THE DANISH INVASIONS, AND THE GREAT KINGS OF WESSEX.
The English chronicles have accurately fixed for us the date of the
first raid of the Northmen. In 787, three strange ships were seen off
the Dorsetshire coast. From them landed a small band of marauders,
who sacked the port of Wareham, and then hastily put to sea and
vanished from sight. This insignificant descent was only the first of
a series of dreadful ravages. A few years later, in 793, a greater
band descended on Lindisfarne, the holy island of St. Cuthbert off
the Bernician coast, the greatest and richest monastery of northern
England. Thenceforth raids came thick and fast, till at last the sword
of the invaders had turned half England into a desert.
[Sidenote: =The Vikings.=]
The people of Scandinavia were at this moment in much the same state
of development in which the English had been three centuries before,
ere yet they left the shores of Saxony and Schleswig. The Danes and
Norwegians were a hardy seafaring race, divided into many small
kingdoms, always at war with each other. They were still wild heathens,
and practised piracy as the noblest occupation for warriors and
freemen. Just as Hengist and Aella had sailed out with their war-bands
in search of plunder and land in the fifth century, so the chiefs of
the Northmen were now preparing to lead out their followers into the
western seas. For two centuries the onslaughts of the Vikings--as
these piratical hordes were called--were fated to be the curse of
Christendom. The Vikings in their early days were led, not by the
greater kings of Denmark and Norway, but by leaders chosen by the
pirate bands for their military abilities. Such chiefs were obeyed on
the battle-field alone; off it they were treated with small respect by
their comrades. There were dozens of these sea-kings on the water, each
competing with the others for the largest following that he could get
together.
[Sidenote: =Their raids grow more permanent.=]
The Northmen were at first seeking for nothing more than plunder.
Western Christendom offered them a great field, because the Franks,
English, and Irish of the ninth century almost all dwelt in open towns,
had very few forts and castles, and had built enormous numbers of rich
defenceless monasteries and churches. The Dane landed near a wealthy
port or abbey, sacked it, and hastily took to sea again, before the
countryside had time to muster in arms against him.
But after a time the continued successes of their first raids
encouraged the Northmen to take the field in much greater numbers, so
that fleets of a hundred ships, with eight or ten thousand men aboard
them, were found sailing under some noted sea-king. When they grew so
strong they took to making raids deeper into the land, boldly facing
the force of an English shire or a Frankish county if they were brought
to bay. When numbers were equal they generally had the advantage in
the fray, for they were all trained warriors, and were fighting for
their lives. Against them came only a rustic militia fresh from the
plough. If beset by the overwhelming strength of a whole kingdom,
they fortified themselves on a headland, an island, or a marsh-girt
palisade, and held out till the enemy melted homeward for lack of
provisions.
[Sidenote: =Sufferings of Northumbria and Mercia.--Reign of
Aethelwulf.=]
As long as Ecgbert lived he kept the Danes away from his kingdom
of Wessex, dealing them heavy blows whenever they dared to march
inland. The greatest of these victories was one gained at Hengistesdun
(Hingston Down), near Plymouth, over the combined forces of the Danes
and the revolted Welsh of Cornwall (835). But though he was able to
protect his own realm, Ecgbert was unable to care for his Mercian and
Northumbrian vassals; they were too far off, and his authority over
them was too weak. So northern England was already suffering fearfully
from the Viking raids even before Ecgbert died. His son Aethelwulf, who
succeeded him as king of Wessex, was a pious easy-going man, destitute
of his father's strength and ability. If the Mercians and Northumbrians
had not been so desperately afflicted at the moment by the ravages of
the Vikings, they would have undoubtedly taken the opportunity to throw
off the yoke of the Wessex kings. But their troubles made them cautious
of adding civil war to foreign invasion, and so Aethelwulf was allowed
to keep his father's nominal suzerainty over the whole of England.
More than once he led a West-Saxon army up to aid the Mercians, but he
could not be everywhere at the same time, and while he was protecting
one point, the Danes would slip round by sea and attack another. Wessex
itself was no longer secure from their incursions, and the chronicles
record several disastrous raids carried out on its coast.
