THE FOUNDATION OF THE ENGLISH KINGDOMS AND THEIR CONVERSION TO
CHRISTIANITY.
The Jutes, Angles, and Saxons--Their Village Communities--Larger
Combinations, Gradations of Rank--Morality and Religion--Hengist
and Horsa found the Kingdom of Kent--The Kingdoms of
Sussex, Wessex and Essex--The Anglian Kingdoms--Mercia--The
Welsh--Gregory and St. Augustine--Augustine and Kent--Conversion
of Northumbria--England becomes Christian--The Greatness of
Mercia--King Offa.
After the departure of the Romans, the Britons were left to contend as
best they could against the hordes of invaders who pressed upon them from
the north, and on the eastern coast from overseas. The Saxons reappeared,
and were accompanied by the kindred nations known as the Jutes and
Angles. It is from this last nation that England takes her name, the land
of the Angles, or English, and we shall soon cease to talk of Britain.
The Angles, Jutes, and Saxons formed a confederacy of tribes dwelling
at the mouth of the Elbe, in the district known now-a-days as
Schleswig-Holstein. They were of German race, so that the well-known
description of that country and people given by Tacitus in the _Germania_
applies to them, and is, moreover, confirmed in a remarkable way by
what we know of their institutions and customs after they had conquered
Britain. Perhaps the most striking feature of the society of our
forefathers is that they had no towns. They dwelt in village communities,
as the rural inhabitants of India do at the present day, and we are
able from other sources to form a very exact idea of the way in which
these communities were constituted. The land belonged to the whole of
the little society, and the district occupied by it was known as the
Mark. In the centre was the village. Beyond the village lay the arable
land, in which each member of the village had a share, but this he could
only cultivate in the same way as his neighbours. These shares were
frequently redistributed, so that no man might permanently hold a more
fertile portion than his neighbour, and the right to leave property by
will was strictly limited. The head man of the village was elected by the
community. Beyond the village came the common pasture land, into which
the cattle of the community were turned to feed as they pleased; and
farther still came the waste or belt of woodland or moor which separated
one village from the next.
The village, called the _vicus_ by Tacitus, was the administrative unit;
but, for purposes of common defence, a neighbourhood of villages was
combined into a district, or _pagus_, corresponding to what, after the
English had settled in Britain, was known as the _hundred_, that is,
the territory occupied by a hundred heads of families. Its chief is
called by Tacitus the _princeps_, who is known in later times as the
_alderman_, that is, the "older," and therefore more reverenced, man. A
union of _pagi_ formed a tribe, but our forefathers had not yet advanced
to the formation of a nation. In war the hosts were led by generals,
called _duces_ by Tacitus, and probably elected by the _principes_ of
the different districts. The confederacy had as yet no kings; kingship
was the result of the conquest of the foreign country of Britain, the
victorious general deriving an immense accession of authority from the
vast quantities of land which fell to his disposal.
Free as were their institutions, our forefathers recognised nevertheless
gradations of rank. There was the _eorl_ (earl), or man of noble birth.
Then came the _ceorl_, or churl, a term which has now become one of
contempt, but which then signified the freeman who was entitled to his
share of the common land. Lowest in the social scale came the _laet_,
or landless man, who cultivated the soil for his lord. It is improbable
that slavery existed to any considerable extent before the conquest of
Britain, when the conquered, if not exterminated, sank into a position to
which death must have been preferable. Every man above the rank of _laet_
was free in theory; but the origins of dependent relationship are seen
in the institution called by Tacitus the Comitatus, and by the English
the _Gefolge_ or _Gesith_. This was the bodyguard of the _princeps_, who
fought round him in battle, and over whose interests he watched, probably
rewarding them with grants of land whenever a permanent conquest or
occupation was effected.
The morality of the Germans is said by Tacitus to have been very high.
"They are almost the only barbarians who are content with one wife; there
being, however, a few exceptions among them who contract more than one
marriage, not from motives of passion, but on account of their nobility
of birth." "Good customs," he says in another place, "are of greater
influence there than good laws elsewhere;" and much respect was paid to
women. Justice was rude, as might be expected, every man being his own
avenger; but, even in the earliest times, murder might be atoned for by
the payment of a money fine called by the English the _wergild_, which
was graduated according to the rank of the person slain.
Our ancestors were heathens, and worshipped gods whose names are
preserved in some of the days of the week. _Woden_, the god of wars, has
given his name to Wednesday; _Thor_, the god of thunder, to Thursday;
_Friga_, the goddess (and wife of Odin), to Friday. Tuesday is called
after _Tew_, the god of night; the attributes of _Sætern_, after whom
Saturday is named, are not clearly known. Sunday and Monday are the days,
of course, of the sun and moon. Another deity of our forefathers is
perpetuated in Easter, the day of _Eostre_, the deity of the dawn. Our
ancestors believed in a future abode called the Walhalla, where the brave
warrior, after death, would sit at the feast, quaffing from the skulls of
his slaughtered enemies.
