THE CONVERSION OF BRITAIN AND THE RISE OF WESSEX.
597-836.
After the battles of Deorham and Chester had broken the strength of
the Britons, and all central Britain had fallen into English hands,
the victorious invaders did not persevere in completing the conquest
of the island, but turned to contend with each other. For the next two
hundred years the history of England is the history of the conflict of
the three larger kingdoms--Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex--for the
supremacy and primacy in the island. First one, then the other obtained
a mastery over its rivals, but the authority of an English king who
claimed to be "Bretwalda," or paramount lord of Britain, was as vague
and precarious as that of the Celtic chiefs who in an earlier age had
asserted a similar domination over their tribal neighbours.
Both Ceawlin the victor of Deorham, and Aethelfrith the victor of
Chester, were great conquerors in their own day, and are said to have
claimed an over-lordship over their neighbours. But about the year 595,
when the one was dead and the other had not yet risen, the chief king
of Britain was Aethelbert of Kent, a warlike young monarch who subdued
his neighbours of Sussex and Essex, and aspired to extend his influence
all over the island.
[Sidenote: =Augustine, 597.--Conversion of Kent.=]
To the court of this King Aethelbert there came, in the year 597,
an embassy from beyond the high seas, which was destined to change
the whole course of the history of England. It was led by the monk
Augustine, and was composed of a small band of missionaries from Rome,
who had set out in the hope of converting the English to Christianity.
Twenty years before there had been a pious abbot in Rome named Gregory,
who had earnestly desired to go forth to preach the gospel to the
English. The well-known legend tells how he once saw exposed in the
market for sale some young boys of a fair countenance. "Who are these
children?" he asked of the slave-dealer. "Heathen Angles," was the
reply. "Truly they have the faces of angels," said Gregory. "And whence
have they been brought?" "From the kingdom of Deira," he was told.
"Indeed, they should be brought _de ira Dei_, out from the land of the
wrath of God," was the abbot's punning rejoinder. From that day Gregory
strove to set forth for Britain, but circumstances always stood in his
way. At last he became pope, and when he had gained this position of
authority, he determined that he would send others, if he could not go
himself, to care for the souls of the pagan English.
So in 596 he sent out the zealous monk Augustine, with a company of
priests and others, to seek out the land of England. Augustine landed
in Kent, both because King Aethelbert was the greatest chief in
Britain, and because he had taken as his queen a Christian lady from
Gaul, Bertha, the daughter of Charibert, king of Paris. So Augustine
and his fellows came to Canterbury to the court of the king, and when
Aethelbert saw them he asked his wife what manner of men they might
be. When she had pleaded for them, he looked upon them kindly, and
gave them the ruined Roman church of St. Martin outside the gates
of Canterbury, and told them that they might preach freely to all
his subjects. So Augustine dwelt in Kent, and taught the Kentishmen
the truths of Christianity till many of them accepted the gospel and
were baptized. Ere long King Aethelbert himself was converted, and
when he had declared himself a Christian most of his _gesiths_ and
nobles followed him to the font. Then Augustine was made Archbishop of
Canterbury, and his companion Mellitus Bishop of Rochester, and the
kingdom of Kent became a part of Christendom once more.
Ere very long the kings of the East Saxons and East Angles, who were
vassals to Aethelbert, declared that they also were ready to accept
the gospel. They were baptized with many of their subjects, but
Christianity was not yet very firmly rooted among them. When King
Aethelbert died, and was succeeded by his son, who was a heathen
and an evil liver, a great portion of the men who so easily accepted
Christianity fell back into paganism again. They had conformed to
please the king, not because they had appreciated the truths of the
gospel. East Anglia and Essex relapsed almost wholly from the faith,
and had to be reconverted a generation later; but in Kent Augustine's
work had been more thorough, and after a short struggle the whole
kingdom finally became Christian.
[Sidenote: =Conversion and prosperity of Eadwine of Northumbria.=]
From Kent the true faith was conveyed to the English of the North.
Eadwine, King of Northumbria, married a daughter of Aethelbert
and Bertha. She was a Christian, and brought with her to York a
Roman chaplain named Paulinus, one of the disciples of Augustine.
By the exhortations of this Paulinus, King Eadwine was led toward
Christianity. He was a great warrior, and while he was doubting as to
the faith, it chanced that he had to set forth on an expedition against
his enemy, the King of Wessex. Then he vowed that if the God of the
Christians gave him victory and he should return in peace, he would be
baptized. The campaign was successful, and Eadwine went joyfully to
the baptismal font. It was long remembered how he held council with
his Witan, urging them to leave darkness for light, and doubt for
certainty. Then, because they had found little help in their ancient
gods, and because the heathen faith gave them no good guidance for
this life, and no good hope of a better life to come, the great men of
Northumbria swore that they would follow their king. Coifi, the high
priest, was the first to cast down his own idols and destroy the great
temple of York, and with him the nobles and _gesiths_ of Eadwine went
down to the water and were all baptized (627).
