Mr. Kemble has gone (Saxons in England, i. 77–84) very minutely into the

subject of the old divisions of England, and he has collected a great

number of names, some of which can be easily identified, while others

can only be guessed at and some are quite hopeless. But it is plain (see

Kemble, i. 78, 79) that the West-Saxon names, Wilsætas, Sumorsætas,

Dornsætas, are all older than Ælfred’s time, while the names of the

present Mercian shires are later than Ælfred, and have supplanted

earlier names, as appears from Mr. Kemble’s list of old Mercian shires

(i. 81), some of which are quite unintelligible. One or two very obvious

instances will be enough for my purpose. Thus the principality of the

Hwiccas has long formed two whole shires, Worcester and Gloucester, and

part of another, Warwick. The Magesætas seem to be divided between

Herefordshire and Shropshire. Lincolnshire contains several

principalities, Gainas, Lindisfaras, &c., but the traces of their

original independence are not wholly lost even at the present day.

In Wessex most of the shires, Berkshire, Somerset, Dorset, Devonshire,

are clearly not called from towns. Somerset and Dorset have cognate

towns in Somerton and Dorchester; but they are merely cognate; the shire

is not called after the town. But Hampshire, the County of Southampton,

is simply _Hamtunscír_, from the town of Hampton. Hampshire was the

first conquest; no doubt it had originally no local name like the other

shires, but was simply _Westseaxe_ or _Westseaxnarice_. When therefore

it became a mere shire, it had to take a new name, and was named from

the town. It may be asked why the shire which contained the capital was

called from the town of Hampton and not from the royal city of

Winchester. I can only suggest that some prerogative of the crown or

some privilege of the citizens may have kept the capital more distant

from the body of the shire than Hampton was.

Wiltshire is a case intermediate between Hampshire and Somerset. The

Wilsætas are a tribe, and have their chief town Wilton. But the form

_Wiltunscír_ shows that the shire is immediately called from the town,

whence the _t_ in the modern form Wiltshire.

In Mercia, on the other hand, all the shires are now called from towns

with one, perhaps two exceptions. _Shropshire_ seems to be rather

cognate with Shrewsbury than directly derived from it, and alongside of

_Scrobbesbyrigscír_ the _Scrobsœtas_ continue to be heard of. Rutland,

at once the smallest and the most modern of Mercian shires, is, oddly

enough, the only one which has a distinct territorial name, not even

cognate with that of any town. Rutland, as a distinct shire, is later

than Domesday, where it appears, strangely enough, as a kind of

appendage to Nottingham. How it gained the rank of a shire, while the

adjoining and larger district of Holland did not, would be an

interesting question for local antiquaries.

I have no doubt that the Mercian shires were mapped out afresh after the

reconquest. That the redistribution was not made by the Danish invaders

is plain from the fact that the boundary laid down between Guthrum and

Ælfred is not attended to in marking out the divisions of the shires. We

may conceive that the work was begun by Ælfred, or rather perhaps by

Æthelred and Æthelflæd in that part of Mercia which was assigned to them

by the peace with Guthrum, and that it was further carried on by Eadward

the Elder after the recovery of Danish Mercia. In this we may see the

groundwork of the legendary belief that Ælfred first divided England

into shires and hundreds. With the shires within his own kingdom there

was no need to meddle. Gneist (Englische Verwaltungsrecht, i. 56)

enlarges on the share of Ælfred in this matter, but leaves out Eadward.

As for the nomenclature of towns and villages, it would seem that places

were more commonly named directly after individuals in the course of the

Danish Conquest than they had been by the earlier English occupiers. At

least, among the names given during the English occupation, those which

are formed from the proper name itself are less common than those which

are formed from the patronymic ending in -_ing_. These last again raise

the question, how far they are called after historical individuals and

how far they are tribe-names called after some mythical patriarch. This

last view will be found discussed at length by Kemble, Saxons in

England, i. 59 and Appendix A. (See also Comparative Politics, 395.)

Names like Toot_ing_, Bens_ing_ton, Gill_ing_ham, give the typical

forms. On the other hand (see Kemble’s note, p. 60), it should be

remembered that this familiar form _ing_, being so familiar, has often

swallowed up others; thus Eth_an_dún, Æbb_an_dún, Hunt_an_dún, forms of

quite different origin, have been corrupted into Ed_ing_ton, Ab_ing_don,

Hunt_ing_don. Birm_ing_ham again has been thought to to be a corruption

of _Bromicham_, but Mr. Kemble (i. 457) admits it as a genuine

patronymic from the Beormingas. On the other hand, Glæst_inga_byrig, a

genuine patronymic, has been corrupted into Glast_on_bury, and a wrong

derivation given to the name.

An exact parallel to the Danish system of nomenclature is supplied by a

later and less known, though very remarkable, settlement of the same

kind, the Flemish occupation of Pembrokeshire in the twelfth century.

The villages in the Teutonic part of that county bear names exactly

analogous to those of Lincolnshire, only ending in the English _ton_

instead of the Danish _by_. Such are Johnston, Williamston,

Herbrandston, and a crowd of others.

NOTE F. p. 54.

ÆTHELRED AND ÆTHELFLÆD OF MERCIA.

The Chronicles speak of Æthelred as Ealdorman of that part of Mercia

which was kept by Ælfred, in 886, when London was entrusted to his

keeping. See also the extract from Asser in Florence, where he is

described as “Merciorum comes.” He married Ælfred’s daughter Æthelflæd,

and he appears, even in the older state of things in Mercia, to have

held a special position under Burhred, as in a charter in Cod. Dipl. ii.

99, confirmed by “Burhred rex Merciorum,” he describes himself as

“Æðelred Deo adjuvante Merciorum dux,” a title which suggests those of

“Francorum” and “Anglorum dux.” His reappointment by Ælfred must have

been one of the King’s first acts after the peace with Guthrum, as we

find a charter of his of the year 880 in Cod. Dipl. ii. 107, in which

his style runs thus; “Ego Æðelred, gratia Domini largiflua concedente,

dux et patricius gentis Merciorum cum licentia et impositione manûs

Ælfredi regis, una cum testimonio et consensu seniorum ejusdem gentis

episcoporum vel principum, pro redemptione animarum nostrarum et pro

sospitate necnon et stabilitate _regni Merciorum_.” So in a charter of

883 (Cod. Dipl. ii. 110), which begins in Latin and goes on in English,

and which even in the English part comes nearer than usual to the

inflated style of the Latin documents; “Ic Æðelræd ealdorman inbyrdendre

Godes gefe gewelegod and gewlenced mid _sume dæle_ Mercna _rices_ ...

mid Ælfredes cyninges leafe and gewitnesse, and mid ealra Myrcna witena

godcundra hada and woroldcundra.” The words “sume dæle” seem to mark

Æthelred as holding a smaller territorial jurisdiction under Ælfred than

he had held under Burhred, and the formula reminds one of Cnut’s style

(Florence 1031); “Rex totius Angliæ et Denemarciæ et Norreganorum et

_partis Suanorum_.” Mercia however is still a kingdom, like Ireland up

to 1801, and Æthelred looks very like a Lord Lieutenant holding an Irish

Parliament. Heming’s Worcester Cartulary (93) records another Mercian

Gemót held by Æthelred; “Þa ðe gere gebeon Æðelred alderman alle Mercna

weotan to somne to Gleaweceastre biscopas and aldermen and all his

duguðe, and þæt dyde be Ælfredes cyninges gewitnesse and leafe.”

The position of Æthelred in Mercia is thus described by William of

Malmesbury (ii. 125); “Ille [Elfredus] duo regna Merciorum et

West-Saxonum conjunxerit, Merciorum nomine tenus, quippe commendatum

duci Etheredo, tenens.” He had already said (ii. 121), “Londoniam,

_caput regni Merciorum_ [“caput regni, Merciorum”?] cuidam primario

Etheredo in fidelitatem suam cum filia Ethelflædi concessit.” This use

of “regnum” is like the use of the same word as applied to Bavaria under

the Agilolfing Dukes. (See Waitz, iii. 302.)

It may perhaps be thought that Æthelred and the Lady felt themselves

more nearly on an equality with their brother than they had done with

their father; at least in a charter of 901 (Cod. Dipl. ii. 136) they

seem to assume a more royal style; “Æðelred Æð[elflædque o]pitulante

gratuita Dei gratia _monarchiam Merciorum_ tenentes honorificeque

gubernantes et defendentes.” And it may be a sign of a higher rank that

Æthelred, who in Ælfred’s time (as in 886) is called only Ealdorman, in

Eadward’s reign is twice called “Myrcna _hlaford_” in the Chronicles.

One time is in 911, when his death is recorded (though he is called

“Ealdorman” in other entries of the same event), and again in 919, when

his daughter Ælfwyn is spoken of. Florence too in 912 calls him “dux et

patricius, dominus et subregulus Merciorum;” and again in 919,

“subregulus.” This last title he also gives him in Ælfred’s time in 894,

but in 886 he is only “comes.” However this may be, in another charter

of 904 (Cod. Dipl. ii. 148), granted to a subordinate Ealdorman

Æthelfrith, the supremacy of Eadward is distinctly recognized;

“prædictus dux rogavit Eaduuardum regem et Æðelredum quoque et

Æðelflædam qui tunc principatum et potestatem gentis Merciorum sub

prædicto rege tenuerunt, omnes etiam senatores Merciorum.”

As Æthelred is “Myrcna hlaford,” so Æthelflæd always appears in the

Chronicles as “Myrcna hlæfdige,” and in Florence as “Merciorum domina.”

Lady, I need hardly say, was in Wessex the highest female title, being

reserved for the King’s wife. But in Mercia, as not being affected by

the crime and punishment of Eadburh, the title of Queen seems to have

gone on. In the Chronicles (888) we read of Ælfred’s sister, the widow

of Burhred, as “Æðelswið cwén.” “Hlæfdige” therefore may perhaps have

been meant as a title less distinctly royal; but in the Annales Cambriæ

(917) we read, “Ælfled regina obiit.”

On the whole it seems plain that the position of Æthelred, and still

more the position of his widow, was something above that of an ordinary

Ealdorman. It should be remembered that he was the first Ealdorman of

what had not long before been a mighty kingdom, and this _quasi_-royal

position was a natural stage in the process of incorporation.

NOTE G. pp. 58, 119.

THE COMMENDATION OF 924.

My narrative of the relations between England and Scotland, and my view

of the dependence of the Scottish crown on the English Empire from 924

to 1328, are grounded on what I believe to be the sure witness of

ancient authorities, read to a great extent under the guidance of Sir

Francis Palgrave. All notion of any legal or permanent dependence such

as I assert is cast aside by the late Mr. E. W. Robertson in his book

entitled “Scotland under Early Kings.” That book is one which, though I

hold many of its views to be erroneous, cannot be passed by without

notice. It is a work of deep research and ability, and Mr. Robertson has

the advantage of an acquaintance with Celtic literature to which I can

make no pretensions. And I find with especial pleasure that, on several

points where our theories do not clash, Mr. Robertson and myself have

come independently to the same conclusions. Still on the points at issue

I confess that, after reading Mr. Robertson’s arguments, I remain of the

same opinion as I was before. He has thrown a certain amount of doubt on

a few details which are not absolutely essential, but I think that he

has utterly failed to upset those clear passages of the Chronicles on

which the belief which I share with Sir Francis Palgrave mainly rests.

Unluckily the scheme of my work does not allow me to grapple in detail

with all Mr. Robertson’s arguments as to the earliest stages of the

question. But I confess that I feel strongly inclined to enter minutely

into them in some other shape. The subject is one excellently suited for

a monograph. I have myself dealt with some parts of it somewhat more

fully in my Historical Essays (First Series, p. 56). But I feel that the

question is very far from being exhausted, and I trust that some other

champion of the rights of Eadward and Æthelstan may be forthcoming.

The point which forms the immediate subject of this Note is the

Commendation of Scotland to Eadward in 924, the most important point in

the whole dispute. The choosing of Eadward as Father and Lord by the

King of Scots and the whole people of the Scots is, both in the

thirteenth and in the nineteenth century, the primary fact from which

the English controversialist starts. William of Malmesbury, or even

Florence of Worcester, may have blundered or exaggerated about Eadgar’s

triumph at Chester or about any other point of detail, but, as long as

the fact of the great Commendation is admitted, the case of the

West-Saxon Emperors of Britain stands firm. That Commendation is

recorded, as clearly as words can record it, not in a ballad or in a

saga, not in the inflated rhetoric of a Latin charter, but in the honest

English of the Winchester Chronicle. Than its words no words can be

plainer; “And hine geces þa to fæder and to hlaforde Scotta cyning and

eall Scotta þeod, and Rægnald and Eadulfes suna and ealle þa þe on

Norþhymbrum, bugeaþ, ægþer ge Englisce, ge Denisce, ge Norþmen, ge oþre,

and eac Stræcled Weala cyning, and ealle Stræcled Wealas.” I add the

translation of Florence, who places the event in 921, not however as

holding that it adds anything to the authority of the original record;

“Eo tempore rex Scottorum cum tota gente sua, Reignoldus rex Danorum cum

Anglis et Danis Northhymbriam incolentibus, rex etiam Streatcledwalorum

cum suis, regem Eadwardum seniorem sibi in patrem et dominum elegerunt,

firmumque cum eo fœdus pepigerunt.” Now if we are not to believe a fact

on such evidence as this, there is nothing in those times which we can

believe. It is strange that, in the obvious place for treating of the

subject, in the text of his history at vol. i. p. 59, Mr. Robertson has

not a word to say about the matter, but passes over the year 924 as if

it were bare of events. But in an Appendix (vol. ii. p. 394) he

discusses the matter at some length. To the truth of the famous record

which I have quoted at pp. 58, 119 of my own text Mr. Robertson makes

several objections.

First, he alleges that the Northumbrian Danes did not submit to Eadward.

It is almost enough to answer that this passage is evidence that they

did. If we are not to accept the distinct statements of the Chronicles,

we are altogether at sea in the history of these times. Mr. Robertson’s

reason for doubting the truth of the statement is that it is

inconsistent with certain passages in other English writers—he might

have added in the Chronicles themselves—which attribute the first

annexation of Northumberland to Æthelstan in 926. But there is nothing

irreconcileable in the two statements. I gave the explanation in the

text of my first edition without having heard of Mr. Robertson’s

objections; “Eadward’s immediate kingdom reached to the Humber, and his

over-lordship extended over the whole island” (p. 58). But, from 926

onwards, the object of Æthelstan and his successors was to extend, not

their over-lordship but their immediate sovereignty, over the whole of

Northumberland. “Æthelstan cyning feng to Norðhymbra rice.” He became

the immediate King of the country, whereas Eadward had been only Father

and Lord to its Kings and people. After 926 Northumbrian Kings were

often set up, but, except the lords of Bamburgh, of whom I shall speak

in another Note, no Northumbrian prince was admitted by Æthelstan to

vassalage. He asserted and maintained an immediate dominion over the

country. This system was followed by his successors, except during the

momentary recognition of Olaf and Rægnald by Eadmund in 943. There is

therefore no contradiction. Eadward introduced one state of things in

Northumberland and Æthelstan introduced another.

Secondly, Mr. Robertson objects that the Chronicles represent the

Commendation to have been made at Bakewell in the Peakland, and that

this is inconsistent “with the words which Simeon and Florence place in

the mouth of Malcolm Ceanmore” in 1092 (it should be 1093), which “show

that, in the opinion of that age, no Scottish King had ever met an

Anglo-Saxon sovereign except upon their _mutual_ [sic] frontiers.” Now,

if there were any real inconsistency between the two statements, the

direct statement of the Chronicle under the year 924 is surely much

better authority for the events of the year 924 than an inference made

by Mr. Robertson from a speech attributed to Malcolm in 1093. If

Malcolm’s speech contradicts the facts of history, so much the worse for

Malcolm and his speech. But there is really no inconsistency at all. The

Chronicle in no way implies that the Commendation was made at Bakewell,

and Malcolm in no way implies that it was not made at Bakewell. The

Chronicler puts the Commendation of the King of Scots and the other

princes in the same year as the building of the fortress of Bakewell; he

may even imply that Eadward’s progress towards the North, of which the

fortification of Bakewell was a part, had a share in bringing about the

submission of all these Northern Kings. But he does not say that any of

them came to Bakewell to make the Commendation. Malcolm says only that

the Kings of Scots had been used to “do their duty” (rectitudinem

facere) to the Kings of the English only on the confines of their

dominions. The assertion may be true or false; but it is quite another

thing from asserting that no King of Scots had ever met an English King

anywhere but on the frontier. The first place of meeting need not have

been the same as that which was usual 169 years later. There is in short

nothing to show whether the Commendation took place at Bakewell or

anywhere else.

Lastly, Mr. Robertson objects that Rægnald or Regenwald, who is

described as one of the princes who submitted in 924, died in 921. I

presume that, along with the Commendation of Rægnald in 924, Mr.

Robertson sets aside his taking of York, which the Chronicles place in

923. This is asking us to give up a good deal out of deference to his

Irish guides. But here again there is no necessary inconsistency. Mr.

