ALFRED’S LAST DAYS.
From the peaceful labours which had occupied him for the last seven
years, Alfred was recalled to the weary work of war by tidings of the
return of the dreaded _here_ to the English coast. During those seven
years the chronicler had been nervously noting the deeds of “the army”
beyond seas. They had been fighting chiefly in the north of Gaul,
pressing up the rivers Somme, Seine and Marne, and even laying close
siege for ten months (November, 885, to September, 886) to the city of
Paris itself, a siege which the Emperor Charles the Fat had raised, not
by arms but by the ignominious payment of tribute. It is easy to trace
a connexion between these vehement attacks on Frankish territory and
the resistance which, in our own country, from Athelney onwards, had
been so valiantly offered by Alfred. But now the process was reversed,
and the Northmen, severely handled by a Frankish king, were thrown back
upon England. In the year 887 Charles the Fat, who had disgusted his
subjects by his ignominious treaty with the Danes, was deposed from
his imperial dignity, and Arnulf, his nephew, was chosen king by the
Franks east of the Rhine, by whose aid he won for himself, nine years
after, the grander title of emperor. In 891 he won a great victory over
the Danes near the modern city of Louvain. Hereupon the Scandinavians,
recognising that “Francia” was for the present closed against them by
the might of this new German king, decided to try their fortune once
more on the other side of the channel.
The operations of the five years that followed (892–896[147]) are
described by the Chronicle in great detail and with unusual vividness
and vigour. A recent editor[148] calls the six or seven pages devoted
to these campaigns “the most remarkable piece of writing in the whole
series of chronicles”. It is allowable to conjecture that such a
narrative, if not from Alfred’s own pen, comes from some person in the
immediate neighbourhood of the king. Fresh and vivid, however, as the
narrative is, it is not easy to discover therefrom the precise sequence
of events. Different bands of Danes are seen to be operating in
different parts of the kingdom, and the difficulty which they probably
felt in combining their efforts meets also the historian who seeks to
combine their narratives. Here it will be sufficient to indicate some
of the principal stages of the contest.
The invasion of 892 seems to have been made by two bodies of Danes,
acting to some extent independently of each other. “The great army”
which had been defeated by Arnulf at Louvain, went westwards from
Flanders to Boulogne, embarked from the latter port “with horses and
all” in a fleet of 250 ships, and sailed across to the Kentish coast.
According to their usual custom they made use of a river channel to
penetrate into the interior; but the river up which they fared and
which probably entered the sea at Lymne, has long since disappeared
in that region of silted-up streams. Up the river they towed their
ships for four miles, and there they found a “work” half finished and
defended by a few rustics. Their capture of this work well illustrates
a remark of Asser’s that “of the many forts which Alfred ordered to
be built, some were never begun and others, begun too late, were not
finished when the enemy broke in upon them by land and sea,” causing
tardy repentance and shame on the part of the disobedient builders.
The Danish army then constructed for themselves a “work” at Appledore,
some twenty miles west of Hythe. The nature of these “works,” of which
we hear so much at this point of the history, is explained to us by
the Frankish chronicler who describes the Emperor Arnulf’s victory in
891, and who tells us that the Northmen “had according to their usual
manner fortified themselves with wood and heaped-up earth”.[149] The
description points to a mound crowned with a palisading, such as the
Romans had used to protect their encampments.
Meanwhile another horde, not so large as the first, and fleeing,
not so much from the conquering sword of Arnulf, as from the famine
which waited upon their own destructive footsteps, having crossed the
channel with eighty ships, had entered the Thames and made a “work”
in Kent near the Isle of Sheppey. The leader of this band was the
far-famed Haesten or Hasting, a pirate who had sailed up the Loire to
ravage Central Gaul in the year 866, and in the twenty-six years which
followed had not often rested from the work of devastation. Between
these two invading armies Alfred took up a position (893) in the great
Andredesweald which stretched along the whole length of Kent and Sussex
dividing the two counties, and from thence or from the _burhs_ or
fortresses which he had erected, forays were constantly made with some
success on the unwelcome visitors. So things seem to have remained
through the winter. At Easter the larger host, having broken up from
Appledore, wandered through Hants and Berks, ravaging as they went.
