CHAPTER II

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THE FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF ENGLAND. 449–975.

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

[Sidenote: The races and languages of Britain essentially the same at the time of the Norman Conquest as they are now.]

The Norman invaders in the eleventh century found in the Isle of Britain, as any modern invader would find now, three nations, speaking three languages; and they found then, as would be found now, one of the three holding a distinct superiority over the whole land. Then as now, English, Welsh, and Gaelic were the three distinct tongues of the three races of the island; then as now, the dominant Teuton knew himself by no name but that of Englishman, and was known to his Celtic neighbour by no name but that of Saxon. The boundaries of the two races and of their languages were already fixed, nearly as they remain at present. The English tongue has made some advances since the eleventh century; but they are small compared with the advances which it had made between [Sidenote: Preservation of local names and divisions in England.] the fifth century and the eleventh. The main divisions of the country, the local names of the vast mass of its towns and villages, were fixed when the Norman came, and they have survived, with but little change, to our own day. While a map of France or Germany in the eleventh century is useless for modern purposes, and looks like the picture of another region, a map of England proper in the reign of Victoria hardly differs at all from a map of England proper in the reign of William. The Norman found in the land substantially the same English nation which still exists, occupying substantially the same territory which it occupies at present. He found it already exhibiting, in its laws, its language, its national character, the most essential [Sidenote: The Norman element absorbed in the English nation then and now existing.] of the features which it still retains. Into the English nation which he thus found already formed his own dynasty and his own followers were gradually absorbed. The conquered did not become Normans; but the conquerors did become Englishmen. It was by a very different process that the English themselves had made good their footing in the land in which the Norman found them, and to which they had long before given their name.

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

The details of the English Conquest of Britain, and the exact amount of historical truth to be found in them, are questions which hardly concern us here. It will be enough to point out the essential difference between the traditional narrative of the English Conquest, as contained in the English Chronicles,[1] and the romantic narrative of which Geoffrey of Monmouth is the chief [Sidenote: General credibility of the traditional narrative.] spokesman. The narrative in the Chronicles is perfectly credible in itself, and perfectly consistent with all the undoubted phænomena of later history. It is also perfectly consistent with the record of all those living witnesses whose testimony may be mistaken, but which themselves cannot lie. Such are the evidence of language and local nomenclature, the evidence of the surviving antiquities, the camps, the dykes, the barrows, which chronicle this warfare as well as the warfare of earlier and of later times. The only question is whether an accurate narrative of details can have been handed on from the date assigned to Hengest to the ascertained date of Bæda, whether by oral tradition, by runes, or by written documents which are lost to us. And this really amounts to little more than a question whether, in the earliest part of the narrative, the exact names and the exact dates can always be trusted. Some of the earlier names may be mythical;[2] some of the dates may have been reached by ingenious calculation rather than by genuine tradition. But granting all this, the main substance of the narrative remains essentially where it was.

Much learning and ingenuity has been spent, and, I venture to think, in many cases wasted, in attempts to show the untrustworthiness of the traditional account, by [Sidenote: Questions of earlier Teutonic invasions and settlements in Britain.] bringing forward proofs of Teutonic invasions, and even of Teutonic settlements, of an earlier date than that assigned by the Chronicles to the beginning of the English Conquest.[3] The facts which are brought forward are in most cases probable and in some cases certain, but I cannot look on them as having that bearing on later history which they have sometimes been supposed to have. It is possible that, among the tribes which Cæsar found in Britain, some, especially in the eastern districts of the island, may have been of Teutonic origin, or in some degree mingled with Teutonic elements. It is certain that in Britain, as everywhere else, Teutonic soldiers largely served in the Roman armies, and that settlements of such soldiers sometimes grew into permanent colonies.[4] It is certain that, long before the days of Cerdic or Hengest, Theodosius and Stilicho repelled Teutonic invasions; and it is probable that, by repelling such invasions, they hindered the formation of Teutonic settlements in Britain at that earlier [Sidenote: The course of the English Conquest not affected by them.] time.[5] But these facts or probabilities do not affect the credibility of the recorded course of the English Conquest, or of the tradition which fixes its real beginning in the middle of the fifth century. Teutonic settlements before the Roman invasion, or under the Roman domination, would be something quite different from the Teutonic invasions recorded from the fifth century onwards. Teutonic tribes subdued by the Roman arms, Teutonic soldiers planted as colonists by the Roman government, would sink into the general mass of Roman subjects; they would retain no strong national feeling; they would most likely not even retain their national language. The only way in which they could possibly influence the later history would be by making the establishment of the later Teutonic settlers a less difficult matter in those parts of the country which they occupied than in those where the population was purely Celtic or Roman.[6] We may admit the fact that the Teutonic, and even the distinctively Saxon, invasions began, not in the fifth century, but in [Sidenote: Light thrown on these events by the analogy of the Danish invasions.] the fourth. But the true bearing of this fact will be best understood by comparing the successive Saxon invasions with the later and better known invasions of the Danes both in England and in Gaul. In the Danish invasions I shall presently endeavour to establish three periods, one of mere plunder, one of settlement, one of political conquest. For the last of these three there was no opportunity under the circumstances of the earlier Teutonic invaders, but for the first two stages we may fairly look in the history of the English, as well as in that of the Danish, Conquest. The Saxon pirates against whom the Roman government found it needful to establish so elaborate a system of defence, find their parallels in those Danish plundering expeditions which ravaged various parts of England in the latter half of the eighth century and the former half of the ninth, and in the ravages inflicted on Gaul by chieftains earlier than Hasting. The Anglian, Saxon, and Jutish settlements of the fifth and sixth centuries answer to the [Sidenote: 878.] settlements of Guthrum in East-Anglia in the ninth [Sidenote: 912.] century and of Rolf in Neustria in the tenth. Even if it be held that the Saxons who were driven back by Theodosius and Stilicho designed settlement and not merely plunder, still, as they did not actually settle, the case remains much the same. The Teutons were baffled in their attempts at settlement in the fourth century; they succeeded in their attempts at settlement in the fifth. The general history of the Conquest, as handed down to us in the Chronicles, is therefore in no way affected by the certain fact of earlier incursions, by the possible fact of much earlier settlements. The really lasting effect of the Saxon invasions of the fourth century seems to have been this; the Saxon name became familiar to the Celtic inhabitants of Britain earlier than the Anglian name; consequently Saxon, and not Angle or English, has been the name by which the Teutonic immigrants in Britain have been known to their Celtic neighbours from that day to this.[7]

[Sidenote: Course of the English Conquest.]

What then the English Chronicles profess to record is, not these early and transient incursions which led to no permanent result, but that series of constant, systematic, successful attempts at settlement on the part of various Teutonic tribes which constituted the English Conquest of [Sidenote: 418.] Britain. Early in the fifth century the Roman legions were withdrawn from the island, and the former provincials were left to defend their new and precarious independence [Sidenote: No improbability in the story of Vortigern’s invitation, but the tale not essential.] how they might. The Southern Britons were now exposed to the attacks of the Picts and Scots who had never submitted to the Roman yoke, and there is no absurdity in the familiar story that a British prince took Teutonic mercenaries into his pay, and that these dangerous allies took advantage of the weakness of their hosts to establish themselves as permanent possessors of part of the island. But if this account be rejected, the general narrative of the Conquest is in no way affected; and, if it be accepted, we may be sure that Vortigern’s imitation of many Roman precedents did but hasten the progress of events. The attempts which had been checked while the Roman power was flourishing were sure to be renewed when the check was withdrawn, and if a Welsh King did invite a Jutish chieftain to defend him, that invitation was only the occasion, and not the cause, of the Conquest which now [Sidenote: 449–597.] began. We cannot seriously doubt that, in the course of the fifth and sixth centuries, a succession of tribes of kindred origin, all of them of the same Low-Dutch[8] stock, and speaking essentially the same Low-Dutch language, landed at various points of the British coast, that they gradually forced their way inland, and founded permanent [Sidenote: Extent of the English dominion and of the independent British states at the end of the sixth century.] Teutonic kingdoms. Before the end of the sixth century the Teutonic dominion stretched from the German Ocean to the Severn, and from the English Channel to the Firth of Forth. The northern part of the island was still held by Picts and Scots, Celtic tribes whose exact ethnical relation to each other hardly concerns us.[9] And the whole west side of the island, including not only modern Wales, but the great kingdom of Strathclyde, stretching from Dumbarton to Chester, and the great peninsula containing Cornwall, Devon, and part of Somerset, was still in the hands of independent Britons. The struggle had been long and hard, and the natives often kept their hold of a defensible district long after the surrounding country had been occupied by the invaders. It is therefore probable that, at the end of the sixth century and even later, there may have been within the English frontier inaccessible points where detached bodies of Welshmen still retained a precarious independence. It is probable also that, within the same frontier, there still were Roman towns, tributary to the conquerors rather than occupied by them.[10] But by the end of the sixth century even these exceptions must [Sidenote: The English Conquest, as a whole, accomplished by 597.] have been few. The work of the Conquest, as a whole, was accomplished. The Teutonic settlers had occupied by far the greater part of the territory which they ever were, in the strictest sense, to occupy. The complete supremacy of the island was yet to be won; but that was to be won, when it was won, by quite another process.

[Sidenote: Points of difference between the English Conquest and other Teutonic conquests.]