All through King Aethelwulf's reign (836-858) the state of England
was growing progressively worse. Commerce was at a standstill, many
of the larger towns had been burnt by the Danes, the greatest of the
monasteries had been destroyed, and their monks slain or scattered;
with them perished the wealth and the learning which had made the
English Church the pride of Western Christendom. The land was beginning
to sink back into poverty and barbarism, and there seemed to be no hope
left to the English, for the Viking armies grew larger and bolder every
year.
[Sidenote: =The Danes threaten permanent occupation.=]
After a time the invaders began to aim at something more than
transitory raids; they took to staying over the winter in England,
instead of returning to Norway or Denmark. Fortifying themselves in
strong posts like the isles of Thanet or Sheppey, they defied King
Aethelwulf to dislodge them. In a very short time it was evident that
they would think of permanently occupying Britain, just as the Saxons
and Angles had done three centuries back.
Aethelwulf, in great distress of mind, made a pilgrimage to Rome,
and obtained the Pope's blessing for his efforts. But he fared none
the better for that. It was equally in vain that he tried to concert
measures for common defence with his neighbour across the Channel, King
Charles the Bald, whose daughter Judith he took to wife. The Frankish
king was even more vexed by the pirates than Aethelwulf himself, and no
help was got from him.
[Sidenote: =Deposition of Aethelwulf, 856.--Winchester burnt, 864.=]
The men of Wessex at last grew so discontented with Aethelwulf's weak
rule that the Witan deposed him, and elected his son Aethelbald king in
his stead (856). But they left the small kingdoms of Kent and Sussex to
the old man for the term of his natural life, to maintain him in his
royal state. Aethelwulf died two years later, and after him reigned his
three short-lived sons--Aethelbald (856-860), Aethelbert (860-866), and
Aethelred (866-871).
The fifteen years, during which they ruled, proved a time of even
greater misery and distress than the latter days of their father's
troubled reign. The Danes not only penetrated into every nook and
corner of Mercia and Northumbria, but even struck at the heart of
Wessex, and burnt its capital, the ancient city of Winchester (864).
[Sidenote: =Conquest of Northumbria by the Danes.=]
But the sorest trial came two years later, in the time of King
Aethelred. A vast confederacy of many Viking bands, which called itself
the "Great Army," leagued themselves together and fell on England, no
longer to plunder, but to subdue and occupy the whole land. Under two
chiefs, called Ingwar and Hubba, they overran Northumbria in 867. The
Northumbrians were divided by civil war, but the rival kings, Osbercht
and Aella, joined their forces to resist the oncoming storm. Yet both
of them were slain by the Danes in a great battle outside the gates
of York, and the victors stormed and sacked the Northumbrian capital
after the engagement. They then proceeded to divide up the land among
themselves, and settled up all the old kingdom of Deira, from Tees to
Trent. The English population was partly slain off, partly reduced to
serfdom. So, after being for two hundred years a Christian kingdom,
Deira became once more a community of wild heathen; the work of Oswald
and Aidan seemed undone.
[Sidenote: =Conquest of East Anglia.=]
But the whole of the Danes of the "Great Army" could not find land in
Deira. One division of them went off against the East Angles, under
Jarl Ingwar, and fought a great battle with Edmund, the brave and
pious king of that race. They took him prisoner, and when he would
not do them homage or worship their gods, they shot him to death with
arrows. His followers secretly buried his body, and raised over it a
shrine which became the great abbey of St. Edmundsbury. East Anglia
was then divided up among the victorious Danes, just as Yorkshire had
been; but they did not settle down so thickly in the eastern counties
as in the north, and the share of Danish blood in those districts is
comparatively small (869).
