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Thus Gregory's gracious heart set the sound of every word to
the time of spiritual goodness. Nor can his words be justly
censured for levity, if we consider how, in that age, the
elegance of poetry consisted in rhythm, and the eloquence of
prose in allusions. And which was the main, where his pleasant
conceits did end, there his pious endeavours began; which did
not terminate in a verbal jest, but produce real effects,
which ensued hereupon."
Thomas Fuller,
The Church History of Britain,
book 2, section 1.
In 590 the good Gregory became Bishop of Rome, or Pope, and
six years later, still retaining the interest awakened in him
by the captive English youth, he dispatched a band of
missionary monks to Britain, with their prior, Augustine, at
their head. Once they turned back, affrighted by what they
heard of the ferocity of the new heathen possessors of the
once-Christian island of Britain; but Gregory laid his
commands upon them again, and in the spring of 597 they
crossed the channel from Gaul, landing at Ebbsfleet, in the
Isle of Thanet, where the Jutish invaders had made their first
landing, a century and a half before. They found Ethelbert of
Kent, the most powerful of the English kings at that time,
already prepared to receive them with tolerance, if not with
favor, through the influence of a Christian wife--queen
Bertha, of the royal family of the Franks. The conversion and
baptism of the Kentish king and court, and the acceptance of
the new faith by great numbers of the people followed quickly.
In November of the same year, 597, Augustine returned to Gaul
to receive his consecration as "Archbishop of the English,"
establishing the See of Canterbury, with the primacy which has
remained in it to the present day. The East Saxons were the
next to bow to the cross and in 604 a bishop, Mellitus, was
sent to London. This ended Augustine's work--and Gregory's--
for both died that year. Then followed an interval of little
progress in the work of the mission, and, afterwards, a
reaction towards idolatry which threatened to destroy it
altogether. But just at this time of discouragement in the
south, a great triumph of Christianity was brought about in
Northumberland, and due, there, as in Kent, to the influence
of a Christian queen. Edwin, the king, with many of his nobles
and his people, were baptised on Easter Eve, A. D. 627, and a new
center of missionary work was established at York. There, too,
an appalling reverse occurred, when Northumberland was
overrun, in 633, by Penda, the heathen king of Mercia; but the
kingdom rallied, and the Christian Church was reestablished,
not wholly, as before, under the patronage and rule of Rome,
but partly by a mission from the ancient Celtic Church, which
did not acknowledge the supremacy of Rome. In the end,
however, the Roman forms of Christianity prevailed, throughout
Britain, as elsewhere in western Europe. Before the end of the
7th century the religion of the Cross was established firmly
in all parts of the island, the South Saxons being the latest
to receive it. In the 8th century English missionaries were
laboring zealously for the conversion of their Saxon and
Frisian brethren on the continent.
G. F. Maclear,
Conversion of the West; The English.
ALSO IN:
The Venerable Bede,
Ecclesiastical History.
H. Soames,
The Anglo Saxon Church.
R. C. Jenkins,
Canterbury,
chapter 2.
ENGLAND:
End of the 6th. Century.
The extent, the limits and the character
of the Teutonic conquest.
"Before the end of the 6th century the Teutonic dominion
stretched from the German ocean to the Severn, and from the
English Channel to the Firth of Forth. The northern part of
the island was still held by Picts and Scots, Celtic tribes,
whose exact ethnical relation to each other hardly concerns
us. And the whole west side of the island, including not only
modern Wales, but the great Kingdom of Strathclyde, stretching
from Dumbarton to Chester, and the great peninsula containing
Cornwall, Devon and part of Somerset, was still in the hands
of independent Britons. The struggle had been a long and
severe one, and the natives often retained possession of a
defensible district long after the surrounding country had
been occupied by the invaders. It is therefore probable that,
at the end of the 6th century and even later, there may have
been within the English frontier inaccessible points where
detached bodies of Welshmen still retained a precarious
independence. It is probable also that, within the same
frontier, there still were Roman towns, tributary to the
conquerors rather than occupied by them. But by the end of the
6th century even these exceptions must have been few. The work
of the Conquest, as a whole, was accomplished. The Teutonic
settlers had occupied by far the greater part of the territory
which they ever were, in the strictest sense, to occupy. The
complete supremacy of the island was yet to be won; but that
was to be won, when it was won, by quite another process. The
English Conquest of Britain differed in several important
respects from every other settlement of a Teutonic people
within the limits of the Roman Empire. ... Though the literal
extirpation of a nation is an impossibility, there is every
reason to believe that the Celtic inhabitants of those parts
of Britain which had become English at the 6th century had
been as nearly extirpated as a nation can be. The women would
doubtless be largely spared, but as far as the male sex is
concerned, we may feel sure that death, emigration or personal
slavery were the only alternatives which the vanquished found
at the hands of our fathers. The nature of the small Celtic
element in our language would of itself prove the fact. Nearly
every Welsh word which has found its way into English
expresses some small domestic matter, such as women and slaves
would be concerned with."
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 2, section 1.
"A glance at the map shows that the mass of the local
nomenclature of England begins with the Teutonic conquest,
while the mass of the local nomenclature of France is older
than the Teutonic conquest. And, if we turn from the names on
the map to the living speech of men, there is the most
obvious, but the most important, of all facts, the fact that
Englishmen speak English and that Frenchmen speak French.
