The Expansion of England
While Harald Fairhair was occupied in settling the Hebrides and
Orkneys with inhabitants from Norway, and Rollo and his successors
were possessing themselves of the larger part of the North of France,
England and Ireland were enjoying a period of comparative repose. The
twenty-three years of Edward the Elder’s reign were devoted largely to
building up the great kingdom which his father, Alfred, had founded,
but not consolidated; he brought Mercia more immediately into his
power, and subdued East Anglia and the counties bordering on the
kingdom of Wessex; before his death Northumbria, both English and
Danish, had invited him to reign over them, and he was acknowledged
lord also of Strathclyde Britain, then an independent princedom,
and of the greater part of Scotland. In all his designs Edward was
supported by the powerful help of his sister, Ethelfled, “the Lady of
the Mercians,” as her people called her, a woman great of soul, beloved
by her subjects, dreaded by her enemies, who not only assisted her
brother with advice and arms, but helped him in carrying out his useful
projects of building and strengthening the cities in his dominions,
a matter which had also occupied the attention of their father. This
woman had inherited the high spirit of Alfred; she was the widow of
Ethelred, Prince of Mercia, and she ruled her country with vigour
after her husband’s death, building strong fortresses at Stafford,
Tamworth, Warwick, and other places; she bravely defended herself at
Derby, of which she got possession after a severe fight in which four
of her thanes were slain. The following year she became possessed of
the fortress of Leicester, and the greater part of the army submitted
to her; the Danes of York also pledged themselves to obey her. This was
her last great success, for in 922 the Lady of Mercia died at Tamworth,
after eight years of successful rule of her people. She was buried amid
the grief of Mercia at Gloucester, at the monastery of St Peter’s,
which she and her husband had erected, on the spot where the cathedral
now stands.
The most severe attack of the Danes in Edward the Elder’s reign
was made by two Norse or Danish earls who came over from the new
settlements in Normandy and endeavoured to sail up the Severn,
devastating in their old manner on every hand. They were met by the
men of Hereford and Gloucester, who drove them into an enclosed place,
Edward lining the whole length of the Severn on the south of the river
up to the Avon, so that they could not anywhere find a place to land.
Twice they were beaten in fight, and only those got away who could swim
out to their ships. They then took refuge on a sandy island in the
river, and many of them died there of hunger, the rest taking ship and
going on to Wales or Ireland. One of the great lords of the Northern
army, well known in the history of his own country, Thorkill the Tall,
of whom we shall hear again, submitted to Edward, with the other Norse
leaders of Central England, in or about Bedford and Northampton. Two
years afterwards we read that Thorkill the Tall, “with the aid and
peace of King Edward,” went over to France, together with such men as
he could induce to follow him.
Great changes had been brought about in England during the reigns
of Edward and his father. Everywhere large towns were springing up,
overshadowed by the strong fortresses built for their protection, many
of which remain to the present day. Commerce and education everywhere
increased, and there was no longer any chance of young nobles and
princes growing up without a knowledge of books. Edward’s large family
all received a liberal education, in order that “they might govern the
state, not like rustics, but like philosophers”; and his daughters
also, as old William of Malmesbury tells us, “in childhood gave their
whole attention to literature,” afterwards giving their time to
spinning and sewing, that they might pass their young days usefully and
happily.
This was a change of great importance. The ruler who succeeded
Edward, his son, the great and noble-minded Athelstan, was a man of
superior culture, and the daughters of Edward and Athelstan sought
their husbands among the reigning princes of Europe. England was no
longer a mere group of petty states, always at war with each other, or
endeavouring to preserve their existence against foreign pirates; it
was a kingdom recognized in the world, and its friendship was anxiously
sought by foreign princes.
Another thing which we should remark is that it was at this time
that the Norse first came into close contact with England. Hitherto
her enemies had been Danes, and the kingdom of Northumbria seems to
have been a Danish kingdom. But Thorkill the Tall, King Hakon, the
foster-son of Athelstan, King Olaf Trygveson, who all came into
England at this period, were Norsemen; and henceforth, until the
return of the Danish kings under Sweyn and Canute the Great and their
successors, it is principally with the history of the Kings of Norway
that we shall have to deal, in so far as these kings were connected
with the history of England.
Hitherto the connexion between Great Britain and Norway had been
confined to the settlements of the Norse in the Western Isles and in
Northern Scotland; but the partial retirement of the Danes from the
South of England, and the importance to which the country had recently
grown, brought her into closer relationship with the North of Europe
generally, and with Norway in particular. This we shall see as our
history proceeds.