CHAPTER II.

THE FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF ENGLAND.

449–975.

§ 1. _The Heathen period of English Conquest._ 449–597.

[Sidenote: The races and languages of Britain essentially the same at

the time of the Norman Conquest as they are now.]

The Norman invaders in the eleventh century found in the Isle of

Britain, as any modern invader would find now, three nations, speaking

three languages; and they found then, as would be found now, one of the

three holding a distinct superiority over the whole land. Then as now,

English, Welsh, and Gaelic were the three distinct tongues of the three

races of the island; then as now, the dominant Teuton knew himself by no

name but that of Englishman, and was known to his Celtic neighbour by no

name but that of Saxon. The boundaries of the two races and of their

languages were already fixed, nearly as they remain at present. The

English tongue has made some advances since the eleventh century; but

they are small compared with the advances which it had made between

[Sidenote: Preservation of local names and divisions in England.] the

fifth century and the eleventh. The main divisions of the country, the

local names of the vast mass of its towns and villages, were fixed when

the Norman came, and they have survived, with but little change, to our

own day. While a map of France or Germany in the eleventh century is

useless for modern purposes, and looks like the picture of another

region, a map of England proper in the reign of Victoria hardly differs

at all from a map of England proper in the reign of William. The Norman

found in the land substantially the same English nation which still

exists, occupying substantially the same territory which it occupies at

present. He found it already exhibiting, in its laws, its language, its

national character, the most essential [Sidenote: The Norman element

absorbed in the English nation then and now existing.] of the features

which it still retains. Into the English nation which he thus found

already formed his own dynasty and his own followers were gradually

absorbed. The conquered did not become Normans; but the conquerors did

become Englishmen. It was by a very different process that the English

themselves had made good their footing in the land in which the Norman

found them, and to which they had long before given their name.

[Sidenote: The ENGLISH CONQUEST OF BRITAIN. A.D. 449–924.]

The details of the English Conquest of Britain, and the exact amount of

historical truth to be found in them, are questions which hardly concern

us here. It will be enough to point out the essential difference between

the traditional narrative of the English Conquest, as contained in the

English Chronicles,[1] and the romantic narrative of which Geoffrey of

Monmouth is the chief [Sidenote: General credibility of the traditional

narrative.] spokesman. The narrative in the Chronicles is perfectly

credible in itself, and perfectly consistent with all the undoubted

phænomena of later history. It is also perfectly consistent with the

record of all those living witnesses whose testimony may be mistaken,

but which themselves cannot lie. Such are the evidence of language and

local nomenclature, the evidence of the surviving antiquities, the

camps, the dykes, the barrows, which chronicle this warfare as well as

the warfare of earlier and of later times. The only question is whether

an accurate narrative of details can have been handed on from the date

assigned to Hengest to the ascertained date of Bæda, whether by oral

tradition, by runes, or by written documents which are lost to us. And

this really amounts to little more than a question whether, in the

earliest part of the narrative, the exact names and the exact dates can

always be trusted. Some of the earlier names may be mythical;[2] some of

the dates may have been reached by ingenious calculation rather than by

genuine tradition. But granting all this, the main substance of the

narrative remains essentially where it was.

Much learning and ingenuity has been spent, and, I venture to think, in

many cases wasted, in attempts to show the untrustworthiness of the

traditional account, by [Sidenote: Questions of earlier Teutonic

invasions and settlements in Britain.] bringing forward proofs of

Teutonic invasions, and even of Teutonic settlements, of an earlier date

than that assigned by the Chronicles to the beginning of the English

Conquest.[3] The facts which are brought forward are in most cases

probable and in some cases certain, but I cannot look on them as having

that bearing on later history which they have sometimes been supposed to

have. It is possible that, among the tribes which Cæsar found in

Britain, some, especially in the eastern districts of the island, may

have been of Teutonic origin, or in some degree mingled with Teutonic

elements. It is certain that in Britain, as everywhere else, Teutonic

soldiers largely served in the Roman armies, and that settlements of

such soldiers sometimes grew into permanent colonies.[4] It is certain

that, long before the days of Cerdic or Hengest, Theodosius and Stilicho

repelled Teutonic invasions; and it is probable that, by repelling such

invasions, they hindered the formation of Teutonic settlements in

Britain at that earlier [Sidenote: The course of the English Conquest

not affected by them.] time.[5] But these facts or probabilities do not

affect the credibility of the recorded course of the English Conquest,

or of the tradition which fixes its real beginning in the middle of the

fifth century. Teutonic settlements before the Roman invasion, or under

the Roman domination, would be something quite different from the

Teutonic invasions recorded from the fifth century onwards. Teutonic

tribes subdued by the Roman arms, Teutonic soldiers planted as colonists

by the Roman government, would sink into the general mass of Roman

subjects; they would retain no strong national feeling; they would most

likely not even retain their national language. The only way in which

they could possibly influence the later history would be by making the

establishment of the later Teutonic settlers a less difficult matter in

those parts of the country which they occupied than in those where the

population was purely Celtic or Roman.[6] We may admit the fact that the

Teutonic, and even the distinctively Saxon, invasions began, not in the

fifth century, but in [Sidenote: Light thrown on these events by the

analogy of the Danish invasions.] the fourth. But the true bearing of

this fact will be best understood by comparing the successive Saxon

invasions with the later and better known invasions of the Danes both in

England and in Gaul. In the Danish invasions I shall presently endeavour

to establish three periods, one of mere plunder, one of settlement, one

of political conquest. For the last of these three there was no

opportunity under the circumstances of the earlier Teutonic invaders,

but for the first two stages we may fairly look in the history of the

English, as well as in that of the Danish, Conquest. The Saxon pirates

against whom the Roman government found it needful to establish so

elaborate a system of defence, find their parallels in those Danish

plundering expeditions which ravaged various parts of England in the

latter half of the eighth century and the former half of the ninth, and

in the ravages inflicted on Gaul by chieftains earlier than Hasting. The

Anglian, Saxon, and Jutish settlements of the fifth and sixth centuries

answer to the [Sidenote: 878.] settlements of Guthrum in East-Anglia in

the ninth [Sidenote: 912.] century and of Rolf in Neustria in the tenth.

Even if it be held that the Saxons who were driven back by Theodosius

and Stilicho designed settlement and not merely plunder, still, as they

did not actually settle, the case remains much the same. The Teutons

were baffled in their attempts at settlement in the fourth century; they

succeeded in their attempts at settlement in the fifth. The general

history of the Conquest, as handed down to us in the Chronicles, is

therefore in no way affected by the certain fact of earlier incursions,

by the possible fact of much earlier settlements. The really lasting

effect of the Saxon invasions of the fourth century seems to have been

this; the Saxon name became familiar to the Celtic inhabitants of

Britain earlier than the Anglian name; consequently Saxon, and not Angle

or English, has been the name by which the Teutonic immigrants in

Britain have been known to their Celtic neighbours from that day to

this.[7]

[Sidenote: Course of the English Conquest.]

What then the English Chronicles profess to record is, not these early

and transient incursions which led to no permanent result, but that

series of constant, systematic, successful attempts at settlement on the

part of various Teutonic tribes which constituted the English Conquest

of [Sidenote: 418.] Britain. Early in the fifth century the Roman

legions were withdrawn from the island, and the former provincials were

left to defend their new and precarious independence [Sidenote: No

improbability in the story of Vortigern’s invitation, but the tale not

essential.] how they might. The Southern Britons were now exposed to the

attacks of the Picts and Scots who had never submitted to the Roman

yoke, and there is no absurdity in the familiar story that a British

prince took Teutonic mercenaries into his pay, and that these dangerous

allies took advantage of the weakness of their hosts to establish

themselves as permanent possessors of part of the island. But if this

account be rejected, the general narrative of the Conquest is in no way

affected; and, if it be accepted, we may be sure that Vortigern’s

imitation of many Roman precedents did but hasten the progress of

events. The attempts which had been checked while the Roman power was

flourishing were sure to be renewed when the check was withdrawn, and if

a Welsh King did invite a Jutish chieftain to defend him, that

invitation was only the occasion, and not the cause, of the Conquest

which now [Sidenote: 449–597.] began. We cannot seriously doubt that, in

the course of the fifth and sixth centuries, a succession of tribes of

kindred origin, all of them of the same Low-Dutch[8] stock, and speaking

essentially the same Low-Dutch language, landed at various points of the

British coast, that they gradually forced their way inland, and founded

permanent [Sidenote: Extent of the English dominion and of the

independent British states at the end of the sixth century.] Teutonic

kingdoms. Before the end of the sixth century the Teutonic dominion

stretched from the German Ocean to the Severn, and from the English

Channel to the Firth of Forth. The northern part of the island was still

held by Picts and Scots, Celtic tribes whose exact ethnical relation to

each other hardly concerns us.[9] And the whole west side of the island,

including not only modern Wales, but the great kingdom of Strathclyde,

stretching from Dumbarton to Chester, and the great peninsula containing

Cornwall, Devon, and part of Somerset, was still in the hands of

independent Britons. The struggle had been long and hard, and the

natives often kept their hold of a defensible district long after the

surrounding country had been occupied by the invaders. It is therefore

probable that, at the end of the sixth century and even later, there may

have been within the English frontier inaccessible points where detached

bodies of Welshmen still retained a precarious independence. It is

probable also that, within the same frontier, there still were Roman

towns, tributary to the conquerors rather than occupied by them.[10] But

by the end of the sixth century even these exceptions must [Sidenote:

The English Conquest, as a whole, accomplished by 597.] have been few.

The work of the Conquest, as a whole, was accomplished. The Teutonic

settlers had occupied by far the greater part of the territory which

they ever were, in the strictest sense, to occupy. The complete

supremacy of the island was yet to be won; but that was to be won, when

it was won, by quite another process.

[Sidenote: Points of difference between the English Conquest and other

Teutonic conquests.]

The English Conquest of Britain differed in several important respects

from every other settlement of a Teutonic people within the limits of

the Roman Empire. Everywhere else the invaders gradually adopted the

language and the religion of the conquered. If the conquerors were

heathens at the time of their settlement, they gradually adopted

Christianity. If they had already adopted Christianity in its Arian

form, they gradually exchanged their heretical creed for that of the

Catholic [Sidenote: Gradual Romanization of the conquerors elsewhere in

religion, language, &c.] Church. Everywhere but in Britain the invaders

gradually learned to speak some form, however corrupt, of the language

of Rome. The Teutonic conquerors of Italy, Spain, and Gaul have indeed

infused into the Romance languages of these countries a large proportion

of words of Teutonic origin. Still the language of all those countries

remains essentially Latin; the Teutonic element in them is a mere

infusion. Everywhere but in Britain the invaders respected the laws and

the arts of Rome. The Roman Law was preserved, side by side with the

Barbarian codes, as the rightful heritage of the conquered people; and,

in the process of ages, the Roman Law gradually recovered its position

as the dominant code of a large portion of continental Europe.

Everywhere but in Britain the local divisions and local nomenclature

survived the Conquest. Nearly every Gaulish tribe recorded by Cæsar has

left its name still to be traced on the modern map.[11] In Britain

everything is different. [Sidenote: Retention by the English of their

Teutonic language and heathen worship.] The conquering English entered

Britain as heathens, and, after their settlement in Britain, they still

retained the heathen worship of their fathers. They were after a while

converted to Christianity, but they were not converted by the Christians

whom they found in the island, but by a special mission from the common

ecclesiastical centre. Our bishoprics and ecclesiastical divisions are

not, as they are in Gaul, an heritage of Roman times, representing Roman

political divisions. Our oldest episcopal sees are foundations of later

date than the English Conquest, and the limits of their dioceses answer,

not to anything Welsh or Roman, but to the boundaries of ancient English

[Sidenote: History of the English language—] principalities. And, as the

English in Britain retained their religion, so they also retained their

language, and they retained it far more permanently. A few Celtic, and a

still fewer Latin,[12] words found their way into English from the first

days of the Conquest, and a somewhat larger stock of Latin

ecclesiastical terms[13] was [Sidenote: a Low-Dutch tongue with a

Romance infusion.] naturally brought in by the Christian missionaries.

