transactions where he chose to consider his own interests concerned. But all the facts in every case show that there was no concert, no regular dignity, and no regular means of obtaining it; that it was a mere fluctuating superiority, such as we may find in Owhyhee, Tahiti, or New Zealand, due to success in war, and lost in turn by defeat. On the rout of Ceawlin, the second Bretwalda, by the Welsh, we learn that he was expelled from the throne, and succeeded by Ceólwulf, who spent many years in struggles against Angles, Welsh, Scots and Picts[[17]]: according to Turner’s and Lappenberg’s theory, he was the very man to have been made Bretwalda; but we do not find this to have been the case, or that the dignity returned to the intervening Sussex; but Æðelberht of Kent, whose ambition had years before led him to measure his force against Ceawlin’s, stepped into the vacant monarchy. The truth is that Æðelberht, who had husbanded his resources, and was of all the Saxon kings the least exposed to danger from the Keltic populations, was enabled to impose his authority upon his brother kings, and to make his own terms: and in a similar way, at a later period, it is clear that Rædwald of Eastanglia was enabled to deprive him of it. I therefore again conclude that this so-called Bretwaldadom was a mere accidental predominance; there is no peculiar function, duty or privilege anywhere mentioned as appertaining to it; and when Beda describes Eádwini of Northumberland proceeding with the Roman tufa or banner before him, as an ensign of dignity, he does so in terms which show that it was not, as Palgrave seems to imagine, an ensign of imperial authority used by all Bretwaldas, but a peculiar and remarkable affectation of that particular prince. Before I leave this word ducatus, I may call attention to the fact that Ecgberht, whom the Saxon Chronicle adds to the list given by Beda, has left some charters in which he also uses it[[18]], and that they are the only charters in which it does occur. From these it appears that he dated his reign ten years earlier than his ducatus, that is, that he was rex in 802, but not dux till 812. Now it is especially observable that in 812 he had not yet commenced that career of successful aggression against the other Saxon kingdoms, which justified the Chronicler in numbering him among those whom Camden and Rapin call the Monarchs, and Palgrave the Emperors of Britain. He did not attack Mercia and subdue Kent till 825: in the same year he formed his alliance with Eastanglia: only in 820 did he ruin the power of Mercia, and receive the submission of the Northumbrians. But in the year 812 he did move an army against the Welsh, and remained for several months engaged in military operations within their frontier: there is every reason then to think that the ducatus of Ecgberht is only a record of those conquests over his British neighbours, which enabled him to turn his hand with such complete success against his Anglosaxon rivals; and thus that it has no reference to the expression used by Beda to express the factitious preponderance of one king over another. Let us now inquire to what the passage in the Saxon Chronicle amounts, which has put so many of our historians upon a wrong track, by supplying them with the suspicious name Bretwalda. Speaking of Ecgberht the Chronicler says[[19]], “And the same year king Ecgberht overran the kingdom of the Mercians, and all that was south of the Humber; and he was the eighth king who was Bretwalda.” And then, after naming the seven mentioned by Beda, and totally omitting all notice of the Mercian kings, he concludes,—“the eighth was Ecgberht, king of the Westsaxons.”
Now it is somewhat remarkable that of six manuscripts in which this passage occurs, one only reads Bretwalda: of the remaining five, four have Bryten-walda or-wealda, and one Breten-anweald, which is precisely synonymous with Brytenwealda. All the rules of orderly criticism would therefore compel us to look upon this as the right reading, and we are confirmed in so doing by finding that Æðelstán in one of his charters[[20]] calls himself also “Brytenwealda ealles ðyses ealondes,”—ruler or monarch of all this island. Now the true meaning of this word, which is compounded of wealda, a ruler, and the adjective bryten, is totally unconnected with Bret or Bretwealh, the name of the British aborigines, the resemblance to which is merely accidental: bryten is derived from breótan, to distribute, to divide, to break into small portions, to disperse: it is a common prefix to words denoting wide or general dispersion[[21]], and when coupled with wealda means no more than an extensive, powerful king, a king whose power is widely extended. We must therefore give up the most attractive and seducing part of all this theory, the name, which rests upon nothing but the passage in one manuscript of the Chronicle,—and that, far from equal to the rest in antiquity or correctness of language: and as for anything beyond the name, I again repeat that we are indebted for it to nothing but the ingenuity of modern scholars, deceived by what they fancied the name itself; that there is not the slightest evidence of a king exercising a central authority, and very little at any time, of a combined action among the Saxons; and that it is quite as improbable that any Saxon king should ever have had a federal army to command, as it is certainly false that there ever was a general Witena gemót for him to preside over. I must therefore in conclusion declare my disbelief as well in a college of kings, as in an officer, elected or otherwise appointed, whom they considered as their head. The development of all the Anglosaxon kingdoms was of far too independent and fortuitous a character for us to assume any general concert among them, especially as that independence is manifested upon those points particularly, where a central and combined action would have been most certain to show itself[[22]].