Robertson refers to the Annals of Ulster. Those Annals (Ant. Celt. Norm.

p. 66) undoubtedly kill “Reginald O’Ivar,” not in 921 but in 920; but

the name was a common one, and I see no evidence that the two Rægnalds

need be the same. The Annals of Ulster themselves show that there was

another person of the same name, “Reginald Mac Beolach,” living in the

same part of the world in 917, and it would be worth inquiring whether

any of these Rægnalds—the name is spelt in endless ways—can be the same

as the Rægnald who figures at this time in the history of Gaul (see p.

163). I will not rely on the signatures of two charters of 930 by

Regenwald or Reinwald (Cod. Dipl. ii. 168–171), because Mr. Kemble marks

them as doubtful. Anyhow I see no proof of error in our Chronicles.

There is no real contradiction between the English and Irish

authorities; and if there be, I really do not see why the Englishman

must needs go to the wall. But granting that Rægnald’s name was wrongly

inserted, such a mistake would not touch the main fact of the

Commendation. Such a fact as the Commendation of Scotland and

Strathclyde is a thing about which there could be no mistake. It is

either an historical truth or a barefaced lie. But in mentioning several

minor princes who commended themselves at the same time, a wrong name

might easily slip in without any evil intention. Several Northumbrian

chiefs commended themselves; Rægnald was a famous Northumbrian name; a

scribe might easily put Rægnald instead of some other name. The blunder

would not be so bad as when Thietmar calls Ælfheah Dunstan (see Appendix

OO), or as the utter confusion which the Scandinavian writers make of

the names and order both of English Kings and of Norman Dukes.

I have examined this question in full, because it is the root of the

whole matter. Other questions raised by Mr. Robertson I must pass by, or

reserve for some other opportunity for discussion. I certainly think

that the Commendation of 924 is in no way touched by Mr. Robertson’s

objections, and I feel sure, from the acuteness which Mr. Robertson

displays in other parts of his work, that he would never have satisfied

himself with such futile arguments except under the influence of strong

national partiality.

Another point, which I have briefly mentioned at pp. 131, 451, is worth

notice. The fact that the people, as well as the King, choose Eadward as

their lord does not seem to me to imply that he became lord to each

particular man. In cases where the relation was much closer than between

Scotland and England, the _arrière_ vassal was not the _man_ of the

over-lord. Thus John of Joinville, as a vassal of the Count of

Champagne, refused to do homage to the King of the French, because he

was not his _man_. When Henry the Second exacted an oath of fealty from

the vassals of William the Lion, the claim was a novelty, and it was

given up by Richard the First, a renunciation which has been perverted

into a renunciation of all superiority over Scotland.

But when we reach the final quarrel between Edward the First and John of

Balliol, it turns on a question which looks very like a claim on the

part of the King of England to jurisdiction in internal Scottish

affairs. That is to say, Edward the First, as a feudal superior,

received appeals from the courts of the King of Scots, exactly as the

King of the French, Edward’s own feudal superior for the duchy of

Aquitaine, received appeals from Edward’s courts in that duchy. We can

hardly suppose that any such right was contemplated in the original

Commendation; it is a notion essentially belonging to a later time. But

it was no arbitrary invention of Edward; he did but receive the appeals

which Scottish suitors brought before him of their own accord. The truth

is that, when the commendatory relation had, in the ideas of both sides,

changed into a strictly feudal one, the right of appeal would seem to

follow as a matter of course, and neither side would stop to ask whether

such a right was really implied in the ancient Commendation.

NOTE H. pp. 63, 125.

THE GRANT OF CUMBERLAND.

Nothing can be plainer than the entry on this head in the Chronicles

(945), “Her Eadmund cyning ofer hergode eal Cumbraland, and hit let eal

to Malculme Scotta cyninge on þæt gerad þæt he wære his midwyrhta ægþer

ge on sæ ge on lande.”

Florence simply translates, except that a slight tinge of the later

feudalism is perhaps thrown in when he expresses the word “midwyrhta” by

“fidelis.” Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 746 C), though bringing in some

rather vague matter, is more literal in his version on this point;

“Sequenti vero anno totam Cumberland, quia gentem provinciæ illius

perfidam et legibus insolitam ad plenum domare nequibat, prædavit et

contrivit et commendavit eam Malculmo regi Scotiæ hoc pacto, quod in

auxilio sibi foret terra et mari.” William of Malmesbury (ii. 141)

merely says, “Provincia quæ vocatur Cumberland regi Scottorum Malcolmo,

sub fidelitate jurisjurandi commendata.” Roger of Wendover (ii. 398)

adds the two important details, which he could hardly have invented,

that Eadmund was helped in his expedition by Llywelyn of Dyfed, and that

the sons of Dummail or Donald were blinded; “Eodem anno rex Eadmundus,

adjutorio Leolini regis Demetiæ fretus, Cumbriam totam cunctis opibus

spoliavit, ac duobus filiis Dummail, ejusdem provinciæ regis, oculorum

luce privatis, regnum illud Malcolmo, Scotorum regi, de se tenendum

concessit, ut aquilonales Angliæ partes terra marique ab hostium

adventantium incursione tueretur.”

The Scottish writers, as I have said in the text, in no way deny the

fact of the grant; they are indeed rather inclined, for obvious reasons,

to make too much rather than too little of it. Fordun (iv. 24) is more

explicit than any of the English writers, and uses the most distinctly

feudal language; “Provinciam, quæ vocatur Cumbreland, regi Scotorum

Malcolmo rex sub fidelitate jurisjurandi commendavit, hæc ille.

Postmodum vero statim inter eos concordatum est, et amborum consilio

decretum, ut in futurum, pro bono continuandæ pacis utriusque regni,

Malcolmi regis proximus hæres Indulfus, cæterorumque regum Scotorum

hæredes qui pro tempore fuerint, Edmundo regi suisque successoribus

Anglis regibus homagium pro Cumbria facerent, ac fidelitatis

sacramentum.” He goes on to say, in language which seems to come from

the same source as the words of Henry of Huntingdon, that neither King

was ever to take the Cumbrians, “barbaram aquilonis et perfidam gentem,”

into his direct favour or homage, a promise which was afterwards broken

on both sides.

The fact of the grant is also admitted in the book called “Extracta ex

Cronicis Scocie,” pp. 49, 50, though the compiler vigorously asserts a

former Scottish possession which was lost through the Scottish defeat at

Brunanburh. Of King Gregory (875–892) we read (p. 46), “Hic etiam

strenue totam subjugavit Hiberniam et pene totam Angliam.” Of

Constantine (p. 47), “Hic rex xl annis regnavit, et quamvis contra eum

bellabant reges Anglorum, Ead_winus_ [sic] et filius suus nothus

Adelstanus successive regnantes, et contra Scotos cum Danis pactum et

pacem inierunt, qui post iv annos rumpitur, et Angli a Scotis veniam

precantes iterum Scotos sibi reconciliarunt. Quo toto tempore rex

Constantinus Cumbriam et ceteras terras in Anglia possedit, et regni sui

anno xvi dedit Eugenio filio Dovenaldi sperato successori dimidium regni

Cumbri hereditarie possidendum.” It is curious to see the frame of mind

in which he approaches the mention of Brunanburh; “Infaustus ille dies

Scotis, nam quæque dominia temporibus Gregorii et hactenus conquesta,

necnon liv annis possessa, quidam scribunt Constantinum regem hoc bello

perdidisse.”

So we find it also in Hector Boece (218 _b_), by whose time the story

had got further confused, and the grant, or rather treaty, is now

attributed to Æthelstan instead of Eadmund; “Secundum legationem omnibus

consentientibus fœdus inter Anglos Scotosque veteribus conditionibus est

ictum, hac unica adjecta, ut Anglis Northumbria, Danico tum sanguine

pene referto, cederent; Cumbria ac Vestmaria Scotis; ea lege, ut

Scotorum _princeps_ (ita eum qui secundum regem vita functum summum

obiturus est magistratum, uti est significatum antea, vocant nostrates)

in verba Anglorum regis ea pro regione juraret.” This passage is worth

notice, as showing that the modern use of the word _Prince_, as

equivalent to Ætheling, was coming into use in Boece’s time, but that it

still needed explanation.

As to the fact and the nature of the grant to Malcolm there can, I

think, be no doubt. It was probably the earliest instance in Britain of

a fief in the strictest sense, as opposed to a case of commendation. But

I wish to keep myself as clear as possible from all mazes as to the ever

fluctuating boundaries of Strathclyde or Cumberland. On the whole

matter, I would refer to Palgrave, English Commonwealth, i. 440 et seqq.

NOTE I. p. 65.

THE CESSION OF LOTHIAN.

The question with regard to Lothian is briefly this. Was the cession of

that part of Northumberland to the Scottish crown a grant from Eadgar to

his faithful vassal Kenneth? Or was the district wrung by Malcolm from

the fears of Eadwulf Cutel, or won by force of arms after the battle of

Carham in 1018?

Mr. Robertson (Scotland under Early Kings, i. 96; ii. 390 et seqq., 426

et seqq.), consistently with his theory, strongly adopts the latter

view, and maintains the former to be a mere “fabrication.” To me the

question seems a very difficult one, about which it will be well to go

minutely through all the authorities.

The Chronicles, Florence, William of Malmesbury, Simeon of Durham in his

main history, are all silent as to any transfer of Lothian from English

to Scottish dominion. And yet nothing is more certain than that Lothian

was at one time English and that at a later time it became Scottish. The

only question is as to the date of the change. The first beginnings of

the Scottish occupation of Lothian are certainly older than either of

the dates given above. Indulf, who reigned from 954 to 962, occupied

Edinburgh, _Eadwinesburh_, the frontier fortress of the great

Northumbrian Bretwalda, which ever after remained in the power of the

Scots. This does not seem to have been a conquest made in war. The

English forsook the post. “In hujus tempore,” says the Pictish

Chronicler (Ant. Celt. Norm. p. 142), “oppidum Eden vacuatum est, ac

relictum est Scottis usque in hodiernum diem.” Possibly Edinburgh was a

grant made by Eadred on his final acquisition of Northumberland in 954.

Eadred’s relations with Scotland were friendly. The Scots made full

submission to him on his election in 946; they acted as his allies in

his wars with the rebellious Northumbrians; Scots and English, “the men

of Alba and the Saxons,” were, according to the Four Masters (vol. ii.

p. 668), defeated by the “foreigners”—doubtless the Danes—in 951. If

Eadred rewarded his Scottish ally with the grant of Edinburgh, the step

would be very like the grant of Cumberland to Malcolm in 945. On the

other hand, it is quite possible that the relinquishment of Edinburgh by

the English may have been less wholly an act of free will than the grant

of Cumberland; it may have been found difficult or useless to maintain

so distant a fortress during the troubles of the reign of Eadwig. But on

any showing, the event of Indulf’s reign was simply a relinquishment of

the single fortress of Edinburgh, though such a relinquishment may well

have been felt, especially on the Scottish side, to be merely a step

towards the transfer of the whole province. For the date of the great

cession our authorities are John of Wallingford (p. 544) and Roger of

Wendover (i. 416), who give the earlier date, and Simeon of Durham in

his Tract on the Northumbrian Earls (X Scriptt. 81), who gives the

later.

According to John of Wallingford, Eadgar (see p. 266 and Appendix KK),

in a meeting of the Northumbrian Witan at York (“barones Northumbrenses

in concilium convocans apud Eboracum”), divided the ancient kingdom into

two earldoms, giving Deira to Oslac and Bernicia (which John confusedly

calls Deira) to Eadwulf “Evelchild.” The name of Eadwulf is seemingly

due to some confusion with Oswulf, whom John fancies to be dead. But

Lothian, the northern part of Bernicia, lying exposed to the incursions

of the Scots, was little valued by the English Kings. The King of Scots

moreover asserted a claim to it by hereditary right. Kenneth accordingly

went to London, accompanied by the two Northumbrian Earls and by Ælfsige

Bishop of Lindisfarne, to seek a conference with Eadgar. Eadgar received

him friendly, and Kenneth opened his case, praying for Lothian as an

ancient possession of the Scottish Kings. Eadgar referred the matter to

his Witan (“caussam curiæ suæ intimavit”), by whose consent the province

was granted in fief—I cannot avoid the terms of a later jurisprudence—to

Kenneth, who did homage for it. Kenneth also promised that the ancient

laws and customs of the country should be preserved and the English

language retained, an engagement which was strictly carried out (“sub

cautione multa promittens quod populo partis illius antiquas

consuetudines non negaret, et sub nomine et lingua Anglicana

permanerent. Quod usque hodie firmum manet”). Thus the old dispute about

Lothian was settled, though new ones often arose (“sicque determinata

est vetus querela de Louthion, et adhuc nova sæpe intentatur”).

Roger of Wendover is briefer. He tells how Earl Eadwulf—he does not

mention Oslac—and Bishop Ælfsige took the Scottish King to the court of

Eadgar; how the King of the English gave Kenneth many magnificent

presents, and granted to him the whole land of Lothian. The tenure was

that, each year, on the great feasts when the King wore his crown (see

the Peterborough Chronicle under the year 1087), the King of Scots

should come to his court with the other princes of his realm. Eadgar

also assigned to his royal vassal and his successors several houses at

different points of the road, at which they could be entertained on

their way to the English court, which mansions the Kings of Scots

retained down to the time of Henry the Second.

Simeon places the cession after the death of Uhtred in 1016 (see p.

448);

“Quo [Ucthredo] occiso, frater ipsius Eadulf cognomento Cudel, ignavus

valde et timidus, et successit in comitatum. Timens autem ne Scotti

mortem suorum quos frater ejus, ut supradictum est [see p. 329],

occiderat, in se vindicarent, totum Lodoneium ob satisfactionem et

firmam concordiam eis donavit. Hoc modo Lodoneium adjectum est regno

Scottorum.”

Now, looking at our authorities in the abstract, there is no doubt as to

the infinite superiority of Simeon, our very best authority for

Northumbrian affairs, over two late and often inaccurate writers like

John of Wallingford and Roger of Wendover. If there is an

irreconcileable contradiction between the two stories, Simeon’s story is

to be preferred without hesitation. I hold that Simeon’s statement

distinctly proves that some cession of Lothian was made by Eadwulf, and,

if so, we can hardly be wrong in setting down that cession as a result

of the battle of Carham. The question is whether this can be admitted,

and at the same time some kernel of truth be recognized in the story

told by John and Roger. Let us first see what the witness of those

writers is worth in itself.

I need hardly say that secondary writers of this sort, even the best of

them, must be subjected to much severer tests than any that we apply to

the Chronicles, to Florence, or even to William of Malmesbury. We accept

nothing, strictly speaking, on their _authority_. We weigh their

statements and judge what they are worth, both according to the laws of

internal evidence and according to the way in which they may

incidentally fall in with or incidentally contradict the statements of

better writers. We put very little faith in their details, which are

more likely than not to be romantic additions. Still in all cases we

acknowledge the likelihood that there is some kernel of truth round

which the romantic details have grown. John of Wallingford is

undoubtedly a writer whom it is not safe to trust, unless his statements

have some strong confirmation, internal or external. Of his way of

dealing with matters, I have given some specimens in the course of this

volume (see Note GG). Still he is not to be cast aside as wholly

worthless. A few pages before the passage with which we are concerned

(pp. 535, 540), he shows a good deal of critical acumen in pointing out

the chronological impossibility of the tale which makes Rolf an ally of

the great Æthelstan (see above, p. 165). Roger of Wendover is, on the

whole, a more trustworthy writer than John, and when he comes nearer to

his own time, he becomes a very valuable authority; but for times so far

removed from their own days, John and Roger must be set down as writers

belonging essentially to the same class. Now in comparing their two

statements as to the cession of Lothian by Eadgar, we are at once struck

by the fact that the two accounts seem quite independent of each other.

There is no sign that either narrative is borrowed from the other, no

sign that the two are borrowed from some common source. The two stories

do not directly contradict one another; but they have nothing in common,

except the bare facts that Kenneth received the province from Eadgar,

and that Earl Eadwulf and Bishop Ælfsige had a hand in the business.

