Ses — Ein gt oe {he {olan Smith fibrary Prefented to The Cornell University, 1869, BY Goldwin Smith, M. A. Oxon., Regius Proteffor of Hittory in the Univerfity of Oxford. ornell University Library Ci DA 130.P36E2 “TTA TTA 3 1924 027 941 917 aw THE EARLY AND MIDDLE AGES OF ENGLAND. EARLY AND MIDDLE AGES OF ENGLAND. By CHARLES H. PEARSON, MA, FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD, AND PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY, KING’S COLLEGE, LONDON. x ~ ft > ela 7 nw . 2 ~ ~ s d Zz Th THS TUXNS OUx AYE Qurews, n guynrAwciws KaS EDIT ROKNS THY T povorg sOLKOUM Evy? Marcus AURELIUS. Wir tragen die Lasten unserer Vater, wie wir ihr Gutes empfangen haben, und so leben die Menschen in der That in der ganzen Vergangenheit und Zukunft, und nirgend weniger als in der Gegenwart. Novatls. LONDON: BELL AND DALDY, 186, FLEET STREET. 1861. [THE RIGHT OF TRANSLATION IS RESERVED. | LONDON : JIENRY VIZETELLY, PRINTER AND ENGRAVER, GOUGH SQUARE, FLEET STREET. PREFACE. In the present volume I have tried to give the last results of enquiry into the early history of England. Perhaps no period has been more profoundly studied, or less generally understood. The true explanation of this apparent anomaly is, I believe, that the great works of Sir F. Palgrave, Mr. Kemble, and their followers, have suffered in popular estimation from the elaborate treatment and profuse illustration which make their writings invaluable to scholars. I have condensed the history of twelve hundred years into a single volume, with a view to the large class who want time or inclination to pursue English history as an exclusive study. I think, too, that the labours of. antiquarians, essayists, and philologists require from time to time to be reduced to order, for the mere pur- pose of comparison. An imperfect, even a false, theory of the connection and interdependence of events, is better than none at all. Without regard to the powers of arrangement, and vivid narrative style that make M. Thierry’s “Conquest of England” a work of genius, I am sure the theory of races which it de- velopes, however unsound it may be in its principles and application, has had results of the last importance in stimulating enquiry. Yl PREFACE. I believe my own differences from the school of Hume and Robertson are mainly referable to the principle that all changes in the constitution of so- ciety have been gradual and partial. That Nature does nothing violently, and that there is no great difference between man and man as regards the ulti- mate facts of life, are commonplaces, which cannot even be claimed for the present century. But it is of some moment, whether we regard the Saxons as inheriting or as destroying Roman civilization, and whether we use the terms barbarous and civilized as purely relative, or as having a certain absolute value. Further, I believe we must estimate every age by what it is at its highest. At least, it is not fair to con- trast the short-comings of one century with the excel- lences of another. We can afford quietly to pass by the attacks of continental journalists, who confine their view of England to our police reports, our pauperism, and the ignorance or misery of a few districts under exceptional circumstances. All the facts ever quoted against us may be true, but they are not the whole truth. Those who draw their view of medieval