The young “Etheling” Edward, son of Alfred, being informed of their
movements, and having collected his troops, pursued the spoil-laden
plunderers and came up with them at Farnham. He fought them and gained
a complete victory; the booty was all recovered and the robbers in
their desperation swam the Thames without waiting to find a ford, and
made their way up the little stream of the Hertfordshire Colne to the
river island of Thorney. There apparently Edward was forced to leave
them, for the _fyrd_ was divided into two parts, each bound to serve
for six months only. The time for relieving guard had now arrived,
and while one half was marching “thitherward” (to the front) and the
other half homeward, the favourable moment passed away for pursuing the
Danes, whose king had been wounded in the late encounter. Some of the
enemy penetrated to the coast, collected a hundred ships and sailed
westward to make a raid on Devonshire, whither Alfred was forced to
follow them.
Leaving “the great army” for a time, we turn to follow the fortunes
of Hasting. It seems that he had pretended to imitate the example of
Guthrum (who had died three years before, at peace with Alfred), and
had expressed his willingness to become a Christian. He gave hostages,
swore oaths of peace and friendship, and was probably baptised along
with his two sons, the godfathers being Alfred and his son-in-law
Ethelred of Mercia, his stout ally in all these campaigns. But some
turn in the fortunes of war, perhaps the disloyal attitude of the
Danes of Northumbria and Mercia, who were hungering for war, sent
Hasting again into armed opposition. He made a “work” at Benfleet in
the south-east corner of Essex, and as soon as it was finished he
began, as the chronicler says with indignation, to harry that realm
of Mercia which Ethelred, his godfather, was bound to defend. Alfred,
who had been summoned to Exeter by the tidings of another Danish raid,
now returned rapidly to London where a strong _burh_ had been built, a
stout-hearted body of citizens having been sworn to defend it. Marching
forth with these and with his own troops, he assailed the “work” at
Benfleet and carried it by storm. Great spoil was found there as well
as many women and children--a sure token that the Northmen had come
to settle in the land. All the treasure was gathered within the safe
shelter of London-burh, but Alfred, recognising the obligations of
spiritual kindred, though Hasting had so soon forgotten them, restored
to the old pirate his wife and her two sons. After this the two Danish
armies seem to have united and to have made a great “work” at Shoebury
in Essex, not far from the abandoned Benfleet. Hasting henceforward
fades out of the narrative, possibly unwilling to continue to fight
against his generous foe.[150]
The avowed union of all the men of the “Danelaw” (as the district
settled by the Danes was now called), both in East Anglia and
Northumbria, gave a new character to the war. It was no longer a
mere descent of sea-rovers on Kent or Devonshire; it was a terrible
internal struggle, and all along the Watling Street, the boundary
between the two kingdoms, the shuttle of war flew swiftly. Leaving
their camp at Shoebury, the Danes marched up the valley of the Thames
and across the country to the Severn. But now the whole forces of the
kingdom were collected for the contest. Not only Ethelred of Mercia
but “the Ealdormen of Wilts and Somerset and such of the king’s thegns
as were then at home at the works, gathered together from every town
east of the Parret, from both sides of Selwood, from the north of
the Thames and the west of the Severn, and with them came also”--a
memorable addition--“some part of the North Welsh race”. Evidently
the Welshmen had learned by experience that there were worse enemies
than the Saxons, and probably also the righteous rule of Alfred had
won their confidence. The army thus collected marched after the Danes
and came up with them at a place called Buttington on the Severn. For
many weeks the two armies sat watching each other, the river flowing
between them. At last, after the Danes had eaten most of their horses,
they sallied forth and crossed the river to fight. The battle which
followed was a bloody one, many of the king’s thegns falling; but the
slaughter on the Danish side was greater, and victory remained with
the English. Back into Essex fled the beaten remnant of the army, but
having ere winter gathered to them many helpers from the Danelaw, and
having entrusted ships and wives and property to the care of the East
Angles, they once more followed the Watling Street into Cheshire, which
for some reason or other (possibly connected with the Danish conquest
of Ireland) they persistently made the objective of their campaign.
