First of all, whatever was the crime either of Godwine or of Harold, we

must remember that, in any case, it was not the kind of crime which the

exaggerated language of some of our narratives would lead us to think.

Godwine might be a traitor in the sense of one who betrays any

fellow-creature to his ruin; on the worst showing, he was not a traitor

in the sense of one who betrays or rebels against his lawful sovereign.

Ælfred was not, as the legends of his martyrdom might seem to imply, a

lawful King driven from his throne. Harold was not an usurper, keeping

the lawful heir out of his lawful possession. Godwine was not a rebel,

conspiring to betray a prince to whom his allegiance was lawfully due.

According to any version of the story, Ælfred appeared in England as the

enemy of a settled government, established by a regular vote of the

legislature. As such it was the part and duty of the King, of the Earl,

and of the whole people, to resist him. He was a pretender to the crown

entering the kingdom at the head of a foreign force, whether great or

small. There has never been any time or place in which such a pretender

would not have been at once arrested; there have been few times and

places in which such a pretender would not have been speedily put to

death. Against the arrest of Ælfred not a word can be said in any age;

his execution was perhaps more deeply offensive to the public feeling of

the eleventh century, a time when the shedding of blood by the sentence

of law was singularly rare,[1094] than it would have been to the public

feeling of the fifteenth or the sixteenth century. The real question is

whether either the arrest or the execution was accompanied with any

circumstances of [Sidenote: Ælfred’s position analogous to that of the

Stewart Pretenders.] treachery or needless cruelty. The sons of Æthelred

were very much in the position of the elder and younger Pretenders in

the reigns of George the First and Second. In both cases the power which

had a right to dispose of the crown had disposed of it, and had not

disposed of it in their favour. Now no man could have blamed any

officer, civil or military, in the service of King George, for arresting

either James or Charles Edward Stewart. In so doing he would simply have

been doing his duty to his King and country. If either Pretender had

been arrested, his execution would doubtless have been a very harsh

measure; but it would have been a perfectly legal measure; he was

attainted, and he might have been as regularly executed as Monmouth was.

Nay, the letter of the law, as the law stood till the reign of George

the Third, as it was actually enforced as late as the reign of Charles

the Second, would have condemned the pretended Prince of Wales to

indignities and torments quite as cruel as any that Harold Harefoot

inflicted on the Ætheling and his companions.[1095] To have put James or

Charles Stewart to death in the horrible form which the law decreed for

the traitor would doubtless have called forth as fierce a storm of

righteous indignation as was called forth by the death of the Ætheling

Ælfred. Still the act would have been legal; it might have inflicted

undying shame on the King and his counsellors who ordered it, but it

would have been no ground of blame whatever against the gaoler, the

sheriff, or the executioner. So it was with the case of Ælfred.

According to one account, first Eadward and then Ælfred entered the land

at the head of a foreign army; they tried, in short, to repeat the

exploit of Cnut, to forestall the exploit of William. In banished men,

eager for a restoration to their country on any terms, such conduct may

admit of many excuses. Still, on the face of it, they put themselves in

the position of open enemies of their country. If Eadward really landed

at the head of a Norman army, if he really fought a battle against an

English force at Southampton, those who withstood him were as plainly

doing their simple duty as the men who fought at Maldon or on Senlac.

Even if we reject this version, if we believe that Ælfred entered the

country, not with an army but with a mere escort of strangers, still he

was coming, seemingly without any invitation from any party in the

country, to disturb a settlement which the legislature of the kingdom

had established, and which he was not likely to upset except by force of

arms. Men who run such desperate risks must take the consequences.

[Sidenote: The real question as to Godwine; Was he guilty of treachery

or needless cruelty?] If Godwine, as a military commander, fought

against Eadward, if, as a civil magistrate, he arrested Ælfred, he

simply did his duty and nothing else. The only question would be, as I

before put it, Was there any treachery or needless cruelty in the

matter? Now cruelty is perhaps of all charges that which most needs to

be looked at with reference to the habits and feelings of the age. What

one age looks on as mildness another age looks on as barbarity. But it

is clear that the cruelties which were wrought by Harold on his captives

deeply revolted the public opinion of the time in which he lived. As for

deliberate treachery, that is a crime in all ages alike. If then we set

aside accusations which rest on mere misconception of the case, the

question remains whether the evidence is enough to convict Godwine

either of personal treachery towards the Ætheling or of any share in the

savage cruelties of Harold.

[Sidenote: Inconsistency of the ordinary story with the fact of the

division of the Kingdom.]

Now in reading any version of the story one great difficulty at once

presents itself. Godwine is always described as acting a part which, in

his real position at the time, he cannot have acted. Not one of the

versions of the tale takes any notice of the division of the kingdom.

They all seem to look on Harold as sole King and to look on Godwine as

his minister, or at least as his subject. Yet we know that, at this

time, Godwine was neither Harold’s minister nor Harold’s subject.

Harthacnut was still the acknowledged King, at all events King-elect, of

the West-Saxons; Emma was still sitting at Winchester as regent in his

name; Godwine, who had secured for them this remnant of dominion, was

the chief minister and general of the Lady and her son. If Godwine acted

in any way in the interest of Harold, it could only have been because

Harold was, as I suggested above, the superior lord of his own

sovereign—because the invasion, or attempt of whatever kind, made by the

Æthelings threatened not only the rights of the King of the West-Saxons,

but also the rights of the Emperor of Britain. This is certainly

possible, but it is rather straining a point; nothing of the sort is at

all implied in the language of any of the writers who tell the tale.

They all, even the best informed, seem to know nothing of the kingship

of Harthacnut and the regency of Emma. This seeming ignorance of

writers, some of them contemporary, on such a point shows in the most

remarkable way how soon and how completely the first ephemeral reign of

Harthacnut was forgotten. But their forgetfulness certainly goes a good

way to lessen the trustworthiness of their own tale. In fact the story

as it stands cannot be made to agree with the known facts of the

history. Godwine cannot have played the part attributed to him by his

enemies while the arrangement decreed by the Witenagemót of Oxford was

still in force. But the historical character of that arrangement is

undoubted. That the kingdom really was divided, that Godwine really was

at this time not the minister of Harold but the minister of Harthacnut,

are facts which cannot be gain-sayed. The details of the story of Ælfred

cannot have happened in the manner and at the time in which they are

said to have happened. It was perhaps a feeling of this inconsistency

which led several later writers to shift the story to a later time, to

the time immediately following the death, not of Cnut, but of either

Harold or Harthacnut. But the part played by Harold is the most

essential part of the story; the tale cannot be fitted in to a later

time except by a complete change of its circumstances. [Sidenote: The

direct evidence against Godwine fails.] Altogether I think it must be

allowed that the direct evidence brought to implicate Godwine in any

guilty share in the business altogether breaks down.

[Sidenote: Early suspicions against Godwine.]

On the other hand, we have to explain the fact that Godwine was

suspected, that the suspicion arose early and prevailed extensively, and

that it was not confined to Godwine’s foreign enemies and slanderers.

Godwine indeed was not the only person who was suspected. One tale or

legend accused Emma herself; another laid the guilt to the charge of

Lyfing, Bishop of Devonshire, a prelate who often appears as a powerful

supporter of Godwine’s policy; in another version, if Godwine was the

instigator, the English people in general seem to have been his

accomplices.[1096] Still Godwine was specially suspected, and suspected

while the memory of the event was still fresh. His own special apologist

and panegyrist seems to imply that the charge against him was a mere

invention of the Norman Archbishop Robert.[1097] This however was not

the case; Godwine was formally accused and formally acquitted [Sidenote:

[1040.]] of the crime soon after the accession of Harthacnut, four years

after the event. He was acquitted, as we shall presently see,[1098] by

the solemn judgement of the highest court in the realm, and he is fully

entitled to the benefit of that acquittal. Still the mere fact of his

accusation has to be explained. The charge, brought at such a time and

in such a shape, could not have been a mere Norman slander. Godwine’s

accuser, in fact, was an Englishman of the highest rank. Nor would a

mere Norman slander ever have been embodied in popular songs, or have

found [Sidenote: Some ground for the suspicion must be supposed.] a

place in any version of the English Chronicles. Such a suspicion—strong,

early, native—proves something. Godwine, guilty or innocent, must have

done some act which, to say the least, was capable of an unlucky

misconstruction. By putting together one or two hints in the different

accounts, we may perhaps come to a probable conjecture as to what his

share in the matter really was. There is one version, and only one,

which, while consistent with Godwine’s innocence, explains the early and

prevalent suspicion as to his guilt. Let us look how things stood.

[Sidenote: Probable state of the case.] It seems that the feeling which

broke out openly in the next year was already beginning to show itself;

men were beginning, even in Wessex, to be weary of the absent

Harthacnut. Well they might; to wait so long for an absent King, who,

still uncrowned, unsworn, unanointed, could not be looked on as full

King, was something of which no man had seen the like. It was not

wonderful if popular feeling was, as we are told, veering round, whether

wrongfully or not, in favour of Harold.[1099] At such a moment, a son of

Æthelred, either knowing the state of the kingdom or eager to try his

chance in any case, lands in England. We of course dismiss the story

which speaks of actual invasion and warfare, which is probably a mere

repetition of the attempted invasion by Duke Robert. [Sidenote: Godwine

probably met Ælfred.] But the Ætheling was in England; if Godwine really

wished to preserve the settlement which gave Wessex to a son of Emma, it

might well occur to him to ask whether the game could not be better

played with the present son of Æthelred than with the absent son of

Cnut. He may have sought an interview with the Ætheling; he may even

have pledged himself to his cause. But if a son of Æthelred was at large

in England, the throne of Harold would be endangered as well as the

throne of Harthacnut. Harold and his emissaries would be on the alert.

The prince who had, perhaps before his election, seized on Emma’s

treasures at Winchester, would not, in such a case, be very scrupulous

about respecting the frontiers of his brother’s kingdom. Perhaps, if he

were superior lord, he might have a real right to interfere in a matter

which [Sidenote: Ælfred probably seized by Harold without Godwine’s

connivance.] clearly touched the interests of the whole Empire. At any

rate, if the Ætheling and his companions were known to be lodged in a

West-Saxon town not very far from the borders of the Northern kingdom,

it is perfectly conceivable that they might be seized by the agents of

Harold, against the will or without the knowledge of Godwine. When the

Ætheling was once seized and carried off, Godwine might well think that

the game was up, that the star of Harold was fairly in the ascendant,

and that neither interest nor duty called on him to plunge Wessex into a

war with Northumberland and Mercia either to deliver Ælfred or to

revenge his wrongs. Such conduct would not be that of a sentimental and

impulsive hero; it would be that of a wary and hard-headed statesman.

Such conduct would involve no real treachery; but it might easily give

rise to the suspicion of treachery. If Godwine received the Ætheling, if

Harold’s agents afterwards seized him, it would be an easy inference

that Godwine betrayed him to Harold. As soon as the tale had once got

afloat, mythical details would, as ever, gather round it. When Godwine

was once believed to have betrayed Ælfred, it would be an obvious

improvement on the story to make him a personal agent in the barbarities

to which his supposed treason had given occasion. It is clear that the

ordinary narrative, as it stands, cannot be received; but in some such

explanation as this we may discern the probable kernel of truth on which

the fabulous details gradually fastened themselves.[1100]

[Sidenote: Probable innocence of Godwine.]

On the whole then I incline to the belief that the great Earl, every

other recorded deed of whose life is the deed of an English patriot, who

on every other occasion appears as conciliatory and law-abiding, who is

always as strongly opposed to everything like wrong or violence as the

rude age in which he lived would let him be, did not, on this one

occasion, act in a manner so contrary to his whole character as to

resort to fraud or needless violence to compass the destruction of a man

of English birth and kingly descent. The innocence of Godwine seems to

me to be most likely in itself, most consistent with the circumstances

of the time, and not inconsistent with such parts of our evidence as

seem most trustworthy. But in any case, even if, while casting aside

palpable fables and contradictions, we take the evidence, so far as it

is credible, at the worst, even then it seems to me that the great Earl

is at least entitled to a verdict of Not Proven, if not of Not Guilty.

[Sidenote: Disappointment of the hopes]

The next year after the unlucky attempt of Ælfred[1101] was marked by

the breaking down of the short-lived arrangement [Sidenote: of the

West-Saxons.] which had been made between the two sons of Cnut. The

West-Saxons had seemingly supported Harthacnut as the representative of

that policy of his father which had raised Wessex, not only to the

headship of England and of all Britain, but to the practical headship of

all Northern Europe. No hope on the part of any people was ever more

grievously disappointed. No contrast could be greater than the contrast

between Wessex in the days of Cnut and [Sidenote: Degrading position of

Wessex.] Wessex in these two years of Harthacnut. Wessex was no longer

the chosen dominion, Winchester was no longer the chosen capital, of an

Emperor of the North, whose name was dreaded on the Baltic and

reverenced on the Tiber. The old Imperial kingdom had sunk to be, what

it had never been before, a dependent province ruled by representatives

of an absent sovereign. A King of the Danes, who did not think England

worthy of his presence, held the West-Saxon kingdom, seemingly as a

vassal of the King of the Mercians and Northumbrians, and entrusted it

to the government of his Norman mother. It would doubtless be no excuse

in English eyes that Denmark was now threatened by Magnus of

Norway,[1102] and that Harthacnut’s first duty was to provide for its

defence. To the West-Saxon people it would simply seem that they had

chosen a King whom no entreaties on the part of his English subjects

could persuade to come and take personal possession of his English

kingdom. Being absent, he must have remained uncrowned, and his lack of

the consecrating rite would alone, in the ideas of those times, be

enough to make his government altogether uncertain and provisional. Even

the influence of Godwine could not prolong—most likely it was not

exerted to prolong—a state of things so essentially offensive to all

patriotic feeling. It was felt that to accept the rule of Harold would

be a far less evil than to keep a nominal independence which was

practically a degrading bondage. Popular feeling therefore set strongly

in favour of union with Mercia and Northumberland, even under the

doubtful son of Ælfgifu of [Sidenote: Harthacnut deposed in Wessex, and

Harold chosen King over all England. 1037.] Northampton. “Man chose

Harold over all to King, and forsook Harthacnut, for that he was too

long in Denmark.”[1103] That is, I conceive, the Witan of Wessex, in

discharge of their undoubted constitutional right,[1104] deposed their

King Harthacnut, and elected the King of the Mercians and Northumbrians

as their immediate sovereign, the election being, as it would seem,

confirmed by a vote of the Witan of all England. Harold was thus called

by the universal voice of the nation to be King over the whole realm.

The southern kingdom, just as at the final election of his father,[1105]

was again joined to the northern. England again became one kingdom under

one King, an union which since that day has never been broken.

The reign of the new King of the English was short and troubled. His

first act was the banishment of the Lady [Sidenote: Banishment of Emma.

1037.] Emma, who was sent out of the land at the beginning of

winter.[1106] She did not return to Normandy, as that country was now in

all the confusion attendant on the minority of its new sovereign, the

future Conqueror. She betook herself to the court of Baldwin of

Flanders, which we shall henceforth find serving as the general place of

refuge for English exiles. She was received with all honour by Baldwin

and his Countess Adela.[1107] Two of the near kinswomen of Baldwin will

play a prominent part in our future history; one of them indeed, his

daughter Matilda, the wife of the great William, was destined, within

thirty years, to fill the place from which Emma herself had been driven.

[Sidenote: Character of Harold.]

Of the administration of Harold himself we hear hardly anything. The

tale which affirms that he reigned without the usual consecrating rite

charges him also with entire neglect of Christian worship, and of

choosing the hour of mass for his hunting or other amusements.[1108]

Other accounts however imply that he was not wanting in the conventional

piety of the age.[1109] He at least, like other Kings, kept chaplains in

his personal service, so that he can hardly have been the avowed heathen

or infidel which he appears in the hostile picture. Ecclesiastical

affairs however do not seem to have been in a flourishing [Sidenote:

Ecclesiastical appointments.] state under his government. We read, as to

be sure we read in the reigns of Kings of greater claims to sanctity, of

bishoprics being held in plurality and [Sidenote: Death of Archbishop

Æthelnoth. 1038.] being sold for money. Good Archbishop Æthelnoth died

[Sidenote: Eadsige succeeds.] in the second year of Harold’s sole reign,

and was succeeded by Eadsige, who appears at once in the threefold

character of a royal chaplain, a monk, and a suffragan Bishop in

Kent.[1110] We also find another royal chaplain, [Sidenote: Promotion of

Stigand and Lyfing.] Stigand, the priest of Assandun, appointed to a

bishopric, deposed, seemingly before consecration, because another

competitor was ready with a larger sum, and finally reinstated, whether

by dint of the same prevailing arguments we are not told.[1111] Lyfing,

Bishop of Devonshire, also received the see of Worcester in

plurality.[1112] These appointments are worthy of notice, as throwing

some light on the otherwise utterly obscure politics of this reign.