{784}
That is to say, in Gaul the speech of Rome lived through the
Teutonic conquest, while in Britain it perished in the
Teutonic conquest, if it had not passed away before. And
behind this is the fact, very much less obvious, a good deal
less important, but still very important, that in Gaul tongues
older than Latin live on only in corners as mere survivals,
while in Britain, while Latin has utterly vanished, a tongue
older than Latin still lives on as the common speech of an
appreciable part of the land. Here then is the final result
open to our own eyes. And it is a final result which could not
have come to pass unless the Teutonic conquest of Britain had
been something of an utterly different character from the
Teutonic conquest of Gaul--unless the amount of change, of
destruction, of havoc of every kind, above all, of slaughter
and driving out of the existing inhabitants, had been far
greater in Britain than it was in Gaul. If the Angles and
Saxons in Britain had been only as the Goths in Spain, or even
as the Franks in Gaul, it is inconceivable that the final
results should have been so utterly different in the two
cases. There is the plain fact: Gaul remained a Latin-speaking
land; England became a Teutonic-speaking land. The obvious
inference is that, while in Gaul the Teutonic conquest led to
no general displacement of the inhabitants, in England it did
lead to such a general displacement. In Gaul the Franks simply
settled among a subject people, among whom they themselves
were gradually merged; in Britain the Angles and Saxons slew
or drove out the people whom they found in the land, and
settled it again as a new people."
E. A. Freeman,
The English People in its Three Homes
(Lectures to American Audiences),
pages 114-115.
"Almost to the close of the 6th century the English conquest
of Britain was a sheer dispossession of the conquered people;
and, so far as the English sword in these earlier days
reached, Britain became England, a land, that is, not of
Britons, but of Englishmen. There is no need to believe that
the clearing of the land meant the general slaughter of the
men who held it, or to account for such a slaughter by
supposed differences between the temper of the English and
those of other conquerors. ... The displacement of the
conquered people was only made possible by their own stubborn
resistance, and by the slow progress of the conquerors in the
teeth of it. Slaughter no doubt there was on the battlefield
or in towns like Anderida, whose long defence woke wrath in
their besiegers. But for the most part the Britons cannot have
been slaughtered; they were simply defeated and drew back."
J. R. Green,
The Making of England,
chapter 4.
The view strongly stated above, as to the completeness of the
erasure of Romano-British society and influence from the whole
of England except its southwestern and north· western
counties, by the English conquest, is combated as strongly by
another less prominent school of recent historians,
represented, for example, by Mr. Henry C. Coote (The Romans of
Britain) and by Mr. Charles H. Pearson, who says: "We know
that fugitives from Britain settled largely during the 5th
century in Armorica and in Ireland; and we may perhaps accept
the legend of St. Ursula as proof that the flight, in some
instances, was directed to the more civilized parts of the
continent. But even the pious story of the 11,000 virgins is
sober and credible by the side of that history which assumes
that some million men and women were slaughtered or made
homeless by a few ship-loads of conquerors."
C. H. Pearson,
History of England during the Early and Middle Ages,
volume 1, chapter 6.
The opinion maintained by Prof. Freeman and Mr. Green (and, no
less, by Dr. Stubbs) is the now generally accepted one.
ENGLAND: 7th Century.
The so-called "Heptarchy."
"The old notion of an Heptarchy, of a regular system of seven
Kingdoms, united under the regular supremacy of a single
over-lord, is a dream which has passed away before the light
of historic criticism. The English Kingdoms in Britain were
ever fluctuating, alike in their number and in their relations
to one another. The number of perfectly independent states was
sometimes greater and sometimes less than the mystical seven,
and, till the beginning of the ninth century, the whole nation
did not admit the regular supremacy of any fixed and permanent
over-lord. Yet it is no less certain that, among the mass of
smaller and more obscure principalities, seven Kingdoms do
stand out in a marked way, seven Kingdoms of which it is
possible to recover something like a continuous history, seven
Kingdoms which alone supplied candidates for the dominion of
the whole island." These seven kingdoms were Kent, Sussex,
Essex, Wessex, East Anglia, Northumberland and Mercia.
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 2.
"After the territorial boundaries had become more settled,
there appeared at the commencement of the seventh century
seven or eight greater and smaller kingdoms. ... Historians
have described this condition of things as the Heptarchy,
disregarding the early disappearance of Sussex, and the
existence of still smaller kingdoms. But this grouping was
neither based upon equality, nor destined to last for any
length of time. It was the common interest of these smaller
states to withstand the sudden and often dangerous invasions
of their western and northern neighbours; and, accordingly,
whichever king was capable of successfully combating the
common foe, acquired for the time a certain superior rank,
which some historians denote by the title of Bretwalda. By
this name can only be understood an actual and recognized
temporary superiority; first ascribed to Ælla of Sussex, and
later passing to Northumbria, until Wessex finally attains a
real and lasting supremacy. It was geographical position which
determined these relations of superiority. The small kingdoms
in the west were shielded by the greater ones of
Northumberland, Mercia and Wessex, as though by
crescent-shaped forelands--which in their struggles with the
Welsh kingdoms, with Strathclyde and Cumbria, with Picts and
Scots, were continually in a state of martial activity. And so
the smaller western kingdoms followed the three warlike ones;
and round these Anglo-Saxon history revolved for two whole
centuries, until in Wessex we find a combination of most of
the conditions which are necessary to the existence of a great
State."
R. Gneist,
History of the English Constitution,
chapter 3.
ENGLAND: A. D. 617.
Edwin becomes king of Northumbria.
ENGLAND: A. D. 634.
Oswald becomes king of Northumbria.
ENGLAND: A. D. 655.
Oswi becomes king of Northumbria.
{785}
ENGLAND: A. D. 670.
Egfrith becomes king of Northumbria.
ENGLAND: A. D. 688.
Ini becomes king of the West Saxons.
ENGLAND: A. D. 716.
Ethelbald becomes king of Mercia.
ENGLAND: A. D. 758.
Offa becomes king of Mercia.
ENGLAND: A. D. 794.
Cenwulf becomes king of Mercia.