They are two independent witnesses, pointing, as it seems to me, to two

independent sources of tradition or lost record. And of the two, the

narrative of John of Wallingford certainly has the clearer inherent

signs of trustworthiness. If there is any ground to suspect fabrication

with a motive—not necessarily in the historian himself, but in those

whom he followed—it certainly appears in the narrative of Roger rather

than in that of John. Roger gives no account of the circumstances of the

grant, he assigns no intelligible political motive for it, he describes

no intelligible tenure by which the fief was to be held; he dwells

mainly on the magnificence of the presents made by Eadgar to Kenneth,

and on points bearing on questions which, when he wrote, were matters of

recent controversy and negotiation. The points brought out into the

greatest prominence are the duty of the King of Scots to attend at the

English court, and the signs at once of English munificence and of

Scottish submission displayed in the preparations made for the due

reception of the royal vassal. These were points of no small interest in

the times when Roger was young, and which were not forgotten when he

wrote. There is nothing of this kind in the narrative of John of

Wallingford. He has undoubtedly made a false step on ground on which it

is very easy to make a false step, namely in the succession of the

Northumbrian Earls. Even the accurate Simeon, writing so much nearer to

the place and to the time, has himself, in one case at least, done the

like (see Note LLL). John’s Eadwulf Evelchild ought to be Oswulf, just

as Simeon’s Uhtred, in the account of the battle of Carham, ought to be

Eadwulf. But John’s main story fits in very well with the facts of the

case. Mr. Robertson (ii. 391) objects that there was no “old quarrel

about Lothian.” But the facts show that there was. Surely Lothian was an

old Pictish possession which had been conquered by the Angles, and which

was sometimes partially won back by its old owners. The wars of

Æthelfrith (Bæda, i. 34) and of Ecgfrith (iv. 26) surely make up a very

old “querela de Louthion,” but one not too old for Celtic memories to

bear in mind. The acquisition of Edinburgh, however made, shows that the

Scottish Kings in the tenth century were looking steadily in the

direction of Lothian. Kenneth himself, friendly as he now was to Eadgar,

had made at least one foray into the country. The Pictish Chronicle

(Ant. Celt. Norm. 143) says, “Primo anno perrexit Cinadius et prædavit

Saxoniam [Lothian] et traduxit filium regis Saxonum” (see p. 65). The

captivity of an English Ætheling is a grotesque exaggeration; but we may

accept the fact that Kenneth had some border skirmishes with the local

Earl, who in 971, the first year of Kenneth, would be Oswulf. All this

shows that the acquisition of Lothian was at this time a favourite

object of Scottish ambition. And now that Eadgar and Kenneth were on

friendly terms, a grant of the country, like the undoubted grant of

Cumberland, like the probable grant of Edinburgh, might be an act of

thoroughly good policy on the part of England. A distant province, which

it was hard to keep as an integral part of the kingdom, might be

prudently granted as a fief to the prince by whom it was claimed, and to

whose incursions it lay open. That the conditions spoken of by John of

Wallingford, the retention of the laws and language of Lothian, were

strictly kept, is proved by the whole later history. The laws and

language of Lothian became the laws and language of the historic

Scotland.

The cession recorded by John of Wallingford seems therefore to be in

itself highly probable. But is it inconsistent with the later, and

undoubtedly better authenticated, cession recorded by Simeon of Durham?

It does not seem to me to be so; neither did it to Sir Francis Palgrave

(Engl. Comm. i. 474, 477) or to Dr. Lappenberg (ii. 141, 207, p. 473 of

the original). It may be that the word Lothian, a somewhat vague name,

has a slightly different meaning in the two passages; it may be that a

cession was made to Kenneth by Eadgar, and a further cession by Eadwulf

Cutel to Malcolm. It is less easy to believe, with Sir Francis Palgrave,

that Eadwulf’s cession was a cession of the rights of the local Earl,

reserved, or not formally surrendered, at the time of the earlier grant

by the King. The simplest explanation is to suppose that Lothian was

recovered by the English after the great victory of Uhtred in 1006, that

it was occupied again by the Scots after their victory at Carham, and

that then the cowardly Eadwulf gave up all claim to it. Cnut however, in

1031, if not before (see p. 450 and Note LLL), set matters straight. In

that year at least, “Scotta cyng him to beah,” “and wearð his

mann”—Malcolm then became the liegeman of the King of all England for

Scotland and Lothian and all that he had.

This I believe to be the most probable explanation of this difficult

question. The silence of the Chronicles proves nothing either way; it

has to be accounted for equally on either view of the story. No transfer

of Lothian at any time is mentioned in the Chronicles, yet we know that

a transfer did take place at some time. The positive argument from the

statement of the Chronicles is always the strongest that can be found;

the negative argument from their silence is, under varying

circumstances, of every degree of strength and weakness. Here it seems

easily accounted for. The Chroniclers are at all times somewhat

capricious in their mention or neglect of Scottish affairs. They mention

neither the victory of Durham nor the defeat of Carham. And the reigns

of Eadgar and Cnut, the periods with which we are immediately concerned,

are periods in which the Chronicles are decidedly meagre, as compared

with their minute narratives of the reigns of Æthelred and of Eadward

the Confessor.

How thoroughly English Lothian was held to be long after either date

assigned to the cession appears from the words of the Chronicler, 1091;

“Melcolm ... for mid his fyrde ut of Scotlande into Loðene on

Englaland.” Florence translates “Northymbriam invasit.” One would like

to know whether the “xii. villæ quas in Anglia sub patre illius

[Willelmi Rufi sc.] habuerat [Malcolmus]” (Flor. Wig. 1091) were in

Lothian or where.

NOTE K. pp. 75, 117.

EALDORMEN AND KINGS.

The description of the oldest Teutonic constitution given by Cæsar

(Bell. Gall. vi. 23) tells us, “In pace nullus est communis magistratus;

sed principes regionum atque pagorum inter suos jus dicunt.” This seems

to imply a government by Ealdormen as distinguished from one by Kings.

_Pagus_ is the _Gau_ or Shire. So Dio (lxxi. 11), describing the German

embassies to Marcus, says, οἱ μὲν κατὰ γένη, οἱ δὲ καὶ κατὰ ἔθνη

ἐπρεσβεύσαντο. But Tacitus (Germ. 25, 44) seems to distinguish the

tribes “quæ regnantur” from others. So Arminius was suspected of aiming

at royalty (Ann. ii. 88); “Regnum adfectans, libertatem popularium

adversam habuit.” So Bæda (v. 10) describes the Old-Saxons at the end of

the seventh century. They had no King, but _Satraps_, that is doubtless

_Ealdormen_; in war-time one Satrap was chosen as a common commander,

but his superiority ended with the conclusion of peace. “Non enim habent

regem iidem Antiqui Saxones, sed satrapas plurimos suæ genti præpositos,

qui ingruente belli articulo mittunt æqualiter sortes, et quemcumque

sors ostenderit, hunc tempore belli ducem omnes sequuntur, huic

obtemperant; peracto autem bello, rursum æqualis potentiæ omnes fiunt

satrapæ.” I have collected some other analogous cases in the Growth of

the English Constitution, 172–3 (3rd ed.), and Comparative Politics,

414. In Zosimos (iv. 34) Athanaric is ἄρχων and Frithgar ἡγεμών. We may

compare the description of the Alemanni at the battle of Strassburg in

Ammianus, xvi. 12. Chnodomarius, the Bretwalda, so to speak, comes

first, then some other chiefs by name; “Hos sequebantur potestate

proximi reges numero quinque, _regalesque_ decem et optimatum series

magna.” Are the _regales_ Æthelings, or are they _subreguli_,

_undercyningas_, _ealdormen_?

With regard to the Kentishmen and the West-Saxons, the case seems

perfectly clear. We read of the Jutes in the Chronicles, 449, “Heora

_heretogan_ wæron twegen gebroðra, Hengest and Horsa.” Here _heretogan_

translates the _duces_ of Bæda, i. 15. And of the West-Saxons in 495,

“Her comen twegen _ealdormen_ on Brytene Cerdic and Cynric his súnu.”

Afterwards in 519 we find nearly the same words applied to them as to

Ida, “Her Cerdic and Cynric Westseaxena _rice_ onfengon.” The word

_rice_ I take to mark the change from ealdormanship to kingship. Between

the two dates, in 514, is placed the reinforcement under Stuf and

Wihtgar. The temporary change from Kings back again to Ealdormen is

distinctly asserted by Bæda, iv. 12; “Quumque mortuus esset

Coinvalch ... acceperunt subreguli regnum gentis, et divisum inter se

tenuerunt annis circiter decem.... Devictis atque amotis subregulis,

Cædualla suscepit imperium.” The Chronicles however give an

uninterrupted succession of Kings during this time. In 672 Cenwealh

dies; his widow Sexburh succeeds—a most rare case of a female reign.

Then follow Æscwine in 674, Centwine in 676, Ceadwalla in 685. The

change from Ealdormen to Kings in Mercia and East-Anglia is also plainly

marked in the remarkable passage of Henry of Huntingdon which I quoted

in page 26. And we may with all likelihood, as I there said, assert much

the same of Northumberland. But between the case of Wessex and the case

of Mercia or Northumberland there would be this difference. In Mercia,

and probably in Northumberland, a number of small but quite independent

kingdoms or ealdormanships were brought in under the power of a single

conqueror, while in Wessex, though there were several Kings at once, a

certain national unity was never lost. The change therefore from Kings

back again to Ealdormen was possible in Wessex, where it was merely a

change in the form of government; in Mercia it would have been the utter

dissolution of every tie between the different parts of the country.

The history of the Lombards affords in this respect a singular parallel

to the history of the West-Saxons. According to Paul Warnefrid (Gest.

Langob. i. 14, ap. Muratori, i. 413), they were at first governed by

Dukes, but afterwards they chose a King; “Nolentes jam ultra Langobardi

esse sub ducibus, regem sibi ad ceterarum instar gentium statuerunt.”

There is no reason to doubt the fact, though it is placed in a mythical

age, and though Paul the Deacon is evidently thinking of Saul and the

Hebrews. Indeed the change from Judges and “Dukes” to Kings among the

Hebrews and Edomites is only another instance of the same law. At a

later time, after their settlement in Italy, the Lombards fell back

again from Kings to Dukes or Ealdormen. Paul Warn. ii. 32; “Post cujus

[Cleph] mortem, Langobardi per annos decem regem non habentes sub

ducibus fuerunt. Unusquisque enim ducum [there were thirty of them] suam

civitatem obtinebat.” (See Allen, Royal Prerogative, 165.) In comparing

these Lombard revolutions with those of the West-Saxons and Old-Saxons,

it should not be forgotten that a considerable body of Saxons is said

(Paul Warn. ii. 6) to have taken a part in the Lombard invasion of

Italy. But parallels may be found in very distant times and places.

Compare the twelve Kings of Egypt in the second Book of Herodotus.

That _Heretoga_ and _Ealdorman_ express the same office in different

aspects, there can, I think, be no doubt. See Kemble, Saxons in England,

ii. 126. I do not however understand Mr. Kemble’s meaning when he says;

“The word Heretoga is nowhere found in the Saxon Chronicle, and, to the

best of my remembrance, but once in the Charters.” Besides the passage

above quoted, it is found in the Chronicles under the years 794 (of

Danish pirates), 993 (of English commanders), 1003 (in a proverb), 1121

(of a Duke of Lotharingia). I have not looked through all the Charters

for the purpose, but it is used in three successive grants of Bishop

Oswald (Cod. Dipl. iii. 259, 260, 262) to express an Ealdorman of the

Mercians.

We have just seen _Heretoga_ used in English to translate the High-Dutch

_Herzog_; but the Dukes and Counts of Gaul commonly appear in the

Chronicles as _Eorlas_. _Eorl_ however, as the later equivalent of

_Ealdorman_, is also equivalent to _Heretoga_. Ælfred uses _Heretoga_ to

translate the Latin _Consul_, just as, in return, Gaulish Counts and

English Ealdormen are constantly spoken of as _Consules_.

On the use of _Ealdor_, _Ealdorman_, _Yldestan_ _þegnas_, to express

simply rank and office without any reference to actual age, and for

analogous uses in other languages, see Kemble, ii. 128; Heywood’s Ranks

of the People, 53; Schmid’s Glossary under _Eald_, _Ealdorman_, &c.;

Comparative Politics, 366. We have _Ealdorapostol_, _Ealdorbiscop_, and

even, if I mistake not, _Ealdordeofol_. Kemble compares the use of

_Senatus_, γέρων, πρεσβύτερος, and the feudal use of _Senior_,

_Seigneur_. Πρέσβυς in the sense of Ambassador may be added to the list,

and the Latin _Patres_, _Patricius_, express the same general idea. In

the same spirit the Ealdorman’s deputy is called his _Younger_; see

Ælfred’s Laws, 38, § 2 (Schmid, 92); “gif þises hwæt beforan cyninges

ealdormonnes _gingran_ gelimpe, oððe cyninges preôste,” etc. So Lewis

the Pious (Waitz, iv. 262, 368) speaks to his officials of “vos et

juniores vestri, juniores et ministeriales vestri.”

_Hlaford_, as equivalent, or perhaps something more than equivalent, to

_Ealdorman_, seems peculiar to Æthelred of Mercia (see above, p. 382),

though of course the word may be applied to an Ealdorman, as it is to

Brihtnoth in the Song of Maldon, with reference to those persons to whom

he was personally _hlaford_. _Eorl_, I need hardly say, supplanted

_Ealdorman_ in later times. The older English meaning of the word _Eorl_

has been already explained. The later special sense in which it is

equivalent to _Ealdorman_ came in with the Danes, whose leaders had

always been called _Jarls_. The governors of Northumberland, after the

incorporation under Eadred, certainly bore the Danish title. Urm,

Andcol, Uhtred (the ancestor of a long line of Northumberland Earls),

Grim, and Scule, all seemingly Northumbrian chiefs, sign a charter of

Eadred in 949 (Cod. Dipl. ii. 292) with the title of _Eorl_. The same

title is applied to Oslac both in the Chronicles under 975 (“Oslac se

mæra eorl”), and in the laws of Eadgar (Thorpe, i. 278), where the

_Earl_ Oslac seems to be pointedly distinguished from the _Ealdormen_

Ælfhere of Mercia and Æthelwine of East-Anglia. So in the Chronicles for

992 “Ælfric _ealdorman_” (the well-known Ælfric, of whom more in Note

CC) is no less pointedly distinguished from “Þored _eorl_.” But when the

word _Eorl_ is found in this sense in the Chronicles at an earlier date,

it is always a sign of later insertion. (See Earle, p. 38.) Whether the

title was in use throughout the Denalagu is less clear. Brihtnoth is

called _Eorl_ in the poem of Maldon; but this may be a poetical use. He

is also called _Ealdor_ in the wide sense in the poem itself, as well as

_Ealdorman_ in various documents and in the Chronicles. On the other

hand the Chronicles constantly speak of _Ealdormen_, even in Danish

districts like Lindesey; but this may be an accommodation to Southern

language, and they do so even when speaking of Northumberland. In the

purely Saxon districts there can be no doubt that the ancient title of

_Ealdorman_ went on uninterruptedly, till, under Cnut, _Eorl_ gradually

supplanted it everywhere. See p. 407.

That birth was of less importance in the case of an Ealdorman than in

the case of a King appears from the well-known words of Tacitus (Germ.

7), “Reges ex nobilitate, Duces ex virtute sumunt.” This is most

curiously illustrated in the Song of Brunanburh, where seven earls of

the Danes are killed and five _young_ kings (“Fife lagon On ðæm

campstede Ciningas geonge”). The King ruling “ex nobilitate” might be

young; the Earl ruling “ex virtute” was likely to be old.

On this whole subject of the origin and growth of kingship see the

Authorities and Illustrations to Allen on the Royal Prerogative.

NOTE L. p. 78.

ORIGIN OF THE WORD _KING_.

It is enough for my purpose that the word _Cyning_ is closely connected

with the word _Cyn_. (See Allen, Royal Prerogative, 176; Kemble, i.

153.) That the two words are of the same origin, as is shown by a whole

crowd of cognates, _cynebarn_, _cynecyn_, _cynedom_, _cynehelm_,

_cyne-hlaford_ (used in the Chronicles, a. 1014, as equivalent to

_gecynde hlaford_), _cynelice_, _cynerice_, _cynestol_. (I copy from Mr.

Earle’s Glossarial Index.) In all these words _cyn_ has the meaning of

royal. What little I venture to say on the remote Aryan affinities of

the word I have said in Comparative Politics, 450, Growth of the English

Constitution, 172.

The modern High-Dutch _König_ is an odd corruption; but the elder form

is _Chuninc_. The word has never had an English feminine; _Queen_ is

simply _cwen_, woman, wife, the same as the Greek γυνή, but in Wessex,

from the days of Beorhtric to those of William, _Cwen_ most rarely

occurs (Chron. 855 and Chron. Petrib. 1043, though in both these

passages it may simply mean _wife_); _Hlæfdige_ (see above, p. 575) is

the regular title.

Sir Francis Palgrave’s attempt (ii. cccxli.) to derive the word from a

Celtic root _Cen_ (_head_), to say nothing of other objections, could

not account for the use of the word among the Teutonic nations on the

Continent. Still more ludicrous is the notion of the King being the

_canning_ or _cunning_ man, an idea which could have occurred only to a

mind on which all Teutonic philology was thrown away. It is however as

old as Sir Thomas Smith, who, in the Commonwealth of England (pp. 9, 10)

says, “That which we cal in one sillable king in English, the old

Englishmen, and the Saxons, from whom our tongue is derived, to this day

call in two sillables, _cyning_, which whether it commeth of _cen_ or

_ken_, which betokeneth to know and understand, or _can_, which

betokeneth to be able, or to have power, I cannot tel.”

The connexion of _Cyning_ with _Cyn_ is closely analogous to the

connexion of the word _Þeoden_ (the Gothic _Þiudans_) with _Þeod_ (see

Kemble, i. 152) and that of _Drihten_ with _Driht_. In all these cases

the ruler takes his name from those whom he rules.