England from a few acts of violence, which the chronicles recorded for their enormity, from the gene- ral want of material comforts, and from the imperfect education of a pre-scientific period, are surely special pleaders rather than historians. The political consti- tution which we inherit, our common law, even our philosophy, bear the traces of medizeval workmanship as plainly as the castles and churches that still testify to the past. The ideas that regulate the life of gentle- men were not derived from Greece and Rome, or PREFACE. vil invented by eighteenth-century savans. We cannot dis- claim our fathers without being untrue to ourselves. My present volume is complete in itself. But should it appear to answer its purpose, I hope to con- tinue it till the period of the Reformation, which is already well occupied. Having rigidly restricted my- self to English history, and to the period I am discuss- ing, I have left untouched many subjects, which a more general work on the Middle Ages would naturally embrace. I have tried to limit my references to cases in which there was some doubt, or where I felt bound to acknowledge the assistance derived from other writers. With all allowances, and in spite of all help from the unwearied kindness of my friends, and from the courtesy of some who were strangers to me, the first edition of a first volume cannot fail to be imper- fect. I have to thank two of my own family for cor- recting the text. Mr. Sandars and Mr. Earle have kindly assisted me in some of those portions which relate to Roman law and Anglo-Saxon antiquities. To Mr. Shirley of Oxford, whose accurate and wide knowledge of our early history is known to all who study it, I am not only indebted for much informa- tion and many criticisms, but for his notes on the life and letters of Becket, which he liberally placed at my disposal. The constant help I have received from my old friend and colleague, Professor Brewer, is only one of many obligations that I owe him. CHARLES H. PEARSON. 10, Gonpen Savarz, Marcu 25ru, 1861. ” ABBREVIATIONS AND AUTHORITIES. A.§., Anglo-Saxon. M.B., Monumenta Britannica. D. M., Deutsche Mythologie. H. E., Historia Ecclesiastica. Dean Milman’s Histories of Christianity and Latin Christianity, are cited as Milman’s Christianity and Latin Christianity respectively. Gildas, Nennius, Bede (except the Opera Scientifica), the Codex Diplo- maticus, Malmesbury, Florence of Worcester, Newburgh, Hemingburgh, Gesta Stephani, Wendover, Trivet, and Richard of Devizes, are cited from the editions of the English Historical Society. Bede’s Opera Scientifica, Aldhelm, Lanfranc, Vitee Becket, Epistole Becket, Epistole Foliot, Bosham’s Vita Becket, John of Salisbury, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, are cited from the editions of Dr. Giles. Gregory of Tours, Alcuin, and Anselm, are cited from the Cursus Patro- logize of the Abbe Migne. For Gregory the Great, the Benedictine edition of 1705, in 4 volumes, has been consulted. Ordericus Vitalis, and Eginhard, are cited from the editions of the French Historical Society. The Chronicle of Jocelyn de Brakelonde, the Liber de Antiquis Legibus, Nicander Nucius, Mapes de Nugis Curialium, Letters on the Dissolution of Monasteries, Political Songs, and the French Chronicle of London, from the editions of the Camden Society. The Lives of Edward the