The English Conquest of Britain differed in several important respects from every other settlement of a Teutonic people within the limits of the Roman Empire. Everywhere else the invaders gradually adopted the language and the religion of the conquered. If the conquerors were heathens at the time of their settlement, they gradually adopted Christianity. If they had already adopted Christianity in its Arian form, they gradually exchanged their heretical creed for that of the Catholic [Sidenote: Gradual Romanization of the conquerors elsewhere in religion, language, &c.] Church. Everywhere but in Britain the invaders gradually learned to speak some form, however corrupt, of the language of Rome. The Teutonic conquerors of Italy, Spain, and Gaul have indeed infused into the Romance languages of these countries a large proportion of words of Teutonic origin. Still the language of all those countries remains essentially Latin; the Teutonic element in them is a mere infusion. Everywhere but in Britain the invaders respected the laws and the arts of Rome. The Roman Law was preserved, side by side with the Barbarian codes, as the rightful heritage of the conquered people; and, in the process of ages, the Roman Law gradually recovered its position as the dominant code of a large portion of continental Europe. Everywhere but in Britain the local divisions and local nomenclature survived the Conquest. Nearly every Gaulish tribe recorded by Cæsar has left its name still to be traced on the modern map.[11] In Britain everything is different. [Sidenote: Retention by the English of their Teutonic language and heathen worship.] The conquering English entered Britain as heathens, and, after their settlement in Britain, they still retained the heathen worship of their fathers. They were after a while converted to Christianity, but they were not converted by the Christians whom they found in the island, but by a special mission from the common ecclesiastical centre. Our bishoprics and ecclesiastical divisions are not, as they are in Gaul, an heritage of Roman times, representing Roman political divisions. Our oldest episcopal sees are foundations of later date than the English Conquest, and the limits of their dioceses answer, not to anything Welsh or Roman, but to the boundaries of ancient English [Sidenote: History of the English language—] principalities. And, as the English in Britain retained their religion, so they also retained their language, and they retained it far more permanently. A few Celtic, and a still fewer Latin,[12] words found their way into English from the first days of the Conquest, and a somewhat larger stock of Latin ecclesiastical terms[13] was [Sidenote: a Low-Dutch tongue with a Romance infusion.] naturally brought in by the Christian missionaries. But, with these two very small classes of exceptions, the English language retained its purely Low-Dutch character down to that great infusion of Romance words into our vocabulary which was a result, though not an immediate result, of the Norman Conquest. And to this day, though the Romance infusion divides the vocabulary of our dictionaries with our natural Teutonic speech, it still remains only an infusion, an infusion greater in degree, but essentially the same in kind, as the Teutonic infusion into the Romance languages.[14] As we cannot put together the shortest French sentence without the use of Romance words, so we cannot put together the shortest English sentence without the use of Teutonic words. But we can put together sentence after sentence of French without a single Teutonic word, and we can equally put together sentence after sentence of English without a single Romance word. In Britain too the arts of Rome perished as utterly as the language and the religion of Rome; arts, language, and religion were all brought back again at a later time and in a corrupted form. [Sidenote: Slight and late influence of the Roman Law in England.] The laws of Rome perished utterly; they exercised no influence upon our insular jurisprudence, until, in times after the Norman Conquest, the Civil Law was introduced as something utterly exotic. And even then our insular jurisprudence proved too strong for it; the Imperial legislation never gained in England the same supremacy which it gained in most parts of the Continent, and even in the Scottish portion of our island. The municipal institutions of the Roman towns in Britain utterly perished; no dream of ingenious men is more groundless than that which seeks to trace the franchises of English [Sidenote: Local nomenclature of England essentially Teutonic.] cities to a Roman source. In England again the local nomenclature is everywhere essentially Teutonic. A few great cities and a few great natural objects, London on the Thames and Gloucester on the Severn, still retain names older than the English Conquest; but the great mass of the towns and villages of England bear names which were given them either by the Angles and Saxons of the fifth and sixth centuries or by the Danes of the [Sidenote: Probable extirpation of the Celtic inhabitants.] ninth and tenth. In short, though the literal extirpation of a nation is an impossibility,[15] there is every reason to believe that the Celtic inhabitants of those parts of Britain which had become English at the end of the sixth century had been as nearly extirpated as a nation can be. The women would doubtless be often spared;[16] but as far as the male sex is concerned, we may feel sure that death, emigration, or personal slavery were the only alternatives which the vanquished found at the hands of our fathers. The nature of the small Celtic element [Sidenote: Nature of the Celtic element in English confirms this view.] in our language would of itself prove the fact. Nearly every Welsh word which has found its way into English expresses some small household matter, such as women and slaves would be concerned with; nearly all the words belonging to the nobler callings, all the terms of government and war, and nearly all the terms of agriculture, are thoroughly Teutonic. In short, everywhere but in Britain an intruding nation sat down by the side of an elder nation, and gradually lost itself in its mass. In Britain, so far as such a process is possible, the intruding nation altogether supplanted the elder [Sidenote: Difference in the actual process of the Conquest in Britain and elsewhere.] nation. The process of the Conquest again, its gradual character, the way in which the land was won, bit by bit, by hard fighting, was of itself widely different from the Gothic settlements in Italy or Spain. This peculiar character of the English Conquest would of itself favour the complete displacement of the former inhabitants, by giving the remnant of the vanquished in any district the means of escape to those districts which were yet unconquered.

[Sidenote: Causes of the difference.]

This remarkable contrast between the English Conquest of Britain and the other Teutonic settlements within the Empire seems to be due to two main causes. The position of Britain differed from that of Italy or Gaul or Spain, and the position of the Angles and Saxons differed from that of Goths, Burgundians, or even Franks. [Sidenote: Britain less thoroughly Romanized than Gaul and Spain.] The event alone might seem to show that the Roman occupation of Britain had not brought about so complete a Romanization of the country as had taken place in Gaul and Spain. The evidence of language looks the same way. In Spain and in Gaul the ante-Roman languages survive only in a few out of the way corners; the speech of the land is Roman. But in no part of Britain has any Roman language been spoken for ages; the speech of the land, wherever it is not English, is not Roman but Celtic. The surviving Britons kept, and still keep, their own native language and not the language of their Roman conquerors. It would therefore seem that the Roman occupation of Britain was, after all, very superficial, and that, when the legions were withdrawn, the natives largely fell back into their ancient barbarism. The English therefore found in Britain a more stubborn, because a more truly national, resistance than any that their Teutonic kinsmen found elsewhere. But on the other hand, they did not find that perfect and striking fabric of Roman laws, manners, and arts which elsewhere impressed the minds of the conquerors, [Sidenote: Familiarity of the other Teutons with Roman civilization.] and changed them from destroyers into disciples. Again, the Goths above all, and the Franks in some degree, had long been familiar with Rome in peace and in war. They had resisted Roman attempts at conquest and they had repaid them in kind. They had served in the Roman armies, and had received lands and honours and offices as the reward of their services. They were, in short, neither wholly ignorant of Roman civilization nor [Sidenote: The English utterly ignorant of it.] utterly hostile to it. But our forefathers came from lands where the Roman eagle had never been seen, or had been seen only during the momentary incursions of Drusus and Germanicus. They had never felt the charm which led Gothic kings to glory in the title of Roman generals, and which led them to respect and preserve the forms of Roman civilization and the monuments of Roman art. Our forefathers appeared in the Isle of Britain purely as destroyers; nowhere else in Western Europe were the existing men and the existing institutions so utterly swept away. The English wiped out everything Celtic and everything Roman as thoroughly as everything Roman was wiped out of Africa by the Saracen conquerors of Carthage. A more fearful blow never fell on any nation than the landing of the Angles [Sidenote: Results of the peculiar character of the English Conquest.] and Saxons was to the Celt of Britain. But we may now be thankful for the barbarism and ferocity of our forefathers. Had we stayed in our earlier land, we should have remained undistinguished from the mass of our Low-Dutch kinsfolk. Had we conquered and settled only as Goths and Burgundians conquered and settled, we should be simply one more member of the great family of the Romance nations. Had we been a colony sent forth after the mother country had attained to any degree of civilization, we might have been lost like the Normans in Sicily or the Franks in Palestine. As it was, we were a colony sent forth while our race was still in a state of healthy barbarism. We won a country for ourselves, and we grew up, a new people in a new land, bringing with us ideas and principles common to us with the rest of our race, but not bringing with us any of the theories and prejudices which have been the bane of later colonization. Severed from the old stock, and kept aloof from intermixture with any other, we ceased to be Germans and we did not become Britons or Romans. In our new country we developed a new system for ourselves, partly by purely native growth, partly by independent intercourse with the common centre of civilization. The Goth is merged in the Romance population of Italy, Spain, and Aquitaine; the Old-Saxon has lost his national being through the subtler proselytism of the High-German; but the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, transplanted to the shores of Britain, have won for themselves a new name and a new national being, and have handed on to us the distinct and glorious inheritance of Englishmen.

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

Thus, before the end of the sixth century, by far the greater and more fertile portion of Britain had become heathen and Teutonic. The land had been occupied by various tribes; and most probably, as always happens in such migrations, few bodies of settlers had been perfectly homogeneous. A certain following of allies or subjects of other races is almost sure to come in under the shadow of the main body. But it is clear that that main body was everywhere so distinctly and predominantly of Low-Dutch blood and speech as to swallow up any foreign elements which may have accompanied it during its migration, as well as any that it may have incorporated during the [Sidenote: The country occupied by various kindred tribes, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians.] process of the Conquest or after its completion. Three kindred tribes, Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, are, in the common national tradition, said to have divided the land among them in very unequal proportions. For Saxons a contemporary foreign notice substitutes Frisians.[17] But Angles, Saxons, Frisians, were all tribes of one common stock; all spoke mere dialectic varieties of one common tongue. From the very beginning of the Conquest, all the Teutonic settlers, without distinction, are spoken of as belonging to “the English kin.”[18] To trace out, by the evidence of local nomenclature or otherwise, the exact extent of the settlements of these various kindred tribes is highly interesting and important as a matter of antiquarian and philological research. But the results of such inquiries are of little moment for the purpose of such a sketch as the present. [Sidenote: The various Teutonic tribes in Britain fused into one nation before the Norman Conquest.] Long before the Norman Conquest the various Low-Dutch tribes in Britain had been fused into one English nation. The distinction between Angle and Saxon had become a merely provincial distinction, and the jealousies which undoubtedly survived between them had become merely provincial jealousies. To the united nation the Angle had given his name, the Saxon had given his royal dynasty; the Jute, the least considerable in the extent of his territorial possessions, had been, according to all tradition, the first to lead the way to a permanent settlement, and he had undoubtedly been honoured by supplying the ecclesiastical centre from which Christianity was spread over the land. If Wessex boasted of the royal capital of Winchester, Kent boasted no less proudly of the spiritual metropolis of Canterbury.