The origin of the word is curiously illustrated in Cardinal Pole’s

exposition of the nature of kingship, quoted in Froude’s History of

England, iii. 34. “‘What is a king?’ he asks. ‘A king exists for the

sake of his people; he is an outcome from Nature in labour [partus

naturæ laborantis]; an institution for the defence of material and

temporal interests.... In human society are three grades—the people—the

priesthood, the head and husband of the people—_the king, who is the

child_ [populus enim regem procreat], the creature, and minister of the

other two.’”

One can hardly suspect Pole of any Teutonic scholarship, but if he had

not the true derivation of the word _king_ before his eyes, the

coincidence is remarkable. Not very unlike is the speech of Philip Pot,

Great Seneschal of Burgundy in the States General of Tours in 1484. “La

royauté est une dignité et non un héritage. Dans l’origine, le peuple

souverain créa des rois pour son utilité.” De Cherrier, Histoire de

Charles VIII. i. 76.

NOTE M. p. 78.

KING OF ENGLAND OR KING OF THE ENGLISH?

It is most curious to see how very modern are those territorial titles

which, for some centuries past, European Kings have thought good to

assume. In Greek we always find a national sovereign described by the

national style; it is always Λακεδαιμονίων, Μακεδόνων, even Περσῶν and

Μήδων, βασιλεύς. In Livy (xxxi. 14, xxxv. 13) we no doubt read of

“Antiochus rex Syriæ” and “Ptolemæus rex Ægypti.” But this is of course,

because the kingship of the Ptolemies and Seleucidæ was so utterly

unnational that any but a territorial description would have been

absurd. In fact it is a description and not a title. As a description of

this kind, the words “Rex Franciæ” actually occur as early as the tenth

century. (Flodoard, A. 924.) But this is not a formal title; it is

merely the annalist’s vague way of describing or pointing at a prince

who had as yet no formal title. If one Rudolf is “Rex Franciæ,” in the

very same year another Rudolf is “Cisalpinæ rex Galliæ,” which certainly

never was the formal title of any man. The truth is that, throughout the

ninth and tenth centuries, the various Frankish Kings had no formal

title beyond the vague “Rex Francorum,” common to all of them. The

Chroniclers had therefore to describe each King as they might, just as

the sons of Charles the Great are indifferently called “Rex super

Aquitaniam,” or “Italiam,” Ann. Laur. 781 (Pertz, i. 32); “Rex in

Aquitania,” Ann. Egin. 781, and “Aquitaniæ Rex” (ib. 813). But when the

French Kings adopted a formal title, _Rex Francorum Christianissimus_

was the style down to the end of the line of Valois. _Franciæ et Navarræ

Rex_ came in with Henry of Bourbon. When the ancient style was revived

in 1791, and again in 1830, many people seem to have thought it a

strange innovation.

In both Empires, down to the last days of each, the style is always

“Romanorum Imperator,” Ῥωμαίων βασιλεύς. It is only late in the

thirteenth century, and when a prince has to be described by his

dominions, that we find such a title as the Trapezuntine style πιστὸς

βασιλεὺs καὶ αὐτοκράτωρ Ἀνατολής, Ἰβήρων, καὶ Περατείας. (Finlay,

Mediæval Greece and Trebizond, 370.) In earlier days Charles the Great

was “Patricius Romanorum.”

In England it would seem that Cnut, and Cnut alone before the Norman

Conquest, did call himself “King of England.” In the Preface to his Laws

(Thorpe, i. 358; Schmid, 250) he is called “Cnut cyningc, ealles

Englalandes cyningc, and Dena cyningc and Norðrigena cyningc.” In the

letter from Rome in Florence (1031) he calls himself “Rex totius Angliæ

et Denemarciæ et Norreganorum et partis Suanorum.” In a doubtful charter

(Cod. Dipl. iv. 50) he is “Rex totius Angliæ regni atque Danorum;” “Cing

ealles Englelandes and ealre Dene.” In two most doubtful charters (Cod.

Dipl. iv. 25, 41) he is “Kining of Ænglelande,” and “Rex totius Angliæ

et Danmarchiæ et Norwagiæ et magnæ partis Swavorum.” In other charters

he is either “Rex Anglorum” (as Florence calls him when speaking in his

own person) or else he assumes the Imperial style.

It has been suggested that Cnut took up his territorial style as being a

conqueror of the land, not a native monarch of the people. But the above

instances show that, though he fluctuates between the two forms, he

makes no consistent distinction between his hereditary and his acquired

kingdoms. Moreover Cnut, like William, was formally elected King, and he

was even less likely than William to assume any title which would be

offensive to his English subjects. This makes one inclined to look a

little further. In the most authentic documents, _Anglia_, _Englaland_,

does not occur without a qualification; the words are “_totius_ Angliæ,”

“_ealles_ Englalandes.” Is this description so distinctly and

unmistakeably territorial as the later forms, “Rex Angliæ,” “King of

England”? The _totius_, the _ealles_, strikes me as making a difference.

It may show that what is meant is, not “King of England” in the later

sense, but “King over the whole land of the English,” as distinguished

from Cnut’s earlier and narrower dominion while the kingdom was divided

between him and Eadmund. But anyhow Cnut stands alone before the Norman

Conquest in the use of this style. After the Conquest “Rex Angliæ”

begins to creep in, but at first very rarely. William himself is all but

invariably “Rex Anglorum.” Richard is the first King who is

systematically “Rex Angliæ” in his charters, and even he is “Rex

Anglorum” on his seal. And during his reign his mother stuck to the old

style “Regina Anglorum.” The final innovation of “Rex Angliæ” on the

seal is due to King John. See Allen, p. 51.

In everything, in short, belonging to our old days it is the people who

stand forth and not the mere land. In fact, except in the case of old

geographical names like Gaul and Britain, the land can hardly be said to

have a being or a name apart from the people. The land is simply called

by the name of the people, like Lokroi and Leontinoi in Greek geography,

like Franken and Hessen in Germany. So in our Chronicles, in the year

774, we read “gefuhton Myrce and Cantwara,” where _Myrce_ is clearly the

people; but in 796 we read “hine læddon on Myrce,” where we must take

_Myrce_ for the country. On the use of the name _Englaland_ I shall

speak in Note T.

On this modern notion of “territorial sovereignty,” see Maine, Ancient

Law, 103. He remarks that “territorial titles were not unknown, but they

seem at first to have come into use only as a convenient mode of

describing the ruler of a _portion_; the king of a _whole_ tribe was

king of his people, not of his people’s lands.” This is, I suppose, the

“rex super Aquitaniam,” and the like.

NOTE N. pp. 91, 122.

COMMENDATION.

On the subject of Commendation a good deal will be found in Hallam’s

Middle Ages (i. 114, edition 1846), and still more in the Supplementary

Notes (p. 118; and see specially Waitz, iv. 204). By the time of

Æthelstan a lordless man seems to have become something exceptional, and

to have needed special legislation (see Æthelstan’s Laws in Schmid, 132.

“Be hlâfordleâsum mannum”). The passages from the Capitularies quoted by

Hallam imply the necessity of every man seeking a lord, though they

leave to him the right of choosing what lord he will seek. There is

another remarkable Capitulary of Lewis the Pious in the year 815 (Baluz.

i. 552), in which the Emperor grants the power of Commendation, as an

accustomed right of his own subjects, to the Spanish Christians who had

taken refuge within his dominions from the oppression of the Saracens;

“Noverint tamen iidem Hispani sibi licentiam a nobis esse concessam ut

se in vassaticum commitibus nostris more solito commendet. Et si

beneficium aliquod quisquam eorum ab eo cui se commendavit fuerit

consequutus, sciat se de illo tali obsequium seniori suo exhibere debere

quale nostrates homines de simili beneficio senioribus suis exhibere

solent.” This is remarkable as showing the distinction between the

personal Commendation of a man to his lord and the grant of a feudal

benefice by that lord. The grant is not necessarily implied, but it is

looked on as something which is likely to follow. “Commendati homines”

are often mentioned in Domesday, and there are numberless phrases which

come to the same thing, though the exact words are not used. There is

one very curious story in Hertfordshire (136 _b_), where a certain

Godwine held lands for a life or lives of the church of Westminster, but

after his death his widow illegally transferred the lordship of the

lands to Eadgifu the Fair. “Hanc terram tenuit Godwinus de ecclesia

Sancti Petri; non potuit vendere, sed post mortem ejus debebat ad

ecclesiam redire, ut hundreda testatur; sed uxor ejus cum hac terra

vertit se per vim ad Eddevam pulcram, et tenebat ea die qua Edwardus rex

fuit vivus et mortuus.” This Godwine who could not sell his land is

distinguished from various “homines” of Eadgifu “qui potuerunt vendere.”

See more in vol. v. p. 885.

This process of seeking a lord we find described in the Laws of Ælfred

(37, Schmid 90), where the proper formalities are described; “Gif mon

wille of bold-getale in oðer bold-getæl hlâford sêcan, dô þæt mid þæs

ealdormonnes gewitnesse þe he ǽr in his scire folgode.” And this phrase

of _seeking_ or _choosing_ a lord is the very phrase which is used to

express the international commendation of Wales and Scotland to the

English King. In the Chronicles, 922, we read of Eadward, “and þa

cyningas on Norþ Wealum, Howel and Cledauc and Ieoþwel, and eall Norþ

Weallcyn _hine sohton him to hlaforde_.” And in the famous passage which

describes the great commendation of 924 (see above, p. 576) the words

are, “_hine geces þa to fæder and to hlaforde_ Scotta cyning,” &c.

Of the use of the word as applied on an international scale there is an

early instance in the letter of Pope Stephen to Pippin (Waitz, iii. 84;

cf. 87), where he says, “tam ipsi Spoletani quamque etiam Beneventani

omnes _se commendare_ per nos a Deo servatæ excellentiæ tuæ cupiunt.”

But the best setting forth of the doctrine between sovereign princes is

to be found in the words which Dudo (128 D) puts into the mouth of Hugh

the Great, when he explains to young Richard the need of seeking a lord;

“Hugo vero Magnus intelligens animadvertisse utrumque affectum

voluntatis suæ, aperta cordis sui intentione dicitur respondisse: ‘Non

est quippe mos Franciæ, ut quislibet princeps duxve constipatus

abundantius tanto milite perseveret cunctis diebus taliter in dominio

ditionis suæ, ut non aut famulatu voluntatis suæ, aut coactus vi et

potestate, incumbat acclivius Imperatori, vel regi, ducive: et si forte

perseveraverit in temeritate audaciæ suæ, ut non famularetur alicui

volenter præcopiosa ubertate sufficientiæ suæ; solent ei rixæ

dissentionesque atque casus innumerabilis detrimenti sæpissime accidere.

Quapropter si placuisset Richardo duci tuo nepoti seipsum flectere ut

militaret mihi, vestro saluberrimo consilio sponte filiam meam connubio

illi jungerem; et terræ, quam hereditario jure possidet, continuus

defensor et adjutor contra omnes adessem.’”

NOTE O. p. 91.

GROWTH OF THE THEGNHOOD.

I cannot forbear transcribing the passage in which Mr. Kemble (Saxons in

England, i. 183) sums up the general results of the growth of the

Thegnhood. “As the royal power steadily advanced by his assistance, and

the old, national nobility of birth, as well as the old, landed freeman

sunk into a lower rank, the gesið found himself rising in power and

consideration proportioned to that of his chief: the offices which had

passed from the election of the freemen to the gift of the crown, were

now conferred upon him, and the ealdorman, duke, geréfa, judge, and even

the bishop, were at length selected from the ranks of the comitatus.

Finally, the nobles by birth themselves became absorbed in the

ever-widening whirlpool; day by day the freemen, deprived of their old

national defences, wringing with difficulty a precarious subsistence

from incessant labour, sullenly yielded to a yoke which they could not

shake off, and commended themselves (such was the phrase) to the

protection of a lord; till a complete change having thus been operated

in the opinions of men, and consequently in every relation of society, a

new order of things was consummated, in which the honours and security

of service became more anxiously desired than a needy and unsafe

freedom; and the alods being finally surrendered, to be taken back as

_beneficia_, under mediate lords, the foundations of the royal, feudal

system were securely laid on every side.”

The supplanting of an older by a newer form of nobility has several

parallels in history. The distinction between _patricii_ and _nobiles_

at Rome has some analogies to the distinction between _eorlas_ and

_þegnas_ in England. The plebeian could not become patrician, but he

could become noble; and this plebeian nobility, derived from the

possession of curule magistracies, answered to our thegnhood in being a

nobility of office, though in this case it was office conferred by the

people and not by a King or other lord. See more in Comparative

Politics, 246–270. On the growth of the official _comitatus_ in the

courts of the Frankish Kings and Emperors see the chapter of Waitz (iii.

410), “Der Hof und die Reichsversammlung.” He comments on the difference

between this and the earlier _comitatus_; but both are instances of the

same principle. See also iv. 278 of the same work, “Dabei wird immer

auch auf Abstammung, Ansehn des Geschlechtes Werth gelegt; aber ein

bestimmter rechtlicher Vorzug war damit nicht verbunden.” He has

collected a great number of cases of the use of the word _nobilis_ and

other equivalent words in the Carolingian age, that is to say, just at

the point when the old notion of nobility had come to an end and when

the new one had not fully developed itself. In that immediate stage

nobility means simply to have meant free birth, or at all events free

birth combined with the possession of land.

NOTE P. p. 95.

GRANTS OF FOLKLAND.

I hope to say something more in my fifth volume about the tenure of land

in England. I will here only give one or two specimens of the form of

these grants.

In 977 (Cod. Dipl. iii. 157) King Eadward makes a grant to Ælfric (which

Ælfric?) in these terms; “Aliquam partem terræ juris mei perpetuali

donatione libenter concedo cuidam fideli meo ministro [þegn] vocitato

nomine Ælfric, ob illius amabile obsequium dignatus sum largiri.” He is

to have it in full property, with the right of bequest, and to hold it

free of all services “exceptis istis tribus, expeditione, pontis arcisve

munitione.” So Æthelred in 982 (Cod. Dipl. iii. 188) grants “ruris

quamdam sed communem portionem, quam hujus nationis indigenæ usitato æt

Stoce nuncupant onomate, cuipiam mihi _pisticâ_ [one thinks of the

πιστοί in the Persians of Æschylus] devotione subnixo vocitamine

Leofrico.” The grantee is to have full power of bequest, and to hold the

land “ab omni terrenæ servitutis jugo liberum, excepta expeditione,

pontis arcisve restauratione.” Fearful curses are imprecated on any one

who shall disturb the grantees in their possessions.

Bishops make grants to their own thegns of Church lands to be held for

one, two, or three lives, and then to revert to the Church. The Codex

contains a great many grants of this kind made by Bishop Oswald, the

grant being made by leave of the King and of the reigning Ealdorman of

the Mercians. In one, in English, which immediately follows the grant to

Ælfric (iii. 159), we find the _trinoda necessitas_ duly excepted. “Sie

hit ǽlces þinges freoh búton ferdfare and walgeworc and brygcgeworc and

cyrcanláde.”

The consent of the Witan is marked in the grant to Leofric by the words

“his testibus consentientibus quorum inferius nomina caraxantur.” So

Eadgar (iii. 153) makes a grant “optimatum meorum utens consilio,” &c.,

&c.

The Codex Diplomaticus is of course the great storehouse of knowledge on

this subject.

NOTE Q. p. 101.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE WITENAGEMÓT.

I conceive that my notions about the Witenagemót do not differ

essentially from those of Mr. Kemble. The process by which a primary

Assembly in a large country naturally shrinks up into a small official

or aristocratic body could not be better drawn out than they are in his

chapter on the Witenagemót (Saxons in England, ii. 191 et seqq.). He

winds up (p. 195) with the words; “At what exact period the change I

have attempted to describe was effected, is neither very easy to

determine nor very material. It was probably very gradual, and very

partial; indeed it may never have been formally recognized, for here and

there we find evident traces of the people’s being present at, and

ratifying the decisions of the Witan.” In a note on the next page Mr.

Kemble goes on to refute the strange notion of Sir Francis Palgrave (ii.

ccclxxxvi.) that a property qualification was needed for a seat in the

Witenagemót. In fact Mr. Kemble’s remarks are all that could be wished,

if he had only brought forward more clearly some of those “evident

traces” to which he cursorily alludes.