Confessor, Liber Albus, Bacon’s Opera Minora, Oxenedes, Capgrave, the His- toria Monasterii de Abingdon, Bartholomew de Cotton, the Brut of Tywysogion, the Annales Cambrix, and Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, from the editions lately issued under the superintendence of the Master of the Rolls. Giraldus Cam- brensis de Instructione Principis, and the Chronicon de Bello, from the editions of the Anglia Sacra Society. Garnier’s Vie de Becket is quoted from the edition of Professor Hippeau; and the edition of Wright’s Celt, Roman and Saxon, published in 1852, has been used. The octavo edition of the Anglo-Saxon and Welsh Laws is the one referred to. _In the spelling of Anglo-Saxon names, Mr, Kemble or the Saxon Chronicle and Laws have been followed, except in cases (such as Alfred and Edgar) where a La- tinized form has become universal. CONTENTS. I.—THE RACES OF BRITAIN. THE TAURANIAN THEORY.—WELSH PRETENTIONS.—GAEL.—KYMRY.—GALLI.— BELGE.—TRACES OF EARLY GERMANIC SETTLEMENTS ON THE EAST COAST.— CIVILIZATION OF THE NATIVES.—DRUIDICAL RELIGION + . . 1 IIl.—THE ROMAN CONQUEST. CESAR’S INVASION.—BRITISH INDEPENDENCE AND CYMBELINE.—THE CLAUDIAN CONQUEST.—CARACTACUS.—THE REVOLT OF BOADICEA.—WARS AND PUBLIC POLICY OF AGRICOLA.—SEVERUS . . . . . . . 1l II].—THE ROMANS IN ENGLAND. ROMAN PROVINCES.—MUNICIPAL CHARACTER OF THE ROMAN OCCUPATION.— CONSTITUTION OF THE TOWNS.—ROMAN ROADS.—ROMAN ARTS AND INSTITUTIONS. — NATIONALITY OF THE ‘COUNTRY DISTRICTS. — GENERAL INFLUENCES OF THE OCCUPATION . , Z ‘ é ‘ i 20 IV.—DECLINE OF THE ROMAN DOMINION. CAUSES OF WEAKNESS IN THE EMPIRE.—REVOLT OF CARAUSIUS.—CONSTANTIUS AND CONSTANTINE.—THE ROMAN WALL.—REVOLTS OF MAXIMUS AND CONSTANTINE.—BRITAIN LEFT TO ITSELF . : i F 5 F 30 V.—THE EARLY BRITISH CHURCH. DOUBTFUL HISTORY OF THE EARLY BRITISH CHURCH.—REASONS FOR AND AGAINST ITS EXISTENCE.—CHRISTIANITY NOT ROMAN IN ITS ORIGIN.— BARBAROUS AND SEMI-PAGAN CHARACTER OF EARLY BRITISH CHRISTIANITY. —NEO-DRUIDISM 5 ‘ 3 : ens . ; . BN A x CONTENTS. VI.—THE SAXON CONQUEST. THE SAXON INVASION UNHISTORICAL.—BRITISH AND ANGLO-SAXON LEGENDS.—— THEIR MYTHICAL CHARACTER.—DISINTEGRATION OF THE ROMAN POWER IN BRITAIN.—THE CITIES AND THE NATIVE PRINCES.—SEPARATE CONQUESTS OF KENT, SUSSEX, THE WESTERN COUNTIES, AND NORTHUMBRIA.—REASONS OF THE ANGLO-SAXON SUCCESS.—BRITONS NOT EXTERMINATED.—PROOFS OF THEIR CONTINUANCE IN ENGLAND. % é ‘ ‘ , . 60 VII.—THE ANGLO-SAXON TYPE. DISTINCTION OF ANGLES, SAXONS, AND JUTES.—ANGLO-SAXON PHYSIQUE AND CHARACTER.—POSITION OF WOMEN.—ABSENCE OF THE FAMILY FEELING.— CIVILIZATION.— RANKS AND THEIR PRIVILEGES.—BRITISH POPULATION.— ODINISM OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS : é . ‘ ‘ 7 » 64 VIIIL—THE ROMAN MISSION. THE KINGDOM OF KENT.—GREGORY THE GREAT.—AUGUSTINE’S MISSION.— DIFFICULTY OF CHANGING OLD HABITS.—GREGORY’S TOLERANCE.—PFRUIT- LESS ATTEMPT AT UNION WITH THE BRITISH CHURCH.—RE-ACTIONS.— NORTHUMBRIA.—PAULINUS, EDWIN, AND COIFI.—THE GAELIC PARTY OVER- COME.—CONSTITUTION OF ENGLISH DIOCESES,—CONNECTION WITH ROME.— ARISTOCRATIC CHARACTER OF ENGLISH RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS . . 76 IX.—FEDERAL MONARCHIES. STRUGGLE OF ANGLES AND SAXONS TOR SUPREMACY.—KENT, NORTHUMBRIA, AND MERCIA.—GROWTH OF THE WEST-SAXON NATIONALITY.—OFFA’S CHA- RACTER AND CRIMES.—HIS POLICY PROVINCIAL RATHER THAN NATIONAL. —CHARLEMAGNE’S RELATIONS WITH ENGLAND.