%^v
HISTOEY OF ENGLAND
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE DEATH OF QUEEN VICTORIA
BY
BENJAMIN TERRY, Ph.D.
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
CHICAGO SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY
1901
COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY
PRESS OF
THE HENRY O. SHEPARD CO,
CHICAGO,
PREFACE
It is the purpose of this book to present in a simple and con- nected story the record of the founding, unfolding, and expansion of English nationality. In covering so vast a field an author must necessarily depend largely upon the work of others; yet in select- ing and organizing material, and in presenting well-worn themes from new points of view he may reasonably be expected to show some originality. He may also be expected to present with accuracy and simplicity the ordinary body of technical material which reader or student naturally looks for in a text-book on Eng- lish History. He ought also to present this material supported by such a body of narrative as shall impart some life to events described, so that the institutions of a people shall appear not as mere abstractions but as human things, and the great personages of their history not as the characters of an algebraic formula but as actual men and women. This, in a word, has been the aim of the present work. That it has not been attained in many respects, no one can be more conscious than the author himself. Only one who has gone through the labor entailed by such a task can appre- ciate the difficulty of attaining even ordinary accuracy in the state- ment of simple fact, to say nothing of properly balancing action and motive, or of placing events always in their proper proportions.
In general, the plan of the book has been to weave in with a thread of political narrative some account of the constitutional and social development of the English people. In carrying out this plan conventional proportions have been sacrificed somewhat. Less space has been given to the petty squabbles of modern poli- ticians and the mere twaddle of court gossip but more to the development of early institutions ; less to the intricate processes of modern diplomacy, but more to Alfred and William I. and Henry II. and Edward I. The wars of Great Britain with
iii
IV PREFACE
Afghans or Zulus or Chinese have been barely mentioned, but an entire chapter has been given to the Norman reduction of Eng- land. In order, also, that each chapter may present a distinct movement as a whole, the familiar arrangement by reigns has been abandoned for an arrangement by topics.
No attempt has been made to give a bibliography or even a complete body of notes. The few references which appear as footnotes are designed simply to show reader or student, who may not have the command of a large library, where he may easily reach a few of the most important authorities or sources. Every school library, however humble, should place within reach of its students such standard works as those connected with the names of Freeman, Greene, Ramsay, Stubbs, Taswell-Langmead, Nor- gate, Lingard, Round, Cunningham, Seebohm, and Gardiner, or such collections of sources as those connected with the names of Stubbs, Gee and Hardy, Prothero, and Gardiner. The English Historical Review, also, will be found to be a mine of wealth to both student and teacher, and a complete file may still be easily obtained for a very moderate outlay. The Epoch Series will also be found invaluable in a small library. References have been given to these works rather than to the more formidable collections which are beyond the reach of most students, in the hope that the references will be actually used and thus prove of some practical value in the more extended study of important movements. Where time per- mits, such documents as Magna Charta, The Bill of Rights, The Act of Union, The Bill of Union, and the several Reform Bills of the nineteenth century should be carefully read and analyzed.
In preparing the work I have levied heavily upon my old stu- dents, my colleagues of the Department of History in the Univer- sity of Chicago, and upon the members of my own family. Special credit is due to Dr. James F. Baldwin of Vassar College who has put his extensive knowledge of the English Feudal Period at my service by gathering for me the material upon the basis of which I have prepared the text; he has also read the finished MS. of this part of the work and made many valuable criticisms and sug- gestions from which I have been glad to profit. For a similar service in the preparation of the MS. upon the period of the
PREFACE V
Tudors and the Stuarts I am indebted to my colleague, Mr. Ralph C. H. Catterall, and upon the Hanoverian period to Professor Charles Truman Wyckoff of the Bradley Polytechnic Institute. I am greatly indebted, also, to my colleague, Dr. J. W. Thompson for assistance in reading the proof of the maps and for sugges- tions which have added greatly to their value; also to the un- wearied service of Miss Priscilla Grace Gilbert of Chicago in verifying quotations, the spelling of proper names, the correct- ness of dates, and in preparing the MS. for the printer. I wish also to mention the patient service and kindly interest of my colleague Professor George S. Goodspeed of the University of Chicago, and of my father, Mr. J. C. Terry of St. Paul, Minnesota, in reading the proof of the entire work.
The University of Chicago, August 1, 1901.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface ,,....iii
List of Maps . ,....xi
List of Tables ............ xii
PART I— TEUTONIC ENGLAND The Era of National Foundation
From Earliest Times to 1042
CHAPTER
I. Introduction — Britain before the coming of the Teutons 1
II. The Teutonic Settlement of Britain 18
III. The Rival Confederacies of Teutonic Britain, and the Found-
ing of the National Church 32
IV. The Danish Wars — Alfred the Great and the Founding of the
English Kingdom 57
V. The Reconquest of the Danelagh and the Expansion of the English Kingdom under the Great Kings of the House of
Alfred 78
VI. The Days of Dunstan; the Early English Kingdom passes
Meridian 93
VII. The Decline of the Early English Kingdom; the Era of
Danish Kings 106
PART II— FEUDAL ENGLAND The Era of National Organization
From 1042 to 1297
I. The Shadow of the Norman 125
II. The Conquest of England 145
III. The Norman Reorganization of the Kingdom and the Intro- duction of Feudalism 167
vii
Vlll CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
IV. The Organization of the Kingdom Continued — The English
Conquest of Normandy 184
V. Feudal Reaction and the Reconstitution of the Kingdom. 202
VI. The Growth of Popular Rights and the Loss of the Continental
Possessions of the Angevins 230
VII. The Great Charter 249
VIII. The Struggle for the Charter 266
IX. The Chartered Confirmed 294
PART III— NATIONAL ENGLAND
The Era of National Awakening
book i — social awakening
From 1297 to 1485
I. The New Era; Edward I. and the Beginning of the Wars of Foreign Conquest — The Struggle of the Scots for
Independence.. 317
II. The Barons and the Royal Favorites — The Independence of
Scotland Established 334
III. Edward III. and the Opening of the Hundred Years' War 350
IV. The Decline of Edward III. — Second Stage of Hundred Years'
War 381
V. The Peasant Revolt — The Attack of the King upon the
Constitution 403
VI. The Constitutional Kings of the House of Lancaster — The
Third Stage of the Hundred Years' War 427
VII. The Last Stage of the Hundred Years' War— The Rivalry of
Lancaster and York 450
VIII. The Fall of York and the Close of the Dynastic Struggle 474
BOOK II — RELIGIOUS REFORMATION
From 1485 to 1603
I. The Restoration of the Monarchy 494
II. The Monarchy Supreme — The Administration of Wolsey 512
III. The Ecclesiastical Revolt of England 528
IV. The Progress of the Reform 548
V. The Catholic Reaction 571
VI. Elizabeth; the Reform Established 587
VII Elizabeth; The Duel with Spain 606
CONTENTS IX
BOOK III — POLITICAL REVOLUTION
From loo:i to last)
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Breach Between King and Commons , 618
II. The Era of Arbitrary Government 647
III. The Long Parliament and the Civil War.. 609
IV. The Parliament and the Army 697
V. Cromwell and the Protectorate .... 722
VI. The Stuart Restoration . ... 742
VII. The Birth of the Whig Party ,.... 760
VIII. The Whig Revolution 782
PART IV— IMPERIAL ENGLAND The Era op National Expansion
From 1089 to the Close of the 19th Century
I. The Beginning of Party Rule in England and the Founding of
British Foreign Policy 805
II. The Completion of the Work of the Revolution 836
III. Walpoleand the First Era of Whig Rule 861
IV. The Pelhams and Pitt— The Ocean Empire Secured 885
V. George III. — The First Period of Tory Rule and the Loss of
the American Colonies 911
VI. The Second Period of Tory Rule and the French Revolution... 941
VII. The Eastern Question and the First Era of Reform 970
VIII. Peel and the Dissolution of the Old Parties — The Crimean
War — Palmerston and British Foreign Policy 1009
IX. The Rise of the New Democracy — Gladstone and the Second
Era of Reform , 1037
Index 1070
LIST OF MAPS
PAGE
Teutonic Britain about 600 36
Britain about 792 52
Partition of England by Treaty of Wedmore 67
England: Later Expansion of Wessex 80
The Great Earldoms 118
England: 1066-1068 .*. 145
England and Scotland: 1066-1328 184
The Angevin Dominions 208
Battle of Bannockburn 338
Campaigns of Hundred Years' War 350
Battle of Crecy 365
Battle of Poitiers 377
Parts of France held by England after Treaty of Troyes 380
France by Treaty of Bretigny 380
General Map of Hundred Years' War 444
Field of Agincourt 446
The Wars of the Roses 467
England during Tudor Period 528
Battle of Edgehill 684
England during Civil Wars and Later Stuart Period 686
Battle of Marston Moor 689
Battle of Naseby 694
Ireland during Civil Wars and Later Stuart Period 710
Scotland during Civil Wars and Later Stuart Period 712
Battle of Punbar 714
Europe: 1713-14 836
Battle of Blenheim or Hochstadt 810
Battle of Ramillies 844
Spanish Netherlands 850
Europe: 1789 _ 950
Europe: 1812 970
Peninsular Campaigns of Wellesley 969
Battle of Waterloo.... 973
India 1028
South Africa 1055
LIST OF TABLES
PAGE
The Family op Alfred 57
Rival English and Danish Royal Families 106
The Dukes of Normandy. Early Connection with the Eng- lish Line 125
Contemporaries of Edward the Confessor and William 1 166
The Family of the Conqueror 167
Families of Blois and Boulogne 202
Contemporaries of later Norman and Early Angevin Kings.. 229
Family of Henry II 230
Family of John Lackland 266
Prominent Contemporaries of the Era of the Charter 293
The English Constitution from the 11th to the 14th Century 316
The Disputed Succession to the Scottish Throne 317
Contemporaries of Edward 1 333
The House of Lancaster 334
The Valois Succession 350
The Uncles of Edward III 351
The Breton Succession 361
Family of Edward III 381
Contemporaries of Edward III 402
The House of Lancaster 427
The Descent of the Rival House of York 450
The Beauforts 474
The Woodvilles ; 478
The Younger Branch of the Nevilles — The De la Poles 494
Prominent Characters of the Fifteenth Century 511
Royal Descent of the Staffords 512
The Howards 548
The Stuart Succession 587
Prominent Contemporaries of the Later Tudors 605
Contemporaries of the Early Stuarts 696
The Rival Lines of Stuart 805
Contemporaries of the Later Stuarts 835
Claimants to the Spanish Succession 836
Descent of the House of Hanover 861
Prominent British Statesmen of Modern Times Who Have
Entered the Peerage 1069
xii
THE
HISTORY OF ENGLAND
PART I— TEUTONIC ENGLAND THE ERA OF NATIONAL FOUNDATION
FROM EARLIEST TIMES TO 1042
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION BRITAIN BEFORE THE COMING OF THE TEUTONS
The entire area of the British Islands, roughly estimated, is about one hundred and twenty thousand square miles. Of this,
England occupies less than one-half, about fifty-eight hmiJof1 thousand square miles; not a very large country as "reatrwss modern states go. And yet, what has been lacking in
size, has been more than made up by physical conditions, the most favorable to vigorous and prosperous national life. An insular position, midway in the north temperate zone, provides a climate tempered, yet invigorated by ocean breezes, and sup- plying that most urgent of agricultural needs, an abundant and regular rainfall. The soil is diversified with mountain, river, and lowland; and under intelligent tillage, is generally capable of great fertility. To resources of soil and favorable climatic conditions, is also to be added a vast wealth in minerals, by no means the least considerable of the national assets. Above all, and of the greatest political importance, the continuous
1
2 EARLY BRITAIN
boundary of ocean and channel, by protecting the people from foreign interference, has afforded opportunity for the develop- ment of unique political and social institutions, the normal unfolding of a healthy national life. The long seaboard, more- over, set with numerous and commodious harbors, has naturally suggested commerce and naval enterprise; offered a ready outlet for a population straitened by inflexible natural boundaries, but peculiarly energetic and adventure loving; and inspired those vast schemes of colonization, which have resulted in the founding of a 'Greater Britain beyond the seas.
The population of the British Islands represents in about equal proportions the two great branches of the Aryan race, who have
taken possession of central and western Europe, — the So/Ta?" Celts and the Teut<>ns- To tne first belong the Scots, SSSto the Welsh, the Irish, and the Manx; to the second the
English. The Celts, who were the first to come, found another race in occupation before them; these they did not exterminate, but absorbed. The Teutons in turn over- whelmed the Celts, and while they probably expelled them entirely from the eastern parts of the island, in the west and the north, Celt and Teuton rapidly blended, until to-day they so shade into each other that it is difficult to tell where Celtic Britain begins, or Teutonic Britain leaves off. Other infusions of foreign blood from Denmark and Normandy, from Holland and France, have since been received and lost in the larger population. Hence the population of the British Islands to-day is the result, partly, of a layer of population upon population, of race upon race ; and partly of the fitting of population to population, like the pieces of a mosaic, yet so skillfully set, that the seams of division are lost, and colors the most violent in contrast shade into each other imperceptibly.
The history of the people of the British Islands, therefore, begins far back beyond the Teutonic migration, when the first of
these populations appeared. Then a huge peninsula B)Stnfl °* occupied the place of the present islands, and stretched
away from the continent, far into the northern ocean. Its vast areas of woodland and marsh, broken here and there by open country, afforded a home for the bison and the mammoth,
EARLIEST INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN 3
the reindeer and the wolf, and many other creatures, fierce and strange, which have long since disappeared. A people who are
represented to-day by the Esquimaux, fished along, the Paleolithic sedgy rivers, or tracked the wild beasts to their lairs
among the uplands. They are known to scientists as Paleolithic or Old Stone men. Of these, two races have been distinguished. The oldest or first comers are called the River Drift men; the second comers, the Cave men. They represent the rudest form of human life. They made tools of flint which the Eiver Drift men used without handles. They also protected their bodies from the extremes of the weather, much more violent then than now, with garments made of skins, rudely stitched together with the tendons of wild beasts. Though barbarians of the lowest type, they had some artistic sense, and attempted to ornament their weapons with rude imitations of the creatures which they were accustomed to slay in the chase. Yet they had no domestic animals; knew nothing of spinning, or weaving; and took no care of their dead. Existence must have been hard and precarious at best, affording little to develop the nobler instincts of human nature.
Then untold centuries passed away; the great peninsula was severed from the mainland, and cut up into the group of islands
which we know to-day; a climate better suited to
The ... .
Neolithic primitive life also succeeded. The earlier races of men, the Old Stone men, or Paleolithic men, disap- peared ; and a new race, the Neolithic, or New Stone men, suc- ceeded them. These people came from the southeast, and must have known something of sea craft. They brought with them over the narrow seas the domestic animals now so familiar, — the dog and the sheep, the ox, the goat, and the hog. They knew some- thing about spinning and weaving; and reverently laid away their dead in long chambers, built of flat stones, over which they heaped pear-shaped mounds of earth. These mounds are still to be seen in parts of the British Islands, and are known as long bar- roivs. From remains found in these barrows, we learn something of the appearance of the New Stone men; they were somewhat shorter than modern Europeans, with swarthy complexions, black curly hair, and, probably, dark eyes. The skulls, seen from
4 EARLY BRITAIN
above, were oval ; the faces, also oval ; chins small, foreheads low, and cheek bones not prominent. Kindred peoples, commonly distinguished from later Neolithic men as Iberians or Ivernians, extended over all western and southern Europe. They dwelt among the Swiss lakes, the Lake Dwellers; they were found upon the plains of Italy and in the mountains of ancient Etruria. Within historic times they appear in the Iberians of Spain and the modern Basques of the Pyrenees. Their blood is repre- sented to-day, probably, in most of the populations of western Europe.
How long these men of the long barrow and the oval skull, the first Neolithic men, remained in undisputed possession of their
island home is not known. But sometime, perhaps The Celts. ■
twenty centuries before the beginning of the Chris- tian era, another people, also in the Neolithic stage, entered Europe, and slowly drifting westward, everywhere displaced the Iberians, breaking up their settlements, and either exterminating the inhabitants or absorbing them. These people were the Celts, the first great historic people of western Europe. They repre- sented a new race — the Aryan, now for the first time seen upon European soil. In marked contrast with the Iberians, the new- comers were tall and muscular, with fair skin, yellow hair, and fierce blue eyes. Their skulls were round, foreheads high and broad, and cheek bones prominent. They treated their dead with reverent care ; but covered the grave with a round or bell-shaped barrow. Later, when bronze had begun to take the place of stone, they burned their dead.
About the seventh or eighth century before the Christian era, these people had completed the conquest of Gaul, and were
beginning to press into Britain. They did not come
The Celtic nor j
migration to all at once, but in successive waves of population, each people pushing their predecessors on before them, to be crowded forward in turn by others who came after. In Caesar's day the last of these migrations had been completed; but so recently, that the last comers still kept up a close connection with their kindred of northern Gaul. During this long period the Celts also were passing through a very important transition. The
THE CELTS 5
first to come had used stone weapons, similar to those of the Iberians ; but the later comers had learned the secret of harden- ing copper with tin. They knew how to make huge bronze swords, and to protect their bodies with bronze armor and bronze shields. They had also learned to use the chariot in war, somewhat after the manner of the Greek nations of the Mediterranean. They must have been very formidable opponents, even to those of their own people who were already in Britain, and who now saw themselves despoiled of their choicest fields and finest hunting grounds.
"While many such waves of Celtic population broke upon the British Islands during this period, they represented only two
divisions of the race, the Goidels or Gaels, and the Bm>mand Britons. The Gaels are represented to-day by the
people of Ireland and the Scotch Highlands ; the Brit- ons, by the Welsh. It is thought, too, that strains of the old Iberian blood may be detected in the short stature, black hair, and dark eyes which prevail in certain parts of Ireland and Scot- land. A map of the British Islands at the close of the Celtic migration would show in the hands of the Britons, middle and southern Britain from the Firth of Forth to the Channel and about one-half of Wales ; in the hands of the Goidels the modern Cornwall, southern Wales, with Anglesey and the adjoining penin- sula, the Scotch Highlands, Man, and Ireland.
The Celts were an exceedingly interesting people, and the ardent researches of antiquarians have restored many of their
customs. They understood agriculture, but their chief customs wealth consisted in cattle. They soon discovered the
mineral resources of their new home, for which, espe- cially the tin, they found a ready market among the peoples of the Mediterranean. Along the channels of this ancient commerce,
the gold and silver coins of the Greek cities of the Coinage.
south found their way into Britain, and the British Celts
soon began to imitate them on their own account. Many of these imitations have been found, struck long before the era of Roman occupation, and bear no slight testimony to the wealth and intelli- gence of the people who used them, the more remarkable when we
6 EARLY BRITAIN
remember that "Saxon England practically never had a gold coin- age, and that even Norman England never saw a gold coin struck until the year 1257." l
The Celts had kings or tribal chieftains; but they seem to have been unable to attain any permanent political union. Like Gaul in
the time of Caesar, or Ireland in the time of the Plan- Tribal kings. . . -
tagenets, Britain was cut up into scores of petty tribal
families, each family held together by a theoretical kinship to a tribal chief. There were laws and interpreters of laws ; but beyond the tribal family there was no judicial machinery by which inter- tribal quarrels might be adjusted, or offenses might be punished. Hence the tribal chieftains were ever quarreling among themselves, and never able to secure a lasting peace.
Another institution peculiar to the Celts was the order of
Druids, a body of men of learning, who were held in great honor,
and were exempt from military service and taxation.
TJic Dvtiid/8
They were the repositories of the learning of the age, which they received as oral traditions in a long and arduous tutelage. Like most primitive peoples, the Celts offered human sacrifices to their gods, and the Druids officiated in these grim rites. The famous Stonehenge, the remains of which are still to be seen in the great Salisbury plain, is generally thought to be a monument of such ancient British worship. Beside their sacerdotal functions, the Druids were also professional jurists; "they could give legal advice, enunciate the law, act as arbiters, but could not enforce a decree." They existed both in Gaul and Britain, and, if the later Irish brehons or judges may be regarded as representatives of an ancient order, probably in Ireland as well. The authentic record of Celtic Britain begins with the perma- nent Eoman occupation, about the middle of the first century of the
Christian era. Some three centuries earlier, however, o^pythms6 Pykneas> a savant of the Greek city of Marseilles, was sent about 325 out Dy the merchants of his city to open up new trade
relations with the people of the north coast of Europe. The expedition was successful, and much useful information was no doubt brought back to the Mediterranean cities ; but unfor-
1 Ramsay, Foundations of England, I, p. 33.
A. D. 43] CAESAR IN BRITAIN 7
tunately the original record left by the explorer has been lost, and all that remain are a few stray references or allusions on the pages
of his critics. When Caesar was in Gaul, he also made Britain, B.C. two expeditions to the island; but apparently he had no
serious thought of conquest at the time, and proposed little more than a reconnoissance in force. His first expedition was unmistakably a failure. On his second expedition he remained two months, advancing beyond the Thames, and breaking up a confederacy of tribes which the chieftain Cassivellaunus had brought together to resist him. He also exacted a promise of tribute; but there is no evidence that a tribute was ever collected or that any effort was made by the Eomans at this time to secure a permanent footing on the island. They were soon too busy with their own domestic affairs to give the distant Britons further attention, and left them to sink again into the oblivion which for so many centuries had hidden their island from the eyes of civilized Europe; nor was it until the reign of Claudius, ninety-seven years later, that the Romans seriously undertook to reduce the Britons, or to establish their power beyond the Channel. Here the recorded history of Britain begins.
