ENGLAND UNDER ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS
Athelstan, the son of Edward the Elder, succeeded that king. He reigned
only fifteen years; but he remembered the glory of his grandfather, the
great Alfred, and governed England well. He reduced the turbulent
people of Wales, and obliged them to pay him a tribute in money, and in
cattle, and to send him their best hawks and hounds. He was victorious
over the Cornish men, who were not yet quite under the Saxon
government. He restored such of the old laws as were good, and had
fallen into disuse; made some wise new laws, and took care of the poor
and weak. A strong alliance, made against him by Anlaf a Danish prince,
Constantine King of the Scots, and the people of North Wales, he broke
and defeated in one great battle, long famous for the vast numbers
slain in it. After that, he had a quiet reign; the lords and ladies
about him had leisure to become polite and agreeable; and foreign
princes were glad (as they have sometimes been since) to come to
England on visits to the English court.
When Athelstan died, at forty-seven years old, his brother Edmund, who
was only eighteen, became king. He was the first of six boy-kings, as
you will presently know.
They called him the Magnificent, because he showed a taste for
improvement and refinement. But he was beset by the Danes, and had a
short and troubled reign, which came to a troubled end. One night, when
he was feasting in his hall, and had eaten much and drunk deep, he saw,
among the company, a noted robber named Leof, who had been banished
from England. Made very angry by the boldness of this man, the King
turned to his cup-bearer, and said, ‘There is a robber sitting at the
table yonder, who, for his crimes, is an outlaw in the land—a hunted
wolf, whose life any man may take, at any time. Command that robber to
depart!’ ‘I will not depart!’ said Leof. ‘No?’ cried the King. ‘No, by
the Lord!’ said Leof. Upon that the King rose from his seat, and,
making passionately at the robber, and seizing him by his long hair,
tried to throw him down. But the robber had a dagger underneath his
cloak, and, in the scuffle, stabbed the King to death. That done, he
set his back against the wall, and fought so desperately, that although
he was soon cut to pieces by the King’s armed men, and the wall and
pavement were splashed with his blood, yet it was not before he had
killed and wounded many of them. You may imagine what rough lives the
kings of those times led, when one of them could struggle, half drunk,
with a public robber in his own dining-hall, and be stabbed in presence
of the company who ate and drank with him.
Then succeeded the boy-king Edred, who was weak and sickly in body, but
of a strong mind. And his armies fought the Northmen, the Danes, and
Norwegians, or the Sea-Kings, as they were called, and beat them for
the time. And, in nine years, Edred died, and passed away.
Then came the boy-king Edwy, fifteen years of age; but the real king,
who had the real power, was a monk named Dunstan—a clever priest, a
little mad, and not a little proud and cruel.
Dunstan was then Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, whither the body of King
Edmund the Magnificent was carried, to be buried. While yet a boy, he
had got out of his bed one night (being then in a fever), and walked
about Glastonbury Church when it was under repair; and, because he did
not tumble off some scaffolds that were there, and break his neck, it
was reported that he had been shown over the building by an angel. He
had also made a harp that was said to play of itself—which it very
likely did, as Æolian Harps, which are played by the wind, and are
understood now, always do. For these wonders he had been once denounced
by his enemies, who were jealous of his favour with the late King
Athelstan, as a magician; and he had been waylaid, bound hand and foot,
and thrown into a marsh. But he got out again, somehow, to cause a
great deal of trouble yet.
The priests of those days were, generally, the only scholars. They were
learned in many things. Having to make their own convents and
monasteries on uncultivated grounds that were granted to them by the
Crown, it was necessary that they should be good farmers and good
gardeners, or their lands would have been too poor to support them. For
the decoration of the chapels where they prayed, and for the comfort of
the refectories where they ate and drank, it was necessary that there
should be good carpenters, good smiths, good painters, among them. For
their greater safety in sickness and accident, living alone by
themselves in solitary places, it was necessary that they should study
the virtues of plants and herbs, and should know how to dress cuts,
burns, scalds, and bruises, and how to set broken limbs. Accordingly,
they taught themselves, and one another, a great variety of useful
arts; and became skilful in agriculture, medicine, surgery, and
handicraft. And when they wanted the aid of any little piece of
machinery, which would be simple enough now, but was marvellous then,
to impose a trick upon the poor peasants, they knew very well how to
make it; and _did_ make it many a time and often, I have no doubt.
Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, was one of the most sagacious of
these monks. He was an ingenious smith, and worked at a forge in a
little cell. This cell was made too short to admit of his lying at full
length when he went to sleep—as if _that_ did any good to anybody!—and
he used to tell the most extraordinary lies about demons and spirits,
who, he said, came there to persecute him. For instance, he related
that one day when he was at work, the devil looked in at the little
window, and tried to tempt him to lead a life of idle pleasure;
whereupon, having his pincers in the fire, red hot, he seized the devil
by the nose, and put him to such pain, that his bellowings were heard
for miles and miles. Some people are inclined to think this nonsense a
part of Dunstan’s madness (for his head never quite recovered the
fever), but I think not. I observe that it induced the ignorant people
to consider him a holy man, and that it made him very powerful. Which
was exactly what he always wanted.
On the day of the coronation of the handsome boy-king Edwy, it was
remarked by Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury (who was a Dane by birth),
that the King quietly left the coronation feast, while all the company
were there. Odo, much displeased, sent his friend Dunstan to seek him.
Dunstan finding him in the company of his beautiful young wife Elgiva,
and her mother Ethelgiva, a good and virtuous lady, not only grossly
abused them, but dragged the young King back into the feasting-hall by
force. Some, again, think Dunstan did this because the young King’s
fair wife was his own cousin, and the monks objected to people marrying
their own cousins; but I believe he did it, because he was an
imperious, audacious, ill-conditioned priest, who, having loved a young
lady himself before he became a sour monk, hated all love now, and
everything belonging to it.
The young King was quite old enough to feel this insult. Dunstan had
been Treasurer in the last reign, and he soon charged Dunstan with
having taken some of the last king’s money. The Glastonbury Abbot fled
to Belgium (very narrowly escaping some pursuers who were sent to put
out his eyes, as you will wish they had, when you read what follows),
and his abbey was given to priests who were married; whom he always,
both before and afterwards, opposed. But he quickly conspired with his
friend, Odo the Dane, to set up the King’s young brother, Edgar, as his
rival for the throne; and, not content with this revenge, he caused the
beautiful queen Elgiva, though a lovely girl of only seventeen or
eighteen, to be stolen from one of the Royal Palaces, branded in the
cheek with a red-hot iron, and sold into slavery in Ireland. But the
Irish people pitied and befriended her; and they said, ‘Let us restore
the girl-queen to the boy-king, and make the young lovers happy!’ and
they cured her of her cruel wound, and sent her home as beautiful as
before. But the villain Dunstan, and that other villain, Odo, caused
her to be waylaid at Gloucester as she was joyfully hurrying to join
her husband, and to be hacked and hewn with swords, and to be
barbarously maimed and lamed, and left to die. When Edwy the Fair (his
people called him so, because he was so young and handsome) heard of
her dreadful fate, he died of a broken heart; and so the pitiful story
of the poor young wife and husband ends! Ah! Better to be two cottagers
in these better times, than king and queen of England in those bad
days, though never so fair!
Then came the boy-king, Edgar, called the Peaceful, fifteen years old.
Dunstan, being still the real king, drove all married priests out of
the monasteries and abbeys, and replaced them by solitary monks like
himself, of the rigid order called the Benedictines. He made himself
Archbishop of Canterbury, for his greater glory; and exercised such
power over the neighbouring British princes, and so collected them
about the King, that once, when the King held his court at Chester, and
went on the river Dee to visit the monastery of St. John, the eight
oars of his boat were pulled (as the people used to delight in relating
in stories and songs) by eight crowned kings, and steered by the King
of England. As Edgar was very obedient to Dunstan and the monks, they
took great pains to represent him as the best of kings. But he was
really profligate, debauched, and vicious. He once forcibly carried off
a young lady from the convent at Wilton; and Dunstan, pretending to be
very much shocked, condemned him not to wear his crown upon his head
for seven years—no great punishment, I dare say, as it can hardly have
been a more comfortable ornament to wear, than a stewpan without a
handle. His marriage with his second wife, Elfrida, is one of the worst
events of his reign. Hearing of the beauty of this lady, he despatched
his favourite courtier, Athelwold, to her father’s castle in
Devonshire, to see if she were really as charming as fame reported.