I will try, partly at least, to fill up the gap. Take for instance the

very beginning of recorded English legislation, the Dooms of Æthelberht

(Thorpe, i. 2); “Gif cyning his _leode_ to him gehated.” _Leode_ here

surely means _people_ in the widest sense. So in the Preface to the Laws

of Wihtræd (p. 36); “Ðær þa eadigan fundon _mid ealra gemedum_ þas

domas.” The great men propose, the people accept, just as in the

_concilia_ described by Tacitus. So the deposition of Sigeberht in 755

(of which more in the next Note) was, according to Henry of Huntingdon

(M. H. B. 729 C), who is clearly following some earlier writer, the act

of the whole West-Saxon people; “Congregati sunt proceres et _populus

totius regni_, et provida deliberatione et _unanimi consensu omnium_

expulsus est a regno. Kinewlf vero, juvenis egregius de regia stirpe

oriundus, electus est in regem.” So the “Decretum Episcoporum et aliorum

sapientum de Kancia,” addressed to Æthelstan (Thorpe, i. 216), whatever

its exact bearing, is drawn up in the name of the “thaini, comites

[eorlas], et _villani_ [ceorlas].” So the “Judicia Civitatis Lundoniæ”

(p. 228, Schmid, 156) are confirmed by all, “ægder ge eorlisce ge

ceorlisce,” in the Latin “comites et villani.” So in the Chronicles a

popular element is often mentioned in the election of Kings and in other

national acts. In 959 Eadgar was, according to Florence, “ab omni

Anglorum populo electus.” In 1016 Eadmund is chosen by the Witan and the

citizens (burhwaru) of London. So in 1036 Harold the First is chosen by

most of the thegns north of Thames and by the _liðsmen_ or sailors of

London. In 1041 “_all folk_ chose Eadward to King.” So in 1066 Harold

took the kingdom “as _men_ chose him thereto.” So in 1048, when Godwine

proposes to interfere in the wars of the North, “hit þuhte unræd _eallum

folce_.” So too Godwine, on his return in 1052, makes his speech in the

_Mycel Gemót_ “wið Eadward cyng his hlaford and wið _ealle landleodan_.”

So with regard to a local body, in the account of a Scirgemót of

Herefordshire in Cod. Dipl. iv. 54, though the thegns (“ealle ða þegnas

on Herefordscíre”) are mentioned in a special way, yet the final

judgement is given by the popular voice—“be _ealles ðæs folces_ leáfe

and gewitnesse.” With regard to the action of the citizens of London,

the case no doubt simply was that they, being on the spot, could assert

this right, which others at a distance could not do. But it must be

remembered that till the eleventh century the Witan did not commonly

meet either in London or in any other of the chief towns. Possibly, when

a Gemót was held at Winchester or Exeter, the citizens of those towns

would hold the same position as the Londoners did when the Gemót was

held in their city. Something of this kind seems to be referred to in a

charter of Æthelstan (Cod. Dipl. ii. 194) of the year 934—a charter

remarkable on other grounds from the vast number of signatures,

including four vassal Kings, and evidently passed in what was indeed a

_Mycel Gemót_. It is given “in civitate opinatissima [sic] quæ

Winteceaster nuncupatur, tota populi generalitate sub alis regiæ

dapsilitatis ovanti.” The citizens both of London and of Winchester seem

to be mentioned as electors of Kings as late as the accession of

Stephen. (See W. Malms., Hist. Nov. i. 11.) Even as late as 1461, Edward

Earl of March was elected King by a tumultuous assembly of the citizens

of London, and the citizens were foremost in the revolution which placed

Richard the Third on the throne in 1483. These elections are fully

described in Hall’s Chronicle, pp. 253, 372. (See Growth of English

Constitution, 204.) And that of Edward comes out well in the Collections

of a London Citizen (Camden Society), 215, where we read how the Earl of

March “enteryed unto the cytte of London, and there he toke uppon hym

the crowne of Inglond by the avysse of the lordys spyrytual and

temporalle, and by the _elexyon of the comyns_. And so he be-gan hys

rayne.” These are plainly the last traces of the right which the

citizens had more regularly exercised in the elections of Eadmund

Ironside and of Harold the son of Cnut.

These passages seem distinctly to imply that every freeman had a

theoretical right to attend. Some of the expressions used might be

applied without impropriety to a representative assembly; but they could

not be applied to a body not representative, unless, in theory at least,

it took in the whole nation. These passages prove also that some form of

demanding the assent of the people at large was always retained. But the

retention of some such usage is almost proved, without going any

further, by the custom which still exists of presenting the King at his

coronation for the acceptance of the people (see vol. iii. Appendix E).

This is at once the last trace of our elective monarchy, and the last

vestige of the ancient right of the Teutonic freeman to take a direct

part in the affairs of the nation. We may see the working of the same

process on the continent in what Waitz, iii. 56, says of the Frankish

Assemblies under the Karlings; “Das Volk, oder die Grossen, welche auf

den allgemeinen Versammlungen im Namen des Volkes handelten.” But in the

quasi-official language of Einhard (Vita Kar. 1) it is “publicus populi

sui conventus,” and the Continuator of Fredegar (117 a, 752) speaks of

the change of dynasty as made “cum consilio omnium Francorum.”

The charter of 934, which I have just quoted, starts a point of quite

another kind, namely the question as to the attendance of the vassal

Celtic princes in the English Witenagemót. On this I have said something

in p. 132. The attendance of the Welsh Kings is not uncommon, especially

in the reign of Æthelstan. They often sign charters with the titles of

_subregulus_ or _undercyning_. See the signatures, ranging from 930 to

956 (Cod. Dipl. ii. 170, 173, 193, 196, 203, 292, 304, 326, 413; v. 199,

208, 217), of the _subreguli_ Howel, Morcant, Owen, Juthwal, Tudor,

Syferth, Jacob, Jukil, and Wurgeat. The Cumbrian signatures are rarer,

but we have those of Eugenius in 931 (v. 199) and 937 (ii. 203), and of

Malcolm in 966 and 970 (ii. 413, iii. 59). The signature of Kenneth of

Scotland is attached to three charters (Cod. Dipl. ii. 413, iii. 69;

Palgrave, ii. ccli. cclii.), but the authenticity of all three has been

suspected. Still his presence at the great ceremony at Chester shows

that the appearance of the King of Scots in the Witenagemót was a thing

that might be looked for. The treaty between Richard the First and

William the Lion, by which the novel claims of Henry the Second were

given up, contains elaborate rules for the reception of the King of

Scots on his way to the King’s court as due of ancient custom (Palgrave,

ii. cccxxxix.).

NOTE R. p. 106.

THE RIGHT OF THE WITAN TO DEPOSE THE KING.

Mr. Kemble (ii. 219) formally reckons among the powers of the Witan that

they “had the power to depose the King, if his government was not

conducted for the benefit of the people.” He adds that “it is obvious

that the very existence of this power would render its exercise an event

of very rare occurrence.” He then goes on to discuss the case of

Sigeberht at length, and adds, “I have little doubt that an equally

formal, though hardly equally justifiable, proceeding severed Mercia

from Eádwig’s kingdom, and reconstituted it as a separate state under

Eádgár; and lastly from Simeon of Durham we learn that the Northumbrian

Alchred was deposed and exiled, with the counsel and consent of all his

people.”

This last Northumbrian case is worth notice, as showing that a perfectly

legal proceeding may lurk under words which at first sight seem to imply

mere violence. The two Chronicles, Worcester and Peterborough, which

record the deposition of Ealhred in the year 774, use the words, “Her

Norðhymbra fordrifon heora cyning Alchred of Eoforwic on Eastertid, and

genamon Æþelred Molles sunu him to hlaforde.” So Florence, “Festi

paschalis tempore Northymbrenses regem suum Alhredum, Molli regis

successorem, Eboraco expulere, filiumque ejusdem regis Molli,

Æthelberhtum, in regem levavere.” This might suggest the notion of a

mere revolutionary act; but the words of Simeon bring out the legal

character of the deposition much more strongly; “Alcredus rex, consilio

et consensu _suorum omnium_, regiæ familiæ ac principum destitutus

societate, exilio imperii mutavit majestatem.” With this new light

before us, we better understand the force of the words of the

Chronicles, “of Eoforwic on Eastertid.” It is plain that Ealhred was

deposed by the Easter Gemót of his kingdom assembled in his capital.

Simeon then goes on to speak of Æthelred as “tanto honore coronatus;”

and it should be noticed that in 779, when he records the expulsion of

Æthelred himself, richly deserved as it was by the treacherous murder of

three of his Ealdormen, he does not use the same legal language;

“Ethelredo expulso de regali solio et in exilio fugato, cogitur mœstos

inire modos miserasque habere querelas. Elfwald vero filius Oswlfi,

Ethelredo expulso, regnum Northanhymbrorum suscepit.” So in the

Chronicles (778), “And þa feng Alfwold to rice and Æþeldred bedraf on

lande.”

To turn to the case of Sigeberht, I have already quoted (see above, p.

400) the words of Henry of Huntingdon, in whose account the legal action

of the nation stands out most clearly; but the consent of the Witan

appears also in all the other accounts. In the Chronicles (755) we read,

“Her Cynewulf benam Sigebryhte his mæge his rices and Wæst-seaxna witan

for unrihtum dædum butan Hamtunscire.” So Florence, “Cynewlfus, de

prosapia Cerdici regis oriundus, auxilium sibi ferentibus West-Saxonicis

primatibus, regem illorum Sigebertum, ob multitudinem suorum iniquorum

factorum, regno exterminavit, et loco ejus regnavit; unam tamen

provinciam, quæ Hantunscire dicitur, eidem concessit.” And even

Æthelweard (ii. 17), who seems to tell the story with a certain royalist

leaning against Cynewulf, witnesses to the same facts; “Post decursum

unius anni ex quo Sigebryht regnare cœperat, cujus regnum invadens

Cynulf abstraxit ab eo, et sapientes totius partis occidentalis

facietenus traxit cum eo propter inconditos actus supradicti regis; nec

illi derelicta pars potestatis nisi provincia una quæ Hamtunscire

nuncupatur.” In this case, as in the case of Ealhred, we may remark the

different colourings given to the same action. The deposition of

Sigeberht was clearly a legal act, but it might be spoken of as an

“invasio,” just as equally legal acts later in our history could be also

spoken of as “invasiones.”

With regard to the separation of Mercia from the kingdom of Eadwig,

spoken of by Mr. Kemble, the whole of Eadwig’s reign is shrouded in such

darkness that, as it forms no part of my immediate subject, I have

rather avoided going into it. But at any rate that separation would

present one point of difference from any of the other cases. As Eadgar

seems to have been Under-king of the Mercians from the death of Eadred,

the act by which the Mercians threw off the authority of Eadwig was

rather the rejection of the supremacy of an over-lord than the

deposition of an immediate sovereign.

Of the other cases which I have mentioned in the text, those which come

within the range of my History I have discussed in their proper places.

Among the later cases, some may have expected to see the names of Henry

the Sixth and Charles the First. But neither of these Kings were, in

strictness of speech, deposed. By deposition I understand an act by

which a King, whose right to be King is acknowledged up to that time,

is, by virtue of such act, declared to be no longer King. This was not

exactly the case with Henry the Sixth. When Richard Duke of York claimed

the crown in preference to Henry, a compromise was made, by which Henry

was to keep the crown for life and Richard was to become his

heir-apparent. It was therefore the Yorkist theory that Henry reigned by

virtue of this agreement, and that, when he afterwards, as was alleged,

broke the agreement, the Crown was thereby forfeited and the Duke became

_de jure_ King. (See Growth of the English Constitution, p. 149.) Yet,

as we have seen, a kind of popular election was thought needful to

confirm the rights of his son. Charles the First, it is still more

clear, was not deposed. He was tried and executed _being King_, a

process of which English history supplies no other example. The

depositions of Edward the Second and Richard the Second are too plain to

need comment. James the Second was clearly deposed in Scotland; whether

the vote against him in England could be strictly called a vote of

deposition is less clear. On the character of this famous vote,

logically so absurd, yet practically so thoroughly adapted to all the

circumstances of the time, see Macaulay, Hist. of Eng. ii. 623. So on

the vote of the Scottish Estates, iii. 285.

I have spoken in the text of that milder form of deposition by which the

King was removed from his authority without being formally removed from

his office. Of this process the simpler forms of our early constitution

will hardly supply an instance, unless we see an approach to it in the

engagement (see p. 368) entered into by Æthelred on his restoration to

rule in all things by the advice of his Witan. But it was done in the

cases of Henry the Third, Edward the Second, and Richard the Second; in

the two latter cases the act was a kind of forewarning of the severer

punishment which was to follow.

It must be remembered that throughout this argument I am dealing with

the legal right of deposition, not with the justice of its exercise in

any particular case. As to Sigeberht, and as to Ealhred too, both of

them clearly deserved their fate, but how far in either case the

West-Saxon and Northumbrian Witan may have been influenced by any

personal intrigues of Cynewulf or Æthelred, who play in the two stories

respectively the part of Henry of Bolingbroke or William of Orange, is

not to the purpose. So too with the later fates of the deposed Kings,

with the certain murder of Edward, the all but certain murder of

Richard, the constitutional question has nothing to do. The deposed

prince was let off the most easily in the earliest case. Sigeberht,

deposed from the kingdom of Wessex, was allowed to retain Hampshire as

Under-king. Having murdered one of his Ealdormen, he was banished

altogether by Cynewulf, the new head King, and he was afterwards killed

by a private enemy.

For instances of deposition among other Teutonic nations see Kemble, ii.

221. The most famous case of all, the deposition of Childeric and

election of Pippin, was somewhat spoiled by the application to the

Bishop of Rome about a matter which it clearly lay within the power of

the Frankish nation to settle without his interference.

NOTE S. p. 107.

THE ELECTION OF KINGS.

Some passages bearing on the election of Kings by the Witan, that is in

truth by the people, have been already quoted (see above, p. 602). At

every stage of my history I shall have to call attention to the way in

which the right of free election was carried out in practice. But it is

worth while to point out how long the old Teutonic feeling survived, and

at how late a time it was still formally put forth as a constitutional

principle. Nowhere can a better exposition of the ancient doctrine as to

the election of Kings be found than in the speech which Matthew Paris

(Chronica Majora, ii. 454, ed. Luard) puts into the mouth of Archbishop

Hubert at the election of King John. Whether the speech is Hubert’s or

Matthew’s matters little; or rather, if it be Matthew’s own, it is the

more valuable, as carrying on the ancient tradition still later. No one

has any right to be King unless he be chosen by the whole people of the

land on account of his merits (“nullus prævia ratione alii succedere

habet regnum, nisi ab _universitate regni_ unanimiter, invocata Spiritus

gratia, electus”), but if any member of the royal family be worthy, he

is to be preferred to any one else (“verum si quis ex stirpe regis

defuncti aliis præpolleret, pronius et promptius in electionem ejus est

consentiendum”). The preamble is excellent, but the practical inference

is strange, namely that Duke John, for his many virtues, should be

chosen King. With this speech, made by, or attributed to, an English

Archbishop, we may compare the similar doctrine of elective monarchy

laid down by a French Archbishop, Adalbero of Rheims, at the election of

Hugh Capet in 987; “Non ignoramus Karolum fautores suos habere, qui eum

dignum regno ex parentum collatione contendant. Sed si de hoc agitur,

_nec regnum jure hæreditario adquiritur_, nec in regnum promovendus est

nisi quem non solum corporis nobilitas, sed et animi sapientia

illustrat, fides munit, magnanimitas firmat. Legimus in annalibus,

clarissimi generis Imperatoribus ignavia ab dignitate præcipitatis,

alios modo pares, modo impares successisse.” (Richer, iv. 11.) So again

the combination of the elective and hereditary principles, as found in

all the old Teutonic kingdoms, is well set forth by Rudolf Glaber, i. 3;

“Totius regni primates _elegerunt_ Ludovicum, filium videlicet prædicti

regis Caroli, unguentes eum super se regem _hæreditario jure_

regnaturum.” We shall find as nearly as possible the same words in an

important passage of our Chronicles (A. 1042).

NOTE T. p. 151.

NAMES OF KINGDOMS AND NATIONS.

It should be carefully borne in mind that, throughout the times with

which we are dealing, two systems of geographical nomenclature were in

use, we might say in rival use. The ancient names, Roman or ante-Roman,

still survived, as many of them survive still, as purely geographical

descriptions, and the new names, the names of states and kingdoms named

after their inhabitants, were still only in process of forming. I have

said something of this in an earlier Note (see above, p. 596) with

regard to the nomenclature of our own island; the nomenclature of

continental countries we shall find to be still more confused. But the

two classes of names can be clearly distinguished. _Gallia_ and

_Britannia_ were doubtless in their origin names derived from a people,

no less than _Francia_ and _Anglia_; but, in the times with which we

have to deal, _Gallia_ and _Britannia_ had become purely geographical

terms, simply expressing a certain extent of territory on the map, while

_Francia_ and _Anglia_ (if the latter name was used at all) were

political names, expressing the territory occupied or ruled by _Franci_

and _Angli_. The shifting of names of this latter class are frequent and

well known. The modern kingdom of Saxony, for instance, has not an inch

of ground in common with the Saxony which was conquered by Charles the

Great, and the various meanings of the word Burgundy have become a

proverb among the learned and a touchstone to bewray the half-learned.