Stigand, the old chaplain of Cnut, was the firm friend and [Sidenote:

Reconciliation between Harold and the party of Godwine.] counsellor of

his widow.[1113] Lyfing was the right hand man of Earl Godwine. That

these men shared in the promotions of which Harold had an unusual number

to distribute, that Lyfing especially became the King’s personal

friend,[1114] seems to show that a perfect reconciliation was now

brought about between Harold and the party which had opposed his

original election. We may infer that Emma was sacrificed to the King’s

personal dislike, a dislike which, it seems to be implied, was shared by

the mass of the people.[1115] But there seems to have been no

disposition on Harold’s part to bear hard in any other way on his former

antagonists. A certain amount either of generosity or of policy must

have found a place in his character.

It is probably a sign of degeneracy and weakness on the part of Harold’s

government that the vassal kingdoms no longer remained in the same state

of submission to which they had been brought during at least the later

days of Cnut. North Wales was now gathering strength [Sidenote: Inroad

of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn; battle of Rhyd-y-Groes and death of Eadwine.

1039.] under the famous Gruffydd son of Llywelyn. His first exploit was

an inroad in which he reached as far as the Severn, and fought a battle

at Rhyd-y-Groes, near Upton-on-Severn, a place which, perhaps owing to

this event, still retains its British name. In that fight several

eminent Englishmen were killed, and among them Eadwine, a brother of

Earl Leofric.[1116] In the next year, the last year of [Sidenote:

Duncan’s siege of Durham and his defeat. 1040.] the reign of

Harold,[1117] Duncan, King of Scots, on what occasion we are not told,

repeated the exploit of his grandfather, and with much the same

success.[1118] He crossed the frontier and besieged Durham. The strength

and prosperity of the city, though probably thrown back by the defeat of

Carham,[1119] had vastly increased since its first [Sidenote: Bishop

Eadmund of Durham. 1020–1042.] creation by Ealdhun. Ealdhun’s successor

Eadmund, called to the see, as the story went, by a miraculous

voice,[1120] had finished the work of his predecessor. The minster of

Durham had been brought to perfection,[1121] and the city of Durham had

gained strength and population enough to withstand an attack by its own

efforts. In the invasion of Malcolm the infant settlement had been

delivered by the intervention of Earl Uhtred; the invasion of Duncan was

driven back by the valour of the citizens themselves. The Scots were put

to flight; of the chief men of the army the greater part were killed in

the battle; the remainder owed their escape to their horses. The

soldiers of meaner degree, who had suffered less in the actual combat,

were slaughtered without mercy in the pursuit.[1122] Northumbriam

barbarism showed itself now as on the former occasion. The bloody

trophies of victory were collected in the market-place of Durham, and a

garland of Scottish heads again adorned the battlements of the rescued

city.[1123]

[Sidenote: Harthacnut prepares to assert his claims. 1039.]

The reign and life of Harold were now drawing to an end. Harthacnut was

not at all disposed to acquiesce in the arrangements which had wholly

shut him out from England. His Northern possessions were now safe. A

treaty had been concluded with Magnus, according to which, as in some

other instances of which we have heard, each King, in case of the other

dying childless, was to succeed to his kingdom.[1124] Harthacnut

therefore was now able to turn his thoughts in the direction of England,

and a message from his mother in Flanders is said to have further worked

upon his mind.[1125] He began to make great preparations for an invasion

of England,[1126] but for the present he merely sailed to Flanders with

ten ships,[1127] and there passed the winter with his mother. The time

however was not spent in idleness. His preparations were busily carried

on, and in the course of the next year he found himself at the head of a

considerable fleet.[1128] No invasion however was needed, as an event

which was probably not unexpected[1129] opened the way for his accession

[Sidenote: Death of Harold. March 17, 1040.] without difficulty or

bloodshed. King Harold, who had been for some time lying sick at Oxford,

died in that town in the month of March.[1130] He was buried at

Westminster, a spot which is now mentioned in our Chronicles for the

first time.[1131] Its mention however seems to show that the smaller

monastery which preceded the great foundation of Eadward enjoyed a

greater amount of reputation than we might otherwise have been led to

think. Harold, who could not have been above two or three and twenty

years old, left no recorded posterity. We hear nothing of wives,

mistresses, or children of any kind.

§ 4. _The Reign of Harthacnut._ 1040–2.

[Sidenote: Harthacnut unanimously chosen]

Immediately on the burial of Harold, probably at the Easter festival,

the Witan of all England, English and Danish, unanimously chose

Harthacnut to the kingdom.[1132] [Sidenote: King. Easter? 1040.] The

only undoubted, and now the only surviving, son of Cnut united all

claims. No attempt seems to have been made on behalf of Eadward the

surviving son of Æthelred, and the events of the last reign were not

likely to have prejudiced men in his favour. The universal belief of the

moment was that the choice of Harthacnut was the right and wise

course.[1133] An embassy, of which Ælfweard, Bishop of London and Abbot

of Evesham, was a leading member,[1134] was sent to Bruges, to invite

the newly-chosen [Sidenote: Harthacnut lands. June 17.] King to take

possession of his crown. He and his mother accordingly set sail for

England in the course of June; he landed at Sandwich, and was presently

crowned at Canterbury by Archbishop Eadsige.[1135]

[Sidenote: His character.]

The expectations which had been formed of Harthacnut were grievously

disappointed. One worthless youth had made way for another equally

worthless. Writers in the Norman interest, and members of foundations to

which he was lavish, try to clothe him with various virtues.[1136] But

the utmost that can be claimed for him is an easy species of munificence

which showed itself on the one hand in bounty to monasteries and to the

poor,[1137] and on the other in providing four meals daily for his

courtiers.[1138] But all his recorded public acts set him before us as a

rapacious, brutal, and bloodthirsty tyrant. His short reign is merely a

repetition of the first and worst days of his father, while he could

not, like his father, invoke even the tyrant’s plea of necessity in

palliation of his evil deeds. Harthacnut had been unanimously chosen

King; he had been received with universal joy; there was no sedition

within the country, and no foreign enemy threatened it. But his conduct

was that of a conqueror in a hostile land. His first act was to wring a

heavy contribution from his new subjects for an object which in no way

concerned them. We now learn incidentally that the standing navy of

England, both under Cnut and under Harold, had consisted of sixteen

ships, and eight marks were paid, seemingly yearly, either to each rower

singly or to some group of rowers.[1139] [Sidenote: Harthacnut’s first

Danegeld.] Harthacnut had come over with sixty ships, manned by Danish

soldiers, and his first act was to demand eight marks for each man of

their crews, a piece of extortion which at once destroyed his newly

gained popularity.[1140] He then began to revenge himself on his enemies

alive [Sidenote: Harold’s body disinterred.] and dead. His first act in

this way was an act of senseless brutality towards the dead body of his

half-brother the late King. The dead Harold, the Chronicles tell us, was

dragged up and shot into a fen. Other writers tell the story with more

detail.[1141] Some of the officers of his household, Stir his Mayor of

the Palace,[1142] Eadric his dispenser, Thrond his executioner, all, we

are told, men of great dignity, were sent to Westminster to dig up the

body, and in their company we are surprised to find Earl Godwine and

Ælfric Archbishop of York. Westminster was neither in Godwine’s earldom

nor in Ælfric’s diocese, so that both these chiefs of Church and State

seem out of place on such an occasion. We are however told that Ælfric

was something more than an instrument in the matter; it was specially at

his advice that Harthacnut was guilty of this cowardly piece of spite,

one which, like the brutalities of Harold himself towards the comrades

of Ælfred, did not [Sidenote: and buried again.] go without imitators in

more polished times. The body of Harold was treated on the restoration

of Harthacnut much as the body of Oliver Cromwell was treated on the

restoration of Charles the Second. The late King was dug up, beheaded,

and thrown, according to this account, into the Thames. The body was

afterwards brought up by a fisherman, and received a second burial. The

large Danish population of London had a burial-place of their own

without the walls of the city, the memory of which is still retained in

the name of the church of Saint Clement Danes. There Harold’s body was

again buried, secretly, we may suppose, though the act is spoken of as a

tribute of honour paid by the Danes of London to the King whose

accession to the throne had been so largely their own doing.

No act could have been more offensive to the Danes settled in England

than these insults offered to the body [Sidenote: Harthacnut’s second

Danegeld. 1040–1.] of their own chosen prince. Harthacnut’s next act was

to enrage all his subjects, English and Danish, by laying on them

another enormous Danegeld of about twenty-two thousand pounds, with

another sum of more than eleven thousand pounds for thirty-two ships,

probably a fresh contingent which had just come from Denmark.[1143] He

was now, before he had been a year on the throne, thoroughly [Sidenote:

Godwine and Lyfing accused of the death of Ælfred. 1040.] hated.[1144]

As if on purpose to increase his unpopularity, he next attacked the two

leaders of the national party, Earl Godwine and Bishop Lyfing.

Archbishop Ælfric, who appears almost in the character of a spiritual

Eadric, is said to have accused them to the King of being concerned in

the death of his brother Ælfred. Some other persons unnamed joined with

him in bringing the charge.[1145] Of the two defendants the Bishop was

the easier victim. Lyfing lost his bishopric of Worcester, which was

given to his accuser to hold in plurality,[1146] as it was held by

several Archbishops of York before and after. Lyfing however recovered

Worcester in the course of the next year, as the [Sidenote: Trial and

acquittal of Godwine.] price, we are told, of money paid to the

King.[1147] Whether the deposition of Lyfing was effected with any legal

forms we are not told; but the Earl of the West-Saxons certainly

underwent a regular trial before the Witan. The proceedings form a

curious illustration of the jurisprudence of the age. The functions of

witness, judge, and juror were not yet accurately distinguished, and

compurgation,[1148] whenever compurgation could be had, was looked on as

the surest proof of innocence. Godwine asserted his own innocence on

oath, and his solemn plea of Not Guilty was confirmed by the oaths of

most of the Earls and chief thegns[1149] of England. We must not judge

of the value of such an acquittal by the ideas of our own time. In a

modern trial, some of Godwine’s compurgators would have had to act as

his judges; some would have been examined as witnesses to the facts;

others might, at least in the case of a less illustrious defendant, have

appeared as witnesses to character. In the rude state of the law in

those times, these distinctions were not thought of. But it does not

follow that substantial justice was not done. Godwine’s acquittal was as

solemn as any acquittal could be. All the chief men of England swore to

their belief in his innocence. The only difference between such an

acquittal and a modern acquittal on a trial before the House of Lords is

that, in the ancient mode of procedure, the voices of those who of their

own knowledge affirmed Godwine to be innocent, and the voices of those

who accepted his innocence [Sidenote: Value of the acquittal.] on their

witness, were all reckoned together. Godwine then was acquitted, after

the most solemn trial which the jurisprudence of his own time could

provide. He is in fairness entitled to the full benefit of that

acquittal. The judgement of a competent tribunal is always worth

something, though its worth may be overbalanced by facts or

probabilities the other way. There are those who hold, in defiance of

all fact and all reason, that Sir Thomas More and Anne Boleyn must have

been guilty, because English courts of justice pronounced them to be

guilty. I am surely asking much less if I ask that Godwine may be held

to be innocent, because an English court of justice, whose verdict is

outweighed by no facts or probabilities the other way, solemnly

pronounced him to be innocent.[1150]

[Sidenote: Godwine purchases the favour of Harthacnut by a magnificent

ship.]

One circumstance which in our days would at once throw suspicion upon

the verdict proves nothing at all according to the ideas of those days.

Ages after the time of Harthacnut, in times which by comparison seem as

yesterday, English judges did not scruple to receive presents from their

suitors, and English sovereigns did not scruple to receive presents from

their subjects. It is always possible that such presents may be bribes

in a guilty sense; it is always equally possible that they may not. It

therefore proves nothing either way when we read that the Earl of the

West-Saxons, solemnly acquitted by his peers, had still to buy his full

restoration to the friendship of his highest judge at the cost of a

magnificent gift. We have already seen how dear a possession a ship was

in Danish eyes;[1151] we have seen how acceptable a gift it might be in

English eyes.[1152] We have seen too what an astonishing amount of

adornment the warriors of the North lavished upon these cherished

instruments, almost companions, of their warfare.[1153] Though we hear

nothing of any warlike exploits of Harthacnut,[1154] he had enough of

the wiking in him for a well-equipped ship to be the most acceptable of

all gifts.[1155] Godwine therefore gave Harthacnut a ship with a beak of

gold, manned with eighty chosen warriors armed with all the magnificence

of the full panoply of [Sidenote: Arms of the soldiers.] the time. Each

man had on each arm a golden bracelet of sixteen ounces weight; each was

clad in a triple coat of mail; each bore on his head a helmet partly

gilded; each was armed with all the weapons which could be needed in

warfare of any kind.[1156] Each bore on his left arm a shield with

gilded boss and studs; his right hand bore the javelin, the English

_ategar_, for the distant skirmishing at the beginning of a battle. But

each too was ready for the closest and most deadly fight. Each was

girded with a sword with a gilded handle, and from each man’s left

shoulder hung, also adorned with [Sidenote: The Danish axe.] gold and

silver, the most fearful weapon of all, the Danish battle-axe.[1157]

This is our first mention[1158] of the weapon [Sidenote: 1066.] which

Englishmen were, twenty-six years later, to wield with such deadly

prowess upon the height of Senlac, and [Sidenote: 1203–4.] which, after

the lapse of a hundred and forty years, the descendants of English

exiles were still found wielding in defence of the throne of Constantine

and Justinian.[1159]

[Sidenote: The Danegeld levied by the housecarls. 1041.]

Meanwhile all England was astir at the imposition of the Danegeld. Men

had deemed that such imposts had passed away for ever in that

Witenagemót of Oxford where Cnut the Danish conqueror changed into Cnut

the English King. No enemy was in the land; Denmark, the old foe, was a

sister kingdom; Normandy, the new foe, was hindered by her domestic

troubles from threatening any of her neighbours; the overthrow of Duncan

before Durham had taught Scotland to respect the frontiers of the

Imperial state.[1160] But here was a tax such as had been heard of only

in the darkest and saddest hours of the reign of Æthelred. Taxes of this

kind always came in slowly,[1161] and this particular tax came in with

special slowness. Military force was needed to extort payment; the

housecarls, who do not seem to have been sent on such errands in the

days of Cnut, were now turned into tax-gatherers, and were sent into

every shire in England to collect the King’s tribute.[1162] That

soldiers entrusted with such a duty behaved with insolence and violence

we might take for granted in any age. In their conduct we may probably

find the historical groundwork for those wonderful tales of Danish

oppression in which later and rhetorical writers indulge.[1163] No doubt

this collection of the Danegeld was accompanied by much oppression; but

there is no evidence that it was oppression inflicted by Danes as Danes

on Englishmen as Englishmen. As far as we can see, the state of things

under Harthacnut must have been something like the state of England

under John and Henry the Third. The natives, of whatever race, and the

settlers who were fairly naturalized in the country, were all alike

taxed for the sake of the mere strangers who had come in the King’s

train.[1164] We cannot suppose that a Danish citizen of London, or a

Danish thegn who had received a grant of lands from Cnut, was let off

his share of the tribute on proof of his Danish birth. The discontent

which was doubtless common to the whole kingdom at [Sidenote: The

housecarls killed at Worcester. May 4, 1041.] last broke out in one

particular quarter. The citizens of Worcester and the men of

Worcestershire generally rose in revolt and attacked the housecarls. Two

of their number, Feader and Thurstan, fled, like the Danes at

Oxford,[1165] to a tower of the minster.[1166] The people followed them

to their hiding-place, and slew them. The murder deserved legal

punishment, but Harthacnut preferred a form of chastisement for which

unluckily he could find precedents in the reigns of better princes than

himself.[1167] He is said to have been further stirred up to vengeance

by one who ought to have been the first to counsel mercy. Archbishop

Ælfric had, as we have seen, received the bishopric of Worcester on the

deposition of Lyfing;[1168] it would seem that the citizens refused to

receive him.[1169] They were doubtless attached to their own patriotic

pastor, and they may well have been unwilling to be again made an

appendage to the Northumbrian metropolis. In revenge for this injury,

Ælfric, we are told, counselled the terrible punishment which Harthacnut

now decreed for his flock. The offending city and shire were to feel the

full extremity of military vengeance; the town was to be burned, the

country harried, and the inhabitants, [Sidenote: The Earls sent against

Worcester.] as far as might be, killed. For this purpose Harthacnut sent

nearly all his housecarls—unhappily we are not told their numbers—under

the command of all the chief men of England. The three great Earls,

Godwine of Wessex, Leofric of Mercia, Siward of Northumberland,[1170]

and their subordinate Earls, among whom Thored of the Middle-Angles or

Eastern part of Mercia,[1171] and Ranig of the Magesætas or

Herefordshire[1172], are specially mentioned, were all sent against the

one city of Worcester. Ten [Sidenote: [1051.]] years later, when Eadward

the Confessor required the like chastisement to be inflicted on the town

of Dover, Godwine utterly refused to have any hand in such a business,

and distinctly asserted the right of every Englishman to a legal trial.

