STATE OF ENGLAND.
Having thus brought down the narrative of Alfred's early life as far
and as fully as the records that remain enable us to do so, we resume
the general history of the national affairs by returning to the
subject of the depredations and conquests of the Danes, and the
circumstances connected with Alfred's accession to the throne.
To give the reader some definite and clear ideas of the nature of
this warfare, it will be well to describe in detail some few of the
incidents and scenes which ancient historians have recorded. The
following was one case which occurred:
The Danes, it must be premised, were particularly hostile to the
monasteries and religious establishments of the Anglo-Saxons. In the
first place, they were themselves pagans, and they hated Christianity.
In the second place, they knew that these places of sacred seclusion
were often the depositories selected for the custody or concealment of
treasure; and, besides the treasures which kings and potentates often
placed in them for safety, these establishments possessed utensils of
gold and silver for the service of the chapels, and a great variety
of valuable gifts, such as pious saints or penitent sinners were
continually bequeathing to them. The Danes were, consequently, never
better pleased than when sacking an abbey or a monastery. In such
exploits they gratified their terrible animal propensities, both of
hatred and love, by the cruelties which they perpetrated personally
upon the monks and the nuns, and at the same time enriched their
coffers with the most valuable spoils. A dreadful tale is told of
one company of nuns, who, in the consternation and terror which they
endured at the approach of a band of Danes, mutilated their faces in a
manner too horrid to be described, as the only means left to them for
protection against the brutality of their foes. They followed,
in adopting this measure, the advice and the example of the lady
superior. It was effectual.
There was a certain abbey, called Crowland, which was in those days
one of the most celebrated in the island. It was situated near the
southern border of Lincolnshire, which lies on the eastern side of
England. There is a great shallow bay, called The Wash, on this
eastern shore, and it is surrounded by a broad tract of low and marshy
land, which is drained by long canals, and traversed by roads built
upon embankments. Dikes skirt the margins of the streams, and
wind-mills are engaged in perpetual toil to raise the water from the
fields into the channels by which it is conveyed away.
Crowland is at the confluence of two rivers, which flow sluggishly
through this flat but beautiful and verdant region. The remains of the
old abbey still stand, built on piles driven into the marshy ground,
and they form at the present time a very interesting mass of ruins.
The year before Alfred acceded to the throne, the abbey was in all its
glory; and on one occasion it furnished _two hundred_ men, who went
out under the command of one of the monks, named Friar Joly, to join
the English armies and fight the Danes.
The English army was too small notwithstanding this desperate effort
to strengthen it. They stood, however, all day in a compact band,
protecting themselves with their shields from the arrows of the foot
soldiers of the enemy, and with their pikes from the onset of the
cavalry. At night the Danes retired, as if giving up the contest;
but as soon as the Saxons, now released from their positions of
confinement and restraint, had separated a little, and began to
feel somewhat more secure, their implacable foes returned again and
attacked them in separate masses, and with more fury than before. The
Saxons endeavored in vain either to defend themselves or escape. As
fast as their comrades were killed, the survivors stood upon the heaps
of the slain, to gain what little advantage they could from so slight
an elevation. Nearly all at length were killed. A few escaped into a
neighboring wood, where they lay concealed during the day following,
and then, when the darkness of the succeeding night came to enable
them to conceal their journey, they made their way to the abbey, to
make known to the anxious inmates of it the destruction of the army,
and to warn them of the imminence of the impending danger to which
they were now exposed.
A dreadful scene of consternation and terror ensued. The affrighted
messengers told their tale, breathless and wayworn, at the door of the
chapel, where the monks were engaged at their devotions. The aisles
were filled with exclamations of alarm and despairing lamentations.
The abbot, whose name was Theodore, immediately began to take measures
suited to the emergency. He resolved to retain at the monastery only
some aged monks and a few children, whose utter defenselessness, he
thought, would disarm the ferocity and vengeance of the Danes. The
rest, only about thirty, however, in number--nearly all the brethren
having gone out under the Friar Joly into the great battle--were put
on board a boat to be sent down the river. It seems at first view a
strange idea to send away the vigorous and strong, and keep the infirm
and helpless at the scene of danger; but the monks knew very well that
all resistance was vain, and that, consequently, their greatest safety
would lie in the absence of all appearance of the possibility of
resistance.
The treasures were sent away, too, with all the men. They hastily
collected all the valuables together, the relics, the jewels, and all
of the gold and silver plate which could be easily removed, and
placed them in a boat--packing them as securely as their haste and
trepidation allowed. The boats glided down the river till they came to
a lonely spot, where an anchorite or sort of hermit lived in solitude.