Another cause of confusion is that the ancient geographical names were

constantly used, not only in their straightforward geographical sense,

but also by way of fine writing, in which case they are constantly used

affectedly, and often inaccurately. This is especially the case with

Richer. Take for instance the opening of his second book, where he

describes the political parties of his own day in the geographical

language of Cæsar, “Galli namque Celtæ cum Aquitanis Hugonem Rotberti

regis filium, Belgæ vero Ludovicum Karoli sequebantur.” Here we get a

real distinction of race and language. The _Celtæ_ and _Aquitani_ are

the nations of the Romance tongues, the forerunners of the future French

and the future Provençal, while the _Belgæ_ mark the still Teutonic part

of the kingdom, whose inhabitants Richer elsewhere (i. 47) distinctly

calls _Germani_. But none would guess this from the antiquated

phraseology which he chooses. A still more remarkable instance of

Richers way of misusing antiquated terms will be found in a passage

which seems to have misled Sir Francis Palgrave. Sir Francis, describing

the campaign of 944 (see p. 225) says (ii. 543), “Among other vassals or

dependants ... Otho was joined by Conrad ‘King of Geneva,’ under which

style we might have some difficulty in recognizing the King of Burgundy,

yet the title is not undeserving of notice, as embodying the very few

remaining recollections of a kingdom practically effaced from historical

memory.” This I do not understand. As Sir Francis gives no references, I

cannot undertake to deny that Conrad may be called “King of Geneva”

somewhere, but he certainly is not so called in any of the most obvious

authorities for this campaign. Widukind does not mention him at all. In

Flodoard (A. 946) he is, as usual, “Cisalpinæ Galliæ rex.” In Richer

(ii. 53) he is “Rex Genaunorum.” (Did Sir Francis read “Genevanorum”?)

It is strange geography of Richer to place the Genauni in Burgundy, but

we find again in ii. 98, “urbem Vesontium, quæ est metropolis

Genaunorum, cui etiam in Alpibus sitæ Aldis Dubis præterfluit.” The

ecclesiastical province of Besançon answers almost exactly to

_Transjurane_ Burgundy. In iii. 86 the same Conrad is, still more

wonderfully, made into “Rex Alemannorum.” Richer, in short, despised the

geography of his own age, and used his obsolete names without much

discretion.

But this affectation extends to better writers than Richer. Lambert

himself constantly uses the word _Galliæ_ in a vague sort of way, or

rather as equivalent to Germany. Thus, for instance, we hear of the

church of Fulda as one of the chief churches of the Gauls “illius

monasterii opes usque ad id temporis florentissimæ erant cunctisque

_Galliarum_ ecclesiis eminebant.” A 1063), while Mainz (A. 1074) is

“caput et princeps _Gallicarum_ urbium.” And the word is used in the

same sense in several other passages under those two years. So, as I

have implied in discussing Richer’s description of Conrad, the name

“Gallia Cisalpina,” as used by Flodoard, always, I cannot conceive why,

means the kingdom of Burgundy or some part of it (see A. 924, 937, 939,

946). Of these the third is the passage referred to in p. 203. M. Gaudet

in his note on Richer takes the “Hugo Cisalpinus” there spoken of for

Hugh the Black, one of the Princes of the ducal Burgundy who is

mentioned by Flodoard the next year. But there can be no doubt that the

person meant is Hugh of Provence, the famous King of Italy.

But the great source, not so much of confusion as of vague and strange

descriptions or rather indications of kingdoms and states, arises from

the fact that none of the states formed by the division of the

Carolingian Empire, none at least of those north of the Alps, had as yet

won for itself a geographical name. There were old national names in

abundance, Saxony, Bavaria, Aquitaine, Britanny, but there were no

general names to express the kingdoms of Charles, Lothar, and Lewis,

respectively. Each King was a King of the Franks; he reigned over so

much of the old Frankish dominion as he could get hold of; he had no

distinct and recognized national or territorial title; he and his

kingdom had to be described, or rather pointed out, as they might be. We

nowhere see this better than in the way in which our own Chronicles

under the year 887 record the division of the Empire after the

deposition of Charles the Third. The four kingdoms are clearly marked

out, but not one of the four has a territorial name; the three which lie

north of the Alps are simply pointed to geographically; “Earnulf wunode

on þam lande be æstan Rine; and Hroðulf þa feng to þam middel rice, and

Oda to þam west dæle, and Beorngar and Wiða to Langbeardna lande.” This

is at least clearer than the description given by Erchempert (Hist.

Langobardorum, 11; Pertz, iii. 245) of the earlier division between the

sons of Lewis the Pious; “Ab hoc Francorum divisum est regnum, quoniam

Lutharius Aquensem et Italicum, Ludoguicus [this form, with the _gu_ for

the _w_, is worth noting philologically] autem Baioarium, Karlus vero,

ex alia ortus genitrice, Aquitaneum regebat imperium.” Here, in the

hopelessness of finding a name for Lothar’s kingdom, we find an unique

“regnum” or “imperium Aquense,” while Saxony and the rest of Germany are

merged in Bavaria, and Neustria is merged in Aquitaine. Another way of

distinguishing kingdoms and their inhabitants was to describe them by

the names of their rulers, as in the passage of Widukind (i. 29) quoted

in p. 155; “Unde usque hodie certamen est de regno Karolorum stirpi et

posteris Odonis, concertatio quoque regibus Karolorum et Orientalium

Francorum super regno Lotharii.” Here “regnum Lotharii” is of course

Lotharingia, Lothringen, Lorraine, though it must be remembered that the

name takes in a far wider territory than the modern duchy. So Gregory

the Seventh (Jaffé, Mon. Greg. 465) speaks of “regnum Lotharii” and

Bonitho (ib. 631) of “Lothariorum regnum.” And in the continuation of

Regino (Pertz, i. 618) “Lothariensi regnum” is opposed to Gallia Romana.

But it should also be noticed that the Western Kingdom also has no name;

its Kings are “reges Karolorum;” it was quite a chance that France was

not permanently called _Carolingia_ to match _Lotharingia_. So in

Widukind (iii. 2) the Western kingdom is “regnum Karoli,” though in the

reign of a Lewis; so, still more distinctly, in the Gesta Episcoporum

Cameracensium (i. 55, iii. 50; Pertz, vii. 421, 481) the inhabitants of

France and Lotharingia are distinguished as “_Karlenses_” and

“Lotharienses.” So in the same work (i. 116; Pertz, vii. 452) “Robertus

rex _Karlensium_” is coupled with “Richardus rex Rotomagensium.” And

strangest of all, in the Chronicle of the Counts of Flanders (Corp.

Chron. Fland. i. 86) the Emperor Henry the Third is spoken of as “Rex

Lothariensis, qui et Cæsar Imperator Augustus appellatus est.” (So in

our own Chronicle, 1126, “þone kasere Heanri of Loherenge;” in the next

year we hear of “ðes Caseres wif of Sexlande.”) This way of describing

countries by their rulers is very common just at this time, when

divisions were springing up for which there were no received

geographical names. Thus Germany is sometimes “Terra Heinrici”

(Flodoard, 933); Flanders and Normandy are, in our own Chronicles,

“Baldwines land” and “Ricardes rice.” But Lotharingia, perhaps as the

name of the most purely artificial division of all, is the only name of

the class which has survived.

This same passage leads us to the way which (except in the case of

Lotharingia, a kingdom which almost always bore the name of its founder)

became more usual, that of distinguishing the kingdoms and their

inhabitants by some distinctive epithet of race or language, or by some

word which simply points to them geographically. The difficulty, as I

have already hinted, arises from the still abiding notion of the

existence of a single Frankish kingdom, however many might be the Kings

among whom its administration was divided. None of the Kings, nor yet

the subjects of any of the Kings, would give up their right to be at

least one of the Kings of the Franks, to be at least part of the people

of the Franks. While such a state of feeling was rife, it was impossible

that any King or kingdom should bear any title distinctly and

permanently recognized. A King most commonly describes himself simply as

“Rex;” any more particular description might have been construed either

as a surrender of his own rights or as an infringement of the rights of

some other prince. Thus it has often been remarked that in the act of

election (see Pertz, Legg. i. 547, cf. the election of Lewis at p. 558)

by which Boso was raised to the kingship of Burgundy—the “middel rice”

of our Chronicles—he is simply made King without any particular title,

and without any particular geographical extent being traced out for his

kingdom. It was not so while the Frankish dominions remained undivided.

In the days of the early Karlings, the King had a title and his

dominions had a name. His dominions were _Francia_; he himself was the

_Rex Francorum_. In Einhard, _Francia_ means the whole territory

occupied or ruled by the Franks and their King. This comes out very

strongly in the Life of Charles, c. 2; “Pater ejus [Pippini] Karolus,

qui tyrannos per totam Franciam dominatum sibi vindicantes oppressit, et

Sarracenos Galliam occupare tentantes duobus magnis prœliis, uno in

Aquitania apud Pictavium civitatem, altero juxta Narbonam apud Birram

fluvium devicit.” Here, with the strictest precision, _Gallia_ is a part

of _Francia_ and _Aquitania_ is a part of _Gallia_. And this will be

found to be the common use throughout the Life and Annals. So the Monk

of Saint Gallen (Gesta Karoli, i. 10; Pertz, ii. 735) defines Francia in

the widest sense to take in “omnes Cis-alpinas provincias.” But the name

_Francia_ gradually came to be confined to two portions of the original

_Francia_, one on each side of the Rhine, those where the name still

survives alike in _France_ and in _Franken_ or _Franconia_. These two

had therefore to be distinguished by various epithets. Thus we find

“Francia Teutonica” opposed to “Francia Latina” and “Francia Orientalis”

opposed to “Francia Occidentalis.” Sometimes “Francia” and “Gallia” are

opposed, as in Ann. Xant. 877 (Pertz, ii. 234), and the use is not

uncommon in the Annals of Fulda, as 880 (i. 393). See too specially

Bruno, Bell. Sax. 36 (Pertz, v. 342), and Liudprand (Antapodosis, i. 14,

16), who talks of “Franciam quam Romanam dicunt,” and elsewhere (iii.

20) of “Francorum genus Teutonicorum.” See also Widukind, i. 16, 29;

Wipo, Vit. Chuon. 1, 6, 27, and especially c. 2, where he describes the

Rhine as the frontier of “Gallia” and “Germania,” and reckons up the

nations in both countries which formed the kingdom of Conrad, among

which are “Franci Orientales,” and “Franci qui supra Rhenum habitant,”

an unusual distinction. See also Otto of Freising, Gest. Frid. i. 34,

where he speaks of “Orientalis Francia,” and Ann. vii. 5, where he

distinguishes “Franci Romani et Teutonici.” In the Annals of Saint

Vedast, 887 (Pertz, ii. 203), we find “Franci Australes” and

“inferiores;” but in those Annals “Franci” and “Francia” commonly mean

the Western kingdom. The word is sometimes used in this sense in the

phrases “rex Franciæ” and “regnum Franciæ” (see above, p. 595, and Dudo,

97 D). But _Francia_, as used by writers within the Western kingdom,

commonly means the Parisian duchy, and it is only through the successive

conquests of the Parisian Kings that the word _France_ has gained that

modern meaning which now takes in the old Western kingdom and something

more. The ordinary meaning of the word _Francia_ in Flodoard and Richer

is plain from such passages as Flodoard, A. 923, 926. It means the

dominion of the “Dux Francorum,” whether he be “Rex Francorum” as well

or not. In the latter passage, we find a Danegeld levied “per Franciam

et Burgundiam,” where _Burgundia_ does not mean the kingdom of Boso, but

the duchy which did homage to the West-Frankish King. So in the Vita

Hludowici, 49, we find “Francia, Burgundia, Aquitania, et Germania.”

_Francia_, in short, as used by these writers, excludes Lotharingia and

all the Burgundies; it excludes Aquitaine, Normandy, and Britanny; and

it has further to be distinguished as “Latina” or “Occidentalis” from

the other _Francia_ east of the Rhine.

In the like sort, we read in the Chronica Regum Francorum, ap. Pertz,

iii. 214; “Hic [at the deposition of Charles the Third] divisio facta

est inter Teutones Francos et Latinos Francos.” But it is remarkable to

trace how early, especially within the Western _Francia_, the word

_Franci_ began to mean the Western as opposed to the Eastern Franks.

Thus the Astronomer (ap. Pertz, ii. 617) speaks of Lewis the Pious as

“monitus tam a _Francis_ quamque a Germanis,” and again (p. 633),

“diffidens _Francis_, magisque se credens Germanis.” So Liudprand

(Antapod. i. 14, 17) uses “Rex Galliæ” and “Rex Francorum” as

synonymous. And the word seems to be used in the same sense by Nithard,

i. 5, ii. 3, in the former of which passages _Francia_ seems to be

opposed to “universi qui trans Renum morabantur.” So Wipo (31)

distinguishes the Western kingdom as “Galliæ Francorum,” and Lambert

(1073), unlike Bruno, allows the title of “Rex Francorum” to the Western

potentate. Still in Germany _Franci_ kept its natural meaning down to

the days of Frederick Barbarossa. “Sic emitur a _Francis_ Imperium,”

says Otto of Freising (Gest. Frid. ii. 22). Yet elsewhere (i. 58) he

speaks of “Rex Francorum” and “Rex Franciæ” in the other sense. So

William of Malmesbury (i. 68), in a passage the whole of which is worth

study, says, “Lotharingi et Alemanni, et cæteri Transrhenani populi qui

Imperatori Teutonicorum subjecti sunt, magis proprie se Francos

appellari jubent; et eos quos nos Francos putamus, _Galwalas_ antiquo

vocabulo [did William know the force of the _walas_?] quasi Gallos

nuncupant. Quibus et ego assensum commodo,” &c. Elsewhere (iv. 360) he

says, “Romanum Imperium prius ad Francos, post ad Teutones, declinavit;”

he yet more strangely adds, “orientale apud Persas semper durat.”

In other cases the words _Franci_ or _Francia_ are altogether left out.

“Occidentales” alone is used as equivalent to West-Frankish or French,

and “Orientales” is used as equivalent to German. Perhaps the most

remarkable case of this use is to be found in the treaty between Charles

the Simple and Henry of Saxony in 921 (Pertz, Legg. i. 567). Here the

two Kings of the Franks are geographically distinguished, as

“Gloriosissimus rex Francorum Occidentalium, Karolus” and

“Magnificentissimus rex Francorum Orientalium Heinricus.” But in the

text of the treaty, where Charles speaks in his own person, he says,

“Ego Karolus, divina propitiante clementia, rex Francorum Occidentalium,

amodo ero huic amico meo _regi Orientali_ Heinrico amicus.” We find the

same use in Dudo, 130 B, and in a very remarkable passage of Richer (iv.

12, 13), where he gives two descriptions of the extent of the Western

kingdom in the tenth century. Hugh Capet is made King over “Galli,

Britanni, Dahi [doubtless _Dani_, i.e. the Normans], Aquitani, Gothi,

Hispani [the county of Barcelona], Wascones.” He then associates his son

Robert in the kingdom—“a Mosa fluvio usque Oceanum _Occidentalibus_

regem præfecit et ordinavit.” So in the extract from Thietmar in p. 175,

“Occiduæ partes” is the German writer’s description of the kingdom of

Charles the Simple. In other passages a King is simply, as it were,

pointed at. In Flodoard, 938, Otto is “Rex Transrhenensis,” in Richer,

i. 20, his father is simply “Heinricus Transrhenensis,” and in Dudo, 130

B, where the Germans are still “Orientales,” their King is still “Rex

Transrhenanus.” So “Rex Orientalis” is opposed to “Rex Galliæ,” Ann.

Xant. 873 (Pertz, ii. 235). More curious still is the description of no

less a person than Hugh the Great in Flodoard, A. 960; “Richardus,

filius Willelmi Nortmannorum principis, filiam Hugonis trans Sequanam

[or ‘Transsequani’] quondam principis, duxit uxorem.” So in 946 our

Eadmund is “Edmundus rex transmarinus.” See above, p. 565. This way of

describing suggests some of those curious mediæval verbs,

“transfretare,” “transpadare,” and the like.

Germany in fact was longer than any of the other countries of which we

have been speaking in getting a true territorial name for itself, and a

true territorial title for its sovereign. We have seen several instances

of the use of _Germania_; but then _Germania_, like _Gallia_, is a

purely geographical name, and the Eastern kingdom took in a large part

of _Gallia_. The kingdom itself is commonly “Regnum Teutonicum”

(Lambert, 1073), a phrase which is the more remarkable when we find it

coupled with the geographical name _Italia_, as in Gregory’s anathema in

Muratori, iii. 336. Lewis the son of Lewis the Pious is repeatedly

called “Rex Germanorum” by Prudentius of Troyes (Pertz, i. 441, 443),

and “Rex Germaniæ” by Hincmar (Pertz, i. 458). So Henry is “Germaniæ

princeps” in Flodoard, 928. But these are mere descriptions, and no such

formal title seems to be found earlier than the days of Maximilian.

Indeed the German kingdom was so soon swallowed up by the Roman Empire

that a distinct title for its King was hardly needed. The kingdom of

Boso, on the other hand, though he and his electors shrank from giving

it a name, soon found one in common use. Liudprand (Ant. ii. 60) tells

how “Rodulfus rex superbissimus Burgundionibus imperabat,” and Wipo

speaks familiarly (15, 19) of “Rex Burgundiæ” and “Burgundionum.”

Flodoard, however, besides his favourite flourish about Cisalpine Gaul,

tells us of “Rex Jurensis” under the years 935 and 940.

Lastly, the Norman duchy, as I have once or twice implied in the text,

was also slow in gaining for itself any distinct territorial name. There

is no trace of any such name in Flodoard or in Richer. In Dudo’s time

the country is beginning, but only beginning to have a name; it is

sometimes “Northmannia,” sometimes only “Terra Northmannorum,”

“Northmannica regio,” and the like. In the next century the people have

become “Normanni,” and their land has become “Normannia,” “Normendie.”