Now, she was so exceedingly beautiful that Athelwold fell in love with
her himself, and married her; but he told the King that she was only
rich—not handsome. The King, suspecting the truth when they came home,
resolved to pay the newly-married couple a visit; and, suddenly, told
Athelwold to prepare for his immediate coming. Athelwold, terrified,
confessed to his young wife what he had said and done, and implored her
to disguise her beauty by some ugly dress or silly manner, that he
might be safe from the King’s anger. She promised that she would; but
she was a proud woman, who would far rather have been a queen than the
wife of a courtier. She dressed herself in her best dress, and adorned
herself with her richest jewels; and when the King came, presently, he
discovered the cheat. So, he caused his false friend, Athelwold, to be
murdered in a wood, and married his widow, this bad Elfrida. Six or
seven years afterwards, he died; and was buried, as if he had been all
that the monks said he was, in the abbey of Glastonbury, which he—or
Dunstan for him—had much enriched.
England, in one part of this reign, was so troubled by wolves, which,
driven out of the open country, hid themselves in the mountains of
Wales when they were not attacking travellers and animals, that the
tribute payable by the Welsh people was forgiven them, on condition of
their producing, every year, three hundred wolves’ heads. And the
Welshmen were so sharp upon the wolves, to save their money, that in
four years there was not a wolf left.
Then came the boy-king, Edward, called the Martyr, from the manner of
his death. Elfrida had a son, named Ethelred, for whom she claimed the
throne; but Dunstan did not choose to favour him, and he made Edward
king. The boy was hunting, one day, down in Dorsetshire, when he rode
near to Corfe Castle, where Elfrida and Ethelred lived. Wishing to see
them kindly, he rode away from his attendants and galloped to the
castle gate, where he arrived at twilight, and blew his hunting-horn.
‘You are welcome, dear King,’ said Elfrida, coming out, with her
brightest smiles. ‘Pray you dismount and enter.’ ‘Not so, dear madam,’
said the King. ‘My company will miss me, and fear that I have met with
some harm. Please you to give me a cup of wine, that I may drink here,
in the saddle, to you and to my little brother, and so ride away with
the good speed I have made in riding here.’ Elfrida, going in to bring
the wine, whispered to an armed servant, one of her attendants, who
stole out of the darkening gateway, and crept round behind the King’s
horse. As the King raised the cup to his lips, saying, ‘Health!’ to the
wicked woman who was smiling on him, and to his innocent brother whose
hand she held in hers, and who was only ten years old, this armed man
made a spring and stabbed him in the back. He dropped the cup and
spurred his horse away; but, soon fainting with loss of blood, dropped
from the saddle, and, in his fall, entangled one of his feet in the
stirrup. The frightened horse dashed on; trailing his rider’s curls
upon the ground; dragging his smooth young face through ruts, and
stones, and briers, and fallen leaves, and mud; until the hunters,
tracking the animal’s course by the King’s blood, caught his bridle,
and released the disfigured body.
Then came the sixth and last of the boy-kings, Ethelred, whom Elfrida,
when he cried out at the sight of his murdered brother riding away from
the castle gate, unmercifully beat with a torch which she snatched from
one of the attendants. The people so disliked this boy, on account of
his cruel mother and the murder she had done to promote him, that
Dunstan would not have had him for king, but would have made Edgitha,
the daughter of the dead King Edgar, and of the lady whom he stole out
of the convent at Wilton, Queen of England, if she would have
consented. But she knew the stories of the youthful kings too well, and
would not be persuaded from the convent where she lived in peace; so,
Dunstan put Ethelred on the throne, having no one else to put there,
and gave him the nickname of The Unready—knowing that he wanted
resolution and firmness.
At first, Elfrida possessed great influence over the young King, but,
as he grew older and came of age, her influence declined. The infamous
woman, not having it in her power to do any more evil, then retired
from court, and, according, to the fashion of the time, built churches
and monasteries, to expiate her guilt. As if a church, with a steeple
reaching to the very stars, would have been any sign of true repentance
for the blood of the poor boy, whose murdered form was trailed at his
horse’s heels! As if she could have buried her wickedness beneath the
senseless stones of the whole world, piled up one upon another, for the
monks to live in!