ENGLAND: A. D. 800.
Accession of the West Saxon king Ecgberht.
ENGLAND: A. D. 800-836.
The supremacy of Wessex.
The first king of all the English.
"And now I have come to the reign of Ecgberht, the great
Bretwalda. He was an Ætheling of the blood of Cerdic, and he
is said to have been the son of Ealhmund, and Ealhmund is said
to have been an Under-king of Kent. For the old line of the
Kings of Kent had come to an end and Kent was now sometimes
under Wessex and sometimes under Mercia. ... When Beorhtric
died in 800, he [Ecgberht] was chosen King of the West-Saxons.
He reigned until 836, and in that time he brought all the
English Kingdoms, and the greater part of Britain, more or
less under his power. The southern part of the island, all
Kent, Sussex, and Essex, he joined on to his own Kingdom, and
set his sons or other Æthelings to reign over them as his
Under-kings. But Northumberland, Mercia, and East-Anglia were
not brought so completely under his power as this. Their Kings
submitted to Ecgberht and acknowledged him as their over-lord,
but they went on reigning in their own Kingdoms, and
assembling their own Wise Men, just as they did before. They
became what in after times was called his 'vassals,' what in
English was called being his 'men.' ... Besides the English
Kings, Ecgberht brought the Welsh, both in Wales and in
Cornwall, more completely under his power. ... So King
Ecgberht was Lord from the Irish Sea to the German Ocean, and
from the English Channel to the Firth of Forth. So it is not
wonderful if, in his charters, he not only called himself King
of the West-Saxons or King of the West-Saxons and Kentishmen,
but sometimes 'Rex Anglorum,' or 'King of the English.' But
amidst all this glory there were signs of great evils at hand.
The Danes came several times."
E. A. Freeman,
Old English History for Children,
chapter 7.
ENGLAND: A. D. 836.
Accession of the West Saxon king Ethelwulf.
ENGLAND: A. D. 855-880.
Conquests and settlements of the Danes.
The heroic struggle of Alfred the Great.
The "Peace of Wedmore" and the "Danelaw."
King Alfred's character and reign.
"The Danish invasions of England ... fall naturally into three
periods, each of which finds its parallel in the course of the
English Conquest of Britain. ... We first find a period in
which the object of the invaders seems to be simple plunder.
They land, they harry the country, they fight, if need be, to
secure their booty, but whether defeated or victorious, they
equally return to their ships, and sail away with what they
have gathered. This period includes the time from the first
recorded invasion [A. D. 787] till the latter half of the
ninth century. Next comes a time in which the object of the
Northmen is clearly no longer mere plunder, but settlement.
... In the reign of Æthelwulf the son of Ecgberht it is
recorded that the heathen men wintered for the first time in
the Isle of Sheppey [A. D. 855]. This marks the transition
from the first to the second period of their invasions. ... It
was not however till about eleven years from this time that
the settlement actually began. Meanwhile the sceptre of the
West-Saxons passed from one hand to another. ... Four sons of
Æthelwulf reigned in succession, and the reigns of the first
three among them [Ethelbald, A. D. 858, Ethelberht, 860,
Ethelred, 866] make up together only thirteen years. In the
reign of the third of these princes, Æthelred I., the second
period of the invasions fairly begins. Five years were spent
by the Northmen in ravaging and conquering the tributary
Kingdoms. Northumberland, still disputed between rival Kings,
fell an easy prey [867-869], and one or two puppet princes did
not scruple to receive a tributary crown at the hands of the
heathen invaders. They next entered Mercia [868], they seized
Nottingham, and the West-Saxon King hastening to the relief of
his vassals, was unable to dislodge them from that stronghold.
East Anglia was completely conquered [866-870] and its King
Eadmund died a martyr. At last the full storm of invasion
burst upon Wessex itself [871]. King Æthelred, the first of a
long line of West-Saxon hero-Kings, supported by his greater
brother Ælfred [Alfred the Great] met the invaders in battle
after battle with varied success. He died and Ælfred
succeeded, in the thick of the struggle. In this year [871],
the last of Æthelred and the first of Ælfred, nine pitched
battles, besides smaller engagements, were fought with the
heathens on West-Saxon ground. At last peace was made; the
Northmen retreated to London, within the Mercian frontier;
Wessex was for the moment delivered, but the supremacy won by
Ecgberht was lost. For a few years Wessex was subjected to
nothing more than temporary incursions, but Northumberland and
part of Mercia were systematically occupied by the Northmen,
and the land was divided among them. ... At last the Northmen,
now settled in a large part of the island, made a second
attempt to add Wessex itself to their possessions [878]. For a
moment the land seemed conquered; Ælfred himself lay hid in the
marshes of Somersetshire; men might well deem that the Empire
of Ecgberht and the Kingdom of Cerdic itself, had vanished for
ever. But the strong heart of the most renowned of Englishmen,
the saint, the scholar, the hero, and the lawgiver, carried
his people safely through this most terrible of dangers.
Within the same year the Dragon of Wessex was again victorious
[at the battle of Ethandun, or Edington], and the Northmen
were driven to conclude a peace which Englishmen, fifty years
sooner, would have deemed the lowest depth of degradation, but
which might now be fairly looked upon as honourable and even
as triumphant. By the terms of the Peace of Wedmore the
Northmen were to evacuate Wessex and the part of Mercia
south-west of Watling-Street; they, or at least their chiefs,
were to submit to baptism, and they were to receive the whole
land beyond Watling-Street as vassals of the West-Saxon King.
... The exact boundary started from the Thames, along the Lea
to its source, then right to Bedford and along the Ouse till
it meets Watling-Street, then along Watling-Street to the
Welsh border. See Ælfred and Guthrum's Peace,' Thorpe's 'Laws
and Institutes,' i. 152. This frontier gives London to the
English; but it seems that Ælfred did not obtain full
possession of London till 886."
