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."
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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.
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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.