But in that case the alleged crime had been done in Godwine’s own

earldom, and no doubt Godwine’s power was much less under Harthacnut

than it became under Eadward, most likely much less than it had been

under Cnut. As things now stood, it was hardly possible to disobey,

unless the Earls had been prepared for [Sidenote: The housecarls.] the

extreme measure of deposing the King. England in fact in this age felt

for the first time both the good and the bad consequences of the

existence of a standing army. We shall hereafter see what the housecarls

could do for England under a patriotic King; we now see what they could

do against Englishmen at the bidding of a rapacious tyrant. It was not

at the head of the forces of their several governments that the Earls

were bidden to attack the offending city. Those forces would have taken

some time to bring together, and, when they were brought together, they

would doubtless have sympathized with their intended victims. The King

had now at his command a body of Janissaries, who could march at a

moment’s notice, a force bound to him by a personal tie, and ready to

carry out his personal will in all things. It was no doubt deemed a

great stroke of policy to implicate in the deed all the chief men of the

land, English and Danish, by putting them at the head of the King’s

personal force. But it seems plain that the Earls showed little zeal in

the bloody errand on which they were sent. Placed as they were, they

could hardly avoid doing much mischief to property, but they were

evidently determined to shed as little blood as might be. [Sidenote:

Worcester burned and the shire ravaged.] Their approach was well

known[1173]—most likely they took care that it should be well known—to

those against whom they were coming. The inhabitants of the shire took

shelter in various places, while the men of the city itself

entrenched[1174] themselves in an island of the Severn, whose name of

Beverege reminds us of one of the losses which our national _fauna_ has

undergone.[1175] They held out for four days; on the fifth peace was

made, and they were allowed to go where they would. But the city was

burned, and the army marched away with great plunder.[1176] The

vengeance of Harthacnut and Ælfric was thus partly satisfied, and the

Archbishop, having thus witnessed the harrying of the diocese upon which

he had been forced, seems to have been not unwilling to give back the

see to its earlier possessor. As Ælfric still held it at the time of the

burning of the city,[1177] it seems to follow that Lyfing’s

reappointment [Sidenote: Patriotic Bishops of Worcester.] happened soon

after this conclusion of peace. And it is a natural conjecture that the

restoration of the popular prelate and the exclusion of the Northumbrian

Metropolitan was one of the articles agreed on between the Earls and the

citizens. Worcester has been happy in its Bishops in more than one great

crisis of our history. Side by side with Godwine we find Lyfing; side by

side with Harold we find Wulfstan; and in later times, when the part of

Godwine is played again by Simon of Montfort, we find Walter of

Cantelupe walking in the steps of Lyfing, and [Sidenote: [1265.]] saying

mass and hearing the confession of the martyred Earl on the morning of

the fight of Evesham.[1178]

Harthacnut had still another great crime in store; but the burning of

Worcester seems to have set the final seal to the shame and hatred which

he had drawn upon himself [Sidenote: Harthacnut recalls Eadward from

Normandy. 1041.] among all classes of his people.[1179] It may have been

a desperate effort to win back some measure of popularity which now led

him to send for his half-brother Eadward out of Normandy.[1180] He could

have had no personal affection for a brother whom he had never seen, and

the influence of Emma would hardly have been exercised in Eadward’s

favour. But the events of the next year showed that popular feeling was

now veering round towards the ancient royal family. The memory of Cnut

had secured the throne to two of his sons in succession; but this

feeling could hardly have survived the evil deeds of Harold and

Harthacnut. Harthacnut himself was childless; he was also, young as he

was,[1181] in failing health.[1182] The recall of Eadward at once

provided him with a successor in case of his death, and with one whose

presence would be some support to him while he lived. Foreign writers

tell us that he associated Eadward with him in the kingdom.[1183] For

this statement there is no English authority, and it is not according to

English customs. But to have given Eadward the government of a part of

the kingdom, whether as Earl or as Under-king, would have been in no way

wonderful. We do not however hear anything of such an arrangement;

Eadward is set before us as living in great honour at his brother’s

court, but no English writer describes him as holding any administrative

office.[1184]

One thing however Eadward did, which, had men’s eyes been open to the

future, would have seemed to them a sure sign of the evil to come. Emma

had brought with her Hugh the French churl, who betrayed Exeter to the

Dane.[1185] So her son, even when coming back as a private man, brought

with him the advanced guard of that second swarm of strangers who were

finally to bring the land into bondage. Among other Frenchmen, Eadward

brought with him to England his nephew Ralph, the son of his sister

Godgifu by her first husband Drogo of Mantes.[1186] He must now have

been a mere youth; but he lived to be gorged with English wealth and

honours, to bring his feeble force to oppose the champions of England,

and to be branded in our history as “the timid Earl,”[1187] who sought

to work improvements in English warfare, and himself turned and fled at

the first sight of an armed enemy.

[Sidenote: The Northumbrian Earls.]

The latest internal events of the reign of Harthacnut call our thoughts

once more to the great Northumbrian earldom. They set vividly before us

the unrestrained barbarism of that part of the kingdom. I have already

described the strange career of Uhtred, and how he at last died, by the

connivance of Cnut in his early days, but by the personal vengeance of

an enemy whom he had himself unwisely omitted to slay.[1188] A fate

almost literally the same now overtook one of his descendants and

successors, whose story introduces us more directly to one of the great

actors [Sidenote: Eadwulf Cutel.] of the next reign. Uhtred, as we have

seen, was succeeded by his brother Eadwulf Cutel, at first, it would

seem, under the superiority of the Danish Eric.[1189] The reign of

Eadwulf was both short and inglorious; he did not long survive the

defeat of the forces of his earldom at Carham.[1190] He was succeeded,

but in the Bernician earldom only, by his nephew Ealdred, son of Uhtred

by the daughter [Sidenote: Ealdred of Bernicia puts Thurbrand to death,]

of Bishop Ealdhun.[1191] The new Earl presently put to death Thurbrand

the murderer of his father. Whether this was done by way of public

justice or of private assassination does not appear, and the savage

manners of the Northumbrian Danes most likely drew no very wide

distinction between the two. But at all events the deadly feud went on

from generation to generation. A bitter enmity raged between Ealdred and

Thurbrand’s son Carl, evidently a powerful thegn.[1192] The two, we are

told, were constantly seeking each other’s lives.[1193] Common friends

contrived to reconcile them, and, like Cnut and Eadmund, they were more

than reconciled; they became sworn brethren. In this character they

undertook to go together on a pilgrimage to Rome; but this pious

undertaking, like so many other undertakings of that age, was hindered

by stress of weather.[1194] They returned to Northumberland together.

The reconciliation on Ealdred’s part had been [Sidenote: and is murdered

by Carl.] made in good faith; not so on the part of Carl. He invited the

Earl to his house; he received and feasted him splendidly, and then, we

are told, slew him in a wood, according to the most approved formula of

assassination.[1195] [Sidenote: Eadwulf of Bernicia. 1038?] Ealdred was

succeeded in Bernicia by his brother Eadwulf. The succession of the

Earls of Yorkshire or Deira is less easy to trace, but, at some time

before this year, the [Sidenote: Siward of Deira.] Southern earldom must

have come into possession of the famous Siward, whom we have already

seen acting as its Earl at the burning of Worcester.[1196] Siward,

surnamed Digera or the Strong,[1197] was a Dane by birth. His gigantic

stature, his vast strength and personal prowess, made him a favourite

hero of romance. He boasted of the same marvellous pedigree as Ulf;

perhaps indeed Siward and Ulf might claim a common forefather on the

non-human side. His name is attached to several charters of the reign of

Cnut, but he does not seem to have risen to Earl’s rank in his time. He

married Æthelflæd,[1198] a daughter of Earl Ealdred, a marriage which

seems to have been his only connexion with the house of the Northumbrian

Earls. Whether he laid any claim to the Bernician earldom in right of

his wife it is hard to say; he was at any rate ready to abet the

criminal designs of Harthacnut against its present possessor. Eadwulf

seems to have been a ruler of more vigour than his uncle of the same

name; at least we hear, though rather darkly, of a devastating campaign

carried on by him against the Britons, a name which here can mean only

the inhabitants of Strathclyde.[1199] He was however in ill odour at the

court of Harthacnut; probably he and the men of his earldom had been

among the foremost in pressing the claims of Harold. He now came to make

his peace with the King, and was received by him to full

friendship.[1200] But Harthacnut was as little bound by his plighted

faith as Carl. As Cnut had allowed or [Sidenote: Eadwulf murdered by

Siward, who obtains all Northumberland. 1041.] commanded the slaughter

of Uhtred at the hands of Thurbrand, Harthacnut now allowed or commanded

the slaughter of Eadwulf at the hands of Siward the husband of his

niece. The murderer forthwith obtained the whole earldom of

Northumberland from the Humber to the Tweed, but it would seem from the

words of a local writer that he obtained [Sidenote: Oswulf son of

Eadwulf.] possession of it only by force.[1201] Oswulf, the young son of

Eadwulf, did not obtain any share of the ancient heritage of his house,

till he was invested with a subordinate [Sidenote: 1065.] government on

the very eve of the Norman Conquest.

[Sidenote: Death of Bishop Eadmund.]

The Bernician earldom was thus disposed of. Early in the next year

Harthacnut had also the disposal of the [Sidenote: Harthacnut sells the

see of Durham to Eadred. 1041–2.] Bernician bishopric. The King was, it

would seem, keeping the Midwinter festival at Gloucester,[1202] and

Bishop Eadmund was in attendance. He died while at the court, and his

body was taken to Durham for burial. Harthacnut presently sold the see

to one Eadred, who seems to have given nearly equal offence by his

simony and by the fact of his being a secular priest.[1203] It is set

down as a mark of divine vengeance that he did not like to take full

possession of the see. At the time appointed for his [Sidenote: Death of

Eadred. 1042.] installation, he fell suddenly ill, and died in the tenth

month from his nomination.[1204]

The reign of Harthacnut was now drawing to an end. [Sidenote: War with

Magnus; defeat of Swegen Estrithson. 1042.] As far as it is possible to

make out anything from the tangled mazes of Scandinavian history and

legend, it would seem that he was engaged in another war with Magnus

after he had fixed himself in England.[1205] He had left as his

lieutenant in Denmark his cousin Swegen, the son of Ulf and Estrith.

Swegen came to England for help against Magnus,[1206] and was despatched

to Denmark a second time with a fleet. He was defeated by the Norwegian

King, and came back to England.[1207] But he [Sidenote: Death of

Harthacnut. June 8, 1042.] found his royal cousin no more. Harthacnut

died during his absence, by a death most befitting a prince whose chief

merit was to have provided four meals a day for his courtiers. “This

year,” say the Chronicles, “died Harthacnut as he at his drink

stood.”[1208] It was at the marriage-feast of Tofig the Proud, a great

Danish Thegn, who held the office of standard-bearer,[1209] with Gytha,

the daughter of Osgod Clapa, a man who fills a considerable space in the

annals of the next reign.[1210] Tofig is chiefly memorable as the first

beginner of that great foundation at Waltham which is so inseparably

connected with the memory of our last native King. He held large estates

in Somerset, Essex, and elsewhere. According to the legend, a miraculous

crucifix was found on his lordship of Lutgaresbury in Somerset, on the

top of the peaked hill from which the place in later times took its name

of Montacute. For the reception of this revered relic he built a church

on his estate of Waltham in Essex, and made a foundation for two

priests. The place was then a mere wilderness, unmarked by any town,

village, or church; Tofig had only a hunting-seat in the forest. But

along with the building of the church, he gathered a certain number of

inhabitants on the spot, and thus, like Ealdhun at Durham, founded the

town as well as the minster of Waltham.[1211] This was in the days of

Cnut. Tofig must have been an elderly man at the time of his marriage

with Gytha,—his eulogist indeed tells us that his youth was renewed like

that of the eagle.[1212] His son Æthelstan was of an age to take a share

in public affairs, and his grandson Ansgar was able to hold great

offices a few years later. Gytha then can hardly fail to have been his

second wife, and he seems not to have long survived his marriage. But

the bridal, held at the house of Gytha’s father at Lambeth, was honoured

with the presence of the King. As Harthacnut arose at the wedding-feast

to propose the health of the bride,[1213] he fell to the ground in a fit

accompanied by frightful struggles,[1214] and was carried out speechless

by those who were near him. He died, and his body was carried to

Winchester and buried by that of his father Cnut in the Old

Minster.[1215] With him the direct line of Cnut came to an end. The

times were such that the land could not long abide without a King. Even

before the burial of Harthacnut another great national solemnity had

taken place. If Swegen cherished any hopes of the English succession,

they vanished when, on his return to England, [Sidenote: Eadward chosen

King. June, 1042.] he found a son of Æthelred already called to the

throne of his fathers. “Before the King buried were, all folk chose

Eadward to King at London.”[1216]

[Sidenote: End of the preliminary part of the history.]

I have thus gone through the whole of that part of my history which I

look upon as introductory to its main subject. We have now gone through

all the events which form the remoter causes of the Norman Conquest.

[Sidenote: The Norman Conquest begins with the election of Eadward.] The

accession of Eadward at once brings us among the events which

immediately led to the Conquest, or rather we may look upon his

accession as the first stage of the Conquest itself. Swegen and Cnut had

shown that it was possible for a foreign power to overcome England by

force of arms. The misgovernment of the sons of Cnut hindered the

formation of a lasting Danish dynasty in England; the throne of Cerdic

was again filled by a son of Woden; but there can be no doubt that the

shock given to the country by the Danish Conquest, especially the way in

which the ancient nobility was cut off in the long struggle with Swegen

and Cnut, directly opened the way for the coming of the Norman. Eadward

did his best, wittingly or unwittingly, to make the path of the Norman

still easier. This he did by accustoming Englishmen to the sight of

strangers—not national kinsmen like Cnut’s Danes, but Frenchmen, men of

utterly alien speech and manners—enjoying every available place of

honour or profit in the country. The great national reaction under

Godwine and Harold made England once more England for a few years. But

this change, happy as it was, could not altogether do away with the

effects of the French tastes of Eadward. With Eadward then the Norman

Conquest really begins, and his election therefore forms the proper

break between these two great [Sidenote: Position of the leading men of

this and the next generation.] divisions of my subject. The men of the

generation before the Conquest, the men whose eyes were not to behold

the event itself, but who were to do all that they could do to hasten or

to delay it, are now in the full maturity of life, in the full

possession of power. Eadward is on the throne of England; Godwine,

Leofric, and Siward divide among them the administration of the realm.

The next generation, the warriors of Stamfordbridge and Senlac, of York

and Ely, are fast growing into manhood. Harold Hardrada is already

following his wild career of knight-errantry in distant lands, and is

astonishing the world by his exploits in Russia and in Sicily, at

Constantinople and at Jerusalem. Swegen Estrithson is still a wanderer,

not startling men by wonders of prowess like Harold, but schooling

himself and gathering his forces for the day when he could establish a

lasting dynasty in his native land. In our own land, the younger

warriors of the Conquest, Eadwine and Morkere and Waltheof and Hereward,

were probably born, but they must still have been in their cradles or in

their mothers’ arms. But among the leaders of Church and State, Ealdred,

who lived to place the crown on the head both of Harold and of William,

was already a great prelate, Abbot of the great house of Tavistock, soon

to succeed the patriot Lyfing in the chair of Worcester. Stigand,

climbing to greatness by slower steps, was already the chosen counsellor

of Emma, a candidate for any post of dignity and influence that chance

might open to him. Wulfstan, destined to outlive them all, had begun

that career of quiet holiness, neither seeking for, nor shrinking from,

responsibility in temporal matters, which distinguishes him among the

political and military prelates of that age. In the house of Godwine

that group of sons and daughters were springing up which for a moment

promised to become the royal line of England. Eadgyth was growing into

those charms of mind and person which perhaps failed to win for her the

heart of the King who called her his wife. Gyrth and Leofwine were still

boys; Tostig was on the verge of manhood; Swegen and Harold were already

men, bold and vigorous, ready to march at their father’s bidding, and

before long to affect the destiny of their country for evil and for

good. Beyond the sea, William, still a boy in years, but a man in

conduct and counsel, was holding his own among the storms of a troubled

minority, and learning those arts of the statesman and the warrior which

fitted him to become the wisest ruler of Normandy, the last and greatest

Conqueror of England. Thus the actors in the great drama are ready for

their parts; the ground is gradually clearing for the scene of their

performance. The great struggle of nations and tongues and principles in

which each of them had his share, the struggle in which William of

Normandy and Harold of England stand forth as worthy rivals for the

noblest of prizes, will form the subject of the next, the chief and

central portion of my history.

APPENDIX.

NOTE A. p. 13.

THE USE OF THE WORD “ENGLISH.”