[Sidenote: =The Danes checked in Wessex.--Battle of Ashdown, 870.=]
King Aethelred of Wessex had not been able to afford any practical
help to his Northumbrian and East Anglian neighbours. It was now his
own turn to face the storm which had overwhelmed the two northern
realms. In 870 the "Great Army," now under two kings, Guthrum and
Bagsaeg, sailed up the Thames and threw itself upon Surrey and Berks,
the northern border of Wessex. Aethelred came out in haste against
them, and with him marched his younger brother Alfred, the youngest
of the four sons of the old Aethelwulf, a youth of eighteen, who now
entered on his first campaign. The men of Wessex made a far sterner
defence than had the armies of the other English kingdoms. The two
warrior-brothers Aethelred and Alfred fought no less than six battles
with the "Great Army" in the single year 871. The war raged all along
the line of the chalk downs of Berkshire, as the Danes strove to force
their way westward. At last the men of Wessex gave them a thorough
beating at Ashdown, where the Etheling Alfred won the chief honour of
the day. The defeated Vikings sought refuge in a stockaded camp at
Reading, between the waters of the Thames and the Kennet. Aethelred
could not dislodge them from this stronghold, and in a skirmish with
one of their foraging parties at Merton, in Surrey, he received a
mortal wound (871).
[Sidenote: =Alfred, King of Wessex, 871.=]
Wearied with six battles, the army of Wessex broke up, and the thegns
sadly bore King Aethelred home, to bury him at Wimborne. His young
brother, the Etheling Alfred, succeeded him, and took up the task of
defending Wessex in its hour of sore distress. It was fortunate that
such a great man was at hand to bear the burden, for never was it
more likely than now that the English name would be utterly swept off
the face of the earth. In spite of his youth Alfred was quite capable
of facing any difficulty or danger. From his boyhood upward he had
always shown great promise; when a young child, he had been sent by
his father, Aethelwulf, to Rome, and there had attracted the notice of
Pope Leo, who anointed him, and predicted that he should one day be a
king. He was able and brave, like most of the descendants of Ecgbert,
but he was also far above all men of his day in his desire for wisdom
and learning, and from his earliest years was known as a lover of books
and scholars. Seldom, if ever, did any king combine so much practical
ability in war and governance with such a keen taste for literature and
science.
[Sidenote: =He makes peace with, the Danes.--Conquest of Mercia.=]
Alfred had short space to mourn his dead brother. The "Great Army"
soon forced its way up from the Thames into Wiltshire, and beat the
men of Wessex at Wilton. Then Alfred gave them great store of treasure
to grant him peace, and they--since they found that the winning of
Wessex cost so many hard blows--consented to turn aside for a space.
But it was only in order to throw themselves on the neighbouring realm
of Mercia. They dealt with it as they had already done with Deira and
East Anglia. They defeated Burgred, its king, who fled away over sea
and died at Rome; and then they took eastern Mercia and parcelled it
out among themselves, while they gave its western half to an unwise
thegn called Ceolwulf, who consented to be their vassal and proffered
them a great tribute. It was not long, however, before they chased
away him also. Now it was that there arose the great Danish towns in
Mercia--Derby, Stamford, Leicester, Lincoln, and Nottingham, which,
under the name of the "Five Boroughs," played a considerable part in
English history for the next two centuries (876).
[Sidenote: =Renewed invasion of Wessex.=]
When Mercia had fallen, the Vikings turned once more against their old
foes in Wessex. If only they could break down King Alfred's defences,
they saw that the whole isle of Britain would be their own. So under
the two kings, Guthrum and Hubba, they once more pushed southward
beyond the Thames. There followed two years of desperate fighting
(877-878). At first the invaders swept all before them. They took
London, the greatest port of England, and Winchester, the capital of
Wessex. Alfred, repeatedly beaten in battle, was forced westward,
and driven to take refuge almost alone in the isle of Athelney, a
marsh-girt spot in Somersetshire, between the Tone and the Parret. This
was the scene of the celebrated legend of the burnt cakes. A curious
memorial of Alfred's stay in Athelney is to be seen at Oxford--a gold
and enamel locket bearing his name,[5] which was dug up in the island
some nine hundred years after it was dropped by the wandering king.