{786}
The territory thus conceded to the Danes, which included all
northeastern England from the Thames to the Tyne, was
thenceforth known by the name of the Danelagh or Danelaw,
signifying the country subject to the law of the Danes. The
Peace of Wedmore ended the second period of the Danish
invasions. The third period, which was not opened until a full
century later, embraced the actual conquest of the whole of
England by a Danish king and its temporary annexation to the
dominions of the Danish crown.
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 2, with foot-note.
"Now that peace was restored, and the Danes driven out of his
domains, it remained to be seen whether Alfred was as good a
ruler as he was a soldier. ... What did he see? The towns,
even London itself, pillaged, ruined, or burnt down; the
monasteries destroyed; the people wild and lawless; ignorance,
roughness, insecurity everywhere. It is almost incredible with
what a brave heart he set himself to repair all this; how his
great and noble aims were still before him; how hard he
strove, and how much he achieved. First of all he seems to
have sought for helpers. Like most clever men, he was good at
reading characters. He soon saw who would be true, brave, wise
friends, and he collected these around him. Some of them he
fetched from over the sea, from France and Germany; our friend
Asser from Wales, or, as he calls his country, 'Western
Britain,' while England, he calls 'Saxony.' He says he first
saw Alfred 'in a royal vill, which is called Dene' in Sussex.
'He received me with kindness, and asked me eagerly to devote
myself to his service, and become his friend; to leave
everything which I possessed on the left or western bank of
the Severn, and promised that he would give more than an
equivalent for it in his own dominions. I replied that I could
not rashly and incautiously promise such things; for it seemed
to be unjust that I should leave those sacred places in which
I had been bred, educated, crowned, and ordained for the sake
of any earthly honour and power, unless upon compulsion. Upon
this he said, "If you cannot accede to this, at least let me
have your service in part; spend six months of the year with
me here, and the other six months in Britain."' And to this
after a time Asser consented. What were the principal things
he turned his mind to after providing for the defence of his
kingdom, and collecting his friends and counsellors about him?
Law--justice--religion--education. He collected and studied
the old laws of his nation; what he thought good he kept, what
he disapproved he left out. He added others, especially the
ten commandments and some other parts of the law of Moses.
Then he laid them all before his Witan, or wise men, and with
their approval published them. ... The state of justice in
England was dreadful at this time. ... Alfred's way of curing
this was by inquiring into all cases, as far as he possibly
could, himself; and Asser says he did this 'especially for the
sake of the poor, to whose interest, day and night, he ever
was wonderfully attentive; for in the whole kingdom the poor,
besides him, had few or no protectors.' ... When he found that
the judges had made mistakes through ignorance, he rebuked them,
and told them they must either grow wiser or give up their
posts; and soon the old earls and other judges, who had been
unlearned from their cradles, began to study diligently. ...
For reviving and spreading religion among his people he used
the best means that he knew of; that is, he founded new
monasteries and restored old ones, and did his utmost to get
good bishops and clergymen. For his own part, he strove to
practise in all ways what he taught to others. ... Education
was in a still worse condition than everything else. ... All
the schools had been broken up. Alfred says that when he began
to reign there were very few clergymen south of the Humber who
could even understand the Prayer-book. (That was still in
Latin, as the Roman missionaries had brought it.) And south of
the Thames he could not remember one. His first care was to
get better-educated clergy and bishops. And next to get the
laymen taught also. ... He founded monasteries and schools,
and restored the old ones which had been ruined. He had a
school in his court for his own children and the children of
his nobles. But at the very outset a most serious difficulty
confronted Alfred. Where was he to get books? At this time, as
far as we can judge, there can only have been one, or at most
two books in the English language--the long poem of Cædmon
about the creation of the world, &c., and the poem of Beowulf
about warriors and fiery dragons. There were many English
ballads and songs, but whether these were written down I do
not know. There was no book of history, not even English
history; no book of geography, no religious books, no
philosophy. Bede, who had written so many books, had written
them all in Latin. ... So when they had a time of 'stillness'
the king and his learned friends set to work and translated
books into English; and Alfred, who was as modest and candid
as he was wise, put into the preface of one of his
translations that he hoped, if anyone knew Latin better than
he did, that he would not blame him, for he could but do
according to his ability. ... Beside all this, he had a great
many other occupations. Asser, who often lived with him for
months at a time, gives us an account of his busy life.
Notwithstanding his infirmities and other hindrances, 'he
continued to carry on the government, and to exercise hunting
in all its branches; to teach his workers in gold and
artificers of all kinds, his falconers, hawkers, and
dog-keepers; to build houses, majestic and good, beyond all
the precedents of his ancestors, by his new mechanical
inventions; to recite the Saxon books (Asser, being a
Welshman, always calls the English, Saxon), and especially to
learn by heart the Saxon poems, and to make others learn them;
he never desisted from studying most diligently to the best of
his ability; he attended the mass and other daily services of
religion; he was frequent in psalm-singing and prayer; ... he
bestowed alms and largesses on both natives and foreigners of
all countries; he was affable and pleasant to all, and
curiously eager to investigate things unknown.'"
M. J. Guest,
Lectures on the History of England,
lecture 9.
"It is no easy task for anyone who has been studying his
[Alfred's] life and works to set reasonable bounds to their
reverence, and enthusiasm, for the man. Lest the reader should
think my estimate tainted with the proverbial weakness of
biographers for their heroes; let them turn to the words in
which the earliest, and the last of the English historians of
that time, sum up the character of Alfred.