My readers will doubtless have remarked—indeed I have, in the text,

expressly called their attention to the fact—that, in speaking of the

Teutonic inhabitants of Britain looked at as a whole, I always use the

word “English,” never the words “Saxon” or “Anglo-Saxon,” which are more

commonly in use. I do this advisedly, on more grounds than one. I hold

it to be a sound rule to speak of a nation, as far as may be, by the

name by which it called itself in the age of which we are speaking. This

alone would be reason enough for using the word “English” and no other.

But besides this, the common way of talking about “Saxons” and

“Anglo-Saxons” leads to various confusions and misconceptions; it ought

therefore to be avoided on that ground still more than on the other.

I am not aware of any instance in which a Teutonic inhabitant of

Britain, living before the Norman Conquest, and speaking in his own

tongue and in his own name of the whole nation formed by the union of

the various Teutonic tribes in Britain, uses the word “Saxon.” “Engle,”

“Angel-cyn,” are the words always used. The only exceptions, if we can

call them exceptions, are certain charters in which the King of the

English is called “King of the Anglo-Saxons.” Of these I shall presently

speak (see below, p. 540, and Appendix B). But I am not aware that the

word “Anglo-Saxon” is ever used in English writings except in the royal

style, and even there it is excessively rare. It is quite certain that

the word “Anglo-Saxon” was not used, any more than the word “Saxon,” as

the ordinary name of the nation. An inhabitant of one of the real Saxon

settlements might indeed call himself a Saxon as opposed to his Anglian

or Jutish neighbours. But even in this case it is remarkable that we

very seldom find the word “Saxon” used alone. It is almost always

coupled with one of its geographical adjuncts, “West,” “East,” or

“South.” Cuthred’s army at Burford (see pp. 38, 517) is not spoken of as

the “Saxon” but as the “West-Saxon” host, even though its adversaries

were Angles. But the word “Saxon” is never used, in the native tongue,

to express either the whole nation or any part of it which was not

strictly Saxon. On the other hand, the words “Engle” and “Angel-cyn” are

constantly used to express, not only the whole nation, but particular

parts of it which were not strictly Anglian. The Chronicles use the

words in this sense from the very beginning. They expressly tell us that

Hengest and Horsa were, in strictness, not Angles, but Jutes; yet their

followers are called “Engle” (473), and the Teutonic settlers as a whole

are called “Angel-cyn” (449). One single passage in the Chronicles

(605), which has another look, I shall have presently to speak of as

being most distinctly an exception which proves the rule. “Engle,” in

short, in native speech, is the name of the whole nation, of which the

“Seaxe” are a part.

On the other hand, for reasons which I have already stated (see p. 13),

all the Teutonic settlers in Britain have always been known to their

Celtic neighbours as “Saxons.” They were so in the fifth century; they

are so still. In the Pictish Chronicle, for instance, Lothian is always

“Saxonia.” On the continent too the word was sometimes used to describe

the Teutonic settlers in Britain before they were fully consolidated

into one kingdom. At the very beginning Prosper (see Appendix C) talks

of Saxons, while Prokopios (see above, pp. 22, 31) talks of Ἄγγιλοι. As

Gregory the Great calls the Jutish Æthelberht “Rex Anglorum” (Bæda,

Hist. Eccl. i. 32), so Einhard speaks of certain Northumbrians, who

therefore were strictly Angles, as Saxons. Ealhwine (Alcuin), who was

certainly a Northumbrian, is called (Vita Karoli, 25) “Saxonici generis

homo,” and one Ealdwulf, who seems also to have been a Northumbrian,

appears (Annals, 808) as “de ipsa Britannia, natione Saxo.” But I

suspect that this way of speaking was peculiar or nearly so to Einhard.

A generation earlier, Paul Warnefrid has several passages which

illustrate the uncertain way in which the Teutonic settlers in Britain

were for a long time spoken of on the Continent. But though he uses the

words “Angli” and “Saxones” as it might seem indiscriminately, there is

no case in which it is clear that he applies the Saxon name to any but

real Saxons, while he uses the Anglian name to take in those who were

not real Angles. First of all, in ii. 6 the Saxons who joined in

Alboin’s invasion of Italy are distinguished as “vetuli Saxones.” In

iii. 25 he records the conversion of the English, how “Beatus Gregorius

Augustinum, ... in Britanniam misit, eorumque prædicatione ad Christum

_Anglos_ convertit.” In v. 30 we read of the “ecclesiæ _Anglorum_;” but

in c. 32 the banished prince Bertarid “ad Britanniam insulam

_Saxonumque_ regem properare disponit;” and in c. 33, “navem ascendit ut

ad Britanniam insulam ad regnum _Saxonum_ transmearet.” Here a

West-Saxon King is doubtless meant. In vi. 28 we find two persons,

seemingly Ine and his wife Æthelburh, described in the text as “duo

reges _Saxonum_,” and in the heading as “duo _Anglorum_ reges.” Lastly,

in vi. 37 the fashion of pilgrimage is attributed to “multi _Anglorum_

gentis nobiles et ignobiles;” and in the same chapter _Saxones_ is used

in its common meaning of Old-Saxons. Altogether, “Anglus” is the

received and usual name even from the earliest times; it became more

usual as time went on, and after the nation was consolidated, when the

“Rex Anglorum” was known on the continent as a great potentate, any

other way of speaking altogether died out, and foreign nations always

spoke of us as we spoke of ourselves. The opposition between “Saxon” and

“Norman,” so commonly made by modern writers when speaking of the days

of the Conquest, is never found in any contemporary writer of any

nation. The rule on this head during the period of the Conquest is very

plain. In the English Chronicles, in Domesday and other legal documents,

and in the Bayeux Tapestry, the opposition is made between “French” and

“English.” “The King’s men, French and English,” form an exhaustive

division. In Latin writers, especially those on the Norman side, the

opposition is made between “Normans” and “English.” “Normans” and

“Saxons” are not opposed till long after. The earliest instance that I

know of the usage is in Robert of Gloucester, who opposes “Normans” and

“Saxons” exactly as Thierry does, in verses which Thierry has not

inappropriately chosen for the epilogue of his work;

“Of þe Normannes beþ þẏs hey men, þat beþ of þys lond,

And þe lowe men of Saxons, as ẏch understonde.”

(Vol. i. p. 363, ed. 1810.)

It is possibly owing to the comparative laxity of the foreign use of the

words that even the native use is not quite so strict in Latin writings

as it is in those which are composed in the native tongue. Native

writers, when following, or translating from, Welsh authorities, often

follow the Welsh usage, and use the word “Saxones” in positions where,

if they had been speaking in their own persons, they would certainly

have used the word “Angli.” There is one instance, and, as far as I

know, one instance only, of this Welsh usage having made its way into

the English speech. In the entry in the Chronicles under the year 605,

the word “Saxon” does occur for once in the wider sense. But the word is

not used by the Chronicler in his own person, nor is it put into the

mouth of any Angle or Saxon. It is found in a speech of Augustine to the

Welsh Bishops; “Gif Wealas nellað sibbe wið us, hy sculon æt _Seaxena_

handa forwurðan,” a prediction which was accomplished by the invasion of

the Anglian Æthelfrith. Here is a story, probably preserved by Welsh

tradition, in which a Roman speaking to Welshmen is made to adopt a

Welsh form of speech. The contrast between this passage and the ordinary

language of the Chronicles makes the ordinary usage still more marked.

In Latin the usage is more common. Asser, as a Welshman, naturally

speaks of “Saxones,” and his so speaking is a strong proof of the

genuineness of his work. Florence of Worcester therefore, in that part

of his Chronicle in which he copies Asser, keeps Asser’s language, and

speaks of “Saxones,” whereas, when speaking in his own words or

translating from the English Chronicles, he speaks of “Angli” from the

beginning. No doubt the subjects of Ælfred, the books, poems, &c. to

which the name “Saxon” is thus applied, were strictly Saxon; but no

West-Saxon, speaking in his own tongue, would have called them so.

Ælfred calls his own tongue “English,” and nothing else; but Asser

naturally called it “Saxon.” So Bæda, as long as he draws from Welsh

sources or repeats Welsh traditions, uses the words “Angli” and

“Saxones” almost indiscriminately (Hist. Eccl. i. 14, 15, 22); but, as

soon as he begins fairly to speak in his own person, he always uses

“Angli” (i. 23 et seqq.). Exactly the same distinction will be found in

the use of the words by Æthelweard and Henry of Huntingdon, who

constantly use the word “Saxones” in what we may call the Welsh stage of

their histories. But Henry uses “Anglus” also from the beginning, and,

when he gets fairly clear of Welsh matters, he uses it exclusively. It

is most curious to see him, as in the Prologue to the fifth Book, fall

back on the Welsh way of speaking when he has to make a summary of what

has gone before. And as the Welsh way of speaking affected these

writers, we find writers who had occasion to speak of Pictish matters

affected in the like way by Pictish usage. Thus Æddi or Eddius, the

biographer of Wilfrith (c. 19, 20), speaking of the relations between

Picts and Northumbrians, uses the Pictish mode of speech; he speaks of

“Saxones,” and says that the Picts “subjectionem Saxonum despiciebant.”

Besides these instances of Celtic influence on English speech, it is not

uncommon to find in the charters the word “Saxonice” used as a

definition of language, where the vernacular definition would

undoubtedly have been “on Englisc.” In West-Saxon charters the usage is

in truth no more than we might have looked for. The words and things

spoken of were Saxon in the strict sense. Bæda too not uncommonly (iii.

7 et al.) uses “Saxon” as a description of language; but it is usually,

if not always, when he is speaking of persons or places which are

strictly Saxon. He may therefore mean “Saxon” as opposed to “Anglian.”

But the usage certainly now and then passes these bounds, and we find

the word Saxon and its derivatives applied to objects which were not

strictly Saxon. Thus in a charter of Ecgfrith of Mercia in 796 (Cod.

Dipl. i. 207), we find the words “celebri vico qui _Saxonice_ vocatur æt

Baðum.” Though even here it is worth remarking that the place spoken of,

though at that time under Mercian rule, was in a district which was

originally Saxon and which became Saxon again. So in a deed of

Archbishop Oswald as late as 990 (Cod. Dipl. iii. 253) we read how a

certain grant “in ista cartula _Saxonicis_ sermonibus apparet.” But the

land spoken of is in Worcestershire, also a district originally Saxon.

It is more remarkable when in a charter of Archbishop Wulfred in 825

(Cod. Dipl. i. 280), the Synod of Clovesho is said to be “de diversis

_Saxoniæ_ partibus congregatum.” As the document chiefly relates to

Mercian affairs, it is clear that “Saxonia” here means England

generally. The word is used in the same sense at an earlier time in a

petition of Wilfrith to Pope Agatho (Eddius, c. 29), in which he

describes himself as “episcopus _Saxoniæ_.” So again in the

letter—whether genuine or not, matters little—of Eleutherius of

Winchester in William of Malmesbury (i. 30), he is described as

“pontificatus _Saxoniæ_ gubernacula regens.” In this passage “Saxonia”

might mean Wessex; but Hwætberht, Abbot of Wearmouth (Bæda, Hist. Abb.

Wiremuth, c. 14. p. 329 Hussey), also calls himself “Abbas cœnobii

beatissimi apostolorum principis in Saxonia.” It should of course be

remembered that these are letters addressed to foreigners, and in which

a foreign mode of speech is naturally adopted. Still, when I have these

examples before me, and when I remember how late it was before the names

“Anglia” and “Englaland” became thoroughly established in use, I am

inclined to think that “Saxonia” may be the older name of the two. We

have seen (see p. 79) that the name Englaland dates only from the last

period of the Danish wars; the earliest use of it that I have come

across is not earlier than the reign of Æthelred, being found in the

treaty with Olaf and Justin in 991 (see p. 79, and below, Note DD). Here

the word _Englaland_, _Ænglaland_, is twice found. From the latter days

of Æthelred and the reign of Cnut the territorial name becomes more and

more commonly used. (It is needless to say that the entry in the

Canterbury Chronicle for 876 and the long insertion at 995 are not

contemporary.) It would seem then that the name of England was first

used in opposition, not to Wales or Scotland, but to the Scandinavian

lands. As opposed to the lands of the Scot and the Briton the strict

territorial name was rather _Saxony_ than _England_. It was only natural

that it should be so. The part of Britain occupied by the Teutonic

invaders, the English land as distinguished from the English people,

would receive its first territorial name from the Celts of the island,

and that name would naturally be, as we have seen in the case of

Lothian, “Saxonia.” In dealing with foreigners, even Englishmen might,

in the days of Wilfrith or Hwætberht, use the only territorial name

which their country had as yet acquired, and, in the days of Wulfred,

the same word might be now and then used as a rhetorical flourish. I am

therefore inclined to think that there is really more authority for

calling England, as a whole, “Saxony,” than there is for calling

Englishmen, as a whole, “Saxons.” The Latin name _Anglia_ is most likely

older than the English _Englaland_. But it is hard to say when it came

into contemporary use. It seems to be unknown to Bæda, but it is

familiar to Æthelweard. A rarer form, “Angul-Saxonia,” “Anglo-Saxonia,”

is now and then found, as in a charter of Eadward the Elder in Cod.

Dipl. v. 165, and in a doubtful charter of Æthelred (see below, p. 557).

So in a Frankish ecclesiastical writer in Duchesne, Rer. Franc. Scriptt.

i. 665, Queen Balthild is said to come “de ultramarinis partibus

Angli-Saxoniæ.” Still, whatever may have been the case in earlier times,

all these usages had died out long before the time of the Norman

Conquest. After all England and all Britain had been brought into

subjection to a Saxon dynasty, we hear no more about “Saxons” or

“Saxony.” The latest instance that I can remember of “Saxonice” being

used for “on Englisc” is in a passage of Florence of Worcester (1002,

see p. 306), where he says that the Norman Emma was “_Saxonice_ Ælfgiva

vocata.” The expression stands almost by itself; but it should be

remembered that it is of the West-Saxon speech that it is used. During

the period of the Conquest, as the people are always “Angli” and their

land “Anglia,” so it is always the English language (“lingua Anglica or

Anglicana”), never the Saxon, which contemporary writers oppose to the

French.

The fact that the word “Saxon” is thus occasionally used in Latin, in

cases where we always find “English” used in the native tongue, is, I

think, mainly to be attributed to the tendency, one which has more or

less influence on almost all Latin writings then and since, to use

expressions which sounded in any way grander or more archaic than those

which were in common use. I suspect that the occasional use of “Saxon”

instead of “English” was very much of a piece with the use, not uncommon

in the charters, of “Albion” to express Britain. To talk of “Saxonia,”

“Saxonice,” &c. was doubtless one of the elegancies of the _Kanzleistyl_

of those days. It is an archaism, just as when, in a charter of Eadwig

(Cod. Dipl. ii. 324; cf. 391), we read of the “Gewissi,” a name which

had passed out of use ages before. Once or twice we find “Teutonice”

instead of either “Anglice” or “Saxonice.” The decrees of the Synod of

Cealcyth in 787 (Labbe and Cossart, vi. 1873) were published “tam Latine

quam _Teutonice_, quo omnes intelligere possent.” So in the Encomium

Emmæ (ii. 18) we once find the word used where either English or Danish

is intended, and the expression is an unusual and affected one as

applied to either. In a most remarkable story told by Giraldus (Itin.

Kamb. i. 6. p. 64 Dimock), a Welshman is said to speak to Henry the

Second “quasi Teutonice,” and is presently answered “Anglice.” But

Giraldus elsewhere (i. 8. p. 77), in his curious philological

discussion, distinguishes “Anglice” and “Teutonice,” though his

“Teutonice” does not seem to be _High_-Dutch. There can be no doubt that

this use of “Teutonice” was simply an instance of “the grand style.” It

is less clearly so when Fordun (ii. 9) says that in Scotland “duabus

utuntur linguis, Scotica videlicet et Theuthonica.” For he writes at a

time when men were just beginning to be unwilling to give the English

name to the Teutonic speech of Scotland. But in earlier times we may be

sure that, when men said either “Teutonice” or “Saxonice” instead of

“Anglice,” the unusual word was chosen mainly as being finer. Still, in

the great mass of instances, the use of the word “Saxon,” affected and

archaistic as it is, is still accurate. It is rarely used out of the

strictly Saxon districts, while “Anglus” and its derivatives are freely

used out of the strictly Anglian districts. The title of “Rex Saxonum,”

so common in the age of Ælfred, was, as I have elsewhere said (see p.

54), the most accurate which he could assume. Still it appears only as a

Latin title; in his vernacular will and his vernacular laws he is only

“King of the West-Saxons.” (See p. 52, and Cod. Dipl. ii. 114.) It might

be thought to have an English equivalent in the Abingdon Chronicle under

867, where we read, “Her feng Æþered Æþelbryhtes broþor to _Seaxna

rice_,” but as all the other copies have “_West-Seaxna rice_,” it is

most likely a slip of the pen.

