This was a fatal day to England, a melancholy havoc of our dear country, through its change of masters. For it had long since adopted the manners of the Angles, which had been very various according to the times: for in the first years of their arrival, they were barbarians in their look and manners, warlike in their usages, heathens in their rites; but, after embracing the faith of Christ, by degrees, and in process of time, from the peace they enjoyed, regarding arms only in a secondary light, they gave their whole attention to religion. I say nothing of the poor, the meanness of whose fortune often restrains them from overstepping the bounds of justice: I omit men of ecclesiastical rank, whom sometimes respect to their profession, and sometimes the fear of shame, suffer not to deviate from the truth: I speak of princes, who from the greatness of their power might have full liberty to indulge in pleasure; some of whom, in their own country, and others at Rome, changing their habit, obtained a heavenly kingdom, and a saintly intercourse. Many during their whole lives in outward appearance only embraced the present world, in order that they might exhaust their treasures on the poor, or divide them amongst monasteries. What shall I say of the multitudes of bishops, hermits, and abbats? Does not the whole island blaze with such numerous relics of its natives, that you can scarcely pass a village of any consequence but you hear the name of some new saint, besides the numbers of whom all notices have perished through the want of records? Nevertheless, in process of time, the desire after literature and religion had decayed, for several years before the arrival of the Normans. The clergy, contented with a very slight degree of learning, could scarcely stammer out the words of the sacraments; and a person who understood grammar, was an object of wonder and astonishment. The monks mocked the rule of their order by fine vestments, and the use of every kind of food. The nobility, given up to luxury and wantonness, went not to church in the morning after the manner of Christians, but merely, in a careless manner, heard matins and masses from a hurrying priest in their chambers, amid the blandishments of their wives. The commonalty, left unprotected, became a prey to the most powerful, who amassed fortunes, by either seizing on their property, or by selling their persons into foreign countries; although it be an innate quality of this people, to be more inclined to revelling, than to the accumulation of wealth. There was one custom, repugnant to nature, which they adopted; namely, to sell their female servants, when pregnant by them and after they had satisfied their lust, either to public prostitution, or foreign slavery. Drinking in parties was a universal practice, in which occupation they passed entire nights as well as days. They consumed their whole substance in mean and despicable houses; unlike the Normans and French, who, in noble and splendid mansions, lived with frugality. The vices attendant on drunkenness, which enervate the human mind, followed; hence it arose that engaging William, more with rashness, and precipitate fury, than military skill, they doomed themselves, and their country to slavery, by one, and that an easy, victory. “For nothing is less effective than rashness; and what begins with violence, quickly ceases, or is repelled.” In fine, the English at that time, wore short garments reaching to the mid-knee; they had their hair cropped; their beards shaven; their arms laden with golden bracelets; their skin adorned with punctured designs. They were accustomed to eat till they became surfeited, and to drink till they were sick. These latter qualities they imparted to their conquerors; as to the rest, they adopted their manners. I would not, however, have these bad propensities universally ascribed to the English. I know that many of the clergy, at that day, trod the path of sanctity, by a blameless life; I know that many of the laity, of all ranks and conditions, in this nation, were well-pleasing to God. Be injustice far from this account; the accusation does not involve the whole indiscriminately. “But, as in peace, the mercy of God often cherishes the bad and the good together; so, equally, does his severity, sometimes, include them both in captivity.”
Moreover, the Normans, that I may speak of them also, were at that time, and are even now, proudly apparelled, delicate in their food, but not excessive. They are a race inured to war, and can hardly live without it; fierce in rushing against the enemy; and where strength fails of success, ready to use stratagem, or to corrupt by bribery. As I have related, they live in large edifices with economy; envy their equals; wish to excel their superiors; and plunder their subjects, though they defend them from others; they are faithful to their lords, though a slight offence renders them perfidious. They weigh treachery by its chance of success, and change their sentiments with money. They are, however, the kindest of nations, and they esteem strangers worthy of equal honour with themselves. They also intermarry with their vassals. They revived, by their arrival, the observances of religion, which were everywhere grown lifeless in England. You might see churches rise in every village, and monasteries in the towns and cities, built after a style unknown before; you might behold the country flourishing with renovated rites; so that each wealthy man accounted that day lost to him, which he had neglected to signalize by some magnificent action. But having enlarged sufficiently on these points, let us pursue the transactions of William.
[A.D. 1066.] WILLIAM’S CORONATION.
When his victory was complete, he caused his dead to be interred with great pomp; granting the enemy the liberty of doing the like, if they thought proper. He sent the body of Harold[308] to his mother, who begged it, unransomed; though she proffered large sums by her messengers. She buried it, when thus obtained, at Waltham; a church which he had built at his own expense, in honour of the Holy Cross, and had endowed for canons. William then, by degrees proceeding, as became a conqueror, with his army, not after an hostile, but a royal manner, journeyed towards London, the principal city of the kingdom; and shortly after, all the citizens came out to meet him with gratulations. Crowds poured out of every gate to greet him, instigated by the nobility, and principally by Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, and Aldred, of York. For, shortly before, Edwin and Morcar, two brothers of great expectation, hearing, at London, the news of Harold’s death, solicited the citizens to exalt one of them to the throne: failing, however, in the attempt, they had departed for Northumberland, conjecturing, from their own feelings, that William would never come thither. The other chiefs would have chosen Edgar, had the bishops supported them; but, danger and domestic broils closely impending, neither did this take effect. Thus the English, who, had they united in one opinion, might have repaired the ruin of their country, introduced a stranger, while they were unwilling to choose a native, to govern them. Being now decidedly hailed king, he was crowned on Christmas-day by archbishop Aldred; for he was careful not to accept this office from Stigand, as he was not canonically an archbishop.