But, with these two very small classes of exceptions, the English

language retained its purely Low-Dutch character down to that great

infusion of Romance words into our vocabulary which was a result, though

not an immediate result, of the Norman Conquest. And to this day, though

the Romance infusion divides the vocabulary of our dictionaries with our

natural Teutonic speech, it still remains only an infusion, an infusion

greater in degree, but essentially the same in kind, as the Teutonic

infusion into the Romance languages.[14] As we cannot put together the

shortest French sentence without the use of Romance words, so we cannot

put together the shortest English sentence without the use of Teutonic

words. But we can put together sentence after sentence of French without

a single Teutonic word, and we can equally put together sentence after

sentence of English without a single Romance word. In Britain too the

arts of Rome perished as utterly as the language and the religion of

Rome; arts, language, and religion were all brought back again at a

later time and in a corrupted form. [Sidenote: Slight and late influence

of the Roman Law in England.] The laws of Rome perished utterly; they

exercised no influence upon our insular jurisprudence, until, in times

after the Norman Conquest, the Civil Law was introduced as something

utterly exotic. And even then our insular jurisprudence proved too

strong for it; the Imperial legislation never gained in England the same

supremacy which it gained in most parts of the Continent, and even in

the Scottish portion of our island. The municipal institutions of the

Roman towns in Britain utterly perished; no dream of ingenious men is

more groundless than that which seeks to trace the franchises of English

[Sidenote: Local nomenclature of England essentially Teutonic.] cities

to a Roman source. In England again the local nomenclature is everywhere

essentially Teutonic. A few great cities and a few great natural

objects, London on the Thames and Gloucester on the Severn, still retain

names older than the English Conquest; but the great mass of the towns

and villages of England bear names which were given them either by the

Angles and Saxons of the fifth and sixth centuries or by the Danes of

the [Sidenote: Probable extirpation of the Celtic inhabitants.] ninth

and tenth. In short, though the literal extirpation of a nation is an

impossibility,[15] there is every reason to believe that the Celtic

inhabitants of those parts of Britain which had become English at the

end of the sixth century had been as nearly extirpated as a nation can

be. The women would doubtless be often spared;[16] but as far as the

male sex is concerned, we may feel sure that death, emigration, or

personal slavery were the only alternatives which the vanquished found

at the hands of our fathers. The nature of the small Celtic element

[Sidenote: Nature of the Celtic element in English confirms this view.]

in our language would of itself prove the fact. Nearly every Welsh word

which has found its way into English expresses some small household

matter, such as women and slaves would be concerned with; nearly all the

words belonging to the nobler callings, all the terms of government and

war, and nearly all the terms of agriculture, are thoroughly Teutonic.

In short, everywhere but in Britain an intruding nation sat down by the

side of an elder nation, and gradually lost itself in its mass. In

Britain, so far as such a process is possible, the intruding nation

altogether supplanted the elder [Sidenote: Difference in the actual

process of the Conquest in Britain and elsewhere.] nation. The process

of the Conquest again, its gradual character, the way in which the land

was won, bit by bit, by hard fighting, was of itself widely different

from the Gothic settlements in Italy or Spain. This peculiar character

of the English Conquest would of itself favour the complete displacement

of the former inhabitants, by giving the remnant of the vanquished in

any district the means of escape to those districts which were yet

unconquered.

[Sidenote: Causes of the difference.]

This remarkable contrast between the English Conquest of Britain and the

other Teutonic settlements within the Empire seems to be due to two main

causes. The position of Britain differed from that of Italy or Gaul or

Spain, and the position of the Angles and Saxons differed from that of

Goths, Burgundians, or even Franks. [Sidenote: Britain less thoroughly

Romanized than Gaul and Spain.] The event alone might seem to show that

the Roman occupation of Britain had not brought about so complete a

Romanization of the country as had taken place in Gaul and Spain. The

evidence of language looks the same way. In Spain and in Gaul the

ante-Roman languages survive only in a few out of the way corners; the

speech of the land is Roman. But in no part of Britain has any Roman

language been spoken for ages; the speech of the land, wherever it is

not English, is not Roman but Celtic. The surviving Britons kept, and

still keep, their own native language and not the language of their

Roman conquerors. It would therefore seem that the Roman occupation of

Britain was, after all, very superficial, and that, when the legions

were withdrawn, the natives largely fell back into their ancient

barbarism. The English therefore found in Britain a more stubborn,

because a more truly national, resistance than any that their Teutonic

kinsmen found elsewhere. But on the other hand, they did not find that

perfect and striking fabric of Roman laws, manners, and arts which

elsewhere impressed the minds of the conquerors, [Sidenote: Familiarity

of the other Teutons with Roman civilization.] and changed them from

destroyers into disciples. Again, the Goths above all, and the Franks in

some degree, had long been familiar with Rome in peace and in war. They

had resisted Roman attempts at conquest and they had repaid them in

kind. They had served in the Roman armies, and had received lands and

honours and offices as the reward of their services. They were, in

short, neither wholly ignorant of Roman civilization nor [Sidenote: The

English utterly ignorant of it.] utterly hostile to it. But our

forefathers came from lands where the Roman eagle had never been seen,

or had been seen only during the momentary incursions of Drusus and

Germanicus. They had never felt the charm which led Gothic kings to

glory in the title of Roman generals, and which led them to respect and

preserve the forms of Roman civilization and the monuments of Roman art.

Our forefathers appeared in the Isle of Britain purely as destroyers;

nowhere else in Western Europe were the existing men and the existing

institutions so utterly swept away. The English wiped out everything

Celtic and everything Roman as thoroughly as everything Roman was wiped

out of Africa by the Saracen conquerors of Carthage. A more fearful blow

never fell on any nation than the landing of the Angles [Sidenote:

Results of the peculiar character of the English Conquest.] and Saxons

was to the Celt of Britain. But we may now be thankful for the barbarism

and ferocity of our forefathers. Had we stayed in our earlier land, we

should have remained undistinguished from the mass of our Low-Dutch

kinsfolk. Had we conquered and settled only as Goths and Burgundians

conquered and settled, we should be simply one more member of the great

family of the Romance nations. Had we been a colony sent forth after the

mother country had attained to any degree of civilization, we might have

been lost like the Normans in Sicily or the Franks in Palestine. As it

was, we were a colony sent forth while our race was still in a state of

healthy barbarism. We won a country for ourselves, and we grew up, a new

people in a new land, bringing with us ideas and principles common to us

with the rest of our race, but not bringing with us any of the theories

and prejudices which have been the bane of later colonization. Severed

from the old stock, and kept aloof from intermixture with any other, we

ceased to be Germans and we did not become Britons or Romans. In our new

country we developed a new system for ourselves, partly by purely native

growth, partly by independent intercourse with the common centre of

civilization. The Goth is merged in the Romance population of Italy,

Spain, and Aquitaine; the Old-Saxon has lost his national being through

the subtler proselytism of the High-German; but the Angles, Saxons, and

Jutes, transplanted to the shores of Britain, have won for themselves a

new name and a new national being, and have handed on to us the distinct

and glorious inheritance of Englishmen.

[Sidenote: Condition of Britain at the end of the sixth century.]

Thus, before the end of the sixth century, by far the greater and more

fertile portion of Britain had become heathen and Teutonic. The land had

been occupied by various tribes; and most probably, as always happens in

such migrations, few bodies of settlers had been perfectly homogeneous.

A certain following of allies or subjects of other races is almost sure

to come in under the shadow of the main body. But it is clear that that

main body was everywhere so distinctly and predominantly of Low-Dutch

blood and speech as to swallow up any foreign elements which may have

accompanied it during its migration, as well as any that it may have

incorporated during the [Sidenote: The country occupied by various

kindred tribes, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians.] process of the

Conquest or after its completion. Three kindred tribes, Angles, Saxons,

and Jutes, are, in the common national tradition, said to have divided

the land among them in very unequal proportions. For Saxons a

contemporary foreign notice substitutes Frisians.[17] But Angles,

Saxons, Frisians, were all tribes of one common stock; all spoke mere

dialectic varieties of one common tongue. From the very beginning of the

Conquest, all the Teutonic settlers, without distinction, are spoken of

as belonging to “the English kin.”[18] To trace out, by the evidence of

local nomenclature or otherwise, the exact extent of the settlements of

these various kindred tribes is highly interesting and important as a

matter of antiquarian and philological research. But the results of such

inquiries are of little moment for the purpose of such a sketch as the

present. [Sidenote: The various Teutonic tribes in Britain fused into

one nation before the Norman Conquest.] Long before the Norman Conquest

the various Low-Dutch tribes in Britain had been fused into one English

nation. The distinction between Angle and Saxon had become a merely

provincial distinction, and the jealousies which undoubtedly survived

between them had become merely provincial jealousies. To the united

nation the Angle had given his name, the Saxon had given his royal

dynasty; the Jute, the least considerable in the extent of his

territorial possessions, had been, according to all tradition, the first

to lead the way to a permanent settlement, and he had undoubtedly been

honoured by supplying the ecclesiastical centre from which Christianity

was spread over the land. If Wessex boasted of the royal capital of

Winchester, Kent boasted no less proudly of the spiritual metropolis of

Canterbury.

[Sidenote: The old notion of a regular Heptarchy inaccurate,]

The old notion of an Heptarchy, of a regular system of seven kingdoms,

united under the regular supremacy of a single over-lord, is a dream

which has passed away before the light of historic criticism. The

English kingdoms in Britain were ever fluctuating, alike in their number

and in their relations to one another. The number of perfectly

independent states was sometimes greater and sometimes less than the

mystical seven; and, till the beginning of the ninth century, the whole

nation did not admit the regular [Sidenote: yet seven kingdoms more

conspicuous than others.] supremacy of any fixed and permanent

over-lord. Yet it is no less certain that, among the mass of smaller and

more obscure principalities, seven kingdoms do stand out in a marked

way, seven kingdoms of which it is possible to put together something

like a continuous history, seven kingdoms which alone supplied

candidates for the dominion of the whole island. First comes the

earliest permanent [Sidenote: Kent. 449–825.] Teutonic settlement in

Britain, the Jutish kingdom of Kent. The direct descendants of Hengest

reigned over a land, which, as the corner of Britain nearest to the

continent, has ever been the first to receive every foreign immigration,

but which, notwithstanding, prides itself to this day on its specially

Teutonic character and on the retention of various old Teutonic usages

which have vanished elsewhere. Besides Kent, the Jutes formed no other

strictly independent state. Their only other settlement [Sidenote: [The

Jutes of Wight. 530–686.]] was a small principality, including the Isle

of Wight and part of Hampshire, whose history is closely connected with

that of the great Saxon kingdom in its immediate [Sidenote: The three

Saxon kingdoms.] neighbourhood, in which it was at last merged. The

remainder of the English territory south of the Thames, together with

some districts to the north of that river, formed the three kingdoms of

the Saxons, the East, the South, and the West, whose names speak for

themselves. Among these Sussex and Essex fill only a secondary part in

[Sidenote: Sussex. 477–825.] our history. The greatness of Sussex did

not last beyond the days of its founder Ælle, the first Bretwalda.

