RISE OF WESSEX AND OF THE SOCIAL SYSTEM OF ENGLAND.
Ceawlin and his Successors--Cedwalla--Ina--Subjection to
Mercia--Accession of Egbert--He subdues his Rivals--His Wars with
the Welsh and Danes--Land-owning System--Local Assemblies--The
Hundred Moot--The Shire Moot and its Business--Methods of Trial
and Punishments--The Wergild--The Witena-gemot--Its Powers--The
King--Class Distinctions--The Church.
Hitherto the rise of the kingdom of Wessex has been left out of sight
in these pages; but as we are approaching the reign of the great king
Egbert, it is necessary to trace the steps by which a great power had
been slowly consolidated in the West under a series of able kings. We
have already mentioned Ceawlin, the third of the sovereigns of the West
Saxons. This prince greatly added to his authority and possessions.
Besides defeating the Welsh in numerous battles, and conquering a large
district north of the Thames, he seized upon the kingdom of Sussex after
the death of Cissa, defeated the King of Kent, and was suspected of
entertaining the ambitious project of reducing all England under his
sceptre. But his subjects, headed by his nephew, Ceolric, rose against
him, and met him in battle at Wodensbury. Being defeated, Ceawlin ended
his days in exile. This collapse lost to the kingdom of Wessex all the
country which had been annexed to the north of the Thames.
Ceolric, his nephew, succeeded him; he died in 597.
This last-named prince was followed by his brother, Ceolwulf, who
defeated the South Saxons, and died in 611.
Cynegils, the son of Ceolric, succeeded him, and divided the kingdom with
his brother Quicelm. The two last-named princes obtained a great victory
over the Britons in 614. Before the death of Quicelm, which took place
in 635, he became a Christian: after his decease the kingdom was again
united under Cynegils, also a Christian, who henceforth reigned alone.
Cenwealh, his son, had to carry on a succession of wars with the kings of
Mercia. Penda, whose sister he had divorced, drove him from his kingdom,
and he remained in exile several years, but was afterwards restored,
dying in 672. His widow, Sexburh, was chosen as his successor.
This princess reigned little more than a year, when she died. Some
historians say that she was deposed by her subjects, who disliked the
idea of being commanded by a woman.
Cedwalla became king in 688. During the life of his predecessor, who
was jealous of the affection which the people bore him, he had been
compelled to fly. He carried on severe contests with the kings of Kent.
He afterwards conquered the Isle of Wight; and would have rooted out all
the inhabitants, but for the remonstrances of Wilfrith, Bishop of Selsey.
In 688 he undertook a journey to Rome, to receive baptism at the hands
of the Pope; for although he was a Christian and a great zealot, he had
never been baptised. As he travelled through France and Lombardy, he was
everywhere very honourably received; and Cunibert, King of the Lombards,
was particularly remarkable for the noble entertainment he gave him.
When he came to Rome, he was baptised by Pope Sergius II., who gave him
the name of Peter. He had always expressed a wish to die soon after his
baptism, and his desire was gratified, for he died a few weeks after,
at Rome, and was buried at St. Peter's Church, where a stately tomb was
erected to his memory, with an epitaph showing his name, quality, age,
and time of his death. His two sons being too young to succeed him, his
cousin Ina mounted the throne.
Ina was a king of much ability, and reigned no less than thirty-eight
years, _i.e._ from 688 to 726. He was a man of war, a legislator, and a
saint. By arms he succeeded in reducing Kent, Sussex, and East Anglia
to obedience, and fought many battles against the Welsh, building the
fortress of Taunton to protect his new frontier. As a legislator he made
a collection of laws seventy-six in number, which is the earliest English
code still in existence with the exception of some fragments of a legal
system drawn up by the kings of Kent. His holiness was seen in his large
benefactions to the Church. Wessex was divided into two dioceses, the new
bishop being placed at Sherborne, in Dorsetshire; he founded and endowed,
moreover, several monasteries, and rebuilt the abbey of Glastonbury, the
burial place of the famous king Arthur. But towards the end of his reign
it did not fare well with Ina. In 714 he fought a great battle with the
Mercians, in which so many were slain on either side that the issue was
held to be doubtful, and this large loss of life perhaps was the cause of
his subsequent defeats by the Welsh. Moreover, the members of the royal
house proved rebellious, and their leader Aldbert was not defeated by
Ina until a wearying contest had been waged between the two parties. In
726, therefore, Ina, tired of the world, and wishing to provide for the
safety of his soul, resigned his kingdom, and went to Rome, where he was
received by Pope Gregory the Second, and ended his days as a common man.