Of the conquest of Britain by the Angles and the other members of the
confederacy, little can be asserted as proven, for our chief authority,
the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," was not written until more than two hundred
years later. The familiar story is that in the year 449, the chiefs
of Britain were holding a council as to the most efficient means of
repelling the invasion of the Picts and Scots, when intelligence was
brought of the landing of a body of Jutish pirates under Hengist and
Horsa, on the neighbouring coasts. Vortigern, one of the most powerful
princes, proposed that the strangers should be invited to assist them
against the common enemy, which proposal was adopted. In consequence of
this arrangement, a negotiation with the strangers was entered into; the
Jutes were promised money and supplies in exchange for their swords and
arms. The offers were acceded to, and the Picts and Scots driven back
to their own country. Although the Jutes were far from being numerous,
Vortigern became anxious to secure their services for the future, and
a treaty was accordingly concluded between him and the two brothers,
Hengist and Horsa, by which the latter bound themselves to return with
a much larger number of their countrymen, on condition of receiving a
tract of land and subsidies of various kinds. The island of Thanet was
devoted to them for their abode. Faithful to their promise, the allies
returned with considerable reinforcements, and landed on the coast of
Kent. For some time the Jutes remained faithful to their engagement;
but becoming tired of fighting for others, their pride increased with
their success, and they demanded a large increase of territory, which
was indignantly refused. That which they could not obtain by concession
they resolved to gain by conquest, to which end they treacherously
entered into an alliance with the Picts and Scots, whom they had hitherto
combated. This fatal treaty made the Britons comprehend at last the error
they had fallen into. Instead of allies, they had made for themselves
masters. Indignation at the treachery, however, did not permit them at
once to succumb; the struggle was a fierce and protracted one. Several
British chiefs immortalised themselves in the battle which was fought
at Aylesford by deeds worthy of the heroic age; amongst others the son
of Vortigern, who, being pressed in battle, tore up a young tree by its
roots, with which he killed Horsa, and the Jutes were put to flight. It
is evident that the writer of the "Chronicle" imagines that the Britons
obtained several victories, for Hengist and the rest of his companions
re-embarked, and for five years the island was free from their presence.
The Jutes once more returned under the leadership of the surviving
brother, Hengist, in formidable numbers, and soon afterwards gained the
battle of Crayford, the result of which was the cession of the greater
part of Kent to the conquerors in 473. Eight years later they obtained a
second victory, which assured Hengist in his new possessions, from that
date called the kingdom of East Kent, to which was afterwards added West
Kent and the Isle of Wight.
Twenty-eight years after the first landing of the Jutes, Ælla, a chief of
Saxon race, who boasted himself the descendant of Odin, arrived with his
three sons in the same number of vessels, on the coast of Kent, and took
the old Roman fortress of Anderida (Pevensey). He eventually founded the
kingdom of Sussex.
The third kingdom founded by the invaders was that of Wessex, which in
time became the mightiest of them all. This, too, was created by Saxons,
who, settling to the west of the people of Sussex (South-Saxons), called
themselves West-Saxons. It began by an invasion of what is now Hampshire
by Cerdic and his son Cymric in 495, who, like the other victorious
chiefs, soon assumed the title of king. From them are descended the
royal family of the present day. They gradually conquered the country
up to the Severn, and as far as the limits of what are now called
Oxfordshire and Berkshire. From the Britons, or _Welsh_ as they called
them, "the speakers," that is, "of a strange tongue," they met a vigorous
resistance, and the war was doubtless carried on with hideous ferocity.
From the few Welsh words in the English language it is clear that little
or no admixture of races took place. The men were exterminated or driven
into the mountains; the women were probably kept as slaves. The hero
of the Welsh resistance in the west was the famous Arthur, whom legend
has so entirely taken for her own that very little positively can be
asserted about him. It is certain, however, that he won a great battle
over the Saxons at Mons Badonicus, identified by Professor Freeman with
Badbury in Dorsetshire. Ceawlin, however, the grandson of Cerdic, rallied
the Saxons, and after a long and protracted struggle, the resistance of
the Welsh was broken for the time being in 577 by the great victory of
Deorham, near Gloucester.
The third Saxon kingdom was that of Essex (the East Saxons), which
included the greater part of Middlesex, and with it London. No record,
however, remains to tell us of the exact process or time of this invasion.