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

The old notion of an Heptarchy, of a regular system of seven kingdoms, united under the regular supremacy of a single over-lord, is a dream which has passed away before the light of historic criticism. The English kingdoms in Britain were ever fluctuating, alike in their number and in their relations to one another. The number of perfectly independent states was sometimes greater and sometimes less than the mystical seven; and, till the beginning of the ninth century, the whole nation did not admit the regular [Sidenote: yet seven kingdoms more conspicuous than others.] supremacy of any fixed and permanent over-lord. Yet it is no less certain that, among the mass of smaller and more obscure principalities, seven kingdoms do stand out in a marked way, seven kingdoms of which it is possible to put together something like a continuous history, seven kingdoms which alone supplied candidates for the dominion of the whole island. First comes the earliest permanent [Sidenote: Kent. 449–825.] Teutonic settlement in Britain, the Jutish kingdom of Kent. The direct descendants of Hengest reigned over a land, which, as the corner of Britain nearest to the continent, has ever been the first to receive every foreign immigration, but which, notwithstanding, prides itself to this day on its specially Teutonic character and on the retention of various old Teutonic usages which have vanished elsewhere. Besides Kent, the Jutes formed no other strictly independent state. Their only other settlement [Sidenote: [The Jutes of Wight. 530–686.]] was a small principality, including the Isle of Wight and part of Hampshire, whose history is closely connected with that of the great Saxon kingdom in its immediate [Sidenote: The three Saxon kingdoms.] neighbourhood, in which it was at last merged. The remainder of the English territory south of the Thames, together with some districts to the north of that river, formed the three kingdoms of the Saxons, the East, the South, and the West, whose names speak for themselves. Among these Sussex and Essex fill only a secondary part in [Sidenote: Sussex. 477–825.] our history. The greatness of Sussex did not last beyond the days of its founder Ælle, the first Bretwalda. Whatever [Sidenote: Essex. 526–825.] importance Essex, or its offshoot Middlesex, could claim as containing the great city of London was of no long duration. We soon find London fluctuating between the condition of an independent commonwealth and that of a dependency of the Mercian Kings. Very different was [Sidenote: Wessex. 519–869.] the destiny of the third Saxon kingdom. Wessex has grown into England, England into Great Britain, Great Britain into the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom into the British Empire. Every prince who has ruled England before and since the eleventh century[19] has had the blood of Cerdic the West-Saxon in his veins. At the [Sidenote: 577–584.] close of the sixth century Wessex had risen to high importance among the English kingdoms, though the days of its permanent supremacy were still far distant. Step by step, from a small settlement on the Hampshire coast, the West-Saxons had won their way, fighting battle after battle against the Welsh, and, after nearly every battle, extending their borders by a new acquisition of territory. At the time of which I speak they held the modern shires of Hampshire, Berks, Wilts, Dorset, part of Somerset, with a considerable dominion north of the Thames and Avon, including the shires of Buckingham, Oxford, Gloucester, and Worcester, and an undefined territory stretching northwards along the valley of the Severn.[20] But this northern dominion was not lasting; the Thames and the Avon became the permanent boundaries of Wessex to the north, and the later extension of the West-Saxon dominion was wholly westward. At this time the Somerset Axe, and the forests on the borders of Somerset and Wiltshire, separated the kingdom from the independent [Sidenote: The three Anglian kingdoms.] Britons to the West. North of the Thames lay the three great kingdoms of the Angles. One of these, probably the most purely Teutonic realm in Britain,[21] occupied the great peninsula, or rather island,[22] between the fens and [Sidenote: East-Anglia. 571–870.] the German Ocean, which received from them the name of East-Anglia. Far to the north, from the Humber to the [Sidenote: Northumberland. 547–876.] Forth, lay the great realm of the Northumbrians, sometimes united under a single prince, sometimes divided by the Tyne or the Tees into the two kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira. Both these kingdoms have a large sea-board, but they are not, like Wessex, distinctly attributed to a personal founder from beyond sea. The first recorded King of the Northumbrians is Ida, who began to reign in 547;[23] the first recorded King of the East-Angles is Offa, who began to reign in 571.[24] These dates give the beginnings of the kingdoms, but they do not give the beginnings of the English settlements in those countries. What Ida and Offa did was apparently to unite districts ruled by several independent, or at most confederated, Ealdormen into a [Sidenote: Mercia. 584?–877.] single kingdom. Meanwhile, in the middle of Britain, a power equal to any of the others was growing up, in which the same process is still more plainly to be discerned. The kingdom of the Mercians, the _march_ or border land against the Welsh, appears at the end of the sixth century as a powerful state, but it has no distinctly recorded [Sidenote: Peculiar character of Mercia, as an union of small states of different origins.] founder, no distinctly recorded date of origin.[25] It seems to have grown up through the joining together of a great number of small principalities, probably of much more varied origin than the different portions of the other kingdoms. The prevailing blood was Anglian; but it is certain that the Mercian kingdom was considerably enlarged by conquest at the expense of the Saxon race. The West-Saxon conquests north of the Thames and Avon were gradually cut off from the West-Saxon body, and were constrained, along with all the other states of Mid-England, to admit the Mercian supremacy. Mercia, throughout its history, appears far more divided than any other part of England, the result, no doubt, of its peculiar [Sidenote: Minor principalities in the other kingdoms.] origin. But it must not be supposed that the other kingdoms formed compact or centralized monarchies. Wessex was an union of several kindred principalities, each having its own Ealdorman or Under-king, though all were united under one supreme chief. At one time five West-Saxon Kings appear in a single battle.[26] So in Kent there were Kings of East and West Kent, a fact which has left its memory in our ecclesiastical arrangements to the present day. No other English shire contains two bishoprics; the two sees of Canterbury and Rochester still bear witness to the former existence of two distinct kingdoms within the present shire. So, in East-Anglia, the two divisions of the race, the North and the South Folk, have left their almost unaltered names to two modern counties. But in these cases the principalities seem to have been formed by separate, though kindred, detachments of colonists, each of them ruled by a prince of the one royal house. In Wessex each successive conquest from the Welsh seems to have formed a new principality; but the national unity of the West-Saxon people was never lost, and it does not appear that any but princes of the line of Cerdic ever ruled within their borders. But in Mercia a crowd of wholly independent principalities seem to have been gradually united under one common rule—a type of the fate which the whole island was destined to undergo, though not at the hands of Mercia.

Such were the territorial divisions of Teutonic Britain at the end of the sixth century. Among a crowd of lesser states seven principal Kingdoms stand out conspicuously. And I do not hesitate to add that it was by no means unusual for the sovereign of one or other of these states [Sidenote: The supremacy of the Bretwaldas.] to win, whether by arms or by persuasion, a certain dominion over the rest, a dominion which presented the aspect of an acknowledged, though probably not a very well defined, supremacy. The famous title of Bretwalda[27] appears to have been borne by the princes in whom such a supremacy was successively vested. Eight kings, of five different kingdoms, including all the seven except Essex and Mercia, are said to have possessed this supremacy over the rest of their fellows. The list, it should be remarked, does not form a continuous series, and it ends, after a considerable gap, with the prince who established in one kingdom a lasting supremacy over all the rest. The earlier names probably represent earlier attempts at establishing a supremacy of the same kind, a supremacy which was more or less fully acknowledged at the time, but which the princes who held it failed to hand on to their successors. The early Bretwaldas and their dominion present us with the first foreshadowings of that union of the whole English race which was at last carried out by the West-Saxon Kings of the ninth and tenth centuries.

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

The last years of the sixth century were marked by a change hardly less important than the first settlement of the Teutonic tribes in Britain. The Christian faith, which the English had hitherto despised or passed by unheeded as the creed of the conquered Welsh, was now set before them by a special mission from the city which still commanded the reverence of all Western Europe. Kent, under its King Æthelberht, who then held the rank of Bretwalda, became the first Christian [Sidenote: 597.] kingdom, and Canterbury became the first Christian city, the spiritual metropolis of the English nation. To the vanquished Welsh the conquering Saxons and Angles [Sidenote: Controversies between the Roman and Scottish parties.] had never listened; but no sooner had the Roman missionaries begun their work than another Christian element was brought in from the North, at the hands of the already converted Picts and Scots. Sectarian differences divided the two parties, and led to controversies which threatened to tear the infant Church in pieces. Christian Kings and kingdoms apostatized; heathen Kings overthrew the champions of the new faith [Sidenote: Christianity makes its way in England without violence.] in battle; but, amidst all these fluctuations, Christianity gradually but steadily made its way. And in no part of the world did Christianity make its way in a more honourable manner. We nowhere read of any of those persecutions, those conversions at the point of the sword, which disgraced the proselytizing zeal of the Frankish and Scandinavian apostles of the faith. Of the first Christian prince in England, it is distinctly told us that, while still a heathen, he hindered none of his subjects from embracing Christianity, and that, after he was himself converted, he constrained none to forsake their ancient faith.[28] In less than a century all the English kingdoms had fully accepted Christianity, and they had distinctly preferred its Roman to its Scottish form. [Sidenote: Conversion of Sussex, the last heathen part of Britain. 681] Before the end of the seventh century, the spiritual conquest of Britain was completed by the entrance of the South-Saxons into the fold of Christ; and, in the course of the eighth century, the insular Teutons showed themselves the most zealous of missionaries for the [Sidenote: English missionaries on the Continent.] conversion of those of their continental brethren who still remained in heathen darkness. Bishoprics were gradually founded, the limits of each diocese commonly answering to those of a kingdom or principality. The [Sidenote: 597.] supremacy of Kent at the beginning of the conversion, [Sidenote: 627.] the supremacy of Northumberland at the stage when Christianity was first preached to the northern English, is still shown to this day in the metropolitan position of Canterbury, the city of the Bretwalda Æthelberht, and of York, the city of the Bretwalda Eadwine. The land was speedily covered with churches and monasteries, the distinction between regulars and seculars being, during the missionary period, not very accurately drawn. Our forefathers soon acquired a fair share of the learning of the age, and the first two centuries after the conversion form a brilliant period in our ecclesiastical history, one which seems the more brilliant from the contrast with the time of renewed heathenism and darkness, which, in a large portion of Britain, was to follow it.

[Sidenote: Effects of the conversion of the English. Their former isolated position.]

The conversion of the English to Christianity at once altered their whole position in the world. Hitherto our history had been almost wholly insular; our heathen forefathers had had but little to do, either in war or in peace, with any nations beyond their own four seas. We hear little of any connexion being kept up between the Angles and Saxons who were settled in Britain, and their kinsfolk [Sidenote: Instances of connexion with the Franks in Gaul.] who abode in their older land.[29] The little intercourse that we read of with the mainland seems to be wholly with the Franks who now bore rule on the opposite coast of Gaul. Englishmen seem once, in the sixth century, to have found their way to the Imperial court, but it was in company with the ambassadors of a Frankish prince, who at least tried to represent himself as the over-lord of Britain.[30] One instance of connexion between Britain and Gaul may have had some indirect effect in promoting the work of conversion. English Kings then, and long after, commonly intermarried with English women, the daughters either of other English princes or of their own nobles. But the Bretwalda Æthelberht, before the landing of Augustine, was already married to a Frankish princess, who retained her Christian religion in his heathen court. Such a fact is chiefly remarkable for its strangeness; yet it points to a considerable amount of intercourse between Kent and the Franks of Paris at this particular moment. Still, up to the end of the sixth century, Britain, as a whole, was cut off from the rest of the world. It was a heathen and barbarous island, where the Christian faith was professed only by an obscure remnant, which, in some remote corners beyond the reach of the invaders, still retained a form of Christianity which, after all, was not the orthodoxy of the Old or of the New Rome. It was the conversion of our forefathers which brought England for the first time, not only within the pale of the Christian Church, but within the pale of the general political society of Europe. But our insular position, combined with the events of our earlier history, was not without its effect on the peculiar character of [Sidenote: England the first strictly national Church in the West.] Christianity as established in England. England was the first great territorial[31] conquest of the spiritual power, beyond the limits of the Roman Empire, beyond the influence of Greek and Roman civilization. Italy, Spain, Gaul, Africa, the Greek East and the remoter Churches of doubtful loyalty and orthodoxy, were all either actually under the sway of Cæsar, or retained distinct traces of the recent times when they had been so. When Æthelberht received baptism, the political sway of Rome still reached from the Ocean to the Euphrates, and the language of Rome was the one civilized speech from the Ocean to the Hadriatic. Strictly national Churches existed only in those lands of the further East, where the religious and the political loyalty of Syrians and Egyptians was already equally doubtful, and which were destined to fall away at the first touch of the victorious Saracen. In England, [Sidenote: Error of not employing the English language in public worship.] alone in the West, a purely national Church arose. One great error indeed was committed; the vernacular tongue did not become the language of public worship. The mistake was natural. It had occurred to no man to translate the Latin services, drawn up at a time when Latin was the universal language of the West, into those provincial dialects, the parents of the future Romance tongues, which were already growing up in Gaul and Spain. We should as soon think now of translating the Prayer-Book into the dialects of Somerset or Yorkshire. Led thus to look on Latin as the one tongue of worship, as well as of literature and government, Augustine and his successors failed to see that Teutonic England stood in a wholly different position from Romanized Gaul and Spain. They failed to see that the same reasons which required that men should pray in Latin at Rome required that they should pray in English at Canterbury. The error was pardonable, but in its effects it was great. Still, though England had not vernacular services, she soon began to form a vernacular literature, sacred and profane, poetical and historical, to which no other nation of the West can supply a parallel. The English Church, reverencing Rome, but not slavishly bowing down to her, grew up with a distinctly national character, and gradually infused its influence into all the feelings and habits of the English people. By the end of the seventh century, the independent, insular, Teutonic Church had become one of the brightest lights of the Christian firmament.