“Northmannia,” with Einhard, meant Denmark. In Adam of Bremen

“Nortmannia” means distinctively Norway, though he also uses the word

“Norvegia.” With him “Nortmanni” always means Norwegians, except in ii.

52, where Richard is described as “Comes Nortmannorum” and his duchy as

“Nortmannia.” It is perhaps needless to add that in our own Northumbrian

geography the local names Normanton and Normanby point to Northmen, not

to Normans, just as the word “Norþmen” is used in our own Chronicles in

describing the Commendation of 923.

NOTE V. p. 158.

NOTICES OF LANGUAGE IN THE TENTH CENTURY.

The notices of language which we come across in our authors are often

highly curious. The Romance languages are now just beginning to be felt

to be really languages, and not mere vulgar dialects of Latin. We get

perhaps our first glimpse of this feeling in Nithard’s description (iii.

5) of the famous oath of Strassburg in 842. The two languages, the

parents of modern High-Dutch and modern French, are distinguished as

“lingua Teudisca” and “lingua Romana.” Charles the Bald himself spoke

Lingua Romana; Pertz, Legg. i. 472. “Romana,” _Romance_, is the usual

description of the new language, as distinguished from the classical

“Latina,” though we have seen (see p. 182) at least one instance where

“Latinus sermo” means the popular Romance. In the course of the next

century the language became nationalized, and in Richer (iv. 100) it

appears as “lingua Gallica,” which becomes its usual later name. I leave

to professed philologers to fix the exact relation of the “lingua

Romana” of Nithard to French and to Provençal respectively. For my

purpose it is enough that it is Romance, as distinguished both from

Latin and from Teutonic.

We also in the course of the narratives of Flodoard and Richer come

across several curious passages where the Romance and Teutonic languages

are opposed to each other. Thus Charles the Simple has a conference at

Worms with Henry of Saxony (“Heinricus Transrhenensis”), when (Richer,

i. 20) “Germanorum Gallorumque juvenes, linguarum idiomate offensi, ut

eorum mos est, cum multa animositate maledictis sese lacessire

cœperunt.” In 948 Lewis and Otto attend a synod, where letters are read

in Latin, and are translated “propter reges juxta Teutiscam linguam.”

(Flod. in an.; Pertz, iii. 396.) Lewis therefore spoke German no less

than Otto. Otto however (see Widukind, ii. 36) could speak French on

occasion (“Romana lingua Slavanicaque loqui scit”), which makes the

employment of German still more important. In 981 Hugh Capet and Otto

the Second met. Otto spoke Latin, and a Bishop translated his speech to

Hugh. (Richer, iii. 85.) Hugh therefore did not understand German, and

the Romance which he spoke had departed so far from Latin that Latin

needed an interpreter. In 996 certain Gaulish and German Bishops meet

(Richer, iv. 100), and the Bishop of Verdun is chosen to speak “eo quod

linguam Gallicam norat.” The Lotharingian prelate could doubtless speak

both languages. These passages seem enough to make out the view which I

have everywhere maintained, that throughout the tenth century the

Carolingian Kings at Laon were a strictly German dynasty, speaking

German as their mother-tongue, while the Dukes and Kings of Paris were

already French.

Sir Francis Palgrave’s assertion (i. 72) that “the German Ritterschaft

of Otho the Great raised the war-cry in French” is an evident

misconception of the passage in Widukind (ii. 17) on which it seems to

be grounded. The historian is clearly speaking of the Lotharingian

borderers who spoke both languages. His words are simply, “Ex nostris

etiam fuere, qui Gallica lingua ex parte loqui sciebant, qui clamore in

altum Gallice levato, exhortati sunt adversarios ad fugam.”

Of the speed with which French displaced Danish as the language of

Normandy, I have said something in p. 181. For the retention of the

ancient speech at Bayeux, after it had been forgotten at Rouen, our

chief authority is Dudo, 112 D; “Quoniam quidem Rotomagensis civitas

Romana potius quam Dacisca utitur eloquentia, et Baiocacensis fruitur

frequentius Dacisca lingua quam Romana; volo igitur ut ad Baiocacensia

deferatur quantocius mœnia, et ibi volo ut sit, Botho, sub tua custodia,

et enutriatur et educetur cum magna diligentia, fervens loquacitate

Dacisca, tamque discens tenaci memoria, ut queat sermocinari profusius

olim contra Dacigenas.” (“Contra sermocinari,” in Dudo’s language, is

simply to converse with.) So Benoît, 11520;

“Si à Roem le faz garder

E norir, gaires longement

Il ne saura parlier neient

Daneis, kar nul l’i parole.

Si voil qu’il seit a tele escole

Ou l’en le sache endoctriner

Que as Daneis sache parler.

Ci ne sevent riens fors romanz;

Mais à Baiues en a tanz

Qui ne sevent si Daneis non:

E pur ceo, sire quens Boton,

Voil que vos l’aiez ensemble od vos.”

Wace (Roman de Rou, 2502) says only

“Richart sout en Daneiz, en Normant parler.”

Here “Normant” can mean nothing but French, but it is less clear what he

means by it in v. 2377, where we read,

“Cosne sout en Thioiz et en Normant parler.”

Wace probably meant French, but he seems to have misunderstood a passage

of Dudo (99, 100) which contains a curious notice of the use of the

Danish language, the force of which Dudo himself seems hardly to have

understood. William is at a conference with Henry of Germany (really

with Otto). Certain Lotharingians and Saxons talk to their own chief

Cono; William, by his knowledge of Danish, understands them (“per

Daciscam linguam quæ dicebant subsannantes, intelligendo subaudit”). The

Saxon Duke Hermann afterwards speaks to William in Danish, and being

asked how the Saxons came to understand that language, explains the fact

by the constant incursions of the Northmen. Duke Hermann might very well

understand Danish, and might speak Danish to William; but the Saxons and

Lotharingians would not speak Danish to Cono. What the story seems to

point to is that the Low-Dutch of Saxony and Lower Lorraine was so far

intelligible to one who understood Danish that he could guess at the

general meaning of what was said.

But the most remarkable notice of language at all is to be found in the

Tours Chronicle in Duchesne, Rer. Franc. Scriptt. iii. 360, which

records the homage of Rolf to Charles (see p. 168), and the traditional

origin of the name _Bigot_ as applied to the Normans. When Rolf is

called on to kiss the King’s feet, “lingua Anglica respondit, _Ne se

bigoth_, quod interpretatur, non per Deum, rex vero et sui illum

deridentes, et sermonem ejus corrupte referentes, illum vocaverunt

Bigoth. Unde Normanni adhuc Bigothi dicuntur” (see Wace, 9907, et

seqq.). Here we read that this famous refusal of Rolf to abase himself

was made in a language which by Frankish hearers was looked upon as

English. That Rolf spoke English in any strict sense is most unlikely;

the tongue in which he answered was doubtless his native Danish. Nor is

it enough to say, with Sir F. Palgrave (i. 700), that any Teutonic

speech was loosely called English by the French; for Rolf was speaking

in the presence of a prince whose native speech was undoubtedly

Teutonic. But Charles the Frank spoke High-Dutch; Rolf the Dane spoke a

language which, in a wide sense of the words, might be called Low-Dutch.

England was the most famous and most familiar country of the Low-Dutch

speech, and the Scandinavian talk of Rolf was by his Frankish hearers

accordingly set down as English.

NOTE W. pp. 168, 222.

THE VASSALAGE OF NORMANDY.

That Rolf became in the strictest sense the “man” of King Charles, I

have no doubt whatever. Against plain facts and probabilities we have

nothing to set except the shirkings and twistings of Dudo’s rhetoric.

Thus he tells us (83 D); “Dedit itaque [Karolus] filiam suam Gislam

nomine uxorem illi Duci, terramque determinatam _in alodo, et in fundo_,

a flumine Eptæ usque ad mare, totamque Britanniam, de qua posset

vivere.” And again (84 A); “Ceterum Karolus rex, duxque Rotbertus,

comitesque et proceres, præsules et abbates, juraverunt sacramento

Catholicæ fidei patricio Rolloni vitam suam, et membra, et _honorem

totius regni_, insuper terram denominatam,” &c. See Palgrave, ii. 361.

And he is rather fond of speaking of Normandy as a kingdom or a

monarchy; “Tenet sicuti rex monarchiam Northmannicæ regionis;” “Regnum

Northmannicæ Britonicæque regionis.” (110 D; 128 B, C; 136 C.) Still the

homage of Rolf is perfectly plain, and so is the homage of his son

William Longsword. (See pp. 168, 196.) The testimony of Flodoard (927,

cf. 933) is express; “Se filius Rollonis Karolo committit.” But whether

Richard the Fearless ever did homage to Lewis or Lothar is not so clear.

Richard may be included among the “cæteri regni primores” who (see p.

221) did homage to Lewis in 946. Dudo however (126 C) seems very anxious

to except him; “Venit rex supra fluvium Eptæ contra Northmannos, cum

magno duce Hugone.... Propriis verbis fecit securitatem _regni_ quod

suus avus Rollo vi ac potestate, armis et præliis sibi acquisivit.

Ipseque et omnes episcopi, comites, et abbates reverendi, principesque

Franciæ regni Richardo puero innocenti, ut teneat et possideat, et

_nullis nisi Deo servitium ipse et successio ejus reddat_, et si quis

perversæ invasionis rixatione contra eum congredi, vel alicujus

rixationis congressione invadere _regnum_, maluerit, fidissimus adjutor

in omni adversæ inopportunitatis necessitate per omnia exstiterit.” As

for any homage to Lothar (see p. 232), I suspect that no such homage was

ever rendered. The French writers do not mention it, though they would

doubtless have been glad to mention it if it had happened. And

Flodoard’s way of speaking of Richard is remarkable. William was “the

Prince of the Normans;” Richard is only “the son of William Prince of

the Normans” (“filius Willelmi Northmannorum principis;” see p. 232,

note 3). But I have no doubt that the homage was lawfully due, and it

was most likely its refusal which led to the differences between Lothar

and Richard. On the other hand, the Commendation of Richard to Hugh the

Great (see p. 222) seems to be quite authentic, and it is clear that it

was renewed to Hugh’s son. This appears from a charter, which I am

obliged to quote at secondhand from Lappenberg, Norman Kings, p. 30.

Richard there uses the words, “cum assensu _senioris mei_, Hugonis,

Francorum principis.” The date is 968; the lord therefore is Hugh Capet.

With regard to this matter a remarkable passage of Sir Francis Palgrave

(ii. 494–5) must be quoted and commented on. His words are, “A perfect

reciprocity was established between France and the ‘Norman

Monarchy,’ ... That Dominion which Rollo the Grandsire had won by so

many battles, Richard shall henceforward have and hold, owing service to

none but God.... Should any enemy attempt to disturb the right of the

Norman Sovereign, the King of France shall be his help and aid in all

things.... No other service shall Normandy render unless the King should

grant the Duke some Benefice within the Kingdom of France. Therefore, as

it was explained in after-time, the Duke of Normandy doth no more than

promise faith and homage to the King of France. In like manner doth the

King of France render the same fealty to the Duke of Normandy; nor is

there any other difference between them, save that the King of France

doth not render homage to the Duke of Normandy like as the Duke of

Normandy doth to the King.”

If I rightly understand Sir Francis Palgrave, his meaning is that the

Duke of the Normans ceased from that time to be the man of the _King_ of

the French; that he merely entered into a treaty on equal terms with his

former lord; that by voluntary commendation he became the man of the

_Duke_ of the French; that the later vassalage of Normandy to France was

due, not to the kingdom of France but to the duchy, that it had its

beginning in the homage done by Richard the Fearless to Duke Hugh, not

in the homage done by Rolf to King Charles. I say, if I rightly

understand Sir Francis, because I cannot quite reconcile his statements

with one another. In one page there “is perfect reciprocity established

between France and the Norman monarchy.” Richard has and holds his

dominion, owing service to none but God,—yet directly afterwards it is

allowed that “the Duke of Normandy promises fealty and homage to the

King of France.” It is dangerous to dispute with Sir Francis Palgrave on

a question of feudal law, and the more so, as the relations between

Normandy and France at once awaken the whole controversy about “liege”

and “simple” homage. But surely, even in a case of simple homage, there

is not “perfect reciprocity” between him who pays and him who receives

the homage; and certainly, in the tale as I read it, I see nothing but

the simple relation of lord and man, only clouded over by the big words

of Dudo. And as for reciprocity, surely reciprocity of a certain kind

was the essence of the feudal relation. Lord and vassal were each to

help and defend the other. No one denies that Henry the Second was the

vassal of King Lewis the Seventh, if not for Normandy, at any rate for

his other continental possessions, but an equal obligation is imposed,

in their mutual oath, on Lewis to defend Henry “sicut fidelem suum” and

on Henry to defend Lewis “dominum suum.” See Roger of Wendover, ii. 388.

The notion of the independence of Normandy on France comes out very

strongly in the speech which Henry of Huntingdon puts into the mouth of

William the Conqueror before the Battle of Senlac (M. H. B. 762 D). A

much later instance will be found in William of Worcester’s Collections

(Stevenson’s Wars in France, ii. 522), when the relations between

Normandy and France had again begun to interest Englishmen. We there

read of “Normandy, which ducdom, as yt ys sayde by auncyent wrytyng,

holdeth of noone higher souverayn in chief but of God.”

The exact relations between Richard the Fearless and the two—if any one

cares to reckon the last Lewis, the three—last Karlings I must be

content to leave doubtful. When the Duke of the French—the undoubted

over-lord of Normandy—became also King of the French the question ceased

to be a practical one. As I have said in p. 246, the French King was the

lord of the Norman Duke in some character, whether in that of Duke or of

King it mattered little. The question was not likely to be stirred again

till that change in the relations and mutual feelings between France and

Normandy which marked the days of King Henry and Duke William.

NOTE X. p. 180.

DANISH MARRIAGES.

The “mos Danicus” with regard to marriage or concubinage, or rather with

regard to some third state between marriage and concubinage, is often

mentioned in the Norman history of the time. And, though I do not

remember the exact words being used in England, yet something of the

same kind seems to have existed there also. The ease with which Earl

Uhtred (see p. 329) parts with two successive wives, the relations

between Cnut and his two Ælfgifus (see p. 411), perhaps the relation

between Harold the son of Godwine and the East-Anglian Eadgyth

Swanneshals (see vol. iii. Appendix NN), all seem to point to a practice

of the same kind. Indeed we shall find (see below, Note SS) that it is

by no means clear whether the first wife of Æthelred, the mother of his

heroic son, was not in the same way cast aside to make room for the

Norman Lady. Instances of the same sort might indeed be found very much

later in German, in French, and in English history, and we find a

relation essentially the same as far as we can go back in the history of

the Aryan race. The “mos Danicus” might just as well be called “mos

Achaicus;” the relation between Rolf and Popa at once reminds one of the

relation of Briseis to Achilleus, or of Andromachê to Neoptolemos.

Briseis is a captive; but she receives the honourable appellation of

ἄλοχος (II. ix. 336, 340); she has hopes of becoming even κουριδίη

ἄλοχος (II. xix. 298). Still Achilleus’ relation to her in no way

hinders him from taking another wife (II. ix. 394), any more than it

hinders Diomêdê (ib. 661) from taking her place during her constrained

absence. In just the same way, Popa is put away to make room for King

Charles’s daughter; but afterwards we read (Will. Gem. ii. 22),

“Repudiatam Popam ... iterum repetens sibi copulavit.” (See more in

detail, Benoît, v. 7954, and Roman de Rou, 2037.) The “mos Danicus” is

opposed to the “mos Christianus.” The tardy bridal of Richard and Gunnor

(see p. 253) was done Christian fashion; “_Virginem_ [viraginem?] ...

sibi in matrimonium _Christiano more_ desponsavit.” So says William of

Jumièges (iv. 18), and he even thinks it necessary to guarantee (v. 5)

that the marriage of Alan of Britanny and Hadwisa the daughter of

Richard the Good was celebrated “Christiano more.” The expressions used

with regard to Sprota herself are many and various. She is in Dudo, 97

A, “conjux dilectissima;” in 110 D, “matrona venerabilis,” a description

which, I need hardly say, proves nothing as to her age. In Flodoard, A.

943, her son is “natus de concubina Britanna.” King Lewis, if we may

believe William of Jumièges (iv. 3), went a step further, and called

young Richard “meretricis filium ultro virum alienum rapientis.” This is

mere Billingsgate, as Richard was certainly born before William’s

marriage with Liudgardis, though from the Roman de Rou (v. 2073, 2251)

one might be led to think otherwise. Elsewhere (iii. 2), in announcing

the birth of Richard, William calls her “nobilissima puella, _Danico

more_ sibi [William Longsword] juncta, nomine Sprota.” And so Benoît,

8872;

“Icele ama mult e tint chere;

Mais à la Danesche manere

La vout aveir, non autrement,

Ce dit l’estorie qui ne ment.”

The last line is most likely meant as a compliment to William of

Jumièges.