A great king, Cunobelinus, the "Cymbeline" of Shakespeare, had closed a long and prosperous reign in eastern Britain. His
capital was at Camulodunum, among the Trinobantes, of™™ tne site of tbe modern Colchester. Both north and ^icmdius^ south, the neighboring tribes had yielded to his sway.
Upon his death, however, his kingdom broke up; the tribes were embroiled in a bloody civil war, and soon exiled chief- tains began to appear at the court of Claudius, only too ready to sign away questionable claims to paper thrones, in order to secure the aid of the emperor in avenging their wrongs. Claudius deter- mined to interfere upon pretext of the 'alliance and friendship' of Rome with these dispossessed chieftains. He was, moreover, sadly in need of a military reputation, while the chronic disorder of the island promised an easy conquest — much easier than the conquest of the incorrigible Germans, upon whom Augustus had spent the whole strength of the empire to little purpose.
Accordingly, in the summer of the year 43 A. D., Claudius sent
8 EARLY BRITAIN
forward an able general, Aulus Plautius, with an armament, number- ing, both legionaries and auxiliaries, about forty thousand men. The
Britons were able to make no effective resistance to this ^luhts9"68* force, and in a few weeks the lands of the Cantii, the Piautiws, region of the later Kent and Sussex, were overrun.
So glowing were the accounts returned of the achievements of Roman prowess, that Claudius ventured to expose his sacred person by appearing among the legionaries, and was present when the army crossed the Thames and took possession of Camulodunum. After sixteen days he returned to Home to enjoy his much-needed triumph, and to add a "Britannicus" to the calendar of Roman national heroes. Aulus Plautius remained behind to complete the work of conquest, and within four years the most of Roman Britain was secured. Colonists also flocked into the island, and in a short time the Romanizing of the new provinces was seriously under way.
Other governors followed Aulus Plautius. There was much hard fighting on the borders ; but for eighteen years the Roman advance
failed to pass the Severn, or the Humber. Within these ^Brittn^ lines> however, there were many important changes. 43?6in~ Londinium, the modern London, was rising rapidly to
be the "commercial center of the island." From the southern ports the inevitable Roman roads converged upon her gates. A great road led away to Glevum (Gloucester), the Roman outpost on the Severn. The famous Watling Street stretched away to Uriconium (Wroxeter), and Deva (Chester), the outpost of Rome in the northwest. Other highways, the Icknield Street, the Ermine Street, and the Fosse-way, then, or soon after, were laid down to connect the remote corners of the province with the interior and with each other. These roads were designed primarily for military purposes; but commerce was quick to take advantage of the easy and safe communication offered by solid roadbeds and continuous lines of depots and watch-stations ; and very soon, over the Roman road, as along the line of the modern railroad, the subtle influences of civilization began to pass outward in ever-increasing volume, from the older cities of the coast into the western and northern wilderness.
61]
BOADICEA
But how fared it with the conquered people during these eight- een years? The Celtic nature is not averse to civilization ; but it was the peculiar misfortune of the British Celts, as with of the * their kinsmen of Ireland, to come first in contact with civilization on its most unlovely side. Under such emperors as Claudius and Nero, Roman public service was at its worst. Officials were shamelessly corrupt, and did not hesitate to use their public authority to extort money from the defenseless provincials for their own uses. Troops of private speculators, brokers and money-lenders, had also followed the army, and "offered fatal facilities to needy chiefs." Conscriptions, taxation, and requisitions of all sorts, enforced by punishments which the Britons thought fit only for slaves, were the order of the day.
Such blind and stupid oppression of a brave people, who, though conquered, still retained in their hands unlimited power for mis- chief, could have but one result. In the year 61, the BoaalcL,6i. .Iceni, a vassal tribe who dwelt in the region of the pres- ent Norfolk, rose under the leadership of their widowed queen, the famous Boadicea, and, joined by the Trinobantes and other neighbors to the south, made a desperate effort to destroy the foreigners and break the Roman yoke. In the first tide of revolutionary ardor the insurrection bore all before it. The recently established colony at Camulodunum was overwhelmed. Veru- lamium, the modern St. Albans, and London were stormed and sacked. Frightful massacres attended these successes; seventy thousand persons, it was said, perished. The nearest legion, the Ninth, hastened to the scene of the revolt, but only to be swept away in the flood. Help, however, was not far off. Suetonius Paul- linus, the governor, was already returning from the distant Mona, the later Anglesey, where he had been engaged in an attempt upon the warlike Ordovices. He hastened his march in the hope of saving London; but when he found that he was too late, he fell back to a strong position somewhere on the line of the Thames, and there awaited the advance of the enemy. Boadicea led the charge in her war chariot ; her people supported her with great spirit, but their valor was no match for the dogged endurance of the
10 EARLY BRITAIN
Romans. After the first wild and furious onslaught, their energies were soon spent, and they were easily swept away before a well timed counter charge of the legionaries. Boadicea ended her life with poison. Southern Britain was not only conquered, but crushed ; and never again disputed the Roman supremacy. Yet the rising was not without its lesson to the Romans; and when the overthrow of the last of the Claudian Caesars and the subse- quent establishment of the Flavians, afforded an opportunity for a change in the policy of the provincial administration, the Britons were among the first to share the benefit of the new order. The governors who now came out to the province were good men, who sought to reconcile the people to the Roman rule by removing the causes of irritation.
Among the new governors was the famous Agricola, immor- talized by the pen of his son-in-law, the historian Tacitus. He
came to Britain in the year 78, and at once under- Bntaili!111 took the reduction of the wild tribes of the island, who
had not yet recognized the Roman rule. In three years, he had overrun the western highlands, the later Wales; then, turning north, he crossed the Humber and advanced to the line of the Clyde and the Forth. It took two years more to clear the lowlands, and in the summer of 84 he entered the mountain fast- nesses of the Caledonians, as the Picts were then called, the only people who still defied the authority of Rome in Britain. The difficulties which confronted the Romans in the unaccustomed mountain warfare were serious, but the Caledonians greatly sim- plified the task by massing their forces at a place known as Mons Graupius,1 where Agricola defeated them in a single pitched battle. If we may believe his biographer, Agricola left ten thousand of
their warriors dead upon the field. It was one of the circumnavi- most brilliant victories which Roman arms had won idmdi (>84h6 smce ^ne ^ay °f ^ne great Caesar. Yet it was impossible
to hold or fortify the Highlands, or secure the fruits of victory by permanent possession, and Agricola was forced to return to the province. The fleet, however, he sent forward to
1 It is now generally agreed that Mons Graupius is not to be identified with the Grampian Hills.
84] ROMAN CIVILIZATION 11
explore the northern coast. They turned the cape, and discovering the Orkneys, returned by way of the Irish Sea and the Channel to their winter station. They were the first representatives of civiliza- tion to circumnavigate the island.
Agricola, in the meantime, was meditating great things for his next campaign. He proposed, in short, the complete reduction, not
only of the people of the Highlands, but of the Irish Agrtcoia, Gaels as well. But the suspicious Domitian was already
jealous of the growing fame of his brilliant lieutenant, and determined to recall him, leaving three legions in the island, sufficient for a guard, but not sufficient to tempt another lieuten- ant to a career of conquest.
The Roman advance in Britain now ceased for a season. The government, in accordance with a policy, deliberately adopted,
sought henceforth not to make new conquests, but to mea^fmsive secnre the most practicable military frontier. The
northern Gaels kept up their old active hostility, and again and again swept into the Lowlands; the Brigantes, who dwelt south of the Tyne, also gave the unfortunate Ninth Legion which was stationed at York, much hard work; yet Rome persisted in her defensive policy. Hadrian, who was a thrifty, business-like emperor, decided that the conquests of Agricola north of the Tyne were not worth the trouble which it cost to hold them, and aban- doning all this region, withdrew south of the Tyne and the Sol way;
marking the new frontier by a permanent fortification, Antoninus, the remains of which are still to be seen.1 Antoninus
Pius, who succeeded Hadrian in 138, however, advanced again to the old frontier, connected the Clyde and the Forth with a second line of fortifications, and made the intervening country once more Roman territory. This practically ended the Roman advance.
One hundred and twenty-four years after the battle of feverZfin Mons Graupius, Septimius Severus once more took up m-m1' the aggressive policy of Agricola, and made a last
attempt to complete the conquest of the island. But
1 For description of the famous walls of Hadrian and his successors, see Mommsen, Tlie Provinces of the Roman Empire I, pp. 200-205; and Ramsay, Foundations of England I, pp. 75-79.
12 EARLY BRITAIN
he died before he had hardly begun his work. His successors were too deeply occupied at home with military mutinies and barbaric inroads, to burden themselves with the old quarrel with the High- land Gaels.
After the death of Septimius Severus, Roman historians have little to say of Britain for nearly a hundred years ; a fact which may be taken to indicate that the history of the country was unevent- ful, and hence peaceful. Agricola had begun to train the British chieftains in the use of Latin. He had also introduced the luxuries of the bath and the banquet. He gave liberally for the erection of
temples and courthouses, and introduced more durable virilization dwellings to take the place of the huts of clay and thatch.
Numerous remains of villas of the Roman type testify to the extent to which the Britons profited by these lessons. Some of these villas must have been of considerable magnificence for private dwellings. Agriculture remained the common flourishing industry of the island; in the time of Probus, Britain sent large shipments of grain to Italy. Additions were also made to the flora and fauna of the island; the chestnut and the walnut, the elm and the poplar, the rabbit and the fallow deer, are supposed to date from this era. Bede mentions mines of lead, iron, and coal; and in more recent times numerous discoveries of Roman pig iron testify to the actual output of these mines. Little, however, is known of other forms of native industry. The Romans also brought in many customs connected with the occupation of the soil, which scholars, in some quarters at least, are beginning to think survived the later Teutonic migration, and possibly formed no inconsiderable element in pre- paring the foundation of the later medieval social system in Britain, as well as in other parts of the west. It must not be for- gotten, however, that the Roman occupation of Britain was primarily a military occupation. A military purpose dictated
the laying down of the famous roads and the planting Naturc'of °^ R°man colonies. There is no evidence, moreover, ocJu'jcMm ^lat tnere ever existed in Britain any such municipal
life as existed in Gaul or Spain; or that beyond the four colonies, Camulodnnum (Colchester), Glevum (Gloucester), Eboracnm (York), and Lindum (Lincoln), any other cities received
800] PLANTING OF CHRISTIANITY 13
the municipal franchise. The towns which the Romans occupied, were really great camps or forts, and remained so down to the coming of the Teutons. The upper classes of the Britons, who were brought into direct contact with the Roman officials, spoke Latin, adopted Latin names, and aped Italian manners ; but outside of the Roman camp cities, and beyond the line of the Roman roads, the people remained still Celtic, Latin a foreign tongue, and the Roman a stranger.
First and last, therefore, the relations of the Romans to Britain were like those of the English to India — essentially a military
occupation of a foreign country inhabited by a subject Roman population — and with similar results, No new and
powerful nationality rose from the wreck of the old independent British states. Instead, even "the remembrance of past independence" faded away; the sense of nationality disap- peared; individuality was destroyed; all capacity for self-help was stifled in the languor and hopeless apathy, generated by a system of paternalism, which insisted upon doing everything for its dependents, and sternly frowned down every effort at self-help. Even at its best, the Roman system of government was burdensome and oppressive. In Britain it was never at its best. Though the better emperors checked the plundering instincts of their subordi- nates, the government itself was always the most grievous plun- derer, from whose exactions there was no redress. It was always needy, and even when it meant well, seemed never able to stay its hand.
One ray of light there is, however, which comes to us out of the deep gloom of these centuries of Roman military rule in Britain.
It comes, however, not from Rome or Roman institu- te of tions, but from the despised and forbidden religion of
the Christian. The time, and even the traditions, of the early conquests of Christianity in this Land's End of the ancient world, have been forgotten ; evidence positive that, as in the time of the apostles, the consolations of the Gospel here also came first to the humble poor. The progress of Christianity, how- ever, when once planted in Britain, must have been very rapid. When Tertullian wrote in the early third century, he could claim
14 EARLY BRITAIN
the Britons as a Christian people. In the year 314 the British church was recognized as a part of the great western brotherhood of churches, and was represented by three of her bishops at the Council of Aries.
If we know little of the founding of British Christianity, we know hardly more of the British church. In the year 359 its bishops were conspicuous for their poverty among the prosperous
ecclesiastics who gathered at the Council of Rimini, Churchtish an(^ were compelled to accept alms at the hand of the
emperor. With their poverty, the British churches seem also to have united a sturdy orthodoxy, and through all the controversies which distracted the wealthy eastern churches of this period, adhered loyally to the teachings of Athanasins.
Three noted names have come down to us from the British church — Pelagius, Ninian, and Patricius, the last, better known
as St. Patrick. But valuable as these lives are in namesof^ &*vmS us types of British Christianity, they reveal little church™11 °^ ^ne British church itself. Pelagius, the arch heretic,
lived and wrote in Italy and Palestine; Ninian and Patrick toiled among the Gaels of the north and west — the pioneer missionaries of Scotland and Ireland.
Of the political history of Britain, something more is known. When Diocletian and Constantine reorganized the empire, Britain
was constituted one of the six dioceses of the great izawmof Western Praefecture, and placed under its own vicar, a part of or vice prefect, with the seat of government at York.
The region south of Hadrian's Wall was further sub- divided into four provinces, the exact boundaries of which are not known. In general, however, these provinces lay as follows : Britan- nia Prima, south of the Thames; Britannia Secunda, west of the Severn ; Flavia Caesariensis, between the Thames and the Hum- ber; and Maxima Caesariensis, between the Humber and Hadrian's Wall. Later, the region within the walls was known as Valentia, and is sometimes, although improperly, designated as a province. Each province was governed by a praeses, or president, whose functions were entirely civil, and distinct from those of the three great military officials who directed the defense of the island. Of
294] EAllLY BARBARIAN INVADERS 15
these latter the Count of the Saxon shore commanded the army
which guarded the eastern coast from the Wash to the Isle of
Wight, cantoned in nine permanent coast camps. Some-
nmnauin times the littoral Count was assisted also by a fleet of
Aivit(T.iii
considerable strength. The famous Carausius was one of these counts, who by the support of his fleet was able to throw off his allegiance to the emperor and establish himself in Carausim Britain as a sort of pirate emperor, where he maintained 287-294. his sway for nearly eight years. His career is important
as the first hint of the possibilities of Britain as a base for a great naval power. The Duke of the two Britains commanded the legions stationed at Caerlepn, Chester, and York. A third officer was the Count of Britain, who seems to have been commander-in- chief.
The disposition of these forces was dictated by new dangers which began to threaten the existence of Roman Britain as
early as the third century. Bands of wild Scots, Gaels Barbaric who then dwelt on the east coast of Ireland, crossed
the Irish Sea, and uniting with other hordes of Gaels from the Highlands, the old Caledonians, descended upon the lands between the Clyde and the Severn, and after burning and The Scots ravaging the country, retired again with troops of andPicts. captives and herds of cattle. A still greater danger threatened the Roman Britons in the southeast. The successes of Probus had cut off the Franks and other neighboring con- federations from their long-accustomed predatory raids by land. The sea, however, still lay open, and along this "swan road of the water" small piratical fleets soon began to find their way
westward and descend upon the shores of Britain.
The Saxons, whose terrible name appears first upon Roman annals about the year 160, were the most troublesome of these marauders. In the third century they had extended over all the region between the lower Elbe and the land of the Franks, and began seriously to menace the coasts of Britain and northern Gaul.
During the long-continued helplessness of the period of the Barrack emperors, Britain suffered much from the robbers who
16 EARLY BRITAIN
thus swept down upon her from the northern mountains and the two seas. Carausius met the pirates on their own element, and during The fail of ^is eight years' reign once more gave the land peace. powefln ^e emperors of the House of Constantino continued Britain. his work, and for fifty years preserved the tranquillity of the country. But after this family of princes had passed away, with barbaric hordes marching and countermarching the plains of Moesia and Gaul and Italy, with revolting generals sup- ported by mutinous legions hatching into rival emperors, the legitimate emperors were no longer able to give thought to a remote outlying province like Britain. If an emperor honestly sought to protect his distant subjects, and sent out from his scanty legions at home a military force sufficient to help them, the chances were that the soldiers, taking advantage of their remoteness from the capital, would make an emperor of some favorite officer or provincial gover- nor, and force him to lead them back again, in order to tilt with the already distracted occupant of the throne. Emperor-making was far more profitable than fighting barbarians on the lonely heaths of the north. Between the years 383 and 407 this very thing happened twice ; when the entire British garrison crossed the Channel, and with their mushroom emperor plunged into the confusion of strife and intrigue which marked the collapse of Eoman authority in Gaul. The Picts and Scots and Saxons were also quick to take advantage of the defenseless condition of the Provincials, and from all sides began to pour into the country. A wild panic seized the people ; all who could, the most of the Eoman population and the wealthier class of the Britons, left the island and withdrew to the continent. The tillers of the soil, the slave and the serf, the poor, the artisans and mechanics only were left. All the conservative elements of society, the so-called "respectable elements," the men who made the laws and supported the courts, were gone. Civil authority dis- appeared ; the country rapidly reverted to barbarism and anarchy. A crop of guerrilla kings, the representatives of violence and dis- order, sprang up in the place of the lapsed civil order, plun- dering the people and warring upon each other whenever the barbarians afforded them a respite. The wail of the British provincials reached the ears of the feeble Honorius behind the
414] END OF ROMAN POWER 17
lagoons of Ravenna. But he had no more troops to send, and bade the Britons take care of themselves. Once again, when thirty years later the fame of the mighty Aetius reached the island, a second cry for help was sent out from this "Algiers of the ancient empire." 'The barbarians drive us back into the sea,' the people moaned; 'the sea drives us back upon the barbarians. We must die by the sword or drown; we have none to help us.' And so Britain drifted away from the nerveless hand that could no longer retain its grasp, and disappeared in the deep night of the fifth century.
CHAPTER II
THE TEUTONIC SETTLEMENT OF BEITAIN"
The first chapter of British history ends in the wild con- fusion which followed the departure of the Roman legionaries.
Of the next two centuries, known as the era of the change* in Anglo-Saxon conquest, few records have survived to thewim- T furnish a basis for the compilation of an authentic the Romans, history. Yet violent and far-reaching changes are in
progress, and when the curtain rises upon the second act of the drama the old stage setting has been entirely changed. Where were populous cities, or swelling grain fields, are now only dreary wastes of marsh and fen, or solemn forests of beech and oak. A new people of strange tongue, and uncouth manners, living the simple life of the wilderness, hunt along grass-grown Roman roads, or camp among the silent ruins of villa or temple. There are Britons still to be found in the western part of the island, who speak the Celtic tongue and live under the strange old Celtic laws, but the Roman Britons, with all that Rome had given them, have disappeared.
The new-comers were the so-called Anglo-Saxons, the ancestors of the present English people. They were Germans, of pure Teutonic
stock, and represented the second great wave of Aryan ExpmwUm10 population to break over western Europe. When Pytheas °Eur(mei<tern enterea' the northern seas this second group of Aryan
peoples had reached the Elbe and behind it were holding the entire southern Baltic basin ; but when Caesar began his career in Gaul, two hundred and seventy years later, they had long since passed the Elbe, and were crowding upon the Celtic populations on the west bank of the Rhine. The interposition of Rome and the establishment of the Rhine as the eastern boundary of her trans- alpine empire, at once checked the Germanic advance, but the crowding of populations upon the Rhine frontier did not cease,
18
150 ] EAHL1EST SETTLEMENTS OF GERMANS IN BRITAIN 19
and when at last, after five hundred years, the decline of Roman civilization made it impossible longer to hold the outer defenses of the empire, Teutonic hordes began again to stream across the boundary river and within a generation had overwhelmed all west- ern Europe, permanently establishing themselves among the ruins of tho great cities of the west and south.
The Teutons who settled in Britain belonged to a group of tribes who had long occupied lands on the lower Elbe and along
the Danish peninsula. Of these the Angles were known maiLm of to Tacitus ; and although the Saxons do not appear sai'otis""11 ky name until later, it is not unlikely that they were
represented among the peoples who figured in the ancient war of liberation when the Germans who dwelt between the Rhine and the Elbe rose against the generals of Augustus, and threw off the Roman yoke. Just when the Germans of the lower Elbe began to form permanent settlements in Brit- ain is not known; but the time apparently was much earlier
than that assigned by the traditional accounts of
First perma- mi
vent settle- the conquest. The eastern coasts of lower Britain
merit of the ,
Saxons. offered an easy approach to their shallow barks, and
it is not unlikely that even before the withdrawal of the Romans they had made a permanent lodgment upon the coast of modern Essex, the "Saxon Shore." New arrivals continued to swell the ranks of the first comers, and with the increasing feeble- ness of the defense steadily pushed their way westward, taking up land as they needed it, until at last they reached the neighborhood of London.