In short, the introduction of Christianity completely changed the position of the English nation both within its own island and towards the rest of the world. From this time the amount of intercourse with other nations steadily increased, and the change of religion had also a most [Sidenote: Practical effect of Christianity.] important effect within the island itself. The morality of the Gospel had a direct influence upon the politics of the age. The evangelical precepts of peace and love did not put an end to war, they did not put an end to aggressive conquest, but they distinctly humanized the way in which [Sidenote: The wars with the Welsh no longer wars of extermination.] war was carried on. From this time forth the never-ending wars with the Welsh cease to be wars of extermination. The heathen English had been satisfied with nothing short of the destruction or expulsion of their enemies; the Christian English thought it enough to [Sidenote: Advance of Wessex.] reduce them to political subjection. This is clearly marked in the advance of Wessex towards the West. Twenty [Sidenote: Conquests of Ceawlin. 577–584.] years before the coming of Augustine, Ceawlin, the West-Saxon Bretwalda, had won the great battle of Deorham; he had taken the cities of Bath, Gloucester, and Cirencester; he had then carried his arms northward, and in his northern march he had destroyed the Roman city of Uriconium. These northern conquests, as we have seen,[32] were in a certain sense temporary; the districts overrun by Ceawlin beyond the Avon, like the other West-Saxon possessions north of the Thames, ceased for ever to be Welsh, but they did not become for ever West-Saxon. But the land between the Avon and the Axe, the northern part of modern Somerset, became an abiding part of the West-Saxon realm. This was the last heathen conquest, the last exterminating conquest, waged by the West-Saxons against the Britons. During a space of three hundred years, the process of West-Saxon conquest [Sidenote: Further advances of the West-Saxons. 652–926.] still went on; step by step the English frontier advanced from the Axe to the Parret, from the Parret to the Tamar; Taunton at one stage, Exeter at another, were border fortresses against the Welsh enemy; step by step the old Cornish kingdom shrank up before the conquerors; till at last no portion of land south of the Bristol Channel was subject to a British sovereign. This was conquest; it was, no doubt, fearful and desolating conquest; but it was no longer conquest which offered only the dreadful alternatives of death, banishment, or personal slavery. The Christian Welsh could now sit down as subjects of the [Sidenote: In these later wars the Welsh are allowed to become West-Saxon subjects.] Christian Saxon. The Welshman was acknowledged as a man and a citizen; he was put under the protection of the law; he could hold landed property; his blood had its price, and his oath had its ascertained value.[33] The value set on his life and on his oath shows that he was not yet looked on as the equal of the conquering race; but the Welshman within the West-Saxon border was no longer a wild beast, an enemy, or a slave, but a fellow-Christian living under the King’s peace. There can be no doubt that the great peninsula stretching from the Axe to the Land’s End was, and still is, largely inhabited by men who are only naturalized Englishmen, descendants of the old Welsh inhabitants, who gradually lost their distinctive language and were merged in the general mass of their [Sidenote: Celtic element still remaining in the western shires of Wessex.] conquerors. In fact, the extinction of the Cornish language in modern Cornwall within comparatively recent times was only the last stage of a process which began with the conquests of Cenwealh in the seventh century. The Celtic element can be traced from the Axe, the last heathen frontier, to the extremity of Cornwall, of course increasing in amount as we reach the lands which were more recently conquered and therefore less perfectly Teutonized. Devonshire is less Celtic than Cornwall, and Somerset is less Celtic than Devonshire, but not one of those three shires can be called a pure Teutonic land like Kent or Norfolk. The same rule would doubtless apply to those less accurately recorded conquests by which the Mercian Kings extended their dominion from the Severn to the modern boundaries of Wales. We have now everywhere passed the age of extermination, and have entered on the age marked by the comparatively harmless process of political conquest.

[Illustration: BRITAIN IN 597.]

FOR THE DELEGATES OF THE CLARENDON PRESS.

§ 3. _Fluctuations of dominion between Northumberland, Mercia, and Wessex._ 577–823.

[Sidenote: History of the seventh and eighth centuries; position of the smaller kingdoms; of Wessex.]

During the seventh and eighth centuries there were many fluctuations in the relative position of the English kingdoms. Not only Essex, but Sussex and East-Anglia, each of which had given the nation a single Bretwalda, sink into insignificance, and even Kent falls into quite a secondary position. Wessex stood higher; but its Kings, occupied with extending their western frontier, made as yet no attempt to win the supremacy of the whole island, and they often had no small difficulty in maintaining their own independence against Northumbrians [Sidenote: Rivalry of Mercia and Northumberland.] and Mercians. The rivalries of these last two powers fill for a long while the most important place in our history. [Sidenote: Greatness of Northumberland at the] At the end of the sixth century and the beginning of the seventh, Northumberland was at the height of its power. Its King Æthelfrith stands forth in the pages of Bæda[34] as [Sidenote: beginning of the period.] the mightiest of conquerors against the Welsh, and as checking an invasion of Picts and Scots at the great battle [Sidenote: 603.] of Dægsanstan. It must always be borne in mind that, at this time and long after, Lothian was politically as well as ethnologically English, and that Picts and Scots—whatever was the amount of distinction between them—are to [Sidenote: Dominion of Eadwine. 617–633.] be looked for only north of the Forth. Eadwine, the first Christian King of Northumberland, and who ranks as the fifth Bretwalda, has left his name to the frontier fortress of Eadwinesburh or Edinburgh. Eadwine was a true Bretwalda in every sense of the word, holding a supremacy alike over Teutons and Britons.[35] Five Kings of the [Sidenote: 626.] West-Saxons fell in battle against him;[36] but at last [Sidenote: 633.] he died at Heathfield in battle against Penda, the [Sidenote: Reign of Penda of Mercia. 627–655.] heathen King of the Mercians. Along with Penda appeared a strange ally, Cadwalla, the Christian King of the Strathclyde Welsh, the last of his race who could boast of having carried on aggressive war, as distinguished from mere plundering inroads, within the territory of any, [Sidenote: 641.] English people. Not long afterwards, Oswald, the restorer of the Northumbrian kingdom and the sixth Bretwalda, fell in another battle against the heathen Mercian. The arms of Penda were no less successful against the West-Saxons. [Sidenote: 628.] Even before the overthrow of Eadwine, he had most likely annexed to Mercia part of the West-Saxon [Sidenote: 644.] lands north of the Thames and Avon;[37] and sixteen years later, Cenwealh, who afterwards appears as an extender of the West-Saxon frontier at the expense of the Welsh, was for a while driven from his kingdom by the same terrible enemy. Penda, in short, came nearer to achieving the [Sidenote: Extent of his dominion.] union of the whole English nation under one sceptre than any prince before the West-Saxon Ecgberht. Everything looked as if the lasting dominion of Britain were destined for Mercia, and even as if the faith of Christ were about to be plucked up out of the land before it had well taken root. But it was impossible that England should now fall back under the rule of a mere heathen conqueror. The dominion of Penda appears in our history as a mere passing tyranny, and, though he must have possessed more real power than any English prince had ever done before him, his name finds no place on the list of Bretwaldas. [Sidenote: Death of Penda. 655.] At last the seventh prince who bore that title, Oswiu of Northumberland, checked him in his last invasion, and slew him in the battle of Wingfield, a name which, obscure as it now sounds, marks an important turning-point in the history of our island. The strife between the creeds of Christ and of Woden was there finally decided; the Mercians embraced the religion of their neighbours, and Northumberland again became the leading power of [Sidenote: Greatness of Northumberland under Oswald, Oswiu, and Ecgfrith. 635–685.] Britain. Under her two Bretwaldas, Oswald and Oswiu, the English dominion was, seemingly for the first time, extended beyond the Forth, and Picts and Scots, as well as English and Britons, admitted the supremacy of the Northumbrian King.[38] But the greatness of Northumberland lasted no longer than the reigns of Oswiu and his son [Sidenote: 685.] Ecgfrith. Ecgfrith was slain in battle against the Picts; the northern dominion of Northumberland died with him, and the kingdom itself, which had been for a while the most flourishing and advancing state in Britain, was gradually weakened by internal divisions. It sank into utter insignificance, and stood ready, as we shall soon see, [Sidenote: Greatness of Mercia. 716–819.] for the irruption of a new race of conquerors. After the decline of Northumberland, the Christian Mercians are again seen on the road to that supremacy which had once been so nearly grasped by their heathen forefathers. The [Sidenote: 655–656.] fall of Penda carried with it a momentary subjugation of Mercia to Northumberland, but the land almost immediately recovered its independence, and in the next century Mercia again advanced from independence to dominion. [Sidenote: Æthelbald, 716–757. Offa, 757–795. Cenwulf, 796–819.] Under three bold and enterprising Kings, Æthelbald, Offa, and Cenwulf, the armies of Mercia went forth conquering and to conquer, and the periods of momentary confusion which divided these three vigorous reigns seem to have been no serious hindrance to the general advance of the kingdom. Wessex was still engaged in its long struggle with the Welsh, and was in no position to aspire to the dominion of Britain. It was quite as much as the West-Saxon Kings could do to push their conquests against the Welsh on the one hand and to maintain their independence against Mercia on the other. Wessex was more than once invaded by the Mercians; at one time it became actually [Sidenote: 752.] tributary; till Cuthred, in the middle of the eighth century, finally secured its independence in the fight of Burford. In the latter half of that century, Offa raised the Mercian kingdom to a greater degree of real power than it had ever held, even during the momentary dominion of Penda. He conquered from the Welsh the lands between the Severn and the Wye, a lasting and useful acquisition for the English nation, which he is said to have secured by the great dyke which still bears his name. On the other side of Britain, all the smaller states, East-Anglia, Essex, Kent, and Sussex, were brought more or less completely under his power. Victorious over all enemies within his own island, Offa, as the mightiest potentate of the West, corresponded on equal terms with the Great Charles, the mightiest potentate of the East.[39] [Sidenote: Influence of Charles the Great] Occasional misunderstandings between the two princes seem not to have seriously interrupted their friendship. It [Sidenote: in English affairs. 808.] is possible that the Kentish Kings applied for help against Offa to the mighty Frank; it is more certain that, after Offa’s death, Charles, now Emperor, procured the restoration of the banished Northumbrian King Eardwulf, and there seems reason to believe that both the Northumbrian and his Scottish neighbours acknowledged themselves the vassals of the new Augustus.[40]

After the death of Offa the greatness of Mercia continued for a while undiminished under the reign of his son Cenwulf. But meanwhile the seeds of a mighty revolution [Sidenote: Accession of Ecgberht of Wessex. 802.] were sowing. A prince, taught in the school of adversity, who had learned the arts of war and statecraft at the feet of the hero of the age, was, in the eighth year after Offa’s death, raised to the throne of the West-Saxons.[41] He was destined to win a dominion for which that narrow and local description seemed all too mean. Once, but seemingly once only, in the hour of victory, did the eighth Bretwalda, the founder of the abiding supremacy of Wessex, venture to exchange his ancestral title of King of the West-Saxons for the prouder style of KING OF THE ENGLISH.[42]

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

[Sidenote: Analogy between Charles and Ecgberht.]