The name “Anglo-Saxon,” though rare, is a genuine and ancient

description of the nation. There are some, though rare, vernacular

examples of its use (see below, pp. 549, 556), to which I shall have to

refer again. It is also used rather more commonly in Latin, as by Asser

(M. H. B. 483 A), by Florence of Worcester (A. 1066), by Simeon of

Durham (X Scriptt. 137). In the Latin charters, especially those of

Eadwig, it is not uncommon (see the list in pp. 554–558). So in a

charter of Eadward the Elder which has been quoted already (Cod. Dipl.

v. 168, 169), as he calls the land “Angul-Saxonia,” so he twice calls

himself “Angul-Saxonum rex.” The word is not uncommon in foreign

writers; it occurs for instance in the singular passage of Lambert of

Herzfeld (1066) in which Harold is called “Rex Angli-Saxonum.” To go

back to earlier writers, it is found in Paul Warnefrid (iv. 23), where,

describing the manners of the Lombards, he says, “Vestimenta eis erant

laxa et maxime lintea, qualia _Angli-Saxones_ habere solent.” In c. 37,

“Cunibertus rex Hermilindam e _Saxonum Anglorum_ genere duxit uxorem.”

Here the name Eormenhild, cognate with the royal Kentish names

Eormenred, Eormenburh, Eormengyth, and Eormengild, seems to show almost

for certain from what part of England the Lombard King brought his wife.

But presently in vi. 15 the West-Saxon Ceadwalla appears as “Cedoaldus

rex _Anglorum-Saxonum_,” though in the heading he is “Theodebaldus rex

_Anglorum_.” (These passages show how fast the Anglian name was

spreading over the Saxon and Jutish districts.) The compound name is

used also by Widukind in a very amusing passage (i. 8; cf. p. 567),

where, having mentioned how certain Saxons settled in Britain, he adds,

“Et quia illa insula in angulo quodam maris sita est, _Anglisaxones_

usque hodie vocitantur.” So Prudentius of Troyes (Pertz, i. 449) calls

Æthelwulf “Edilvulfus rex _Anglorum-Saxonum_.” Elsewhere (i. 451) he

gives him his usual title of “Rex Occidentalium Saxonum.” In another

passage (i. 452) he records how in 860 a Danish fleet sailed “ad

Anglo-Saxones.” And in a third, under the year 844 (Pertz, i. 441),

“Nortmanni Britanniam insulam ea quam maxime parte quam _Angli-Saxones_

incolunt impetentes.” So in the Annals of Quedlinburg (Pertz, iii. 32),

“_Angli-Saxones_ in Britannia fidem percipiunt;” in those of

Weissemburg, 1066 (Pertz, iii. 71), “Comes Willihelmus qui et Basthart

(see vol. ii. p. 582) _Anglos-Saxones_ et regem illorum occidit

regnumque obtinuit.” In the Annales Altahenses, 1066 (Pertz, xx. 817),

we hear of “Angli-Saxonici.” In the Life of Saint Boniface (Pertz, ii.

338) London or “Lundenwich” is so called “_Anglorum Saxonumque_

vocabulo;” and in Aimon of Fleury (Pertz, ix. 375) Lewis the son of

Charles the Simple flies “ad _Anglo-Saxones_.” All these passages remind

us of the “Prisci Latini,” and all are in the plural. Orderic too once

or twice uses expressions to the same effect. Thus he (666 A) makes

certain Normans say “Saxones Anglos prostravimus.” Elsewhere he makes

Wimund (525 B) speak of the original English conquerors as

“Angli-Saxones.” Again, speaking in his own person (722 B), he recounts

the Norman exploits, and adds, “Hoc Itali et Guinili _Saxonesque Angli_

usque ad internecionem experti sunt.” And again in 887 B, where he is

talking of Welsh matters and the prophecies of Merlin, he speaks of

“Saxones Anglos, qui tunc pagani Christicolas Britones oppugnabant.” But

these unusual phrases are clearly mere flourishes, just as when he calls

the Byzantine Empire “Ionia” and its inhabitants “Danai” and “Pelasgi.”

The passage reminds one of the comment of William of Poitiers (137),

where, after describing the valour of the English at Senlac, he adds,

“Gens equidem illa natura semper in ferrum prompta fuit, descendens ab

antiqua Saxonum origine ferocissimorum hominum.” But he never calls the

English of his own time “Saxons.”

“Anglo-Saxon” then, unlike “Saxon,” is a description which is fully

justified by ancient authority. But it is quite clear that it is a

description which never passed into common use. It is found mainly in

charters and as a peculiarity of one or two writers, who doubtless

thought that it had a grander or more learned sound than the usual name.

The name by which our forefathers really knew themselves was “English”

and none other. “Angli,” “Engle,” “Angel-cyn,” “Englisc,” are the true

names by which the Teutons of Britain knew themselves and their

language. The people are the English, their tongue is the English

tongue, their King is the King of the English. The instances of any

other use are to be found in a foreign language, and are easily

accounted for by exceptional causes. And even these exceptional usages

had quite died away before the stage of our history with which we are

immediately concerned. The people whom William overcame at Senlac, and

over whom he was crowned King at Westminster, knew themselves and were

known to their conquerors by the name of ENGLISH and by the name of

ENGLISH alone.

But it is sometimes argued that, though our forefathers confessedly

called themselves English, yet we ought, in speaking of them, to call

them something else; that, though Ælfred called his own tongue English,

we ought to correct him and call it Saxon. Now the presumption is surely

in favour of calling any people by the name by which they called

themselves, especially when that name had gone on in uninterrupted use

to our own days. Our national nomenclature has never changed for a

thousand years. In the days of Ælfred, as now, the Englishman speaking

in his own tongue called himself an Englishman. In the days of Ælfred,

as now, his Celtic neighbour called him a Saxon. As we do not now speak

of ourselves by the name by which Welshmen and Highlanders speak of us,

some very strong reason indeed ought to be brought to show that we ought

to speak of our forefathers, not as they spoke of themselves, but as

Welshmen and Highlanders spoke of them. But the reason commonly given

springs out of mere misconception and leads to further misconceptions.

From some inscrutable cause, people fancy that the word English cannot

be rightly applied to the nation, its language, or its institutions,

till after the Norman element has been absorbed into it; that is, they

fancy that nothing can be called English till it has become somewhat

less English than it was at an earlier time. The tongue which Ælfred, in

the days of its purity, called English, we must not venture to call

English till the days when it had received a considerable infusion of

French. This notion springs from an utterly wrong conception of the

history of our nation. The refusal to call ourselves and our forefathers

a thousand years back by the same name springs from a failure to take in

the fact that our nation which exists now is the same nation as that

which migrated from Germany to Britain in the fifth century. In the

words of Sir Francis Palgrave, “I must needs here pause, and substitute

henceforward the true and antient word English for the unhistorical and

conventional term Anglo-Saxon, an expression conveying a most false idea

in our civil history. _It disguises the continuity of affairs, and

substitutes the appearance of a new formation in the place of a

progressive evolution._” (Normandy and England, iii. 596.) People talk

of the “English” as a new nation which arose, in the thirteenth century

perhaps, as a mixed race of which the “Saxons” or “Anglo-Saxons” were

only one element among several. Now in a certain sense, we undoubtedly

are a mixed race, but not in the sense in which popular language

implies. We are a mixed race in the sense of being a people whose

predominant blood and speech has incorporated and assimilated with

itself more than one foreign infusion. But we are not what our

High-Dutch kinsmen call a _Mischvolk_, a mere _colluvies gentium_, a

mere jumble of races in which no one element is predominant. People run

over the succession of the various occupants of Britain—Romans, Britons,

Saxons, Danes, Normans—sometimes as if they were races each of which ate

up the one before it, sometimes as if they were, each in the same sense,

component elements of the modern English nation. The correct statement

of the case is much clearer and simpler. A Low-Dutch people, which took

as its national name the name of one of its tribes, namely the Angles,

settled in Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries. It has occupied the

greater part of Britain ever since. It has ever since kept its unbroken

national being, its national language, its national name. But it has at

different times assimilated several foreign elements. The conquered

Welsh were, as far as might be, slaughtered or driven out; but a small

Welsh infusion into our language, and therefore no doubt a small Welsh

infusion into our blood, is owing to the fact that the women were

largely spared. A small Welsh element was thus assimilated. The Danish

element, far greater in extent than the Welsh, hardly needed

assimilation; the ethnical difference between the Englishman and the

Dane was hardly greater than the ethnical difference between one tribe

of Englishmen and another. Lastly came the Norman, or rather French,

element, which was also gradually assimilated, but not till it had

poured a most important infusion, though still only an infusion, into

our institutions and our language. Thus, besides the kindred Danes, we

have assimilated two wholly foreign elements, British and French, what

our forefathers called _Bret-Welsh_ and _Gal-Welsh_. But these elements

are not coequal with the original substance of the nation. In all these

cases, the foreign element was simply incorporated and assimilated into

the existing Low-Dutch stock. The small Welsh element, the large Danish

and French elements, were absorbed in the predominant English mass. The

Briton and the Norman gradually became Englishmen. The kindred Dane of

course became an Englishman with far greater ease. All adopted the

English name; all adopted, while to some extent they modified, the

English tongue. If we confine the name “English” to the men, the speech,

the laws, of the time after the last assimilation had become complete,

if we talk of “Saxons” as only one coequal element among others, we

completely misrepresent the true history of our nation and our language.

Such a way of speaking cuts us off from our connexion with our

forefathers; it wipes out the fact that we are the same people who came

into this island fourteen hundred years back, and not another people. We

have absorbed some very important elements from various quarters, but

our true substance is still the same. We are like a Roman _gens_, some

of whose members, by virtue of the law of adoption, were not Fabii or

Cornelii by actual blood, but which none the less was the Fabian or

Cornelian _gens_. If we allow ourselves to use, as people constantly do,

the words “Saxon” or “Anglo-Saxon” as chronological terms, we altogether

wipe out the fact of the unbroken life of our nation. People talk of

“Saxons” and “Anglo-Saxons” as of races past and gone. Sometimes,

especially in architectural disquisitions, they seem to fancy that all

“the Saxons” lived at one time, forgetting that Harold is removed from

Hengest by as many years as Charles the First is removed from Harold. A

man, a word, a book, a building, earlier than 1066 is called “Saxon;”

whether the same man, word, book, or building, after 1066 is “Norman,” I

have never been able to find out. Waltheof, born before 1066, was of

course a “Saxon;” what were the children whom he begot and the buildings

which he built after 1066? This chronological use of the word “Saxon”

implies one of two alternatives; either the “Saxons” were exterminated

by the Normans, or else the “Saxons” turned into Normans. People talk of

“the Saxon Period” and “the Norman Period,” as if they followed one

another like the periods of geology, or like Hesiod’s races of men. The

“Norman Period” is a phrase which may be admitted to express a time when

Norman influences were politically predominant. We may speak of a Norman

period, as we may speak of an Angevin period or an Hanoverian period.

But, if we are to talk of a “Saxon period” at all, it is a period which

began in 449 and which has not ended in 1877.

The most grotesque instance of this confused sort of nomenclature is to

be found in the technical language of unscientific philologers. The

gradual result of the Norman Conquest on the English language was

twofold. The English language, like other languages, especially other

Low-Dutch languages, was, at the time of the Conquest, already beginning

to lose, in popular speech at least, the fulness and purity of its

ancient inflexions. This process the Norman Conquest hastened and

rendered more complete. It also brought in a great number of foreign

words into the language, many of which supplanted native words. The

result of these two processes is that the English of a thousand years

back, like the Scandinavian or the High-Dutch of a thousand years back,

is now unintelligible except to those who specially study it. But the

English language has never either changed its name or lost its

continuity. In the eyes of the scientific philologer, it is the same

English tongue throughout all its modifications. But by unscientific

philologers, the language, from some utterly mysterious cause, is not

called English until the two processes of which I speak are

accomplished. Before those processes begin, it is “Saxon” or

“Anglo-Saxon;” while they are going on, it is “_Semi-Saxon_”—a name

perhaps the most absurd to be found in the nomenclature of any human

study. It is manifest that, with such a nomenclature as this, the true

history of the English language and its relation to other Teutonic

languages never can be understood.

One word as to the name “Anglo-Saxon.” I have shown that it is a real

ancient name, used, though very rarely, in English documents, and

somewhat more commonly in Latin ones. But it was always a mere formal

description; it never became the familiar name of the nation. The

meaning of the word also is commonly completely misconceived. In modern

use “Anglo-” is a prefix which is used very freely, and which is

certainly used in more than one meaning. We have heard of

“Anglo-Saxons,” “Anglo-Normans,” “Anglo-Americans,” “Anglo-Indians,”

“Anglo-Catholics.” I cannot presume to guess at the meaning of the

prefix in the last formation; but I conceive “Anglo-Normans” to mean

Normans settled in England, and “Anglo-Americans” to mean Englishmen

settled in America. By “Anglo-Saxons,” I conceive, in the vulgar use of

the word, is meant Saxons who settled in England (meaning of course in

Britain), as opposed to the Old-Saxons who stayed in Germany. It is as

when Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 708 C) inaccurately talks of an

“adventus Saxonum in Angliam,” while the accurate Bæda (Hist. Eccl. i.

23) talks of the “adventus Anglorum in Brittaniam.” And it would seem

that this really was the sense in which the compound name was used by

some of the foreign writers. Indeed, as soon as the Teutonic part of

Britain came to be commonly known by the name of “Anglia,” some such

phrase as “Anglo-Saxones” would be, from a continental point of view,

not an unnatural description of the Saxons of the island as

distinguished from those of the mainland. It is plain that all

remembrance of continental “Angli” must have passed away from the mind

of Widukind when he made the grotesque derivation—one not all peculiar

to himself—which was quoted in p. 541. But this is not the meaning of

the word “Anglo-Saxon” as used by Asser, Florence, and King Æthelstan.

“King of the Anglo-Saxons,” as a title of Æthelstan or Eadred, meant

simply “King of the Angles and Saxons,” a way of describing him which

was clearly more correct, though far less usual, than the common style

of “Rex Anglorum.” In the ancient Coronation Service (see vol. iii.

chap. xi. and Appendix E; Selden’s Titles of Honour, 116), in the same

prayer we twice read “Anglorum vel (= et) Saxonum,” once

“Anglo-Saxonum.” The latter form is clearly a mere abbreviation, perhaps

a mere clerical error. That, under a purely Saxon dynasty, the title of

“Rex Anglorum” became regular and universal, that “Rex Saxonum” died

completely out, that “Rex Anglo-Saxonum” was always rare, is the most

overwhelming proof that “English” was the real and only recognized name

of the united nation. “Anglo-Saxon” then, in certain positions, is a

perfectly correct description. But it is dangerous to use it, because it

is so extremely liable to misconstruction. Again, its correct use is so

very narrow, that the term becomes almost useless. It has no real

meaning except in the plural. It is quite correct to call Æthelstan

“King of the Anglo-Saxons,” but to call this or that subject of

Æthelstan “an Anglo-Saxon” is simply nonsense. I have as yet only once

lighted on the use of the word in the singular, namely in the Vita

Alchuini, 11 (Jaffé, Monumenta Alcuiniana, p. 25), where a certain

priest is described as “Engelsaxo.” See Mullinger, Schools of Charles

the Great, 113. As a _chronological_ term “Anglo-Saxon” is equally

objectionable with “Saxon.” The “Anglo-Saxon period,” so far as there

ever was one, is going on still.

I speak therefore of our forefathers, not as “Saxons” or even as

“Anglo-Saxons,” but as they spoke of themselves, as Englishmen—“Angli,”

“Engle,” “Angel-cyn.” I call their language, not “Saxon” or even

“Anglo-Saxon,” but, as Ælfred called it, “English.” I thus keep to the

custom of the time of which I speak, and I also avoid the misconception

and confusion which must follow any other way of speaking. But the

different shapes which names have taken in later times allow us to make

an useful distinction between the two uses of the same word. In Latin it

was necessary to use the single word “Anglus” to express both the whole

nation and one particular part of it. But we can now speak of the whole

nation as “English,” while we can speak of the tribe from which the

nation borrowed its name as “Anglian.” When I wish pointedly to

distinguish the men, the language, or the institutions of the time

before 1066 from those of any time after 1066, I speak distinctively of

“Old-English,” as our kinsmen speak of “Alt-Deutsch.”

I now leave the subject with a reference to the golden words of Sir

Francis Palgrave, England and Normandy, iii. 630–2.

NOTE B. pp. 28, 133.

THE BRETWALDADOM AND THE IMPERIAL TITLES.