About the ninth or tenth year of this reign, Dunstan died. He was
growing old then, but was as stern and artful as ever. Two
circumstances that happened in connexion with him, in this reign of
Ethelred, made a great noise. Once, he was present at a meeting of the
Church, when the question was discussed whether priests should have
permission to marry; and, as he sat with his head hung down, apparently
thinking about it, a voice seemed to come out of a crucifix in the
room, and warn the meeting to be of his opinion. This was some juggling
of Dunstan’s, and was probably his own voice disguised. But he played
off a worse juggle than that, soon afterwards; for, another meeting
being held on the same subject, and he and his supporters being seated
on one side of a great room, and their opponents on the other, he rose
and said, ‘To Christ himself, as judge, do I commit this cause!’
Immediately on these words being spoken, the floor where the opposite
party sat gave way, and some were killed and many wounded. You may be
pretty sure that it had been weakened under Dunstan’s direction, and
that it fell at Dunstan’s signal. _His_ part of the floor did not go
down. No, no. He was too good a workman for that.
When he died, the monks settled that he was a Saint, and called him
Saint Dunstan ever afterwards. They might just as well have settled
that he was a coach-horse, and could just as easily have called him
one.
Ethelred the Unready was glad enough, I dare say, to be rid of this
holy saint; but, left to himself, he was a poor weak king, and his
reign was a reign of defeat and shame. The restless Danes, led by
Sweyn, a son of the King of Denmark who had quarrelled with his father
and had been banished from home, again came into England, and, year
after year, attacked and despoiled large towns. To coax these sea-kings
away, the weak Ethelred paid them money; but, the more money he paid,
the more money the Danes wanted. At first, he gave them ten thousand
pounds; on their next invasion, sixteen thousand pounds; on their next
invasion, four and twenty thousand pounds: to pay which large sums, the
unfortunate English people were heavily taxed. But, as the Danes still
came back and wanted more, he thought it would be a good plan to marry
into some powerful foreign family that would help him with soldiers.
So, in the year one thousand and two, he courted and married Emma, the
sister of Richard Duke of Normandy; a lady who was called the Flower of
Normandy.
And now, a terrible deed was done in England, the like of which was
never done on English ground before or since. On the thirteenth of
November, in pursuance of secret instructions sent by the King over the
whole country, the inhabitants of every town and city armed, and
murdered all the Danes who were their neighbours.
Young and old, babies and soldiers, men and women, every Dane was
killed. No doubt there were among them many ferocious men who had done
the English great wrong, and whose pride and insolence, in swaggering
in the houses of the English and insulting their wives and daughters,
had become unbearable; but no doubt there were also among them many
peaceful Christian Danes who had married English women and become like
English men. They were all slain, even to Gunhilda, the sister of the
King of Denmark, married to an English lord; who was first obliged to
see the murder of her husband and her child, and then was killed
herself.
When the King of the sea-kings heard of this deed of blood, he swore
that he would have a great revenge. He raised an army, and a mightier
fleet of ships than ever yet had sailed to England; and in all his army
there was not a slave or an old man, but every soldier was a free man,
and the son of a free man, and in the prime of life, and sworn to be
revenged upon the English nation, for the massacre of that dread
thirteenth of November, when his countrymen and countrywomen, and the
little children whom they loved, were killed with fire and sword. And
so, the sea-kings came to England in many great ships, each bearing the
flag of its own commander. Golden eagles, ravens, dragons, dolphins,
beasts of prey, threatened England from the prows of those ships, as
they came onward through the water; and were reflected in the shining
shields that hung upon their sides. The ship that bore the standard of
the King of the sea-kings was carved and painted like a mighty serpent;
and the King in his anger prayed that the Gods in whom he trusted might
all desert him, if his serpent did not strike its fangs into England’s
heart.