Day and night they marched, till they came to the estuary of the Dee.
Here, still surrounded by its grass-grown walls, lay the silent and
ruined city which had for near four centuries resounded to the shouts
of the twentieth legion, “Valerian and Victorious”. In its desolation
it yet bore the name of “the camp of the legions” (_lega-ceaster_), but
it was “a waste Chester”. A Chester it is still, by its picturesque
medieval architecture pre-eminent above all others of its kind, but
happily no longer waste. The _fyrd_ hastened with all speed after the
_here_, but failed to overtake them ere they had taken refuge in the
ghostly city. They had, therefore, to be satisfied with destroying
all the cattle and corn in the neighbourhood, slaying some straggling
Danes and leaving nought but a hungry wilderness round the survivors.
The blockade of Chester (894) was not a strict one; before long the
Danes, urged by famine, broke out of the city, and escaping into the
friendly Danelaw marched across the country to the island of Mersea at
the mouth of the Blackwater, not far from their old winter quarters in
Essex. At the same time the invaders who had been troubling Devonshire
sailed homeward, but on their way harried the west of Sussex, until the
_burg-ware_ (townsfolk) of Chichester issued forth to battle, routed
them, slew many hundreds, and captured some of their ships. Throughout
this second Danish war, the martial ardour of the inhabitants of the
_burhs_ built or refortified by the king is very conspicuous.
It was now apparently 895, the fourth year since the great _scip-here_
had appeared off the coast of Kent. The Danes who had wintered in
Mersea, still hankering doubtless after the spoil of London, sailed
round to the estuary of the Thames and towed their ships up the
sluggish waters of the Lea, which now forms the boundary between Essex
and Middlesex. Here, about twenty miles above London--that is, probably
in the neighbourhood of Bishop Stortford--they wrought a “work,” and
remained encamped for six months. When summer came a multitude of the
_burg-ware_ of London marched forth to storm the Danish work. This
time, unfortunately, civic valour did not triumph. The _burg-ware_ were
put to flight, and four of the king’s thegns, who had been acting as
their leaders, were slain.
Autumn was now approaching and it was important that the men of Essex
should not be attacked while they were gathering in their harvest.
Accordingly Alfred encamped in the neighbourhood of London. One day he
rode up the Lea to reconnoitre the Danish position, and something in
the course of the river suggested to his mind, fertile in expedients
and enriched by the study of ancient historians, that it might be
possible so to obstruct it as to hinder the escape of the Danes. The
scheme ripened; he set two bodies of troops to erect works above and
below the station of the ships. Ere the works were finished the Danes
saw that their position was being made untenable; they abandoned the
ships--probably by night--and marched off, still no doubt through the
friendly Danelaw, till they came to Bridgnorth on the Severn, where
they again wrought a work and fixed their winter quarters. While the
_fyrd_ rode after them towards the north, the men of London-burh came
out and captured the ships, some of which they broke up and others,
the more serviceable, they towed down stream to London. Such was the
strange campaign of the Lea. Any one who knows the Lea in its present
conditions, who has seen the sleepy bargemen gliding along from lock to
lock, the anglers sitting all day on the banks which Izaak Walton has
made classic ground, all the indescribable restfulness and tranquillity
of the scene, will feel the contrast between this peaceful Present
and the days when Alfred’s men were toiling at their noisy labours
and when the heathens howled forth their execrations on finding their
passage barred by the Saxons.