{787}
Florence of Worcester, writing in the century after his death,
speaks of him as 'that famous, warlike, victorious king; the
zealous protector of widows, scholars, orphans and the poor;
skilled in the Saxon poets; affable and liberal to all;
endowed with prudence, fortitude, justice, and temperance;
most patient under the infirmity which he daily suffered; a
most stern inquisitor in executing justice; vigilant and
devoted in the service of God.' Mr. Freeman, in his 'History
of the Norman Conquest,' has laid down the portrait in bold
and lasting colours, in a passage as truthful as it is
eloquent, which those who are familiar with it will be glad to
meet again, while those who do not know it will be grateful to me
for substituting for any poor words of my own. 'Alfred, the
unwilling author of these great changes, is the most perfect
character in history. He is a singular instance of a prince
who has become a hero of romance, who, as such, has had
countless imaginary exploits attributed to him, but to whose
character romance has done no more than justice, and who
appears in exactly the same light in history and in fable. No
other man on record has ever so thoroughly united all the
virtues both of the ruler and of the private man. In no other
man on record were so many virtues disfigured by so little
alloy. A saint without superstition, a scholar without
ostentation, a warrior all whose wars were fought in the
defence of his country, a conqueror whose laurels were never
stained by cruelty, a prince never cast down by adversity,
never lifted up to insolence in the day of triumph--there is
no other name in history to compare with his. Saint Lewis
comes nearest to him in the union of a more than monastic
piety with the highest civil, military, and domestic virtues.
Both of them stand forth in honourable contrast to the abject
superstition of some other royal saints, who were so selfishly
engaged in the care of their own souls that they refused
either to raise up heirs for their throne, or to strike a blow
on behalf of their people. But even in Saint Lewis we see a
disposition to forsake an immediate sphere of duty for the
sake of distant and unprofitable, however pious and glorious,
undertakings. The true duties of the King of the French
clearly lay in France, and not in Egypt or Tunis. No such
charge lies at the door of the great King of the West Saxons.
With an inquiring spirit which took in the whole world, for
purposes alike of scientific inquiry and of Christian
benevolence, Alfred never forgot that his first duty was to
his own people. He forestalled our own age in sending
expeditions to explore the Northern Ocean, and in sending alms
to the distant Churches of India; but he neither forsook his
crown, like some of his predecessors, nor neglected his
duties, like some of his successors. The virtue of Alfred,
like the virtue of Washington, consisted in no marvellous
displays of super-human genius, but in the simple,
straightforward discharge of the duty of the moment. But
Washington, soldier, statesman, and patriot, like Alfred, has
no claim to Alfred's further characters of saint and scholar.
William the Silent, too, has nothing to set against Alfred's
literary merits; and in his career, glorious as it is, there
is an element of intrigue and chicanery utterly alien to the
noble simplicity of both Alfred and Washington. The same union
of zeal for religion and learning with the highest gifts of
the warrior and the statesman is found, on a wider field of
action, in Charles the Great. But even Charles cannot aspire
to the pure glory of Alfred. Amidst all the splendour of
conquest and legislation, we cannot be blind to an alloy of
personal ambition, of personal vice, to occasional unjust
aggressions and occasional acts of cruelty. Among our own
later princes, the great Edward alone can bear for a moment
the comparison with his glorious ancestor. And, when tried by
such a standard, even the great Edward fails. Even in him we
do not see the same wonderful union of gifts and virtues which
so seldom meet together; we cannot acquit Edward of occasional
acts of violence, of occasional recklessness as to means; we
cannot attribute to him the pure, simple, almost childlike
disinterestedness which marks the character of Alfred.' Let
Wordsworth, on behalf of the poets of England, complete the
picture:
'Behold a pupil of the monkish gown,
The pious Alfred, king to justice dear!
Lord of the harp and liberating spear;
Mirror of princes! Indigent renown
Might range the starry ether for a crown
Equal to his deserts, who, like the year,
Pours forth his bounty, like the day doth cheer,
And awes like night, with mercy-tempered frown.
Ease from this noble miser of his time
No moment steals; pain narrows not his cares--
Though small his kingdom as a spark or gem,
Of Alfred boasts remote Jerusalem,
And Christian India, through her widespread clime,
In sacred converse gifts with Alfred shares.'"
Thomas Hughes,
Alfred the Great,
chapter 24.
ALSO IN:
R. Pauli,
Life of Alfred the Great.
Asser,
Life of Alfred.
See, also, NORMANS, and EDUCATION, MEDIÆVAL.
ENGLAND: A. D. 901.
Accession of the West Saxon king Edward, called The Elder.
ENGLAND: A. D. 925.
Accession of the West Saxon king Ethelstan.
ENGLAND: A. D. 938.
The battle of Brunnaburgh.
Alfred the Great, dying in 901, was succeeded by his son,
Edward, and Edward, in turn, was followed, A. D. 925, by his
son Athelstane, or Æthalsten. In the reign of Athelstane a
great league was formed against him by the Northumbrian Danes
with the Scots, with the Danes of Dublin and with the Britons
of Strathclyde and Cumbria. Athelstane defeated the
confederates in a mighty battle, celebrated in one of the
finest of Old-English war-songs, and also in one of the Sagas
of the Norse tongue, as the Battle of Brunnaburgh or
Brunanburh, but the site of which is unknown. "Five Kings and
seven northern Iarls or earls fell in the strife. ...
Constantine the Scot fled to the north, mourning his
fair-haired son, who perished in the slaughter. Anlaf [or
Olaf, the leader of the Danes or Ostmen of Dublin], with a sad
and scattered remnant of his forces, escaped to Ireland. ...
The victory was so decisive that, during the remainder of the
reign of Athelstane, no enemy dared to rise up against him;
his supremacy was acknowledged without contest, and his glory
extended to distant realms."