Ecgberht was chosen King of the West-Saxons two years after Charles the Great was chosen Emperor. And we can hardly doubt that the example of his illustrious friend and host was ever present before his eyes. He could not indeed aspire, like Charles, to the diadem of the Cæsars, but he could aspire to an analogous rank in an island which men sometimes counted for another world. He could win for his own kingdom a lasting superiority over all its neighbours, and so pave the way for the day when all England and all Britain [Sidenote: Permanent supremacy of Wessex now established.] should acknowledge only a single King. The eighth Bretwalda not only established a power over the whole land such as had been held by no other prince before him, but he did what no other Bretwalda had ever done, he handed on his external dominion as a lasting possession to his successors in his own kingdom. From this time forward, Wessex remained the undisputed head of the English nation. The power of the West-Saxon Kings might be assaulted, and at last overthrown, by foreign invaders, but it was never again disputed by rival [Sidenote: Ecgberht the founder of the kingdom of England.] potentates of English blood. In short, as Charles founded the Kingdom of Germany, Ecgberht at least laid the foundations of the Kingdom of England. In his reign [Sidenote: Gradual submission of the other states. 802–837.] of thirty-six years he reduced all the English kingdoms to a greater or less degree of subjection. The smaller states seem to have willingly submitted to him as a deliverer from the power of Mercia. East-Anglia became [Sidenote: Kent, &c. 823. [See Chron. in anno.]] a dependent ally; Kent and the smaller Saxon kingdoms were more closely incorporated with the ruling state. While in East-Anglia Kings of the old line continued to reign as vassals of the West-Saxon over-lord, Kent, Essex, and Sussex were united into a still more dependent realm, which was usually granted out as an apanage to some prince of the West-Saxon royal house.[43] Northumberland, torn by civil dissensions, was in no position to withstand the power which was growing up in the [Sidenote: Submission of Northumberland. 829.] south of Britain. At the approach of a West-Saxon army the Northumbrians seem to have submitted without resistance; keeping, like East-Anglia, their own line of [Sidenote: Final struggle with Mercia. 802–829.] vassal Kings. But Mercia was won only after a long struggle. Ecgberht had inherited war with Mercia as an inheritance from his predecessors. The first year of his reign, before he had himself come back to assume the crown to which he had been chosen, was marked by a successful resistance to a Mercian inroad.[44] And even [Sidenote: 825.] many years after, one of the greatest victories of his reign, the fight of Ellandun, was a victory over Mercian invaders within the West-Saxon realm. That victory deprived Mercia of all her external dominion; it was immediately after it that Ecgberht annexed the smaller [Sidenote: Submission of Mercia. 829.] kingdoms which had become Mercian dependencies. Four years later, Mercia herself had to submit to the conqueror; [Sidenote: 830–874.] she kept her Kings for nearly another half century, but they now received their crown at the hands of the West-Saxon over-lord. It is immediately after recording this greatest of Ecgberht’s triumphs that the Chronicles give him in a marked way the title of Bretwalda.

It was immediately after the submission of Mercia that Ecgberht received the far more easily won submission of Northumberland, which completed his work of welding all the Teutonic kingdoms of Britain into one whole. [Sidenote: Successes of Ecgberht over the Welsh. 815–837.] But, while thus occupied, he had also to carry on the usual warfare with his Celtic neighbours. The power of the Cornish Britons was now utterly broken. The long struggle which had gone on ever since the days of Cerdic was now over; the English frontier seems to have been extended to the Tamar,[45] and the English [Sidenote: 825.] supremacy was certainly extended to the Land’s End. The Welsh however within the conquered territory still [Sidenote: 835.] kept their distinct being, and they sometimes, with the aid of foreign invaders, strove to cast off the yoke. Against the North-Welsh,[46] that is the inhabitants of Wales proper, Ecgberht was equally successful. As Lord of Mercia he inherited from the Mercian Kings a warfare against them as constant as that which he had inherited from his own ancestors against the Welsh of Cornwall. As soon therefore as he had established his supremacy [Sidenote: 828.] over Mercia, he went on to require and to receive the submission of the Celtic neighbours of his new dominion. [Sidenote: North and West Welsh vassals of Wessex.] From this time forth all the Celtic inhabitants of Britain south of the Dee were vassals of the West-Saxon King. But his power never reached to the Picts, the Scots, or [Sidenote: Independence of Picts, Scots, and Strathclyde Welsh.] the Strathclyde Welsh. In fact, the northern Celts, except so far as they came in for their share of the Danish invasions, enjoyed about this time a century of unusual independence. The power of Northumberland had long been unequal to maintaining its old supremacy over its Celtic neighbours, and the new over-lord of Northumberland seems not to have attempted to enforce it. Ecgberht therefore, even at the height of his power, was not Lord of the whole isle of Britain. To win that title was the work of the West-Saxon conquerors of the next century.

But just as the West-Saxon monarchy was reaching this pitch of greatness, it was threatened by an enemy [Sidenote: Invasions of the Danes. 789–1070.] far more formidable than any that could be found within the four seas of Britain. We have now reached the time of the Danish invasions. The Northern part of Europe, peopled by a race closely akin to the Low-Dutch and speaking another dialect of the common Teutonic speech, now began to send forth swarms of pirates over all the seas of Europe, who from pirates often grew into conquerors. They were still heathens, and their incursions, both in Britain and on the Continent, must have been [Sidenote: 787. [Chron. in anno.]] a scourge almost as frightful as the settlement of the English had been to the original Britons. The Scandinavian incursions began before the accession of Ecgberht, and even his power did not keep them wholly in check. It must however have had some considerable effect, as it is only quite towards the end of his reign that we hear of them again. In his last years their incursions [Sidenote: 833.] became frequent and formidable, and in one battle the Bretwalda himself was defeated by them. But he afterwards gained, over the united forces of the Danes and [Sidenote: 836.] the revolted Welsh, the battle of Hengestesdun in Cornwall, which may rank with Ellandun as the second great victory of his reign. Soon after this success, which barely checked the Danish invasions, but which completed [Sidenote: 837.] the submission of the West Welsh, King Ecgberht died, like his model Charles, with, his own power undiminished, but perhaps foreseeing what was to come when his sceptre should pass into weaker hands.

[Sidenote: Three Periods of the Danish invasions.]

The Danish invasions of England, as I have already said,[47] fall naturally into three periods, each of which finds its parallel in the course of the English Conquest of Britain. As the Saxons and Angles plundered and desolated long before they actually settled, so now their [Sidenote: First Period, of simple plunder. 789–855.] Northern kinsmen followed the same course. We first find a period in which the object of the invaders seems to be simple plunder. They land, they harry the country, they fight, if need be, to secure their booty, but whether defeated or victorious, they equally return to their ships, and sail away with what they have gathered. This period includes the time from the first recorded invasion [Sidenote: Second Period, of settlement. 855–897.] till the latter half of the ninth century. Next comes a time in which the object of the Danes is clearly no longer mere plunder, but settlement. They now, just as the English had done before them, come in much stronger bodies, and instead of sailing away every winter with their plunder, they make lasting settlements in a large part of the country. This took place in the second half of the ninth century. During the greater part of the tenth century we read of few or no fresh invasions from Scandinavia; the energies of the Northern tribes were just now mainly devoted to those successive settlements in Gaul which formed the Duchy of Normandy. [Sidenote: Struggle of the West-Saxon Kings with the Danes settled in Britain. 902–954.] But the West-Saxon Lords of Britain were engaged for more than fifty years in a constant struggle to subdue and keep in obedience the Danes who had already settled in the island. And the Danes in Britain were often helped by the Scandinavian settlers who had occupied the eastern coast of Ireland and the islands to the west and north of Scotland. A short interval of peace, the glorious reign of Eadgar, now follows; [Sidenote: Third Period of Danish invasion. Period of political conquest. 980–1016.] towards the end of the tenth century the plundering invasions of the Danes begin again; but they soon assume altogether a new character. The North of Europe, hitherto divided among a crowd of petty princes, had now, like England, like the Empire, settled down into a more regular order of things. Three great kingdoms, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, had arisen. With Sweden we had nothing directly to do; the conquests of that power were made to the East. With Norway also England proper had comparatively little to do, though the Northmen who ravaged and settled in Scotland and Ireland seem to have come mainly from that part of Scandinavia. But the history of England for a long term of years is one record of constant struggles with the power of Denmark. This forms the third period. We have passed the time of mere plunder; we have passed the time of mere local settlement. We have now reached the time of political conquest, the [Sidenote: 994–1013.] time analogous to the conquests of the West-Saxon Kings from Cenwealh to Eadred. We now see a King of all Denmark bent on achieving the conquest of all England. We at last see the foreign invader succeeding [Sidenote: 1013–1016.] in his attempt, and reigning as King of the English, with the formal, though no doubt the constrained, assent of the English nation. Of these three periods, the third, as furnishing some of the immediate causes of the Norman Conquest, I must deal with in greater detail at a later stage of this history. The two earlier periods, those of mere plunder and of mere settlement, come within the bounds of the present preliminary sketch.