Soon after the settlement of the "Saxon Shore," other bands
also succeeded in making a lodgment on the southern shore of the
Thames mouth. According to later traditions these
7 he Jutes. iii i
The people belonged to the Jutes, a tribe dwelling on the
Kent, Danish peninsula, and came under two war chiefs or
about 450.
caldormen, Ilengist and Ilorsa, who had been invited
by the Britons to assist them against their old hereditary foes the
Picts. These Jutes proved to be very troublesome allies, and, like
their kindred on the north bank of the Thames, proceeded to take
land as they needed it, pushing south and west, forcing the south-
20 THE TEUTONIC SETTLEMENT OF BRITAIN
era Britons back upon London, and finally taking possession of the entire peninsula of the ancient Cantii. The name of the dispos- sessed Britons reappeared in the Cantwara, or men of Kent ; but the old Durovernum gave way to Cantwarabyriq (Can- waraandthe terbury). Other tribes of Jutes, represented m the Wight and later Wihtivara and Meanwara, continued along the
Hampshire. . ,
southern coast until they came to the sheltered waters about Portsmouth, where they took possession of the Isle of Wight and the mainland opposite, and extended their conquests over a large part of the modern county of Hampshire. The Saxons also seem to have found their way into the Channel at an early date, and, pushing into the rivers and estuaries which were at that time more numerous on these coasts than now, began a series of settle- ments south of the great forest of Anderida, and probably extended even west of the "Wihtwara.
The Britons of the south did not surrender their homes
graciously to these strangers. There are grim traditions of attacks
and counter attacks, of fierce battles, of whole cities
The first
period of massacred in the fury of storm, of a wave of fire which
surged across the island from sea to sea, nor ceased
its fury until it had bathed its flames in the western ocean ; then
followed a long period of truce, when the Germans retired to the
coast again and rested on their arms, while the Britons wasted
their strength and their resources in riotous living and civil brawls.
With the opening of the new century, the activities of the
Saxons began anew. Passing up the left bank of the Thames they
overran the regions occupied by the modern counties of
the middle Middlesex and Hertfordshire; then passing the Chil-
Thames. •
terns they added the modern Buckinghamshire, Oxford- shire, and Northamptonshire, and turning south crossed the Thames and began the conquest of Berkshire. This region west of the Chilterns, the middle Thames country, was the original land of the West Saxons, the "geographical complement" of the lands east of the Chilterns, which now by contrast began to be known as the land of the East Saxons.1
1 See English Historical Review, Oct. 1898, p. 671. Art. by Henry H. Ha worth, and also the reply by W. H. Stevenson in Review of Jan. 1899.
ANGLES IN THE NOKTH 21
When the Saxons began the conquest of the broad lowlands which to-day stretch away from the suburbs of London to the southwest, the modern Surrey, the "South Kingdom," is not known, but it is fair to suppose that this region, at least the parts north of the forest of Anderida, was conquered not by the Saxons who had settled on the southern coast, but by the bands who had overrun the adjacent country across the Thames. Possibly the conquest belongs to the later era when West Saxon and Cantwara met in deadly struggle for supremacy south of the Thames.
The beginnings of the Anglian settlements are as obscure as those of the Saxons. The Angles do not seem to have been very active until the sixth century, when coasting along the shores in the emt of the ancient Frisia in the track of the Saxons, and pass- ing by the Thames mouth their fleets first found shelter among the islands and estuaries on the coast of East Anglia, where two distinct settlements may be traced in the familiar Northfolk and Southfolk. The wild Fen country and the deep indentations of the Wash, however, afforded no such easy egress to the west as had invited the Saxons to the conquest of the Thames basin. Later comers, therefore, according to tradition coming in overwhelming numbers, and including 'first and last a great part of the nation of the Angles,1 passed on up the coast until they reached the broad mouth of the Humber. At this time the northern provinces of Roman Britain must have been in some such condition as northern Italy on the eve of the Lombard migra- tion. A century of Pictish inroads, followed by years of famine and pestilence, had left the land depopulated and desolate.3 No echoes of any great battles, no traditions of long and bitter strife, such as linger about the Saxon advance in the south, have ever reached us from this northern conquest. If any of the original
1 A part of the Angles were left behind to be finally merged in the Thuringians.
2 An official report of the Mayor of Santa Clara County in Cuba showed that in only three years, 1896, 1897, 1898, 80 per cent of the population had perished. Conceive this state of affairs lasting for a hundred years, and we have some idea of the condition of the northern part of the Roman provinces of Britain when the Angles came. And we may also under- stand why there was so little show of resistance.
22 THE TEUTONIC SETTLEMENT OF BRITAIN
population had survived the earlier Pictish inroads, they were too feeble to resist the overwhelming numbers of the new invaders. Two tribes, later known as Deirans and Bernicians, turned north and took possession of the lands between the Humber and the Firth of Forth. Other tribes turned south, and advancing along the basin of the Trent soon appeared far down in mid-Britain, leaving to the east, between the lower Trent and the Wash, the modern Lincolnshire, the Gainas and the Lindiswara. Still farther to the southeast, the Girwas found their way into the Fen country, while other Anglian communities took up their station about the later Leicester, where they appear as Middle Angles; others still, the South Angles, appeared among the hills of North- ampton, where they began to encroach upon the earlier settlements of the West Saxons. Other tribes worked their way out of the Trent basin to the west, where they appear as North Angles and West Angles.
It is perhaps to the era when the Angles were pushing rapidly
to the south that we are to ascribe the advance of the West Saxons
into the Severn country. Apparently they could not
ofthe hold their own against the increasing pressure of the
West Saxons.
Angles upon their northern borders, and began to seek a new extension of territory to the west and south, overrunning the later Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and eastern Somersetshire. It is probable also that at this time, or soon after, there occurred the direct southward advance of the West Saxons, crossing the lower Thames, expelling the Jutes of Kent from Surrey and Sussex, and conquering the kindred Meanwara of Hampshire, and the Wihtwara of Wight.
This last movement is associated by tradition with the name of Oeawlin, the first really authentic king of the WTest Saxons, and it is not improbable that the great part of these later Z™59on' conquests were carried on by him or his immediate pred- ecessors. It is also not unlikely that out of the mili- tary need of the hour there arose the first great confederation of Teutonic tribes in Britain. At one time Ceawlin appears at war with the young king Ethelbert of Kent, when he drives in the western outposts of the Cantwara in Surrey and Sussex. Again
577-603] ETHELFRID THE DEVASTATOR 23
he appears in the Isle of Wight, overthrowing the Wihtwara, pur- suing their kings through the country of the Meanwara, and adding their lands to his dominions; probably forcing the Jutes of Wight and Hampshire to join the West Saxon confederation. Again, he appears in the valley of the Severn, hunting the Britons out of the country, and in 577 winning the decisive victory of Deorham. The old cities of Bath, Gloucester, and Cirencester fell to the spoil of war, and their blackened ruins lay for centuries to tell of the furious valor of Ceawlin. The victory of Deorham gave the West Saxons the valley of the Severn, where the Hwiccas at once took possession and extended their settlements over Gloucestershire and Worcestershire.
While the West Saxons were thus drawing together under the inspiration of Ceawlin's leadership and preparing for the great The North- r^e whi°h they were *o P^aY iQ the ^ uture history of conmera- ^e ^s^an^' ^ne Angles north of the Humber, possibly (ton. under the pressure of the Scots upon their western bor-
der, were also learning to combine their strength for offensive and defensive war. These Scots were representatives of the old Irish Goidels, who some time in the fifth or sixth century had begun to cross in greater numbers to the opposite coasts of Argyle and
Strathclyde, and had swarmed over the western High- Ftrafhalde lan<is, subduing the old Picts, probably merging with
them and forming the basis of the later Highland popu- lation. They were no match, however, for the warlike lords of the lowlands. A generation after Ceawlin had united the West Saxon tribes of southern Britain, the Scot king Aidan led an army of Scots and Picts and Britons down into the lands of the Berni- cians. The recently confederated Berniciaus and Deirans advanced to meet them under their king, Ethelfrid. The battle was joined
at Dawstone near Carlisle. The Scots and their allies Dawshmc, were r0uted, and so great was the slaughter that for
more than a century the memory of the terrible ven- geance of Ethelfrid "The Devastator" was enough to deter the Scots from any further attempts upon the lands of the Bernicians. Ten years later Ethelfrid won a second victory over the western Britons under the walls of Chester. The city was taken and sacked,
24 THE TEUTONIC SETTLEMENT OF BRITAIN
and for three centuries lay in mournful ruins. The victory of Chester gave the Northumbrian Angles possession of all the lands between Leeds and the Irish Sea.
With these later victories of Ceawlin and Etbelfrid the era of
the Teutonic conquest and settlement of Britain ends. The
fertile lands of the old Roman provinces were now
End of era of securely in the possession of the invaders, abundant for
migration . *
ana conquest, all needs for many years to come. West Wales or Cornwall, North Wales or Wales proper, and Strath- clyde, separated from all land communication with each other, alone remained in the hands of the Celts. The Teutons had already begun to call them Welsh, or Strangers,1 and under this name the remnant of the once great people pass into modern his- tory. The memory of their last brave stand in defense of the inheritance of their fathers, when for once, but too late, they dropped their quarrels and united for the common defense, long lingered in the name of Kymry or Allies.
Thus, by the close of the sixth century, the Teutons had estab- lished themselves in Britain. It had taken them, however, two hundred years to accomplish what Roman legionaries oftheeifwd ^ac^ accomplished in four years. This was due not to Teutonic j^q stubborn resistance of the Britons, for the Britons
advance. '
had long since ceased to be capable of resistance, but wholly to the method of the Teutonic advance. The Germans had settled in Britain as they had settled on the Rhine when Caesar knew them, not under any common king, or in one compact horde, but in detached tribes or kindreds; each kindred or maegtli? mov- ing out for itself, as it needed more room, driving the skeleton British population on before it, taking what lands its present need demanded, and here settling as a kind of frontier colony and giv- ing its name to the surrounding region. Each colony was thus an independent state, — civitas,&s Caesar or Tacitus would call it; liv- ing under its own local laws and under the government of its own elective chieftains, or ealdormen, but ready to unite in loose con-
1 See Freeman in Encyclopedia Britannica, VIII, p. 269, for use of this word both in Britain and on the continent.
2 Bede uses the word of the Mercian tribes.
METHOD OF THE SETTLEMENT 25
federation with neighboring and similar communities, whenever threatened by common danger. They then selected some chief- tain, renowned in war or in council, who led the allied hosts to battle, and for the time exercised a regal authority. The West Saxon Ceawlin was such a war chief, certainly not the first, but probably the first to unite all the Saxon tribes west of the Chilterns under one leadership. It is significant, however, that such con- federations as those associated with the name of Ceawlin or Ethel- frid belong to the later period of the conquest, and mark its final stages. The great part of the territory was first abandoned by the Britons and then seized by the Teutons, not as conquerors, but as simple settlers ; not as a whole, but a fragment at a time as the needs of a new generation dictated.
A similar instance may be found in the series of movements by which the lands along the upper Rhine and the Danube were finally detached from the empire and became German territory. Here, in the rich valleys which now belong to the modern Baden and Wurtemberg, the old Alamannia, were once flourishing settlements of Roman colonists introduced from beyond the Rhine. During the third century there was frequent and severe fighting on this frontier. But long before the Germans had made a permanent lodgment the older population had begun to recede. For a long period there is no record of battles, or traditions of cities stormed or sacked ; and yet the recession of the older populations steadily continued, and the Teutonic population as steadily filled in behind them, swarming about the dwindling cities and effectually taking possession of the land clear to the Rhine and the Swiss Lakes; and yet so gradually withal, that no historian can tell just when this region ceased to be Roman, or began to be wholly German. The Marcomannic conquest of what is modern Bavaria is still more to the point. Here, as in the case of the Angles in north and mid Britain, the invaders, in overwhelming masses, poured into a coun- try already depopulated by centuries of anarchy, war, famine, and pestilence. The remnant population did not try to resist, but retired into the remote Alpine valleys, or shut themselves up in their few remaining cities, where, in time, by a steady process of infiltration, the survivors of the old population disappeared in the
26 THE TEUTONIC SETTLEMENT OF BRITAIN
new, assimilating to them in language, institutions, and physical appearance.
So, apparently, Britain also was won, not by a storm, followed by a deluge, as when the Goth swept into Italy, or the Vandal swept over Gaul and Spain; but rather, after the first fiery eruption into the Thames basin, described by Gildas, by a steady recession of the Celtic population, attended by a corresponding advance of the Germans. The new-comers were no such fiends incarnate as commonly represented, fired only by a wild frenzy for the shedding of blood, or bent only upon exterminating the original inhabitants; they were rather a race of herdsmen and farmers, and as long as they were not attacked themselves, or were driven by no pressure of expanding numbers to seek new lands, were for bar- barians, in the main, peaceably inclined. Hence long periods appar- ently passed, in which the new-comers remained quietly and peacefully within the last established borders. The meager Celtic population beyond these borders, without protection and not liking the rough ways of their neighbors, quietly and steadily withdrew, leaving an ever-widening belt of wilderness between them and the dreaded strangers. When a particular Teutonic settlement had outgrown its territories, a new swarm again moved out into the regions beyond, sometimes driving out the depleted Britons altogether, sometimes allowing them to remain in a servile relation, but more likely finding only a deserted wilderness. Then the same process went on again, the Britons steadily withdrawing as the Teutons advanced.
Where there were cities the stages of the process, perhaps, were somewhat different, but the results were virtually the same. Some- times the inhabitants stood at bay behind their walls, or within the lines of an old Eoman camp, and maintained themselves in the midst of surrounding Teutonic tribes. Sometimes, possibly in an attempt to dislodge the new settlers from the neighborhood, they drew down the wrath of the invaders, and in a short, quick action lost everything; the pitiless swords of the enemy exter- minating the inhabitants and leaving only a desolate heath to mark the spot where once had stood a British town. This could not have been the general experience, however, as the survival of so
EARLY ENGLISH INSTITUTIONS 27
many Roman town names at the end of this era indicates. It is more likely that as each city was cut off from all support from the neighboring country, its Celtic population dwindled, or, if recruited at all, was recruited from Teutonic elements which rapidly absorbed the remnant Celtic stock. It is to be remembered, however, that the Germans did not love the city, and much preferred the open country; hence it is more likely that if a city survived, it was only to be submitted to this process of dwindling, until little was left save the name and a pitiful cluster of habitations suitable for the needs of its present mongrel population, and sufficient to mark the ancient site and preserve the ancient name.
In the north the advance was more rapid than in the south, but there is no record of any great battles. More significant still,
during the whole early period, there is no trace of the Mwmce formation of any great confederations of Teutonic ^^ tribes, such as we might expect, had the Britons ever
been able to exert any military strength. Instead, we have on the part of the Germans the same advance in detached bands, each band taking up its station as an independent colony, where wood or watercourse or valley attracted them, as in the days of Tacitus. The advance was more rapid, because the Angles came in far greater numbers than the Saxons, and larger areas of land were needed at once. But there is no record of any concerted action on the part either of Celt or Teuton, until we reach the time of Ceawlin and Ethelfrid.
Of the ancient laws and institutions of the Teutonic tribes who entered Britain, directly, we know no more than we do of the _ events of the so-called conquest. Nothing, however, has
English yet been advanced to show that they differed materially
institutions
from the institutions of the Teutonic tribes who were known to Caesar and Tacitus. Monogamy was the rule: woman- hood was honored ; children were loved and cherished. Each tribe or kindred was a small state by itself, sufficient to all the needs of local government. The male members of the community, the free warriors, were both citizens and soldiers. They met under arms in an assembly, or folk-mote, to discuss matters of general impor- tance. In this capacity they were also a court to try serious
28 THE TEUTONIC SETTLEMENT OF BRITAIN
offenses against the customary laws of the tribe. Here, too, the young warrior was formally initiated by appropriate ceremonies into the company of free citizens. In this assembly also they elected the ealdormen, the principes of Tacitus,1 whose duty it was to make regular circuits through the settlements, appre- hending criminals and holding courts of justice. In this service they were attended by a body of select companions, the comitatus, who assisted in capturing and trying criminals and enforcing the laws. These companions, the gesiths, were bound by special oath to support their chief in the performance of his duties. They lived at his table, and for this the other members of the tribe brought their regular gifts ; thus recognizing the public nature of the service of the ealdorman and his companions and the common obligation of supporting them. In time of war the ealdorman with his following of gesiths formed the nucleus of the host. The several magistrates together formed a tribal council, the germ of the later national tvitenagemot. It was their custom to come together while the free warriors were gathering for the folkmote, as a sort of preliminary council to prepare the business which was to be submitted to the people. Of kings in the later sense, the early Germans of Britain had none, though the germ out of which the king subsequently developed is to be found in the common chieftain elected by several tribes on the eve of a general war. His powers, however, were only temporary, and when the war was ended his authority ceased, and the confederating tribes again fell apart, each pursuing its independent life as before.
Of the freemen there were two classes, eorls and ceorls. The eorl was a noble, but his nobility seems to have entitled him only to a precedence in rank. His life also was protected by of the a higher wergeld, the fine or indemnity which the mur-
derer or his family, paid to the family of his victim. The ceorl was the simple freeman, whose political liberty was attested by his right of meeting with his fellows for public business with arms in his hands. Chattel slavery as it existed among the Komans was never popular among the Germans. Servitude, how-
1 Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, I, p. 125.
CLASSES OF THE POPULATION 29
ever, was by no means uncommon, bnt it took a form of serfage, wherein a tenant and his heirs were bound to perform certain services for a master who was at the same time owner of the soil. Tacitus compares the position of the German slave to that of the Roman colouus, who in Tacitus' day was really a free tenant whoso home was protected by law, and whose right of marriage was recog- nized. We have no way of knowing what the relative proportion of the unfree was to the free until the time of the Domesday Survey; but then the organization of English society had become very complex compared with that of the primitive Teutonic tribes, and the servile condition itself had been differentiated into a series of degrees, or gradations, the distinctions of which are obscure. It is not unlikely that the numbers of the servile popula- tion were largely recruited from the ranks of the conquered Britons. Servitude was also frequently prescribed by the courts as a penalty for crime. It may be that in the more thickly populated parts of Britain, the south and west, where Teutonic occupation was more after the nature of a conquest, that the new population was superimposed upon an older servile population. It may be also that the members of this servile population were of German blood, and represented the results of earlier Roman conquests beyond the Rhine and the upper Danube, when whole nations were corralled and deported to distant parts of the empire and settled as coloni or tenant farmers. Thousands of these unwilling settlers had been introduced into Britain.
The civitas or tribal state was subdivided into judicial districts,
which seem at first to have had various names in different parts of
Teutonic Britain. For simplicity we may call this snb-
division the hundred, although the name, though known
on the continent, does not appear in the laws of England until the
time of Edgar. Undoubted traces of the institution
959 'in 5-
however, are to be found as early as the time of Tacitus, and it may be taken as one of the most characteristic features of the early Teutonic state. Here at regular intervals, every four weeks, as fixed by the laws of Edgar, the freemen of the district came together in the liundredgemot, constituting a court, in which civil suits were tried, or quarrels between neighbors were adjusted.
30 THE TEUTONIC SETTLEMENT OF BRITAIN
Below the hundred was the town or tun. The town consisted of a cluster of detached dwellings, each with its court or door- yard, stables, and outhouses. The adjacent lands also
The Tun. •?*.*. o
belonged to the town. Here the freeman possessed a shifting severalty in the arable land, and a share in the common use of meadow and woodland. The town also had. its popular assembly or tungemot. The tungemot does not seem to have been a civil court like the hundredgemot ; its functions were economic rather than judicial.
When the period of the Anglo-Saxon codes began, private owner- ship of land was already recognized ; yet, if the progress of Germanic
institutions on the continent be considered, we may Ownership believe that in Britain also the lands of each settlement
of Land.
were at first held by the freemen in common; but with the increase of population the exclusive right of individuals to par- ticular pieces of land was allowed. The first form of tenure how- ever was probably folk-land or land held by folk-right, distinguished later from book-land or land set apart by special charter or grant. The charter, however, suggests the influence of the priest, nor is it unlikely that the church is largely responsible, if not for the intro- duction, at least for the rapid extension of privileged ownership in land among the Teutons of Britain. If so, this is only one of the many ways, economic, social, and political in which Christianity affected profoundly the life of the new-comers.
Before the priest came, they were a simple people, knowing little of the arts of civilized life, but much of forest craft ; living
under their curious old laws of custom, yet far re- cw&mis* moved from the condition of the mere savage. They
had their traditions and war songs; but knew noth- ing of letters. They had also their conceptions of deity, but worshiped God as they saw him revealed in the wild tumult of the storm, or the wilder tumult of their own rude natures. They knew nothing of temples, but reared their altars in the silence of the sacred grove, or upon some lonely hill top. Here they sought to solve the mysteries of their own lives, in offerings, sometimes of human victims, more often of the animals supposed to be the favorites of their special deities. These deities were the great
CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE 31
gods Tiu, Wotan or Odin, and Donar or Thor. There were also a multitude of lesser deities. The practical religion of the people was made up largely of beliefs in omens of good luck or ill luck ; in elves and fairies; "cursing stones" and "wishing wells"; nor is it likely that "the common villagers ever rose to any sublimated theories of deity ; or were ever conscious of more than a confused unthinking worship of things held to be holy, whether beings or places." There were deities for river and grove and fountain, for the upper air and the world of the dead, for the forest and the grain field, for the field of battle and the wedding festival, for the home and the hearth, for the flock and the sheepfold, in short, for everything that touched the lives of the people, or for anything they could not understand, they had their deity.
They loved war and the chase, and constantly manifested their contempt for a life which was hard and rigorous at best. They lived upon milk and cheese, the flesh of their herds, and the quarry, and the products of a limited agriculture. They could not have been very cleanly in their habits. The word itch, as also the common names of most of the well-known dirt diseases, are old English names. But so are the words clean, wholesome, healthy, hale, and hearty. Possibly the former were winter words, asso- ciated with the dreary months when the people were compelled to hive themselves with their cattle in close dens or caverns for pro- tection from the weather; while the latter were summer words, associated with joyous days when open fields and fresh winds, springing flowers and flowing streams invited the people to a dif- ferent life. All in all they were very human, these first Teutonic settlers of Britain, and not very different from what the people who dwell upon their lands to-day would be under similar circumstances.