F. Palgrave,
History of the Anglo-Saxons,
chapter 10.
Mr. Skene is of opinion that the battle of Brunnaburgh was
fought at Aldborough, near York.
W. F. Skene,
Celtic Scotland,
volume 1, page 357.
ENGLAND: A. D. 940.
Accession of the West Saxon king Edmund.
ENGLAND: A. D. 946.
Accession of the West Saxon king Edred.
ENGLAND: A. D. 955.
Accession of the West Saxon king Edwig.
{788}
ENGLAND: A. D. 958.
Accession of the West Saxon king Edgar.
ENGLAND: A. D. 958.
Completed union of the realm.
Increase of kingly authority.
Approach towards feudalism.
Rise of the Witenagemot.
Decline of the Freemen.
"Before Alfred's son Edward died, the whole of Mercia was
incorporated with his immediate dominions. The way in which
the thing was done was more remarkable than the thing itself.
Like the Romans, he made the fortified towns the means of
upholding his power. But unlike the Romans, he did not
garrison them with colonists from amongst his own immediate
dependents. He filled them, as Henry the Fowler did afterwards
in Saxony, with free townsmen, whose hearts were at one with
their fellow countrymen around. Before he died in 924, the
Danish chiefs in the land beyond the Humber had acknowledged
his overlordship, and even the Celts of Wales and Scotland had
given in their submission in some form which they were not
likely to interpret too strictly. His son and his two
grandsons, Athelstan, Edmund, and Edred completed the work,
and when after the short and troubled interval of Edwy's rule
in Wessex, Edgar united the undivided realm under his sway in
958, he had no internal enemies to suppress. He allowed the
Celtic Scottish King who had succeeded to the inheritance of
the Pictish race to possess the old Northumbrian land north of
the Tweed, where they and their descendants learned the habits
and speech of Englishmen. But he treated him and the other
Celtic kings distinctly as his inferiors, though it was
perhaps well for him that he did not attempt to impose upon
them any very tangible tokens of his supremacy. The story of
his being rowed by eight kings on the Dee is doubtless only a
legend by which the peaceful king was glorified in the
troubled times which followed. Such a struggle, so
successfully conducted, could not fail to be accompanied by a
vast increase of that kingly authority which had been on the
growth from the time of its first establishment. The
hereditary ealdormen, the representatives of the old kingly
houses, had passed away. The old tribes, or--where their
limitations had been obliterated by the tide of Danish
conquest, as was the case in central and northern England--the
new artificial divisions which had taken their place, were now
known as shires, and the very name testified that they were
regarded only as parts of a greater whole. The shire mote
still continued the tradition of the old popular assemblies.
At its head as presidents of its deliberations were the
ealdorman and the bishop, each of them owing their appointment
to the king, and it was summoned by the shire-reeve or
sheriff, himself even more directly an officer of the king,
whose business it was to see that all the royal dues were paid
within the shire. In the more general concerns of the kingdom,
the king consulted with his Witan, whose meetings were called
the Witenagemot, a body, which, at least for all ordinary
purposes, was composed not of any representatives of the
shire-motes, but of his own dependents, the ealdormen, the
bishops, and a certain number of thegns whose name, meaning
'servants', implied at least at first, that they either were
or had at one time been in some way in the employment of the
king. ... The necessities of war ... combined with the
sluggishness of the mass of the population to favour the
growth of a military force, which would leave the tillers of
the soil to their own peaceful occupations. As the conditions
which make a standing army possible on a large scale did not
yet exist, such a force must be afforded by a special class,
and that class must be composed of those who either had too
much land to till themselves, or, having no land at all, were
released from the bonds which tied the cultivator to the soil,
in other words, it must be composed of a landed aristocracy
and its dependents. In working out this change, England was
only aiming at the results which similar conditions were
producing on the Continent. But just as the homogeneousness of
the population drew even the foreign element of the church
into harmony with the established institutions, so it was with
the military aristocracy. It grouped itself round the king,
and it supplemented, instead of overthrowing, the old popular
assemblies. Two classes of men, the eorls and the gesiths, had
been marked out from their fellows at the time of the
conquest. The thegn of Edgar's day differed from both, but he
had some of the distinguishing marks of either. He was not
like the gesith, a mere personal follower of the king. He did
not, like the eorl, owe his position to his birth. Yet his
relation to the king was a close one, and he had a hold upon
the land as firm as that of the older eorl. He may, perhaps,
best be described as a gesith, who had acquired the position
of an eorl without entirely throwing off his own
characteristics. ... There can be little doubt that the change
began in the practice of granting special estates in the
folkland, or common undivided land, to special persons. At
first this land was doubtless held to be the property of the
tribe. [This is now questioned by Vinogradoff and others. See
FOLCLAND.] ... When the king rose above the tribes, he
granted it himself with the consent of his Witan. A large
portion was granted to churches and monasteries. But a large
portion went in privates estates, or book land, as it was
called, from the book or charter which conveyed them to the
king's own gesiths, or to members of his own family. The
gesith thus ceased to be a mere member of the king's military
household. He became a landowner as well, with special duties.
to perform to the king. ... He had special jurisdiction given
him over his tenants and serfs, exempting him and them from
the authority of the hundred mote, though they still remained,
except in very exceptional cases, under the authority of the
shire mote. ... Even up to the Norman conquest this change was
still going on. To the end, indeed, the old constitutional
forms were not broken down. The hundred mote was not
abandoned, where freemen enough remained to fill it. Even
where all the land of a hundred had passed under the
protection of a lord there was little outward change. ...
There was thus no actual breach of continuity in the nation.