[Sidenote: =Defeat of the Danes.--Treaty of peace.=]
While Alfred was in hiding, the Danes ranged all over Wessex; King
Guthrum settled down at a fortified camp at Chippenham, in Wiltshire,
while King Hubba ravaged Devon. But when all seemed in their power,
they were suddenly disconcerted by a new gathering of the stubborn
West Saxons. The men of Devon slew Hubba and took his raven banner,
and then Alfred, issuing from Athelney, put himself at the head of the
levies of Devon, Somerset, and Dorset, and made a desperate assault
on Guthrum and the main body of the Danes. The king was victorious at
Ethandun (Eddington), and drove the army of Guthrum into its stockade
at Chippenham. There the Vikings were gradually forced by starvation
to yield themselves up. Alfred granted them easy terms: if they would
promise to quit Wessex for ever, and would swear homage to him as
over-lord, and become Christians, he would grant them the lands of the
East Angles and East Saxons to dwell in. Guthrum was fain to accept,
so he was baptized, and received at Alfred's hands the new name of
Aethelstan. Many of his host followed him to the font, and then they
retired to East Anglia and dwelt therein, save those roving spirits who
could not settle down anywhere. These latter went off to harry France,
but King Guthrum and the majority abode in their new settlement, and
were not such unruly or unfaithful subjects to Alfred as might have
been expected from their antecedents.
In such troublous times it was not likely that Alfred would be free
from other wars, but he came out of them all with splendid success.
When new bands of Vikings assailed him in later years, he smote them
again and again, and drove them out of the land. As a Norse poet once
sang--
"They got hard blows instead of shillings,
And the axe's weight instead of tribute;"
so they betook themselves elsewhere, to strive with less valiant kings
beyond the seas.
[Sidenote: =Division of Britain.=]
By Alfred's agreement with Guthrum, England was divided into two
halves, of which one was Danish and the other English. The old document
called _Alfred's and Guthrum's Frith_ gives the boundary of the
Danelagh, or Danish settlement, thus: "Up the Lea and then across to
Bedford, up the Ouse to Watling Street, and so along Watling Street to
Chester." That is to say, that Northumbria and East Anglia and Essex,
and the eastern half of Mercia, were left to the Danes, while Alfred
reigned directly, not only over his own heritage of Wessex, Sussex,
and Kent, but over western Mercia also. The nine counties[6] west of
Watling Street became part of Wessex, so that Alfred's own kingdom came
out of the Danish war much increased. Beyond its bounds he now had a
nominal suzerainty over three Danish states, instead of four English
ones. Guthrum reigned in the East, another Danish king at York, and
between them lay the "Five Boroughs," which were independent of both
kings, and were ruled by their own "jarls," as the Danes called their
war-lords.
[Sidenote: =Danish rule in England.=]
The Danish rule in North-Eastern England was made comparatively light
to the old inhabitants of the land when Guthrum and his men embraced
Christianity. Instead of killing the people off or reducing them to
slavery, the Danes now were content to take tribute from them, and to
occupy a certain portion of their lands. The limit and extent of the
Danish settlement can be well traced by studying the names of places in
the northern counties. Wherever the invaders established themselves we
find the Danish termination _by_ in greater or less abundance. We find
such names strewn thick about Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire,
and Leicestershire, less freely in Derbyshire, Northamptonshire, and
the eastern counties. Rugby, close to the line of Watling Street, is
the Danish settlement that lies furthest into the heart of Mercia.
The Viking blood, therefore, is largely mixed with the English in the
valleys of the Trent and Ouse, and close to the eastern coast, and
grows proportionately less as Watling Street is approached. The Danes
took very easily to English manners; they had all turned Christians
within a very few years, and their language was so like Old English
that their speech soon became assimilated to that of their subjects,
and could only be told from that of South England by differences of
dialect that gradually grew less. In the end England gained rather than
suffered by their invasion, for they brought much hardy blood into the
land, and came to be good Englishmen within a very few generations.
[Illustration: ENGLAND
IN THE YEAR 900.]
[Sidenote: =Effects of the Danish wars.=]
But meanwhile, when they were but just settled down, and the land was
still black with their burnings, England appeared in a sorry state,
and Alfred the king had a hard task before him when he set to work to
reform and reorganize his wasted realm. Well-nigh every town had been
sacked and given to the flames at one time or another, during fifty
years of war: the churches lay in ruins, the monasteries were deserted.
Riches and learning had fled from the wasted land. "There was not
one priest south of Thames," writes King Alfred himself, "who could
properly understand the Latin of his own church-books, and very few in
the whole of England." Moreover, the social condition of the people was
rapidly becoming what we may style "feudalized"; that is, the smaller
freeholders all over the country, unable to defend themselves from
the Danes, were yielding themselves to be the "men" of their greater
neighbours. This phrase implied that they surrendered their complete
independence, and consented to pay the great men certain dues, and to
follow them to the wars, and seek justice at their hands instead of
from the free meeting of the village moot. The land still remained the
peasant's own, but, instead of being personally free, he was now a
dependent. It is noticeable that a similar state of things grew up from
the same cause in every part of Western Europe during the ninth century.