Whatever [Sidenote: Essex. 526–825.] importance Essex, or its offshoot

Middlesex, could claim as containing the great city of London was of no

long duration. We soon find London fluctuating between the condition of

an independent commonwealth and that of a dependency of the Mercian

Kings. Very different was [Sidenote: Wessex. 519–869.] the destiny of

the third Saxon kingdom. Wessex has grown into England, England into

Great Britain, Great Britain into the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom

into the British Empire. Every prince who has ruled England before and

since the eleventh century[19] has had the blood of Cerdic the

West-Saxon in his veins. At the [Sidenote: 577–584.] close of the sixth

century Wessex had risen to high importance among the English kingdoms,

though the days of its permanent supremacy were still far distant. Step

by step, from a small settlement on the Hampshire coast, the West-Saxons

had won their way, fighting battle after battle against the Welsh, and,

after nearly every battle, extending their borders by a new acquisition

of territory. At the time of which I speak they held the modern shires

of Hampshire, Berks, Wilts, Dorset, part of Somerset, with a

considerable dominion north of the Thames and Avon, including the shires

of Buckingham, Oxford, Gloucester, and Worcester, and an undefined

territory stretching northwards along the valley of the Severn.[20] But

this northern dominion was not lasting; the Thames and the Avon became

the permanent boundaries of Wessex to the north, and the later extension

of the West-Saxon dominion was wholly westward. At this time the

Somerset Axe, and the forests on the borders of Somerset and Wiltshire,

separated the kingdom from the independent [Sidenote: The three Anglian

kingdoms.] Britons to the West. North of the Thames lay the three great

kingdoms of the Angles. One of these, probably the most purely Teutonic

realm in Britain,[21] occupied the great peninsula, or rather

island,[22] between the fens and [Sidenote: East-Anglia. 571–870.] the

German Ocean, which received from them the name of East-Anglia. Far to

the north, from the Humber to the [Sidenote: Northumberland. 547–876.]

Forth, lay the great realm of the Northumbrians, sometimes united under

a single prince, sometimes divided by the Tyne or the Tees into the two

kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira. Both these kingdoms have a large

sea-board, but they are not, like Wessex, distinctly attributed to a

personal founder from beyond sea. The first recorded King of the

Northumbrians is Ida, who began to reign in 547;[23] the first recorded

King of the East-Angles is Offa, who began to reign in 571.[24] These

dates give the beginnings of the kingdoms, but they do not give the

beginnings of the English settlements in those countries. What Ida and

Offa did was apparently to unite districts ruled by several independent,

or at most confederated, Ealdormen into a [Sidenote: Mercia. 584?–877.]

single kingdom. Meanwhile, in the middle of Britain, a power equal to

any of the others was growing up, in which the same process is still

more plainly to be discerned. The kingdom of the Mercians, the _march_

or border land against the Welsh, appears at the end of the sixth

century as a powerful state, but it has no distinctly recorded

[Sidenote: Peculiar character of Mercia, as an union of small states of

different origins.] founder, no distinctly recorded date of origin.[25]

It seems to have grown up through the joining together of a great number

of small principalities, probably of much more varied origin than the

different portions of the other kingdoms. The prevailing blood was

Anglian; but it is certain that the Mercian kingdom was considerably

enlarged by conquest at the expense of the Saxon race. The West-Saxon

conquests north of the Thames and Avon were gradually cut off from the

West-Saxon body, and were constrained, along with all the other states

of Mid-England, to admit the Mercian supremacy. Mercia, throughout its

history, appears far more divided than any other part of England, the

result, no doubt, of its peculiar [Sidenote: Minor principalities in the

other kingdoms.] origin. But it must not be supposed that the other

kingdoms formed compact or centralized monarchies. Wessex was an union

of several kindred principalities, each having its own Ealdorman or

Under-king, though all were united under one supreme chief. At one time

five West-Saxon Kings appear in a single battle.[26] So in Kent there

were Kings of East and West Kent, a fact which has left its memory in

our ecclesiastical arrangements to the present day. No other English

shire contains two bishoprics; the two sees of Canterbury and Rochester

still bear witness to the former existence of two distinct kingdoms

within the present shire. So, in East-Anglia, the two divisions of the

race, the North and the South Folk, have left their almost unaltered

names to two modern counties. But in these cases the principalities seem

to have been formed by separate, though kindred, detachments of

colonists, each of them ruled by a prince of the one royal house. In

Wessex each successive conquest from the Welsh seems to have formed a

new principality; but the national unity of the West-Saxon people was

never lost, and it does not appear that any but princes of the line of

Cerdic ever ruled within their borders. But in Mercia a crowd of wholly

independent principalities seem to have been gradually united under one

common rule—a type of the fate which the whole island was destined to

undergo, though not at the hands of Mercia.

Such were the territorial divisions of Teutonic Britain at the end of

the sixth century. Among a crowd of lesser states seven principal

Kingdoms stand out conspicuously. And I do not hesitate to add that it

was by no means unusual for the sovereign of one or other of these

states [Sidenote: The supremacy of the Bretwaldas.] to win, whether by

arms or by persuasion, a certain dominion over the rest, a dominion

which presented the aspect of an acknowledged, though probably not a

very well defined, supremacy. The famous title of Bretwalda[27] appears

to have been borne by the princes in whom such a supremacy was

successively vested. Eight kings, of five different kingdoms, including

all the seven except Essex and Mercia, are said to have possessed this

supremacy over the rest of their fellows. The list, it should be

remarked, does not form a continuous series, and it ends, after a

considerable gap, with the prince who established in one kingdom a

lasting supremacy over all the rest. The earlier names probably

represent earlier attempts at establishing a supremacy of the same kind,

a supremacy which was more or less fully acknowledged at the time, but

which the princes who held it failed to hand on to their successors. The

early Bretwaldas and their dominion present us with the first

foreshadowings of that union of the whole English race which was at last

carried out by the West-Saxon Kings of the ninth and tenth centuries.

§ 2. _Conversion of the English to Christianity._ 597–681.

The last years of the sixth century were marked by a change hardly less

important than the first settlement of the Teutonic tribes in Britain.

The Christian faith, which the English had hitherto despised or passed

by unheeded as the creed of the conquered Welsh, was now set before them

by a special mission from the city which still commanded the reverence

of all Western Europe. Kent, under its King Æthelberht, who then held

the rank of Bretwalda, became the first Christian [Sidenote: 597.]

kingdom, and Canterbury became the first Christian city, the spiritual

metropolis of the English nation. To the vanquished Welsh the conquering

Saxons and Angles [Sidenote: Controversies between the Roman and

Scottish parties.] had never listened; but no sooner had the Roman

missionaries begun their work than another Christian element was brought

in from the North, at the hands of the already converted Picts and

Scots. Sectarian differences divided the two parties, and led to

controversies which threatened to tear the infant Church in pieces.

Christian Kings and kingdoms apostatized; heathen Kings overthrew the

champions of the new faith [Sidenote: Christianity makes its way in

England without violence.] in battle; but, amidst all these

fluctuations, Christianity gradually but steadily made its way. And in

no part of the world did Christianity make its way in a more honourable

manner. We nowhere read of any of those persecutions, those conversions

at the point of the sword, which disgraced the proselytizing zeal of the

Frankish and Scandinavian apostles of the faith. Of the first Christian

prince in England, it is distinctly told us that, while still a heathen,

he hindered none of his subjects from embracing Christianity, and that,

after he was himself converted, he constrained none to forsake their

ancient faith.[28] In less than a century all the English kingdoms had

fully accepted Christianity, and they had distinctly preferred its Roman

to its Scottish form. [Sidenote: Conversion of Sussex, the last heathen

part of Britain. 681] Before the end of the seventh century, the

spiritual conquest of Britain was completed by the entrance of the

South-Saxons into the fold of Christ; and, in the course of the eighth

century, the insular Teutons showed themselves the most zealous of

missionaries for the [Sidenote: English missionaries on the Continent.]

conversion of those of their continental brethren who still remained in

heathen darkness. Bishoprics were gradually founded, the limits of each

diocese commonly answering to those of a kingdom or principality. The

[Sidenote: 597.] supremacy of Kent at the beginning of the conversion,

[Sidenote: 627.] the supremacy of Northumberland at the stage when

Christianity was first preached to the northern English, is still shown

to this day in the metropolitan position of Canterbury, the city of the

Bretwalda Æthelberht, and of York, the city of the Bretwalda Eadwine.

The land was speedily covered with churches and monasteries, the

distinction between regulars and seculars being, during the missionary

period, not very accurately drawn. Our forefathers soon acquired a fair

share of the learning of the age, and the first two centuries after the

conversion form a brilliant period in our ecclesiastical history, one

which seems the more brilliant from the contrast with the time of

renewed heathenism and darkness, which, in a large portion of Britain,

was to follow it.

[Sidenote: Effects of the conversion of the English. Their former

isolated position.]

The conversion of the English to Christianity at once altered their

whole position in the world. Hitherto our history had been almost wholly

insular; our heathen forefathers had had but little to do, either in war

or in peace, with any nations beyond their own four seas. We hear little

of any connexion being kept up between the Angles and Saxons who were

settled in Britain, and their kinsfolk [Sidenote: Instances of connexion

with the Franks in Gaul.] who abode in their older land.[29] The little

intercourse that we read of with the mainland seems to be wholly with

the Franks who now bore rule on the opposite coast of Gaul. Englishmen

seem once, in the sixth century, to have found their way to the Imperial

court, but it was in company with the ambassadors of a Frankish prince,

who at least tried to represent himself as the over-lord of Britain.[30]

One instance of connexion between Britain and Gaul may have had some

indirect effect in promoting the work of conversion. English Kings then,

and long after, commonly intermarried with English women, the daughters

either of other English princes or of their own nobles. But the

Bretwalda Æthelberht, before the landing of Augustine, was already

married to a Frankish princess, who retained her Christian religion in

his heathen court. Such a fact is chiefly remarkable for its

strangeness; yet it points to a considerable amount of intercourse

between Kent and the Franks of Paris at this particular moment. Still,

up to the end of the sixth century, Britain, as a whole, was cut off

from the rest of the world. It was a heathen and barbarous island, where

the Christian faith was professed only by an obscure remnant, which, in

some remote corners beyond the reach of the invaders, still retained a

form of Christianity which, after all, was not the orthodoxy of the Old

or of the New Rome. It was the conversion of our forefathers which

brought England for the first time, not only within the pale of the

Christian Church, but within the pale of the general political society

of Europe. But our insular position, combined with the events of our

earlier history, was not without its effect on the peculiar character of

[Sidenote: England the first strictly national Church in the West.]

Christianity as established in England. England was the first great

territorial[31] conquest of the spiritual power, beyond the limits of

the Roman Empire, beyond the influence of Greek and Roman civilization.

Italy, Spain, Gaul, Africa, the Greek East and the remoter Churches of

doubtful loyalty and orthodoxy, were all either actually under the sway

of Cæsar, or retained distinct traces of the recent times when they had

been so. When Æthelberht received baptism, the political sway of Rome

still reached from the Ocean to the Euphrates, and the language of Rome

was the one civilized speech from the Ocean to the Hadriatic. Strictly

national Churches existed only in those lands of the further East, where

the religious and the political loyalty of Syrians and Egyptians was

already equally doubtful, and which were destined to fall away at the

first touch of the victorious Saracen. In England, [Sidenote: Error of

not employing the English language in public worship.] alone in the

West, a purely national Church arose. One great error indeed was

committed; the vernacular tongue did not become the language of public

worship. The mistake was natural. It had occurred to no man to translate

the Latin services, drawn up at a time when Latin was the universal

language of the West, into those provincial dialects, the parents of the

future Romance tongues, which were already growing up in Gaul and Spain.