The reigns of the son and the grandsons of Ecgberht were almost wholly taken up by the struggle with the [Sidenote: Reign of Æthelwulf and his sons. 837–901.] Northmen. In the reign of Æthelwulf the son of Ecgberht it is recorded that the heathen men wintered for the first time in the Isle of Sheppey. This marks [Sidenote: 855.] the transition from the first to the second period of their invasions. Hitherto they had plundered and had gone away with their plunder; to spend the winter on English soil was the first step towards a lasting [Sidenote: 866.] settlement. It was not however till about eleven years from this time that the settlement actually began. Meanwhile the sceptre of the West-Saxons passed from one hand to another. It is remarkable that no English king of this or of the following century seems to have reached old age. After Æthelwulf, whose age is uncertain, only one or two of his descendants for several generations reached the age of fifty, and the greater part of them were cut off while they were quite young. Four sons of Æthelwulf reigned in succession, and the [Sidenote: 858–871.] reigns of the first three among them make up together [Sidenote: Reign of Æthelred. 866–871.] only thirteen years. In the reign of the third of these princes, Æthelred the First, the second period of the invasions fairly begins. Five years were spent by the Northmen in ravaging and conquering the tributary [Sidenote: Conquest of Northumberland. 867–869.] kingdoms. Northumberland, still disputed between rival kings, fell an easy prey; one or two puppet princes did not scruple to receive a tributary crown at the hands [Sidenote: Invasion of Mercia. 868.] of the heathen invaders.[48] They next entered Mercia, they seized Nottingham, and the West-Saxon King, hastening to the relief of his vassals, was unable to [Sidenote: Conquest of East-Anglia. 866–870.] dislodge them from that stronghold. East-Anglia was completely conquered, and its King Eadmund died a [Sidenote: First invasion of Wessex. 871.] martyr. At last the full storm of invasion burst upon Wessex itself. King Æthelred, the first of a long line of West-Saxon hero kings, supported by his greater brother Ælfred, met the invaders in battle after battle [Sidenote: Reign of Ælfred. 871–901.] with varied success. He died, and Ælfred succeeded, in the thick of the struggle. In this year, the last of Æthelred and the first of Ælfred, nine pitched battles, besides smaller engagements, were fought with the heathens on West-Saxon ground. At last peace was [Sidenote: 872.] made; the Danes withdrew to London, within the Mercian frontier; Wessex was for a moment delivered, but the supremacy won by Ecgberht was lost. For a few years Wessex was subjected to nothing more than temporary incursions, but Deira or Southern Northumberland, and north-eastern Mercia were systematically [Sidenote: 876–877.] occupied by the Danes, and the land was divided among them. In Bernicia or Northern Northumberland English princes still reigned under Danish supremacy. The last native King of the Mercians,[49] Burhred, the brother-in-law [Sidenote: 874.] of Ælfred, had already been deposed by the Danes, [Sidenote: Second invasion of Wessex. 878.] and had gone to Rome, where he ended his days. At last the Danes, now settled in a large part of the island, made a second attempt to add Wessex itself to their possessions. For a moment the land seemed conquered; Ælfred himself lay hid in the marshes of Somerset; men might well deem that the Empire of Ecgberht, and the kingdom of Cerdic itself, had vanished for ever. But the strong heart of the most renowned of Englishmen, the saint, the scholar, the hero, and the lawgiver, carried his people safely through this most [Sidenote: Peace of Wedmore and evacuation of Wessex. 878–880.] terrible of dangers. Within a few months the Dragon of Wessex was again victorious; the Northmen were driven to conclude a peace which Englishmen, fifty years sooner, would have deemed the lowest depth of degradation, but which now might fairly be looked upon as honourable and even as triumphant. By the terms of the Peace of Wedmore the Northmen were to leave Wessex and the part of Mercia south-west of Watling-Street;[50] they, or at least their chiefs, were to submit to baptism, and they were to receive the whole land beyond Watling-Street as vassals of the West-Saxon [Sidenote: Reign of Guthrum-Æthelstan in East-Anglia. 880–890.] King. Guthrum, the Danish King, was accordingly baptized by the name of Æthelstan; he took possession of his new dominions, and observed the peace with decent fidelity down to his death.

[Sidenote: Character and extent of the Danish occupation.]

A large part of England thus received a colony of Danish inhabitants. They gave their name to their conquest, and England is now divided into Wessex, Mercia, and _Denalagu_, the region where the Danish law was in force. This Danish occupation was a real settlement of a new people in the land. There is no reason to think that any extirpation or expulsion of the native inhabitants took place, such as that which accompanied the English Conquest. But the displacement of landowners and the general break-up of society must have been far greater than anything that was afterwards [Sidenote: Evidence of local nomenclature.] brought about by the Normans. How extensive the Danish occupation was is best seen in the local nomenclature and local divisions.[51] The West-Saxon shires keep to this day the names and the boundaries of the principalities founded by the first successors of Cerdic. [Sidenote: Contrast between the West-Saxon and Mercian shires.] In some of them there is no one dominant town in a shire; several shires contain a town bearing a cognate name, but the shire is seldom called directly and solely after a town. In short, the local divisions of Wessex were not made but grew. Mercia, on the other hand, has every appearance of having been artificially mapped out. The shires, with at most two exceptions, are called after towns, and in most cases the shire groups itself round its capital, as round an acknowledged and convenient centre. The names of the old principalities vanish, and their boundaries are often disregarded. One principality is divided among several shires, and another shire is made up of several ancient principalities. We can hardly doubt that the old divisions were wiped out in the Danish invasions, and that the country was divided again by the English Kings after the reconquest.

[Sidenote: Names of places in Northumberland and Mercia retaining the names of Danish lords.]

Again, the names of the towns and villages throughout a large part of the ceded territory show the systematic way in which the land was divided among the Danish leaders. Through a large region, stretching from Warwickshire to Cumberland, but most conspicuously in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Leicestershire, the Danish termination _by_ marks the settlements of the invaders, and, in a vast number of cases, the name of the manor still retains the name of the Danish lord to whom it was assigned in the occupation of the ninth century. In two cases at least the Danes gave new names to considerable towns. Streoneshalh and Northweorthig received the [Sidenote: Whitby and Derby.] new names of Whitby and Derby (Deoraby). This last town is one of considerable importance in the history of the Danish settlement. It was, together with Lincoln, [Sidenote: The Five Boroughs.] Leicester, Nottingham, and Stamford, a member of a confederation of Danish towns, which, under the name of the Five Boroughs, often plays a part in the events of the tenth and eleventh centuries.

[Sidenote: Character of Ælfred.]

Ælfred, the unwilling author of these great changes, is the most perfect character in history. He is a singular instance of a prince who has become a hero of romance, who, as a hero of romance, has had countless imaginary exploits and imaginary institutions attributed to him, but to whose character romance has done no more than justice, and who appears in exactly the same light in history and [Sidenote: Singular union of virtues in him.] in fable. No other man on record has ever so thoroughly united all the virtues both of the ruler and of the private man. In no other man on record were so many virtues disfigured by so little alloy.[52] A saint without superstition, a scholar without ostentation, a warrior all whose wars were fought in the defence of his country, a conqueror whose laurels were never stained by cruelty,[53] a prince never cast down by adversity, never lifted up to insolence in the hour of triumph—there is no other name in history [Sidenote: Comparison with Saint Lewis;] to compare with his. Saint Lewis comes nearest to him in the union of a more than monastic piety with the highest civil, military, and domestic virtues. Ælfred and Lewis alike stand forth in honourable contrast to the abject superstition of some other royal saints, who were so selfishly engaged in the care of their own souls that they refused either to raise up heirs to their throne or to strike a blow on behalf of their people. But even in Saint Lewis we see a disposition to forsake an immediate sphere of duty for the sake of distant and unprofitable, however pious and glorious, undertakings. The true duties of a King of the French clearly lay in France and not in Egypt or at Tunis. No such charge lies at the door of the great King of the West-Saxons. With an inquiring spirit which took in the whole world, for purposes alike of scientific inquiry and of Christian benevolence, Ælfred never forgot that his first duty was to his own people. He forestalled our own age in exploring the Northern Ocean, and in sending alms to the distant Churches of India; but he neither forsook his crown, like some of his predecessors, nor neglected its [Sidenote: with Washington;] duties, like some of his successors. The virtue of Ælfred, like the virtue of Washington, consisted in no marvellous displays of superhuman genius, but in the simple, straightforward, discharge of the duty of the moment. But Washington, soldier, statesman, and patriot like Ælfred, has no claim to Ælfred’s character of scholar and master [Sidenote: with William the Silent;] of scholars. William the Silent, like Ælfred the deliverer of his people, had no call to be also their literary teacher; and in his career, glorious as it is, there is an element of intrigue which is quite unlike the noble simplicity of both Ælfred and Washington. The same union of zeal for religion and learning with the highest gifts of the warrior and the statesman is found on a wider field of [Sidenote: with Charles the Great;] action, in Charles the Great. But even Charles cannot aspire to the pure glory of Ælfred. Amidst all the splendours of conquest and legislation, we cannot be blind to an alloy of personal ambition and personal vice, to occasional unjust aggressions and occasional acts of cruelty. [Sidenote: with Edward the First.] Among our own later princes, the great Edward alone can bear for a moment the comparison with his glorious ancestor. And, when tried by such a standard, even the great Edward fails. Even in him we do not see the same wonderful union of gifts and virtues which so seldom meet together; we cannot acquit Edward of occasional acts of violence, of occasional recklessness as to means; we cannot attribute to him the pure, simple, almost childlike disinterestedness which marks the character of Ælfred. The times indeed were different; Edward had to tread the path of righteousness and honour in a time of far more tangled policy, and amidst temptations, not harder indeed, but far [Sidenote: Ælfred’s position as a legislator;] more subtle. The legislative merits of Edward are greater than those of Ælfred; but this is a difference in the times rather than in the men. The popular error which makes Ælfred the personal author of all our institutions hardly needs a fresh confutation. Popular legends attribute to him the invention of Trial by Jury and of countless other portions of our law, the germs of which may be discerned ages before the time of Ælfred, while their existing shapes cannot be discerned till ages after him. Ælfred, like so many of our early kings, collected and codified the laws of his predecessors; but we have his own personal witness[54] that he purposely abstained from any large amount of strictly new legislation. The legislation of Edward, on the other hand, in its boldness and originality, forms the most [Sidenote: as scholar.] marked of all epochs in the history of our law. It is perhaps, after all, in his literary aspect that the distinctive beauty of Ælfred’s character shines forth most clearly. The mere patronage of learning was common to him with many princes of his age. Both Charles the Great and several of his successors had set brilliant examples in this way. What distinguished Ælfred was his own personal appearance as an author. Now, as a rule, literary kings have not been a class deserving of much honour. They have commonly stepped out of their natural sphere only to display the least honourable characteristics of another calling. But it was not so with the Emperor Marcus; it was not so with our Ælfred. In Ælfred there is no sign of literary pedantry, ostentation, or jealousy; nothing is done for his own glory; he writes, just as he fights and legislates, with a single eye to the good of his people. He shows no signs of original genius; he is simply an editor and translator, working honestly for the improvement of the subjects whom he loved. This is really a purer fame, and one more in harmony with the other features of Ælfred’s character, than the highest achievements of the poet, the historian, or the philosopher. I repeat then that Ælfred [Sidenote: Happiness of Ælfred in his successors.] is the most perfect character in history. And he was specially happy in handing on a large share of his genius and his virtue to those who came after him. The West-Saxon kings, for nearly a century, form one of the most brilliant royal lines on record. From Æthelred the Saint to Eadgar the Peaceful, the short and wretched reign of Eadwig is the only interruption to one continued display of valour under the guidance of wisdom. The greatness of the dynasty, obscured under the second Æthelred, flashes forth for a moment in the short and glorious career of the second Eadmund. It then becomes more permanently eclipsed under the rule of Dane, Norman, and Angevin, till it shines forth once more in the first of the new race whom we can claim as English at heart, till, if not Ælfred himself, at least his unconquered son, seems to rise again to life in one who at once bore his name and followed in his steps.

[Sidenote: The Danish settlement tends to the consolidation of England under the West-Saxon Kings.]