The essence of this kind of connexion seems to be that the woman is the

man’s wife but that the man is not the woman’s husband. He can evidently

leave her at pleasure, but there is no recorded instance of her leaving

him. This difference may however be simply the result of the difference

of rank between the parties in all the cases with which we have to deal.

The wife or mistress of a prince is obviously less likely to forsake him

than he is to forsake her. And from a modern Scandinavian writer I

gather that Scandinavian manners, at a somewhat later time, allowed of a

connexion of nearly the same kind, but one which put the sexes more on a

level.

“The term _fylgikona_ (literally companion-woman), which frequently

occurs in the Sagas, must have originally meant the same as _frilla_.

Later on, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it received a more

honourable import, as it was applied to a free woman living with a man

in connubial intercourse according to the terms of a formal contract,

but without the observance of the usual wedding ceremonies, and

especially without consecration by the Church. Connexions of this kind

seem to have been rather common, especially in Iceland, and dated from

the time when the Church began to lay greater hindrances in the way of

obtaining a divorce than had formerly been the case. This connexion

would be dissolved at the wish of either of the parties, or in

accordance with the terms which had been previously agreed upon, without

the intervention of the Church, a result which was not in accordance

with Christian views, and could not be applied to marriages proper....

The _fylgikona_ frequently occupied the position of house-wife.”

Keyser’s Private Life of the Old Northmen, pp. 35, 36.

As for earlier Frankish laxity, among many strange examples I choose the

strangest. “Luxuriæ supra modum deditus [Dagobertus] tres habebat ad

instar Salomonis reginas, maxime et plurimas concubinas. Reginæ vero hæ

erant, Nantechildis, Wlfegundis, et Berchildis. Nomina concubinarum, eo

quod plures fuissent, increvit huic chronicæ inseri.” Fredegar, c. 60.

NOTE Y. p. 197.

THE ELECTION OF LEWIS.

We have two main accounts of the election of Lewis. Flodoard (A. 936)

tells the tale very briefly; Richer (ii. 1–4), as usual, is much fuller.

But the longer version only expands, and in no way contradicts, the

shorter one. The main points, that Hugh the Great was the chief mover in

the business and that application had to be made to King Æthelstan in

England, come out equally in both accounts. Flodoard tells us, in his

dry annalistic way, “Hugo comes trans mare mittit pro accersiendo ad

apicem regni suscipiendum Ludowico Karoli filio, quem rex Alstanus

avunculus ipsius, accepto prius jurejurando a Francorum legatis, in

Franciam cum quibusdam episcopis et aliis fidelibus suis dirigit.” We

may here note how completely the words “trans mare” had got to mean

England and nothing else, and also that _Francia_ seems to be used in a

wider sense than usual (see above, p. 614), though not necessarily in a

sense taking in the whole of the Western kingdom. Lewis is met at

Boulogne by Hugh and the other princes (“cæteri Francorum proceres”),

who do homage to him on the sea-shore (“in ipsis litoreis arenis apud

Bononiam sese committunt, ut erat utrimque depactum”). He then goes to

Laon, and is crowned. Richer (ii. 1) first gives us that geographical

distribution of parties which I have mentioned in the text, and of which

I have also spoken in an earlier Note (see above, p. 609). He distinctly

mentions Hugh’s unwillingness to assume the crown; “Quum Hugo patrem ob

insolentiam periisse reminiscebatur, et ob hoc regnare formidaret” (cf.

c. 73, where King Lewis says the same), and adds that, through the

absence of Lewis and the unwillingness of Hugh, the choice of a King at

least seemed freer than usual (“Galli itaque in regis promotione

liberiores videri laborantes”). They meet under the presidency of Duke

Hugh (“sub Hugone duce deliberaturi de rege creando collecti sunt”). The

Duke makes a speech, which we may safely set down as the composition of

the historian. Hugh, we cannot doubt, really had a superstitious feeling

against taking the title of King, but he is not likely to have made the

strong legitimist harangue which is put into his mouth by Richer. He

deplores the sin of his father in reigning, even though he had been

chosen to reign by the common voice of the nation; “Pater meus vestra

quondam omnium voluntate rex creatus, non sine magno regnavit facinore,

quum is cui soli jura regnandi debebantur viveret, et vivens carcere

clauderetur. Quod credite Deo non acceptum fuisse. Unde et absit ut ego

patris loco restituar.” He then goes on to speak of the reign of Rudolf

as teaching the same lesson (“quum ejus tempore visum sit, quid nunc

innasci possit, contemptus videlicet regis ac per hoc principum

dissensus”). He therefore counsels a return to the lawful royal stock

(“repetatur ergo interrupta paullulum regiæ generationis linea”). The

rest agree, and the embassy is sent to England in the name of the Duke

and the other princes (“Ducis benevolentia atque omnium qui in Galliis

potiores sunt”).

The real importance of this speech, like that of many other speeches,

consists in its setting forth the feelings of Richer, not the feelings

of Duke Hugh. It points to a strong royalist tone as prevailing at

Rheims when this part of Richer’s history was written, and it is curious

to contrast his language now with the language which he uses after the

revolution of 987. See p. 240.

William of Normandy is not mentioned in either of these accounts. Dudo

(97 D) has quite another story, in which, as I hinted in the text, the

first step is taken by Æthelstan, who prays Duke William to restore his

nephew. “Audiens autem Alstemus, rex Anglorum pacificus, quod

præcellebat Willelmus virtute et potentia Franciscæ nationis omnibus,

misit ad eum legatos suos cum donis præmaximis et muneribus, deprecans

ut Ludovicum nepotem suum, Karoli capti regis morte jam in captione

præoccupati filium, revocaret ad Franciæ regnum,” &c., &c.

It is in recording this election of Lewis that Rudolf Glaber (i. 3) uses

those expressions, so well setting forth the union of election and

hereditary right, which I have quoted elsewhere (see above, p. 609). He

does not mention Hugh at all, though he had just before enlarged on his

share in the election of Rudolf.

NOTE Z. p. 205.

THE DEATH OF WILLIAM LONGSWORD.

Our accounts of the circumstances which led to the death of William

Longsword differ widely from each other. Flodoard (943) simply tells us

that Arnulf invited him to a conference, and there caused him to be put

to death. “Arnulfus comes Willelmum Nortmannorum principem ad colloquium

evocatum dolo perimi fecit.” Thus much we may accept as certain; but the

oldest French and Norman versions of the events immediately going before

are remarkably unlike, and in later writers we find quite another

version of the whole affair.

Richer (ii. 30 et seqq.) connects the murder of William with an insult

offered by him to King Otto in the Council held by Otto and Lewis at

Attigny. William, whether by accident or by design, was not admitted at

the beginning of the meeting. After waiting for some time, he forced his

way in in great wrath, and his indignation was further heightened at

what he then saw. The two Kings were sitting on a raised couch, the

Eastern King, the truer successor of Charles, taking the seat of honour.

Below them, on two chairs, sat Hugh the Great and Arnulf. William had

lately renewed his homage to Lewis, and was filled with zeal for the

honour of his over-lord. He bade Lewis rise, and he himself took his

seat immediately below Otto. It was not fit that the Western King should

allow any man to sit above him (“ipse resedit, dixitque indecens esse

regem inferiorem, alium vero quemlibet superiorem videri”). He then made

Otto rise, and made Lewis take the seat left empty by Otto, he himself

keeping the place immediately below Lewis, that where Lewis himself had

been seated at first; “Quapropter oportere Ottonem inde amoliri, regique

cedere. Otto pudore affectus surgit ac regi cedit. Rex itaque superior,

at Wilelmus inferior consederunt.” William thus set forth his theory of

precedence; the King of the West-Franks first, the Duke of the Normans

second, the Teutonic King and the other princes of Gaul seemingly

nowhere. Such a doctrine was naturally unacceptable alike to Otto, Hugh,

and Arnulf. They dissembled their anger at the time; but, when the

council had broken up, and when Lewis and William had gone away

together, they met and discussed their wrongs privately. Otto in vague

terms (c. 31) exhorted Hugh and Arnulf to vengeance against William; he

who had not spared him, King Otto, would certainly not spare them (“qui

sibi regi non indulsit, minus illis indulturum”). Richer however does

not charge Otto with counselling the assassination of William, unless

such a charge is implied in the words, “conceptum facinus variis

verborum coloribus obvelat.” Hugh and Arnulf then met together and

determined on the murder of William. His death was expedient, because it

would enable them to get Lewis altogether into their power, whereas now

William supported the King against them (“regem etiam ad quodcumque

volent facilius inflexuros, si is solum pereat, quo rex fretus ad quæque

flecti nequeat.” c. 32). The plot was laid; Arnulf invited William to

the conference at Picquigny; the Norman Duke was there killed by some of

the conspirators whose names are not given, but not in the presence or

by the avowed orders of the Count of Flanders.

Dudo’s story (pp. 104 et seqq.) is quite different. He knows nothing of

the Council of Attigny, nothing of King Otto as having even an

involuntary share in William’s murder. With him the first deviser of the

scheme is Arnulf, to whom all mischief is as naturally attributed at

this stage of Norman history as, at a later stage of English history, it

is attributed first to Ælfric and then to Eadric. Arnulf’s quarrel with

William arises wholly out of the affair of Herlwin of Montreuil (see p.

201). But certain French princes who are not named join with Arnulf in

the conspiracy; “Arnulfus dux Flandrensium supra memoratus, veneno

vipereæ calliditatis nequiter repletus astuque diabolicæ fraudis

exitialiter illectus, gentisque Franciscæ quorumdam principum subdolo

consilio et malignitate atrociter exhortatus, cœpit meditari et tractare

lugubrem mortem ejus Willelmi.” From this point the two tales are nearly

the same; only Dudo of course throws Arnulf’s talk with William into a

characteristic Dudonian shape. Arnulf is not only ready to make up his

differences with Herlwin; he asks for William’s protection against King

Lewis, Duke Hugh, and Count Herbert; he is ready to become William’s

vassal during life, and to make him his successor at his death; “Quamdiu

superstes fuero ero tibi tributarius, meique servient tibi ut domino

servus. Post meæ resolutionis excessum, possidebis meæ ditionis regnum”

(105 A). No one but Dudo could have thought of putting such words into

Arnulf’s mouth, even by way of a blind. The assassination itself is

described in much the same way as it is by Richer; Dudo also gives us

the names of the actual murderers. They are Eric, Balzo, Robert, and

Ridulf or Riulf.

Now these two versions, though at first sight so utterly different, do

not formally contradict one another. It is quite possible that Arnulf

may have been led to his crime by a combination of causes, of which

Richer has enlarged on one part and Dudo on another, according to their

several points of view. Arnulf may well have had a grudge against

William, both on account of the wrong done to him in the matter of

Montreuil and also on account of the insult offered to him at Attigny.

And in fact the two narratives to a certain degree incidentally

coincide. Richer (ii. 31) implies that Arnulf and his confederates

already had a grudge against William before the meeting at Attigny; “Quæ

oratio [Ottonis sc.] plurimam invidiam paravit, ac amicos in odium

Wilelmi incitavit, quum et ipsi, quamvis latenter, ei admodum

inviderent.” Dudo, as we have seen, speaks of a conspiracy of Arnulf

with other princes of Gaul. It was not at all unnatural that the affair

of Attigny should be of primary importance in the eyes of Richer, and

that the affair of Montreuil should be of primary importance in the eyes

of Dudo. Attigny lay quite beyond the reach of ordinary Norman vision,

and William’s doings there might not seem very meritorious in Norman

eyes. It was certainly something to have put an open affront upon the

Eastern King; but it was perhaps hardly becoming in the independent lord

of the Norman monarchy (see page 221, and above, p. 621) to show such

ostentatious deference to the Western King. It is therefore quite

possible to put together a very probable narrative, taking in the main

statements both of Richer and of Dudo, but of course allowing for the

rhetorical and exaggerated form into which both of them throw their

details. This is very much what is done by Sir Francis Palgrave

(Normandy and England, ii. 299 et seqq.), only in one or two places he

gives the story a strange colouring of his own. I can find nothing about

William being himself too late, either on purpose or by accident. The

statement of Richer, as I read it, is simply that, whether by design or

by accident, he was shut out of the council-chamber. Again, Sir Francis

simply says that William “compelled King Otho to rise;” he says not a

word about William’s motive for so doing or about the exaggerated

loyalty which he displayed towards Lewis.

One can hardly doubt, on the authority of Flodoard and Richer, that

William was really killed at Picquigny by the machinations of Arnulf.

But there is quite another story, briefly alluded to by Sir Francis

Palgrave in two places (pp. 298, 303), which transfers the scene of the

murder from the Somme to the Seine. This version turns up in several

shapes. We get it in Rudolf Glaber (iii. 9. Duchesne, vol. iv. p. 38),

according to whom the chief criminal was Theobald of Chartres. Theobald

the Tricker is the first to devise the plot, and he is also the actual

murderer. In concert with Arnulf, William is invited by Theobald to a

conference somewhere on the Seine. Rudolf is not clear whether the

summons was sent in the name of the King or of the Duke of the French

(“promittens se ex parte regis Francorum seu Hugonis Magni, qui fuerat

filius Roberti regis, _quem Otto dux Saxonum, postea vero Imperator

Romanorum, Suessionis interfecit_”); that is to say, Rudolf already

failed to understand that there had been a time when the _Rex Francorum_

was quite a different person from the lord of Paris and the Seine. The

story of the murder then follows much as before, with the Seine for the

Somme and Theobald for Arnulf; only Theobald kills William with his own

hand.

In the Tours Chronicle (Duchesne, Rer. Franc, iii. 360) we find another

version; “Guillelmus filius Rollonis ducis Normanniæ a Balzone Curto in

medio Sequanæ occisus est, propter mortem Riulfi et filii sui

Anchetilli.” Now we found Balzo in Dudo’s account as the name of one of

William’s murderers, but we had no account of the man or of his motives.

He here appears as the avenger of Riulf, doubtless the Riulf who headed

the revolt against William in 932 (see p. 189). We then however heard

nothing of Riulf’s death, the statement of Dudo (96 D) being that

“Riulfus fugiendo evanuit.” But who is Anchetillus, Anquetil, Anscytel,

a palpable Dane like our own Thurcytels and Ulfcytels? And why should

Balzo avenge either Ancytel or Riulf? Here comes in the story of William

of Malmesbury, which he first tells (ii. 145) as if he fully believed

it, and then adds, as more trustworthy (“veraciores literæ dicunt”), an

abridgement of Dudo’s story. Anscytel (Oscytel) is the son of Riulf, a

Norman chief who had somehow incurred William Longsword’s displeasure,

and who greatly troubled him with his revolts. But Anscytel is the

faithful soldier of Duke William, and he carries his loyalty so far as

to take his father prisoner and to hand him over to the Duke. He does

however exact a promise that Riulf shall suffer no punishment worse than

bonds. But, not long after, Anscytel is sent by Duke William to Pavia

with a letter for a potentate described as the Duke of Italy, asking

that the bearer may be put to death (“Comes Anschetillum in Papiam

dirigit, epistolam de sua ipsius nece ad ducem Italiæ portantem”). This,

I need hardly say, is a story as old as Bellerophontês (Il. vi. 168) and

as modern as Godwine (see Note EEE). The Duke of Italy of course abhors

the crime, and, equally of course, is in dread of the power of his

brother of Normandy. A thousand horsemen are sent to attack Anscytel and

his companions as soon as they are out of the city. Anscytel, like the

Homeric Tydeus, was small in stature but valiant in war (“vir exigui

corporis sed immanis fortitudinis”—μικρὸς ἔην δέμας, ἀλλὰ μαχητής· Il.

v. 801), whence his surname _Curtus_. But, less successful than Tydeus

(Il. iv. 387; v. 803 et seqq.) or Bellerophontês (Il. vi. 188), Anscytel

and his comrades indeed slay all their enemies, but they are also all

slain themselves, except Balzo. This sole survivor, unlike Othryadês

(Herod, i. 82), does not kill himself, but at once accuses his immediate

lord Duke William in the court of his over-lord the King. Besides the

treachery practised against Anscytel, Riulf too, contrary to Duke

William’s promise, had been blinded in prison. The Duke of the Normans

is summoned by his over-lord to answer for the crime, and, somewhat

strangely, the court of the Carolingian King of Laon is held at Paris.

Thither Duke William humbly comes, and there he is, like Uhtred (see p.

379) and Eadwulf (see p. 527), killed by Balzo under the pretext of a

conference.

I need hardly say that this tale, as it stands, is a mere romance; but

it is an instructive romance, because it is so easy to trace out the

mythical elements out of which it is made up. Still, like most other

such stories, it most likely contains its kernel of truth. Balzo may

have been one of Riulf’s followers in the Côtentin, who took an

opportunity to revenge his chieftain’s defeat. More than this it would

be rash to infer. So the story in Rudolf Glaber may justify us in adding

Theobald of Chartres to the list of conspirators against William, and

the same story falls in with the charge against Hugh brought by Richer.

But there is no kind of need to breathe the least suspicion against King

Lewis; William was just then his firm friend, and any mention of the

King as having a hand in the business seems to be owing only to the fact

that the later writers had forgotten what were the true relations

between Laon and Paris in the days of William Longsword.