We should as soon think now of translating the Prayer-Book into the

dialects of Somerset or Yorkshire. Led thus to look on Latin as the one

tongue of worship, as well as of literature and government, Augustine

and his successors failed to see that Teutonic England stood in a wholly

different position from Romanized Gaul and Spain. They failed to see

that the same reasons which required that men should pray in Latin at

Rome required that they should pray in English at Canterbury. The error

was pardonable, but in its effects it was great. Still, though England

had not vernacular services, she soon began to form a vernacular

literature, sacred and profane, poetical and historical, to which no

other nation of the West can supply a parallel. The English Church,

reverencing Rome, but not slavishly bowing down to her, grew up with a

distinctly national character, and gradually infused its influence into

all the feelings and habits of the English people. By the end of the

seventh century, the independent, insular, Teutonic Church had become

one of the brightest lights of the Christian firmament.

In short, the introduction of Christianity completely changed the

position of the English nation both within its own island and towards

the rest of the world. From this time the amount of intercourse with

other nations steadily increased, and the change of religion had also a

most [Sidenote: Practical effect of Christianity.] important effect

within the island itself. The morality of the Gospel had a direct

influence upon the politics of the age. The evangelical precepts of

peace and love did not put an end to war, they did not put an end to

aggressive conquest, but they distinctly humanized the way in which

[Sidenote: The wars with the Welsh no longer wars of extermination.] war

was carried on. From this time forth the never-ending wars with the

Welsh cease to be wars of extermination. The heathen English had been

satisfied with nothing short of the destruction or expulsion of their

enemies; the Christian English thought it enough to [Sidenote: Advance

of Wessex.] reduce them to political subjection. This is clearly marked

in the advance of Wessex towards the West. Twenty [Sidenote: Conquests

of Ceawlin. 577–584.] years before the coming of Augustine, Ceawlin, the

West-Saxon Bretwalda, had won the great battle of Deorham; he had taken

the cities of Bath, Gloucester, and Cirencester; he had then carried his

arms northward, and in his northern march he had destroyed the Roman

city of Uriconium. These northern conquests, as we have seen,[32] were

in a certain sense temporary; the districts overrun by Ceawlin beyond

the Avon, like the other West-Saxon possessions north of the Thames,

ceased for ever to be Welsh, but they did not become for ever

West-Saxon. But the land between the Avon and the Axe, the northern part

of modern Somerset, became an abiding part of the West-Saxon realm. This

was the last heathen conquest, the last exterminating conquest, waged by

the West-Saxons against the Britons. During a space of three hundred

years, the process of West-Saxon conquest [Sidenote: Further advances of

the West-Saxons. 652–926.] still went on; step by step the English

frontier advanced from the Axe to the Parret, from the Parret to the

Tamar; Taunton at one stage, Exeter at another, were border fortresses

against the Welsh enemy; step by step the old Cornish kingdom shrank up

before the conquerors; till at last no portion of land south of the

Bristol Channel was subject to a British sovereign. This was conquest;

it was, no doubt, fearful and desolating conquest; but it was no longer

conquest which offered only the dreadful alternatives of death,

banishment, or personal slavery. The Christian Welsh could now sit down

as subjects of the [Sidenote: In these later wars the Welsh are allowed

to become West-Saxon subjects.] Christian Saxon. The Welshman was

acknowledged as a man and a citizen; he was put under the protection of

the law; he could hold landed property; his blood had its price, and his

oath had its ascertained value.[33] The value set on his life and on his

oath shows that he was not yet looked on as the equal of the conquering

race; but the Welshman within the West-Saxon border was no longer a wild

beast, an enemy, or a slave, but a fellow-Christian living under the

King’s peace. There can be no doubt that the great peninsula stretching

from the Axe to the Land’s End was, and still is, largely inhabited by

men who are only naturalized Englishmen, descendants of the old Welsh

inhabitants, who gradually lost their distinctive language and were

merged in the general mass of their [Sidenote: Celtic element still

remaining in the western shires of Wessex.] conquerors. In fact, the

extinction of the Cornish language in modern Cornwall within

comparatively recent times was only the last stage of a process which

began with the conquests of Cenwealh in the seventh century. The Celtic

element can be traced from the Axe, the last heathen frontier, to the

extremity of Cornwall, of course increasing in amount as we reach the

lands which were more recently conquered and therefore less perfectly

Teutonized. Devonshire is less Celtic than Cornwall, and Somerset is

less Celtic than Devonshire, but not one of those three shires can be

called a pure Teutonic land like Kent or Norfolk. The same rule would

doubtless apply to those less accurately recorded conquests by which the

Mercian Kings extended their dominion from the Severn to the modern

boundaries of Wales. We have now everywhere passed the age of

extermination, and have entered on the age marked by the comparatively

harmless process of political conquest.

[Illustration: BRITAIN IN 597.]

FOR THE DELEGATES OF THE CLARENDON PRESS.

§ 3. _Fluctuations of dominion between Northumberland, Mercia, and

Wessex._ 577–823.

[Sidenote: History of the seventh and eighth centuries; position of the

smaller kingdoms; of Wessex.]

During the seventh and eighth centuries there were many fluctuations in

the relative position of the English kingdoms. Not only Essex, but

Sussex and East-Anglia, each of which had given the nation a single

Bretwalda, sink into insignificance, and even Kent falls into quite a

secondary position. Wessex stood higher; but its Kings, occupied with

extending their western frontier, made as yet no attempt to win the

supremacy of the whole island, and they often had no small difficulty in

maintaining their own independence against Northumbrians [Sidenote:

Rivalry of Mercia and Northumberland.] and Mercians. The rivalries of

these last two powers fill for a long while the most important place in

our history. [Sidenote: Greatness of Northumberland at the] At the end

of the sixth century and the beginning of the seventh, Northumberland

was at the height of its power. Its King Æthelfrith stands forth in the

pages of Bæda[34] as [Sidenote: beginning of the period.] the mightiest

of conquerors against the Welsh, and as checking an invasion of Picts

and Scots at the great battle [Sidenote: 603.] of Dægsanstan. It must

always be borne in mind that, at this time and long after, Lothian was

politically as well as ethnologically English, and that Picts and

Scots—whatever was the amount of distinction between them—are to

[Sidenote: Dominion of Eadwine. 617–633.] be looked for only north of

the Forth. Eadwine, the first Christian King of Northumberland, and who

ranks as the fifth Bretwalda, has left his name to the frontier fortress

of Eadwinesburh or Edinburgh. Eadwine was a true Bretwalda in every

sense of the word, holding a supremacy alike over Teutons and

Britons.[35] Five Kings of the [Sidenote: 626.] West-Saxons fell in

battle against him;[36] but at last [Sidenote: 633.] he died at

Heathfield in battle against Penda, the [Sidenote: Reign of Penda of

Mercia. 627–655.] heathen King of the Mercians. Along with Penda

appeared a strange ally, Cadwalla, the Christian King of the Strathclyde

Welsh, the last of his race who could boast of having carried on

aggressive war, as distinguished from mere plundering inroads, within

the territory of any, [Sidenote: 641.] English people. Not long

afterwards, Oswald, the restorer of the Northumbrian kingdom and the

sixth Bretwalda, fell in another battle against the heathen Mercian. The

arms of Penda were no less successful against the West-Saxons.

[Sidenote: 628.] Even before the overthrow of Eadwine, he had most

likely annexed to Mercia part of the West-Saxon [Sidenote: 644.] lands

north of the Thames and Avon;[37] and sixteen years later, Cenwealh, who

afterwards appears as an extender of the West-Saxon frontier at the

expense of the Welsh, was for a while driven from his kingdom by the

same terrible enemy. Penda, in short, came nearer to achieving the

[Sidenote: Extent of his dominion.] union of the whole English nation

under one sceptre than any prince before the West-Saxon Ecgberht.

Everything looked as if the lasting dominion of Britain were destined

for Mercia, and even as if the faith of Christ were about to be plucked

up out of the land before it had well taken root. But it was impossible

that England should now fall back under the rule of a mere heathen

conqueror. The dominion of Penda appears in our history as a mere

passing tyranny, and, though he must have possessed more real power than

any English prince had ever done before him, his name finds no place on

the list of Bretwaldas. [Sidenote: Death of Penda. 655.] At last the

seventh prince who bore that title, Oswiu of Northumberland, checked him

in his last invasion, and slew him in the battle of Wingfield, a name

which, obscure as it now sounds, marks an important turning-point in the

history of our island. The strife between the creeds of Christ and of

Woden was there finally decided; the Mercians embraced the religion of

their neighbours, and Northumberland again became the leading power of

[Sidenote: Greatness of Northumberland under Oswald, Oswiu, and

Ecgfrith. 635–685.] Britain. Under her two Bretwaldas, Oswald and Oswiu,

the English dominion was, seemingly for the first time, extended beyond

the Forth, and Picts and Scots, as well as English and Britons, admitted

the supremacy of the Northumbrian King.[38] But the greatness of

Northumberland lasted no longer than the reigns of Oswiu and his son

[Sidenote: 685.] Ecgfrith. Ecgfrith was slain in battle against the

Picts; the northern dominion of Northumberland died with him, and the

kingdom itself, which had been for a while the most flourishing and

advancing state in Britain, was gradually weakened by internal

divisions. It sank into utter insignificance, and stood ready, as we

shall soon see, [Sidenote: Greatness of Mercia. 716–819.] for the

irruption of a new race of conquerors. After the decline of

Northumberland, the Christian Mercians are again seen on the road to

that supremacy which had once been so nearly grasped by their heathen

forefathers. The [Sidenote: 655–656.] fall of Penda carried with it a

momentary subjugation of Mercia to Northumberland, but the land almost

immediately recovered its independence, and in the next century Mercia

again advanced from independence to dominion. [Sidenote: Æthelbald,

716–757. Offa, 757–795. Cenwulf, 796–819.] Under three bold and

enterprising Kings, Æthelbald, Offa, and Cenwulf, the armies of Mercia

went forth conquering and to conquer, and the periods of momentary

confusion which divided these three vigorous reigns seem to have been no

serious hindrance to the general advance of the kingdom. Wessex was

still engaged in its long struggle with the Welsh, and was in no

position to aspire to the dominion of Britain. It was quite as much as

the West-Saxon Kings could do to push their conquests against the Welsh

on the one hand and to maintain their independence against Mercia on the

other. Wessex was more than once invaded by the Mercians; at one time it

became actually [Sidenote: 752.] tributary; till Cuthred, in the middle

of the eighth century, finally secured its independence in the fight of

Burford. In the latter half of that century, Offa raised the Mercian

kingdom to a greater degree of real power than it had ever held, even

during the momentary dominion of Penda. He conquered from the Welsh the

lands between the Severn and the Wye, a lasting and useful acquisition

for the English nation, which he is said to have secured by the great

dyke which still bears his name. On the other side of Britain, all the

smaller states, East-Anglia, Essex, Kent, and Sussex, were brought more

or less completely under his power. Victorious over all enemies within

his own island, Offa, as the mightiest potentate of the West,

corresponded on equal terms with the Great Charles, the mightiest

potentate of the East.[39] [Sidenote: Influence of Charles the Great]

Occasional misunderstandings between the two princes seem not to have

seriously interrupted their friendship. It [Sidenote: in English

affairs. 808.] is possible that the Kentish Kings applied for help

against Offa to the mighty Frank; it is more certain that, after Offa’s

death, Charles, now Emperor, procured the restoration of the banished

Northumbrian King Eardwulf, and there seems reason to believe that both

the Northumbrian and his Scottish neighbours acknowledged themselves the

vassals of the new Augustus.[40]

After the death of Offa the greatness of Mercia continued for a while

undiminished under the reign of his son Cenwulf. But meanwhile the seeds

of a mighty revolution [Sidenote: Accession of Ecgberht of Wessex. 802.]

were sowing. A prince, taught in the school of adversity, who had

learned the arts of war and statecraft at the feet of the hero of the

age, was, in the eighth year after Offa’s death, raised to the throne of

the West-Saxons.[41] He was destined to win a dominion for which that

narrow and local description seemed all too mean. Once, but seemingly

once only, in the hour of victory, did the eighth Bretwalda, the founder

of the abiding supremacy of Wessex, venture to exchange his ancestral

title of King of the West-Saxons for the prouder style of KING OF THE

ENGLISH.[42]

§ 4. _Permanent Supremacy of Wessex._ 823–924.