For some time King Eadwine prospered greatly; he became the chief king
of Britain, and made the East Angles and East Saxons his vassals. He
destroyed the Welsh kingdom of Leeds, and added the West Riding of
Yorkshire to the Northumbrian kingdom. He also smote the Picts beyond
the Forth, and built a fleet on the Irish sea with which he reduced the
isles of Man and Anglesea.
[Sidenote: =Defeat and death of Eadwine.--Reaction against
Christianity.=]
Eadwine's conquests roused all his neighbours against him, and in their
common fear of the Northumbrian sword, English and Welsh princes were
for the first time found joining in alliance. Penda, King of Mercia,
an obstinate heathen and a great foe of the gospel, leagued himself
with Cadwallon, King of Gwynedd, the greatest of the Christian chiefs
of Wales. Together they beset the realm of Eadwine, and the great King
of Northumbria fell in battle with all his host, at Heathfield, near
Doncaster (632).
The Welsh and Mercians overran Northumbria after slaying its king,
and Cadwallon took York and burnt it. The Northumbrians thought that
Eadwine's God had been found wanting in the day of battle, and most of
them relapsed into paganism in their despair. Paulinus, who had become
the first Bishop of York, had to flee away into Kent, the only kingdom
where Christians were safe for the moment.
[Sidenote: =The Irish missionaries.--Columba.=]
But ere very long the Northumbrians were saved from their despair.
Eadwine and the ancient stock of the kings of Deira were swept away,
but there were two princes alive of the royal house of Bernicia. Their
names were Oswald and Oswiu, and during Eadwine's reign they had been
living in exile. Their abode had been among those of the Scots who
had crossed over from Ireland and settled on the coast of northern
Britain, in the land which now bears their name. There the two brethren
had fallen in with the disciples of the good Abbot Columba, the
founder of the great monastery of Iona, and from them they had learnt
the Christian faith. Columba, whose successors were to convert all
the north of England, had been a man of great mark. He was an Irish
monk who had left his own land in self-imposed exile, because he had
been the cause of a tribal war among his countrymen. Crossing to the
Argyleshire coast, he built a monastery on the lonely island of Iona,
and from thence laboured for the conversion of the Picts and Scots.
[Sidenote: =Oswald, King of Northumbria.--Christianity restored.=]
When Oswald heard of the desperate condition of Northumbria after
Eadwine's death, he resolved to go to the aid of his countrymen against
the Welsh and Mercians. So he went southward with a few companions,
and raised the Bernicians against their oppressors, setting up as his
standard the cross that he had learnt to reverence in Iona. His effort
was crowned with success, and at the Heavenfield, near the Roman wall,
he completely defeated the Welsh and slew their king Cadwallon. Penda
the Mercian was driven out of Northumbria also, and for eight years
(634-642) Oswald maintained himself as king of all the land between
Forth and Trent. He used his power most zealously for the propagation
of Christianity. He sent to Iona for two pious monks, Aidan and Finan,
who were successively bishops of York under him, and by their aid he
so drew his people toward the faith of Christ that they never swerved
from it again, as they had done after the death of Eadwine. Oswald also
encouraged missionaries to go into the other English kingdoms. It was
by his advice that Birinus went from Rome to Wessex, where he converted
King Cynegils, and founded the bishopric of Dorchester-on-Thames.
[Sidenote: =Penda, King of Mercia.--Battle of Maserfield, 642.=]
But Oswald was not strong enough to put down his heathen neighbour,
Penda, the King of Mercia, a mighty warrior who united all the English
of central Britain under his sceptre, slaying the kings of the East
Angles, and tearing away Gloucester and all the land of the Hwiccas[3]
from the kings of Wessex. Penda and Oswald were constantly at war, and
at last the Mercian slew the Northumbrian at the battle of Maserfield,
in Shropshire, near Oswestry (642).
