The place-names of Cumberland and Westmorland must always have arrested the attention of careful philologists. While the names of mountains and rivers, such as Helvellyn, Blencathra, Glaramara, Derwent, are for the most part of Celtic origin, we find a great number of names of villages and some also of hills and streams which evidently are Scandinavian rather than Celtic. Such are all the multitudinous thwaites and ghylls, the garths and haughs, and the frequently recurring beck for a stream, and fell for a high hill. Mr. Robert Ferguson called attention to the fact that this multitude of non-Celtic terminations—so remarkable in a country which actually bears the name of the Cymri—pointed to a large immigration of Scandinavians, not, however, of the Danish but of the Norwegian type. Of such immigration we have scarcely a hint in the chroniclers, but the philological evidence adduced by Mr. Ferguson[154] is so strong that his conclusion has been generally accepted by ethnologists. As to the date of this migration, his theory is that after the Saxon king Edmund in 945 had overrun the district of Cumbria and had left it wasted and bare of people, the Norwegians from their stronghold in the Isle of Man, discerning their advantage, covered the Solway with their ships, and pouring into that land of mountains and lakes and long stream-watered valleys—a land so like their fatherland—settled there and made it their own. This migration he would therefore place in the latter part of the tenth century, between the just mentioned Cumbrian campaign of Edmund (945) and the similar campaign of Ethelred (1000) which was undertaken, Henry of Huntingdon says, against “the Danes” yet involved the ravaging of Cumberland.
However this question of the date may hereafter be settled, there can be little doubt that the race which peoples these two most picturesque counties of England is pre-eminently of Norwegian origin. There seems to have been two other settlements of Scandinavians which deserve remark. One was in that curious peninsula of Cheshire, called the Wirral, between the estuaries of Dee and Mersey, a region which teems with Norse names; and the other, an exceptional instance of a Norse settlement south of the Watling Street, was in the promontory of Pembrokeshire, where a number of towns and villages, of which the best known is the watering-place of Tenby, attest by their names their Danish origin.
CHAPTER XIX.
EDWARD AND HIS SONS.
With the death of Alfred and the accession of his son Edward (called in later times “the Elder,” to distinguish him from his descendants, “the Martyr” and “the Confessor”) we enter upon a new century. Like its predecessor, the tenth century was for Europe generally a time of gloom, dismay and depression. The break-up of the empire of Charlemagne went on with increasing rapidity, the imperial title itself becoming the prize of obscure Italian princes until, about the middle of the century, the great Otto I. of Saxony (962–73) did something to restore its lustre and to bring back the Italian peninsula within the sphere of the imperial unity. In some measure, too, he succeeded in rehabilitating the office of the papacy, cruelly discredited by the intrigues of two profligate women, Theodora and Marozia, who had placed their lovers, their husbands and their young and licentious sons on the most venerated throne in Christendom. In France the Carolingian line was yielding to the same process of decay which had destroyed its Merovingian predecessor; and thirteen years before the end of the century Hugh Capet followed the example of Pippin and, thrusting the descendants of Charlemagne into the background, became the acknowledged king of the diminished territory of France; a position in which he was somewhat overshadowed by the greatness of his nominal vassals, the Norman dukes descended from Rollo. For France and Germany it is true that the invasions of the Northmen had practically ceased, but the ravages of the Hungarians during the first half of the century were a terror to Europe. In England, however, this age was not nearly so dark a time as many of its predecessors. In fact the tenth century saw the Anglo-Saxon monarchy attain its highest point of power and prosperity, though it also before its close saw it sink to the lowest depths of misery and degradation.
The first five years of Edward’s reign[155] were disturbed by the rebellion of his cousin Ethelwald, son of Ethelred. According to the theories of strict hereditary succession which have since prevailed, Ethelwald’s title as representative of an elder son was incontestable, and in fact Alfred himself according to these theories was but a usurper, yet it need hardly be said that these theories had no place in the Anglo-Saxon polity. The son, if a minor, or for any other reason unsuitable, had no indefeasible right to wear his dead father’s crown. Among the Saxons, as with most of the other Teutonic nations, the two principles of inheritance and election were closely, we are inclined to say illogically, blended. The new king must be of the royal race; in the case of Wessex his line must “go unto Cerdic”; but he must also be “chosen and raised to be king” by the witan, the wise men or senators of the kingdom. This ceremony had been duly complied with at Edward’s accession, and therefore he was rightful king though sprung from a younger branch of the royal house. Moreover it was a matter of reproach against Ethelwald that he had “without the king’s leave and against the bishop’s ordinance married or cohabited with a woman who had before been hallowed as a nun”. Yet for all this he did not lack adherents, some of whom probably held that he was wrongfully excluded from the throne.
Ethelwald’s rebellion was announced to the world by his occupation of a royal vill at Badbury in Dorsetshire, near his father’s sepulchre at Wimborne. Thither rode the new king with a portion of the local fyrd, but found all the approaches to the place blocked by order of the insurgent Etheling. It was rumoured that Ethelwald had said to his followers, “Here will I die or here will I lie”: nevertheless his heart failed him when it came to the pinch, and he stole away by night to Northumbria, vainly pursued by the men of King Edward. The Danish army in the northern realm accepted him for their king; the men of East Anglia joined them, and after three years all marched through Mercia, ravaging as they went, as far as Cricklade in Wiltshire. At the approach of Edward with his fyrd, the insurgents moved rapidly northwards with the spoil which they had gathered. Edward pursued, and ravaged all their land between the Cambridgeshire dykes and the river Ouse, as far northward as the fens. He then sounded a retreat, but the men of Kent, eager for the fight, though seven times ordered to withdraw, continued to face the enemy. The battle which ensued was evidently a defeat of the Saxons, and cost the lives of two ealdormen and many distinguished nobles of Kent. Practically however it was as good as a victory, since Ethelwald, “who enticed the Danes to that breach of the peace,” lay dead upon the field. Peace seems naturally to have followed upon his death, and thus was ended in 905 what might have been a dangerous civil war.
The chief work of Edward’s reign was the conquest of the new Danish kingdoms of East Anglia, Essex and the remainder of Mercia. The settlement which followed the Peace of Wedmore, a wise and statesmanlike compromise at the time, had ceased to be applicable to the existing state of affairs. At every serious crisis of the West Saxon state the Danes beyond Watling Street at once broke the frith, and their dreaded “army” crossed the Saxon border. It was time that this intolerable state of things should be brought to an end, and to its termination Edward, himself “a man of war from his youth,” and with an army of Saxon veterans at his back, now successfully devoted himself. We hear of him in 910 beating the Danes at Tettenhall in Staffordshire; in 911, at some place unnamed, winning a great victory over the Northumbrian Danes—a victory in which two kings, many jarls and holds (earls and chief captains) and thousands of soldiers of meaner rank were slain. Then, in 912, he “took possession of London and Oxford, and all the lands thereto belonging”. This however was apparently no fresh conquest, but only a peaceful resumption of territories previously appertaining to Mercia. In 913 he fortified Hertford, encamped at Maldon in Essex, and received the submission of the greater part of that kingdom. In 914 and 915 the chief victories seem to have been won not by the king in person, but by the warlike energies of the local militia. In the former year they defeated a plundering host of Northamptonshire and Leicestershire Danes at Leighton Buzzard, and stripped them of their accumulated spoil. In the latter, operations after a long interval were begun anew by marauders from beyond sea. A scip-here, or naval armament, from the coast of Brittany, made its unwelcome appearance at the mouth of the Severn and captured a Welsh bishop whom Edward ransomed for forty pounds (of silver); and then the men of Hereford, of Gloucester and of all the nearest burhs came out against them, slew one of the two jarls who commanded them and the brother of his colleague, and drove them into a “park” or enclosed space, which the men of the fyrd beset so closely that the Danes were forced to give hostages for their peaceable departure from the country. Apparently, however, they broke their promises, stole away by night and made two hostile descents on the coast of Somerset, one at Watchet and one at Porlock, both of which were successfully repulsed. After betaking themselves to the two islands of Flatholme and Steepholme, in the middle of the Bristol Channel, and seeing many of their number die of sheer starvation on those desolate islands, the remnant departed, first to South Wales and then to Ireland, and were heard of no more.
The largest share of the credit for the conquest of Danish Mercia must be given to Edward’s manlike sister, Ethelfled, “lady of the Mercians”. Daughter herself of a Mercian princess and married to a husband (Ethelred) who was probably related to the royal line of Offa, she seems after her husband’s death in 911 to have still commanded, to an extraordinary degree, the love and loyalty of the Mercian people, and to have wielded the warlike resources of the Midland kingdom with wonderful energy and success. Each year she struck a heavy blow either at the men of the Danelaw, on her right, or at the Welsh of Gwynedd—now no longer friendly to the Saxon—on her left. With her, as with her brother, the plan of campaign, generally centred round some burh which the English ruler built in the hostile territory and defended against all comers. After Chester had been repaired, probably by Ethelred, the chief fortresses built and defended by his widow were Bromesberrow, near Ledbury in Herefordshire, Shrewsbury, Bridgnorth, Stafford, Eddisbury in the forest of Delamere, Warwick, Chirk in Denbighshire, Warburton and Runcorn in the south of Lancashire. While some of these forts were within, most of them were decidedly beyond the Watling Street line, and their erection betokened the recovery for the English of an important portion of the Danelaw. The Denbighshire fort is evidence of the determination of the high-hearted “lady of the Mercians” to reduce her Welsh neighbours to obedience; a determination which was shown still more plainly when in June 19, 916, she sent the Mercian fyrd into South Wales, took Brecon by storm and captured the wife of the Welsh king with thirty-four other persons, probably nobles of his court.
By this time, however, the conquering career of Ethelfled was drawing to a close. Towards the end of July, 917, she “with the aid of God obtained the burh which is called Derby, with all pertaining thereto”. The victory, however, was not bloodless. “There were slain within the gates four of her thegns, of those who were dearest unto her.” The next year by the same Divine aid “she gained peaceable possession of the burh of Leicester and subdued to herself the largest part of the here that owned allegiance thereto. Also the men of York promised obedience, and some gave bail, while others confirmed with oaths their covenant to be under her rule.” Apparently the Lady of Mercia was destined to become also Lady of Northumbria. Not so, however. “Very swiftly after this covenant was made, twelve nights before midsummer (918) she died at Tamworth, in the eighth year that she had held power with right lordship over the Mercians. And her body lieth at Gloucester in the east porch of St. Peter’s Church.” From this entry it appears probable that Tamworth was the favourite residence of the Lady of the Mercians as it had been of her royal predecessors.[156] What was the precise nature of the political relation between Ethelfled and her royal brother, it is perhaps impossible to discover. Clearly the status of Ethelred and his wife was not kingly. He is correctly spoken of as ealdorman and as hlaford (lord), while she is described as hlæfdige (lady); yet in all her actions, in her military movements, her sieges and her treaties, she seems to act as independently as Penda or Offa. Probably the term which is sometimes used in the Chronicle, mund-bora (protector), most fittingly expresses the relation which during Ethelfled’s lifetime Edward held toward his sister. She is not absolutely independent, yet she governs her subjects, marches her armies about, and promotes her well-beloved thegns to honour, as seems meet to her. She is a subject-ally, most faithful and most valiant of all allies, and he, should she ever need to call upon him for help, will not fail as her “protector”.
Whatever may have been the precise nature of the peculiar relation between Wessex and Mercia, it came to an end soon after the death of Ethelfled. She left, indeed, a daughter named Elfwyn, who seems for about eighteen months to have wielded her mother’s authority, but in 919, “three weeks before mid-winter,” she was deprived of all power over the Mercians and led away into Wessex. There are some slight indications in the Chronicle that this obliteration of Mercia as a semi-independent state was not altogether acceptable to the people of the middle kingdom. However this may have been, Edward, now sending forth into the field the united armies of Wessex and Mercia, carried forward with irresistible might the process of the unification of the kingdom. The burhs which he erected between 913 and 924 rounded off the work of Ethelfled. These were Hertford, Bedford, Huntingdon and Towcester in the East Midlands, Maldon and Colchester in Essex, Stamford in Lincolnshire, Nottingham and Bakewell in the country of the Peak, Thelwall in Cheshire, and Manchester, the last being expressly stated to have been “in Northumbria”. The work of subduing and over-aweing the Welsh was not forgotten. In 921 Edward built a burh at Wigmore in Herefordshire, in sight of the long range of Radnor Forest, and another at the mouth of the Cleddau in Pembrokeshire, a proof that his arms had penetrated as far as to Milford Haven.