—FORTUNES OF OFFA’S FAMILY. : 3 i 3 3 : - i F . 88 X.—THE DANES. EGBERT’S SUZERAINTY.—2=THELWULF.—FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE DANES.— CONLICT OF PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY.—INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS UPON ODINISM.—LEADING FEATURES OF NORSE CHARACTER.—EUROPE SAVED FROM IMPERIALISM AND ROTTENNESS BY THE DANES.—SAGAS OF RAGNAR LODBROC, AND BEORN.—DANISH CONQUEST OF NORTHUMBRIA AND ANGLIA. . . . S f Zi 4 . ‘ : 98 CONTENTS. KX XJ.—ALFRED. ALFRED'S YOUTH.—WARS WITH THE DANES UNDER ETHELRED.—CHARACTER OF ALFRED'S GOVERNMENT.—THE DANES OCCUPY MERCIA, AND ENTER WESSEX FROM THE SOUTH.—ALFRED’S EXILE.—DEFEAT OF THE DANES AT EDINGTON, AND TREATY OF WEDMOR.—LATER INVASIONS AND REPULSES OF THE DANEs. —ALFRED'S PUBLIC WORKS.—ALFRED AS LAWGIVER.—OLD AND NEW INSTI- TUTIONS.—FORMATION OF A FLEET.—REVIVAL OF LEARNING.—THE KING'S PRIVATE LIFE.—RELIGIOUS AND AKISTOCRATIC TENDENCIES OF ALFRED'S MIND és ‘ . . : i : , 109 XII.—THE SAXON SOVEREIGNTY. ACCESSION AND REIGN OF EDWARD.—ATHELSTANE’S PARENTAGE.—SUBJUGA- TION OF NORTHUMBRIA.—RELATIONS OF ENGLAND WITH THE CONTINEN’. —ATHELSTANE’S LAWS.—EDMUND.-—EDRED,—REVIVAL OF THE MILITARY SPIRIT i 123 XITI.—DUNSTAN. EARLY LIFE OF DUNSTAN.—STATE OF THE CHURCH.—REASONS FOR CLERICAL CELIBACY.—QUARREL WITH EDWI.—EDWI’S CONDUCT AND DEPOSITION.— CUARACTER OF EDGAR AND HIS REIGN.—EDWARD THE MARTYR.—RE- ACTION AGAINST THE MONASTIC MOVEMENT.—DUNSTAN’S TRIUMPH,—MUR- DER OF EDWARD ‘ i . 2 132 XIV.—THE DANISH CONQUEST. EFFECTS OF DUNSTAN’S POLICY.—RENEWED DANISH INVASIONS.—WORTHLESS CHARACTER OF ETHELRED.—THE DANISH MASSACRE.—MARTYRDOM OF JELFEG.—SWEYN OVERRUNS THE COUNTRY.—EADRIC STREONA.—REIGN OF EDMUND IRONSIDES.—ACCESSION OF CANUTE.—POLITICAL REVIEW OF THE REIGN » . 146 XV.—THE ANGLO-DANISH EPOCH. CHARACTER OF CANUTE.—FAVOUR SHOWN TO THE CHURCH.—YFEUDALISM AND GAME LAWS.—HAROLD HAREFOOT.—MURDER OF ALFRED, AND QUESTION OF GODWIN’S COMPLICITY.—HARDICANUTE’S RKEIGN.—ACCESSION OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.—GODWIN’s ASCENDANCY THREATENED BY NORMAN INFLU- ENCES.—HANISHMENT AND RETURN TO POWER OF GODWIN,—RIVALRY OF HAROLD AND ‘LOSTIG.—-EDWARD’s DEAYH AND CHARACTER : - 106 X11 CONTENTS. XVI.—ANGLO-SAXON POLICE. BRITAIN DIVIDED ANEW.—HUNDREDS AND TITHINGS.—THE EALDORMAN AND COUNTY COURTS.—MUTUAL POLICE, OR FRANK-PLEDGE SYSTEM.—FEUDAL JURISDICTIONS.—A CASE OF CRIMINAL LAW.—NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE RE- QUIRED IN DOUBTFUL CASES.—TRIAL OF THURKILL AND HIS WIFE.—BINARY JURISDICTION OF STATE AND CHURCH: THE STATE ASSESSING DAMAGE, THE CHURCH PUNISHING SIN . . . i 2 ‘ 4 ‘ . 171 XVII—ANGLO-SAXON CIVIL LAW. ROMANO-BRITISH CHARACTER OF THE CITIES.—MUNICIPAL ORGANIZATION AND LAWS DERIVED FROM THE ROMANS.—TENURES OF LAND AND RIGHTS OF BEQUEST.—ACTIONS FOR LAND.—SALES OF CHATTELS REGULATED AS PUBLIC CONTRACTS.—PROPERTY INSURED BY THE STATE.—PRINCIPLE OF MUTUAL INSURANCE IN THE PRIVATE GUILDS.—ANGLO-SAKON AND WELSH CONTRASTS ; . 6 5 ; ; i f é . 183 XVIII.—THE ANGNO-SAXON COMMONWEALTH. GROWTH, RIGHTS, AND REVENUES OF ROYALTY.—FUNCTIONS OF THE WITAN.— GROWTH OF FEUDALISM.—THE ROMAN AND ANGLO-SAXON FAMILY.—GROWTH OF YVILLENAGE.—LOCAL TENURES.—NATURE OF ANGLO-SAXON LIBERTY.— SOCIETY, FOOD, AMUSEMENTS, AND DRESS IN THE ANGLO-SAXON TIMES . 194 XIX.—ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. NATURE AND PREVALENCE OF EARLY POETRY.—C/EDMON’S LIFE AND POEMS.— CEDMON AND MILTON.—THE DESCENT INTO HELL.—BEDE’S LIFE AND WORKS. —BEDE’S THEORY OF THE KOSMO8.—ALCUIN’S LIFE AND SCIENTIFIC TEACHING. —SPURIOUS WORKS ASCRIBED TO GREAT WRITERS.—DECLINE OF LEARNING IN THE NINTH AND TENTH CENTURIES.—LIBRARIES AND LETTERS . 208 XX.—THE ANGLO-SAXON CHURCH. RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE.—POSITION OF THE CLERGY.—CHURCH DISCIPLINE AND INQUISITIONAL POWERS.—IDEALIZATIONS OF PEACE AND WAR.—INFLUENCE OF THE CHURCH ON PURITY OF LIFE.—CHRISTIAN CHARITY.—KOSMICAL THEORIES OF A FUTURE LIFE.— MYTHOLOGICAL PHASE OF INTELLECT.—MIRACLES.—RESULTS OF A BELIEF IN THE SUPER- NATURAL.— COMPULSORY PROFESSION OF CHRISTIANITY . . - 221 CONTENTS. Xi XXI—THE LAST SAXON KING. HAROLD'S OATH OF FEALTY TO WILLIAM.—REFUSAL TO PERFORM THE COMPACT. —CONTINENTAL FEELING IN FAVOUR OF WILLIAM’S CLAIM.—TOSTIQ’S INVA- SION AND DEFEAT.—NORMAN INVASION OF ENGLAND.—BATTILE OF HASTINGS. —CHARACTER OF HAROLD . 3 : : - i é ‘ - 236 XXII—THE NORMAN CONQUEST. SUBMISSION OF KENT AND LONDON.—THE CORONATION.—WILLIAM’S FIRST MEASURES, EXETER REVOLTS AND OBTAINS TERMS.—WAR IN THE MID- LAND AND NORTHERN COUNTIES.—STORM OF YORK AND DEVASTATION OF NORTHUMBRIA.—CHANGED POSITION OF THE GOVERNMENT.—RELATIONS OF NORMANS AND ENGLISH.—HEREWARD AND THE CAMP OF ELY.— FEUDAL REVOLT UNDER RAOUL DE GAEL,—EXECUTION OF WALTHEOF.— EMEUTE AT DURHAM : = s « z ‘ , . 248 XXIII.—RESULTS OF THE CONQUEST. COMPILATION OF DOMESDAY BOOK.—ITS USE.—OMISSIONS.—NUMBERS AND CON- DITION OF THE POPULATION.—SOCIAL AND MATERIAL ADVANCE UNDER WILLIAM’S GOVERNMENT.— SMALL AMOUNT OF THE FOREIGN ELEMENT INTRODUCED.—LEGAL CHARACTER OF THE CHANGES MADE.—THE CHURCH HIERARCHY AND RITUAL NORMANIZED.—THURSTAN.—GUITMUND,—LIMITA TION OF THE POWERS OF THE CHURCH.—NORMAN INFLUENCES ON POLICE AND LAW.—CONTRASTS OF NORMAN AND SAXON CHARACTER : - 265 XXIV.—LAST YEARS OF THE CONQUEROR. CHARACTERISTICS OF A FEUDAL ARISTOCRACY.—PRINCE ROBERT'S REBELLION. —IMPRISONMENT OF EUDES OF BAYEUX.—WILLIAM’S DEATH AND TESTA- MENT.—SCENE AT THE BURIAL.—PERSON AND CHARACTER OF THE CON- QUEROR 5 3 ‘ ‘ s is : , ‘ - . 284 XXV.—WILLIAM RUFUS. ACCESSION OF WILLIAM II.—REVOLT AND DEFEAT OF THE NOBLES,—MINISTRY OF RANULF FLAMBAKD.—CHARACTER OF WILLIAM AND HIS GOVERNMENT.— PETTY WARS.—THE FIRST CRUSADE.—OPPRESSION OF THE PEOPLE.—CIR- CUMSTANCES OF WILLIAM’S DEATH. : $ ‘. ‘ . 293 XXVI—HENRY BEAUCLERK. HENRY’S ACCESSION AND MARRIAGE,—HIS CHARACTER AND TRAINING.—COM- PROMISES WITH ROBERT.—CONQUEST OF NORMANDY.—PETTY WARS WITH FRANCE AND ANJOU.—FLEMISH COLONY IN WALES.—NATIONAL DISTRESS. —POLICE AND JUSTICE.—SHIPWRECK OF PRINCE WILLIAM.—SUCCESSION TO THE CROWN.—HENRY’S DEATH . - : ‘ : : ; . 804 X1V CONTENTS. XXVII.—THE QUESTION OF INVESTITURES. ANSELM’S EARLY LIFE AND CHARACTER.—HIS ELECTION TO THE PRIMACY.— DISPUTES WITH WILLIAM RUFUS.—THE COUNCIL OF ROCKINGHAM.—ANSELM’S FIRST EXILE,—THE PRIMATE AND HENRY I.—NEW QUESTION OF INVESTI- TURES.—ANSELM’S SECOND EXILE.—FINAL ADJUSTMENT OF THE QUARREL.— NATURE OF ANSELM’S SUCCESS . . : : . 4 é . 320 XXVIII.—STEPHEN. STEPHEN’S USURPATION.—REASONS OF ITS SUCCESS.—CHURCH AND STATE.— WARS WITH SCOTLAND.—BATILE OF THE STANDARD.—THE BISHOPS’ WAR.—QUAR- REL WITH THE CHURCH.—THE EMPRESS IN ENGLAND.—CIVIL WAR.—BATTILE OF LINCOLN, AND CAPTURE OF STEPHEN.—MATILDA’S GOVERNMENT.