[Sidenote: Analogy between Charles and Ecgberht.]

Ecgberht was chosen King of the West-Saxons two years after Charles the

Great was chosen Emperor. And we can hardly doubt that the example of

his illustrious friend and host was ever present before his eyes. He

could not indeed aspire, like Charles, to the diadem of the Cæsars, but

he could aspire to an analogous rank in an island which men sometimes

counted for another world. He could win for his own kingdom a lasting

superiority over all its neighbours, and so pave the way for the day

when all England and all Britain [Sidenote: Permanent supremacy of

Wessex now established.] should acknowledge only a single King. The

eighth Bretwalda not only established a power over the whole land such

as had been held by no other prince before him, but he did what no other

Bretwalda had ever done, he handed on his external dominion as a lasting

possession to his successors in his own kingdom. From this time forward,

Wessex remained the undisputed head of the English nation. The power of

the West-Saxon Kings might be assaulted, and at last overthrown, by

foreign invaders, but it was never again disputed by rival [Sidenote:

Ecgberht the founder of the kingdom of England.] potentates of English

blood. In short, as Charles founded the Kingdom of Germany, Ecgberht at

least laid the foundations of the Kingdom of England. In his reign

[Sidenote: Gradual submission of the other states. 802–837.] of

thirty-six years he reduced all the English kingdoms to a greater or

less degree of subjection. The smaller states seem to have willingly

submitted to him as a deliverer from the power of Mercia. East-Anglia

became [Sidenote: Kent, &c. 823. [See Chron. in anno.]] a dependent

ally; Kent and the smaller Saxon kingdoms were more closely incorporated

with the ruling state. While in East-Anglia Kings of the old line

continued to reign as vassals of the West-Saxon over-lord, Kent, Essex,

and Sussex were united into a still more dependent realm, which was

usually granted out as an apanage to some prince of the West-Saxon royal

house.[43] Northumberland, torn by civil dissensions, was in no position

to withstand the power which was growing up in the [Sidenote: Submission

of Northumberland. 829.] south of Britain. At the approach of a

West-Saxon army the Northumbrians seem to have submitted without

resistance; keeping, like East-Anglia, their own line of [Sidenote:

Final struggle with Mercia. 802–829.] vassal Kings. But Mercia was won

only after a long struggle. Ecgberht had inherited war with Mercia as an

inheritance from his predecessors. The first year of his reign, before

he had himself come back to assume the crown to which he had been

chosen, was marked by a successful resistance to a Mercian inroad.[44]

And even [Sidenote: 825.] many years after, one of the greatest

victories of his reign, the fight of Ellandun, was a victory over

Mercian invaders within the West-Saxon realm. That victory deprived

Mercia of all her external dominion; it was immediately after it that

Ecgberht annexed the smaller [Sidenote: Submission of Mercia. 829.]

kingdoms which had become Mercian dependencies. Four years later, Mercia

herself had to submit to the conqueror; [Sidenote: 830–874.] she kept

her Kings for nearly another half century, but they now received their

crown at the hands of the West-Saxon over-lord. It is immediately after

recording this greatest of Ecgberht’s triumphs that the Chronicles give

him in a marked way the title of Bretwalda.

It was immediately after the submission of Mercia that Ecgberht received

the far more easily won submission of Northumberland, which completed

his work of welding all the Teutonic kingdoms of Britain into one whole.

[Sidenote: Successes of Ecgberht over the Welsh. 815–837.] But, while

thus occupied, he had also to carry on the usual warfare with his Celtic

neighbours. The power of the Cornish Britons was now utterly broken. The

long struggle which had gone on ever since the days of Cerdic was now

over; the English frontier seems to have been extended to the Tamar,[45]

and the English [Sidenote: 825.] supremacy was certainly extended to the

Land’s End. The Welsh however within the conquered territory still

[Sidenote: 835.] kept their distinct being, and they sometimes, with the

aid of foreign invaders, strove to cast off the yoke. Against the

North-Welsh,[46] that is the inhabitants of Wales proper, Ecgberht was

equally successful. As Lord of Mercia he inherited from the Mercian

Kings a warfare against them as constant as that which he had inherited

from his own ancestors against the Welsh of Cornwall. As soon therefore

as he had established his supremacy [Sidenote: 828.] over Mercia, he

went on to require and to receive the submission of the Celtic

neighbours of his new dominion. [Sidenote: North and West Welsh vassals

of Wessex.] From this time forth all the Celtic inhabitants of Britain

south of the Dee were vassals of the West-Saxon King. But his power

never reached to the Picts, the Scots, or [Sidenote: Independence of

Picts, Scots, and Strathclyde Welsh.] the Strathclyde Welsh. In fact,

the northern Celts, except so far as they came in for their share of the

Danish invasions, enjoyed about this time a century of unusual

independence. The power of Northumberland had long been unequal to

maintaining its old supremacy over its Celtic neighbours, and the new

over-lord of Northumberland seems not to have attempted to enforce it.

Ecgberht therefore, even at the height of his power, was not Lord of the

whole isle of Britain. To win that title was the work of the West-Saxon

conquerors of the next century.

But just as the West-Saxon monarchy was reaching this pitch of

greatness, it was threatened by an enemy [Sidenote: Invasions of the

Danes. 789–1070.] far more formidable than any that could be found

within the four seas of Britain. We have now reached the time of the

Danish invasions. The Northern part of Europe, peopled by a race closely

akin to the Low-Dutch and speaking another dialect of the common

Teutonic speech, now began to send forth swarms of pirates over all the

seas of Europe, who from pirates often grew into conquerors. They were

still heathens, and their incursions, both in Britain and on the

Continent, must have been [Sidenote: 787. [Chron. in anno.]] a scourge

almost as frightful as the settlement of the English had been to the

original Britons. The Scandinavian incursions began before the accession

of Ecgberht, and even his power did not keep them wholly in check. It

must however have had some considerable effect, as it is only quite

towards the end of his reign that we hear of them again. In his last

years their incursions [Sidenote: 833.] became frequent and formidable,

and in one battle the Bretwalda himself was defeated by them. But he

afterwards gained, over the united forces of the Danes and [Sidenote:

836.] the revolted Welsh, the battle of Hengestesdun in Cornwall, which

may rank with Ellandun as the second great victory of his reign. Soon

after this success, which barely checked the Danish invasions, but which

completed [Sidenote: 837.] the submission of the West Welsh, King

Ecgberht died, like his model Charles, with, his own power undiminished,

but perhaps foreseeing what was to come when his sceptre should pass

into weaker hands.

[Sidenote: Three Periods of the Danish invasions.]

The Danish invasions of England, as I have already said,[47] fall

naturally into three periods, each of which finds its parallel in the

course of the English Conquest of Britain. As the Saxons and Angles

plundered and desolated long before they actually settled, so now their

[Sidenote: First Period, of simple plunder. 789–855.] Northern kinsmen

followed the same course. We first find a period in which the object of

the invaders seems to be simple plunder. They land, they harry the

country, they fight, if need be, to secure their booty, but whether

defeated or victorious, they equally return to their ships, and sail

away with what they have gathered. This period includes the time from

the first recorded invasion [Sidenote: Second Period, of settlement.

855–897.] till the latter half of the ninth century. Next comes a time

in which the object of the Danes is clearly no longer mere plunder, but

settlement. They now, just as the English had done before them, come in

much stronger bodies, and instead of sailing away every winter with

their plunder, they make lasting settlements in a large part of the

country. This took place in the second half of the ninth century. During

the greater part of the tenth century we read of few or no fresh

invasions from Scandinavia; the energies of the Northern tribes were

just now mainly devoted to those successive settlements in Gaul which

formed the Duchy of Normandy. [Sidenote: Struggle of the West-Saxon

Kings with the Danes settled in Britain. 902–954.] But the West-Saxon

Lords of Britain were engaged for more than fifty years in a constant

struggle to subdue and keep in obedience the Danes who had already

settled in the island. And the Danes in Britain were often helped by the

Scandinavian settlers who had occupied the eastern coast of Ireland and

the islands to the west and north of Scotland. A short interval of

peace, the glorious reign of Eadgar, now follows; [Sidenote: Third

Period of Danish invasion. Period of political conquest. 980–1016.]

towards the end of the tenth century the plundering invasions of the

Danes begin again; but they soon assume altogether a new character. The

North of Europe, hitherto divided among a crowd of petty princes, had

now, like England, like the Empire, settled down into a more regular

order of things. Three great kingdoms, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, had

arisen. With Sweden we had nothing directly to do; the conquests of that

power were made to the East. With Norway also England proper had

comparatively little to do, though the Northmen who ravaged and settled

in Scotland and Ireland seem to have come mainly from that part of

Scandinavia. But the history of England for a long term of years is one

record of constant struggles with the power of Denmark. This forms the

third period. We have passed the time of mere plunder; we have passed

the time of mere local settlement. We have now reached the time of

political conquest, the [Sidenote: 994–1013.] time analogous to the

conquests of the West-Saxon Kings from Cenwealh to Eadred. We now see a

King of all Denmark bent on achieving the conquest of all England. We at

last see the foreign invader succeeding [Sidenote: 1013–1016.] in his

attempt, and reigning as King of the English, with the formal, though no

doubt the constrained, assent of the English nation. Of these three

periods, the third, as furnishing some of the immediate causes of the

Norman Conquest, I must deal with in greater detail at a later stage of

this history. The two earlier periods, those of mere plunder and of mere

settlement, come within the bounds of the present preliminary sketch.

The reigns of the son and the grandsons of Ecgberht were almost wholly

taken up by the struggle with the [Sidenote: Reign of Æthelwulf and his

sons. 837–901.] Northmen. In the reign of Æthelwulf the son of Ecgberht

it is recorded that the heathen men wintered for the first time in the

Isle of Sheppey. This marks [Sidenote: 855.] the transition from the

first to the second period of their invasions. Hitherto they had

plundered and had gone away with their plunder; to spend the winter on

English soil was the first step towards a lasting [Sidenote: 866.]

settlement. It was not however till about eleven years from this time

that the settlement actually began. Meanwhile the sceptre of the

West-Saxons passed from one hand to another. It is remarkable that no

English king of this or of the following century seems to have reached

old age. After Æthelwulf, whose age is uncertain, only one or two of his

descendants for several generations reached the age of fifty, and the

greater part of them were cut off while they were quite young. Four sons

of Æthelwulf reigned in succession, and the [Sidenote: 858–871.] reigns

of the first three among them make up together [Sidenote: Reign of

Æthelred. 866–871.] only thirteen years. In the reign of the third of

these princes, Æthelred the First, the second period of the invasions

fairly begins. Five years were spent by the Northmen in ravaging and

conquering the tributary [Sidenote: Conquest of Northumberland.