It is almost impossible, after the connexion between them which Sir

Francis Palgrave so earnestly strove to establish, to treat the question

of the Bretwaldas apart from the question of the Imperial titles borne

by the English Kings of the tenth and eleventh centuries. The unbroken

connexion between the two is the very life and soul of his theory. And

in discussing the matter we must never forget that it is to Sir Francis

Palgrave, more than to any other scholar, that we owe the assertion of

the great truth, without which all mediæval history is an insoluble

puzzle, that the Roman Empire did not come to an end in the year 476,

but that the Empire and Imperial ideas continued to be the very life of

European politics for ages after. On this head I must refer my readers

to Mr. Bryce’s brilliant Essay on the Holy Roman Empire, where the whole

doctrine is drawn out with wonderful clearness and power. (See also

Historical Essays, First Series, p. 126.) But Sir Francis Palgrave, as

usual, made too much of his theory; his very learning and ingenuity

carried him away. The Imperial doctrine itself, as put forth by him, was

greatly exaggerated, and connecting, as he did, the Bretwaldadom with

the later Imperial style, he was disposed to make as much as possible of

the Bretwaldadom. Mr. Kemble, on the other hand, is equally disposed to

make as little as possible of the Bretwaldadom, and I must say that he

slurs over the question of the Imperial titles in a strange way. In both

parts of the controversy, Sir Francis Palgrave may have given a wrong

explanation; but he has at least given a very elaborate and ingenious

explanation. Mr. Kemble leaves passages which must have some meaning

without any explanation at all. For my own part, I cannot help adding

that, years ago, when I first began these studies, I was altogether

carried away by the fascination of Sir Francis Palgrave’s theories. I

soon saw their exaggerated character, and how utterly unfounded a great

part of them were. I was thus led to go too far the other way, and

altogether to cast aside the notion of any Imperial sovereignty in our

Kings. Later thought and study have at last brought me to an

intermediate position, for which I trust that stronger grounds will be

found than for either of the extremes.

The name _Bretwalda_ comes from the well-known passage in the Chronicles

under the year 827, where it is found only in the Winchester version,

all the others having different spellings, _Brytenwalda_,

_Bretanenwealda_, _Brytenwealda_, _Brytenweald_. The only other place

that I know where any of these forms or anything like them occurs is in

a charter of Æthelstan in 934, in which that King is described (Cod.

Dipl. v. 218) as “Ongol-Saxna cyning and _Brytænwalda eallæs ðyses

iglandæs_;” the Latin equivalent (p. 217) is “Angul-Saxonum necnon et

totius Britanniæ rex, gratia Dei regni solio sublimatus.” Mr. Kemble

(ii. 13, 20) argues that the reading _Bretwalda_ is a false one, and

that the meaning _wielder_, _ruler_, or _Emperor of Britain_, or _of

Britons_, is altogether wrong. He takes the true reading to be

_Brytenwealda_, which he derives from the adjective _bryten_, so as to

mean _wide ruler_, quoting the word _Bryten-cyning_ and other similar

cognates as compound forms. As a piece of Teutonic scholarship Mr.

Kemble is most likely right, but I doubt whether his correction of the

etymology is of much strictly historical importance. When the entry in

the Chronicles was made, the title must have been familiar, and it must

have conveyed some meaning. And the forms _Bretwalda_ and

_Bretanenwealda_ seem clearly to show that those who used those forms

meant them, rightly or wrongly, to mean _wielder of Britain_. In the

charter of Æthelstan again, though the Latin and the English do not

exactly translate one another, I think it is plain that _Britanniæ Rex_

was meant to be the equivalent to _Brytænwalda_. I have therefore no

scruple in keeping to the more usual form and in attaching to it the

commonly received meaning. Less correct as a matter of scholarship, I

conceive it to be more correct as a matter of history.

But the passage in the Chronicles, as is well known, is founded on an

equally well-known passage in Bæda (ii. 5). Bæda there reckons up seven

Kings, Ælle of Sussex, Ceawlin of Wessex, Æthelberht of Kent, Rædwald of

East-Anglia, Eadwine, Oswald, and Oswiu of Northumberland, as having a

supremacy, if not over all Britain, yet at least beyond their own

immediate kingdoms. This supremacy he first calls _Imperium_ and then

_Ducatus_. The latter somewhat lowly form may perhaps be a warning

against attaching any exaggerated importance to the other. The

Chroniclers translate the “Imperium hujusmodi” of Bæda by the words

“_þus micel rice_.” They record Ecgberht’s conquest of Mercia, and say

that “he wæs se eahteþa cyning se þe Bretwalda wæs.” They then give

Bæda’s list of seven, with Ecgberht for the eighth. It is of course an

obvious difficulty that several Kings, especially of Mercia, who seem to

have been at least as powerful as any of those on the list, such as

Penda and Offa, and Æthelbald, whom Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 728 D)

speaks of as “rex regum,” are not found on the list. The writer of the

entry, a subject of Ecgberht or one of his successors, no doubt simply

copied Bæda’s list and added the name of Ecgberht, unwilling perhaps to

record the glories of princes of the rival kingdom. Now this objection

quite upsets the old notion with which Mr. Kemble makes himself so

merry, of a regular Federal monarchy under an elective Emperor or

Bretwalda; nor do I attempt to be wise above what is written or to

define anything with precision as to the nature of a supremacy of which

we have such slight records. Still the passages both in Bæda and the

Chronicles must have a meaning. They show that those seven Kings did

exercise a supremacy of some kind beyond the limits of their own

kingdoms, which supremacy Ecgberht was held to have continued or to have

revived. This supremacy is equally a fact whether those seven princes

bore any special title or not. That the Bretwaldadom of Æthelberht

carried with it some real dominion beyond the limits of Kent is shown by

the ease with which Augustine went and held a synod in a distant part of

England and a part still heathen. (See Bæda, ii. 2.) This could hardly

be except by virtue of a safe conduct from the common over-lord. Indeed

Bæda’s words are explicit—“adjutorio usus Ædilbercti regis.” The

supremacy of Ecgberht needs no comment, and Mr. Kemble himself (ii. 19)

calls attention to the fact that _Ducatus_, one of the words used by

Bæda, is used by Ecgberht himself in three charters (Cod. Dipl. vi. 79,

81, 84), in which Ecgberht dates the year of his _Ducatus_ ten years

later than the beginning of his reign as King, exactly like the years of

the _Regnum_ and the _Imperium_ of the later Emperors.

I believe then there was a real, though not an abiding or a very well

defined, supremacy which was often, perhaps generally, held by some one

of the Teutonic princes of Britain over as many of his neighbours,

Celtic and Teutonic alike, as he could extend it over. I believe that

this fact was remembered in the days of Ecgberht and of Æthelstan, and

that Æthelstan probably looked on himself as the successor of Ceawlin in

his wider no less than in his narrower dominion. What I cannot bring

myself to believe is that Ceawlin looked on himself as the successor of

Maximus and Carausius. Sir Francis Palgrave (i. 398) really seems to

have believed that Ælle the South-Saxon, the first recorded Bretwalda,

was called to the post of Emperor of Britain by the choice of the Welsh

princes. Now it is not easy to see in what Ælle’s Bretwaldadom

consisted. It is possible that the Jutes of Kent, and the settlers who

had already begun to make the east coast of Britain a Teutonic land, may

have invested him with some sort of general leadership for the better

carrying on of the Conquest. It is possible that he may have brought

under tribute some Welsh tribes which he did not root out, and that he

may so far have presented a dim foreshadowing of the glories of

Æthelstan and Eadgar. But the days of the Commendation had not yet come.

It is utterly incredible that Ælle held any authority over any Welsh

tribe, save such as he won and held at the point of the sword. It is

utterly incredible that any Welsh congress ever assembled to make him

Cæsar, Augustus, Tyrant, Bretwalda, or anything else. Cnut and William

indeed were chosen Kings of the English by electors, many of whom must

have shared as unwillingly in their work as any Welsh prince could have

shared in the work of investing Ælle with an Imperial crown. But the

times were utterly different; Cnut and William were not mere destroyers;

they took possession of an established kingdom, and it was not their

policy to destroy or to change one whit more than was absolutely

necessary for their own purposes. But Ælle, who did to Anderida as

Joshua did to Jericho and to Ai, was little likely indeed to receive an

Imperial diadem at the hands of the surviving Gibeonites. The dream of a

transmission of Imperial authority from the vanquished Briton to his

Teutonic conqueror seems to me the vainest of all the dreams which

ingenious men have indulged in.

What then was the Bretwaldadom? As we may fairly assert that the

passages which I have already quoted imply a real supremacy of some

kind, so, on the other hand, we may be equally sure that whatever they

imply was something of purely English growth, something in no way

connected with, or derived from, any older Welsh or Roman dominion.

Nothing is proved by the fact that Æthelberht imitated the coinage of

Carausius and put a wolf and twins on his money. Nothing was more common

than for the Teutonic states everywhere, and for the Saracen states too,

to imitate the coinage which supplied them with their most obvious

models. But on a coin of Carausius the wolf and twins had a most

speaking meaning; on a coin of Æthelberht they had no meaning at all. It

may be that Eadwine assumed some ensigns of dignity in imitation of

Roman pomp; the _tufa_ may have the special meaning attached to it, or

it may not; Eadwine, with the Roman Paulinus at his elbow, might well

indulge in a certain Imperial show, without any need of traditions

handed on from Maximus and Carausius. These are, I believe, the only

attempts at evidence to prove that the Bretwaldadom had a Roman origin;

and they prove about as much as King Ælfred’s notion (see his Laws,

Thorpe, i. 58) that the immemorial Teutonic (or rather Aryan, see Il.

ix. 629) practice of the _wergild_ was introduced by Christian Bishops

in imitation of the mild-heartedness of Christ. The title of Bretwalda,

or Brytenwealda, as borne by Æthelstan, was most likely equivalent to

_Imperator_ or _Basileus_; but if it was used by Ælle or Ceawlin, I

cannot think that it had any such meaning in their day.

It does not however seem that the supremacy of the early Bretwaldas

necessarily reached over the whole of Britain or even over the whole of

the Teutonic kingdoms in Britain. A marked predominance in the island, a

distinct superiority over other states than his own, seems to have been

enough to win for a prince a place on the list as given by Bæda and the

Chronicler, though there might be other states over which his dominion

did not reach. The supremacy of Ælle, and even that of Ceawlin, must

have been very far from reaching over all Britain. The supremacy of

Æthelberht is expressly limited by Bæda (ii. 5) to the English states

south of the Humber; “Tertius in regibus gentis Anglorum cunctis

australibus eorum provinciis quæ Humbræ fluvio et contiguis ei terminis

sequestrantur a borealibus, _imperavit_.” This excludes all the Celts

and also the Northumbrians. And it is worth noting that at least this

same extent of dominion is elsewhere (v. 23) attributed by Bæda to

Æthelbald of Mercia, whose name does not appear on his list; “Hæ omnes

provinciæ [all England east of Severn and Hereford west of it] cæteræque

australes ad confinium usque Hymbræ fluminis, cum suis quæque regibus,

Merciorum regi Ædilbaldo subjectæ sunt.” On the other hand, the dominion

of Eadwine is distinctly said not to have taken in Kent, and it seems

implied that it did not take in the Picts and Scots; “Aeduini ... majore

potentia cunctis qui Brittaniam incolunt, Anglorum pariter et Brettonum

populis præfuit, præter Cantuariis tantum.” Sir Francis Palgrave indeed

(ii. cccix.) attributes to Eadwine a dominion over the Picts and Scots.

The words of Bæda however seem to me to exclude it; I understand him as

attributing to Eadwine a dominion over the Britons only, that is the

Welsh (probably of Strathclyde), as distinguished from the Picts and

Scots. And the words which follow might seem to imply that Oswiu was the

first to extend the power of Northumberland beyond the Forth. After

describing the dominion of Eadwine he adds, “Sextus Oswald et ipse

Nordanhymbrorum rex Christianissimus, iisdem finibus regnum tenuit;

septimus Osuiu frater ejus, æqualibus pene terminis regnum nonnullo

tempore coercens, Pictorum quoque atque Scottorum gentes, quæ

septemtrionales Brittaniæ fines tenent, maxima ex parte perdomuit ac

tributarias fecit.” So afterwards (iii. 24), “Osuiu ... qui gentem

Pictorum maxima ex parte regno Anglorum subjecit.” Yet elsewhere (iii.

6) he attributes to Oswald also a dominion over Picts and Scots;

“Denique omnes nationes et provincias Brittaniæ, quæ in quatuor linguas,

id est Brettonum, Pictorum, Scottorum, et Anglorum, divisæ sunt, in

ditione accepit.” It should be remembered that there was a family

connexion between the Pictish royal family and that of Bernicia, and the

words just quoted might imply a voluntary acceptance of Oswald on the

part of the northern tribes. The peculiarity of Ecgberht’s position was

that he had received a formal submission from all the English princes in

Britain, and that he was able to do what no other Bretwalda had done, to

hand on his power to his children. This dominion Eadward and Æthelstan

won back and strengthened after the Danish invasion, and extended it

over Scotland and Strathclyde. Now begins the use of the Imperial style,

and I accordingly go on to give some examples of the various titles

assumed by our Kings from Æthelstan to Cnut. One such instance, that in

which Æthelstan uses the title of “Brytenwealda,” I have already quoted

(see above, p. 367). Among the others I select such as either illustrate

the use of the Latin Imperial titles, or which distinctly claim a

dominion beyond the English kingdom, or which are remarkable on some

other ground. I shall abstain from quoting those which present nothing

beyond the mere use of the word _Basileus_, which is almost as common as

_Rex_. Those which are found in charters marked by Mr. Kemble with an

asterisk I mark with an asterisk also.

1. Ego Æðelstanus rex Anglorum per omnipatrantis dexteram totius

Britaniæ regni solio sublimatus. Cod. Dipl. ii. 159; cf. v. 193.

*2. Quinto anno ex quo nobilissime gloriosus Rex Anglo-saxones regaliter

gubernabat, tertioque postquam authentice Northanhumbrorum Cumbrorumque

blanda mirifici conditoris benevolentia patrocinando sceptrinæ

gubernaculum perceperat virgæ, ii. 160.

Ego Æþelstan rex et rector totius Britanniæ cæterarumque Deo concedente

gubernator provinciarum. ii. 161; cf. v. 215.

*3. Ego Æðelstanus ipsius [altitonantis sc.] munificentia Basileus

Anglorum, simul et _Imperator regum_ et nationum infra fines Brittanniæ

commorantium. ii. 164.

*4. Ego Æðelstanus divinæ dispensationis providentia tam super

Britannicæ gentis quam super aliarum nationum huic subditarum _imperium_

elevatus Rex. ii. 167.

5. Ego Æðelstanus florentis Brytaniæ _monarchia_ præditus rex. ii. 173.

6. Ego Æðelstanus rex _monarchus_ totius Bryttanniæ insulæ, flante

Domino. ii. 204.

7. Ego Æþelstanus divina mihi adridente gratia rex Anglorum et

_curagulus_ totius Bryttanniæ. ii. 215.

8. Ego Æðelstanus Angulsaxonum rex non modica infulatus sublimatus

dignitate. v. 187.

9. Ego Æðelstan, Christo conferente rex et primicerius totius Albionis,

regni fastigium humili præsidens animo. v. 201, 204.

10. Ego Æðelstanus, omnicreantis disponente clementia Angligenarum

omniumque gentium undique secus habitantium rex. v. 214.

11. Ego Æðelstanus ... favente superno numine Basileus industrius

Anglorum cunctarumque gentium in circuitu persistentium. v. 229.

12. Æðelstanus, divina favente clementia, rex Anglorum et _æque totius

Britanniæ orbis curagulus_. v. 231.

*13. Ego Eadmundus divina favente gratia Basyleos Anglorum cæterarumque

provinciarum in circuitu persistentium primatum regalis regiminis

obtinens. ii. 220.

14. Ego Eadmundus rex Anglorum necnon et Merciorum. ii. 265.

15. Eadmundi regis qui regimina regnorum Angulsaxna et Norðhymbra,

Paganorum Brettonumque septem annorum intervallo regaliter gubernabat.

ii. 268.

16. Hoc apparet proculdubio in rege Anglorum gloriosissimo beato Dei

opere pretio Eadredo, quem Norðhymbra Paganorumque ceu cæterarum sceptro

provinciarum rex regum Omnipotens sublimavit, quique præfatus

_Imperator_ semper Deo grates dignissimas largâ manu subministrat. ii.

292.

17. Ego Eadred rex divina gratia totius Albionis monarchus et

primicerius. ii. 294.

18. Eadredus rex Anglorum, gloriosissimus rectorque, Norþanhymbra et

Paganorum _Imperator_, Brittonumque propugnator, ii. 296.

19. En onomatos cyrion doxa. Al wísdóm ge for Gode ge for werolde is

gestaðelad on ðæm hefonlícan goldhorde almæhtiges Godes per Jesum

Christum, cooperante gratiâ Spiritûs Sancti. He hafað geweorðad mid

cynedóme Angulseaxna Eádred _cyning and cásere totius Britanniæ_ Deo

gratias· for ðem weolegað and árað gehádade and lǽwede ða ðe mid rihte

magon geærnian. &c., &c. ii. 303.