The men and the treasures were to be intrusted to his charge. He
concealed the men in the thickets and other hiding-places in the
woods, and buried the treasures.
In the mean time, as soon as the boats and the party of monks which
accompanied them had left the abbey, the Abbot Theodore and the old
monks that remained with him urged on the work of concealing that part
of the treasures which had not been taken away. All of the plate which
could not be easily transported, and a certain very rich and costly
table employed for the service of the altar, and many sacred and
expensive garments used by the higher priests in their ceremonies, had
been left behind, as they could not be easily removed. These the abbot
and the monks concealed in the most secure places that they could
find, and then, clothing themselves in their priestly robes, they
assembled in the chapel, and resumed their exercises of devotion. To
be found in so sacred a place and engaged in so holy an avocation
would have been a great protection from any Christian soldiery; but
the monks entirely misconceived the nature of the impulses by which
human nature is governed, in supposing that it would have any
restraining influence upon the pagan Danes. The first thing the
ferocious marauders did, on breaking into the sacred precincts of
the chapel, was to cut down the venerable abbot at the altar, in his
sacerdotal robes, and then to push forward the work of slaying every
other inmate of the abbey, feeble and helpless as they were. Only one
was saved.
This one was a boy, about ten years old. His name was Turgar. He was
a handsome boy, and one of the Danish chieftains was struck with his
countenance and air, in the midst of the slaughter, and took pity on
him. The chieftain's name was Count Sidroc. Sidroc drew Turgar out
of the immediate scene of danger, and gave him a Danish garment,
directing him, at the same time, to throw aside his own, and then to
follow him wherever he went, and keep close to his side, as if he were
a Dane. The boy, relieved from his terrors by this hope of protection,
obeyed implicitly. He followed Sidroc every where, and his life
was saved. The Danes, after killing all the others, ransacked and
plundered the monastery, broke open the tombs in their search for
concealed treasures, and, after taking all that they could discover,
they set the edifices on fire wherever they could find wood-work that
would burn, and went away, leaving the bodies slowly burning in the
grand and terrible funeral pile.
From Crowland the marauders proceeded, taking Turgar with them, to
another large and wealthy abbey in the neighborhood, which they
plundered and destroyed, as they had the abbey at Crowland. Sidroc
made Turgar his own attendant, keeping him always near him. When
the expedition had completed their second conquest, they packed the
valuables which they had obtained from both abbeys in wagons, and
moved toward the south. It happened that some of these wagons were
under Count Sidroc's charge, and were in the rear of the line of
march. In passing a ford, the wheels of one of these rear wagons sank
in the muddy bottom, and the horses, in attempting to draw the wagon
out, became entangled and restive. While Sidroc's whole attention
was engrossed by this difficulty, Turgar contrived to steal away
unobserved. He hid himself in a neighboring wood, and, with a degree
of sagacity and discretion remarkable in a boy of his years, he
contrived to find his way back to the smoking ruins of his home at the
Abbey of Crowland.
The monks who had gone away to seek concealment at the cell of the
anchorite had returned, and were at work among the smoking ruins,
saving what they could from the fire, and gathering together the
blackened remains of their brethren for interment. They chose one of
the monks that had escaped to succeed the abbot who had been murdered,
repaired, so far as they could, their ruined edifices, and mournfully
resumed their functions as a religious community.
Many of the tales which the ancient chroniclers tell of those times
are romantic and incredible; they may have arisen, perhaps, in the
first instance, in exaggerations of incidents and events which really
occurred, and were then handed down from generation to generation by
oral tradition, till they found historians to record them. The story
of the martyrdom of King Edmund is of this character. Edmund was a
sort of king over one of the nations of Anglo-Saxons called East
Angles, who, as their name imports, occupied a part of the eastern
portion of the island. Their particular hostility to Edmund was
awakened, according to the story, in the following manner:
There was a certain bold and adventurous Dane named Lothbroc, who one
day took his falcon on his arm and went out alone in a boat on the
Baltic Sea, or in the straits connecting it with the German Ocean,
intending to go to a certain island and hunt. The falcon is a species
of hawk which they were accustomed to train in those days, to attack
and bring down birds from the air, and falconry was, as might have
been expected, a very picturesque and exciting species of hunting. The
game which Lothbroc was going to seek consisted of the wild fowl which
frequents sometimes, in vast numbers, the cliffs and shores of the
islands in those seas. Before he reached his hunting ground, however,
he was overtaken by a storm, and his boat was driven by it out to sea.