The thegnhood pushed its roots down, as it were, amongst the
free classes. Nevertheless there was a danger of such a breach
of continuity coming about. The freemen entered more and more
largely into a condition of' dependence, and there was a great
risk lest such a condition of dependence should become a
condition of servitude. Here and there, by some extraordinary
stroke of luck, a freeman might rise to be a thegn. But the
condition of the class to which he belonged was deteriorating
every day.
{789}
The downward progress to serfdom was too easy to take, and by
large masses of the population it was already taken. Below the
increasing numbers of the serfs was to be found the lower
class of slaves, who were actually the property of their
masters. The Witenagemot was in reality a select body of
thegns, if the bishops, who held their lands in much the same
way, be regarded as thegns. In was rather an inchoate House of
Lords, than an inchoate Parliament, after our modern ideas. It
was natural that a body of men which united a great part of
the wealth with almost all the influence in the kingdom should
be possessed of high constitutional powers. The Witenagemot
elected the king, though as yet they always chose him out of
the royal family, which was held to have sprung from the god
Woden. There were even cases in which they deposed unworthy
kings."
S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger,
Introduction to the Study of English History,
part 1, chapter 2, section 16-21.
ENGLAND: A. D. 975.
Accession of the West Saxon king Edward, called The Martyr.
ENGLAND: A. D. 979.
Accession of the West Saxon king Ethelred, called The Unready.
ENGLAND: A. D. 979-1016.
The Danish conquest.
"Then [A. D. 979] commenced one of the longest and most
disastrous reigns of the Saxon kings, with the accession of
Ethelred II., justly styled Ethelred the Unready. The Northmen
now renewed their plundering and conquering expeditions
against England; while England had a worthless waverer for her
ruler, and many of her chief men turned traitors to their king
and country. Always a laggart in open war, Ethelred tried in
1001 the cowardly and foolish policy of buying off the enemies
whom he dared not encounter. The tax called Dane-gelt was then
levied to provide 'a tribute for the Danish men on account of
the great terror which they caused.' To pay money thus was in
effect to hire the enemy to renew the war. In 1002 Ethelred
tried the still more weak and wicked measure of ridding
himself of his enemies by treacherous massacre. Great numbers
of Danes were now living in England, intermixed with the
Anglo-Saxon population. Ethelred resolved to relieve himself
from all real or supposed danger of these Scandinavian
settlers taking part with their invading kinsmen, by sending
secret orders throughout his dominions for the putting to
death of every Dane, man, woman, and child, on St. Brice's
Day, Nov. 13. This atrocious order was executed only in
Southern England, that is, in the West-Saxon territories; but
large numbers of the Danish race were murdered there while
dwelling in full security among their Saxon neighbours. ...
Among the victims was a royal Danish lady, named Gunhilde, who
was sister of Sweyn, king of Denmark, and who had married and
settled in England. ... The news of the massacre of St. Brice
soon spread over the Continent, exciting the deepest
indignation against the English and their king. Sweyn
collected in Denmark a larger fleet and army than the north
had ever before sent forth, and solemnly vowed to conquer
England or perish in the attempt. He landed on the south coast
of Devon, obtained possession of Exeter by the treachery of
its governor, and then marched through western and southern
England, marking every shire with fire, famine and slaughter;
but he was unable to take London, which was defended against
the repeated attacks of the Danes with strong courage and
patriotism, such as seemed to have died out in the rest of
Saxon England. In 1013, the wretched king Ethelred fled the
realm and sought shelter in Normandy. Sweyn was acknowledged
king in all the northern and western shires, but he died in
1014, while his vow of conquest was only partly accomplished.
The English now sent for Ethelred back from Normandy,
promising loyalty to him as their lawful king, 'provided he
would rule over them more justly than he had done before.'
Ethelred willingly promised amendment, and returned to reign
amidst strife and misery for two years more. His implacable
enemy, Sweyn, was indeed dead; but the Danish host which Sweyn
had led thither was still in England, under the command of
Sweyn's son, Canute [or Cnut], a prince equal in military
prowess to his father, and far superior to him and to all
other princes of the time in statesmanship and general
ability. Ethelred died in 1016, while the war with Canute was
yet raging. Ethelred's son, Edmund, surnamed Ironside, was
chosen king by the great council then assembled in London, but
great numbers of the Saxons made their submission to Canute.
The remarkable personal valour of Edmund, strongly aided by
the bravery of his faithful Londoners, maintained the war for
nearly a year, when Canute agreed to a compromise, by which he
and Edmund divided the land between them. But within a few
months after this, the royal Ironside died by the hand of an
assassin, and Canute obtained the whole realm of the English
race. A Danish dynasty was now [A. D. 1016] established in
England for three reigns."
Sir E. S. Creasy,
History of England,
volume 1, chapter 5.
ALSO IN:
J. M. Lappenberg,
England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings,
volume 2, pages 151-233.
See, also, MALDEN, and ASSANDUN, BATTLES OF.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1016.
Accession and death of King Edmund Ironside.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1016-1042.
The Reign of the Danish kings.
"Cnut's rule was not as terrible as might have been feared. He
was perfectly unscrupulous in striking down the treacherous
and mischievous chieftains who had made a trade of Ethelred's
weakness and the country's divisions. But he was wise and
strong enough to rule, not by increasing but by allaying those
divisions. Resting his power upon his Scandinavian kingdoms
beyond the sea, upon his Danish countrymen in England, and his
Danish huscarles, or specially trained soldiers in his
service, he was able, without even the appearance of weakness,
to do what in him lay to bind Dane and Englishman together as
common instruments of his power. Fidelity counted more with
him than birth. To bring England itself into unity was beyond
his power. The device which he hit upon was operative only in
hands as strong as his own. There were to be four great earls,
deriving their name from the Danish word jarl, centralizing
the forces of government in Wessex, in Mercia, in East Anglia,
and in Northumberland. With Cnut the four were officials of
the highest class. They were there because he placed them
there. They would cease to be there if he so willed it. But it
could hardly be that it would always be so. Some day or
another, unless a great catastrophe swept away Cnut and his
creation, the earldoms would pass into territorial
sovereignties and the divisions of England would be made
evident openly."