In the following summer (896) “the _here_ went some to East Anglia,
some to Northumbria, and those who were moneyless got them ships and
fared over sea to the Seine. Thus had the army,” says the chronicler,
“not utterly broken all the English race. But they were more fearfully
broken during those three years by pestilence both of cattle and of
men, especially because the most eminent of the king’s thegns died in
those three years.” The chronicler then gives the name and rank of the
chief victims of the plague: the bishops of Rochester and Dorchester,
the ealdormen of Kent, Essex and Hants, a king’s thegn of Sussex, the
town-reeve of Winchester, a grand constable (king’s horse-thegn) and
many others.
Though the great land invasion was thus defeated, the king had still
to deal with a harassing swarm of sea-pirates, whose long ships named
“ashes,” built of the wood of the ill-omened ash tree, were constantly
appearing off the southern coast, often manned by insurgent Danes from
East Anglia and Northumbria. In order to grapple with these pestilent
enemies Alfred turned shipbuilder. He may have already taken some steps
towards this end, but the following entry in the Chronicle for the
year 897 (= 896) is the earliest definite information that we receive
as to the beginnings of England’s navy: “Then King Alfred bade build
long ships against the ashes; they were full nigh twice as long as the
others. Some had sixty oars, some more. They were both swifter and
steadier and eke higher than the others. They were not built on Frisian
nor yet on Danish lines, but as he himself thought that they might be
most serviceable.”
An engagement of no great importance, which is, however, described in
great detail by the chronicler, took place between the pirates and nine
of the new ships which had been despatched by Alfred to stop their
depredations, and had sealed them up in some estuary or land-locked
bay (such as Brading harbour) in the Isle of Wight. While the tide was
high the crews of the big English ships captured and slew to their
hearts’ content, but when the tide ebbed they were left aground, as the
chronicler says, “very inconveniently” half on one side of the estuary
and half on the other, with the Danish ashes, also aground, between
them. At dead low water the shore was firm enough for the Danish
pirates to climb down out of their ship, paddle across the sands and
challenge a fight with the crews of the three English ships nearest to
them. For such small contending forces the battle seems to have been a
bloody one. One hundred and twenty Danes fell and sixty-two English,
but among these latter were many men of high rank, a king’s reeve and a
king’s companion (_geneat_), and also many of the Frisian captains and
sailors whom Alfred, knowing their nautical skill, had attracted to his
service. When the battle was ended, in came the flowing tide, on which
the Danish ships could float out to sea while the larger ships of the
new navy were still lying “very inconveniently aground”. So the three
pirate ships escaped for the time, but they were sorely strained and
damaged, so that they could not all sail round the coast of Sussex. Two
were wrecked on that coast, and their crews being brought to Winchester
and led into the king’s presence, were ordered by him to be hanged.
This order was not like the usual clemency of the king, but he probably
felt that it was necessary to repress with a strong hand movements
which were now no longer warfare but mere brigandage. The third ship
escaped both the winds and the English pursuers, and landed her crew, a
troop of sore-wounded and weary men, on the East Anglian coast.
Not more than four years of rest seem to have been granted to Alfred
after the repulse of this last invasion before death ended his labours.
There can be little doubt that some part at least of that plentiful
literary harvest which was described in the preceding chapter belongs
to these closing years. Especially interesting is it to note that,
according to the judgment of the most careful modern inquirers,
the king’s metrical translation of Boethius should be referred to
this period. The proem to that translation alludes to “the manifold
worldly cares that oft troubled him both in mind and body” when he was
turning it from Latin into English prose, and then again to the cares,
apparently the yet heavier cares, “that in his days came upon the
kingdom to which he had succeeded,” but which did not prevent him--so
high was his value for the great _Consolatio_--from “working it up once
more into verse” as the reader may now behold it. All these cares were
now at an end, and ended, too, all his noble toil for the defence, the
enlightenment and the guidance of his people. He died on October 26,
900,[151] in the fifty-third year of his age, and was buried in St.