Accustomed to all sorts of adventures and dangers by sea and by land,
and skilled in every operation required in all possible emergencies,
Lothbroc contrived to keep his boat before the wind, and to bail out
the water as fast as it came in, until at length, after being driven
entirely across the German Ocean, he was thrown upon the English
shore, where, with his hawk still upon his arm, he safely landed.
[Illustration: LOTHBROC AND HIS FALCON.]
He knew that he was in the country of the most deadly foes of his
nation and race, and accordingly sought to conceal rather than to make
known his arrival. He was, however, found, after a few days, wandering
up and down in a solitary wood, and was conducted, together with his
hawk, to King Edmund.
Edmund was so much pleased with his air and bearing, and so astonished
at the remarkable manner in which he had been brought to the English
shore, that he gave him his life; and soon discovering his great
knowledge and skill as a huntsman, he received him into his own
service, and treated him with great distinction and honor. In addition
to his hawk, Lothbroc had a greyhound, so that he could hunt with the
king in the fields as well as through the air. The greyhound was very
strongly attached to his master.
The king's chief huntsman at this time was Beorn, and Beorn soon
became very envious and jealous of Lothbroc, on account of his
superior power and skill, and of the honorable distinction which they
procured for him. One day, when they two were hunting alone in the
woods with their dogs, Beorn killed his rival, and hid his body in
a thicket. Beorn went home, his own dogs following him, while the
greyhound remained to watch mournfully over the body of his master.
They asked Beorn what was become of Lothbroc, and he replied that he
had gone off into the wood the day before, and he did not know what
had become of him.
In the mean time, the greyhound remained faithfully watching at the
side of the body of his master until hunger compelled him to leave his
post in search of food. He went home, and, as soon as his wants were
supplied, he returned immediately to the wood again. This he did
several days; and at length his singular conduct attracting attention,
he was followed by some of the king's household, and the body of his
murdered master was found.
The guilt of the murder was with little difficulty brought home
to Beorn; and, as an appropriate punishment for his cruelty to an
unfortunate and homeless stranger, the king condemned him to be put
on board the same boat in which the ill-fated Lothbroc had made his
perilous voyage, and pushed out to sea.
The winds and storms--entering, it seems, into the plan, and
influenced by the same principles of poetical justice as had governed
the king--drove the boat, with its terrified mariner, back again
across to the mouth of the Baltic, as they had brought Lothbroc to
England. The boat was thrown upon the beach, on Lothbroc's family
domain.
Now Lothbroc had been, in his own country, a man of high rank and
influence. He was of royal descent, and had many friends. He had
two sons, men of enterprise and energy; and it so happened that the
landing of Beorn took place so near to them, that the tidings soon
came to their ears that their father's boat, in the hands of a Saxon
stranger, had arrived on the coast. They immediately sought out the
stranger, and demanded what had become of their father. Beorn, in
order to hide his own guilt, fabricated a tale of Lothbroc's having
been killed by Edmund, the king of the East Angles. The sons of the
murdered Lothbroc were incensed at this news. They aroused their
countrymen by calling upon them every where to aid them in revenging
their father's death. A large naval force was accordingly collected,
and a formidable descent made upon the English coast.
Now Edmund, according to the story, was a humane and gentle-minded
man, much more interested in deeds of benevolence and of piety than in
warlike undertakings and exploits, and he was very far from being well
prepared to meet this formidable foe. In fact, he sought refuge in
a retired residence called Heglesdune. The Danes, having taken
some Saxons captive in a city which they had sacked and destroyed,
compelled them to make known the place of the king's retreat. Hinquar,
the captain of the Danes, sent him a summons to come and surrender
both himself and all the treasures of his kingdom. Edmund refused.
Hinquar then laid siege to the palace, and surrounded it; and,
finally, his soldiers, breaking in, put Edmund's attendants to death,
and brought Edmund himself, bound, into Hinquar's presence.
Hinquar decided that the unfortunate captive should die. He was,
accordingly, first taken to a tree and scourged. Then he was shot at
with arrows, until, as the account states, his body was so full of the
arrows that remained in the flesh that there seemed to be no room for
more. During all this time Edmund continued to call upon the name of
Christ, as if finding spiritual refuge and strength in the Redeemer in
this his hour of extremity; and although these ejaculations afforded,
doubtless, great support and comfort to him, they only served to
irritate to a perfect phrensy of exasperation his implacable pagan
foes. They continued to shoot arrows into him until he was dead, and
then they cut off his head and went away, carrying the dissevered head
with them. Their object was to prevent his friends from having the
satisfaction of interring it with the body. They carried it to what
they supposed a sufficient distance, and then threw it off into a wood
by the way-side, where they supposed it could not easily be found.