CHAPTEK III
THE RIVAL CONFEDERACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN, AND THE FOUNDING OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH
The next stage in the history of Teutonic Britain is one of great importance; in it English nationality assumes its first forms.
The time is still far distant when we may use with any new era accuracy the words, "England" or '-English." The fmindino of newcomers are still Germans ; just such Germans as were
dwelling on the Weser and the Ems, living under the same laws and under the same tribal organization. There is also the same bewildering succession of names without forms, of forms without outline, of progress without unity, such as marks the history of contemporary Teutonic life on the continent; and yet within this confusion, obscured by the shifting shadows, the Teutons of Britain were molding to new habits of thought and action, entirely alien to the old isolated tribal life, and preparing for the advent of the nation.
By the close of the sixth century all the most fertile parts of the island had been seized; but the crowding of population upon
population continued, and soon embroiled the new pos- of the sessors of the soil in an endless series of intertribal
wars, waged for the possession of what they had taken from the Britons. Leagues and counter -leagues rapidly succeeded one another. The old tribal lines gradually dissolved, and the elected war chief of temporary powers passed into the permanent king; the isolated tribal settlements into the seven or eight confederacies, the "kingdoms," of the so-called "Heptarchy." Then followed a bitter rivalry of these "Heptarchy" kings, a fierce strife for supremacy, which ended at last in the final triumph of the kings of the West Saxons and the establishment of the permanent hegemony of Wessex.
32
591-616] ETHELBERT IN KENT 33
Such in outline is the history of the new era. Its events may be
grouped about two movements : first, the growth of a habit on the part of neighboring tribes, of acting together in great
ofUu'lra confederacies, culminating at last in the permanent union of all the tribes in a national state; and, second, the
introduction of Christianity, and the final organization of the
national church.
When the period of settlement closed, as we have seen, Ceawlin
was already at the head of a widely extended kingdom or con- federation of the West Saxon tribes. His kingdom, if
The •
breaking up kingdom it can be called, included all the tribes from Kingdom, the Severn to the downs of Surrey, and from the basin
of the middle Thames to the sea. It is not likely that his power rested upon other foundation than the shadowy authority conferred by confederated tribes upon the elective war chief. Such loose confederations were very common among the Germans of the continent down to the close of the migrations. The counter- parts of Ceawlin's career may be found in the Cheruscan and Mar- coman kings of Tacitus. Possibly also, as in the case of the German national hero, Arminius, it was the attempt of Ceawlin to transfer the temporary authority of the war chief into the permanent and more substantial power of a true king that led directly to his fall and the dissolution of this early confederation of the West Saxon tribes. This event took place in 591, two years before Ceawlin's death.
East of the confederation, which by habit we call the kingdom of the West Saxons, lay the Jutish tribes, who had settled on the
south bank of the lower Thames. We have already seen
^o-ti6eHThe them under the leadership of their young king Ethel-
eaermmy kert? struggling with Ceawlin on the borders of the
^antwara, ;porest 0f Anderida, for the possession of the downs of
Surrey. It is not unlikely that Ethelbert also took part in the overthrow of the West Saxon king, though the first shock to Ceawlin's power seems to have come from the Ilwiccas, whom he himself had recently settled on the Severn. At all events, after the fall of Ceawlin, Ethelbert succeeded to his prestige in south Britain, and built up a similar confederation of the eastern tribes. According to Bede, his dominions reached to the Humber ; that is,
34 THE CONFEDERACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN
all the East Saxon, East Anglian, Middle Anglian, South Anglian, and a part of the West Saxon tribes entered the new confederation, and either voluntarily, or by compulsion, recognized the overlord- ship of Ethelbert. This second confederation lasted until the death of Ethelbert, when it in turn also dissolved, and the tribes east of the Chilterns regrouped themselves under the leadership of Eaedwald, king of the East Angles.
The great name of Ethelbert had extended to the continent,
and enabled him to make an alliance with the family of Frankish
kings who ruled over the conquests of Clovis. The
Int voiJ net i/yyij
of Chris- Germans of Britain were still pagans, but the Franks
tianity. , . »
had long since adopted Christianity. The men of the Frankish royal house as a class, however, had been little influenced by the teachings of Christianity; they were for the most part graceless ruffians. But many of the women furnished examples of sweet and noble piety, honored a difficult station by blameless lives, and passed to their graves, leaving behind them a precious memory of good deeds and helpful influence. Some of these royal prin- cesses went out from their own homes to serve Christ in the halls of heathen lords, where they became most efficient missionaries of the church. Thus it happened that Bertha, the granddaughter of Clotaire the Great, left her father's court at Paris and entered the home of Ethelbert of Kent. By special arrangement she was allowed to bring her chaplain, Luithard, with her. The long- deserted British church of St. Martin at Canterbury was refitted for his use, and the old walls looked down once more upon the stately service of the Christian church. Here the good chaplain chanted and preached; here the pious queen with burdened heart bowed and prayed, waiting for the redemption of her heathen lord and her adopted people. How much she and her friends had to do with rousing the church of the continent to any direct mission- ary effort we do not know. But it is more than likely, if the truth were known, that the coming of the first missionaries was due to her efforts and her influence quite as much as to Pope Gregory's happy knack of making Latin puns.1 Certain it is that the band
JSee Green, History of the English People, I, p. 37, for the well- known story.
597-001] INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY 35
of monks led by Augustine whom Gregory sent out, came under the special patronage and protection of the neighboring Frankish kings, and that when they at last landed at Thanet in the spring of 507, they found Ethelbert prepared for their coming and roady to listen to their teaching. On June 2, Whitsunday, Ethelbert himself abjured the faith of his fathers in Wotan and Donar, and received Christian baptism. Thousands of his subjects followed his example, and within a year the mission had become a nourishing church. In Juno, 601, Gregory sent to Augustine the archiepiscopal pallium or pall,1 with a complete plan for the organization of the island church. As yet, however, Christianity had not advanced beyond the boundaries of the original Kent. Neither East Saxons, South Saxons, nor West Saxons were ready to receive Christian teachers. But the sanguine Gregory had his four square plan of organization ready. The entire island was to be divided into two nearly equal metropolitan sees, each with its twelve bishops; the primate of the northern province was to be established in York; of the southern province in London. Augustine wisely selected Canter- bury, under the immediate protection of Ethelbert, as a far more eligible site for his archiepiscopal seat, and left to the future the founding of the northern primacy, and the establishment of the twenty-four bishoprics.
Augustine was not content with simply baptizing his new con- verts. He brought with him a knowledge of the ways of the great civilized world, and he and his monks taught their royal con- verts many useful lessons. It was duo to his influence, probably, that about the year 600 the old customary laws of the
Thclawsof J J .
Ethelbert, Cantwara were reduced to writing and put into code form; "the first formal record of the laws of an English people," preceding by ninety years the like record which Ine made of the laws of the West Saxons. Thus we owe to Ethelbert almost all our knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon institutions as they existed at tho close of the era of settlement. As represented in his laws, they remind us of the descriptions which Tacitus gave of the Germans who lived on the borders of the empire in the first century
'The distinctive badge of the archbishop, a sort of scarf or stole worn round the neck, with falling ends in front, marked each with three crosses.
36 THE CONFEDERACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN
of the Christian era, and show that the Teutons of Britain had not yet advanced very far beyond the condition of the Germans who were first known to the Eomans. The only penalties known to Ethelbert's laws were fines, or indemnities, covering almost every conceivable injury to life or limb or property, and varying from the ordinary indemnities prescribed for the wrongs of a freeman, to the ninefold penalty prescribed for injury to the king or his property ; the elevenfold penalty prescribed for injury to a bishop, and the twelvefold penalty prescribed in the case of him who destroyed the "goods of God." Here we may plainly read the influence of the priest, and see the high estate which the church had already won. The overlordship of Ethelbert, like that of Ceawlin, passed away with the generation to which he belonged, and the con- federacy of Jutes, Saxons, and Angles dissolved once reaction in more into "a chaos of warring tribes." A reaction also set in against the church. Edbald, the new king of the Cantwara, not only rejected his father's faith, but compelled the Christian teachers to retire into Gaul.
When Ceawlin was closing his long career in the southwest,
Ethelric, the king of the Bernicians, was extending his power over
the neighboring Deirans. In 593 his son Ethelfrid,
The first , .
Nm-thumbri- "the Devastator," succeeded to the headship of the
united Northumbrian tribes. We have already seen
him at Dawston overwhelming a combined host of Scots, Picts,
and Britons; and again, a few years later, overwhelming the
Britons in a decisive engagement far down under the walls of
Chester. For twenty years this terrible king lorded it over the
north and extended his power far to the south. His efforts to
extend his power here, however, brought him face to face with the
new East Anglian confederation of Raedwald. The two
armies met at Retford in Nottinghamshire; Ethelfrid
was slain, and Raedwald for the time secured his supremacy
south of the Humber.
The Northumbrian confederacy of Ethelfrid, which had now outlasted two kings, did not break up at his death, but passed to the exiled king of the Deirans, Edwin. Ethelfrid had pursued him relentlessly from one exile to another, and it was the refusal of
0IHOTU3T
I 5 [ {
> \
Q
617-627] CONVERSION OF NOUT1IUM15RIA 37
Raedwald to betray his unfortunate guest which led to the war so
fatal to Ethelfrid. Edwin now returned to his people, and soon
extended his authority even beyond that of his old Edwin, . .
successor of enemy, Ethelfrid. lie awed the Celtic princes on his
western borders, and compelled Man and Anglesey to recognize his overlordship. The Anglian kings to the south, breaking away from the East Anglian confederacy, also accepted his supremacy. He also pushed his conquests to the north, and here, on a hill overlooking the Forth, built a frontier fortress, to which he left his name, the beginning of the modern Edinburgh. Then the great king looked about him for a consort worthy to share his honors. He found her in Ethelburga, the daughter of
Ethelbert; and again a Christian princess turned her
Cnnmvinn
of Northum- back upon her own people and entered the court of a pagan king. The same stipulations were made as in the case of her mother, Bertha; and again a devout princess prayed and waited in her land of exile, and her pious chap- lain preached and taught. Edwin, however, was not to be as easily won as Ethelhert. He long withstood the earnest entreaties of his wife, and the fervid arguments of her chaplain, Paulinus. At last, under the skillful representations of the queen and the chaplain, the birth of a daughter, a narrow escape from the dagger of an assassin, and a successful raid upon the West Saxons, presented themselves with such combined force to the mind of the king as evidences of the favor and power of the Chris- tian's God, that he consented to refer the matter to his witan, as the counselors of the king were called. They met in solemn assembly, the witenagemot, and listened while Paulinus presented his case. The "tall, stooping form, slender aquiline nose and black hair falling round a thin, worn face, were long remembered in the north." The hearts of the grim old warriors softened as the faithful priest, like Paul of old, talked to them of "righteous- ness and judgment," of Christ's love and eternal life. Then an aged ealdorman arose, and in words of rare beauty, gave voice to the new hope which the words of tho preacher had kindled: "The life of man, 0 king," he cried, "is as a sparrow's flight through the hall, when a man is sitting at meat in wintertido with the
38 THE CONFEDERACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN
warm fire lighted on the hearth, but the chill rainstorm without. The sparrow flies in at one door and tarries for a moment in the light and heat of the hearth fire, and then flying forth from the other, vanishes in wintry darkness whence it came. So tarries for a moment the life of man in our sight. For what is before it and what after it we know not. If this new teaching tell us aught certainly of these, let us follow it."1 Still thewitan hesitated, until Coifi, the king's priest, denounced the gods whom he had served and asked that he himself might set fire to the pagan temple at Godmundham. Then Edwin hesitated no longer, and on Easter Day, April 12, G27, acknowledged his submission to the new faith in the rite of Christian baptism.
With the accession of the powerful Edwin, the conversion of the north advanced rapidly. York was made an archi- episcopal see, and Paulinus "was established as its first primacy archbishop. Whenever the king went through his king- dom upon a royal progress, his bishop attended him, and each court day was made the occasion for preaching and baptizing. Vassal kings also followed the example of Edwin. In 628 (?) the son of his old friend Raedwald of East Anglia sub- mitted to baptism, and three years later Felix, a Burgundian bishop, established himself among the East Angles. Paulinus also preached among the Lindiswara, and built a stone church at Lin- coln, where, in G28, he consecrated Honorius, the new archbishop of Canterbury. A few years later the Pope formally recognized the northern primacy by sending to Paulinus the coveted pallium. As with Ethelbert in the south, the presence of the priest by the side of the barbaric king told powerfully for civilization; for Edwin, also under priestly tutelage, honestly strove to influenteof gjve njs people the precious boon of peace under good in Northum- iaws an(j wjse administration. It was said first of him
una.
that in his days, "a woman with her babe might walk scatheless from sea to sea." The people tilled their fields and gathered their harvests in quiet and safety. Men no longer feared the thief or the robber; stakes were driven by the roadside spring,
1 Bede, Ecclesiastical History, II, 13. Quoted in Green, H. E. P., I, p. 46.
626] PENDA IN MEUCIA 39
where the traveler found a brass cup hanging for his use, and no thief durst carry it off. From the priest, too, Edwin learned to adopt a certain pomp, until then unknown to the simple barbaric war chief. When he passed through the villages on his royal tours, a standard of purple and gold preceded him; a tuft of feathers, also, the Roman tufa, surmounted his spear, and was carried before him as he walked, the symbol of the royal presence; — forerunners of crowns and thrones yet to come.
Thus the church, as the great civilizer, had already begun its work in Teutonic Britain. But the conquest of the island was not to be completed without a long and bitter struggle. reaction in The proverbial hatred of the barbarian for foreign insti- tutions was soon awakened. In Kent, the death of Ethelbert had been the signal for reaction. In the north, the reaction did not wait for the death of Edwin, but was the cause of his overthrow.
.. , . The Anglian tribes of mid-Britain were very early known Merda. as Mercians, or the border people. In the later sixth century, they had begun to draw together into a confederacy sim- ilar to those about them. But it was not until the time of their great king Penda that this fifth league became a
Penda, >12G. . .
formidable threat to its neighbors. Penda, moreover, was not a common conqueror, like Ceawlin, fighting only for dominion, lie represents the protest of the adherents of the old faith against the innovations which the foreigner had introduced. About him gathered all the dissatisfied elements of mid-Britain, to make a last stand for the faith of their fathers. Penda was also a politician, as well as a pagan reactionary, and did not hesitate to ally himself with Cadwallon, the Christian king of North Wales. The Celtic Christians had always held aloof from their pagan neighbors, a fact which Gildas had deplored even in his day.
They had not only refused to take any steps to convert Thrhrrarh them to Christianity, but, even after the Teutons had
ill the i i • liio J ' '
churches™1* rGGe™e& Christian teachers from the continent, they stoutly refused to recognize the new church. Augus- tine, by the help of Ethelbert, had arranged a conference with the Welsh bishops on the banks of the Severn, in the hope of enlisting
40 THE CONFEDERACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN
them in his work of converting their neighbors. The Welsh listened willingly at first, but, when they learned that cooperation The confer- meant the recognition of the supremacy of the new arch- Augustin's bisnoP> an(i the acceptance of the innovations which two oak, "Awt." hundred years had added to the western church, they stubbornly refused to accept the terms of compact, and allowed the council to break up with hard and bitter words. "If ye will not have peace with us as brethren," cried the angry primate, "ye shall have war with us as enemies; if ye will not preach the way of life to the Angles, you shall at their hands suffer the vengeance of death."
Nothing had been done in the generation since to cement this breach. The hand of the terrible Ethelfrid had fallen heavily upon the Welsh. Their "holy men," to the number of ho^mtlfof two thousand, had been slain before Chester, an event TevSms!"* wnich they could not fail to connect with the bitter prophecy of Augustine. The Christian Edwin had fol- lowed the pagan Ethelfrid, and gleaned where he had reaped ; nor did it make his dominance more acceptable, that, unlike Ethel- frid, he was a Christian prince. In the wild ferocity of their neighbors, the Welsh could hardly distinguish Christian from pagan.
The western Celts, therefore, although Christians, were ready to unite with Penda for a joint attack on Edwin, and an expul- Aiiiance s*on °^ Pai,lillus an(l his monks from Northumbria. andeMkl ^ne aUie(l armies met Edwin at Hatfield, near the north mmfof71' Anglian border. Edwin was killed, his army routed, Hatfield- and his confederacy broken up. Archbishop Paulinus, with Ethelburga and her children, fled to Kent, where the con- version of Edbald had recently put an end to the pagan reaction, and once more established Christianity among the Cantwara.
Penda now succeeded to the supremacy of Edwin in mid- Britain ; and, for the first time, all the Anglian tribes west of the Recovery of ^en country were united in one confederation. The Nortimmbria. regions north of the Humber, however, he left to his ally, Cadwallon, who lorded it here for twelve months with great cruelty. The glorious Ethelfrid had left a son, Oswald, who, dur-
634 642] OSWALD AND PENDA 41
ing the triumph of Edwin, had remained in exile in Iona, a Celtic
mission station, on a barren rock off the west coast of Scotland.
From his lonely exile, he heard the cry of his people under the
cruel hand of Cadwallon, and, with a small but determined band,
~ . , descended the north Tyne ; overthrew and slew Cadwal-
Denisburn, J '
6aJ- Ion on Denisburn, not far from the Roman wall, and
made himself supreme in all Northumbria. He then set to work to restore the broken altars of the Christian faith. lie refused to recall Paulinus, however, for he had been identified with the rival dynasty of Edwin, and the Bernicians had already refused to heed his teachings. Oswald, therefore, sent to his old friends at Iona for help. The monk Aidan responded; a man who combined tact with purity of life and real nobility of character, and by "teaching not otherwise than he and his followers lived," he soon won the confidence of the Bernicians. Christianity rapidly regained its hold in the north. At Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, Aidan estab- lished the inevitable monastery, and, from this as a center, he sent out his missionaries to teach the people. Aidan represented the older form of worship ; yet Oswald felt none of the hostility of Cadwallon to the southern form of Christianity. He supported the Lombard Birinus, who had begun a work among the West Saxons, and was present and acted as godfather when the king Cynegils was baptized.
The relations between Oswald and Penda remained peaceful for many years. Apparently, Penda was forced for the time to Oswald and ^roP *n^° *ne vassa,l relation; for, according to Bede, Penda. Oswald brought under his dominion all the nations and
provinces of Britain. So wide-reaching was his influence, that, even in distant Kent, the children of Edwin, the rival line of Deira, were thought to be no longer safe, and were sent by their mother across the Channel to her Frankish kindred for safe keep- ing. Penda, however, was not the kind of spirit to bear long even the loosest chains, and, in the year 642, we find him in battle Triumph <>f w^n n^s over-king on the bloody Maserfield, somewhere Maria. [n Shropshire. Oswald was defeated, and later put to death, and Penda was left to reign as the one great king among the Teutonic tribes.
42 THE CONFEDERACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN
The Northumbrian tribes did not lose their independence alto- gether upon the the fall of Oswald. They remained, however, , broken and divided, until they were again united under
N^humbria Oswald's brother, Oswy. But, for thirteen years, Penda 654- and his Mercians carried on a cruel war against the
northern kingdoms. Oswy pleaded hard for peace, but all his efforts at reconciliation were treated with scorn by Penda. At last, in 654, a decisive battle was fought on the Winwaed, not far from the modern Leeds, and Penda, now eighty years old, per- ished in the fight. The victory of Oswy, who fought against vastly superior numbers, was probably due to the discontent of Penda's vassal kings, who were weary of the lordly ways of the old pagan, and dissatisfied with his long wars against their Chris- tian brethren of the north.
With the fall of Penda, the last bulwark of paganism was swept away. Even while he lived, his son Wulfhere had submitted to baptism, and his Mercians had begun to follow Chris- CfvHMiwn'i'fy tian teachers under his very eyes. When, therefore, mMercia. three years after Penda's death, Wulfhere succeeded to the royal title in Mercia, and the last of the great confed- eracies had thus accepted a Christian king, the strength of paganism was broken. It survived only among the South Saxons.
Sixty years had now passed since the baptism of Ethelbert, and,
although Teutonic Britain was virtually won for Christianity, there
was, as vet, no uniform rule of faith, or harmony of
The Teutonic •
churches in practice; there was no commonly accepted authority the 7th before which rival bishops might bring their quarrels
for adjustment, or the unworthy might be tried and punished. North of the Humber, Oswald had restored the older form which ho had learned at Iona. Kent had been converted by missionaries sent out directly by the Roman church; the East Anglians had been won by the Burgundian Felix, and the West Saxons by the Lombard Birinus. There was no such serious divergence in practice between the converts of these southern mis- sionaries, as between them and the northern Christians, but the universal authority of the Pope had not yet been so thoroughly established in the minds of western Christians as to assure the
634] WILFRID 43
supremacy of his representative at Canterbury over the disciples of Felix and Birinus. The tribal life was still strong; the spirit of local independence still persistent and defiant. The bishop was only the royal chaplain, and had little influence and few interests outside of the lines which marked the limits of his master's authority. If he recognized the primacy of the archbishop of Canterbury at all, it was a primacy of prestige and dignity, rather than of actual authority. Sees were overgrown and unmanage- able. Their boundaries advanced, or receded, with the success or failure of the arms of the royal patrons. Churchmen were not all saints ; and too often the bishops shared fully in the ambitious rivalries of their masters, and lent their influence to conquest and land spoiling, in order to enlarge their authority, or curtail that of some troublesome neighbor. The bishops, moreover, did not always wait for conquest; but interfered directly in each other's affairs. Bitter quarrels arose over jurisdiction or precedence, to be settled at last by an arbitrary judgment of the king, who was often himself an interested participant in the quarrel, and eager for a pretext under which to extend his authority. There must have been some community of life, some feeling of com- mon sympathy, some sense of common interest, but the idea of unity was at best only vaguely apprehended, and burned so feebly, that, alone and unaided, it could never have materially counteracted the political influence of the age. Here, then, was a great work to be done, to take advantage of the natural desire of Christian men for unity, to bring all the churches of Teutonic Britain into one organic system, united under one national primate. This great work, the union and organization of the National Church, is associated with the names of Wilfrid and Theodore.