But although I cannot admit the growth of an imperial power in any such way, I still believe the royal authority to have been greatly consolidated, and thereby extended, before the close of the sixth century. It is impossible, for a very long period, to look upon the Anglosaxon kingdoms otherwise than as camps, planted upon an enemy’s territory, and not seldom in a state of mutual hostility. All had either originated in, or had at some period fallen into, a state of military organization, in which the leaders are permitted to assume powers very inconsistent with the steady advance of popular liberty; and in the progress of their history, events were continually recurring which favoured the permanent establishment and consolidation of those powers. Upon all their western and northern frontiers lay ever-watchful and dangerous Keltic populations, the co-operation of whose more inland brethren was always to be dreaded, and whose attacks were periodically renewed till very long after the preponderance of one crown over the rest was secured,—attacks only too often favoured by the civil wars and internal struggles of the Germanic conquerors. Upon all the eastern coasts hovered swarms of daring adventurers, ready to put in practice upon the Saxons themselves the frightful lesson of piracy which these had given the Roman world in the third and fourth centuries, and ever welcomed by the Keltic inhabitants as the ministers of their own vengeance. The constant state of military preparation which was thus rendered necessary could have no other result than that of giving a vast preponderance to the warlike over the peaceful institutions; of raising the practised and well-armed comites to a station yearly more and more important; of leading to the multiplication of fortresses, with their royal castellans and stationary garrisons; nay—by constantly placing the freemen under martial law, and inuring them to the urgencies of military command—of finally breaking down the innate feeling and guarantees of freedom, and even of materially ruining the cultivator, all whose energy and all whose time were not too much, if a comfortable subsistence was to be wrung from the soil he owned. It is also necessary to bear in mind the power derived from forcible possession of lands from which the public enemy had been expelled, and which, we may readily believe, turned to the advantage, mostly if not exclusively, of the king and his nobles. No wonder then if at a very early period the Mark-organization, which contained within itself the seeds of its own decay, had begun to give way, and that a systematic commendation, as it was called, to the adjacent lords was beginning to take its place. To the operation of these natural causes we must refer the indisputable predominance established by a few superior kings before the end of the sixth century, not only over the numerous dynastic families which still remained scattered over the face of the country, but also over the free holders in the gá or scýr.
To these however was added one of still greater moment. The introduction of Christianity in a settled form, which finally embraced the whole Saxon portion of the island, dates from the commencement of the seventh century. Though not unknown to the various British tribes, who had long been in communication with their fellow-believers of Gaul and, according to some authorities[[23]], of Rome, it had made but little progress among the German tribes, although a tendency to give it at least a tolerant hearing had for some time been making way among them[[24]]. But in 595 Pope Gregory the Great determined upon giving effect to his scheme of a missionary expedition to Britain, which he had long revolved, had at one time determined to undertake in person, and had relinquished only as far as his own journey was concerned, in consequence of the opposition manifested by the inhabitants of Rome to his quitting the city. Having finally matured his plan, he selected a competent number of monks and ecclesiastics, and despatched them under the guidance of Augustine, with directions to found an episcopal church among the heathen Saxons. The progress and success of this missionary effort must not be treated of here; suffice it to say that, one by one, the Teutonic kingdoms of the island accepted the new faith, and that before the close of the first century from the arrival of Augustine, the whole of German England was united into one church, under a Metropolitan, who accidentally was also a missionary from Rome[[25]].
Strange would it have been had the maxims of law or rules of policy which these men brought with them, been different from those which prevailed in the place from which they came. Roman feelings, Roman views and modes of judging, the traditions of the empire and the city, the legislation of the emperors and the popes,—these were their sources both of opinion and action. The predominance of the kings must have appeared to them natural and salutary; the subordination of all men to their appointed rulers was even one of the doctrines of Christianity itself, as taught by the great apostle of the gentiles, and recommended by the example of the Saviour. But the consolidation and advancement of the royal authority, if they could only form a secure alliance with it, could not but favour their great object of spreading the Gospel among populations otherwise dispersed and inaccessible: hence it seems probable that all their efforts would be directed to the end which circumstances already favoured, and that the whole spiritual and temporal influence of the clergy would be thrown into the scale of monarchy. Moreover the clergy supplied a new point of approach between our own and foreign courts: to say nothing of Rome, communication with which soon became close and frequent, very shortly after their establishment here, we find an increased and increasing intercourse between our kings and those of Gaul; and this again offered an opportunity of becoming familiar with[with] the views and opinions which had flowed, as it were, from the imperial city into the richest and happiest of her provinces. The strict Teutonic law of wergyld, they perhaps could not prevail to change, and to the last, the king, like every other man, continued to have his price; but the power of the clergy is manifest even in the very first article of Æðelberht’s law, and to it we in all probability owe the ultimate affixing of the penalty of death to the crime of high-treason,—a marvellous departure from the ancient rule. Taking all the facts of the case into account, we cannot but believe that the introduction of Christianity, which not only taught the necessity of obedience to lawful authority, but accustomed men to a more central and combined exercise of authority through the very spectacle of the episcopal system itself, tended in no slight degree to perpetuate the new order which was gradually undermining and superseding the old Mark-organization, and thus finally brought England into the royal circle of European families[[26]].
The chapters of the present Book will be devoted to an investigation of the institutions proper to this altered condition, to the officers by whom the government of the country was conducted, from the seventh to the eleventh centuries, and to the general social relations which thus arose. If in the course of our investigation it should appear that a gradually diminishing share of freedom remained to the people, yet must we bear in mind that the old organization was one which could not keep pace with the progress of human society, and that it was becoming daily less suited to the ends for which it first existed; that in this, as in all great changes, a compromise necessarily took place, and mutual sacrifices were required; after all, that we finally retained a great amount of rational and orderly liberty, full of the seeds of future development, and gained many of the advantages of Roman cultivation, without paying too high a price for them, in the loss of our nationality.
[1]. There is not much positive evidence on this subject: but perhaps the following considerations may appear of weight. The distinctive names of Water in the two principal Keltic languages of these islands, appear to be Aber and Inver: the former occurs frequently in Wales, the latter never: on the other hand, Aber rarely, if ever, occurs in Ireland, while Inver does. If we now take a good map of England and Wales and Scotland, we shall find the following data.
In Wales: