Round all these newly built burhs the tide of battle fiercely ebbed and flowed ere the people whom they were meant to hold down patiently submitted to their domination. Thus we hear of an unsuccessful assault by “the army” of East Anglia and Mercia on the burh at Wigmore; of “the army” breaking the frith and marching against Towcester. “And they fought against it all day and thought to carry it by storm, but the folk that were therein defended it till help came, whereupon they departed ravaging as they went.” In consequence of this attack, unsuccessful as it was, Edward surrounded Towcester with a stone wall which it had not previously possessed. The enemy vainly endeavoured to imitate Edward’s castle-building policy. The Danes of Huntingdon and East Anglia built a great fort at Tempsford on the river Ouse (a little south of St. Neots), “and thought that they should therefrom with battle and un-peace win back to themselves more of this land”. But they were disappointed, for the people from the nearest burhs having gathered themselves together, fought against Tempsford and overthrew it, slaying the Danish king and two of his jarls, and all who were found fighting therein.
The year which is marked in the chief manuscript of the Chronicle as 921 but which probably was in truth 918, saw the full tide of English successes, and in consequence we now hear of the complete submission of East Anglia and Essex to the rule of Edward. “To him submitted much folk both of the East Angles and the East Saxons, who had been erewhile under the Danish power, and all the ‘army’ in East Anglia swore to oneness with him, that they would all will that which he willed, and be at peace with those with whom he was at peace, whether by sea or land. And the here that belonged to Cambridge chose him specially for lord and protector (mund-bora) and confirmed this by oaths as he commanded them.” In 919, the year after the death of Ethelfled, three kings of North Wales and all the North Welsh kin sought Edward to be their lord. His conquest of Nottingham followed, and here we observe with interest that he garrisoned the newly captured fort with Danes as well as with Englishmen; also that all the folk that were in Mercia submitted to his rule, whether they were Danes or Englishmen.
Thus then we now have Edward not wielding the shadowy power of a Bretwalda, but actual king, personally ruling over all the lands south of the Humber, acknowledged as over-lord by North Wales, probably also by Northumbria. Did his overlordship extend yet farther north? Did Scotland recognise him as supreme king? That question seems to be answered decisively in the affirmative by the celebrated entry in the Chronicle for the year 924 which probably should be corrected to 921. After describing Edward’s operations in the midlands, his building a bridge over the Trent between the two burhs of Nottingham, his going from thence into the Peak country and ordering a burh to be built as near as possible to Bakewell, the chronicler thus proceeds: “Him chose as father and lord the Scottish king and all the Scottish people; and Raegnald, Eadulf’s son [king of Northumbria], and all the dwellers in Northumbria whether they were Englishmen or Danes or Northmen or any others, and eke the king of the Welsh of Strathclyde and all his people [did the like]”. The facts here related, as far as they concern the men of Strathclyde and Northumbria, are not seriously disputed, though one may note in passing the distinction now first met with between “Danes” and “Northmen” or Norwegians. But how as to Edward’s over-lordship of Scotland, which seems to be vouched for by the beginning of the sentence, and which was made, four centuries later by his namesake, Edward Plantagenet, the basis of a claim to exercise the rights of lord paramount? The answer to that question has involved historians on both sides of the Border in fierce debate. It is, of course, impossible here to do more than sketch the bare outline of the controversy, but so much as this must be attempted.
The champions of the English claim to supremacy over Scotland[157] maintain that “in 921 Edward received—what no West Saxon king had ever before received—the submission of the Scots and the Strathclyde Welsh.... In the Latin phrase they commended themselves to him; they promised him fidelity and put themselves under his protection.” “There was nothing strange or degrading in this relation; it was the relation in which in theory all other princes stood to the Emperor.”[158] “From this time to the fourteenth century the vassalage of Scotland was an essential part of the public law of the isle of Britain. No doubt many attempts were made to cast off the dependent relation which had been voluntarily incurred; but when a king of the English had once been chosen ‘to father and to lord,’ his successors never willingly gave up the position which had thus been bestowed upon them.”[159] On the other side, Scottish historians[160] naturally point to the fact that it is a Saxon chronicler who makes the statement from which such mighty consequences are deduced. The law does not allow a suitor to make evidence for himself; but here is an alleged “commendation” of which we have no hint in the records of the king and the nation by whom it is alleged to have been made; only in the chronicles of the pretended receiver. They further throw doubt on the genuineness of the passage and suggest that it may be a late interpolation. One argument against its genuineness is that it seems to represent the “commendation” as taking place in the heart of Derbyshire, whereas such a transaction would naturally have been performed on the boundary of the two kingdoms. Another and more serious objection is that Raegnald of Northumbria is here named as taking part in the “commendation” in the year 924, whereas “in the Irish annals, at this period most accurate and trustworthy authorities for all that relates to the family of Raegnald,”[161] the death of this chieftain is assigned to a date three years earlier, 921.
The question at issue, now merely academic but once of vital importance to the two countries, has been much complicated by subsequent transactions, alleged cessions of Lothian and Strathclyde on terms of feudal dependence, homage rendered by Scottish kings for possessions in England and so forth. The allegation of fact made by the English chronicler seems entirely worthy of credit. Doubtless for polemical purposes such a statement if made by a Scottish authority would have been more valuable; but the writer of the Chronicle was a contemporary; his work though not very luminous and often careless of strict chronological accuracy, certainly impresses one’s mind with a general feeling of its honesty and good faith; there is no trace of interpolation in the manuscripts (which are all long antecedent to the reign of Edward I.); nor is there any very obvious reason why a monastic scribe writing at Winchester or Canterbury should have invented the transactions here detailed if they never happened. When the entry is carefully examined and compared with similar passages in the same Chronicle, it is seen that the writer is not committed to the statement that the interview took place at Bakewell. Nor will the objection drawn from the date of Raegnald’s death appear formidable to any one who knows how loose is the chronology of the Chronicle everywhere, but especially in this part of it, in which, for reasons quite unconnected with this controversy, its latest editor considers that all the events are post-dated by three years.