Wilfrid was born about the year G34. At fourteen, he attracted
the attention of Eanfied, the queen of Oswy, and was sent by her
to Lindisfarne for his education. Here, the lad's mind
Wilfrid. .
was fired with a desire to see the great Christian world, of which his people knew so little; and especially to visit Home, regarded by many as the first home of Christianity in the west. His royal patroness humored him in his visions of travel and learning, and finally sent him on his way in company with Benedict Biscop.
44 THE CONFEDERACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN
After an absence of four years, he returned to his people, and was installed as abbot of Kipon. Travel and contact with the world had opened the eyes of the young monk to the isolation of his own people. He had looked upon the greatness of Home; he had caught the spirit of her mighty traditions, and bowed to the authority of the greater Christendom. He returned, therefore, to denounce the peculiar practices of the Celtic church as schis- matic, and to demand that the church of Northumbria should order itself in harmony with the common practice of other Christian nations. There were many of the old disciples of Paulinus at hand, ready to second the earnest words of their young champion. The strife increased in bitterness, until, finally, King Oswy him- self became interested, and consented to summon a meeting of northern bishops to settle the dispute.
The synod met at Whitby. Colman, the bishop of York, argued for the practices of the Celtic church, as the church of their fathers. Wilfrid pleaded the universal practice of wmw°%(4 Christendom. But Oswy at last cut the knot in a sim- ple fashion of his own. "Is it true," he asked Colman, "that the keys of the kingdom of heaven were given to Peter by our Lord? Has any such power been given to Columba, the founder of the Scottish church?" "None," Colman was forced to answer. Then said the king, "If Peter be the door-keeper, he is the man for me." The king's logic was final. Colman and his monks withdrew, and once more the Northumbrians began to follow the customs which they had learned from Paulinus.
Four years after the famous decision at Whitby, Theodore of Tarsus, a Greek monk, was appointed by Pope Vitalian to the Theodore vacant see of Canterbury. When he reached Canter- oYcmter^ bury tbe fonowmg Mav> ne found that a plague had bury, 665. recently devastated the island. The church, in par- ticular, had suffered severely ; several bishops had fallen at their posts ; and the people were awed and softened. Theodore saw his opportunity, and began at once a visitation of the several king- doms ; reorganizing the churches, filling vacant sees, and introduc- ing a stricter conformity to the Roman system. In the north, he found a serious quarrel on between Wilfrid and Oswy. Wilfrid,
673-680] HISTORIC COUNCILS OF THEODORE 45
after his success at Whitby, had been chosen bishop of York, and had gone to the continent to assure himself of a canonical conse- cration, but, upon his return, found that Oswy had installed the Celtic monk Chad in his place. Theodore interfered and deposed Chad on the ground of an uncanonical consecration, and estab- lished Wilfrid. Chad, however, had won the heart of Theodore by his humility, and, after reconsecration, was appointed to the vacant see of the Mercians at Lichfield. Theodore also made appointments to the vacant sees of Rochester, Dunwich, and Dor- chester. Thus, in the first two years of his administration, the new primate had filled five of the six sees of Britain.
The existing sees, however, were unwieldy ; some, as York, or the Mercian see, were very large. In 673, Theodore invited the
bishops to meet him at Hertford, to consider the ques- wwiciisof ^ion °^ reorganization. All responded except Wine, the H%rtfmd673 bishop of London, who was resting under the grave
charge of simony. The gathering was not only the first council of the English church, but the first assembly in which rep- resentatives from all parts of the future nation met to discuss matters of common interest. Theodore proposed to subdivide the unwieldy sees, and place each subdivision under a particular bishop. Each bishop, moreover, was to confine himself to his own diocese ; the priest was to minister only in the diocese of the bishop from whom he received his license; monks also were to remain under their abbots. The plan of subdivision did not meet with the favor of the bishops; but the proposition to confine the activity of each official to his proper district was accepted, and a foundation laid for the further introduction of the orderly methods of
the Roman church. Seven years later, 680, Theodore
held another synod at Hatfield, at which the bishops accepted the decrees of the General Councils, and so formally decreed the orthodoxy of the new national church.
Theodore was by no means disposed to accept the decision of the synod of Hertford upon the question of subdividing the sees as final, and the next year proceeded to divide the see of East Anglia, by creating a new bishop's seat at Elmham. In 676, he settled a long-standing quarrel of Cenwahl and Wulfhere, over the
46 THE CONFEDERACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN
see of Dorchester, by finally establishing an episcopal seat at
Winchester, thus giving the West Saxon king a bishop at his
own capital. The great see of York, however, under
The reornan-
izattonof the masterful Wilfrid, long defied Theodore's plan of
the Church.
reorganization. It was the most unwieldy of all the sees, and included not only the lands of the Deirans and Berni- cians, but an indefinite region beyond the Forth over which Northumbrian kings had extended an overlordship, as well as the Lindiswara, south of the Humber. But the popularity and influ- ence of Wilfrid finally roused the jealousy of King Egfrid, Oswy's successor, and the king himself determined to divide the diocese. Wilfrid refused to yield; but Theodore supported the king, and, in a council at York, at which he presided, Wilfrid was deposed, and Bernicia formally separated from York, with its own bishop at Lindisfarne. Wilfrid possessed too much of the spirit of the later Becket to submit to what he regarded as an unjust invasion of his episcopal rights, and retired to Rome to appeal in person to the Pope. On his outward journey, he was thrown upon the coast of Frisia, and here he spent the winter preaching to the heathen Frisians and laying the foundations for the future mission of his pupil Willibrord. The next year he reached Borne, but, when he returned to Northumbria with a papal decree directing that he be reinstated, the king and his witan treated the decree with con- tempt, and cast the unruly priest into prison. Nine months later, he was released, and, after more wandering, finally found a field congenial to his energetic temperament, among the heathen Saxons of the Andred's weald. Here Wilfrid labored five years. The people were apparently the most degraded and barbaric of any of the Teutonic settlers of Britain. They were ignorant of the sim- plest arts of life. The king, Ethelwald, appointed Wilfrid a resi- dence at Selsey, where he laid the foundations of the future bishopric.
In the meanwhile, Theodore was steadily pushing forward his great plans for the organization of the church. At the request of
King Ethelred, he divided the Mercian see, which was of Mercian almost as unwieldy as that of York, by establishing a
separate bishop for the Hwiccas at Worcester, and an-
681-689] RESULTS OF THEODORE'S WORK 47
other for the Middle Angles at Leicester. The Lindiswara, who had lately been restored to the Mercian confederacy, also received a
separate bishop, whose seat was fixed at Sidnacester; Birnicia Lichfield remained the episcopal seat of Mercia proper.
Two years later, Theodore further divided the see of Bernicia by establishing a bishop at Hexham for the Berniciarts, and one at Abercorn for the Picts.
In the year 686 Wilfrid made his peace with Theodore, and was allowed to return to York and be reinstated. His submission
completed the triumph of Theodore. The plan of Theodore's Gregory for the establishment of a great northern
CQ/VCCV
primacy had been definitely abandoned for the plan
of uniting all the Teutonic sees under the primate of Canterbury.
After Wilfrid's return to York, one more see was established
among the Magesaetas at Hereford. The next year, at
' the advanced age of eighty-eight, Theodore passed
quietly to his well-earned rest.
Theodore is the great man of the seventh century. He created the national church. When he came, in 669, he found six dis- cordant sees, overgrown and unwieldy for administrative Theodore's purposes. When he laid down his work twenty years later, the six had been broken up into fifteen, and all united under the close supervision of the archbishop of Canter- bury. There was in all the west no ecclesiastical province which The was *n Detter stead, or more efficiently organized. But
{Tnatkmta ^unJ as important as the work of Theodore for the England. church, was his influence upon the future political development of the Teutonic tribes of Britain. The original smaller tribal divisions were breaking down. The great confeder- acies were passing into permanent federations. But the five great states of Mercia, Northumbria, Wessex, East Anglia, and Kent still stood over against each other as fiercely jealous and hostile as ever. The patient teaching of the monks had done much to assuage the fires of ancient feuds; still, if a permanent union were ever secured, apparently, it must be by the sword. But, under Theodore, the church, with its perfected territorial organization, recognizing but one country and one people, called up a new vision
48 THE CONFEDERACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN
of unity, "clothed with a sacred form and surrounded with divine sanction," embodied in the one national primate, and expressing its will through the legislative action of one national coun- cil. That this new organization was ecclesiastical, made its influence none the less national and political. Men had not yet differentiated church and state, and it was only a step from the national ecclesiastical organization to a national political organiza- tion ; from the local organization of the bishoprics of Theodore to the shire organizations of Ine ; from the national council of the church to the national council of the state; from the national primate to the national king.
In other ways, also, Theodore assisted in laying deep and stable the foundations of the England to come. His penitential system instilled into the barbaric mind a new conception of vice encesof and crime as sin against God; thus preparing a founda- tion for the work of the future Glanvilles and Bractons, in the quickening moral sense of the people. His school at Can- terbury, under the direction of his friend, the abbot Hadrian, gave instruction in Latin and Greek, arithmetic and astronomy, and the themes of Holy Scripture — the forerunner of the great schools of Jarrow and York. He also did much to diffuse a knowledge of the stately Gregorian music, which had been as yet hardly known outside the borders of Kent.
It must not be forgotten, however, that Theodore is not the
only great name which the church of this era has given to English
history. We have already seen "Wilfrid struggling in
Wilfrid's his own way to solve the Northumbrian church prob-
CQIV€/£/V
lems. The course of his life after the death of Theo- dore continued as stormy as ever. He quarreled with the successors of Egfrid and Theodore. and wasted his declining years between English synods and the papal curia in a vain attempt to recover his lost honors. He died at Oundle in 709.
Wilfrid was one of those turbulent energetic natures, whose lot it is to make a great stir in the world, and so get credit for an influence and importance which they do not really deserve. His old friend, Benedict Biscop, on the other hand, was a quiet, unassuming man, whose merits later generations have hardly rec-
670-687] CUTHBEBT AND CAEDMON 49
ognized. He was the first to introduce stained glass, bringing glass workers from Gaul, in order to provide his own monastery
aic, at Wearmouth. He founded the famous monastery and Bixcop. more famous school at Jarrow, going himself to Rome to
procure books and pictures for its library. "To his enlightened zeal, the world owes Bede, the school of York, and the great Alcuin."
To this era belong also the names of Cuthbert, consecrated
bishop of Lindisfarne by Theodore, famous peasant preacher and
saint, who spent the greater part of his life among the
w,Lf^!bcrf' remoter mountain settlements of Northumbria, "from uvea, 687. '
whpse roughness and poverty other teachers turned aside"; Caedmon, also, the peasant Milton, the cowherd of Whitby, whose untutored lips, touched by divine vision, 'sang of
the creation of the world,' the 'origin of man,' . . .
Vaedmon, , , , . ° ,
died about 'or the incarnation, passion and resurrection of Christ,' ... 'of the terror of future punishment, the horror of hell pangs, and the joys of heaven,' — "the first great English song."
In the year G70, Oswy, first of English royal saints, had passed to his grave. Egfrid, his son and successor, was a very different man from his peace-loving father. He tore the Lindis- uiJ$orth wara from Wulfhere of Mercia; he revived the long feud with his Celtic neighbors, driving them out of Cumbria, and taking possession of the south bank of the Solway to the sea. But, in an evil hour, he determined to conquer the Picts, who, it seems, were still as troublesome and incorrigible as in the days of Agricola. He gathered his Northumbrian thanes, and, leading them across the Forth, disappeared among the wild glens of the Pict land. Neither he nor his army ever returned. NecMam- ^ne solitary fugitive, after long wanderings among the mere,685. mountains, and after incredible hardships, at last came back to tell how King Egfrid and his thanes fell by the shores of the North Sea, 'bitten to death' by the sword of the Pict.
Northumbria never recovered again. Her glory lay in the corpse-ring, which surrounded her fallen lord, "in the far-off moorland of Nechtansmere." For twenty years, Eldfrid, the dead
50 THE CONFEDERACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN
king's brother, continued to hold Northumbria together. But, after his death, evil days fell fast upon the North H umber lands. The witan dominated in the councils of the nation, and lucttn™?1 tae*r quarrels filled the land with disorder. In a Northitm- period of thirty-eight years, nine different kings rapidly succeeded each other. Of these, three were assassin- ated; five were formally deposed, one being afterward executed for presuming to return from exile.
The fall of Egfrid at Nechtansmere left the Mercians and the West Saxons sole competitors for the overlordship of Britain. Decline of ^n^' as 3^' ^ne West Saxons had given little promise wessex. 0f their great future. Some petty conquests of Cenwahl (643-672), on the Avon and among the Mendip hills, by which he extended his borders to the Parret in Somerset, could hardly offset the effect of Wulfhere's conquest in 661, when he not only drove the West Saxons out of the North Thames basin, t>ut tore from them the eastern conquests of Ceawlin, including the Isle of Wight, and added them to the lands of the king of Sussex, thus raising a new and worthy rival to Wessex south of the Thames. Cenwahl managed to hold the remnant of his kingdom together until his death in 672. But, during the thirteen years following, even this remnant was still further divided and torn by the rivalries of petty kings. The affairs of Wessex were then, perhaps, at their lowest ebb.
In 685, Cad walla, one of the petty kings of the West Saxons, fought his way to supremacy over his fellows, and once more suc- ceeded in drawing the fragments of Cenwahl's kingdom
The rise of
wessex. together. Two years later, he ravaged Sussex, and to death of regained what Wulf here had given to its king. Through Sussex, he entered Kent, and, overrunning the country in two successive years, compelled the people to acknowledge his lordship. In 688, Ine became king of the West Saxons. In him the Mercian kings found a rival worthy of all their strength. He completed the conquest of Somer- set, and secured his new territories by a wooden fort on the Tone, the modern Taunton. In 715, he was called upon to measure his strength with Ceolred of Mercia, at Wamborough ; and, although
715-751] INE IN WESSEX 51
neither side could chiini a victory, Ine prevented the Mercians from gaining a foothold south of the Thames. All the country was now his between the Thames and the sea, and from Dorset to Thanet. Within these borders, Ine sought to lay the foundation of a real kingdom, by defining the power of his administrative officers, The Laws au(^ ^v^nS uniformity to the customary law by reduc- ofine. ing it to a code. The shire here first appears as the
territorial unit of the judicial administration. The ealdorman is responsible for the arrest of the criminal in his shire; if he allows him to escape, he forfeits his office. Military service, thefyrd, is required of all, high or low; and heavy fines, but graded to the rank of the laggard, are prescribed for failure to respond to the call to arms. Like the laws of Ethelbert, these of Ine also show the influence of the priest. Sunday labor is prohibited; a merci- ful ordinance when the labor of the community was performed largely by serfs. The precincts of the king's palace, or a bishop's palace, are sacred against acts of violence, and are equally protected by a fine of one hundred and twenty shillings, — the burg-bryce. In these laws, the conquered Briton appears as a bondsman, — theow wealh; but there is also mention of the Welsh freeman with one hide of land, and of the Welsh rent-paying tenant; the king also has his mounted Welshmen. There is also the Welsh noble, with five hides of land.
The later days of Ine were covered with gloom. His old age was saddened by domestic intrigue and revolt, the curse of the
early Teutonic kingdom. Then, after thirty-six years day8lc^tine. °* thankless toil, Ine threw down his work in disgust,
and, like so many of his peers, must go a pilgriming to Rome. The peace which he sought came to him on the way.
While the fortunes of Wessex were rising, those of Mercia were declining. There is no great king after the death of Wulfhere
(675) until we reach the era of Ethelbald, when once SjErereS* more a Mercian king threatens the independence of ™^fd- Wessex; but a defeat at the hands of a Northumbrian
king, whose lands Ethelbald had invaded, so shattered his strength, that his hold upon the south was weakened, and he was compelled to face a revolt of Cuthred, the new vassal king
52 THE CONFEDERACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN
of Wessex. After a long struggle, Cuthred won a decisive victory at Burford in Oxfordshire. No more glorious day had yet dawned in West Saxon history. All the vassal kings of the Mercian overlord, the kings of Kent, Sussex, and Essex, besides those of his own Mercia, had followed him to that fatal field. Opposed were the people of Wessex, marshaled under the famous golden dragon, and fighting for independence. The victory was final; the great Mercian confederacy was shat- tered, and no shred of Ethelbald's power south of the Thames remained. Six years later, 757, Ethelbald was foully slain at night by his own people.
No account of the reigns of Ine and Ethelbald would be com- plete that did not mention their great contemporary, Bede, the Bede first English historian. He was born, probably, in the
673-735. verv year 0f Theodore's historic council at Hertford.
At seven, he was put under the instruction of Benedict Biscop, who had shortly before built his monastery at Wearmouth. Bede very early committed himself to the quiet and uneventful life of the scholar. He passed his years between Wearmouth and the later foundation of Jarrow. Now and then, echoes from the busy, turbulent world outside reached him in his quiet retreat; but never to allure him from his patient round of "reading, teaching, and writing." One marvels at what he accomplished. The library, which his old master had brought from Eome for the two monastery schools, was his sole workshop. "I am my own secre- tary," he writes ; "I make my own notes ; I am my own librarian. " Yet, he mastered the knowledge of the time, and left a list of thirty-seven works to testify to his industry. He revived for England the traditions of the older culture of the almost forgotten classical world, and impressed the warlike thanes of
Northumbria with "the quiet grandeur of a life con- aFHitton/oi secra-ted to knowledge." His reputation to-day rests tteA^t^y uPon *"s "Ecclesiastical History of the Nation of
the Angles," — the beginning of authentic English history; the only light to cast a gleam into the darkness which separates the Britain of Gildas from the Britain of Ine and Ethelbald.
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757-796] OFFA IN MERCIA 53
Under the powerful Offa, who ruled Mercia from 757-796, the
long struggle for supremacy seemed again about to be decided in favor
of the middle kingdom. Of the first year of his reign,
Mercian little is known; but, in 771, we find him parceling out power at ' ' * °
zenith. the lands of Sussex, with the kings of Wessex and Kent
acting as attesting parties; evidence that, even at this date, Offa
had established himself south of the Thames, and that Wessex had
again lost her independence. His greatest wars, however, were
waged against the Welsh, whom he drove out of the valley of the
Severn, advancing his own- borders to the Wye. This conquest he
secured by the introduction of colonists and the erection of a
"Off 's frontier rampart, the famous "Offa's Dyke," connecting
Dyke." the lower Severn and the Dee. The line of "Offa's
Dyke" has remained virtually the permanent boundary between
Wales and England.
Apparently, Offa accepted the threefold division of Teutonic
Britain as final, and sought to secure conformity to this
arrangement in the organization of the church, by rais-
metmpoiuan ing the see of Lichfield to metropolitan honors, coor-
HfC 7S7 -HIM)
dinate in authority with Canterbury and York, the archiepiscopal dignity of the latter having been restored in 735. The pope granted Offa's request, and, for thirteen years, Mercia could boast of an archbishop of its own.
Offa died in 790, and, for a few years, Mercia maintained the position to which ho had elevated her. Then, one by one, the achievements of Offa were undone. The primacy of Lichfield was abandoned, and the under-kings slipped back again into their
old independence. In 802, the young Egbert, of the S9,hoTn' royal house of Wessex, returned from the court of
Charles the Great, whither he had been driven by the persecutions of Offa. The years which he had spent abroad had not been lost. lie had been within that charmed circle which surrounded the mighty Frank. He had looked upon a Teutonic monarchy at its best, and had doubtless studied deep and long the art of ruling men; but most, the peculiar institutions which lay at the basis of the Frankish system. How much he brought back with him, and just what he introduced into the
54 THE CONFEDERACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN [egbkrt
English system, we shall never know; but the striking resem- blances of English and Frankish institutions of the ninth century can not all be ascribed to similarity of Teutonic origin. For the first thirteen years of his reign, Egbert seems to have been rally- ing the shattered forces of his kingdom and nourishing its strength. In 814, he began the series of operations against the West Welsh, Cornwall, which resulted in the final subjugation of the penin- sula. English colonization, however, stopped at the Tamar. For centuries, the Cornishmen retained their own dialect, and enjoyed a semi-independence. Even as late as the seventeenth century, there survived a Cornish parliament, with independence enough to arrest a king's sheriff and hold him until released by a special order of the English parliament.