20. Ego Eadredus Basileos Anglorum hujusque insulæ barbarorum. ii. 305.

21. Ego Eadred gratia Dei Occidentalium Saxonum rex. v. 323.

22. Ego Eadwig industrius Anglorum rex cæterarumque gentium in circuitu

persistentium gubernator et rector, primo anno _imperii_ mei. ii. 308;

cf. 329, 348.

23. Ego Eadwig divina dispositione gentis Angligenæ et diversarum

nationum industrius rex. ii. 316.

24. Ego Eadwig egregius Angulsaxonum Basileus cæterarumque plebium hinc

inde habitantium. ii. 318; cf. v. 344, 354.

25. Ego Eadwig totius Albionis insulæ illustrissimus _archons_. ii. 323;

cf. iii. 24.

26. Eadwig numine cœlesti gentis Gewissorum, Orientaliumque necnon

Occidentalium etiam Aquilonalium Saxonum archons. ii. 324; cf. v. 349.

27. Eadwi Rex, nutu Dei Angulsæxna et Norðanhumbrorum _Imperator_,

Paganorum gubernator, Breotonumque propugnator, ii. 325.

*28. Anno secundo _imperii_ Eadwiges totius Albionis insulæ

_imperantis_. ii. 341.

29. Ego Eadwi rex omnium gentium huic insulæ cohærentium. v. 341.

30. Ego Eadwig non solum Angul-Saxonum Basileus, verum etiam totius

Albionis insulæ gratia Dei sceptro fungens, v. 361.

31. Ego Eadwig _imperiali_ Anglo-Saxonum diademate infulatus, v. 379.

32. Ego Eadwig rex Saxonum. v. 395.

33. Ego Eadgar Britanniæ Anglorum _monarchus_. ii. 374.

*34. Ego Eadgarus Anglorum Basileus, omniumque regum insularum oceani

quæ Britanniam circumjacent, cunctarumque nationum quæ infra eum

includuntur _Imperator_ et dominus ... _monarchiam_ totius Angliæ ...

Anglorum _imperio_ ... Ego Eadgar Basileus Anglorum et Imperator regum

gentium. ii. 404–6.

35. Ic Eádgár cyning éac þurh his [Godes] gife ofer Engla þeóde nú úp

árǽred, and he hæfð nú gewẏld tó minum anwealde Scottas and Cumbras and

éac swylce Bryttas and eal ðǽt ðis igland him on innan hæfd. iii. 59.

36. Ego Eadgar divina allubescente gratia totius Albionis _Imperator

Augustus_. iii. 64.

*37. Signum Eadgari et serenissimi Anglorum _Imperatoris_. iii. 109.

38. Ego Eadgar gratia Dei rex Merciorum cæterarumque circumquaque

nationum. vi. 3.

39. Ego Eadgarus gentis Anglorum et barbarorum atque gentilium Rex ac

prædux. vi. 69.

*40. Ego Æðelred Dei gratia Anglorum rex _imperiosus_. iii. 204.

*41. Ego Æðelredus famosus totius Brittannicæ insulæ _Imperator_. iii.

251.

42. Ego Æðelredus totius Albionis Dei providentia _Imperator_. iii. 290.

43. Ego Æþelred rex totius insulæ. Ego Æþelred rex et rector angul

sexna. iii. 316, 317.

44. Ego Æðelred gentis gubernator Angligenæ totiusque insulæ corregulus

Britannicæ et cæterarum insularum in circuitu adjacentium. iii. 323.

45. Ego Æðelredus ipsius [celsitonantis Dei] opitulante gratia

Brittaniarum Rex. iii. 337.

*46. Ego Æðelredus Anglorum _Induperator_.

Ic Æðelred mid Godes gyfe Angelþeóde cyning and wealdend eác óðra

iglanda ðe hér ábútan licgað. iii. 348.

*47. Ego gratia summi Tonantis Angligenûm, Orcadarum, necne in gyro

jacentium _monarchus_ Æðelredus. iii. 346.

*48. Ego Æðelredus totius Britanniæ _Induperator_. iii. 355.

49. Prædicta _Augusta_ [Ælgifu-Emma]. iii. 358.

*50. Æðelred rex Anglo-Saxoniæ atque Norðhymbrensis gubernator

_monarchiæ_, paganorumque propugnator, ac Bretonum cæterarumque

provinciarum _Imperator_. vi. 166.

51. Æðelredus, gratia Dei sublimatus rex et _monarchus_ totius Albionis.

vi. 167.

52. Ego Cnut totius Britanniæ _monarchus_. vi. 179.

53. Ego _Imperator_ Knuto, a Christo Rege regum regiminis Anglici in

insula potitus. iv. 1.

54. Ego Knut telluris Britanniæ totius largiflua Dei gratia subpetente

subthronizatus rex ac rector. iv. 7.

55. Ego Cnut _Basileon Angelsaxonum_ disponente clementia creantis. iv.

18.

*56. Ic Cnut þurh Godes geve Ænglelandes kining and ealre ðáre eglande

ðe ðǽrtó licgeð. iv. 23.

57. Ego Cnut rex totius Albionis cæterarumque gentium triviatim

persistentium Basileus. iv. 35.

58. Ego Cnut, misericordia Dei Basileus, omnis Britaniæ regimen adeptus.

iv. 45.

Of these forms, Nos. 10, 11, 13 are used over and over again with

various slight changes. The forms “totius Britanniæ” or “Albionis rex”

or “Basileus” occur constantly. They are distinctly more common than the

simple “Anglorum rex.” “Anglorum Basileus” and forms to the like effect

are also common. In fact a charter which does not in one way or the

other assert a dominion beyond the simple royalty of the English nation

is rather the exception. On the other hand we now and then, as in Nos.

21, 32, come upon forms which are startling from their very simplicity.

No. 32, I suppose, belongs to the days when Eadwig was reduced to the

kingdom of Wessex. Meanwhile Eadgar in his Mercian charter, No. 38,

seems to claim, what doubtless was the case, the external dominion of

the crown as belonging to himself rather than to his West-Saxon brother.

Nos. 14, 15, 16, 18, 27, 50 are remarkable for the use of the word

“Angli” and “Angulseaxe” in a sense excluding Northumberland. In No. 14

indeed “Angli” excludes the Mercians. It might be almost rendered

“Saxons.” So completely had “Anglus” become the national name, even in

the most purely Saxon parts of the country.

Some of these titles call for some special notice. _Brytenwealda_ I have

already spoken of. No. 19 is remarkable as the only one in which the

title of _Cæsar_ occurs in any shape. _Casere_ is the regular English

description of the continental Emperors, but I know no other instance of

its application to an English King. (Perhaps the most striking instance

of its use is where Alfred in his Boetius calls Odysseus “án _cyning_

þæs nama Aulixes, se hæfde twa þioda under þam _kasere_ ... and þæs

kaseres nama wæs Agamemnon.”) This solitary English use of the word is a

remarkable contrast to the fact that _Kaiser_ altogether displaced

_König_ as the title of the German sovereign. In fact none of these

titles ever came into common use, even in Latin, much less in English.

_Basileus_, so common in charters, is very rare anywhere else. It occurs

twice in Florence, once (975) where Eadgar is called “Anglici orbis

Basileus,” and again (1016) where Eadric at Sherstone is made to talk of

“dominus vester Eadmundus _Basileus_;” and once in the Ramsey History,

c. 87, where the writer speaks of “Ædgari victoriosissimi Anglorum

_Basilei_ munificentia regalis.” _Imperator_, less rare than _Cæsar_, is

less usual than _Basileus_. _Prædux_ in No. 39 reminds one of the

_ducatus_ of Bæda and of Ecgberht’s charters (see above, p. 551). The

oddest titles of all are _Primicerius_ and _Curagulus_ or _Coregulus_.

Probably _Curagulus_ means _caretaker_, but with the idea of _Rex_ or

_Regulus_ floating in the mind of the scribe, which accounts for the

spelling _Coregulus_. I am uncertain whether the words _monarchus_,

_monarchia_, are to be reckoned as strictly Imperial. They are so used

by Dante in his famous treatise “De Monarchia;” but it is clear that

they have no such special meaning in the rhetoric of Dudo. They may have

been used with equal vagueness in the kindred rhetoric of our charters.

Thus for instance in a doubtful grant of Eadgar, dated 958, in

possession of the Chapter of Wells, Eadgar is made to call himself “Rex

Merciorum et Norðanhymbrorum atque Brettonum;” and afterwards, “divina

favente gratia totius regni Merciorum monarchiam obtinens.”

That of these titles _Casere_, _Basileus_, and _Imperator_ are meant to

be Imperial in the strictest sense I have no doubt. If the title of

_Basileus_ stood alone, it might possibly be merely an instance of the

prevalent fondness for Greek titles; the King might be called _Basileus_

only in the same vague way in which his Ealdormen are called _satrapæ_

and _archontes_. Yet even this would be unlikely; _satrapa_ and _archon_

were not established titles, assumed by a single potentate in a special

sense, and which the diplomacy of the age confined to that potentate.

But _Basileus_ was simply Greek for _Imperator_. To be addressed as

_Imperator_ and _Basileus_ by the ambassadors of Nikêphoros (Einhard,

an. 812. “Laudes et dixerunt, Imperatorem eum et Basileum appellantes”)

is reckoned among the most brilliant triumphs of Charles the Great. It

was the formal acknowledgment of the claims of the Western Cæsar at the

hands of his Eastern colleague or rival. So, later in the ninth century,

the title of _Basileus_ became the subject of a curious diplomatic

controversy between the rival claimants of the dignity which it denoted,

Basil of the New, and Lewis of the Old, Rome, and the Western disputant

went very deep into the matter indeed. (See the letter of Lewis,

“Imperator Augustus Romanorum,” to Basil, “æque Imperator Novæ Romæ,” in

the Chronicle of Salerno, cap. 93 et seqq.; Muratori, t. ii. p. ii. p.

243. See Comparative Politics, 49, 353.) So Liudprand (Legatio, c. 2)

complains that the Nikêphoros of his day refused the title to Otto;

“Ipse enim vos non _Imperatorem_, id est βασιλέα sua lingua, sed ob

indignationem ῥῆγα, id est _Regem_ nostra vocabat.” So late as John

Kinnamos, lib. v. 9 (pp. 228, 229, ed. Bonn), Frederick Barbarossa is

only ῥὴξ Ἀλαμανῶν; the Eastern Emperor alone is βασιλεύς and αὐτοκράτωρ.

That the titles _Casere_ and _Imperator_ are strictly Imperial hardly

needs proof; the only question is whether we are to look for a strictly

Imperial meaning in every instance of the use of the noun _imperium_ and

the verb _imperare_.

The use of _Basileus_ seems more common in England than anywhere else;

yet we find it in Abbo (i. 43) of Charles the Third;

“Urbs mandata fuit Karolo nobis Basileo,

Imperio cujus regitur totus prope kosmus,

Post Dominum, regem dominatoremque potentem.”

_Imperator_ (see Ducange, in voc.) seems to have been used by several

Kings of Castile, on precisely the same ground on which it was used in

England, namely that they were Emperors, independent of Rome or

Byzantium, but holding an Imperial power over princes within their own

peninsula. So Robert de Monte, 1153 (Pertz, vi. 503), “Quia principatur

regulis Arragonum et Galliciæ, Imperatorem Hispaniarum appellant.” The

West-Frankish and French instances which Ducange quotes seem very

doubtful. Charles the Bald, it must be remembered, really was Emperor in

his last years. The oddest thing of all is the fact that the Saxon Kings

Henry and Otto were saluted _Imperator_ by their soldiers in the sense

of the days of the Roman Republic. See Widukind, i. 39; iii. 49. Henry

was “pater patriæ, rerum dominus et Imperator ab exercitu appellatus;”

Otto “triumpho celebri rex factus gloriosus, ab exercitu pater patriæ

Imperatorque appellatus est.” (See p. 143.) In this sense not only

Cæsar, but Cicero also was Emperor. Perhaps the strangest description of

all is that of Charles the Fat in Will. Malms. ii. 111, “Ego Karolus

imperator, gratuito Dei dono rex Germanorum et patricius Romanorum,

atque imperator Francorum.”

It is worth noticing that, though some of the most distinctly Imperial

descriptions are found in charters whose genuineness is undoubted, yet

the proportion of them which are found in doubtful or spurious charters

is remarkably large. This fact in no way tells against the Imperial

theory, but rather in its favour. A forger will naturally reproduce

whatever he thinks most characteristic of the class of documents which

he is imitating; but, in so doing, he is likely somewhat to overdo

matters. A forger, thus attempting to copy the style of a charter of

Eadgar or Æthelred, perhaps actually reproducing a genuine charter from

memory, would naturally fill his composition with the most high-sounding

of all the titles that he had ever seen in any genuine charter. The most

purely Imperial style would thus find its way into forgeries in greater

abundance than into genuine charters. Still the spurious documents are,

in this way, evidence just as much as the genuine ones. The doubtful and

spurious charters have therefore a certain value; their formulæ are part

of the case, and I have not scrupled to add them to my list.

With regard to the assertion of the Imperial character of English

royalty in later times, the doubtful title of “monarcha” or “monarches”

still goes on. Thus in the charter of William Rufus to John of Tours,

preserved in manuscript at Wells, the King is described as “Willelmus

Willelmi regis filius, Dei dispositione monarches Britanniæ.” So, long

after, in a letter from Henry the Sixth to James the Second of Scotland

(correspondence of Thomas Bekynton, ii. 141), the English King is made

to say, “verum et notorium est supremum jus et directum dominium regni

Scotiæ ad regem Angliæ utpote totius Britanniæ monarcham de jure

pertinere.” So in i. 119 of the same collection, where Henry the Sixth

petitions Pope Eugenius the Fourth for the canonization of Ælfred, the

West-Saxon King is described as “Sanctus et Deo devotissimus rex

Aluredus, qui incliti regni Angliæ primus monarcha erat.” It was also

held necessary at various times to deny any superiority of the

continental Emperors over England. Thus it was declared in Edward the

Second’s reign (1330), “Quod regnum Angliæ ab omni subjectione Imperiali

sit liberrimum” (Selden, Titles of Honour, p. 21. b. i. c. 2). And in

1416 a renunciation of all supremacy was required from Sigismund, King

of the Romans, before he was allowed to land in England (see Selden,

u. s.; Lingard, iii. 505; Bryce, 207. But the account in Redman, p. 49,

and Elmham, Liber. Metr. p. 133, is much less explicit). So late as

Elizabeth’s reign, Sir Thomas Smith, in his Commonwealth of England

(10), describing the union of the English kingdoms into one, goes on to

explain that “neither anyone of those Kings, neither he who first had

all, tooke any investiture at the hands of the Emperor of Rome, or of

any other superiour or forraine Prince, but held of God to himselfe, and

by his sword, his people, and crowne, acknowledging no Prince in earth

his superiour, and so it is kept and holden at this day.” But beside

this denial of all Imperial supremacy anywhere else, we also find the

Imperial character of our sovereigns from Edward the First to Elizabeth

from time to time directly asserted. Thus there are two cases in which

the title of Emperor is given to Edward the First, in both cases with

distinct reference to his supremacy over Scotland. The elder Robert

Bruce (Palgrave, Documents, p. 29) claimed the kingdom from Edward the

First as _Emperor_. “Sire Robert de Brus ... prie a nostre Seignur le

Rey, come son sovereyn Seigneur e _son Empeur_.” So when the question is

raised whether the controversy between the candidates for the Scottish

crown should be judged by the Imperial law or by any other, one of the

Prelates consulted (“episcopus Bibliensis,” perhaps a Bishop of Byblos

_in partibus_) answers that the King of England must follow the law of

his own realm because “he is Emperor here” (Rishanger, Riley, p. 255).

“Dixit quod dominus rex secundum leges per quas judicat subjectos suos

debet procedere in casu isto, _quia hic censetur Imperator_.” So

Professor Stubbs (Const. Hist. ii. 491) quotes a statute of 1397 in

which Richard the Second is described as “entier emperour de son

roialme.” The title is also challenged for Henry the Fifth in a

negociation at the siege of Rouen. In the riming Chronicle of John Page

(Historical Collections of a Citizen of London, Camden Society, 1876) an

English knight is made to say of his own King,

“And he ys kyng excellent,

And unto non othyr obedyent,

That levythe here in erthe be ryght,

But only unto God almyght,

With-yn hys owne Emperoure,

And also kyng and conqueroure.”