[Sidenote: =Reforms of Alfred.--The royal power.--The army.=]
Finding himself confronted with this new condition of affairs, Alfred
strengthened the royal power by compelling all these great lords to
become his own sworn followers--_gesiths_, as they would have been
called in an earlier age. But now the word was _thegn_, though the
status was much the same. So all the great landholders of England
became the king's "men," just as the villagers had become the men of
the great landholders. The thegns served the king in bower and hall,
and had to follow him in person whenever he took the field, as the old
gesiths had followed the leaders of the first Saxon war-bands. They
were a numerous body, and constituted a kind of standing army, since
it was their duty to serve whenever their master went out to battle.
The _fyrd_, or local militia of the villages, Alfred divided into two
parts, one of which was always left at home to till the fields when the
other half went out to war. It was at the head of his thegns and this
reorganized fyrd that Alfred smote the Danes when they dared to invade
his realm in his later years.
[Sidenote: =The laws.=]
Alfred has a great name as a law-giver, but he did more in the way of
collecting and codifying the laws of the kings who were before him than
in issuing new ordinances of his own. But since he made everything
clear and orderly, the succeeding generations used to speak of the
"laws of Alfred," when they meant the ancient statutes and customs of
the realm.
[Sidenote: =Learning and civilization.=]
The most noteworthy, however, of Alfred's doings, if we consider
the troublous times in which he lived, were his long-sustained and
successful endeavours to restore the civilization of England, at which
the Danish wars had dealt such a deadly blow. He collected scholars of
note from the Continent, from Wales and Ireland, and founded schools
to restore the lost learning for which England had been famed in the
last century. His interest in literature of all kinds was very keen.
He collected the old heroic epics of the English, all of which, save
the poem of "Beowulf," have now perished, or survive only in small
fragments. He compiled the celebrated "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," and left
it behind him as a legacy to be continued by succeeding ages--as indeed
it was for nearly three hundred years. He also translated Baeda's Latin
history of England into the vernacular tongue, as well as Orosius'
general history of the world. Nor was history the only province in
which he took interest; he also caused Pope Gregory the Great's
"Pastoral Care," and other theological works, to be done into English.
[Sidenote: =The navy.=]
Alfred may also be reckoned the father of the English navy. In order to
cope with the ships of the Vikings, he built new war-vessels of larger
size than any that had yet been seen in Western Europe, and provided
that they should be well manned. He encouraged sailors to go on long
voyages, and sent out the captain Othere, who sailed into the Arctic
seas and discovered the North Cape. He was a friend of merchants, and
it was probably to him that we may attribute the law which allowed any
trader who fared thrice over-sea in his own ship to take the rank and
privileges of a thegn.
We have no space to tell of the many other spheres of Alfred's
activity, such as his church-building, his mechanical inventions, and
his zeal in almsgiving and missionary work, which was so great that he
even sent contributions to the distant Christians of St. Thomas in
India. What heightens our surprise at the many-sided activity of the
man is, that he was of a weakly constitution, and was often prostrated
by the attacks of a periodical illness which clung to him from his
youth up.
[Sidenote: =Renewed prosperity.--Alfred's successors.=]
Alfred lived till 901 in great peace and prosperity. He had increased
the bounds of Wessex, saved England from the Dane, and brought her
back to the foremost place among the peoples of Western Europe, for
his Frankish contemporaries were sinking lower and lower amid the
attacks of the Vikings, while England, under his care, was so rapidly
recovering her strength. Even the Welsh, hostile hitherto to all who
bore the English name, had done homage to him in 885, because they saw
in him their only possible protection against the Dane.
Alfred's son and his three grandsons followed him on the throne in
succession between the years 901 and 955. They were all brave, able,
hard-working princes, the worthy offspring of such a progenitor. They
carried out to the full the work that he had begun; while Alfred had
checked the Danes and made them his vassals, his descendants completely
subdued and incorporated them with the main body of the realm, so
that they were no longer vassals, but direct subjects of the crown.