867–869.] kingdoms. Northumberland, still disputed between rival kings,

fell an easy prey; one or two puppet princes did not scruple to receive

a tributary crown at the hands [Sidenote: Invasion of Mercia. 868.] of

the heathen invaders.[48] They next entered Mercia, they seized

Nottingham, and the West-Saxon King, hastening to the relief of his

vassals, was unable to [Sidenote: Conquest of East-Anglia. 866–870.]

dislodge them from that stronghold. East-Anglia was completely

conquered, and its King Eadmund died a [Sidenote: First invasion of

Wessex. 871.] martyr. At last the full storm of invasion burst upon

Wessex itself. King Æthelred, the first of a long line of West-Saxon

hero kings, supported by his greater brother Ælfred, met the invaders in

battle after battle [Sidenote: Reign of Ælfred. 871–901.] with varied

success. He died, and Ælfred succeeded, in the thick of the struggle. In

this year, the last of Æthelred and the first of Ælfred, nine pitched

battles, besides smaller engagements, were fought with the heathens on

West-Saxon ground. At last peace was [Sidenote: 872.] made; the Danes

withdrew to London, within the Mercian frontier; Wessex was for a moment

delivered, but the supremacy won by Ecgberht was lost. For a few years

Wessex was subjected to nothing more than temporary incursions, but

Deira or Southern Northumberland, and north-eastern Mercia were

systematically [Sidenote: 876–877.] occupied by the Danes, and the land

was divided among them. In Bernicia or Northern Northumberland English

princes still reigned under Danish supremacy. The last native King of

the Mercians,[49] Burhred, the brother-in-law [Sidenote: 874.] of

Ælfred, had already been deposed by the Danes, [Sidenote: Second

invasion of Wessex. 878.] and had gone to Rome, where he ended his days.

At last the Danes, now settled in a large part of the island, made a

second attempt to add Wessex itself to their possessions. For a moment

the land seemed conquered; Ælfred himself lay hid in the marshes of

Somerset; men might well deem that the Empire of Ecgberht, and the

kingdom of Cerdic itself, had vanished for ever. But the strong heart of

the most renowned of Englishmen, the saint, the scholar, the hero, and

the lawgiver, carried his people safely through this most [Sidenote:

Peace of Wedmore and evacuation of Wessex. 878–880.] terrible of

dangers. Within a few months the Dragon of Wessex was again victorious;

the Northmen were driven to conclude a peace which Englishmen, fifty

years sooner, would have deemed the lowest depth of degradation, but

which now might fairly be looked upon as honourable and even as

triumphant. By the terms of the Peace of Wedmore the Northmen were to

leave Wessex and the part of Mercia south-west of Watling-Street;[50]

they, or at least their chiefs, were to submit to baptism, and they were

to receive the whole land beyond Watling-Street as vassals of the

West-Saxon [Sidenote: Reign of Guthrum-Æthelstan in East-Anglia.

880–890.] King. Guthrum, the Danish King, was accordingly baptized by

the name of Æthelstan; he took possession of his new dominions, and

observed the peace with decent fidelity down to his death.

[Sidenote: Character and extent of the Danish occupation.]

A large part of England thus received a colony of Danish inhabitants.

They gave their name to their conquest, and England is now divided into

Wessex, Mercia, and _Denalagu_, the region where the Danish law was in

force. This Danish occupation was a real settlement of a new people in

the land. There is no reason to think that any extirpation or expulsion

of the native inhabitants took place, such as that which accompanied the

English Conquest. But the displacement of landowners and the general

break-up of society must have been far greater than anything that was

afterwards [Sidenote: Evidence of local nomenclature.] brought about by

the Normans. How extensive the Danish occupation was is best seen in the

local nomenclature and local divisions.[51] The West-Saxon shires keep

to this day the names and the boundaries of the principalities founded

by the first successors of Cerdic. [Sidenote: Contrast between the

West-Saxon and Mercian shires.] In some of them there is no one dominant

town in a shire; several shires contain a town bearing a cognate name,

but the shire is seldom called directly and solely after a town. In

short, the local divisions of Wessex were not made but grew. Mercia, on

the other hand, has every appearance of having been artificially mapped

out. The shires, with at most two exceptions, are called after towns,

and in most cases the shire groups itself round its capital, as round an

acknowledged and convenient centre. The names of the old principalities

vanish, and their boundaries are often disregarded. One principality is

divided among several shires, and another shire is made up of several

ancient principalities. We can hardly doubt that the old divisions were

wiped out in the Danish invasions, and that the country was divided

again by the English Kings after the reconquest.

[Sidenote: Names of places in Northumberland and Mercia retaining the

names of Danish lords.]

Again, the names of the towns and villages throughout a large part of

the ceded territory show the systematic way in which the land was

divided among the Danish leaders. Through a large region, stretching

from Warwickshire to Cumberland, but most conspicuously in Yorkshire,

Lincolnshire, and Leicestershire, the Danish termination _by_ marks the

settlements of the invaders, and, in a vast number of cases, the name of

the manor still retains the name of the Danish lord to whom it was

assigned in the occupation of the ninth century. In two cases at least

the Danes gave new names to considerable towns. Streoneshalh and

Northweorthig received the [Sidenote: Whitby and Derby.] new names of

Whitby and Derby (Deoraby). This last town is one of considerable

importance in the history of the Danish settlement. It was, together

with Lincoln, [Sidenote: The Five Boroughs.] Leicester, Nottingham, and

Stamford, a member of a confederation of Danish towns, which, under the

name of the Five Boroughs, often plays a part in the events of the tenth

and eleventh centuries.

[Sidenote: Character of Ælfred.]

Ælfred, the unwilling author of these great changes, is the most perfect

character in history. He is a singular instance of a prince who has

become a hero of romance, who, as a hero of romance, has had countless

imaginary exploits and imaginary institutions attributed to him, but to

whose character romance has done no more than justice, and who appears

in exactly the same light in history and [Sidenote: Singular union of

virtues in him.] in fable. No other man on record has ever so thoroughly

united all the virtues both of the ruler and of the private man. In no

other man on record were so many virtues disfigured by so little

alloy.[52] A saint without superstition, a scholar without ostentation,

a warrior all whose wars were fought in the defence of his country, a

conqueror whose laurels were never stained by cruelty,[53] a prince

never cast down by adversity, never lifted up to insolence in the hour

of triumph—there is no other name in history [Sidenote: Comparison with

Saint Lewis;] to compare with his. Saint Lewis comes nearest to him in

the union of a more than monastic piety with the highest civil,

military, and domestic virtues. Ælfred and Lewis alike stand forth in

honourable contrast to the abject superstition of some other royal

saints, who were so selfishly engaged in the care of their own souls

that they refused either to raise up heirs to their throne or to strike

a blow on behalf of their people. But even in Saint Lewis we see a

disposition to forsake an immediate sphere of duty for the sake of

distant and unprofitable, however pious and glorious, undertakings. The

true duties of a King of the French clearly lay in France and not in

Egypt or at Tunis. No such charge lies at the door of the great King of

the West-Saxons. With an inquiring spirit which took in the whole world,

for purposes alike of scientific inquiry and of Christian benevolence,

Ælfred never forgot that his first duty was to his own people. He

forestalled our own age in exploring the Northern Ocean, and in sending

alms to the distant Churches of India; but he neither forsook his crown,

like some of his predecessors, nor neglected its [Sidenote: with

Washington;] duties, like some of his successors. The virtue of Ælfred,

like the virtue of Washington, consisted in no marvellous displays of

superhuman genius, but in the simple, straightforward, discharge of the

duty of the moment. But Washington, soldier, statesman, and patriot like

Ælfred, has no claim to Ælfred’s character of scholar and master

[Sidenote: with William the Silent;] of scholars. William the Silent,

like Ælfred the deliverer of his people, had no call to be also their

literary teacher; and in his career, glorious as it is, there is an

element of intrigue which is quite unlike the noble simplicity of both

Ælfred and Washington. The same union of zeal for religion and learning

with the highest gifts of the warrior and the statesman is found on a

wider field of [Sidenote: with Charles the Great;] action, in Charles

the Great. But even Charles cannot aspire to the pure glory of Ælfred.

Amidst all the splendours of conquest and legislation, we cannot be

blind to an alloy of personal ambition and personal vice, to occasional

unjust aggressions and occasional acts of cruelty. [Sidenote: with

Edward the First.] Among our own later princes, the great Edward alone

can bear for a moment the comparison with his glorious ancestor. And,

when tried by such a standard, even the great Edward fails. Even in him

we do not see the same wonderful union of gifts and virtues which so

seldom meet together; we cannot acquit Edward of occasional acts of

violence, of occasional recklessness as to means; we cannot attribute to

him the pure, simple, almost childlike disinterestedness which marks the

character of Ælfred. The times indeed were different; Edward had to

tread the path of righteousness and honour in a time of far more tangled

policy, and amidst temptations, not harder indeed, but far [Sidenote:

Ælfred’s position as a legislator;] more subtle. The legislative merits

of Edward are greater than those of Ælfred; but this is a difference in

the times rather than in the men. The popular error which makes Ælfred

the personal author of all our institutions hardly needs a fresh

confutation. Popular legends attribute to him the invention of Trial by

Jury and of countless other portions of our law, the germs of which may

be discerned ages before the time of Ælfred, while their existing shapes

cannot be discerned till ages after him. Ælfred, like so many of our

early kings, collected and codified the laws of his predecessors; but we

have his own personal witness[54] that he purposely abstained from any

large amount of strictly new legislation. The legislation of Edward, on

the other hand, in its boldness and originality, forms the most

[Sidenote: as scholar.] marked of all epochs in the history of our law.

It is perhaps, after all, in his literary aspect that the distinctive

beauty of Ælfred’s character shines forth most clearly. The mere

patronage of learning was common to him with many princes of his age.

Both Charles the Great and several of his successors had set brilliant

examples in this way. What distinguished Ælfred was his own personal

appearance as an author. Now, as a rule, literary kings have not been a

class deserving of much honour. They have commonly stepped out of their

natural sphere only to display the least honourable characteristics of

another calling. But it was not so with the Emperor Marcus; it was not

so with our Ælfred. In Ælfred there is no sign of literary pedantry,

ostentation, or jealousy; nothing is done for his own glory; he writes,

just as he fights and legislates, with a single eye to the good of his

people. He shows no signs of original genius; he is simply an editor and

translator, working honestly for the improvement of the subjects whom he

loved. This is really a purer fame, and one more in harmony with the

other features of Ælfred’s character, than the highest achievements of

the poet, the historian, or the philosopher. I repeat then that Ælfred

[Sidenote: Happiness of Ælfred in his successors.] is the most perfect

character in history. And he was specially happy in handing on a large

share of his genius and his virtue to those who came after him. The

West-Saxon kings, for nearly a century, form one of the most brilliant

royal lines on record. From Æthelred the Saint to Eadgar the Peaceful,

the short and wretched reign of Eadwig is the only interruption to one

continued display of valour under the guidance of wisdom. The greatness

of the dynasty, obscured under the second Æthelred, flashes forth for a

moment in the short and glorious career of the second Eadmund. It then

becomes more permanently eclipsed under the rule of Dane, Norman, and

Angevin, till it shines forth once more in the first of the new race

whom we can claim as English at heart, till, if not Ælfred himself, at

least his unconquered son, seems to rise again to life in one who at

once bore his name and followed in his steps.

[Sidenote: The Danish settlement tends to the consolidation of England

under the West-Saxon Kings.]