[Illustration: EDWIN OF NORTHUMBRIA AND THE CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES. (_See
p._ 29.)]
The abdication of Ina was not productive of good consequences to Wessex;
and for nineteen years, from 733 to 752, the country was subject, as
has already been mentioned, to the yoke of Mercia until, led by their
king Cuthred, the second in succession to Ina, the people won freedom at
the battle of Burford. This stage of the history of Wessex is not very
important, and closes in 802, when the great king Egbert ascended the
throne.
Egbert had laid claim to the throne on the death of Cynewulf, which took
place in 784, but without success. Bertric was elected. Fear of the
vengeance of his more successful rival caused him to take refuge at the
court of Offa of Mercia, but still pursued by the jealousy of Bertric he
eventually withdrew to the court of Charles the Great. A close friendship
arose between the two, and Egbert modelled his after-career on that of
his benefactor. On the death of Bertric he was elected in his absence by
the Witena-gemot, or assembly of the wise men, in due form, and reigned
until 836. At once he set himself to win a superiority over the island,
as Charles had established a dominion on the continent. In the cases
of the southern kingdoms his task was easy, and they submitted without
a blow; East Anglia being allowed to retain her line of sovereigns as
subordinate kings, Kent, Essex and Sussex being practically annexed to
Wessex. But with Mercia the task was not so easy. However, in 823 he
defeated the Mercians so completely at the great battle of Ellandune that
their subject kingdoms, the names and extent of which are not exactly
known, were at once annexed to Wessex; and four years later Mercia itself
owned his supremacy, the king becoming his subordinate. In the following
year Northumbria, torn to pieces by internal dissensions, submitted on
similar terms. He thus became ruler over all England, and is deservedly
honoured by the "Chronicle" with the title of Bretwalda, or "Wealder of
Britain," which is bestowed on some of his predecessors with far more
questionable propriety.
[Illustration: MEETING OF THE SHIRE-MOOT. (_See p._ 34.)]
Not only did Egbert set himself the task of mastering all the English;
but he determined to conquer territory from the Welsh as well. During the
greater part of the reign the struggle went on with varying fortunes,
the general result being that Devonshire became English, that after the
subjection of Mercia the whole of Wales proper submitted (828), but that
he failed to make any impression upon the Celtic peoples north of the
Dee. In 835, the year before he died, the West Welsh, or Cornish, rose
in arms, and were reinforced by the Danes, who now began to scourge the
English coasts. Egbert, however, won a victory over them at Hengestesdun.
At the time of his death this great king ruled over the whole country
south of the Forth, with the exception of Cornwall and the south-west of
Scotland and north-west corner of England. Evidently he must have been a
man of first-rate ability; but of his personal character and disposition
singularly little is known.
Before coming to the period when the Danish invasions (which, however,
had already begun) became a matter of annual occurrence, it may be
well to see what changes had been effected in the social system of our
ancestors since their migration from the banks of the Elbe.
The system of land-owning was much changed, and private property in land
became the rule rather than the exception. At first land was allotted
to each village, and every family had a portion, known as a _hide_, as
its share. The dimensions of the hide appear to have varied according to
locality; as a rule it comprised from thirty to forty acres, but in later
times it covered as much as a hundred and twenty. The remainder of the
land was theoretically public property, and hence was called _folkland_;
but it was in the hands of the king, who, with the assent of the
Witena-gemot, made grants of it from time to time to his thegns, or to the
great monasteries, when it was known as _bookland_, land that is granted
out on copyhold tenure--to use a modern legal equivalent, which is fairly
exact. _Ethel_, or _alod_, was land held by undisputed possession from
the first settlement, and which could be transmitted from father to son.