And while Alfred had been over-king of England, his successors became
over-kings of the whole isle of Britain, the suzerains of the Scots and
the Welsh of Strathclyde, as well as of all the more southern peoples
within the four seas.
[Sidenote: =Edward the Elder, 901-925.--Incorporation of central
England with Wessex.=]
Alfred's eldest son and successor was Edward, generally called Edward
the Elder to distinguish him from two later kings of his line. He was
a wise and powerful king, whose life-work was the incorporation of
central England, south of the Humber, with his realm of Wessex, by the
complete conquest of the Danes of East Anglia and the Five Boroughs.
When Alfred was dead, his Danish vassals tried to stir up trouble by
raising up against Edward his cousin Aethelwulf, son of Aethelred. This
pretender the new king drove out, and then, turning on the eastern
Danes, slew their king Euric, the son of Guthrum-Aethelstan, and made
them swear homage to him again.
But a few years later the Danes broke out again into rebellion, and
Edward then took in hand their complete subjection. His chief helper
was the great ealdorman Aethelred of western or English Mercia, his
brother-in-law. When this chief died, Edward found his widowed sister
Aethelflaed, in whose hands he left the rule of the Mercian counties,
no less zealous and able an assistant than her husband had been. It was
with her co-operation that he started on his long series of campaigns
against the Danes of central and eastern England. While Edward,
starting forward from London, worked his way into Essex and East
Anglia, Aethelflaed was at the same time urging on the Mercians against
the Danes of the Five Boroughs. They moved forward systematically,
erecting successive lines of "burghs," or moated and palisaded
strongholds, opposite the centres of Danish resistance, and holding
them with permanent garrisons.
The Danes were now much more easy to deal with than in the old days,
for they had given hostages to fortune, and were the possessors of
towns and villages which could be plundered, farmsteads that could
be burned, and cattle that could be lifted. So when they found that
they could not storm the "burghs" of Edward and Aethelflaed, or drive
off the garrisons which raided on their fields, they began one after
the other to submit. The last Danish king of East Anglia was slain
in battle at Tempsford, near Bedford, in 921, and his realm was
incorporated with Wessex. Then, while Aethelflaed compelled Derby and
Leicester to yield, her brother subdued Stamford and Lincoln. So all
England south of the Humber was won and cut up into new shires, like
those of Wessex. Having accomplished her share in this great work, the
Lady Aethelflaed died, and the great ealdormanry which she had ruled
was absorbed into her brother's kingdom.
[Sidenote: =Edward over-lord of all England.=]
In their terror at Edward's ceaseless advance and never-ending
successes, not only did the Danes of Northumbria do him homage, but
even the distant kings of the Scots and the Strathclyde Welsh "took him
to father and lord" in a great meeting held at Dore in 924.
[Sidenote: =Aethelstan, 925-941.--Subjection of Northumbria.--Battle of
Brunanburgh.=]
Having thus become the over-lord of all Britain, Edward died in 925,
leaving the throne to his son Aethelstan. This prince was his worthy
successor, and carried out still further the process of annexing
all England to the Wessex inheritance. His great achievement was the
complete subjection and annexation of Northumbria. When Sihtric the
Danish King of York died, Aethelstan seized on his kingdom, and drove
his sons over sea. The dispossessed princes stirred up enemies against
their conqueror, and formed a great league against him. Anlaf, the king
of the Danes of Ireland, brought over a great host of Vikings, while
Constantine, king of the Scots, and Owen, king of Cumbria, came down
from the north to join him. The Danes of Yorkshire at once rose in
rebellion to aid the invaders. Against this league Aethelstan marched
forth at the head of the English of Mercia and Wessex. He met them at
Brunanburgh, a spot of unknown site, somewhere in Lancashire. There
Aethelstan smote them with a great slaughter, so that Anlaf returned
to Ireland with but a handful of men, and Constantine--who lost his
son and heir in the fight--fled away hastily to his own northern
deserts. The fight of Brunanburgh, the greatest battle that the house
of Alfred had yet won, finally settled the fact that Danish England
was to be incorporated with the realm of the Wessex over-kings, and
that there was to be one nation, not two, from the borders of Scotland
to the British Channel. This great victory drew from an unknown poet
the famous "Song of Brunanburgh" which has been inserted in the
"Anglo-Saxon Chronicle." It tells of the glories of Aethelstan, and
how--
"Never was yet such slaughter
In this island, since hitherward
English and Saxons came up from the east,
Over the broad seas, and won this our land."