There can be little doubt that the Danish settlement in England, which

seemed at first to be the utter destruction of the West-Saxon monarchy,

tended in the end to the consolidation of England and of all Britain

under the West-Saxon kings. Looking at Ælfred as Bretwalda, a title

which had passed away, or as King of the English, a title which he

hardly ventured to assume, his loss was beyond expression. But, as local

King of the West-Saxons, he undoubtedly gained. The Danes were nominally

his vassals;[55] but their vassalage was so purely nominal that we may

look on Ælfred as having lost all authority over East-Anglia,

Northumberland, and the larger half of [Sidenote: Closer union between

Mercia and Wessex.] Mercia. But the remainder of Mercia was more closely

united to Wessex than it had been since the seventh century. The new

frontier gave to Ælfred nearly the whole of the old extent of Wessex

beyond the Thames and Avon, while it added a large region in the centre

of England which had never been West-Saxon before.[56] Still this great

acquisition was not absolutely incorporated with the West-Saxon kingdom.

The over-lord no longer entrusted the dependency to a vassal King, but

English [Sidenote: Before 886.] Mercia still had an Ealdorman of her

own, a man of princely descent within the land over which he ruled. But

Æthelred, the new ruler of south-western Mercia, was the son-in-law of

the West-Saxon King and ruled by his [Sidenote: Recovery of London.

886.] father-in-law’s appointment.[57] And along with the recovered

portion of Mercia, Ælfred also regained London, a city which we shall

henceforth ever find to be one of the firmest strongholds of English

freedom and one of the truest bulwarks of the realm.

[Sidenote: Consolidation of Wessex.]

We may therefore look on the immediate West-Saxon territory as actually

increased by the Danish invasion. The recovered part of Mercia was

reduced to the form of a province; we hear no more of even dependent

Kings in Kent and Sussex, but at most of Ealdormen of the King’s

appointment. All England south-west of Watling-Street was fast growing

into a compact and homogeneous kingdom. [Sidenote: Progress of the

West-Saxon power aided by the Danish] And the very fact of the foreign

occupation of the rest of England paved the way for its easier

incorporation with the one kingdom which remained independent. The wars

of Wessex with the Danes of Mercia and Northumberland were wars of quite

another character from the [Sidenote: settlements.] old border strife

between the English inhabitants of the several kingdoms. They were in

the strictest sense national wars, wars of religion and patriotism. The

West-Saxon Kings were, in the eyes of all Englishmen in whatever part of

the island, the champions of the national independence and the national

faith. Their conquests brought with them deliverance from the Danish

yoke, and we therefore find them everywhere welcomed as deliverers by

the subject English population. One or two attempts at a division of the

kingdom[58] show that the old local feelings had not fully died out; but

their ill success shows no less clearly that such divisions no longer

rested on any strong national basis. The successors of Ælfred were

gradually enabled to win back the supremacy established by Ecgberht, and

to enlarge it into an actual sovereignty over all England and an

acknowledged supremacy over all Britain. The kingdom so formed was at

last overcome by a Danish conqueror; but it was overcome by a very

different process from the settlement of this or that wandering pirate.

It was the transfer of the crown of a consolidated English kingdom to

the head of the King of a now no less consolidated kingdom of Denmark.

[Sidenote: 880–893.]

The reign of Ælfred contains two intervals of nearly [Sidenote:

897–901.] perfect peace. After the great deliverance of Wessex

[Sidenote: Later Danish Wars of Ælfred. 893–897.] there was no very

serious warfare with the Danes till quite towards the end of Ælfred’s

life. Then came five years of a struggle almost as fearful as that of

the early days of his reign. But in the end Ælfred and England were

again victorious. During the years of peace Ælfred had seen the need of

forming a naval force to meet the wikings on their own element. It is

wonderful how wholly the old sea-faring spirit of the Angles and Saxons

[Sidenote: Ælfred the founder of the English navy.] seems to have died

out before his time. But both Ælfred and his successors diligently

fostered the naval power of England, alike for war, for commerce, and

for discovery. In short, Ælfred laid the foundations of that naval

greatness which is the special pride of Englishmen. His fleet seems to

have preserved Wessex itself from anything more than a few landings for

plunder. But for three years, Danish invaders, helped by the Danes

settled in the country, marched to and fro through all Britain

[Sidenote: Death of Ælfred. 901.] north of the Thames. But at last

Ælfred succeeded in reducing them at least within the terms of the Peace

of Wedmore, and he again enjoyed a few years of quiet before his death.

[Sidenote: Reign of Eadward the Elder 901–925.]

Ælfred’s successor, Eadward the Elder, completed the work which Ecgberht

had begun, by first extending the supremacy of Wessex over the whole

island of Britain. [Sidenote: Reigns of his sons. 925–955.] Under his

sons, Æthelstan, Eadmund, and Eadred, that supremacy was maintained and

consolidated at the point [Sidenote: Reign of Eadgar. 958–975.] of the

sword. His grandson, Eadgar the Peaceful, enjoyed the fruit of their

labours, and further strengthened their work by a reign of strong and

orderly government, by holding himself in constant readiness for war

during a time, for those days, of most unusual peace. Thus, from

[Sidenote: 800–975.] Ecgberht to Eadgar, it took a hundred and seventy

years to build up the Kingdom of England, a kingdom which, as coming

events showed, could still be conquered, but which could no longer be

permanently divided. The twenty-five years of Eadward are the

turning-point; what he won his successors had only to keep. It is only

[Sidenote: Importance of the reign of Eadward.] the unequalled glory of

his father which has doomed this prince, one of the greatest rulers that

England ever beheld, to a smaller degree of popular fame than he

deserves. His whole reign bears out the panegyric passed on him by an

ancient writer,[59] that he was fully his father’s equal as a warrior

and ruler, and was inferior to him in nothing except those literary

labours which were so peculiarly Ælfred’s own. The work of Eadward was

twofold; he enlarged the borders of his immediate kingdom, and he

brought the whole island under vassalage. His wars, and those of his

three successors, were, it should be remembered, waged mainly against

the Danes settled in Britain. These settlers were sometimes helped by

their brethren from Denmark, and more commonly by the Danes and Northmen

settled in Ireland; but, on the whole, foreign invasions do not form an

important feature in the [Sidenote: Alliance of Æthelwald with the

Danes. 901–905.] events of this half century. The war began when the

Northumbrian Danes took the part of a defeated candidate for the

West-Saxon crown,[60] who did not scruple to accept their alliance, and

to lead them to plunder and attempted conquest against his own

countrymen. But Eadward, when thus put on the defensive, did something

more than merely defend the kingdom which he had received [Sidenote:

Recovery of Mercia, &c. by Eadward and Æthelflæd. 905–922.] from his

father. With the help of his sister Æthelflæd, the famous Lady of the

Mercians, the widow of their Ealdorman Æthelred, he recovered from the

Danish yoke the whole of Mercia, East-Anglia, and Essex, and the brother

and sister secured their conquests by building [Sidenote: Annexation of

Mercia. 922.] fortresses in all directions. By the English population of

all these districts Eadward was welcomed as a deliverer, and he found no

difficulty in annexing the liberated lands to his own kingdom. After the

death of Æthelflæd, who was her brother’s close ally rather than his

subject, the separate being of Mercia came to an end. The whole Mercian

land on both sides of the Watling-Street was [Sidenote: Eadward’s

kingdom extended to the Humber.] incorporated by Eadward with his own

kingdom. He thus became, what no West-Saxon King had been before him,

immediate sovereign of all England south of the Humber. Having thus

extended his immediate dominion beyond all precedent, he was able to

extend his more general supremacy equally beyond anything possessed by

[Sidenote: All the Princes of Britain submit to him. 922–924.] his

predecessors. The princes of Wales, Northumberland, Strathclyde, and

Scotland, all submitted to him by a voluntary act; “they chose him to

father and to lord.”[61] The Welsh and Northumbrian princes only renewed

a homage which they had already paid both to Ecgberht and to Ælfred; but

the relation with Strathclyde and Scotland was new. No warfare with

either country is spoken of; the act of submission seems to have been

made by the free consent of the rulers and people of the two [Sidenote:

Probable causes of their voluntary submission.] Northern kingdoms. The

motive to such an act is doubtless to be found in a dread of Eadward’s

power, combined with a sense of the necessity of his position as the

general champion of Britain against the Danes. Scotland and Strathclyde

had suffered as much from Scandinavian invasions as England had. To

choose the West-Saxon King as their over-lord might involve some

national humiliation, but it was better to receive the champion of

Christendom as an over-lord than to be exposed without defence to the

[Sidenote: Novelty and greatness of his position.] incursions of the

heathen. Eadward thus obtained a far greater extent of dominion than had

been held by Ecgberht himself. Ecgberht’s immediate kingdom stopped at

the Thames, and his over-lordship reached only to the Forth. Eadward’s

immediate kingdom reached to the Humber, and his over-lordship extended

over the whole island. The submission of Scotland and Strathclyde to

Eadward is the most distinctive feature in Eadward’s reign. It was

something which surpassed the greatest exploits of his predecessors. The

Scots had recognized a precarious supremacy in the old Northumbrian

Kings. They had recognized a supremacy yet more precarious still in the

great Frankish Emperor. But their submission to Wessex was wholly new;

the days had long passed when they had bowed to an over-lord at York,

and they had never before bowed to an over-lord at [Sidenote: Vassalage

of Scotland. 924–1328.] Winchester. This _commendation_ of Scotland to

the West-Saxon King is an event so important for the history of the next

four hundred years, and it is an event which is often so completely

misunderstood, that I must reserve some consideration of its exact

bearing for my next Chapter. It is enough to say here that, from this

time to the fourteenth century, the vassalage of Scotland was an

essential part of the public law of the isle of Britain. No doubt many

attempts were made to cast off the dependent relation which had been

voluntarily incurred; but when a King of the English had once been

chosen “to father and to lord,” his successors never willingly gave up

the position which had thus been bestowed upon them. Whenever the King

of the English is strong enough, he always appears as the acknowledged

[Sidenote: 973.] superior of the King of Scots. Kenneth acts the part of

a faithful vassal to Eadgar. Eadward the Confessor, like his nobler

namesakes before and after, acts as superior [Sidenote: 1054.] lord and,

as such, transfers the tributary crown from an [Sidenote: 1072.] usurper

to the lawful heir. When the Norman William had subdued England, he

claimed and received the homage of Scotland as one of the undoubted

rights of the crown [Sidenote: Homage paid for Scotland proper.] which

he had won. And nothing is clearer than that this homage was paid, not

only for Cumberland or Lothian, but for the true kingdom of the Celtic

Picts and Scots. In the days of Eadward and Æthelstan, Lothian was still

English or Danish, an integral part of the kingdom of Northumberland,

and the submission of Strathclyde was the separate act of another

independent prince. The facts are undoubted; they are plain matters of

history, which ought never to be looked at through the medium of

provincial prejudice. The vassalage of Scotland to England is as certain

as the earlier vassalage of Mercia to Wessex; but, for the last hundred

and sixty years, one fact has been of as little practical importance as

the other.

§ 5. _The Imperial Sovereignty of the West-Saxon Kings of the English._

924–975.

Eadward the Elder then was the first prince who could really claim to be

King of the English and Lord of the [Sidenote: Reign of Æthelstan.

925–940.] Isle of Britain. His son Æthelstan added the finishing stroke

to the work of his father, by first making Northumberland [Sidenote:

926.] an integral portion of the realm. He thus became immediate King of

all the Teutonic races in Britain, and superior Lord of all the Celtic

principalities. [Sidenote: Renewal of homage by the vassal Kings. 926.]

In his second year, all the vassal princes, Welsh and Scottish, and the

English prince of Northumberland beyond the Tyne,[62] renewed their

homage. It is expressly mentioned that they renounced all idolatry; many

of the Danes no doubt still clave to their ancient worship. But

Æthelstan had to fight to retain the empire which his father had won.