—SIEGE OF WINCHESTER, AND CAPTURE OF ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER.—DESOLATION OF THE COUNTRY.—PEACE 332 XXIX.—THE CONTEST WITH BECKET. FIRST ACTS OF HENRY’S GOVERNMENT.—BECKET’S BIRTH AND RISE,—HIS CHAN- CELLORSHIP.—NATURAL ANTAGONISM OF CHURCH AND STATE.—ASSERTION OF ARCHIEPISCOPAL RIGHTS.—ABUSES OF A DIVIDED JURISDICTION.—COUNCILS OF WESTMINSTER AND CLARENDON.—ARTICLES OF CLARENDON,—BECKET’S CONSENT AND RECANTATION.—COUNCIL OF NOTTINGHAM.—FLIGHT TO FRANCE. — HENRY’S VIOLENT MEASURES. — CONFERENCES. — CORONATION OF THE YOUNG KING.—BECKET’S RETURN TO ENGLAND, AND VIOLENT CONDUCT.— HIS MURDER.—HENRY’S PENANCE.—TRIUMPH OF HENRY’S POLICY.—CHA- RACTER OF BECKET . é ‘ ; i ; 5 i é . 3847 XXX.—THE CONQUEST OF IRELAND. EARLY IRISH CIVILIZATION AND POLITY.—ENGLISH SCHEMES OF CONQUEST.— DERMOT MAC-MOROGH.—FIRST INVASION UNDER FITZ-STEPHEN.—SECOND IN- VASION UNDER STRONGBOW.—HENRY RECALS HIS SUBJECTS.—STRONGBOW’S DIFFICULTIES.—SIEGE OF DUBLIN—-HENRY’S VISIT TO IRELAND,—CHURCH RE- FORMS AND TERRITORIAL CHANGES.—TREATY WITH RODERIC 0’CONNOR 371 XXXI.—PRIVATE LIFE, AND FAMILY WARS AND DEATH, OF HENRY II. CHARACTER OF HENRY II.—FIRST FAMILY WAR.—SUCCESS OF THE OLD KING.— SECOND WAR.—SIEGE OF LIMOGES, AND DEATH OF PRINCE HENRY.—WAR WITH RICHARD AND PHILIP AUGUSTUS.—DEATH AND PUBLIC CHARACTER OF HENRY W. . : : : : ; ‘ a 2 : . 384 CONTENTS. XV XXXIL—RICHARD CQBUR DE LION. RICHARD’S ACCESSION.—MASSACRES OF THE JEWS.—PREPARATIONS FOR THE CRU- SADE.—SICILY.—CYPRUS.—PALESTINE.—REGENCY OF LONGCHAMP.—QUAR- REL WITH THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK.— LONGCHAMP BESIEGED IN THE TOWER, AND EXPELLED FROM POWER.—RICHARD’S RETURN, AND TREACH- EROUS CAPTURE IN GERMANY.—CONDUCT OF EARL JOHN.—RICHARD’S HOM- AGE TO THE EMPEROR AND RANSOM.—LAST YEARS OF THE REIGN.—RICHARD’S DEATH.—WILLIAM FITZ-OSBERT.—CHARACTER OF RICHARD I. . . 895 XXXUI—THE ANGLO-NORMAN LAW-COURTS. COMMON, CIVIL, AND CANON LAW.—-RIGID POLICE OF THB COUNTRY.—NATURE OF THE CROWN’S INTERFERENCE IN SUITS.—THE CURIA.—JUSTICES IN EYRE ON CIRCUIT.—THE DUEL AND THE GRAND ASSIZE.—AN ACTION FOR LAND,—AN ACTION TURNING ON THE PRINCIPLES OF THE CANON LAW.—LEGAL EXPENSES. DISADVANTAGES OF THE DOUBLE SYSTEM. : ‘ : : . 4ll XXXIV.—FEUDALISM AND CHIVALRY. ORIGIN OF FEUDALISM.—HOMAGE AND FEALTY.—DIFFERENT FEUDAL TENURES. —FEUDAL SERVICES AND RECIPROCAL OBLIGATIONS.—VILLENAGE AND ITS tEMEDIES.—SOCIAL INFLUENCES OF FEUDALISM.—REPRESENTATIVE THEORY. —ORIGIN OF CHIVALRY.—THE KNIGHT'S INITIATION.—INFLUENCE OF CHI- VALRY ON WAR, ON THE RELATIONS OF MEN AND WOMEN, ON S0CIETY.— CAUSE OF ITS DECLINE . : : 3 ‘ ‘i 3 z . £23 XXKV.—MEDLEAVAL LITERATURE. TENDENCIES OF ANGLO-NORMAN LITERATURE.—CONSTRUCTIVE CHARACTER OF PHILOSOPHY.—ANSELM’S METAPHYSICS.—INFLUENCES OF PHILOSOPHY ON RELIGION.—CHARACTERISTICS OF MEDIZVAL HISTORY.—CYCLE OF POLITICAL ROMANCES.—GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH.—DISCOVERY OF ARTHUR'S RE- MAINS.—CHIVALROUS ROMANCES ABOUT ARTHUR.—EXTENT AND DIFFUSION OF MEDIEVAL LITERATURE i i - 4 s . “ . 487 XXXVI—ANGLO-NORMAN SOCIETY. DUALISM OF CHURCH AND STATE.—BELIEF IN SYSTEMS.—SECULAR CHARACTER OF THE CHURCH.—ECCLESIASTICAL INFLUENCES ON SECULAR LIFE.—ECONOMICAL VALUE OF MONASTERIES.—LIFE IN LONDON AND IN THE COUNLRY.—HIGHER MATERIAL WELL-BEING AND DIMINISHED ARTISTIC PERCEPTIONS OF MODERN TIMES.