From West Wales, Egbert returned to protect his northern frontiers against an advance of the Mercians. The armies met at miandun Ellandun, in Wiltshire. The Mercians were utterly 825. routed, and Egbert passed at once to the overlordship
of the region south of the Thames. The next year, the East Angles imitated the example of Wessex; renounced the Mercian dependence, and added their strength to the growing power of Egbert. Again and again, the allies smote the sinking Mercians. Two successive kings, and five great ealdormen, were slain in bat- tle. A third king found refuge in exile. When, in 829, Egbert made a royal progress through Mercia, it was practically his, as much as Wessex. The Northumbrians alone remained, but a century of discord had so weakened their power, that only madness could induce their king, Eanred, to measure swords with the vic- tor of Ellandun. The challenge of Egbert, therefore, was sufficient to bring Eanred to his southern border, there to acknowledge the supremacy of the king of the West Saxons, and enter the new con- federacy as a vassal king.
By the end of 830, with the exception of Celtic Strathclyde, all the lands south of the line of the Forth and the Solway had sub- mitted to Egbert. Through all this magnificent region, the princes, whether Celt or Teuton, acknowledged the overlordship of the southern king. The vague recognition of this overlordship, how- ever, did not constitute these vassal states into a kingdom or an
830-839] THE KINGDOM OF EGBERT 55
empire, still less into a national state.1 Such terms applied here are only confusing and misleading. Egbert had, after all, only
brought together such another confederacy as that which of the so- once obeyed Oswald or Offa; only larger in extent, and, "Kingdomof for the moment, confronted by no possible rival
north or south. Yet, it had been established by the sword, and was held together only by threat of the sword. Its size, moreover, was a source of weakness rather than strength, and made the advent of reaction inevitable. It possessed no new ele- ments of permanence. The monarchy, as an institution, was firmly established in the minds of the people. The church had thrown around it the charm of special sanctions, borrowed from the imagery and rites of the Old Testament. Yet, the monarchy was not one, but many; and, although the right of the witan to select the sovereign was generally recognized, the unwritten laws of the tribes also recognized the claim of certain royal families, the male members of which were known as Ethelings, to the exclu- sive enjoyment of the royal title in their several states. Only com- plete extermination could dissolve this claim, or save the king who held his authority by conquest from the challenge of some fugitive rival of the favored blood. As long as this idea of the ineradicable nature of the hereditary claims of each royal family survived in the laws of Mercians or East Anglians, of Northum- bria or Kent, any consolidation of the kingdoms into an organized state, under one sole king, and administered through all its parts by his appointed representatives, was impossible. At best, it could be merely a question of time before the confederacy of Egbert, also, should break up, and the constituent kingdoms regroup themselves about new centers.
And yet this did not happen. A new element, the Danish, now violently obtruded itself into the history of the English tribes, and, although the great part of the conquests of Egbert were, for the time, torn from the grasp of his successors, though Wes- sex itself was foully smitten, and her strength shattered; yet,
^or significance of term Bretwalde, as used by Chronicle, etc., cf. Freeman, Norman Conquest, I, Append. A., and Stubbs, C. H., I, pp. 180 and 181.
56 THE CONFEDERACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN [eobert
with each successive defeat, her kings returned to the conflict more desperate and more determined than ever, and, at last, succeeded TheCmifed- *n regaining n°t only their old position, but much Eaberftom more- For, *n the l°ng struggle, not only were all other by the royal lines exterminated, and the old tribal partitions
irruption of •> # *
the Danes. as political divisions erased, but the many dominions were at last fused into one kingdom, and the many lordships absorbed in one kingship. In a word, Teutonic Britain became England, and the kings of the West Saxons became kings of the English. The progress of these changes constitutes the subject matter of the next chapter of English history.
CHAPTER IV
THE DANISH WARS. ALFRED THE GREAT AND THE POUNDING OF THE ENGLISH KINGDOM
|
THE FAMILY OF ALFRED Egbert, 802-830 Ethelwulf, 839-855, d. 858 1 |
||
|
1 Etlielbald, 855-800 Ethelbert, 8G0-8GG |
Ethelred, 866-871 |
1 ALFRED, 871-901 1 |
|
Edward tlio Elder, 901-925 i |
I Ethel "The l.adv |
Ifleda, (!. 919. of 1 1 1*3 Mercians" |
|
I 1 Athelstan, 925-940 Edmund, 940-94G Edi 1 |
=Ethelr ed, 946-955 Mercia. 959-975 |
ed, Ealdorman of |
|
! 1 Edwy, 955-959 Edgar, |
For two hundred years, Britain had received no fresh accessions of Teutonic life from beyond the seas; but, in the closing years of the eighth century, a new wave began to break upon the eastern shore, and, increasing in volume with the opening of the ninth century threatened to sweep away the older Teutonic settlers, as the Angles and Saxons had once overwhelmed and swept away the remnant of the Britons. This new Germanic population came from the two great peninsulas which separate the waters of the Baltic from the waters of the North Sea. The people of Britain called them Danes; the Irish, whose eastern coasts were harried by them as severely as the coasts of Britain, knew them as Ostmen, or Eastmen; the people of the continent, as Northmen. The name which they themselves used was Vikings, or Greehmen. They were of Teutonic stock, like the Angles and Saxons, and possessed in gen- eral the same institutions.
57
58 THE DANISH WARS [eo^brt
The first experience of the inhabitants of Britain with these new troublers of the peace of the island dates as far back as the
year 787, when three strange crafts suddenly appeared anceofthc before the town of Warham, in Dorset. The simple-
minded reeve, ignorant of the true character of the strangers, went out to collect his port dues, and bring the sup- posed merchants to the king, as was his duty; but was straightway slain for his pains. It was not, however, until six years later,
that the Northmen gave the people of Britain a fore-
793. . . *
taste of the mischief which they might expect at their hands, when they swooped down upon Lindisfarne and plundered its famous church. The next year, they returned, and Benedict Biscop's settlements at Wearmonth and Jarrow suffered the same fate. The Christian ruffians of the age generally passed by such retreats. The legends of hoarded wealth failed to rouse their cupidity to the extent of braving the wrath of the protecting saints. But the appeals and imprecations of shaveling monks, who had forgotten how to fight, only roused the derision of the pagan Northmen and added to the sport of the plundering.
In the year 795, they reached Ireland, and began a series of depredations on the eastern coast, which continued for more than TheNorthmen^ qnarter of a century. In 832, the pirate king Thorkil in Ireland, made a permanent settlement on the north coast, and established his capital at Armagh. About the same time, another settlement was made at Limerick ; a little later others were made at Dublin and, in the next century, at Waterford and Cork.
The first comers were probably from Norway, and had used only the northern route, which lay directly across the North Sea; increased ac- an(^ ^ was ^° ^n*s ^ac^' no doubt, that the lower coasts of ^a^afbcr Britain owed the long immunity from attack which fol- thedeMhof lowed the plunder of Lindisfarne and Jarrow. But,
Charles the " '
Great, 8i4. after the death of Charles the Great, the people of the Danish peninsula began to take part in these piratical expedi- tions, picking their way along the coasts of the modern Holland and Belgium, running their long black crafts up into each river inlet, in search of monastery or unprotected river town for plunder. Each year they extended their depredations farther to the west; spread-
833-842] THE DANES IN SOUTHERN BRITAIN 59
ing terror before them, and leaving a memory of horror behind them. Homesteads were burned, men slaughtered, children tossed on pikes, and women were driven away into slavery; monasteries were rifled, churches destroyed, and priests slain at their altars. Rumor everywhere added to the actual horrors of these scenes. The courage of strong men melted as in the presence of the pes- tilence. The pious saw the hand of God, who, out of the mysteri- ous mists of the boundless sea, had let slip these, his avengers, to punish his people for their sins.
At last, in the year 833, a fleet of twenty-five vessels ilium south appeared in the mouth of the Thames, and ravaged the
little island of Sheppey. In 834, another band, esti- mated at twelve hundred strong, made a landing in Dorset. Egbert hastened to meet them, but was virtually defeated; the next
1T . , year, however, at Hengestdun, he succeeded in winning a Hengestdun, J ' .
835- brilliant victory over a third horde, which had
descended from Ireland upon Cornwall. He was not again molested during his reign. The memory of the slaughter at Hengestdun was enough to keep the Danes at bay until the accession of Ethel wulf.
With Ethelwulf, the attempts of the Danes upon south Britain began again. The new king, like his contemporary, Louis the Pious, was entirely unfitted for the work to which ^tenad^ffter destiny had appointed him; a fairly respectable monk %"lh(/ having been spoiled in making a king. Each ealdorman
was left to do the best he could for his own district; and a noble record these ealdormen made, in glaring contrast with the shameful incompetency of the king. Sometimes the ealdormen were successful, as when Eanulf and Osric won a victory at the mouth of the Parret in 848; but more frequently the ealdorman fell in hopeless battle, as Ethelhelm at Portland, or Ilerebryht in the Fen country,, or he retired, beaten, to die of his wounds, as Wulfheard after Southampton. The climax was reached in 842, when London and Rochester were sacked, their population scattered, and the cities left in ruin.
The suffering of those who survived these raids can hardly be overdrawn. Homes were broken up, the means of livelihood
60 THE DANISH WARS
Ethelwulf
destroyed, and families scattered never to be reunited. In 844, the devastations of the country had become so widely extended, that Ethelwulf proposed a remission of the royal rents as a Sm^Sing Partial relief- At the time of his death in 858, the indi- °ei'te gent poor, always the first to suffer in "hard times," had
so increased in numbers, that the king made special provision in his will for feeding and clothing them at the expense of the royal estates.
Thus far the invaders had come mostly in detached bands of a few hundred warriors, bent only upon securing plunder, and mak- ing off with it before a sufficient force could be gathered vi£mlfS to Punisn them. But, in the year 850, a fleet of three atockiey, hundred and fifty ships, carrying possibly ten or twelve . thousand men, wintered at Sheppey, and, in the early spring, boldly entered the Thames. Canterbury, and London for the second time, had to pay dearly for their prominence among the cities of the southeast. Beorhtwulf, the vassal king of Mercia, threw himself in the path of the invaders, but was defeated and his army scattered. Then the host crossed into Surrey, but at Ockley Ethelwulf met them at the head of the West Saxon fyrd, and administered such a beating, that the "memory of the great slaughter of heathen" long remained in Saxon tradition. Ethel- wulf, however, seems to have taken little advantage of his victory, wasting his strength in a useless war upon the Welsh; while his ealdormen struggled alone to dislodge the Danes from Thanet and other places where they had gained a permanent footing. When, in 855, another horde gathered at Sheppey, preparatory to a descent upon the neighboring coasts in the spring, the king seized the moment to go on a pilgrimage to Home, quite the "fad" among the rich saints of the day. So, to Rome he went, with another war cloud about to burst upon his people; and the witan, justly indignant, held a meeting at Selwood, and, exercising their consti- tutional right of deposition, the corollary of their right of election, made Ethelbald, the eldest son, king.
Ethelwulf returned in 856, but had to content himself with an under-kingdom made up of Kent, Essex, Surrey, and Sussex. lie survived only two years, and then his sons followed him in quick
8G0-870J HEALEDENE AND 1VAR THE BONELESS 61
succession. When Ethelbald died, in 860, the second brother, Ethelbert, was already the vassal king of Kent, but, instead of
appointing a successor in Kent, he retained both crowns, Etiic('wui?f anc^ ^nus ^ue existence of Kent as a separate kingdom
came to an end. After six years, death again made way for another of Ethelwulf's sons, and Ethelred became king. Dur- ing Ethelbert's reign, the old capital, Winchester, had been taken and sacked by the Danes, and eastern Kent overrun. The Danes, moreover, had been showing alarming intentions of permanently establishing themselves upon English soil. In the year 866, the
first of Ethelred's reign, a great host landed in East
Healfdene in ,i t i i • <-i <• •
Nortimm- Anglia, under the leadership of the famous chiefs,
Healfdene and Ivar. The East Anglians saved them- selves for the time by supplying the invaders with provisions and horses, and inthe spring, saw the horde disappear to the northwest, upon a regular mland campaign. The Danes swept through Lindsey, devouring the country and burning what they could not carry off.
The Ilumber was crossed and Deira overrun. In November, ' November, York fell. Then the two rival kings of
Northumbria, Ella and Osbert, whose strife had made their country a prey to the Danes, arranged their differences, and united for the recovery of the northern capital ; but their reckless courage only gave the enemy a better opportunity for slaughter. Both kings were slain under the walls of York, and the Northum- brian army, with its eight ealdormen, dispersed. Healfdene established himself at York, and set up a puppet, one Egbert, over the Bernicians.
In the meanwhile, Ivar, known by the curious nickname of "the Boneless," advanced into Mercia, and established himself in
Nottingham. Mercia would have followed the fate of Boneless." Northumbria had not Ethelred marched to the aid of andEast the under-king, Burgred, at the head of the West
Saxons. Alfred appears in this campaign holding high command under his brother, and is henceforth one of the prom- inent figures in the wars. The Danes were disheartened by the vigorous campaigning of the West Saxon princes, and agreed to retire across the Ilumber. But the year 870 saw them again on
62 THE DANISH WARS [ethelkkd
the war path, under the same Ivar, "the Boneless," and heading toward East Anglia. The Lindiswara were reduced, and the Fen country was overwhelmed. In East Anglia, the under king, Edmund, attempted to face them, but was routed, taken, and afterwards, in company with his bishop, Humbert of Elmham, tied to a tree and shot to death with arrows. He is '•Edmund ^ known in church traditions as "the Martyr," — the Eng- lish St. Sebastian. To the panic-stricken people, the struggle was rapidly assuming the aspect of a religious war. The invaders turned their fury particularly upon the visible representa- tives of the Christian faith. Every church edifice in the line of march was burned. The monks of Medehamstede, the later Peter- borough, were massacred without mercy. The monks of other monastic communities, as Croyland and Ely, probably shared the same fate. The bishop of Lindsey escaped only by hasty flight, but other priests, like Humbert of Elmham, died with their people. The episcopal sees were broken up, and the flocks scat- tered. Nearly a century passed before Lindsey and Elmham again saw a bishop. Dunwich never recovered.
The Danes had already prepared themselves to hold what they
had won in East Anglia, by constructing elaborate earthworks at
Thetford, the remains of which, even to-day, cover
The 'lY~ear
of Battles," about thirteen acres. Their purpose, apparently, was not to settle as colonists, but to make East Anglia a base in operating against the richer country which lay to the west. Accordingly, in 871, with numbers greatly strengthened by later accessions, under Healfdene and "a host of jarls," they took the old Roman road, the Icknield street, and advanced directly upon Wessex. The moment was a critical one in English history. Northumbria and East Anglia were already conquered; the strength of Mercia was broken; only Wessex remained, the last bulwark of England. If the West Saxons failed now, the end was near. The opening of the year, long known as the "year of battles," was discouraging enough. The Danes took up a strong position at Eeading, between the Thames and the Kennet, where they fortified themselves, as was now their custom. Then they began to spread out over the country in search of forage ; for a medieval
8?]] THE YEAR OF BATTLES 63
army, even of civilized nations, had no other way of sustaining - itself in the field. King Ethelred and Alfred Etheling, however, soon put a stop to the foraging by driving the Danes behind their earthworks. They had then only to sit down to a regular siege, and hunger would soon have compelled the Danes to treat. Such simple tactics were followed later with great success. But the enthusiasm of the West Saxons could not be restrained, and, in an attempt to carry the camp by storm, they were beaten off with great slaughter and compelled to retire up the Thames, where a second battle was fought at Ashdown. Here, though forced to fight at a great disadvantage, the West Saxon princes were success- ful, and compelled the Danes again to retire upon Reading. Within two weeks, a third battle followed at Basing, and still a fourth at Merton, in Surrey. -
The fatigue and anxiety of such vigorous campaigning told heavily upon King Ethelred, who finally broke under the strain,
and died about a fortnight after Merton. Alfred, who of Alfred, had contributed not a little to the successes of the
army, who had endeared himself to his men by the exhibition of true soldierly qualities, and had won their confidence by his wisdom and skill as a leader, was at once selected as king. Two sons survived Ethelred, but the law of strict hereditary suc- cession had not yet been established. These were days, moreover, when regal honors were neither to be lightly sought nor lightly conferred ; so the young children of Ethelred were set aside, and the young man Alfred, probably in his twenty-sixth year, became king, the "people's darling," the hope of the England to be.
Alfred had little time for fetes or celebrations, and at once addressed himself to the serious problem of the hour: how to rid
his eastern kingdom of the Danes and restore again his
The Danes
retire from smitten country. Within a month, he brought his
Wessex. 5
battle-weary people to face their foes again at Wilton, whither they had recently advanced from their old camp at Read- ing. The Danes won the day, but the hard fighting was beginning to tell upon their strength, for they had been forced to fight nine pitched battles in five months. They were glad, therefore, to take advantage of their last victory and retire from Wessex.
64 THE DANISH WARS [alfred
The next position of the Danish army was on the lower Thames, near London. Here, however, the country had already been stripped bare, and they were soon compelled to VtEaSern, see'c a new camP a^ Torksey, on the Trent, whence they anamjrth- began operations upon Mercia, and, in a short time, iimbria, reduced all the eastern and central parts. Burgred, the last Mercian king of the old line, apparently, saw little chance of success in continuing the struggle, and took him- self off to Eome to die. As in Northumbria, Healfdene set up a puppet king over the parts of Mercia which he did not care to take for his people ; but the parts about Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Stamford, and Lincoln he divided among his followers. These towns, the famous "Five Boroughs," soon became Bwowjhs ' vigorous centers of Danish life. We do not know the terms upon which the Danes settled, but it is not likely that they disturbed the tillers of the soil, who were now practically serfs over all England. It is more likely that they simply ejected the landowners and lived upon the labor of their tenants.
The memory of the old life of plunder, however, was still too strong upon the Danes to allow them to settle down into quiet land- lords, and, leaving a sufficient force to hold what they ammut^the na^ won? they continued to lead out their armies both thTnorth* north and south, to plunder the country and exhaust the resources of the states which still survived. In the spring of 875, Healfdene led a horde up the west coast, to complete the pillage of North umbria. Carlisle was left in ruins, and so remained until restored by William Bufus more than two hundred years later. The Britons of Strath clyde and the Picts of Calloway bowed to the storm. Then Bernicia, which had been spared in 8G7, was also compelled to yield up its treasures. Lin- disfarne, which had recovered somewhat from the raid of 793, was again destroyed, and every monastery from sea to sea, it is said, shared the same fate.
The north now lay in ashes. The libraries of Jarrow and York, associated with the great names of Bede and Alcuin, had gone up in flames. The "art treasures" and the "book treasures" so carefully gathered by Benedict Biscop had been either destroyed or
876] GUTHRUM IN WESSEX 65
scattered. The service of the church had been supplanted by the bloody feasts of Odin and Thor, and the successors of Wilfrid
and Cuthbert either been slain at their altars or driven p^",m^t out to wander in strange lands. Then, when there was %a!ies nothing left to plunder, the booty thirst of Healfdene
and his pirates seemed to be satisfied, and they began in serious earnest to make themselves homes in the land which they had desolated. To know how numerous and widely extended these settlements were, then and later, the student has only to take a modern map and note the town names of eastern, middle, and northern England. Wherever he finds an English town with the ending by, he may know that he is on the track of Healfdene and other Danes, who, like him, came to rob and pillage, but, weary of plunder at last, settled down into peaceable landowners.
While Healfdene was thus clearing the ground for the planting of Danish communities in the north, Guthrum, an East Anglian
Dane, who had succeeded Ivar, "the Boneless," gath- fnw^m ere(^ a nee^ an(^ ^n tne spring of 876, took to the sea. wessex, Passing around Kent and sailing westward, he made a
junction with a second fleet, coming probably from Ire- land, and brought the combined hordes to land at Wareham, in Dorset. Here, as at Reading, the Danes fortified themselves, and began to overrun the surrounding country, extending their depre- dations over the entire region. In the spring, they advanced to Exeter, which a band of their comrades had seized the year before. Alfred followed warily, crippled, no doubt, by the instability and irregularity of the fyrd, the "minute men" of early English his- tory; avoiding pitched battles, he could yet cut off foraging parties and prevent the Danes from getting supplies. Thus, at Exeter, as at Wareham, hunger, the vigorous ally of Alfred, soon compelled the Danes to move, and a part of the horde marched into Mercia and took up a third station at Gloucester.
Medieval armies, by common consent, were accustomed to dis- band in the winter months and return to their homes. The Danes, however, by their custom of establishing permanent for- tified camps, were able to winter in the field and^ so had a great
60 THE DANISH WARS [awmid
advantage over the temporary levies of Alfred. The English, moreover were rendered inert by fear; they shrank from the sufferings and perils of a winter campaign in the face A/heiney. of such an enemy. Furthermore, men who had left their families for months to the care and pro- tection of old men and boys, could well plead that they were needed at home. Alfred, therefore, found it impossible to keep the field, and withdrew to the deep recesses of the forests of Somerset. Late in the winter, he established himself in a fort at Athelney, behind the marshes of the Parrot, where he was pro- tected against any sudden advance of the Danish cavalry, but could watch their movements and offer a rendezvous for his people. Athelney was Alfred's "Valley Forge"; nor is it difficult for the imagination to picture the patient waiting and the heroic suffer- ing of the little band who still clung to their king, as they watched and waited for the spring to open the ways of the forest and enable the thanes of Somerset to join their standard again.1
Soon after Easter, the fyrd of Somerset began to come and in, and Alfred was soon enabled to leave his hiding-place
and take the field. On the eastern margin of Selwood, near Warminster, the fyrds of Wiltshire and Hampshire also joined him, and with this force he advanced to meet the Danes at Chip- penham, whither they had removed from Exeter in Jan- Edington, nary. At Edington, eight miles from their camp, he took up a strong position, and waited for them to attack him. The battle was long and bloody, but the Danes were beaten and compelled to retire. Then, for fourteen days, Alfred besieged them at Chippenham, and, finally, by the grim logic of famine, brought them to accept his offer of peace. They must leave Wessex and settle down as peaceful landowners east of the old line of Watling Street. This land was already
1 The old tale of Alfred and the burned cakes, belongs to this winter at Athelney. Its authority, however, is somewhat doubtful; and yet it is not unlikely that the incident or something like it, really happened, in connection with some one of the many expeditions in which Alfred no doubt often went out in person to seek news of the enemy or find forage for his men.