S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger,
Introduction to the Study of English History,
chapter 2, section 25.
{790}
"He [Canute] ruled nominally at least, a larger European
dominion than any English sovereign has ever done; and perhaps
also a more homogeneous one. No potentate of the time came
near him except the king of Germany, the emperor, with whom he
was allied as an equal. The king of the Norwegians, the Danes,
and a great part of the Swedes, was in a position to found a
Scandinavian empire with Britain annexed. Canute's division of
his dominions on his death-bed, showed that he saw this to be
impossible; Norway, for a century and a half after his strong
hand was removed, was broken up amongst an anarchical crew of
piratic and blood-thirsty princes, nor could Denmark be
regarded as likely to continue united with England. The
English nation was too much divided and demoralised to retain
hold on Scandinavia, even if the condition of the latter had
allowed it. Hence Canute determined that during his life, as
after his death, the nations should be governed on their own
principles. ... The four nations of the English,
Northumbrians, East Angles, Mercians and West Saxons, might,
each under their own national leader, obey a sovereign who was
strong enough to enforce peace amongst them. The great
earldoms of Canute's reign were perhaps a nearer approach to a
feudal division of England than anything which followed the
Norman Conquest. ... And the extent to which this creation of
the four earldoms affected the history of the next
half-century cannot be exaggerated. The certain tendency of
such an arrangement to become hereditary, and the certain
tendency of the hereditary occupation of great fiefs
ultimately to overwhelm the royal power, are well
exemplified. ... The Norman Conquest restored national unity
at a tremendous temporary sacrifice, just as the Danish
Conquest in other ways, and by a reverse process, had helped
to create it."
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 7, section 77.
Canute died in 1035. He was succeeded by his two sons, Harold
Harefoot (1035-1040) and Harthacnute or Hardicanute
(1040-1042), after which the Saxon line of kings was
momentarily restored.
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 6.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1035.
Accession of Harold, son of Cnut.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1040.
Accession of Harthacnut, or Hardicanute.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1042.
Accession of Edward the Confessor.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1042-1066.
The last of the Saxon kings.
"The love which Canute had inspired by his wise and
conciliatory rule was dissipated by the bad government of his
sons, Harold and Harthacnut, who ruled in turn. After seven
years of misgovernment, or rather anarchy, England, freed from
the hated rule of Harthacnut by his death, returned to its
old line of kings, and 'all folk chose Edward [surnamed The
Confessor, son of Ethelred the Unready] to king,' as was his
right by birth. Not that he was, according to our ideas, the
direct heir, since Edward, the son of Edmund Ironside, still
lived, an exile in Hungary. But the Saxons, by choosing Edward
the Confessor, reasserted for the last time their right to
elect that one of the hereditary line who was most available.
With the reign of Edward the Confessor the Norman Conquest
really began. We have seen the connection between England and
Normandy begun by the marriage of Ethelred the Unready to Emma
the daughter of Richard the Fearless, and cemented by the
refuge offered to the English exiles in the court of the
Norman duke. Edward had long found a home there in Canute's
time. ... Brought up under Norman influence, Edward had
contracted the ideas and sympathies of his adopted home. On
his election to the English throne the French tongue became
the language of the court, Norman favourites followed in his
train, to be foisted into important offices of State and
Church, and thus inaugurate that Normanizing policy which was
to draw on the Norman Conquest. Had it not been for this,
William would never have had any claim on England." The
Normanizing policy of king Edward roused the opposition of a
strong English party, headed by the great West-Saxon Earl
Godwine, who had been lifted from an obscure origin to vast
power in England by the favor of Canute, and whose son Harold
held the earldom of East Anglia. "Edward, raised to the throne
chiefly through the influence of Godwine, shortly married his
daughter, and at first ruled England leaning on the
assistance, and almost overshadowed by the power of the great
earl." But Edward was Norman at heart and Godwine was
thoroughly English; whence quarrels were not long in arising.
They came to the crisis in 1051, by reason of a bloody tumult
at Dover, provoked by insolent conduct on the part of a train
of French visitors returning home from Edward's Court. Godwine
was commanded to punish the townsmen of Dover and refused,
whereupon the king obtained a sentence of outlawry, not only
against the earl, but against his sons. "Godwine, obliged to
bow before the united power of his enemies, was forced to fly
the land. He went to Flanders with his son Swegen, while
Harold and Leofwine went to Ireland, to be well received by
Dermot king of Leinster. Many Englishmen seem to have followed
him in his exile: for a year the foreign party was triumphant,
and the first stage of the Norman Conquest complete. It was at
this important crisis that William [Duke of Normandy], secure
at home, visited his cousin Edward. ... Friendly relations we
may be sure had existed between, the two cousins, and if, as
is not improbable, William had begun to hope that he might
some day succeed to the English throne, what more favourable
opportunity for a visit could have been found? Edward had lost
all hopes of ever having any children. ... William came, and
it would seem, gained all that he desired. For this most
probably was the date of some promise on Edward's part that
William should succeed him on his death. The whole question is
beset with difficulties. The Norman chroniclers alone mention
it, and give no dates. Edward had no right to will away his
crown, the disposition of which lay with King and Witenagemot
(or assembly of Wise Men, the grandees of the country), and
his last act was to reverse the promise, if ever given, in
favour of Harold, Godwine's son. But were it not for some such