—CONTRASTS OF SUPERSTITION AND INTOLERANCE BETWEEN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES.—QUESTION OF INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY . . . $64 ERRATA. Page 64, note 2, line 11, for “ Viatka” read “ Wiarda.” 89, line 18, after “‘ Maxima’’ insert ‘‘ Czesariensis.” 93, line 11, for ‘ Cadwalla” read “‘ Ceadvalla.”” 101, note 2, line 1, instead of “Bishop Frederick the First, mis- sionary,” &c., read ‘‘ Bishop Frederick, the first missionary,” &c. 119, note 1, line 8, instead of “vol. iii.” read “vol. i.” 141, line 30, instead of “ the throne” read “ Rome.” 145, note 1, omit lines 11, 12, and 13. 208, instead of “‘ Dane-gild” read “ Dane-gelt.”’ 238, note 1, line 3, before ‘‘nephew” insert “ grand.” 245, note 1, line 7, for ‘“ Ron” read ‘‘ Rou.” 250, line 20, instead of ‘ Edward ”’ read ‘‘ Eldred.” 273, line 11, instead of ‘‘ Montaigne’’ read ‘ Mortain.” 298, note 1, line 4, omit “ dieci.”’ 342, line 29, insert a comma after “ Robert.” THE EARLY AND MIDDLE AGES OF ENGLAND. L. THE RACES OF BRITAIN. THE TURANIAN THEORY.—WELSH PRETENSIONS. — GAEL.—KYMRY.—GALLI.— BELGE.—TRACES OF EARLY GERMANIC SETTLEMENTS ON THE EAST COAST.— CIVILIZATION OF THE NATIVES.—DRUIDICAL RELIGION. Who were the first inhabitants of Britain, is among the un- settled questions of history. It is possible that a primeval people, represented at present by the Basques and the Fins, wandered in pastoral tribes over all Europe, while Kelt and German were still east of the Volga. Popular legend in every country of Europe commemorates a race of dwarfs, a simple and kindly people, armed with stone-tipped arrows, acquainted with hidden treasures, and mostly keeping aloof from the haunts of common men. These were perhaps the last of the sons of the soil, whom invasion had dispossessed of their homes, and who were not yet merged with their con- querors.!. But the only proof of this theory lies in the low intellectual capacity of some very ancient skulls,* and in the ! Campbell’s Popular Tales of the Highlands, vol. i., pp. c.-cx. ? Wilson’s Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, pp. 163-187. Dasent’s Tales from 2 THE KYMRY AND THE GAEL. Mongolic features of a few village tribes in remote districts. More positive evidence is desirable for England, where legion- aries from the Lower Danube have been quartered, or for France, over which the horsemen of Attilaswept. We seem to be treading on firmer ground if we accept the people of Wales as representatives of the men with whom Cesar fought in Britain. Native history tells us! that the ancestors of the Kymry sailed from the Land of Summer (Deffrobani), where Constantinople is, across the Sea of Clouds (the German Ocean) to the Isle of Honey (Britain), and found it only occupied by the bear, the wolf, and the humped ox (urus). But this legend, in which some have traced the line of journey in a flight before Scythian enemies, is in fact a fanciful pedigree drawn up in a late century to connect the vain-glorious clans of west England with the distant and splendid Byzantine Empire. We know now that the Kymric or Welsh tribes were never more than one among several peoples in Britain, and as they did not penetrate into the mountains of the Northern Principality til the fifth century,* it is probable that the Erse or Gaelic tribes, whom they dispossessed, have a better claim to be considered sons of the soil. Other facts point to the same conclusion. The ancient Cornish tongue which pre- vailed in the countries of the south-west, is intermediate between the Welsh and Erse,° as if conquest or immigration had joined the two kindred races; and the circumstance that the Norse, p. lxxvi. Mr. Davis rejects this theory.