The fight made Aethelstan once more lord of all Britain. The Scot king
hastened to renew his submission, the Welsh and Cornish did him homage,
the turbulent Northumbrian Danes bowed before him. He was considered
so much the most powerful monarch in Western Europe, that all the
neighbouring kings sought his alliance, and asked for the hands of
ladies of his house. Of his sisters, one was married to the Emperor
Otto I., one to Charles the Simple, King of the West Franks, others to
the King of Arles and the Counts of Paris and Flanders.
[Sidenote: =Edmund. 941-946.--Strathclyde granted as a fief to the
Scotch king.=]
Aethelstan died young, and left no son. He was followed on the throne
by his two brothers Edmund and Eadred, who were equally unfortunate
in being cut off in the flower of their age. Edmund suppressed more
than one rebellion of the Northumbrian Danes, and completely conquered
the Welsh kingdom of Strathclyde. Instead of incorporating it with
England, he bestowed it as a fief on his vassal, Malcolm, King of the
Scots, "on condition that he should be his faithful fellow-worker by
sea and land." This was the first extension of Scotland to the south
of the Clyde and Forth. Up to this time the Scots and the Picts, with
whom they had become blended since the Scot Kenneth McAlpine had been
elected king of the Picts in 836, had only ruled in the Highlands.
Edmund came to a strange and bloody end. As he feasted in his hall at
Pucklechurch, in Gloucestershire, he saw to his anger and surprise
a notorious outlaw named Leofa enter the hall and seat himself at a
table. The servants tried to turn him out, but he held his place, and
Edmund grew so wrathful that he sprang from his high seat and rushed
down to drag the intruder out with his own hands. He seized Leofa by
the hair and threw him down, but the outlaw drew a knife and stabbed
him to the heart.
[Sidenote: =Eadred. 946-955.=]
Eadred, the next king, was a prince of weak health, fonder of the
church than the battle-field. Nevertheless he carried on his brother's
policy, and kept a firm hand over the whole island of Britain. He put
down the last rising of the Danes of Yorkshire, who had proclaimed
Eric-with-the-bloody-axe as their king, and made one last attempt to
assert their independence. After this he cut up Northumbria into two
earldoms, and gave them both to an Englishman named Oswulf, to be ruled
as separate provinces.
[Sidenote: =Rise of Dunstan.=]
Eadred was the patron and protector of the wise abbot Dunstan, the
first of the great clerical statesmen who made a mark on the history
of England. He was a man of great ability and learning, who had risen
to be abbot of Glastonbury under Edmund, and became one of the chief
advisers of the pious Eadred, who was attracted to him as much by
his asceticism as by his eminent mental qualities. Dunstan was a
man with a purpose. He wished to reform the English Church in the
direction of monastic asceticism, and was most especially anxious
to make compulsory the celibacy of the clergy, a practice which had
not hitherto been enforced in England. There was undoubtedly much
ignorance and a certain amount of ill-living among the secular clergy,
and Dunstan, not content with warring against this, tried also to
reform the monasteries all over the face of the land, and to enforce
the rule of St. Benedict, "poverty, chastity, and obedience," in every
place. Dunstan's method of carrying out his views was by winning
court influence, which he was very fitted to obtain, for he was the
cleverest, most versatile, and most learned man of his day.
[Sidenote: =Eadwig, 955-959.--Quarrel with Dunstan.=]
When the pious Eadred died, he was succeeded by his nephew Eadwig
(Edwy), the son of his brother Edmund. This prince had been a child
when Leofa the outlaw slew his father, and the Witan had put him
aside in favour of his uncle, because the rule of a minor was always
disliked by the English. But now he was seventeen, and a very rash and
headstrong youth.