As soon, however, as the Danes had left the place, the affrighted
friends and followers of Edmund came out, by degrees, from their
retreats and hiding places. They readily found the dead body of their
sovereign, as it lay, of course, where the cruel deed of his murder
had been performed. They sought with mournful and anxious steps, here
and there, all around, for the head, until at length, when they came
into the wood where it was lying, they heard, as the historian who
records these events gravely testifies, a voice issuing from it,
calling them, and directing their steps by the sound. They followed
the voice, and, having recovered the head by means of this miraculous
guidance, they buried it with the body.[1]
It seems surprising to us that reasonable men should so readily
believe such tales as these; but there are, in all ages of the world,
certain habits of belief, in conformity to which the whole community
go together. We all believe whatever is in harmony with, or analogous
to, the general type of faith prevailing in our own generation. Nobody
could be persuaded now that a dead head could speak, or a wolf change
his nature to protect it; but thousands will credit a fortune-teller,
or believe that a mesmerized patient can have a mental perception of
scenes and occurrences a thousand miles away.
There was a great deal of superstition in the days when Alfred was
called to the throne, and there was also, with it, a great deal of
genuine honest piety. The piety and the superstition, too, were
inextricably intermingled and combined together. They were all
Catholics then, yielding an implicit obedience to the Church of Rome,
making regular contributions in money to sustain the papal authority,
and looking to Rome as the great and central point of Christian
influence and power, and the object of supreme veneration. We have
already seen that the Saxons had established a seminary at Rome, which
King Ethelwolf, Alfred's father, rebuilt and re-endowed. One of the
former Anglo-Saxon kings, too, had given a grant of one penny from
every house in the kingdom to the successors of St. Peter at Rome,
which tax, though nominally small, produced a very considerable sum
in the aggregate, exceeding for many years the royal revenues of the
kings of England. It continued to be paid down to the time of Henry
VIII., when the reformation swept away that, and all the other
national obligations of England to the Catholic Church together.
In the age of Alfred, however, there were not only these public acts
of acknowledgment recognizing the papal supremacy, but there was
a strong tide of personal and private feeling of veneration and
attachment to the mother Church, of which it is hard for us, in the
present divided state of Christendom, to conceive. The religious
thoughts and affections of every pious heart throughout the realm
centered in Rome. Rome, too, was the scene of many miracles, by which
the imaginations of the superstitious and of the truly devout were
excited, which impressed them with an idea of power in which they felt
a sort of confiding sense of protection. This power was continually
interposing, now in one way and now in another, to protect virtue, to
punish crime, and to testify to the impious and to the devout, to each
in an appropriate way, that their respective deeds were the objects,
according to their character, of the displeasure or of the approbation
of Heaven.
On one occasion, the following incident is said to have occurred. The
narration of it will illustrate the ideas of the time. A child of
about seven years old, named Kenelm, succeeded to the throne in the
Anglo-Saxon line. Being too young to act for himself, he was put under
the charge of a sister, who was to act as regent until the boy became
of age. The sister, ambitious of making the power thus delegated
to her entirely her own, decided on destroying her brother. She
commissioned a hired murderer to perpetrate the deed. The murderer
took the child into a wood, killed him, and hid his body in a thicket,
in a certain cow-pasture at a place called Clent. The sister then
assumed the scepter in her own name, and suppressed all inquiries in
respect to the fate of her brother; and his murder might have remained
forever undiscovered, had it not been miraculously revealed at Rome.
A white dove flew into a church there one day, and let fall upon the
altar of St. Peter a paper, on which was written, in Anglo-Saxon
characters,
In Clent Cow-batch, Kenelme king bearne, lieth under Thorne, head
bereaved.
For a time nobody could read the writing. At length an Anglo-Saxon
saw it, and translated it into Latin, so that the pope and all others
could understand it. The pope then sent a letter to the authorities in
England, who made search and found the body.
But we must end these digressions, which we have indulged thus far in
order to give the reader some distinct conception of the ideas and
habits of the times, and proceed, in the next chapter, to relate the
events immediately connected with Alfred's accession to the throne.
[Footnote 1: A great many other tales are told of the miraculous
phenomena exhibited by the body of St. Edmund, which well illustrate
the superstitious credulity of those times. One writer says seriously
that, when the head was found, a wolf had it, holding it carefully in
his paws, with all the gentleness and care that the most faithful dog
would manifest in guarding a trust committed to him by his master.
This wolf followed the funeral procession to the tomb where the body
was deposited, and then disappeared. The head joined itself to the
body again where it had been severed, leaving only a purple line to
mark the place of separation.]