[Sidenote: =Oswiu, King of Northumbria.--Conversion of Mercia.=]
But the good King Oswald left a worthy successor in his brother Oswiu,
as zealous a Christian and as vigorous a ruler as himself. Oswiu
defeated Penda at the battle of the Winweed, and by slaying the slayer
became the over-king of all England. He conquered the Picts between
Forth and Tay, made the Welsh and the Cumbrians pay him tribute, and
annexed northern Mercia, giving the rest of the kingdom over to Peada,
Penda's son, only when he became a Christian. It was all over with
the cause of heathenism when Penda fell, and the Mercians and their
king bowed to the conquering faith, and listened to the preaching of
Ceadda, one of the Northumbrian monks who had been taught by the Irish
missionaries Aidan and Finan.
[Sidenote: =Dissensions of Irish and Roman clergy.--Council at Whitby,
664.=]
Mercia and Northumbria, therefore, owed their conversion to the
disciples of Columba, and looked to the monastery of Iona as the source
of their Christianity, while Kent and Wessex looked to Rome, from
whence had come Augustine and Birinus. Unhappily there arose dissension
between the clergy of the two churches, for the converts of the Irish
monks thought that the South English paid too much deference to Rome,
and differed from them on many small points of practice, such as the
proper day for keeping Easter, and the way in which priests should cut
their hair. King Oswiu was grievously vexed at these quarrels, and
held a council at Whitby, or Streonshalch as it was then called, to
hear both sides state their case before him. He made his decision in
favour of the Roman observance, and many of the Irish clergy withdrew
in consequence from his kingdom, rather than conform to the ways of
their Roman brethren. This submission of the English to the Papal see
was destined to lead to many evils in later generations, but at the
time it was far the better alternative. If they had decided to adhere
to the Irish connection, they would have stood aside from the rest of
Western Christendom, and sundered themselves from the fellowship of
Christian nations, and the civilizing influences of which Rome was then
the centre (664).
[Sidenote: =Archbishop Theodore.--Unification of the Church in
Britain.=]
The English Church, being thus united in communion with Rome, received
as Archbishop of Canterbury a Greek monk named Theodore of Tarsus,
whom Pope Vitalian recommended to them. It was this Theodore who first
organized the Church of England into a united whole; down to his day
the missionaries who worked in the different kingdoms had nothing to do
with each other. But now all England was divided into bishoprics, which
all paid obedience to the metropolitan see of Canterbury; and in each
bishopric the countryside was furnished with clergy to work under the
bishop. Some have said that Theodore cut up England into parishes, each
served by a resident priest, but things had not advanced quite so far
by his day. Under Theodore and his successors the bishops and clergy of
all the kingdoms frequently met in councils and synods, so that England
was united into a spiritual whole long before she gained political
unity. It was first in these church meetings that Mercian, West Saxon,
and Northumbrian learnt to meet as friends and equals, to work for the
common good of them all.
[Sidenote: =Prosperity of the Church.--Winfrith.--Baeda-Alcuin.=]
The English Church was vigorous from the very first. Ere it had been
a hundred years in existence it had begun to produce men of such
wisdom and piety, that England was considered the most saintly land of
Western Christendom. It sent out the missionaries who rescued Germany
from heathenism--Willibrord, the apostle of Frisia; Suidbert, who
converted Hesse; above all the great Winfrith (or Boniface), the
first Archbishop of Mainz. This great man, the friend and adviser of
the Frankish ruler Charles Martel, spread the gospel all over Central
Germany, and organized a national church in the lands on the Main and
Saal, where previously Woden and his fellows alone had been worshipped.
He died a martyr among the heathen of the Frisian Marshes in 733.
Nor was the English Church less noted for its men of learning. Not only
were they well versed in Latin, which was the common language of the
clergy all over Europe, but some of them were skilled in Greek also,
for the good Archbishop Theodore of Tarsus had instructed many in his
native tongue. Among the old English scholars two deserve special
mention: one is the Northumbrian Baeda (the Venerable Bede), a monk
of Jarrow, who translated the Testament from Greek into English, and
also wrote an ecclesiastical history of England which is our chief
source for the knowledge of his times (d. 735); the second was another
Northumbrian, Alcuin of York, whose knowledge was so celebrated all
over Europe that the Emperor Charles the Great sent for him to Aachen,
the Frankish capital, and made him his friend and tutor; for Charles
ardently loved all manner of learning, and could find no one like
Alcuin among his own people.
[Sidenote: =Reign of Ecgfrith.--Decline of Northumbria.=]
As long as Oswiu and his son Ecgfrith lived, Northumbria held the
foremost place among the English kingdoms, and its rulers were
accounted the chief kings of Britain. Ecgfrith conquered Carlisle and
Cumbria from the Welsh, and even invaded Ireland, but in an attempt to
add the highlands beyond the Forth to his realm, he was slain in battle
by the Picts at Nechtansmere (685). With his death the greatness of
Northumbria passed away, for his successors were weak men, and after a
while grew so powerless that the kingdom was vexed by constant civil
wars, and became the prey of its neighbours, the Mercians on the
south, and the Picts and Scots on the north.