Neither Danes, Welsh, nor Scots were very faithful vassals; but the

power of the King of the [Sidenote: 933.] English was too much for them

all. Scotland was ravaged by land and sea; Wales was constrained not

only to homage but to tribute. At last the rebellious Danes and their

kinsmen from Ireland who came to their help, together with Constantine

of Scotland and Owen of Strathclyde, who did not scruple to league

themselves with the [Sidenote: Battle of Brunanburh. 937.] heathen

barbarians, were all overthrown by Æthelstan and his brother Eadmund in

the glorious fight of Brunanburh. That fight, looked on at the time as

the hardest victory that Angles and Saxons had ever won, still lives in

the earliest and noblest of those national lays with which the

Chronicles, especially at this period,[63] relieve the direct [Sidenote:

Foreign connexions of Æthelstan.] course of their prose narrative. The

reign of this great prince is also remarkable for the brilliant position

which England now held with regard to foreign countries. Contrary to the

usual custom of English Kings, Æthelstan, himself childless,

systematically formed family connexions with the chief powers of Europe.

His numerous sisters [Sidenote: [Marriage 929. Otto King, 936. Emperor,

962.]] were married to a crowd of princes, ranging in dignity from

Sihtric, the momentary King of the Northumbrians, to Otto, who placed

his English wife on the throne of the East-Franks and who lived to be

the restorer of the Roman Empire. With some degree of exaggeration of

the real facts, the court of “glorious Æthelstan” is painted to us as

the common refuge of oppressed princes and as the school where the

scions of royalty learned the lessons which befitted kings and warriors.

But putting aside glories which are at least partly fabulous, it is

certain that the reign of Æthelstan was a time of vigorous government

and successful warfare at home, and that in his days England had an

unusual amount of connexion with foreign countries, and enjoyed an

unusual amount of consideration among them.[64] The reigns of his two

[Sidenote: Reigns of Eadmund and Eadred. 940–955.] younger brothers,

Eadmund the Magnificent and Eadred the Excellent,[65] form a

continuation of the same tale. The Northumbrian Danes were constantly

revolting, constantly setting up kings of their own, and they were as

constantly brought back to submission by the superior power of the

[Sidenote: Final submission of Northumberland. 954.] Emperor[66] of

Britain. At last, under Eadred, the rebellious land was finally subdued,

the last phantom of Northumbrian royalty vanished, and the whole land

beyond the Humber was for the future ruled by Earls of the King’s

appointment. Another success, hardly less valuable, [Sidenote: Final

recovery of the Five Boroughs. 941.] was the final recovery of the Five

Boroughs by Eadmund; a poetical entry in the Chronicles vividly paints

the delight of their English inhabitants at their [Sidenote: Period of

friendly relations with Scotland. 937–1000.] deliverance from the yoke

of their heathen masters.[67] The relations of Scotland to the Imperial

power seem, after the great defeat of Brunanburh, to have remained

friendly for many years. Several Scottish Kings in succession had the

wisdom to avoid following the suicidal policy of Constantine. Indeed the

Scottish King Malcolm received a considerable extension of territory at

the hands of Eadmund. The Kingdom of Strathclyde was conquered and

abolished, and part of it, under the name of Cumberland, [Sidenote:

Grant of Cumberland to Malcolm. 945.] was granted by Eadmund to Malcolm,

on the usual tenure of faithful service in war.[68] This principality

remained for a long time the apanage of the heirs-apparent of the

Scottish crown, much as Kent had been to Wessex in the [Sidenote: 946.]

days of Ecgberht and Æthelwulf. That the Scots renewed their oaths on

the accession of Eadred is no proof of hostile feelings on either side;

it was merely an usual and necessary precaution at the beginning of a

new reign, doubly necessary when Northumberland was in rebellion. The

work begun by Ecgberht was now finally accomplished. The King of the

West-Saxons had grown step by step into the acknowledged King of the

English and Emperor of the Isle of Albion. A time now came when it

seemed for a moment that that work was about to be undone, and that the

blow was struck in the very hearth and home of the English Empire. For a

moment Wessex and Mercia were again divided. The events of the next

reign are recorded with a singular amount of contradiction,[69] and the

voice to which we should have listened with undoubting [Sidenote:

Succession of Eadwig in Wessex and Eadgar in Mercia. 955.] confidence is

all but silent.[70] But as far as can be made out, the two young sons of

Eadmund succeeded their uncle Eadred, the elder, Eadwig, reigning in

Wessex as superior lord, while the younger, Eadgar, reigned as

Under-king north of the Thames. From the stirring tale of an Empire

saved, consolidated, and defended by the unwearied efforts of six wise

and valiant monarchs, we turn to find ourselves involved in the thick of

an ecclesiastical controversy. [Sidenote: Dunstan. 925–988.] Dunstan, a

name known to too many readers only as the subject of one of the

silliest of monastic legends, stands forth as the leading man in Church

and State. As the minister of Eadred and of Eadgar, as the Jehoiada or

[Sidenote: Character of his policy.] Seneca who watched over the still

harmless childhood of the second Æthelred, Dunstan is entitled to

lasting and honourable renown. The ecclesiastical changes which are

commonly connected with his name, but which perhaps rather belong to

contemporary prelates like Oda of Canterbury and Æthelwald of

Winchester, are of a more doubtful character. To bring back the monks to

the observance of their rule, to raise the character of the secular

clergy, often no doubt ignorant and worthless enough, were thoroughly

praiseworthy undertakings. But the complete prohibition of clerical

marriage, the substitution of regulars for seculars in many of the

cathedral and other chief churches of England, were certainly the works

of a zeal which had far outrun discretion. And these measures had also

the effect of dividing the nation into two parties, and of producing an

amount of mutual hostility which might well have led to even greater

evils than it did lead to. The whole of the short reign of Eadwig is

shrouded in mystery; but it is clear that he was the enemy of Dunstan,

perhaps to some extent the enemy of the monks generally, and it is

certain that he was the vigorous opponent of the policy which strove

everywhere to substitute monks for secular [Sidenote: 956.] canons. The

banishment of Dunstan, combined with an uncanonical marriage, seems to

have roused popular feeling against a prince on whose real merits we are

hardly in a [Sidenote: Eadgar chosen King of the Mercians. 957.]

position to pronounce a judgement. The Mercians chose their Under-king

Eadgar King in his own right, and in his separate dominions Dunstan was

recalled and his policy vigorously carried out. The death of Eadwig soon

followed, [Sidenote: Eadgar succeeds to the whole kingdom. 958–975.] and

the Kingdom of England and the Empire of all Britain were again united

under the sceptre of Eadgar the Peaceful. His reign of seventeen years

is a period of almost unbroken peace; we hear, almost unavoidably, of

wars with the Welsh, of moment enough to be recorded by Welsh

chroniclers, but which the English writers pass by.[71] Of Danish

invasions we hear nothing for certain; but Westmoreland, a part of the

Cumbrian fief of the Scottish [Sidenote: 966.] King, was once ravaged,

seemingly by Eadgar’s orders,[72] [Sidenote: 958] and we hear also more

distinctly of a portion of Eadgar’s own kingdom, the Isle of Thanet,

being treated in the like way at his bidding. These last facts point to

some local [Sidenote: His peaceful and vigorous government.] revolts or

disturbances.[73] With these exceptions, weapons of war seem to have

hung useless throughout the English dominions for a time which, short as

it seems to us, was in those days a wonderfully long interval of repose.

But if Eadgar’s sword hung useless, it at least did not rust. Eadgar,

like Ælfred, knew how to guard his Empire, and a fleet which yearly

sailed round the whole island, and which often carried the King in

person, was a sufficient [Sidenote: His effective supremacy over all

Britain.] safeguard of Britain against foreign foes. And no West-Saxon

Basileus ever made his supremacy so fully felt by all the races of the

island as the one West-Saxon Basileus who never drew his sword against a

Scottish or Northumbrian enemy. After a single inroad early in his

reign,[74] Kenneth of Scotland remained on good terms with his

over-lord, and, according to some statements, Eadgar even increased his

dominions by a most important grant of territory.[75] To the Danes of

Northumberland he was anxious to show that he had no mind to deal with

them as with a conquered people, and that he remembered their services

in helping to raise him to the crown.[76] In his legislation he takes

care to assert their perfect equality with the English and their right

to be governed only by laws of their own choosing.[77] He delighted in

pomp and splendour, and there seems no reason to doubt the historic

truth of the tale of that famous pageant in which [Sidenote: 973.] the

Emperor of Britain was rowed on the Dee by eight vassal kings.[78] But

if the tale were only a symbolical expression, it would still be a most

true and speaking symbol of the days of the greatest glory and

prosperity of [Sidenote: He encourages intercourse with foreign

countries.] the West-Saxon Empire. Under Eadgar too England held a high

place in the estimation of foreign lands, and intercourse with them,

commercial and otherwise, was carefully promoted by his enlightened

policy.[79] In ecclesiastical matters the party of the regulars was

steadily favoured. This fact may perhaps have won for Eadgar more than

his due share of praise at the hands of monastic writers. But

exaggeration itself cannot obscure the real glory of such a reign as

his.[80]

[Sidenote: Reign of Eadward the Martyr. 975–979.]

But with Eadgar the glory of England sank. The reign of his elder son

Eadward was short and troubled, and the young prince himself died by

violence, most probably through the intrigues of an ambitious

step-mother. [Sidenote: Reign of Æthelred the Unready. 979–1016.] He was

succeeded by his brother Æthelred, a child, and one who would have been

happy if he had always remained a child. In his time the Danish

invasions began again, in a new form and with a more terrible effect

than ever. In his time too begins that direct and intimate connexion

between English and Norman history which shows that we are now

approaching the days of the Norman Conquest, and that we have reached

the first links in the chain of its direct causes. The reign of Æthelred

will therefore claim a somewhat fuller treatment than that of a

preliminary sketch.

[Sidenote: Recapitulation.]

We have thus traced out the steps by which the West-Saxon Kings, from

Ecgberht onwards, founded that Kingdom of England which one conquest was

to hand over to the King of the Danes and another conquest to the Duke

of the Normans, but which was never again to be permanently divided, and

which each conquest only served to unite more firmly. We have seen also

how, along with the consolidation of their Teutonic kingdom, the same

West-Saxon princes obtained a more extended and more precarious Empire

over their Celtic neighbours. The later fate of the various Celtic

portions of Britain has been widely different. In Cumberland no sign is

left, and in Cornwall not many, that the dominion of the English King

was once that of an external over-lord and not that [Sidenote: Union of

Wales; [1293. 1536. 1830.]] of an immediate sovereign. On Wales the

English dominion was pressed closer and closer, till all political and

civil distinctions between Wales and England were wiped out, though the

ancient language, and with it a distinct [Sidenote: of Scotland; [1328.

1707.]] and strong provincial feeling, still remains. Scotland, after

various fluctuations, at last won complete independence of the English

over-lord, and was finally united with England on equal terms as an

independent kingdom. [Sidenote: Man still distinct.] Strange to say, the

little realm of Man is the only part of the Empire of Eadgar which is

not now thoroughly fused into the general mass of the United

Kingdom.[81] But different as has been the later fate of the various

portions of the dominions of Eadgar, his Teutonic Kingdom and his Celtic

Empire both passed nearly untouched into the hands of the Norman

Conqueror. In another preliminary Chapter I shall attempt a general

picture of the condition and constitution of the Kingdom and Empire

which were thus transferred. I shall then give some account of the

history of Normandy up to the point which I have now reached in the

history of England. I shall then be ready to go on with the more

detailed history of the Norman Conquest itself and of the causes which

immediately led to it, beginning with the reign of Æthelred the Second.