The greater part of England and Scotland was, however, possessed by
the Angles; but of these migrations we know far less than those of the
Jutes and Saxons. East Anglia is said to have been founded in the fourth
century by a chief named Uffa, and there were two settlements formed,
Norfolk and Suffolk (the folk of the north and south).
[Illustration: TREATY OF HENGIST AND HORSA WITH VORTIGERN. (_See p._ 27.)]
Northumbria was also an Anglian settlement, with an admixture of
Frisians, on the banks of the Forth. We know little, however, of the
manner in which the two great divisions grew up--Bernicia, including
the whole of the country from the Forth to the Tees, with Edinburgh
as its capital; and Deira, founded by Ida in 547, answering, roughly
speaking, to Yorkshire, with York as its chief town. These two kingdoms
were sometimes united under one king; sometimes separate. The first king
over all Northumbria was Ethelfrith (600). It is important to notice
that the Lowland Scots are as purely English as the people of London;
and, curiously enough, we are in ignorance of the date when the present
boundary line between the two kingdoms became in any way fixed. The
separation probably did not occur before the time of Canute the Dane.
The last of the English kingdoms to be formed was that of Mercia,
the march or border-land. It probably owed its origin to the gradual
combination of a number of smaller kingdoms, and extended over the
greater part of the midlands.
Thus was founded what is sometimes called the Heptarchy; but wrongly so:
in the first place, because the word does not mean "seven kingdoms," but
"the rule of seven persons;" and in the second, because the number of
kingdoms in England was never fixed, but was sometimes fewer than seven,
sometimes more. It will be noticed that the Britons, or Welsh, still had
possession of an unbroken territory, extending over the whole of the west
of England and Scotland. It included Devon, Cornwall, and the greater
part of Somerset, the whole of the country west of the Severn, part of
Chester, Lancashire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland, and the whole of the
south-west of Scotland, which was called the kingdom of Strathclyde. The
Celtic inhabitants of the Scottish Highlands were also unsubdued; and for
many years the English fought against the Welsh and between themselves.
The first of the Anglo-Saxon or English kingdoms (to give them the
more generally accepted title) to acquire a definite superiority was
that of Kent; but it soon gave way to the rising power of Northumbria.
Nevertheless, the period of Kentish ascendency is one of great
importance, for it witnessed the conversion of England to Christianity.
Ethelbert, who reigned from 560 to 616, was the first prominent English
king after the various sovereignties had taken shape and consistency. He
married a Christian princess, Bertha, the daughter of Charibert, king of
the Franks. But although she was allowed to exercise her religion, it
does not appear that the new faith made any sensible progress until, in
the year 597, Pope Gregory the Great determined to send a monk, named
Augustine, to preach the Gospel in the land of the heathen English. The
beautiful story of the means by which Gregory's attention was called to
this distant land is well known. Before he became Pope, it chanced one
day that he was walking in the market-place at Rome and saw some fair
boys exposed for sale as slaves. His curiosity aroused, he asked of what
nation they came. "They are _Angles_," was the reply. "_Non Angli sed
Angeli_" ("They are not Angles, but angels"), said Gregory, "and should
be the co-heirs of the angels in heaven. But of what tribe are they?"
"Of Deira." "Then must they be delivered _de ira Dei_ (from the wrath
of God). And who is their king?" "Ella," was the answer. "Then," said
Gregory, "shall _Alleluia_ be sung in his land."
When Gregory became Pope he was not long in making good the promise, as
far as in him lay.
Augustine's task was easy; Ethelbert permitted him and his comrades to
dwell at Canterbury and preach to the people. After a while he went back
to the Continent to be consecrated bishop; and on his return, made the
church at Canterbury the cathedral of his diocese, whence Canterbury is
still the metropolitan see of all England. Although Christianity had been
exterminated by the invaders, its dying embers were rekindled among the
Welsh by missionaries from the Continent, and an attempt was now made
to agree upon a basis of union for the two churches. For this purpose a
meeting was arranged between Augustine and the Welsh bishops at a spot
on the banks of the Severn, and a conference was held. But although the
points of difference were slight, neither side would yield; and so the
two churches remained separate.
The greatness of Kent did not endure long after the landing of Augustine,
for in 616 Ethelbert, who had been over-king of the whole of England as
far north as the Humber, died; and his son Eadbald proved an inferior
ruler, and even relapsed into paganism. It was to the north that the
balance of power now inclined, where Edwin of Deira became King of
Northumbria, having overthrown his rival, Ethelfrith of Bernicia, in
a great battle, on the banks of the Idle (617). His marriage with
Ethelberga, the daughter of Ethelbert of Kent, led to the conversion
of Northumbria to Christianity. She brought with her a priest named
Paulinus, and he rapidly succeeded in persuading the people to adopt
Christianity. The story of the king taking counsel with his aldermen and
wise men concerning the new faith which was preached in their midst, and
the fine speech made by one of the thegns, in which he compared the life
of man to the flight of a sparrow from the darkness into a warm room at
wintertime, and thence out into the darkness and storm again, is told us
by Bede in his _Ecclesiastical History of the Nation of the English_.