The owners of _Ethel_ had no title-deeds to show, but based their claim
to ownership on tradition. Later on, however, the distinction between
_Ethel_ and _bookland_ disappears, the owners of the former finding it a
safer course to get a charter for their property.
As to the administration of the English kingdoms, the important point to
notice is that it was not entirely in the hands of a central authority,
but each local community had its own affairs in its hands to a very
considerable extent. In viewing the social organism, it will be well to
start, as before, from the village community, whether in the form of
_vicus_ or rural township, _town_ or group of houses surrounded by a
quickset hedge or _tun_, and _borough_ the dwellings round the fortified
house (_burh_) of a great noble. In each of these there was a _moot_,
or local assembly, presided over by a magistrate or _reeve_, who was
at first elected by the general body of the inhabitants, but later on
appointed by the neighbouring nobility. So, too, the judicial functions
of these petty assemblies were rapidly taken from them, and cases were
tried instead at the manor-courts of the great lords.
A union of villages and towns formed the _hundred_, and to the court of
the hundred each township sent the reeve and four men. Cases which lay
outside their jurisdiction were sent up from the town-moots, but here,
too, the nobility began to encroach upon the rights of their weaker
neighbours; and in cases where landowners had privileges known as _sac_
and _soc_, the decision in their courts was final, and was not subject
to the court of the hundred. The police of the hundred was provided by
the system known as _frankpledge_ (peace pledge), by which freemen were
grouped into bodies of ten, in which each man had to go bail for any one
of the other nine, and produce him before the court if he had done wrong.
The landless man in the same way was compelled to find a lord who would
be answerable for him.
The division above the hundred was the _shire_, usually formed on
the lines of the old kingdoms, as in the case of Kent and Sussex; or
sub-kingdoms as in the case of most of the midland shires. The boundaries
of each shire were co-extensive with those of each bishopric. The court
of the shire, or shire-moot, was presided over by the _sheriff_ or reeve
of the shire, who was appointed by the king. By his side sat the alderman
or chief military officer of the shire, and the bishop. The shire-moot
met twice a year, and any freeman was entitled to attend it, and to have
a voice in its decisions.
Its business was two-fold, taxation and justice. Taxation was a very
simple affair, being practically non-existent until the period of the
Danish invasion, when, as we shall see, the obnoxious burden known as
Danegeld was introduced. Its necessity was obviated by the obligation
which lay upon every freeman known as the "three-fold necessity"
(_trinoda necessitas_), by which he was bound to attend the host or
_fyrd_ in time of war, to repair the public roads, and to keep the
fortifications in good order. Thus no imposts were necessary for what are
some of the principal sources of modern rating; while the king lived and
kept up his court upon the proceeds of the royal domains.
In the matter of justice the shire-moot acted as a court of appeal from
the inferior courts. The influence of the great landowners over it must
have been considerable, for the verdict was given by the twelve senior
thegns. The methods of trial in this and the other courts of old England
in criminal cases were three in number, a statement of innocence on oath,
_compurgation_ and _ordeal_. Compurgation was a mode of defence by which
a man was held to have established his innocence if he could get twelve
men to swear that he was not guilty of the crime in question. Ordeal
was allowed as an alternative to those who failed in or shrank from the
process of compurgation or of taking an oath themselves. It was practised
either by boiling water or red-hot iron. The water, or iron, was
consecrated by many prayers, masses, fastings, and exorcisms; after which
the person accused either took up a stone sunk in the water to a certain
depth, or carried the iron to a certain distance; and his hand being
wrapped up, and the covering sealed for three days, if there appeared,
on examining it, no marks of burning, he was pronounced innocent; if
otherwise, guilty. There were other and less credible methods of trial by
ordeal. The trial by cold water was one of them. The person was thrown
into consecrated water; if he swam he was guilty, if he sank, innocent.
It is difficult for us to conceive how any innocent person could ever
escape by the one trial, or any criminal be convicted by the other. But
there was another usage admirably calculated for allowing every criminal
to escape who had confidence enough to try it. A consecrated cake, called
a _corsned_, was produced; if the person could swallow and digest it, he
was pronounced innocent. Walking on burning ploughshares also appears as
an ordeal, but seldom, or never, except in stories that are evidently
mythical.