Of the various wars which he carried on, this is a summary. Favoured by God’s assistance, he easily reduced the city of Exeter,[309] when it had rebelled; for part of the wall fell down accidentally, and made an opening for him. Indeed he had attacked it with the more ferocity, asserting that those irreverent men would be deserted by God’s favour, because one of them, standing upon the wall, had bared his posteriors, and had broken wind, in contempt of the Normans. He almost annihilated the city of York, that sole remaining shelter for rebellion, and destroyed its citizens with sword and famine. For there Malcolm, king of the Scots, with his party; there Edgar, and Morcar, and Waltheof, with the English and Danes, often brooded over the nest of tyranny; there they frequently killed his generals; whose deaths, were I severally to commemorate, perhaps I should not be superfluous, though I might risk the peril of creating disgust; while I should be not easily pardoned as an historian, if I were led astray by the falsities of my authorities.
Malcolm willingly received all the English fugitives, affording to each every protection in his power, but more especially to Edgar, whose sister he had married, out of regard to her noble descent. On his behalf he burnt and plundered the adjacent provinces of England; not that he supposed, by so doing, he could be of any service to him, with respect to the kingdom; but merely to distress the mind of William, who was incensed at his territories being subject to Scottish incursions. In consequence, William, collecting a body of foot and horse, repaired to the northern parts of the island, and first of all received into subjection the metropolitan city, which English, Danes, and Scots obstinately defended; its citizens being wasted with continued want. He destroyed also in a great and severe battle, a considerable number of the enemy, who had come to the succour of the besieged; though the victory was not bloodless on his side, as he lost many of his people. He then ordered both the towns and fields of the whole district to be laid waste; the fruits and grain to be destroyed by fire or by water, more especially on the coast, as well on account of his recent displeasure, as because a rumour had gone abroad, that Canute, king of Denmark, the son of Sweyn, was approaching with his forces. The reason of such a command, was, that the plundering pirate should find no booty on the coast to take with him, if he designed to depart again directly; or should be compelled to provide against want, if he thought proper to stay. Thus the resources of a province,[310] once flourishing, and the nurse of tyrants, were cut off by fire, slaughter, and devastation; the ground, for more than sixty miles, totally uncultivated and unproductive, remains bare to the present day. Should any stranger now see it, he laments over the once-magnificent cities; the towers threatening heaven itself with their loftiness; the fields abundant in pasturage, and watered with rivers: and, if any ancient inhabitant remains, he knows it no longer.
[A.D. 1068.] SURRENDER OF MALCOLM.
Malcolm surrendered himself, without coming to an engagement, and for the whole of William’s time passed his life under treaties, uncertain, and frequently broken. But when in the reign of William, the son of William, he was attacked in a similar manner, he diverted the king from pursuing him by a false oath. He was slain soon after, together with his son, by Robert Mowbray, earl of Northumberland, while, regardless of his faith, he was devastating the province with more than usual insolence. For many years, he lay buried at Tynemouth: lately he was conveyed by Alexander his son, to Dunfermlin, in Scotland.
Edgar, having submitted to the king with Stigand and Aldred the archbishops, violated his oath the following year, by going over to the Scot: but after living there some years, and acquiring no present advantage, no future prospects, but merely his daily sustenance, being willing to try the liberality of the Norman, who was at that time beyond the sea, he sailed over to him. They say this was extremely agreeable to the king, that England should be thus rid of a fomenter of dissension. Indeed it was his constant practice, under colour of high honour, to carry over to Normandy all the English he suspected, lest any disorders should arise in the kingdom during his absence. Edgar, therefore, was well received, and presented with a considerable largess: and remaining at court for many years, silently sunk into contempt through his indolence, or more mildly speaking, his simplicity. For how great must his simplicity be, who would yield up to the king, for a single horse, the pound of silver, which he received as his daily stipend? In succeeding times he went to Jerusalem with Robert, the son of Godwin,[311] a most valiant knight. This was the time when the Turks besieged king Baldwin, at Rama; who, unable to endure the difficulties of a siege, rushed through the midst of the enemy, by the assistance of Robert alone, who preceded him, and hewed down the Turks, on either hand, with his drawn sword; but, while excited to greater ferocity by his success, he was pressing on with too much eagerness, his sword dropped from his hand, and when stooping down to recover it, he was surrounded by a multitude, and cast into chains. Taken thence to Babylon, as they report, when he refused to deny Christ, he was placed as a mark in the middle of the market-place, and being transfixed with darts, died a martyr. Edgar, having lost his companion, returned, and received many gifts from the Greek and German emperors; who, from respect to his noble descent, would also have endeavoured to retain him with them; but he gave up every thing, through regard to his native soil. “For, truly, the love of their country deceives some men to such a degree, that nothing seems pleasant to them, unless they can breathe their native air.” Edgar, therefore, deluded by this silly desire, returned to England; where, as I have before said, after various revolutions of fortune, he now grows old in the country in privacy and quiet.
[A.D. 1103.] OF EDWIN AND MORCAR.