Eadwig very soon quarrelled with Dunstan and with Oda, Archbishop of
Canterbury, because he insisted on taking to wife the Lady Aelfgyfu
(Elgiva), who was his near kinswoman, and within the "prohibited
degrees" of the mediaeval Church. The churchmen declared her to be no
true wife of the king, and treated the royal pair with such insult that
Eadwig grew furious. The tale is well known how, when Eadwig at a high
feast had retired betimes to his wife's chamber, Oda and another bishop
followed him and dragged him back by force to the board where the
thegns were feasting.
[Sidenote: =Triumph of the Church party.=]
The king, as was natural, quarrelled with the Church party, and drove
Dunstan out of England. But his clerical opponents were too much for
him: they conspired with the Anglo-Danes of Northumbria, and with many
discontented thegns, and set up against Eadwig his younger brother
Eadgar, whom Archbishop Oda crowned as King of England. There followed
civil war, in which Eadwig had the worst; his wife fell into the hands
of Oda, who cruelly branded her with hot irons and shipped her to
Ireland. Only Wessex adhered to the cause of Eadwig, and he was at last
compelled to bow before his enemies. He acknowledged his brother as
King of all England north of Thames, and died almost immediately after
(959).
[Sidenote: =Eadgar, 959-975.--Ascendency of Dunstan.=]
His death put the whole realm into the hands of Eadgar, or rather of
Eadgar's friends of the Church party, for the new king was still very
young. He recalled Dunstan from exile to make him his chief councillor;
and when Archbishop Oda died, he gave the see of Canterbury to him. For
the seventeen years of Eadgar's rule Dunstan was his prime minister,
and much of the character of the earlier years of the king's reign must
be attributed to the prelate.
Dunstan's policy had two sides: he used his secular powers to enforce
his religious views, and everywhere he and his friends began reforming
the monasteries by forcing them to adopt the Benedictine rule. They
expelled the secular canons, many of whom were married men, from the
cathedrals, and replaced them with monks. They also dealt severely
with the custom of lay persons receiving church preferment, one of the
commonest abuses of the time.
[Sidenote: =Complete conciliation of the Danes.--Power of Eadgar.=]
But Dunstan was not only an ecclesiastical reformer. His activity had
another and a more practical side. To him, in conjunction with Eadgar,
is to be attributed the complete unification of the Anglo-Danes and the
English. Instead of being treated as subjects of doubtful loyalty, the
men of the Danelagh were now made the equals of the men of Wessex, by
being promoted to ealdormanries and bishoprics, and admitted as members
of the Witan. Eadgar kept so many of them about his person that he even
provoked the thegns of Wessex to murmuring. But the policy of trust and
conciliation had the best effects, and for the future the Anglo-Danes
may be regarded as an integral part of the English nation.
When he came to years of maturity, Eadgar proved to be a capable
prince. His power was so universally acknowledged in Britain that his
neighbours never dared attack him, and he became known as the _rex
pacificus_ in whose time were known no wars. All the kings of the
island served him with exact obedience; the story is well known how he
made his six chief vassals--the kings of Scotland, Cumbria, Man, and
three Welsh chiefs--row him across the Dee, and then exclaimed that
those who followed might now in truth call themselves kings of Britain.
[Sidenote: =Legislation.--The Ordinance of the Hundred.=]
Eadgar was a firm ruler, and the author of a very considerable body
of laws. To him is attributable the first organization of local police
in England, by the issue of the "Ordinance of the Hundred," which
divided the shires into smaller districts after the Frankish model,
and made the inhabitants of each hundred responsible for the putting
down of theft, robbery, and violence in their own district. He allowed
the Danish half of England to keep a code of laws of its own, but
assimilated it, as much as he was able, to that which prevailed in the
rest of the land, making Dane and Englishman as equal in all things as
he could contrive.
To the misfortune of his realm, Eadgar died in 975, before he had
attained his fortieth year, leaving behind him two young sons, neither
of whom had yet reached his majority. When he was gone, it was soon
seen how much the prosperity of England had depended on the personal
ability of the house of Alfred. Under weak kings there began once more
to arise great troubles for the land.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] The inscription reads "AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN," or "Alfred had
me made."
[6] Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, Shropshire, Warwickshire,
Oxfordshire, Bucks, Middlesex, Hertfordshire.