The punishments amongst the English seem to have been exceedingly mild
for some offences, since even murder might be atoned for by the payment
of a fine.
The laws of Alfred enjoin that if any one know that his enemy or
aggressor, after doing him an injury, resolves to keep within his
own house and his own lands, he shall not fight him till he require
compensation for the injury. If he be strong enough to besiege him in
his house, he may do it for seven days without attacking him; and if the
aggressor be willing during that time to surrender himself and his arms,
his adversary may detain him thirty days; but is afterwards obliged to
restore him safe to his kindred, and be content with the compensation.
If the criminal fly to the church, that sanctuary must not be violated.
Where the assailant has not force sufficient to besiege the criminal
in his house, he must apply to the alderman for assistance; and if the
alderman refuse aid, the assailant must have recourse to the king; and he
is not allowed to assault the house till after this supreme magistrate
has refused assistance. If any one meet with his enemy, and be ignorant
that he was resolved to keep within his own lands, he must, before he
attack him, require him to surrender himself prisoner, and deliver up his
arms, in which case he may detain him thirty days; but if he refuse to
deliver up his arms, it is then lawful to fight him. A slave may fight in
his master's quarrel, and a father in his son's, with any one except his
master.
Ina enacted that no man should take revenge till he had first demanded
compensation, and it had been refused him.
King Edmund decreed that if a man committed a murder, he might, within
a year, pay the fine, with the assistance of his relatives and friends;
but if they refused to aid him, he should alone sustain the feud with the
kindred of the murdered person.
There is, indeed, a law of Alfred, which makes wilful murder capital;
but this seems only to have been an attempt of that great legislator
towards establishing a better police in the kingdom, and probably it
was not often carried into execution. By the laws of the same prince, a
conspiracy against the life of the king might be redeemed by a fine.
The fine to be paid for the murder of a king, or his wergild--a word
signifying the legal value of any one,--was by law 30,000 thrismas,
nearly 1,300 pounds of present money. The price of the head of one of
royal blood (Atheling), was 15,000 thrismas; that of a bishop's, or
alderman's, 8,000; a sheriff's, 4,000; a thegn's, or clergyman's, 2,000;
a ceorl's, 266. These prices were fixed by the laws of the Angles. By the
Mercian law, the price of a ceorl's head was 200 shillings; that of a
thegn's six times as much; that of a king's, six times more. By the laws
of Kent, the price of the archbishop's head was higher than that of the
king. It must be understood that where a person was unable or unwilling
to pay the fine, he was put out of the protection of the law, and the
kindred of the deceased had liberty to punish him as they thought proper.
The price of all kinds of wounds was likewise fixed by the English law:
a wound of an inch long under the hair was paid with one shilling; one
of a like size in the face, with two shillings; thirty shillings were
the compensation for the loss of an ear; and so forth. There seems not
to have been any difference made according to the dignity of the person.
By the laws of Ethelbert, any one who committed adultery with his
neighbour's wife was obliged to pay him a fine, and buy him another wife.
The court of the nation was known as the _witena-gemot_, or assembly of
the wise men. Originally, no doubt, it was a far more popular institution
than it became in later times. In theory every freeman was entitled to be
present; but it was gradually confined to a small body of men, and the
average number of those who attended it was about thirty. They consisted
of royal officials and heads of the church, the bishops, aldermen, and
personal attendants of the king spoken of in the laws and chronicles as
_ministri_. Such a body, although it had in theory great powers, was,
as Bishop Stubbs points out, practically very much under the control of
a strong king.
Its powers were as follows:
(1) All laws, whether national or ecclesiastical, were made with its
counsel and consent.
(2) It supervised grants of land, especially the conversion of _folkland_
into _bookland_.
(3) It was a court of justice in the last resort.
(4) It laid on especial taxes, such as the Danegeld.
(5) It discussed questions of foreign policy.
(6) It elected the aldermen in conjunction with the king, and the bishops
in the more important sees. Bishops were, as a rule, however, elected by
the clergy.
(7) It could elect and depose kings. Deposition was frequent in some
kingdoms, notably in turbulent Northumbria. As to election, "the choice,"
says Bishop Stubbs, "was limited to the best qualified person standing in
close connection to the last sovereign."