In Henry the Eighth’s time the words “Empire” and “Imperial Crown” are

constantly used in a way which cannot fail to be of set purpose. The

Statute of Appeals of 1537, in renouncing all jurisdiction on the part

of the Roman Pontiff, clothed the renunciation in words whose force can

hardly be misunderstood, and which seem designed expressly to exclude

the supremacy of the Roman Cæsar as well. The emphatic words run thus;

“Whereas by divers and sundry old authentic histories and chronicles, it

is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England _is an

Empire_, and so hath been accepted in the world; governed by one supreme

head and King, having the dignity and royal estate of _the Imperial

Crown_ of the same ... without restraint, or provocation to _any foreign

prince or potentate of the world_.” So again, “to keep it from the

annoyance as well of the See of Rome _as from the authority of other

foreign potentates_ attempting the diminution or violation thereof”

(Selden, p. 18; Froude, Hist. Eng. i. 410–412). In an Irish Act of the

same reign a further step is taken, and the King is distinctly spoken of

as Emperor. As Selden (u. s.) puts it, “The Crown of England in other

Parliaments of later times is titled the Imperial Crown; the Kings of

England being also in the express words of an Irish Parliament titled

_Kings and Emperours of the Realm of England and of the Land of

Ireland_, and that before the title of Lord of Ireland was allied with

King.” As for Elizabeth, at her coronation her herald formally

proclaimed her as “most worthy Empress from the Orcade isles to the

mountains Pyrenee.” (See Strickland’s Life of Elizabeth, p. 166, where a

very strange interpretation is put on the words.) “The mountains

Pyrenee” are a flourish which seems to have come from the days of Henry

the Second, when Gilbert Foliot (Ralph of Diss, X Scriptt. 542) speaks

of “dominationis suæ loca quæ ab boreali oceano Pirenæum usque porrecta

sunt.” (So William of Newburgh, i. 94.) And the special mention of the

“Orcade isles” might seem to come out of a charter of Æthelred (Cod.

Dipl. iii. 346); “Angligenum, Orcadarum necne in gyro jacentium

monarchus.” So in 1559, in the debate on restoring to the Crown the

ecclesiastical jurisdiction surrendered under Mary, those who opposed

Elizabeth’s spiritual claims still pointedly admitted her Imperial

position in temporal matters. Archbishop Heath says, “She being our

Sovereign Lord and Lady, our King and Queen, our Emperor and Empress,

other Kings and Princes of duty ought to pay tribute unto her, she being

free from them all” (Strype’s Annals, I. Append. No. 6). And in the

first English translation of Camden’s Britannia (London, 1625), the

title of the book is given as “The true and Royall history of the famous

Empresse Elizabeth, Queen of England.”

Lastly, a pamphlet was published in 1706, when the Union with Scotland

was under debate, headed, “The Queen an Empress, and her three kingdoms

an Empire,” proposing a curious scheme for a British Empire, with

subordinate Kings, Princes, and a Patriarch of London. It is of course

an imitation of the constitution of _the_ Empire, but the writer refers

once or twice to the days of Eadgar for precedents.

The Imperial position of the English King seemed naturally (see p. 134)

to carry with it the Papal position of the English Primate. Britain is

another world, a world beyond the sea, distinct from the “orbis

Romanus.” On this head I have collected a good many extracts in

Comparative Politics, 351. So Eumenius Constantio, Pan. Vet. v. 11;

“Quam Cæsar, ille auctor vestri nominis, eum Romanorum primus intrasset,

alium se orbem terrarum scripsit reperisse, tantæ magnitudinis

arbitratus, ut non circumfusa oceano sed complexa ipsum oceanum

videretur.” (Cf. R. de Diceto, i. 438, ed. Stubbs.) As another world

then, Britain is entitled to its own Cæsar, “mundi dominus” within his

own four seas, and no less to its own Pontiff. As Florence (see above,

p. 559) calls Eadgar “Anglici _orbis_ Basileus,” and as in No. 12 of our

extracts we heard of “totius Britanniæ orbis,” evidently in this sense,

so Pope Urban (Eadmer, Vit. Ans. ii. c. 4) salutes Anselm with an

analogous title, as “comparem vel ut _alterius orbis apostolicum_ et

patriarcham jure venerandum,” or as William of Malmesbury (Gest. Pont.

ap. Scriptt. p. Bed. 127) puts it still more strongly, “Includamus hunc

in orbe nostro, quasi _alterius orbis papam_.” The same idea, one degree

less strongly expressed, is found in William of Jumièges’ (vi. 9)

description of Lanfranc as “gentium transmarinarum summus pontifex.”

This of course connects itself with the not uncommon description of

England and the English King as “partes transmarinæ,” “rex

transmarinus,” &c. See for instance Flodoard, A. 945. So, on the other

side, in the Fulda Annals, 876 (Pertz, i. 389), “Karolus ... ablato

regis nomine, se Imperatorem et Augustum _omnium regem_ cis mare

consistentium appellare præcepit.”

I have thus, I trust, brought together quite evidence enough to show

what was the meaning and purpose of the Imperial style which was

anciently adopted by our Kings, and distinct traces of which still

survive in more than one familiar expression to this day. I do not doubt

that other scholars, in their several lines of study, must often light

on other passages bearing on the subject. I will wind up with one more,

not the least remarkable of the number, that in which Abbot Baldric, the

poetical panegyrist of the great men of his day, describes (Duchesne,

Rer. Franc. Scriptt. iv. 257) the great William as one

“Qui dux Normannis, qui Cæsar præfuit Anglis.”

NOTE C. p. 30.

THE EARLY RELATIONS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND THE CONTINENT.

The notices of Britain between the time of the English Conquest and the

conversion of the English to Christianity are indeed few and far

between. They are chiefly to be found in an episode of Prokopios (Bell.

Goth. iv. 20), from which I have made two quotations in the text (pp.

22, 30). That the Brittia of Prokopios is Britain, and not, as Dr.

Latham (Dict. Geog., art. Britannicæ Insulæ) fancies, Heligoland, Rugen,

or some other island, I have no kind of doubt, and Mr. Kemble seems not

to have entertained any. The difficulty is what his Brettania is. It

strikes me that he had heard both of the continental and the insular

_Britannia_, and that he fancied them to be two islands. His Brittia

therefore is Britain and his Brettania is Britanny. (Cf. Zeuss, _Die

Deutschen_, 362; “Βριττία, Britannia, und Βριταννία, Hibernia,

wahrscheinlich durch Vermengung mit Britannia cismarina, Bretagne.”)

John Kinnamos (ii. 12, p. 67 ed. Bonn), ranks Βρίττιοι καὶ Βρετανοί

among the Crusaders. Allowing for the primary error of fancying Britanny

to be an island, his geographical description is really not so monstrous

as might be thought. His well-known story about the souls of the dead

being ferried over to Brittia, and his confused and marvellous account

of the Roman wall, show how strange and mysterious a land Britain had

already become. But the two passages which I have quoted are distinct

and intelligible. For an island inhabited by Angles, Frisians, and

Britons we need not go far afield.

Prokopios tells us nothing of the process by which these three nations

came into the island. There is, as far as I know, only one foreign

notice of the English Conquest, which is however probably contemporary

with one stage or another of it. This is in the Chronicon Imperiale of

Prosper (see Dict. Biog. and Potthast’s _Wegweiser_ in Prosper), written

either in the fifth or in the sixth century. Here we have two entries

(Duchesne, Rer. Franc. Scriptt. i. 198, 199; M. H. B. lxxxii.); the

former saying that “hac tempestate [the time of Constantine the Tyrant,

407–411; cf. Zôsimos, vi. 5], præ valitudine Romanorum, vires funditus

attenuatæ Britanniæ.” The other says that, some time before the death of

Aëtius in 454, “Britanniæ usque ad hoc tempus variis cladibus

eventibusque laceratæ, in ditionem Saxonum rediguntur.” I am however not

sure that Prokopios has not a dark and confused allusion to the

Armorican migration when he speaks of vast numbers of people coming from

Britain to settle in the land of the Franks, on the strength of which it

was that the Frankish Kings claimed the dominion of the island (τοσαύτη

ἡ τῶνδε τῶν ἐθνῶν πολυανθρωπία φαίνεται οὖσα ὥστε ἀνὰ πᾶν ἔτος κατὰ

πολλοὺς ἐνθένδε μετανιστάμενοι ξὺν γυναιξὶ καὶ παισὶν ἐς Φράγγους

χωροῦσιν. οἱ δὲ αὐτοὺς ἐνοικίζουσιν ἐν γῆς τῆς σφετέρας τὴν ἐρημοτέραν

δοκοῦσαν εἶναι, καὶ ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ τὴν νῆσον προσποιεῖσθαί φασιν). In an

earlier passage Prokopios makes Belisarios (ii. 6) make the Goths the

offer of Bretannia as an island much larger than Sicily. This is

evidently in mockery, and it seems to imply that both Britain and

Britanny were looked on as lands which had quite passed out of all

practical reckoning on the part of the Empire.

Prokopios goes on, in the same chapter, to tell a long story, which is

discussed by Mr. Kemble (Saxons in England, i. 23; cf. Zeuss, Die

Deutschen, 362), of an English princess (παρθένου κόρης, γένους Βριττίας

... ἧσπερ ἀδελφὸς βασιλεὺς ἦν τότε Ἀγγίλων τοῦ ἔθνους), who was

betrothed to Radiger, son of the King of the Varni, who, on his father’s

death, instead of fulfilling his engagement, married his father’s widow,

a sister of Theodberht, King of the Franks, who reigned from 534 to 537.

The incestuous marriage, which was repeated in after days by Eadbald of

Kent and Æthelbald of Wessex, is expressly said to have been contracted

in obedience to the dying commands of Radiger’s father (cf. Soph. Trach.

1199–1207), by the advice of his chief men, and in conformity with the

custom of the nation (καθάπερ ὁ πάτριος ἡμῖν ἐφίησι νόμος). The English

princess however gathers a vast fleet and army, takes with her one of

her brothers, not the King, as its commander, sails to the mouth of the

Rhine, fights a battle, defeats Radiger, and compels him to send away

his step-mother and marry her. The tale, which is told in great detail,

is doubtless mythical in its details; but we may, with Mr. Kemble,

accept it as pointing to the possibility of some intercourse, both

peaceful and warlike, between the insular and the continental Teutons.

But I cannot follow Mr. Kemble when he goes on (i. 25) to build up, on

the expressions of a German ecclesiastical writer, a theory of insular

Saxons aiding the Frank Theodoric in a war with the Thuringians. The

author of the Translation of Saint Alexander (Pertz, ii. 674) is not

speaking of any particular detachment of Saxons from Britain coming over

to Germany to take a part in a particular war. By a strange perversion,

this writer of the ninth century derives the continental Saxons, as a

nation, from the English in Britain; “Saxonum gens, sicut tradit

antiquitas, ab Anglis Britanniæ incolis egressa, per Oceanum navigans

Germaniæ litoribus studio et necessitate quærendarum sedium appulsa

est.” On this the editor remarks, “More solito traditio res gestas

invertit, ita ut Saxones non e Saxonia Britanniam, sed ex Britannia

Saxoniam appulisse dicantur.” The legend is no doubt a corruption of the

legendary origin of the Saxons given by Widukind, i. 3–6. On the sense

in which the English had a better right to the name of “Old-Saxons” than

the Saxons on the continent, see Zeuss, Die Deutschen, 188.

It is worth remarking that Jordanes, though he devotes his second

chapter to a description of Britain, simply gives an account patched up

from Cæsar, Livy, Strabo, and Dio, and seems to describe the Britons as

still the inhabitants of the island, without any reference to the

settlement of the English. He makes another reference to Britain in his

fifth chapter, but it is of a purely mythical kind.

I doubt whether there is any mention of England in Gregory of Tours,

except in the two passages where he records the marriage of Æthelberht

with the daughter of Chariberht. He does not use the words Saxon, Angle,

or Britain, but he speaks of Kent as if the name were familiarly known.

“Charibertus ... filiam habuit quæ postea in Cantiam, virum accipiens,

est deducta” (iv. 26). So afterwards (ix. 26) he speaks of “filiam

unicam quam in Cantia regis cujusdam filius matrimonio copulavit.”

Coming down later among continental writers, there is a well known

passage in the Annals of Einhard (A. 786) in which he speaks of the

English Conquest and of the Armorican migration as its consequence.

Charles leads his army “in Brittanniam cismarinam,” and the Annalist

goes on to explain; “Nam quum ab Anglis ac Saxonibus Brittannia insula

fuisset invasa, magna pars incolarum ejus mare trajiciens in ultimis

Galliæ finibus Venetorum et Coriosolitarum regiones occupavit.” There is

another mention of the Armorican migration in Ermoldus Nigellus, iii. 11

(Pertz, ii. 490). Lantpreht (Lambert), whose command lies in Britanny,

is thus described;

“Prævidet hic fines, quos olim gens inimica

Trans mare lintre volans ceperat insidiis.

Hic populus veniens supremo ex orbe Britanni,

Quos modo Brittones Francica lingua vocat.

Nam telluris egens, vento jactatus et imbri,

Arva capit prorsus, atque tributa parat.

Tempore nempe illo hoc rus quoque Gallus habebat,

Quando idem populus fluctibus actus adest.”

On the whole it would seem that a certain amount of intercourse was kept

up between the Franks in Gaul and the Southern English states, but that

to the world in general Britain had become an unknown land about which

any fables might be put forth.

NOTE D. p. 38.

THE RELATIONS OF CHARLES THE GREAT WITH MERCIA AND NORTHUMBERLAND.

All the passages bearing on the relations of Charles the Great with

Mercia, Northumberland, and Scotland are collected by Sir Francis

Palgrave, English Commonwealth, i. 484 et seqq. The cream of the matter

is contained in the account given by Einhard, A. 808; “Interea rex

Nordanhumbrorum de Brittania insula, nomine Eardulf, regno et patria

pulsus, ad Imperatorem dum adhuc Noviomagi moraretur venit, et patefacto

adventûs sui negotio, Romam proficiscitur Romaque rediens, per legatos

Romani pontificis et domni Imperatoris in regnum suum reducitur.” One of

the legates was “Aldulfus diaconus de ipsa Brittania, natione Saxo,”

spoken of in p. 534. That Eardwulf became the man of Charles there seems

no doubt. Pope Leo says “vester semper fidelis exstitit.” The submission

of the Scots is also mentioned by Einhard in the Life of Charles, c. 16;

“Scotorum quoque reges sic habuit ad suam voluntatem per munificentiam

inclinatos, ut eum numquam aliter nisi _dominum_, seque _subditos et

servos ejus_, pronunciarent.” One would suppose that the Scots both of

Ireland and of Britain are included. This mention of the Scots comes

between the dealings of Charles with Alfonso of Gallicia and those with

Haroun al Rashid. The relation both of the Scots and of the

Northumbrians seems to have been a relation of _commendation_, a term on

which I shall presently have much to say. The Scots doing homage to

Charles on account of his gifts is not unlike the homage which we shall

find done by certain French princes to Eadward the Confessor.

The relations between Charles and Offa, and their temporary difference,

are also fully explained in the passages collected by Sir Francis

Palgrave. A number of important letters will be found in Haddan and

Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, iii. 486 et seqq.; Jaffé,

Monumenta Alcuiniana, 155, 167, 290, et al. There is a long mythical

account of it in the Vita Offæ Secundi, pp. 13 et seqq. From thence Sir

F. Palgrave quotes the story that Archbishop Janberht had promised to

admit a Frankish army into England (Vita Offæ, 21). This is doubtless a

good deal exaggerated, but notice should be taken of a very remarkable

expression in the account given in Cod. Dipl. i. 281 of the relations

between Offa’s successor Cenwulf and Archbishop Wulfred. It is plain

that a deep impression had been made on the minds of Englishmen by the

dealings of Charles in the matters of Eardwulf, Ealhwine, and Janberht;

“Tunc in eodem concilio cum maxima districtione illi episcopo mandavit

quod omnibus rebus quæ illius dominationis sunt dispoliatus debuisset

fieri, omnique de patria ista esse profugus, et numquam nec _verbis

domni Papæ nec Cæsaris_ seu alterius alicujus gradu huc in patriam

iterum recipisse.” Cenwulf clearly held that neither the Bishop of Rome

nor the Emperor of Rome either had any jurisdiction in his realm of

Mercia. The odd description of Offa as the Western and Charles as the

Eastern potentate comes from a very suspicious source, namely the Life

of Offa, p. 21; “Ego Karolus regum Christianorum orientalium

potentissimus, vos, O Offane, regum occidentalium Christianorum

potentissime, cupio lætificare,” &c. But the expression is singular

enough to be worth quoting, if only on account of its very singularity,

as it is the sort of thing which one can hardly fancy a forger

inventing.

The influence of Charles in English affairs is strangely exaggerated in

a passage of John of Wallingford (Gale, 529); “Rex Pipinus obiit regni

ejus anno xii. Successitque Karolus filius ejus anno ab Incarnatione

Domini DCCLXIX. Porro iste, sicut alia regna, sic et Angliam tempore

hujus regis Offæ sibi subegit.”

The description of Offa in the Chronicle of Saint Wandrille (Pertz, ii.

291) as “Rex Anglorum sive Merciorum potentissimus” should be noticed.

NOTE E. p. 48.

THE CHANGES IN NOMENCLATURE PRODUCED BY THE DANISH SETTLEMENT.