There can be little doubt that the Danish settlement in England, which seemed at first to be the utter destruction of the West-Saxon monarchy, tended in the end to the consolidation of England and of all Britain under the West-Saxon kings. Looking at Ælfred as Bretwalda, a title which had passed away, or as King of the English, a title which he hardly ventured to assume, his loss was beyond expression. But, as local King of the West-Saxons, he undoubtedly gained. The Danes were nominally his vassals;[55] but their vassalage was so purely nominal that we may look on Ælfred as having lost all authority over East-Anglia, Northumberland, and the larger half of [Sidenote: Closer union between Mercia and Wessex.] Mercia. But the remainder of Mercia was more closely united to Wessex than it had been since the seventh century. The new frontier gave to Ælfred nearly the whole of the old extent of Wessex beyond the Thames and Avon, while it added a large region in the centre of England which had never been West-Saxon before.[56] Still this great acquisition was not absolutely incorporated with the West-Saxon kingdom. The over-lord no longer entrusted the dependency to a vassal King, but English [Sidenote: Before 886.] Mercia still had an Ealdorman of her own, a man of princely descent within the land over which he ruled. But Æthelred, the new ruler of south-western Mercia, was the son-in-law of the West-Saxon King and ruled by his [Sidenote: Recovery of London. 886.] father-in-law’s appointment.[57] And along with the recovered portion of Mercia, Ælfred also regained London, a city which we shall henceforth ever find to be one of the firmest strongholds of English freedom and one of the truest bulwarks of the realm.

[Sidenote: Consolidation of Wessex.]

We may therefore look on the immediate West-Saxon territory as actually increased by the Danish invasion. The recovered part of Mercia was reduced to the form of a province; we hear no more of even dependent Kings in Kent and Sussex, but at most of Ealdormen of the King’s appointment. All England south-west of Watling-Street was fast growing into a compact and homogeneous kingdom. [Sidenote: Progress of the West-Saxon power aided by the Danish] And the very fact of the foreign occupation of the rest of England paved the way for its easier incorporation with the one kingdom which remained independent. The wars of Wessex with the Danes of Mercia and Northumberland were wars of quite another character from the [Sidenote: settlements.] old border strife between the English inhabitants of the several kingdoms. They were in the strictest sense national wars, wars of religion and patriotism. The West-Saxon Kings were, in the eyes of all Englishmen in whatever part of the island, the champions of the national independence and the national faith. Their conquests brought with them deliverance from the Danish yoke, and we therefore find them everywhere welcomed as deliverers by the subject English population. One or two attempts at a division of the kingdom[58] show that the old local feelings had not fully died out; but their ill success shows no less clearly that such divisions no longer rested on any strong national basis. The successors of Ælfred were gradually enabled to win back the supremacy established by Ecgberht, and to enlarge it into an actual sovereignty over all England and an acknowledged supremacy over all Britain. The kingdom so formed was at last overcome by a Danish conqueror; but it was overcome by a very different process from the settlement of this or that wandering pirate. It was the transfer of the crown of a consolidated English kingdom to the head of the King of a now no less consolidated kingdom of Denmark.

[Sidenote: 880–893.]

The reign of Ælfred contains two intervals of nearly [Sidenote: 897–901.] perfect peace. After the great deliverance of Wessex [Sidenote: Later Danish Wars of Ælfred. 893–897.] there was no very serious warfare with the Danes till quite towards the end of Ælfred’s life. Then came five years of a struggle almost as fearful as that of the early days of his reign. But in the end Ælfred and England were again victorious. During the years of peace Ælfred had seen the need of forming a naval force to meet the wikings on their own element. It is wonderful how wholly the old sea-faring spirit of the Angles and Saxons [Sidenote: Ælfred the founder of the English navy.] seems to have died out before his time. But both Ælfred and his successors diligently fostered the naval power of England, alike for war, for commerce, and for discovery. In short, Ælfred laid the foundations of that naval greatness which is the special pride of Englishmen. His fleet seems to have preserved Wessex itself from anything more than a few landings for plunder. But for three years, Danish invaders, helped by the Danes settled in the country, marched to and fro through all Britain [Sidenote: Death of Ælfred. 901.] north of the Thames. But at last Ælfred succeeded in reducing them at least within the terms of the Peace of Wedmore, and he again enjoyed a few years of quiet before his death.

[Sidenote: Reign of Eadward the Elder 901–925.]

Ælfred’s successor, Eadward the Elder, completed the work which Ecgberht had begun, by first extending the supremacy of Wessex over the whole island of Britain. [Sidenote: Reigns of his sons. 925–955.] Under his sons, Æthelstan, Eadmund, and Eadred, that supremacy was maintained and consolidated at the point [Sidenote: Reign of Eadgar. 958–975.] of the sword. His grandson, Eadgar the Peaceful, enjoyed the fruit of their labours, and further strengthened their work by a reign of strong and orderly government, by holding himself in constant readiness for war during a time, for those days, of most unusual peace. Thus, from [Sidenote: 800–975.] Ecgberht to Eadgar, it took a hundred and seventy years to build up the Kingdom of England, a kingdom which, as coming events showed, could still be conquered, but which could no longer be permanently divided. The twenty-five years of Eadward are the turning-point; what he won his successors had only to keep. It is only [Sidenote: Importance of the reign of Eadward.] the unequalled glory of his father which has doomed this prince, one of the greatest rulers that England ever beheld, to a smaller degree of popular fame than he deserves. His whole reign bears out the panegyric passed on him by an ancient writer,[59] that he was fully his father’s equal as a warrior and ruler, and was inferior to him in nothing except those literary labours which were so peculiarly Ælfred’s own. The work of Eadward was twofold; he enlarged the borders of his immediate kingdom, and he brought the whole island under vassalage. His wars, and those of his three successors, were, it should be remembered, waged mainly against the Danes settled in Britain. These settlers were sometimes helped by their brethren from Denmark, and more commonly by the Danes and Northmen settled in Ireland; but, on the whole, foreign invasions do not form an important feature in the [Sidenote: Alliance of Æthelwald with the Danes. 901–905.] events of this half century. The war began when the Northumbrian Danes took the part of a defeated candidate for the West-Saxon crown,[60] who did not scruple to accept their alliance, and to lead them to plunder and attempted conquest against his own countrymen. But Eadward, when thus put on the defensive, did something more than merely defend the kingdom which he had received [Sidenote: Recovery of Mercia, &c. by Eadward and Æthelflæd. 905–922.] from his father. With the help of his sister Æthelflæd, the famous Lady of the Mercians, the widow of their Ealdorman Æthelred, he recovered from the Danish yoke the whole of Mercia, East-Anglia, and Essex, and the brother and sister secured their conquests by building [Sidenote: Annexation of Mercia. 922.] fortresses in all directions. By the English population of all these districts Eadward was welcomed as a deliverer, and he found no difficulty in annexing the liberated lands to his own kingdom. After the death of Æthelflæd, who was her brother’s close ally rather than his subject, the separate being of Mercia came to an end. The whole Mercian land on both sides of the Watling-Street was [Sidenote: Eadward’s kingdom extended to the Humber.] incorporated by Eadward with his own kingdom. He thus became, what no West-Saxon King had been before him, immediate sovereign of all England south of the Humber. Having thus extended his immediate dominion beyond all precedent, he was able to extend his more general supremacy equally beyond anything possessed by [Sidenote: All the Princes of Britain submit to him. 922–924.] his predecessors. The princes of Wales, Northumberland, Strathclyde, and Scotland, all submitted to him by a voluntary act; “they chose him to father and to lord.”[61] The Welsh and Northumbrian princes only renewed a homage which they had already paid both to Ecgberht and to Ælfred; but the relation with Strathclyde and Scotland was new. No warfare with either country is spoken of; the act of submission seems to have been made by the free consent of the rulers and people of the two [Sidenote: Probable causes of their voluntary submission.] Northern kingdoms. The motive to such an act is doubtless to be found in a dread of Eadward’s power, combined with a sense of the necessity of his position as the general champion of Britain against the Danes. Scotland and Strathclyde had suffered as much from Scandinavian invasions as England had. To choose the West-Saxon King as their over-lord might involve some national humiliation, but it was better to receive the champion of Christendom as an over-lord than to be exposed without defence to the [Sidenote: Novelty and greatness of his position.] incursions of the heathen. Eadward thus obtained a far greater extent of dominion than had been held by Ecgberht himself. Ecgberht’s immediate kingdom stopped at the Thames, and his over-lordship reached only to the Forth. Eadward’s immediate kingdom reached to the Humber, and his over-lordship extended over the whole island. The submission of Scotland and Strathclyde to Eadward is the most distinctive feature in Eadward’s reign. It was something which surpassed the greatest exploits of his predecessors. The Scots had recognized a precarious supremacy in the old Northumbrian Kings. They had recognized a supremacy yet more precarious still in the great Frankish Emperor. But their submission to Wessex was wholly new; the days had long passed when they had bowed to an over-lord at York, and they had never before bowed to an over-lord at [Sidenote: Vassalage of Scotland. 924–1328.] Winchester. This _commendation_ of Scotland to the West-Saxon King is an event so important for the history of the next four hundred years, and it is an event which is often so completely misunderstood, that I must reserve some consideration of its exact bearing for my next Chapter. It is enough to say here that, from this time to the fourteenth century, the vassalage of Scotland was an essential part of the public law of the isle of Britain. No doubt many attempts were made to cast off the dependent relation which had been voluntarily incurred; but when a King of the English had once been chosen “to father and to lord,” his successors never willingly gave up the position which had thus been bestowed upon them. Whenever the King of the English is strong enough, he always appears as the acknowledged [Sidenote: 973.] superior of the King of Scots. Kenneth acts the part of a faithful vassal to Eadgar. Eadward the Confessor, like his nobler namesakes before and after, acts as superior [Sidenote: 1054.] lord and, as such, transfers the tributary crown from an [Sidenote: 1072.] usurper to the lawful heir. When the Norman William had subdued England, he claimed and received the homage of Scotland as one of the undoubted rights of the crown [Sidenote: Homage paid for Scotland proper.] which he had won. And nothing is clearer than that this homage was paid, not only for Cumberland or Lothian, but for the true kingdom of the Celtic Picts and Scots. In the days of Eadward and Æthelstan, Lothian was still English or Danish, an integral part of the kingdom of Northumberland, and the submission of Strathclyde was the separate act of another independent prince. The facts are undoubted; they are plain matters of history, which ought never to be looked at through the medium of provincial prejudice. The vassalage of Scotland to England is as certain as the earlier vassalage of Mercia to Wessex; but, for the last hundred and sixty years, one fact has been of as little practical importance as the other.

§ 5. _The Imperial Sovereignty of the West-Saxon Kings of the English._ 924–975.

