[229] The Saxons, as before hinted, were long distinguished from other nations for their piratical propensities, and predatory adventures, as well as for the success that generally attended their favourite operations. It was no wonder, therefore, if their neighbours would by degrees become attached to similar pursuits: and that it did so happen is undeniable. “In the ninth century (says a respectable historian) it was an established custom in the North, that all the sons of kings except the eldest, should be furnished with ships properly equipped, in order to carry on the dangerous, but not dishonourable profession of piracy.”—So reputable was the pursuit, that parents were even anxious to compel their children into that desperate and detestable occupation. By an extraordinary enthusiasm for which, they would not suffer their children to inherit the wealth which they had gained by it. It was their practice to command their gold, silver, and other property to be buried with them, [see Turner’s History of the Anglo Saxons, and Edinburgh Review No. 6. p. 368]—Here it may not be improper to observe, that what determined the Saxons to piratical enterprises was a most daring, singular, and memorable achievement of a numerous body of their neighbours and allies the Francs, whom the emperor Probus had transported from their own country, on the borders of the Rhine, to the distant shores of the Euxine, with a view of weakening the strength of that warlike nation, which was so very formidable to the neighbouring Roman provinces. These exiles, though removed to a country not inferior to their own, could not bear the idea of seeing their native land no more. There is what may be called a law of nature, which attaches us to the region where we first drew our breath, or spent our childish and youthful days, and which makes it often most painful to think of being for ever separated from it. So it seems to have been with those exiled Francs. Unable to bear the thought of a perpetual separation from their kindred and native country, they seized the earliest opportunity of abandoning their appointed settlement, and regaining what appeared to them the sweetest blessings of life. “They possessed themselves of many ships, and formed the astonishing plan of sailing back to the Rhine. Who were their pilots, or how they conceived, on their untutored minds, the possibility of a project so intricate, and, for such barbarians, so sublime, has not been revealed to us. Its novelty and magnanimity ensured it success. They ravaged Asia and Greece; not for safety merely, but revenge and plunder were also their objects. Landing in Sicily, they attacked and ravaged Syracuse with great slaughter. They carried their triumphant hostility to several districts of Africa, and sailing adventurously to Europe, they concluded their insulting and prosperous voyage by reaching in safety their native shores.”—This amazing enterprise discovered to them and their neighbours, that from the Roman colonies a rich harvest of spoil might be gleaned by those who would seek for it at sea. They had desolated every province almost with impunity; they had plunder to display, which must have fired the avarice of every needy spectator; they had acquired skill, which they who joined them might soon inherit; and perhaps the same adventurers, embarking again with new followers, evinced by fresh booty the practicability of similar attempts.—The Saxons, then inhabiting the parts about the Elbe and Heiligoland, are supposed to be among the first to emulate the exploits of the returned exiles.—Thus originated that system of piracy by which the northern nations were so long distinguished, and for which the Saxons were for many ages deservedly infamous. They became by degrees so powerful and formidable by sea, like the modern English, that some of the competitors for the Roman imperial dignity actually formed alliances with them, in order to insure their own success.—Like ourselves, and perhaps with equal justice, they seemed to aim at the sovereignty of the ocean: but among all their deeds of infamy, it is doubtful if any one of them ever exceeded in baseness and atrocity our own late memorable expedition to Copenhagen, though conducted by such as made pretension even to piety and evangelism, which indeed but rendered it the more detestable.—In vain we look to Algiers and Tunis for more flagitious or fouler deeds. [See Hellfried’s Outlines of a Political survey of the English Attack on Denmark—and for an account of the expedition of the Francs, and the Saxon and northern piracies, see Turner, as before.]
[231] Gildas Epistle. § xxiii.
[232] Henry the Lion, the prime actor in these brutal proceedings, was another time affronted by the inhabitants of Bardewic, one of the largest cities of Germany, for which he stormed it, and, except nine churches, left not one stone on another. No wonder that he is said to have been universally dreaded. He afterward quarrelled with the emperor Frederic Barbarossa, but there he was overmatched, and expelled from Germany. He then took refuge with his wife Matilda, at the court of our Henry II, his father-in-law. He was afterward restored to his hereditary domains only, Brunswick and Lunenburgh, to which august and illustrious house he belonged. [Nugent—Petit Andrews.]
[233] See Nugent’s Hist. of Vandalia: also Monthly Review 35. 174.
[234a] Gildas, as before, xxiv, xxv.
[234b] They are mentioned in Domesday, and by many of our topographical writers, without attempting to account for their origin. Their condition seemed as abject as that of our modern West India Negroes. We seldom hear of them after the bloody contest between the rival houses of York and Lancaster, which proved to them, it seems, a most beneficial contest, as it occasioned their emancipation, in order the more easily to recruit the contending armies. As the lust of Henry VIII. proved favourable to the success of the reformation, so the ambition of those rival houses, proved, it seems, no less so to the manumission of these poor slaves.
[236] That this country, in the time of the Romans, contained many populous, flourishing, and well-built towns, is allowed on all hands; and that they were mostly overthrown and destroyed by the invading Saxons, is confirmed by the testimony of Gildas; it may therefore very naturally be concluded, that the original Lynn was involved in the common fate of its neighbours.—See Gildas, No. xxiv.
[238a] Parkin, pp. 69. 115.
[238b] William of Newburgh.—Gibson’s Camden—Parkin 116.
[239a] Parkin, 237.