Swithun’s monastery at Winchester. In 903, however (according to the
legend told by William of Malmesbury), as “the delirious fancies of
the canons” declared that the king’s ghost, resuming possession of his
corpse, wandered at night through their cells, the royal remains were
transferred to the New Minster, founded by his son in fulfilment of a
plan which Alfred himself had formed and had confided to his friend and
spiritual adviser, Grimbald the Frank. In the reign of Henry I. the
monks of New Minster migrated from their narrow domain within the city
to a large and convenient site called Hyde Mead, on its northern side,
and in their migration they took with them the body of the king. At the
suppression of the monasteries Hyde Abbey fell into decay, and near the
close of the eighteenth century the Hampshire magistrates purchased the
site for the purpose of erecting thereon a county jail. The tombs were
ruthlessly opened, the stone coffins were turned into horse troughs,
the lead which covered a coffin, presumably Alfred’s, was sold for
two guineas, and apparently the dust of the great king himself was
scattered to the winds. No leader of the Danish army could have shown
greater zest in the work of desecration. This New Minster at Winchester
was consecrated by one of Alfred’s friends, Archbishop Plegmund, and
numbered another of his friends, Grimbald, as first on its list of
abbots. Its records, known as the _Liber Monasterii de Hyda_, furnish
us with some valuable information concerning the reigns of Alfred and
his sons.
As for the great king himself, several of the chroniclers, especially
his kinsman, Ethelweard, and Florence of Worcester, have celebrated his
praises in fitting terms, but his best epitaph is contained in three
simple words of an unknown scribe of the twelfth century, “Alfred,
England’s Darling”. His fame and the glory of his noble character have
grown brighter as the centuries have rolled by, and at this day he is
really nearer to the hearts of Englishmen than all, save one, of his
successors.
NOTE.
ON THE EXTENT OF THE DANELAW.
The political boundaries of the Danish state recognised after the
Peace of Wedmore have been sufficiently indicated by historians, and
it may be said that for all practical purposes they nearly coincide
with the old Roman road called the Watling Street, the sphere of
Danish influence lying to the north and east, that of Saxon influence
and rule to the south and west of that line, which, as previously
remarked, coincides very nearly with the line of the London and North
Western Railway. There is, however, another question both interesting
and important: “To what extent did the Danish population fill up the
district thus assigned to them?” In other words, “How far did the
ethnological coincide with the political boundary?” This is a question
which we have not as yet sufficient materials to answer fully or
accurately. Much study and much patient research on the part of our
local antiquaries, study of dialects and research in sepulchral tumuli,
will probably be needed before we can say with certainty: “Here the
old Anglian population remained preponderant, and here the Danish or
Norwegian immigrants so filled the land as to make it practically a
Scandinavian district”. But in the meantime some help is gained from a
consideration of the place-names in the several districts of England;
only we must beware of looking at the conclusions thus arrived at as
final and irreversible.
Broadly, however, we may say with some confidence that place-names
ending in _ton_, _ham_, _yard_ and _worth_ are Saxon or Anglian;
those ending in _by_, _thorpe_ and _toft_ are Danish; in _thwaite_,
_garth_, _beck_, _haugh_, and _fell_, Norwegian; in _borough_, probably
Anglian; in _wick_ or _wich_, if inland, Saxon, if near the sea-coast,
Danish. Applying these tests we find evidence of considerable Danish
settlements, but no Danish preponderance, in Norfolk and Suffolk. The
great fen district round Peterborough seems to have been an impassable
barrier, and we find no Danish names to the west of it; on the other
hand, the Humber and the Wash must have been constantly visited by the
ships of the vikings, for their shores swarm with Danish names. As has
been said by Mr. Isaac Taylor,[152] “A district in Lincolnshire, about
nine miles by twelve, between Tattersall, New Bolingbroke, Horncastle
and Spilsby, would appear to have been more exclusively Danish than
any other in the kingdom. In this small space there are some forty
unmistakably Danish village names, such as Kirby, Moorby, Enderby,
etc., all denoting the fixed residence of a Danish population.” “The
Danish local names radiate from the Wash.[153] In Leicestershire,
Rutland, Northamptonshire and Yorkshire the Danish names preponderate
over those of the Anglo-Saxon type; while Cambridgeshire,
Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire and the adjacent counties, protected by
the fens, present scarcely a single Danish name.” There can be no more
striking proof of the absolute preponderance of the Danish element
in the north-east corner of Yorkshire (where probably the influence
of the invaders radiated from the estuary of the Tees) than the fact
that Streanæshalc itself, the Anglian sanctuary, home of St. Hilda and
meeting-place of the great Paschal Synod, meekly bowed its head to the
alien yoke and accepted the Danish name of Whitby.