F
OITITSUI
k.
4»i«\«tt>»»£ ,
i
MANZ-Chio««o 6
878j ALFRED AND GUTHRUJl'S PEACE 67
theirs. They had wasted it and occupied it; now let them stay there. They should not be disturbed, only, as a pledge of good faith, let Gutlirum, their king, acknowledge Alfred as overlord and submit to Christian baptism. The pledge of Guthrum was fulfilled to the letter. He and thirty of his nobles were baptized at Aller, near Athelney. Alfred himself acted as godfather to his new vassal, and gavo him the now Christian name of Athelstan. Godfather and neophyte then retired to AYedmore, where the
terms of the truce were formally ratified in the famous nf'wedmwe, "fryth," known as "Alfred and Cuthrum's Peace." 1
"This is the peace," it runs, "that King Alfred and King Guthrum, and the witan of all the nation of the Angles, and all the people that are in East Anglia, have all ordained, and with oaths confirmed, for themselves and for their descendants, as well born as for unborn, who reck of Cod's mercy or of ours."
By the agreement of the two kings, the boundaries of their kingdoms were definitely fixed as follows, "up on the Thames, and
then on the Lea, and along the Lea unto its source, of the then right to Bedford, then up on the Onse unto AYat-
ling Street." Each people were to keep to their own side of the boundary. The Danes were not to seek service under Alfred; his people were not to seek service under Guthrum; but commercial dealings were to be allowed, and Englishmen and Danes were to be held "equally dear" on either side of the boundary, and to be protected by the local laws. Thus, all England east of Watling Street- was formally ceded to the Danes. AYessex, and AA'estern Mercia, however, had been saved. This was much. It was more to have established some basis upon which Englishmen and Danes might dwell together in peace.
England, east of the line of AA^edmore and north to the borders of Bernicia, soon became known as the Danelagh; that is, the
country where the law of the Danes prevailed, in dis-
(","''"' '/ tinction from the country where English law prevailed.
latuiundcr This region, however, was not one kingdom, but many. one Itiny. o ' ' e> ' j
The Danes, like the Teutonic settlers of two centuries
1 The so-called Treaty of Wedmore, as we have it, was probably made a year, possibly several years, later. Stubbs, Select Charters, pp. 63, 64.
68 THE DANISH WARS [ Alfred
earlier, gathered in separate communities, about centers of popu- lation, each under its own jarl or king; but linked together in loose confederacies. South of Watling Street, there was now one kingdom and one king. It is, moreover, significant, that, although Alfred continued through his reign to style himself simply "king of the West Saxons," in the Treaty of Wedmore his people are called "English" in distinction from the Danes. Possibly the application of the name to the West Saxons had been brought into general use by the Danes, who failed to distinguish between Angles and Saxons, and knew only the name of the people with whom they had first come in contact.1
Alfred could now undertake the great work of his reign, the restoration and reorganization of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom.
Little of the old order was left; ealdormen and kings devastation ^ad Deen swept away ; peace officers had disappeared,
and the old rude courts for the protection of private rights, abandoned. Sees had been broken up; churches and monasteries destroyed, and bishops and abbots slaughtered or driven into exile. Cities lay in ruins; whole regions were waste, their populations destroyed or scattered by famine and the sword. With the destruction of the church, the sources of moral and intellectual life had also dried up. The very fibers of society were loosened. Yet, in spite of the general wreck, there still sur- vived the elements of the older organization, elements into which the character of the people had already breathed its life. With rare wisdom, Alfred seized upon these elements, and made them the foundation of the new England.
Western Mercia was committed to Ethelred, who ruled it as a dependent principality, under the title of ealdorman. Alfred gave
his own immediate attention to Wessex and the other Alfred reor- kingdoms south of the Thames. Here, he sought to extends the^ we]^ the shattered fragments of these ancient states into
a single compact kingdom. As far back as the days of Ine, Wessex appears to have enjoyed a somewhat thoroughly organized shire system. But Wessex was very small then, and her
'See Gregory's letter to Augustine for early use of name "English" (Angli) as a general term. Gee and Hardy, Documents, etc., p. 9.
ALFRED ORGANIZES THE KINGDOM 69
handful of shires occupied only a small portion of the territory of Teutonic Britain. The rest of the country was governed by petty kings, or semi-independent ealdormen, who ruled each in his own seven-by-nine kingdom, holding his court in the open gate and knowing no intermediate jurisdiction between himself and the local court of the hundred. But now the old kingdoms were gone, with king and ealdormen, their hundred courts and their gate courts ; yet the names and boundaries, and, most valuable of all, the habit and the traditions of local cooperation for local administration remained. Upon the lines of the old tribal kingdoms, therefore, Alfred organized and established the new shires; each a simple administrative district, under the jurisdiction of its own court, and presided over by its own steward, the scir-gerefa, whom we know by the modern name of sheriff. By the side of the sheriff sat also the ealdorman and the bishop. It is not possible to dis- tinguish clearly the respective duties of these officers in the shire, but the sheriff was "the constituting officer1' of the court. It is not likely that ealdorman and bishop were always present, but the sheriff, as the representative of the king, must be ; without him, there could be no shire court. It was his duty, also, to look after the interests of his master in the care of the crown lands within his shire, and the collection of fines and dues. It was the ealdor- man's duty to command the military levies of the shire, — the fyrd. He was responsible for their condition; for the promptness with which they took the field. It was his, also, to lead them in bat- tle, to encourage them by his example, to hearten and cheer them by his fortitude under trial, by his courage in the face of peril. The sheriff was appointed by the king, but the ealdorman was elected by the witan, of which august body he was also a member, and to whose councils he contributed his wisdom. The bishop also had his interests in the shire ; his people were amenable to its court ; the innocent, the poor, and the friendless must be protected against injustice in the name of law; the various religious forms connected with the crude methods of trial must be superintended in the name of the church.
The king himself might be present in the shire court; for this is to be born in mind, that the shire court was the lineal successor
70 THE DANISH WARS [alfred
of the old petty royal court. Hence, its character as a king's court was always maintained. The king and his witan were theoretically present in the sheriff, the ealdorman, and the bishop.
Neither shire nor shire court was the invention of Alfred; both had existed in Wessex for fully a hundred years before his
time. The name scir, which was used at first, prob- Aifrcdin a°ly> m some such general way as the kindred word Ihire^mtem6 sec^on *n America, had been applied sometimes to
the wards of a city, sometimes to the hundreds of a subkingdom. In Wessex, it had already come to indicate the greater divisions of the consolidated state. In Alfred's day, there- fore, neither the thing nor the name was new. What he did was to restore the ancient shires of Wessex, and reorganize alongside of them as coordinate shires, the ancient kingdoms of Kent, and Sussex, and Surrey, thus making them organic parts of one cen- tralized state; but, in so doing, he gave to the shire a significance which had not belonged to it before. The expedient, moreover, was a happy one; for, while on the one hand it preserved the habit of local self-government, so essential to the development of free institutions, on the other, it afforded an opportunity for the development of a strong central government, so essential to the attainment of great statehood.
The association of neighboring villages into minor judicial dis- tricts, known later in England as hundreds, was, as we have seen,
like the shires, not a new thing. These also Alfred the si/stem of reorganized and harmonized, and greatly strengthened
and extended as the foundation of the shire system. To give weight and dignity to the decisions of the hundred court, the great landowners of the district who possessed five hides of land or more, the thanes, were required to be present and to assist the court in rendering just decisions. They themselves, however, were exempt from the jurisdiction of the local court, and held in their own halls a coordinate court for their people. In all cases, the king held the presiding judges responsible for the decisions of their respective courts, nor did he hesitate to inter- fere or punish the judge who was neglectful of his duty or gave other evidence of his unfitness. Even the ealdorman was not
ALFRED AND THE LAWS 71
above the king's displeasure, and might he removed for connivance at crime or injustice. The poor, the remnant of the old free ceorls, the friendless peasantry upon whom the heavy hand of the great magnates was apt to rest with unsparing severity, were the special objects of the king's solicitude; "for the poor had no friend save the king."
Side by side with a better civil organization, Alfred established
also a better military organization. By old Teutonic law, the
great body of freemen were held to military duty, and
A1f !'<;<} might be called into the field in the presence of common
and the ° l
military danger. But the long campaigning of the earlier years of Alfred's reign, and the need of keeping the nation constantly under arms, had been a severe strain upon the older system, and it had more than once failed in an hour of greatest peril, as in the winter of 877. Alfred sought to remedy this weakness of the fyrd, by introducing a system of reliefs. Only a third of the people were to be called into active service in the field at any one time; another third were to do garrison duty; while the remaining third tilled the fields and cared for the families of those who were facing the enemy. The period of service, more- over, was definitely fixed, and the men of each division knew just when they were to be relieved.
With the same wise policy of adapting old institutions to the new needs of the nation, Alfred addressed himself to a reform of existing laws. From the codes of Ethelbert, Lie, and u!e?(iws'ld Offa, supplemented by provisions taken from the ancient Levitical Law, he compiled a new code for the common kingdom. The only originality which he claimed for himself was that of selection: "I gathered these laws together and commanded many of those to be written which our fore- fathers held, those which to mo seemed good; and many of those which to me seemed not good, I rejected." ' In these laws, how- ever, there is a marked advance in this: whereas the general prin- ciple of the commutation of crime for money is still recognized, we have now a distinct law against treason, for which the death penalty is assigned. "If any one plot against the king's life, of
1 Preamble to Alfred's Laws. Stubbs, S. C, p. 62.
72 THE DANISH WARS [alfrbd
himself, or by harboring of exiles, or of his men, let him be liable in his life and in all that he has." The king, however, is not the only member of the community whose life is protected by the death penalty. "He who plots against his lord's life, let him be liable in his life to him, and in all that he has." In these laws we see the strength with which the importance of the kingly authority is taking hold of the popular mind; we also see the growing influence of the great landowning aristocracy. Com- pared with one of these great lords of the soil, the life of the landless freeman was of little importance.
No statesman ever appreciated more than Alfred the value of education in elevating a people, or in creating a true national
spirit. His own education had been neglected in his education* early years ; for what reason is not known. He had
been left to gather what he could in a desultory way ; at twelve he had not yet learned his letters ; nor in his later years was he ever able to atone for the lack of early training, always to him a source of deep regret. Yet possibly this early neglect was not without its compensations. For during these years when Latin, the literary language of the ninth century, was to him a sealed tongue, his fresh young mind must have drnhk deep and long from the homely fountains of his own English, the language which was yet virtually without a literature, and learned to value the priceless traditions of a past which was rapidly fading. It is not likely that he knew much of Bede in those days, for Bede had written in Latin ; but he must have heard the gleemen sing their half -pagan songs in his father's hall ; he must have listened to tales of brave deeds of old, of "sword play," and "shield wall," and "arrow flight," until the generous heart of the lad had thrilled with patriotic emotion. Nor, in after years, when his turn came to take up the. burdens of a king, could he forget these lessons, or fail to appreciate the value of such traditions in in- spiring the English with pride in their past, or confidence in their future. Thus Alfred, first among English kings, grasped the importance of national history as an instrument of education, and sought to leave to the people, in a language which the simplest of them could understand, a record of their kings and of their own
THE NINTn CENTURY RENAISSANCE 73
achievements. This record, compiled under Alfred's direction, partly from current traditions and partly from the Ecclesiastical History of Bede, was the beginning of the famous Chron- saxnn ic/e, which was destined to be continued for three hun-
dred years, forming a sort of semi-official national diary of the greatest value in recovering the later history of Old English kings. For the benefit of his unlearned country- men also Alfred caused to be put in an English dress such works, standard in his day, as Bede's history and the general history of the world of Orosius. The king's interest in literature, however, was by no means confined to history. He caused translations to be made of standard philosophical and theological works as well, of which the most important were the Consolations of Pliilosophy of the unfortunate Boethius, and the Pastoral Care of Pope Gregory I. Ho also made a collection of the ancient epic songs of the English. But of these, with the exception of the epic of
Beowulf, only a few fragments have survived. In Beo- Beowulf. J ■> J , . ,
loulf, however, we have a priceless treasure. It is not only the earliest of English poems, antedating the era of migra- tion;1 it is also a striking picture of life and manners, far more than the dry annals of the Chronicle, revealing the temper of the ancient English folk.2
Tlie compilation of the Chronicle, the translation of standard works, and the collection of English war songs, formed only a
part of Alfred's plans for furthering the education of
The ninth . r to
centum his people. Like Charles the Great, he ransacked his
renaissance. . .
dominions for men who were apt to teach. From Mercia, he drew out Plegmund, who in 890 became archbishop of Canterbury. From Wales, he brought the man who was after- ward to become his biographer, the learned Asser. Even foreign countries also were invited to contribute of their wealth to enrich his schools. Saxony gave him John the "Old Saxon" and St. Bertin gave him Grimbald. Under the inspiration of such men, there began a genuine renaissance. The long struggle with tho
1 Its present form is probably tbe work of a Christian monk of the eighth century.
2 See Green, H. E. P., I., pp. 17-20.
74 THE DANISH WARS [alfred
Danes had dealt severely with the English kingdoms; the old schools had been destroyed, their teachers and pupils scattered, and the people had lapsed into barbaric ignorance. When Alfred began his reign it was said that there was not a man in Wessex who could read understandingly. When Alfred closed his reign, English prose had been born, and the English mind had received an inspiration which it was not to lose, until it emerged into the full day of the modern era.
The same order which Alfred introduced into the administra- tion of his kingdom, he introduced also into his own private life. The value of ^e na<^ n0 c^oc^ to warn him of the flight of the hours; mltiwdicai ^ut, ^y burning a series of tapers, he contrived to divide llfe- his day with some accuracy. When he noticed that the
draughts caused his candles to burn unevenly at times, he pro- tected them with a lantern made with sides of horn. The well- ordered household, the value put upon education, the sobriety and patient industry of the king, and the quiet seriousness with which he took the duties of his high office, created an influence which affected all who came in contact witli him, and from the court ex- tended outward and downward to the people.
While Alfred was thus laying broad foundations for the future greatness of his people, the Danes of Britain were quietly set- The Danes ^ling down to a peaceful life, learning much from the Alfred's later English who dwelt among them, and forgetting much reign. 0f their old hostility. Occasionally a new band from
the continent harried Alfred's coasts. But Alfred, in reorganiz- ing the land fyrd, had not forgotten the ship fyrd. In the year 882 his seamen sank thirteen Danish ships at the mouth of the Stour, one of the earliest recorded achievements of the English navy. It is to be noted, however, that the sea had become a strange element to the English ; the children had forgotten the ways of their fathers, and Alfred could man his ships only by enlisting foreigners. It is to be noted, also, that the long exemption of Britain from such attacks was due quite as much to the extreme feebleness of the Frankish Empire during this period and the richer booty promised by the monasteries and cities of the south, as to the prestige of Alfred. Upon the first manifestation
891-895J RENEWAL OF DANISH INROADS 75
of returning vigor in the Frankish defense, the Danes once more began to appear on the English coast. From 891 to 895, Alfred's hands were full. One horde under Bjorn Jaernsides descended on the southern coast of Kent, and creeping up into the Limen, estab- lished themselves at Appledore. After laying waste the surround- ing shires of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, they were at last beaten by Alfred's son Edward at Farnham in 893, and driven down the Thames where they found shelter among the swamps of Thorny Island, the present Westminster. Then Ethelred, Alfred's son- in-law, the ealdorman of Mercia, fell upon them from the Mercian side, and forced them to make terms and retire to Mersea on the coast of Essex. Alfred himself, in the meanwhile, was occupied with another horde under the famous Hasting, who had entered the Thames and taken up their station at Milton, whence they ravaged western Kent and threatened London. Alfred succeeded in driving them from Kent, only to see them settle again on the other side of the Thames at Benfleet still nearer London. Before he could come at them again he was recalled to the west to save Devonshire and Exeter from a horde of Northumbrian Danes. In the meanwhile, the Danes of East Anglia and Essex had been aroused by the rout of war which had entered their borders, and many of them nocked to the banners of Hasting, so that he was emboldened to dash by London and start "on a wild raid up the va)ley of the Thames." The whole west country, however, rose before him, and by the time ho reached the Severn, he found
himself confronted by the ealdorman, Ethelred, with ButtinQton, the fyrds of the Mercians, the Sumorsaetas, and the
Wilsaetas. Even the North Welsh sent their contingents to help against the common foe. At Buttington, Hasting was brought to bay, and the English prepared to starve him to terms, quite after the manner of Edington and Chippenham. But when his horses had been eaten, apparently not such an extreme hardship for the Danes, Hasting attempted to cut his way through the beleaguering ranks. A great battle was fought, and many of Alfred's thanes fell, but Hasting got away to Chester, where he wintered among the ruins of the old Uoman city. Hither Ethelred followed him and kept him closely beleaguered until the spring of
76 THE DANISH WARS [alfbkd
895, when Hasting again escaped, and finally, after an attempt upon North Wales, retired into Northumbria. Benfleet, in the meantime, had also been cleared of the Danes, whom Hasting had left behind, but Mersea still continued to be the Danish base on the East Saxon coast. Hither Hasting made his way from North- nmbria with the remnant of his army, and, joining his fleet again, brought his ships by way of the Thames up into the Lea, and estab- lished himself within twenty miles of London. He was, strictly, still upon Danish territory, but Alfred could not allow this new camp to remain just over his borders to menace the peace of Mercia.
The Londoners began the siege in the summer and in
harvest time Alfred arrived and took charge of the operations. He threw a dam across the river below the camp, and by cutting off the escape of the Danes to the sea forced the horde to disperse, but could not prevent individual bands from slip- ping away into Essex and East Anglia. One company succeeded in breaking into Mercia, and repeating the career of Hasting of the year before, reached the Welsh border, and wintered near Bridgenorth. The next summer they retired into Northumbria. In the summer of 896 there were "desultory landings" on the southern coast, but the danger was passed. The losses of the four
years had been very severe. A great number of Alfred's MfredPhof Pe°ple na(l fallen; among them two bishops, three eal-
dormen, and many of the minor thanes. Vast areas of country had also been laid waste. But Alfred's system had suc- cessfully stood the strain, and Englishmen had learned the value of an efficient government, loyally sustained.
Five years later, Alfred, the greatest of early English kings, laid down the burdens which he had carried so well. He had
reigned twenty-nine years and six months. He was
Death and ... * ; , . ,
character of preeminently the right man in the right place. He imparted his own energy and courage to the English people in the most critical period of the national history. But he did more than this. He founded the England which we know. By an unerring instinct, the traditions of a thousand years trace back to him the beginnings of almost all that is great and good in English life and character. He has been called "the model man of
CHAKACTEll OF ALFRED 77
the English race." l He was "the noblest, as he was the most complete embodiment of all that is great, all that is lovable, in the English temper. He combined, as no other man has ever combined, its practical energy, its patient and enduring force, its profound sense of duty, the reserve and self-control, that steadies in it a wide outlook and a restless daring, its temperance and fairness, its frank geniality, its sensitiveness to affection, its poetic tenderness, its deep and passionate religion."3 Like all great men, Alfred was many-sided. Among the scholars who gathered about him, he was one of the first, leading them in the arduous work of trans- lation. "The singers of the court found in him a brother singer." He could plan buildings with his craftsmen; he could superintend the workmen; he could instruct oven his "falconers and dogkeep- ers." Deeply religious, frail in health, and seldom free from pain, he was no ascetic, but a thoroughgoing man of affairs, laborious, methodical, and careful of details. He was a leader whom men trusted with implicit confidence, because they felt that he was directed and controlled by sterling good sense, and was able to "bring things to pass"; he is "one of the most pleasing, and per- haps the most perfect, character in history";3 the king who, "as no other man on record, has so thoroughly united all the virtues, both of the ruler and of the private man." 4
1 Goldwin Smith, The United Kingdom, I, p. 12.
2 Green, H. E. P., I, 75.
3 Ramsay, I, 247.
* Freeman, N. C, I, 51.
CHAPTER V
THE RECONQUEST OF THE DANELAGH AND THE EXPANSION OF
THE ENGLISH KINGDOM UNDER THE GREAT KINGS OF
THE HOUSE OF ALFRED
Edward, distinguished by later historians as "the Elder," suc- ceeded to the crown by Alfred's death. His coronation, however,
did not take place until the following spring. The Edward delay, it is thought, was due to an attempt of his cousin
Ethel wold, the son of Ethelred, the brother of Alfred, to regain his father's crown. But the people could not so soon forget the services of Alfred, and nobly responded to the call of his son to defend the crown against his rival. Edward, moreover, had already been elected by the witan during his father's lifetime, and this choice more than offset in the public mind any claim which Ethelwold might advance, based upon the right of primogeni- ture. Before the determined front of the nation, Ethelwold's courage forsook him, and he fled to Northumbria, to return after two years at the head of a Danish army. But a shrewd counter raid of the king into the enemy's country compelled the Danes to turn home again, and with the death of Ethelwold which shortly followed, peace was once more restored, and all resistance to the succession of Edward ceased.