Thus we see that the English kings were elected by the assembly of the
nation; and they went through some form of election, perfunctory though
it was no doubt, even in times subsequent to the Norman conquest. We have
already mentioned that the institution of kingship was subsequent to
the invasion of Britain, and was due to the immense amount of territory
that fell to the disposal of the victorious general and the accession
of importance he assumed thereby. The king was the chief magistrate
in peace, and the leader of the national host (_fyrd_) in war; and
the introduction of Christianity invested him with new attributes of
sanctity. Still, it is important to notice that the idea of treason, and
the penalty of death attached to it, was of late development. The penalty
for killing a king is only a higher _wergild_ than in the case of an
ordinary individual.
The difference between class and class becomes more sharply defined
after the invasion of Britain than before it. The bodyguard of the king
(_comitatus_ or _gesith_) is more distinctly dependent upon him. They are
known as his servants, or _thegns_. As regards the bulk of the people
they form, however, a noble class. There were king's thegns and lesser
thegns; the distinction being apparently regulated by the amount of land
which they possessed.
It was possible, however, for men who were not owners of land, to rise to
the rank of thegn. Thus Athelstan decreed that a merchant who made three
long sea voyages on his own account should be entitled to the quality of
thegn. The classes of _ceorls_, or freedmen, and _laets_, landless men
who cultivated the soil for their lords, continued to exist; but there
was also a class of absolute slaves usually occupied in household labour,
whose position must have been most unenviable. The power of the master
over his slave, however, was not unlimited, for if he beat his eyes or
his teeth out, the latter might claim his liberty; and if he killed him,
he paid a fine to the king, provided the slave died within a day after
receiving his wound.
The English Church was on the best of relations with the various kingdoms
with which its dioceses coincided. The bishop sat with the sheriff and
alderman in the shire-moot, and was a member of the witena-gemot. The
kings and aldermen in the same way took part in the ecclesiastical
councils which were convened after the organisation of the ecclesiastical
system by Theodore of Tarsus. According to his scheme of reform, a
general council of the whole Church was to assemble every August, and
he himself presided over two great councils at Hertford and Hatfield.
The idea was not carried out after his death with perfect regularity,
especially after Archbishop Egbert had successfully asserted the
independence of the see of York; still such assemblies were occasionally
held, and were of the greatest assistance in developing the idea of
national unity. They met at some border town such as Clovesho, an
unknown spot near London, where the hostile kings of Mercia, Wessex,
Kent, and Essex associating with the bishops, abbots, and occasionally
diocesan clergy, learnt to sink their differences, and to realise the
greatness of their common interests. Even after the national assemblies
had practically resolved themselves into the two provincial synods
of Canterbury and York, the comparative unimportance of the northern
province frequently invested the proceedings of the southern with a
national character. Assemblies of each diocese were also occasionally
summoned, which were largely attended by the parish priests, the parish
coinciding with the townships in the same way that the diocese coincided
with the kingdom or subkingdom.
[Illustration: _Typo. Etchin. Co. del. et. sc._
MAP OF ENGLAND SHOWING THE ANGLO-SAXON KINGDOMS AND DANISH DISTRICTS.]
The English Church was notably a learned Church, and numbered among its
dignitaries Bede, the historian of the Church. Despite the intimate
connection between Church and State, it was not a distinctly political
Church. The sees were often set up at a distance from the great towns;
and the bishops made their ecclesiastical duties the chief interest
of their lives, seldom degenerating, as on the Continent, into great
territorial princes. The Church was also a popular institution. It was
supported by voluntary tithes which were not made imperative by law
earlier than the year 787. Its main fault was a certain desultoriness
of effort, which is to be traced in the failure to carry out Theodore's
plans in their integrity. Learning had almost died out at the time of the
accession of Alfred, and the invasions of the Danes can only be adduced
as a partial excuse. We find that king complaining that very few of his
clergy could translate a letter from Latin. The Church was, moreover,
excessively monastic. Pious kings founded and liberally endowed numerous
monasteries, which rapidly became luxurious and corrupt, until some were
religious societies only in name. The system, however, had its advantages
when it was necessary to furnish missionaries gratuitously to poor
districts.