If then we accept as probably true the statement that “the Scottish king [Constantine II.] and all the Scottish people chose Edward as father and as lord,” what does that statement imply? It is perhaps a mistake to introduce the word “commendation,” though that word may pretty nearly describe the nature of the transaction. But the word itself, though known to the Franks and occurring in the Bavarian law-book, does not seem to have been ever used by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. The Teutonic word mund-byrd (protection), which most nearly corresponds to it, is not used of the transactions of 921, though it is used shortly before concerning the men of Huntingdon who “bowed to King Edward and sought his frith (peace) and his mund-byrd”. In such a difficult and obscure discussion, it is surely better to keep quite close to the original words of the historian, avoiding all mention of “commendation” and far more of “vassalage,” which last term, as all agree, does not correctly represent any relation established in Britain early in the tenth century. Let us repeat simply that the King of Scots “chose Edward as father and as lord”.
What then was the meaning of that choice? Did it make “the vassalage of Scotland an essential part of the public law of the isle of Britain”? The word “vassalage” no one would insist upon; but may we not also demur to the expression “the public law of the isle of Britain” at this period of its history? Where is there a trace in that age of such a refined juristic conception? Is not everything in the relation between the races and kingdoms of Britain vague, ill-defined, anarchic? The Danes make a frith and break it; the West Saxons establish some kind of supremacy over the Mercians; Edward’s personal rule is advanced as far as the Humber; he becomes thereby undoubtedly the most powerful man in Britain; Scots, Northumbrians and Britons of Strathclyde take note of the fact and desire to become allies—we may safely say subject-allies—of so mighty a prince, whom they accordingly take “as father and as lord”. That is all that has yet happened. There was something here which on the one hand, as the current of the age swept on towards feudalism, might have been developed into lordship and vassalage, or, on the other, might have utterly disappeared. In the next reign the very districts which have thus acknowledged the superiority of Edward are found fighting against his son. Under such a weak king as Ethelred the germ involved in the transaction of 921 must have disappeared altogether. No one can suppose that the Redeless King, who could not defend his own throne against the attacks of the Danes, was in any sense “father and lord” of Scotland. Thus the question, which is academic to us now, was or should have been equally academic in the thirteenth century. Whatever other grounds Edward I. might have for claiming high-lordship over Scotland, the dead and buried rights or duties or courtesies of 921 ought not to have been imported into the controversy.
Shortly after the events last described, at the end of 924 or the beginning of 925, King Edward died at Farndon[162] in Mercia. Only sixteen days after his death his son Elfweard died also, and father and son were both buried in the New Minster at Winchester. Edward, though one of the noblest of his race, was a man much less richly endowed with intellectual gifts than his father. We cease to hear of works undertaken for the instruction of his subjects, and the great Chronicle begins to languish in his reign. His character also seems to lack some of the beauty of his father’s; one can hardly imagine Alfred dealing with Ethelwald or with Elfwyn exactly in the same manner as his son. But he was essentially a soldier, probably a strict disciplinarian, and he, with the help of that Amazon, his sister, carried strongly and steadily forward the great work which their father had begun, the recovery of England for the English.
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Athelstan, who now succeeded to the throne, and who reigned, probably, from 924 to 940, was much the eldest of the remaining sons of Edward. The others were but children, while he was thirty years of age at his father’s death. Although he cannot have been more than six years old when Alfred died, we are told that his comely face and winning ways so endeared him to his grandfather that the latter made him “a premature soldier,” robing him in a scarlet mantle and girding him with a little sword, golden-scabbarded, and hung round his neck by a jewelled baldric. Moreover, Alfred is said to have prayed that the royal child might one day have a prosperous reign. It is not very easy to reconcile these stories with the fact, alleged by William of Malmesbury, that the stain of illegitimacy rested on his birth. The same authority tells us that he was the son of Egwinna, a noble lady, and then in another place describes her as the daughter of a shepherd, marked out by a dream for high destiny, and introduced to Edward by his old nurse, at whose cottage he was visiting. It is difficult entirely to reject the statement that there was something irregular about Athelstan’s birth which caused difficulties about his accession even in that age, not fastidious about the strict principles of legitimacy. There is also something slightly suspicious about the emphasis which the chroniclers lay on the premature death of his half-brother, Elfweard, as if, had that event not occurred, he would have been at least a partner in the throne, if not its sole occupant. We need not, perhaps, greatly concern ourselves with William of Malmesbury’s story of a certain Alfred, the rival of Athelstan, who opposed his elevation to the throne on the ground of his illegitimacy, went to Rome to state his case before the Pope and died in the act of taking an oath, presumably a false oath, in its support. All this, though it raises a suspicion that for some reason or other the accession of Athelstan was not wholly unopposed, is too doubtful and legendary to be made the ground-work of serious history. We can only say that Athelstan’s day was a glorious one, if there were some clouds which hung round its sunrise. It should, perhaps, also be mentioned that Athelstan when a boy had been entrusted by his grandfather to the care of Ethelred and Ethelfled, and seems before his accession to the West Saxon throne to have been specially connected with Mercia.