In the midland counties the most striking proof of the numerical
superiority of the Danes was exhibited by the powerful confederation of
the five boroughs, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, Stamford and Derby.
It is true that only one of these bore an unmistakably Danish name,
but the part which they played politically, their strong offensive and
defensive alliance, seems to confirm the generally accepted conclusion
that the five boroughs were essentially a Danish confederation. Going
further north we find very slight indications of Danish settlement in
Durham and Northumberland. This part of Northumbria the invaders seem
to have visited only for ravage, not for settlement, being satisfied to
leave it under the rule of some subservient earl, who might or might
not be of their own race. Further north still, across the Scottish
border, Danish names die out altogether; but when we go far enough
we find abundant traces of the other great stream of Scandinavian
invasion, the Norwegian, and about this a few words must be said in
reference, not to Scotland (Shetland, Orkney, Hebrides, etc.), but to
the western coast of England.
The place-names of Cumberland and Westmorland must always have arrested
the attention of careful philologists. While the names of mountains
and rivers, such as Helvellyn, Blencathra, Glaramara, Derwent, are
for the most part of Celtic origin, we find a great number of names
of villages and some also of hills and streams which evidently are
Scandinavian rather than Celtic. Such are all the multitudinous
_thwaites_ and _ghylls_, the _garths_ and _haughs_, and the frequently
recurring _beck_ for a stream, and _fell_ for a high hill. Mr. Robert
Ferguson called attention to the fact that this multitude of non-Celtic
terminations--so remarkable in a country which actually bears the name
of the Cymri--pointed to a large immigration of Scandinavians, not,
however, of the Danish but of the Norwegian type. Of such immigration
we have scarcely a hint in the chroniclers, but the philological
evidence adduced by Mr. Ferguson[154] is so strong that his conclusion
has been generally accepted by ethnologists. As to the date of this
migration, his theory is that after the Saxon king Edmund in 945
had overrun the district of Cumbria and had left it wasted and bare
of people, the Norwegians from their stronghold in the Isle of Man,
discerning their advantage, covered the Solway with their ships, and
pouring into that land of mountains and lakes and long stream-watered
valleys--a land so like their fatherland--settled there and made it
their own. This migration he would therefore place in the latter part
of the tenth century, between the just mentioned Cumbrian campaign of
Edmund (945) and the similar campaign of Ethelred (1000) which was
undertaken, Henry of Huntingdon says, against “the Danes” yet involved
the ravaging of Cumberland.
However this question of the date may hereafter be settled, there can
be little doubt that the race which peoples these two most picturesque
counties of England is pre-eminently of Norwegian origin. There seems
to have been two other settlements of Scandinavians which deserve
remark. One was in that curious peninsula of Cheshire, called the
Wirral, between the estuaries of Dee and Mersey, a region which teems
with Norse names; and the other, an exceptional instance of a Norse
settlement south of the Watling Street, was in the promontory of
Pembrokeshire, where a number of towns and villages, of which the best
known is the watering-place of Tenby, attest by their names their
Danish origin.