[Illustration: ENGLAND
in the 8{TH} CENTURY.]
[Sidenote: =Supremacy of Mercia, 675-796.--Reign of Offa.=]
The supremacy that had once been in the hands of the Northumbrians
now passed away to the kings of Mercia, the largest and most central
of the English kingdoms. Three great kings of that realm, Aethelred,
Aethelbald and Offa, whose reigns occupied almost the whole of the
period from 675 to 796, were all in their day reckoned as supreme lords
of England. The rulers of East Anglia, Essex, and Kent were counted as
their vassals, and they deprived Wessex of its dominions north of the
Thames, and Northumbria of all that it had held south of the Trent and
the Ribble. Offa pushed his boundary far to the west, into the lands
of the Welsh; and, after conquering the valleys of the Wye and the
upper Severn, drew a great dyke from sea to sea, reaching from near
Chester on the north to Chepstow on the south; it marked the boundary
between the English and the Cymry for three hundred years. Offa was the
greatest king whom England had yet seen, and corresponded on equal
terms with Charles the Great, the famous King of the Franks, who was
his firm friend and ally (757-796).
[Sidenote: =Decline of Mercia.=]
Nevertheless, after Offa's day the sceptre passed away from Mercia,
and his successors saw their vassal kings rebel and disown the Mercian
allegiance. To maintain subject states in obedience was always a very
hard task for the old English kings, because they had no standing
armies, and no system of fortification. When a neighbouring realm was
overrun by the tumultuary army of a victorious king, he had to be
satisfied with the homage of its people, because he could not build
fortresses in it, or leave a standing force to hold it down. The only
way of keeping a conquest was to colonize it, as was done with the
lands taken from the Welsh; but the English kings shrank from evicting
their own kinsfolk, and seldom or never employed this device against
them. Hence it always happened that, when a great king died, his
vassals at once rebelled, and unless his successor was a man of ability
he was unable to reconquer them.
[Sidenote: =Supremacy of Wessex.--Ecgbert, 800-836.=]
From Mercia the primacy among the English states passed to Wessex, a
state which had hitherto kept much to itself, and had busied itself in
conquering land from the Welsh of Damnonia, rather than in striving
with its English neighbours for the supremacy in mid-Britain. Wessex,
indeed, had lost to the Mercians all its territory north of the Thames,
and was now a purely south-country state. Its borders reached to the
Tamar and the Cornish moors, since the days when Taunton in 710 and
Exeter in 705 had fallen into the hands of its kings.
The West-Saxon king who succeeded to the power of Offa was Ecgbert,
the ancestor of all the subsequent monarchs of Britain down to our
own day.[4] He was a prince who had seen many troubles in his youth,
having been driven over sea by his kinsman and forced to take refuge
with Charles the Great. He spent some years in the court and army of
the Frankish monarch, but was called to the throne of Wessex in 800, on
the death of his unfriendly cousin. In a long reign that lasted for
thirty-six years, Ecgbert not only subdued the small kingdoms of Kent
and Sussex, and made the Welsh princes of Cornwall do him homage, but
he even dared at last to attack his powerful neighbours the Mercians.
At the battle of Ellandun, in Wiltshire (823), he defeated and slew
King Beornwulf, the unworthy heir of Offa's greatness. Shortly after
Mercia did him homage, and the Northumbrians, sorely vexed by civil
wars, soon followed the example of their southern neighbours.
Thus Ecgbert became over-lord of Britain, in the same sense that
Eadwine and Offa had previously held the title. But the dominion of
the kings of Wessex was destined to be of a more enduring nature than
that of their predecessors. This was not so much due to their own
abilities as to the changed condition of the state of England. Not
only were there strong tendencies arising towards unity within the
English realms--due most especially to the influence of their common
Church--but pressure from without was now about to be applied in a way
that forced the English to combine.
Before Ecgbert had come to the throne, and even before Offa was dead,
the first signs had been seen of the coming storm that was to sweep
over England in the second half of the ninth century. The Danes had
already begun to appear off the coasts of the island.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] The Hwiccas held the lands conquered by Ceawlin on the lower
Severn, the modern counties of Worcester and Gloucester.
[4] All kings, both Anglo-Saxon and Norman, since 820, descend from
Ecgbert save Cnut, the two Harolds, and William I. The Conqueror's
wife, Matilda of Flanders, had English blood in her veins, so William
is the only exception in his line.