Eadward the Elder then was the first prince who could really claim to be King of the English and Lord of the [Sidenote: Reign of Æthelstan. 925–940.] Isle of Britain. His son Æthelstan added the finishing stroke to the work of his father, by first making Northumberland [Sidenote: 926.] an integral portion of the realm. He thus became immediate King of all the Teutonic races in Britain, and superior Lord of all the Celtic principalities. [Sidenote: Renewal of homage by the vassal Kings. 926.] In his second year, all the vassal princes, Welsh and Scottish, and the English prince of Northumberland beyond the Tyne,[62] renewed their homage. It is expressly mentioned that they renounced all idolatry; many of the Danes no doubt still clave to their ancient worship. But Æthelstan had to fight to retain the empire which his father had won. Neither Danes, Welsh, nor Scots were very faithful vassals; but the power of the King of the [Sidenote: 933.] English was too much for them all. Scotland was ravaged by land and sea; Wales was constrained not only to homage but to tribute. At last the rebellious Danes and their kinsmen from Ireland who came to their help, together with Constantine of Scotland and Owen of Strathclyde, who did not scruple to league themselves with the [Sidenote: Battle of Brunanburh. 937.] heathen barbarians, were all overthrown by Æthelstan and his brother Eadmund in the glorious fight of Brunanburh. That fight, looked on at the time as the hardest victory that Angles and Saxons had ever won, still lives in the earliest and noblest of those national lays with which the Chronicles, especially at this period,[63] relieve the direct [Sidenote: Foreign connexions of Æthelstan.] course of their prose narrative. The reign of this great prince is also remarkable for the brilliant position which England now held with regard to foreign countries. Contrary to the usual custom of English Kings, Æthelstan, himself childless, systematically formed family connexions with the chief powers of Europe. His numerous sisters [Sidenote: [Marriage 929. Otto King, 936. Emperor, 962.]] were married to a crowd of princes, ranging in dignity from Sihtric, the momentary King of the Northumbrians, to Otto, who placed his English wife on the throne of the East-Franks and who lived to be the restorer of the Roman Empire. With some degree of exaggeration of the real facts, the court of “glorious Æthelstan” is painted to us as the common refuge of oppressed princes and as the school where the scions of royalty learned the lessons which befitted kings and warriors. But putting aside glories which are at least partly fabulous, it is certain that the reign of Æthelstan was a time of vigorous government and successful warfare at home, and that in his days England had an unusual amount of connexion with foreign countries, and enjoyed an unusual amount of consideration among them.[64] The reigns of his two [Sidenote: Reigns of Eadmund and Eadred. 940–955.] younger brothers, Eadmund the Magnificent and Eadred the Excellent,[65] form a continuation of the same tale. The Northumbrian Danes were constantly revolting, constantly setting up kings of their own, and they were as constantly brought back to submission by the superior power of the [Sidenote: Final submission of Northumberland. 954.] Emperor[66] of Britain. At last, under Eadred, the rebellious land was finally subdued, the last phantom of Northumbrian royalty vanished, and the whole land beyond the Humber was for the future ruled by Earls of the King’s appointment. Another success, hardly less valuable, [Sidenote: Final recovery of the Five Boroughs. 941.] was the final recovery of the Five Boroughs by Eadmund; a poetical entry in the Chronicles vividly paints the delight of their English inhabitants at their [Sidenote: Period of friendly relations with Scotland. 937–1000.] deliverance from the yoke of their heathen masters.[67] The relations of Scotland to the Imperial power seem, after the great defeat of Brunanburh, to have remained friendly for many years. Several Scottish Kings in succession had the wisdom to avoid following the suicidal policy of Constantine. Indeed the Scottish King Malcolm received a considerable extension of territory at the hands of Eadmund. The Kingdom of Strathclyde was conquered and abolished, and part of it, under the name of Cumberland, [Sidenote: Grant of Cumberland to Malcolm. 945.] was granted by Eadmund to Malcolm, on the usual tenure of faithful service in war.[68] This principality remained for a long time the apanage of the heirs-apparent of the Scottish crown, much as Kent had been to Wessex in the [Sidenote: 946.] days of Ecgberht and Æthelwulf. That the Scots renewed their oaths on the accession of Eadred is no proof of hostile feelings on either side; it was merely an usual and necessary precaution at the beginning of a new reign, doubly necessary when Northumberland was in rebellion. The work begun by Ecgberht was now finally accomplished. The King of the West-Saxons had grown step by step into the acknowledged King of the English and Emperor of the Isle of Albion. A time now came when it seemed for a moment that that work was about to be undone, and that the blow was struck in the very hearth and home of the English Empire. For a moment Wessex and Mercia were again divided. The events of the next reign are recorded with a singular amount of contradiction,[69] and the voice to which we should have listened with undoubting [Sidenote: Succession of Eadwig in Wessex and Eadgar in Mercia. 955.] confidence is all but silent.[70] But as far as can be made out, the two young sons of Eadmund succeeded their uncle Eadred, the elder, Eadwig, reigning in Wessex as superior lord, while the younger, Eadgar, reigned as Under-king north of the Thames. From the stirring tale of an Empire saved, consolidated, and defended by the unwearied efforts of six wise and valiant monarchs, we turn to find ourselves involved in the thick of an ecclesiastical controversy. [Sidenote: Dunstan. 925–988.] Dunstan, a name known to too many readers only as the subject of one of the silliest of monastic legends, stands forth as the leading man in Church and State. As the minister of Eadred and of Eadgar, as the Jehoiada or [Sidenote: Character of his policy.] Seneca who watched over the still harmless childhood of the second Æthelred, Dunstan is entitled to lasting and honourable renown. The ecclesiastical changes which are commonly connected with his name, but which perhaps rather belong to contemporary prelates like Oda of Canterbury and Æthelwald of Winchester, are of a more doubtful character. To bring back the monks to the observance of their rule, to raise the character of the secular clergy, often no doubt ignorant and worthless enough, were thoroughly praiseworthy undertakings. But the complete prohibition of clerical marriage, the substitution of regulars for seculars in many of the cathedral and other chief churches of England, were certainly the works of a zeal which had far outrun discretion. And these measures had also the effect of dividing the nation into two parties, and of producing an amount of mutual hostility which might well have led to even greater evils than it did lead to. The whole of the short reign of Eadwig is shrouded in mystery; but it is clear that he was the enemy of Dunstan, perhaps to some extent the enemy of the monks generally, and it is certain that he was the vigorous opponent of the policy which strove everywhere to substitute monks for secular [Sidenote: 956.] canons. The banishment of Dunstan, combined with an uncanonical marriage, seems to have roused popular feeling against a prince on whose real merits we are hardly in a [Sidenote: Eadgar chosen King of the Mercians. 957.] position to pronounce a judgement. The Mercians chose their Under-king Eadgar King in his own right, and in his separate dominions Dunstan was recalled and his policy vigorously carried out. The death of Eadwig soon followed, [Sidenote: Eadgar succeeds to the whole kingdom. 958–975.] and the Kingdom of England and the Empire of all Britain were again united under the sceptre of Eadgar the Peaceful. His reign of seventeen years is a period of almost unbroken peace; we hear, almost unavoidably, of wars with the Welsh, of moment enough to be recorded by Welsh chroniclers, but which the English writers pass by.[71] Of Danish invasions we hear nothing for certain; but Westmoreland, a part of the Cumbrian fief of the Scottish [Sidenote: 966.] King, was once ravaged, seemingly by Eadgar’s orders,[72] [Sidenote: 958] and we hear also more distinctly of a portion of Eadgar’s own kingdom, the Isle of Thanet, being treated in the like way at his bidding. These last facts point to some local [Sidenote: His peaceful and vigorous government.] revolts or disturbances.[73] With these exceptions, weapons of war seem to have hung useless throughout the English dominions for a time which, short as it seems to us, was in those days a wonderfully long interval of repose. But if Eadgar’s sword hung useless, it at least did not rust. Eadgar, like Ælfred, knew how to guard his Empire, and a fleet which yearly sailed round the whole island, and which often carried the King in person, was a sufficient [Sidenote: His effective supremacy over all Britain.] safeguard of Britain against foreign foes. And no West-Saxon Basileus ever made his supremacy so fully felt by all the races of the island as the one West-Saxon Basileus who never drew his sword against a Scottish or Northumbrian enemy. After a single inroad early in his reign,[74] Kenneth of Scotland remained on good terms with his over-lord, and, according to some statements, Eadgar even increased his dominions by a most important grant of territory.[75] To the Danes of Northumberland he was anxious to show that he had no mind to deal with them as with a conquered people, and that he remembered their services in helping to raise him to the crown.[76] In his legislation he takes care to assert their perfect equality with the English and their right to be governed only by laws of their own choosing.[77] He delighted in pomp and splendour, and there seems no reason to doubt the historic truth of the tale of that famous pageant in which [Sidenote: 973.] the Emperor of Britain was rowed on the Dee by eight vassal kings.[78] But if the tale were only a symbolical expression, it would still be a most true and speaking symbol of the days of the greatest glory and prosperity of [Sidenote: He encourages intercourse with foreign countries.] the West-Saxon Empire. Under Eadgar too England held a high place in the estimation of foreign lands, and intercourse with them, commercial and otherwise, was carefully promoted by his enlightened policy.[79] In ecclesiastical matters the party of the regulars was steadily favoured. This fact may perhaps have won for Eadgar more than his due share of praise at the hands of monastic writers. But exaggeration itself cannot obscure the real glory of such a reign as his.[80]

[Sidenote: Reign of Eadward the Martyr. 975–979.]

But with Eadgar the glory of England sank. The reign of his elder son Eadward was short and troubled, and the young prince himself died by violence, most probably through the intrigues of an ambitious step-mother. [Sidenote: Reign of Æthelred the Unready. 979–1016.] He was succeeded by his brother Æthelred, a child, and one who would have been happy if he had always remained a child. In his time the Danish invasions began again, in a new form and with a more terrible effect than ever. In his time too begins that direct and intimate connexion between English and Norman history which shows that we are now approaching the days of the Norman Conquest, and that we have reached the first links in the chain of its direct causes. The reign of Æthelred will therefore claim a somewhat fuller treatment than that of a preliminary sketch.

[Sidenote: Recapitulation.]

We have thus traced out the steps by which the West-Saxon Kings, from Ecgberht onwards, founded that Kingdom of England which one conquest was to hand over to the King of the Danes and another conquest to the Duke of the Normans, but which was never again to be permanently divided, and which each conquest only served to unite more firmly. We have seen also how, along with the consolidation of their Teutonic kingdom, the same West-Saxon princes obtained a more extended and more precarious Empire over their Celtic neighbours. The later fate of the various Celtic portions of Britain has been widely different. In Cumberland no sign is left, and in Cornwall not many, that the dominion of the English King was once that of an external over-lord and not that [Sidenote: Union of Wales; [1293. 1536. 1830.]] of an immediate sovereign. On Wales the English dominion was pressed closer and closer, till all political and civil distinctions between Wales and England were wiped out, though the ancient language, and with it a distinct [Sidenote: of Scotland; [1328. 1707.]] and strong provincial feeling, still remains. Scotland, after various fluctuations, at last won complete independence of the English over-lord, and was finally united with England on equal terms as an independent kingdom. [Sidenote: Man still distinct.] Strange to say, the little realm of Man is the only part of the Empire of Eadgar which is not now thoroughly fused into the general mass of the United Kingdom.[81] But different as has been the later fate of the various portions of the dominions of Eadgar, his Teutonic Kingdom and his Celtic Empire both passed nearly untouched into the hands of the Norman Conqueror. In another preliminary