Edward could now feel himself free to continue the great work which his father had begun. Recent events had taught him the
insecurity of peace, as long as the Danes retained their of Wdward independence. The Danelagh must be conquered and
for ivctt*
made a part of the West Saxon kingdom. But Edward had been trained in too good a school to rush blindly into a strug- gle for which he had not first prepared himself and his people. To this end in the year 907, by the restoration of Chester which had
78
907-911] RECONQUEST OF DANELAGH BEGUN 79
remained in ruins since the time of Ethelfrid the Devastator, he began a series of fortifications which extended along his whole bor- der and took ten years to complete. For the most part these for- tifications consisted of a combination of the earthen rampart and mound of the Danes and the old English burg or surrounding fence of palisades, faced by the inevitable ditch. Sometimes, however, an ancient Roman camp was restored. If stone walls were used in fortifying cities, it was only in rare cases, for the era of stone fortresses had not yet come. The Danes had taught the English the value of such works: for it was neither superior generalship nor superior courage which had made the Danes formerly so difficult to dislodge when once they had established themselves, but their fortified camps. On the other hand, the English heretofore had had no fortified towns, nor known aught of the science of fortification. When once beaten in the field, the whole country lay at the mercy of the enemy.
In 912 Ethelred, the ealdurman of Mercia, died. It was
Alfred's wish apparently that Mercia should be the portion of his
daughter, Ethelfleda, "the Lady of the Mercians."
Ethelfleda, ,,,,,, , . , ,,
The Lady of Edward, therefore, refused to appoint another ealdor- the Mercians. . ' , . . .. . . ..
man, and left the administration ot Mercia in the hands
of his widowed sister; but he detached all the lower Thames basin, including Oxford and London, and probably on account of its importance, added it to Wessex. Ethelfleda, however, possessed all the genius of her house for war and administration, and upper Mercia suffered nothing in her hands.
The Danes were not unmindful of the intent of Edward's fort- building, and from the restoration of Chester, each new essay on
the part of the English was followed by a raid of Danes Invasion <>f *nto ^ng^sn territory. Edward, however, steadily tiw Danelagh, pllslie(} forward the fortification of the border, and in
914 the work was far enough along for him to under- take the formal invasion of Essex. The method of advance which Edward adopted at this time was generally followed in the subse- quent wars, and goes far to explain the unvarying success of his operations, and the steadiness with Avhich the English line was pushed out, until in. ten years it reached the Humber. He first
80
RECONQUEST OF DANELAGH [ei>ward thb Eldkr
led a large force into the enemy's country and established a power- ful camp ; then under cover of the camp he built a permanent for- tress and garrisoned it with his own people. Thus while he lay encamped at Maldon in 914, he erected a fort at Witham, which made him master of all southern Essex, and thrust the Danes
back upon the .Colne.
Yet the task was by no means as simple as the ease with which these first successes were won might seem to imply. The Danes were weak, because they had nev- er been organ- ized into a compact king- dom, but it was possible for them, at any time, to unite their forces and offer a serious resistance. Moreover, there was always a chance of interference on the part of the powerful bands of their kinsmen who were still roaming at large upon the continent. This happened soon after the erection of Witham, when some fragments of the hordes which had recently settled with Rolf on the lower Seine, the later Normandy, descended upon the Bristol coast. But Edward was not to be deterred from his greater work, and, when
915-921] PERMANENT UNION OF MERCIA AND WESSEX ' 81
he had driven the newcomors off to Ireland, returned again to his systematic encroachment on the Danelagh, cautiously seizing and fortifying station after station, and formally annexing the sur- rounding country to Mercia or Wessex. In the year 915 he seized advanced stations on the Ouse. The next year ho fortified Bed- ford and in 917 he took permanent possession of Maldon. The year 918 saw a still more marked advance in middle England. The Danes of Northampton, Leicester, and Huntingdon combined to sweep the English back from the line of Watling Street. They built a counter work at Tempsford, and attacked Edward's recently erected forts at Towcester and Bedford. Edward replied by a vigorous advance along his whole line. He himself took Tempsford; while the Lady of the Mercians attacked Derby and carried it by storm. Other operations also were undertaken by the king in Essex, in which Colchester was taken, Huntingdon occupied, and a fort erected at Passenham. When the year 918 ended, Cambridge had submitted, and the English line had been pushed to the "Welland.
The next year Ethelfleda took possession of Leicester and the great part of the neighboring country submitted without a strug- gle. This was her last success. She died at Tarn worth opMereia *n midsummer after a brilliant reign of eight years. ami Wessex, Ethelfleda stands alone among the women of the old English era. Many women have become great rulers, but few have combined with rare administrative ability, equal talent in marshalling armies and leading men in battle. Ethelfleda left a daughter, but inasmuch as she was a mere child, Edward assumed the administration of Mercian affairs himself. Thus the separate government of Mercia came to an end.
Edward could now see his goal. The submission of the Five
Boroughs and the Fen country was followed by the submission of
East Anglia. The year after Ethelfleda's death the
Completion _ J
of Edward's English outposts were pushed across the Mersey and established at Manchester, and the year following, 921, Edward fortified Bakewell in the Peakland. The whole south Humber country was now in his hands, and English colonists were beginning to pour into the conquered territories. Then followed
82 RECONQUEST OF DANELAGH [ Ed wakd the Elder
a noteworthy event, which shows how the fame of Edward had gone before, him and overawed the whole north ; for here at Bakewell came Welsh and Scots, Danes and English, to accept Edward's authority and take him to "father and lord."1 Thus ended the work of conquest for that generation. The northern states, crippled by dissension and awed by the irresistible advance of the English lines, had no desire to press the question of supremacy farther. Edward had secured the Humber as the northern border of his actual kingdom; he had also secured the recognition of his overlordship in the regions north of the Humber. He rested con- tent; his work was done.
Edward survived his triumph at Bakewell barely four years.
His reign is marked by the solidity of its successes, due as much to
the sterling worth of the man as to his farsighted wis-
Death of ° . . °
Edward, dom. He and his noble sister are in themselves the
925.
best testimonies of the greatness and goodness of Alfred. Only a good home, where all that is lovable and true and strong in child character is strengthened and encouraged, could produce such children. For Alfred, with true insight, had realized how much the strength or weakness of his children might mean to his people, and had taken as much pains in their education and training as in any of the many public institutions which he founded. In some respects possibly, Edward even surpassed Alfred. He is undoubtedly the greatest military leader of the old English period ; his unvarying success is as remarkable as the sub- stantial nature of his conquests. He comprehended fully the spirit of his father's great work of reorganization, and made his con- quests the means of strengthening and extending it, forming of the England which he had won a compact national state.
Edward had all his father's love of justice, and realized fully the importance of "just dooms" to a contented and happy people.
He constrained his witan to support him in the main- Sdtoafxt tenance of peace, and made them responsible for the
denial or delay of justice. Each gerefa was required to
1 For the question of the submission of Constantino, King of Scots, in 921, see Freeman, N. C, I, 57, 118, 565; and also Wyckoff, Feudal Relations of the Crowns of England and Scotland, pp. 1-31.
925] DACRE 83
hold his court "always once in four weeks," plainly the hundred court, and "every suit was to have an end, and a term in which it must be brought forward. " The relations of English and Danes were carefully regulated by a graded wergeld. A system was also established by which legal bargains could be made only within a walled town and in the presence of the reeve. The law was afterward softened somewhat by Athelstan, but the principle which required public recognition of commercial transactions must have been very useful among a semi-barbarous people, and often saved them from the occasion of litigation. In Edward's laws, also, we have the first notice of the ordeal, not a new method of trial by any means, but from this time conspicuous among the strange old laws of the Anglo-Saxons, curious mingling of Christianity and barbarism. All in all, Eng- lish society had not advanced far, when peace breaking and perjury, robbery and murder, were still incidents of daily life against which king and witan waged a long and weary, but not hopeless warfare.
When Edward died, his eldest son, Athelstan, was about thirty years of age. In his infancy Alfred had acknowledged him as his
successor, and had "invested him with the insignia of a wT-fJo"11' warrior and an etheling; namely, a purple mantle, a
jeweled belt, and the national Saxon sword in a golden scabbard." For the moment it seemed that Athelstan's succes- sion also would be disputed in the interests of an heir of Ethelred, and that Mercia, which had declared for Athelstan, would again be separated from Wessex. But the proposal of the West Saxon witan to set up a separate king came to nothing, and Athelstan the third in line of the great West Saxon kings, took up the work of father and grandfather.
The first year of the reign was marked by an important meeting of northern lords at Dacre, where the Welsh kings, Ilowel Dha
of Dyfed and Owen of Gwent, Constantino king of atbacrein<' Scots, and Eldred of Bamborough, came to acknowledge
the lordship of the new king. That Athelstan took the homage seriously, as a recognition of his supremacy over the north, is shown by the style which he now assumes. He is no longer like
84 RECONQUEST OF DANELAGH [athklstan
Alfred, "King of the West Saxons," or like his father, "King
of the Anglo-Saxons"; he is "Monarch of all Britain."
The homage of Dacre, however, does not seem to have proved a
very secure basis for a lasting peace. The attempt of Athelstan to
seize York, and possibly Bernicia, and incorporate them
Brunan- in his southern kingdom, led to complications with the burn, 937. . . , . * ,
king of Scots, and the formation of a great northern
coalition. A raid of Athelstan upon the east coast of Scotland in
934 led to a counter raid into England in 937. With a vast
horde of Scots, Picts, Welsh, and Danes, Constantine entered the
Humber, and, leaving his ships, marched into Lincolnshire.
Athelstan and his brother Edmund met him on the field of
Brunanburh. All day long the battle raged. All day long the
English continued to hurl themselves upon the earthworks and
palisades behind which the northerns had taken their stand.
Here gat King Aethelstan, And eke his brother Eadmund Aetheling Life-long glory At sword's edge, Round Brunanburh ; Board-wall they cleft War-lindens hewed, Sithen sun up At morning-tide, God's noble candle, Glid o'er the lands, Till the bright being Sank to his settle.1
Such terrible war-work cost the English dear; bnt the north- ern horde was beaten, and Constantine with the wreck of his army was glad to retire to his ships leaving behind him upon the earthworks of Brunanburh five "young kings," among them his own son.
1 For the site of Brunanburh see Ramsay, I, p. 285. For the famous war song, see Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, with translation by Thorpe in "Rolls Series." a. d. 937.
RESULTS OF ATHELSTAN'S REIGN 85
From Brunanburh Athelstan returned home to rule in peace, the sole king of the English from the Channel to the Tyne,
and the undisputed overlord of Britain. The degree of Athelstan's authority which he exercised over Scot and Cumbrian
will probably always remain a question of dispute among scholars ; the Welsh recognized his overlordship to the extent of a substantial tribute; their kings also appeared among the witan as regular attendants at the English court.
The reputation of Athelstan soon passed beyond the borders of his island kingdom. Harold of Norway sent his son Hakon to be
educated at his court. Henry the Fowler sought anresof Athelstan's sister, the gentle Edith, as a wife for his
son Otto, then a prince of eighteen, afterward to become emperor and second founder of the Holy Eoman Empire. Still another sister was married to Hugh the Great, Count of Paris and Duke of France, whose son was the famous Hugh Capet,1 founder of the modern French monarchy. A third sister, Edgiva, had been married in Edward's lifetime to Charles the Simple, the only surviving representative of the old Carlovingian dynasty. Her son was the unfortunate Louis D'Outre-Mer, who spent fourteen years of enforced exile at the English court, and succeeded at last to his father's throne only by the influence of his powerful uncles.
Athelstan's death came suddenly, just at the moment when he was beginning to reap the full results of the wisdom of father and
grandfather. He had reigned for fifteen years, and both Athelstan, on the field and in the council chamber had given
940. .
Results of Ms ample proof of the possession of all the abilities of his house. Compared with the glories of Brunanburh or the exaltation of Dacre, the utmost achievements of Alfred or Edward appear almost trifling. And yet, these brilliant triumphs of Athelstan bore no such solid results as the faithful organizing of Alfred, or the patient building of Edward, and much of his work had to be done over again.
1 Hugh Capet was the son of a second wife, Hedwig, a sister of Otto, the Great.
86 RECONQUEST OF DANELAGH [edmund
Upon the death of Athelstan, his brother Edmund passed at once to the throne. Edmund was a mere lad of eighteen. He had fought by his royal brother's side at Brunanburh ; but fjo™^' ne na<^ na<^ no exPerience in administration, and the northern earls1 looked upon his election as an experi- ment. They withheld their allegiance, and invited the Danish king, Olaf of Dublin, to come over and assume the royal authority at York. The Mercian Danes also were restless and ready to join with the Northumbrians. Edmund promptly took the field. Olaf marched into the south Humber country and advanced as far as Northampton. Here his advance was checked, and he was com- pelled to fall back, first upon Tamworth, and then toward Chester. Edmund followed hard upon the track of Olaf, and a pitched bat- tle appeared inevitable, when the two Archbishops, Odo of Canter- bury and Wulfstan of York, interfered and a peace was patched up, which, strange to say, virtually ceded not only what Athelstan had won, but Edward's conquests as well. The English hold upon the old Danelagh, however, was too strong to be renounced in a day, and, shortly after the disgraceful peace of Chester, Edmund appears once more in full possession of the Five Bor- oughs; and by 945 Olaf had been driven out of the northern counties as well, and all Northumbria was again under Edmund's authority. The same year also saw Edmund in Cumberland, harrying the countryside, and compelling its king, Donald, to renew the homage which he had given to Athelstan.2
The next year the young king, whose reign had opened so auspiciously, came to an untimely end in a way that well illus- trates the wild turbulence of the time. The king was keeping the Feast of St. Augustine at Pucklechurch in Gloucestershire, when a notorious freebooter, Leofa, who had been recently banished by
1 Earl is an English spelling of the Danish jarl, e before a in Anglo- Saxon having the sound of the Danish /, After the Danish wars Earl is generally substituted for ealdorman.
2 "The allegation of a cession of Cumbria or Strathclyde to Scotland must be dismissed as an idle boast of our chroniclers, but one quite in accordance with the turgid pretensions of the royal charters of the period."— Ramsay, I, p. 297.
945-955] EDRED 87
the king's order, entered the hall and insisted upon taking his seat at the king's board. The king, indignant at the insult, ordered his steward to expel the man. The ruffian resisted, and the king himself joined in the struggle. A knife flashed, and Edmund sank to the floor. The thanes dispatched the outlaw; but the king was dead.
Edmund's eldest son, Edwy, Avas still a child; and the witan,
as at the death of Ethelred, turned again from the direct line to
elect a younger brother of the late king, in this case
Eared, Edred. Edred was four years older than Edmund when
946-955. J
Edmund assumed the crown, but since childhood Edred had been a confirmed invalid. He was surrounded, how- ever, by the veteran counselors of his brothers and his father, and during his reign of nine years the administration revealed no fall- ing off in energy or efficiency. There was the usual hesitation of the northern people in accepting the new king, but the prompt action of the Welsh and the English, and the ready energy of the king's ministers, not only forestalled the growth of any widely- extended revolt, but enabled Edred to add Northumbria per- manently to England. The Northumbrians themselves, more- over, were weary of Danish rule, and apparently conspired with the English to expel the last representatives of the race of Ilealfdene and Ivar the Boneless. Edred, however, did not organize the newly acquired territory as a part of the English king- dom of the south, but united Deira and Bernicia into one vast ealdormanry, or earldom, which he bestowed upon Osulf, the "High Reeve of Bamborough," who had recently been of great service in expelling the Danish kings.
Edred did not long survive the establishment of an English ealdorman ovor Northumbria. His name hardly belongs to the list
of great kings of the House of Alfred; yet he was
Character b . ? . J
ofEdred'H not lacking in spirit, neither was he a man to be trilled Hi* death, with. The arrest and imprisonment of the treacherous "VVulfstan, Archbishop of York, had quite the ring of the old metal. The reign, moreover, on the whole was suc- cessful, nor did the prestige of the royal house suffer. Yet the poor young king, weighted with a sickly body, with scarcely blood
88 BECONQUEST OF DANELAGH [edred
enough in his veins to keep them open, must have had a weary struggle; after nine years he gave up the contest, and was laid by the side of his brother Edmund at Glastonbury.
The recovery of the Danelagh was now completed. The ques- tion of supremacy was permanently settled, not only between Danes Teut/mic an(^ English, but also between North Britain and South becomes Britain. Henceforth, southern Britain was to direct England. ^he "destinies of the island," give it its royal family, and rule it from its southern capital. But more important still, Teutonic Britain had become England ; in the furnace fire of for- eign war, local differences and tribal antagonisms had disappeared, and the once rival tribes had been fused into one people. The tribal king of the West Saxons had become the national king of the English.
In the presence of such changes it was not possible for the old simple political and social constitution to remain as it had been in the past. The erasure of ancient tribal lines and the Ehanshin concentration of all royal authority in the family of oVaanizatimi ^essex> vastly increasing the personal authority and prestige of the king, were sufficient to change the pro- portions of the old constitution. But other changes fully as impor- tant, and even more radical, had extended through the entire social structure. The old free ceorls had sunk into a condition of semi- servitude. The laws of the time, designed no doubt to protect society against the vagrant, compelled every man to put himself under the protection of some lord, who thus became a sort of per- petual bail, responsible for the conduct of his man, and in case of crime bound to produce him in court or make good the loss which his ill-doing had caused the community. A man of good character would find little difficulty in securing a lord, but the man who had once lost his reputation was in a sad plight, for the lordless man had no standing before the law. The principle was feudal, and indicates, all too plainly, that English society was changing rapidly from a community of independent freemen to an oligarchy of rich landowners, where wealth was the only badge of independence. It indicates, moreover, that the poor freeman could no longer be trusted ; the loss of personal independence, as always, had been attended
THE GILDS 89
by a corresponding loss of self-respect and sense of responsibility. Freemen had become servile in nature, and, therefore, servile in condition.
With the decline of the free poor, there is also a marked advance in the severity of the laws in dealing with petty offenders, who
naturally came from this class, or the scarcely lower r°luiati(ms class wno represented the old villainage. No thief of
twelve years of age or over who stole to the amount of twelve pence was to be spared. He was to be slain, if found guilty, and all that he had was to be taken. The manifest thief was to be pursued by hue and cry, and the first man who felled him to the earth was to receive a fee of twelve pence. The population
also wore invited to enroll themselves into gilds, each
under its own head or ealder. Ten gilds, again, were to be associated together into a larger association known as the hundred} The gild was to serve as a sort of home protection association, designed to insure its members against loss by theft. Their duty was to lead the hue and cry against the thief, and see that the stolen property or its value was restored to the owner. The value of the stolen property was first to be taken from the goods of the thief; what was left was then divided into two parts, one of which was given to the wife of the thief, if she had had no part in the crime; the second part was divided equally between the king and the gild brethren. The gild, in dealing with the thief, was not required to appeal to legal authority, but might proceed at once to extreme measures. In other words "lynch law" was legalized, and its violence justified The sheriff was to be called upon only when the offender was too strong for the gilds to deal with, or when he sought refuge in another shire. Then the pursuit of the criminal was handed over to the neighboring sheriff, who was bound either to produce the thief or hunt him out of his shire.
This particular scheme originated first among the bishops and reeves of London, but it seems to have been added as a supplement to the public acts of Athelstan's reign, and was to be applied to the whole kingdom. The king urges its adoption upon his bishops,
Not to be confused with the territorial institution of that name.
90 RECOJSTQUEST OF DANELAGH [edekd
ealdormen, and sheriffs, that the people may be relieved of the
annoyance of thieving.
In the laws of Athelstan, the shire court and the whole system
of procedure emerges with more and more distinctness from the
,, ,t „ ,. obscurity of the earlier period. General attendance
Method of • , .
trial. upon the shire court was enforced hv fines. The sheriff
was also more definitely recognized as the king's repre- sentative officer. An accused man, if not taken in the act, was allowed to clear himself by the oath of his lord or his friends. Fail- ing of this, he was put to his trial, which was simply an appeal to God to work a miracle in his behalf and save him from punishment, if he were innocent ; another instance which shows how overwhelmingly the laws favored the property holder. The accuser might select the kind of test to be applied, but the law prescribed in each case whether the ordeal should be single or double or triple. "In the case of the ordeal by hot iron, a fire was kindled in the church, and a bar of iron weighing one, two, or three pounds1 placed upon it in the presence of an equal number of witnesses from each side. The iron was kept upon the fire while a certain service was performed. At the end of 'the last collect,' the iron was placed upon trestles, the man's hand was sprinkled with holy water, and then, at a sig- nal from the priest, he took up the iron and carried it a measured distance of nine of his own feet ; then, dropping it, he rushed to the altar, where his hand was bound up with a sealed cloth, to be removed at the end of three days, when his guilt or innocence would be declared, according to the state of his hand. In the ordeal by hot water, the accused had to take up a stone immersed in boiling water to the depth of his wrist or elbow, as the case might be. In the ordeal by cold water, he was let down into a pool of water by a rope an ell and a half long. If he sank, he was innocent. If he floated, he was guilty. " 8
It may be wondered how any one could escape at such a trial, save by the connivance or trickery of those who officiated. But by comparing with the later laws of . the Norman and Angevin period, it appears that the ordeal was more of the nature of a penalty
1 As the ordeal was to be single, double, or triple. 3 Ramsay, I, p. 293.
INSTITUTIONS LOSE POPULAR CHARACTER 91
than a trial, and was imposed only in the case of a notorious per- son, who could not get the requisite number of qualified guar- antors to swear to his good character. Moreover, if the accused succeeded in passing the test, though his life was spared, he was compelled to leave the country.
With the change in the standing of freemen, the government