And indeed it did. For, the great army landing from the great fleet,
near Exeter, went forward, laying England waste, and striking their
lances in the earth as they advanced, or throwing them into rivers, in
token of their making all the island theirs. In remembrance of the
black November night when the Danes were murdered, wheresoever the
invaders came, they made the Saxons prepare and spread for them great
feasts; and when they had eaten those feasts, and had drunk a curse to
England with wild rejoicings, they drew their swords, and killed their
Saxon entertainers, and marched on. For six long years they carried on
this war: burning the crops, farmhouses, barns, mills, granaries;
killing the labourers in the fields; preventing the seed from being
sown in the ground; causing famine and starvation; leaving only heaps
of ruin and smoking ashes, where they had found rich towns. To crown
this misery, English officers and men deserted, and even the favourites
of Ethelred the Unready, becoming traitors, seized many of the English
ships, turned pirates against their own country, and aided by a storm
occasioned the loss of nearly the whole English navy.
There was but one man of note, at this miserable pass, who was true to
his country and the feeble King. He was a priest, and a brave one. For
twenty days, the Archbishop of Canterbury defended that city against
its Danish besiegers; and when a traitor in the town threw the gates
open and admitted them, he said, in chains, ‘I will not buy my life
with money that must be extorted from the suffering people. Do with me
what you please!’ Again and again, he steadily refused to purchase his
release with gold wrung from the poor.
At last, the Danes being tired of this, and being assembled at a
drunken merry-making, had him brought into the feasting-hall.
‘Now, bishop,’ they said, ‘we want gold!’
He looked round on the crowd of angry faces; from the shaggy beards
close to him, to the shaggy beards against the walls, where men were
mounted on tables and forms to see him over the heads of others: and he
knew that his time was come.
‘I have no gold,’ he said.
‘Get it, bishop!’ they all thundered.
‘That, I have often told you I will not,’ said he.
They gathered closer round him, threatening, but he stood unmoved.
Then, one man struck him; then, another; then a cursing soldier picked
up from a heap in a corner of the hall, where fragments had been rudely
thrown at dinner, a great ox-bone, and cast it at his face, from which
the blood came spurting forth; then, others ran to the same heap, and
knocked him down with other bones, and bruised and battered him; until
one soldier whom he had baptised (willing, as I hope for the sake of
that soldier’s soul, to shorten the sufferings of the good man) struck
him dead with his battle-axe.
If Ethelred had had the heart to emulate the courage of this noble
archbishop, he might have done something yet. But he paid the Danes
forty-eight thousand pounds, instead, and gained so little by the
cowardly act, that Sweyn soon afterwards came over to subdue all
England. So broken was the attachment of the English people, by this
time, to their incapable King and their forlorn country which could not
protect them, that they welcomed Sweyn on all sides, as a deliverer.
London faithfully stood out, as long as the King was within its walls;
but, when he sneaked away, it also welcomed the Dane. Then, all was
over; and the King took refuge abroad with the Duke of Normandy, who
had already given shelter to the King’s wife, once the Flower of that
country, and to her children.
Still, the English people, in spite of their sad sufferings, could not
quite forget the great King Alfred and the Saxon race. When Sweyn died
suddenly, in little more than a month after he had been proclaimed King
of England, they generously sent to Ethelred, to say that they would
have him for their King again, ‘if he would only govern them better
than he had governed them before.’ The Unready, instead of coming
himself, sent Edward, one of his sons, to make promises for him. At
last, he followed, and the English declared him King. The Danes
declared Canute, the son of Sweyn, King. Thus, direful war began again,
and lasted for three years, when the Unready died. And I know of
nothing better that he did, in all his reign of eight and thirty years.
Was Canute to be King now? Not over the Saxons, they said; they must
have Edmund, one of the sons of the Unready, who was surnamed Ironside,
because of his strength and stature. Edmund and Canute thereupon fell
to, and fought five battles—O unhappy England, what a fighting-ground
it was!—and then Ironside, who was a big man, proposed to Canute, who
was a little man, that they two should fight it out in single combat.
If Canute had been the big man, he would probably have said yes, but,
being the little man, he decidedly said no. However, he declared that
he was willing to divide the kingdom—to take all that lay north of
Watling Street, as the old Roman military road from Dover to Chester
was called, and to give Ironside all that lay south of it. Most men
being weary of so much bloodshed, this was done. But Canute soon became
sole King of England; for Ironside died suddenly within two months.
Some think that he was killed, and killed by Canute’s orders. No one
knows.