"So it is," said the noble, "with the life of man; it endures but for a
moment, and we know not at all of what goeth before it and what cometh
after it. Therefore, if these strangers can tell us anything that we may
know whence a man cometh, and whither he goeth, let us hear them and
follow their law." So Northumbria became Christian for the time being,
and a church was built at York with Paulinus as its bishop. But in 633
Edwin was defeated and slain at Heathfield by the King of the Welsh,
and Penda the heathen king of Mercia, and the country relapsed for a
time into heathendom, until Oswald, Edwin's nephew, known as St. Oswald,
brought St. Aidan, a Scottish bishop, to Northumbria, and founded the see
of Lindisfarne, in Holy Island, off the Northumbrian coast. There the
holy St. Cuthbert lived, until his death in 687, and, going forth over
all Northumbria, converted vast numbers of men and women.
Concerning the conversion of the remaining kingdoms, we know
comparatively little. Mercia became Christian on the death of Penda, who
was overthrown by Oswy of Northumbria, in 655, at the battle of Winwood.
Wessex was converted by a bishop called Birinus, who was sent from Rome
by Pope Honorius; and though the first bishopric was fixed at Dorchester,
in Oxfordshire, the episcopal seat of Wessex was eventually fixed at
Winchester, and Dorchester became that of the Mercians. The last part
of England to become Christian was East Anglia, which was converted by
Wilfrith, who had been driven from Northumberland by King Egfrith, Oswy's
son and successor.
In less than a hundred years after the arrival of St. Augustine, England
became Christian, and the conversion had been in many cases accomplished
by missionaries from Rome. But many of the kingdoms also had been brought
to the new faith by bishops from Scotland; Mercia, for instance, and
Northumbria finally. These bishops came in many cases from the island of
Iona, and they did not acknowledge or follow the customs of the Church of
Rome. The great question as to which of the two rituals should prevail
was settled at a synod held at Whitby, when Northumbria adopted the Roman
use, and from that time ecclesiastical unity prevailed.
The organisation of the Church of England was effected by Theodore of
Tarsus, who was sent over to England as Archbishop of Canterbury in 668.
He proceeded to organise the various sees, usually following the limits
of the old English kingdoms; and though changes were occasionally made,
much of his work was permanent, and exists at the present day. So England
was one kingdom as far as its religious constitution was concerned, and
this unity led in turn, as we shall see, to a civil unity under the kings
of Wessex.
By the beginning of the eighth century it had become evident that the
struggle for supremacy would eventually be between Wessex and Mercia, for
Northumbria, a turbulent state, harassed by succession questions, had
already ceased to hold the pride of place. At first Mercia appeared to
have the advantage of the struggle. It soon recovered from the overthrow
of Penda, and from the years 716 to 819, with one or two intervals of
temporary prostration, it was extremely powerful. Ethelbald, the nephew
of Penda, reigned from 716 to 755, and built up a great power. Taking
advantage of the anarchy in Northumbria, and of the abdication of Ina of
Wessex, he subdued his neighbours in a series of successful wars, and
claimed to be king "not only of the Mercians, but of all the people who
are called by the common name of South-Angles." He was, however, in 754,
confronted by a general rebellion, and utterly defeated in a battle at
Burford.
In the following year Ethelbald died, and after a year's anarchy
was succeeded by Offa. He was not only a great warrior, but a great
statesman, and combined a series of conquests with a series of judicious
marriage alliances, until he had almost succeeded in making himself king
over all England. His most glorious wars were those against the Welsh,
whom he drove back from the Severn to the Wye. He built a large dyke from
the mouth of the Wye to the mouth of the Dee to keep them back, called
Offa's dyke. Offa was reverenced on the Continent almost as much as in
England, and we even find him corresponding on terms of equality with
the Emperor Charles the Great, known to romance as Charlemagne. Offa was
a warm friend of the Church; he created a temporary archbishopric at
Lichfield as a rival to York and Canterbury, and founded the Abbey of St.
Albans. The power of Mercia, however, depended almost entirely on the
personal abilities of her kings, and ended with Cenwulf, who reigned from
796 to 815. After his death it speedily collapsed, partly owing to the
failure of the royal line, partly owing to the rising power of Wessex,
and partly also owing to devastating raids of the Danes, who had already
begun to make their appearance in Britain.