—Crania Britannica, Decade i. p. 20. In the Notitia Imperii we find, under the Dux Britanniarum, a Prefectus Equitum Crispanorum, whom Pancirollus brings from Crispiana in Pannonia, and a Prefectus Ale Saviniane (from the Saave) Hunno.—Pancir. Comment. vol. ii., pp. 142-144. The Ala Saviniana was stationed along the vallum. Dr. Knox has written a paper, which I cannot now recover, on the traces of the Huns in Kent. The Vandals, whom Probus settled in England, would no doubt be half Mongolic. 1 Triads, quoted by Lappenberg.—Eng. Gesch., Band. i., p. 7. 2 Vestiges of the Gael in Gwynedd, by the Rey. B. Jones. 3 Garnett, Philological Transactions, Vol. i., No. 9. In the case of the Armorican language, which stands in a somewhat similar relation to Welsh,we have evidence, which may be called historical, of Kymric or Cornish exiles settling among a kindred but different pcople, GAULISH TRIBES IN BRITAIN. . 3 the kings in historical times were connected with the ruling families of Wales, seems to designate the Kymry as the in- truders. Now we only know certainly of two districts in which the Welsh dialect was spoken anciently, South Wales and the province west of Leeds, between the Mersey and the Tyne, the old Kymry-land or Cumberland. This position on the western shores lends some probability to the conjecture of Tacitus! that they came originally from Spain, though the “curled hair” and “swart features,” to which he appealed, are insufficient evidence, and their very existence is now disputed by observers. The question is rendered doubly difficult by the fact, that although the Kymric tribes appear in England distinct from the Gael in the west, and from the Gaulish or Loegrian tribes in the east, there is some reason, from local names and lan- guage,® to connect the Gaulish tribes with the Kymric rather than with the Erse variety of the Kelts. Probably the two great families were spread intermixedly over France and Spain, and differed in civilization as they had moved on to- wards the Atlantic, or lay near the Mediterranean, the great highway of the world’s masters. The Kymry, then, were neither the only nor the first people who had invaded England before the days of Cesar. The eastern and southern shores of the island lay still more open to attack than the west, and the continent swarmed with tribes whom famine, or pressure from without, or mere ambition, perpetually impelled upon their neighbours. Adventurers “from Gaul probably led the way into England, and the names Brigantes and Parisi in Durham and East Yorkshire, Cenomanni in East Anglia, and Atrebatii in Berkshire or North Hampshire, belong equally to the continental districts of Bregenz, Paris, Maine, and Arras. The influences of a common tongue and faith outlasted the emigration, and Britain was regarded as a holy island in Gaul at a time when 1 Taciti Agricola, cap. xi. 2 Prichard’s Physical History of Man, vol. ii’., section 10, 4 i THE BELG AND DIVITIACUS. its southern coasts had been wrested by the Belge (probably a Walloon people) from their Gaulish colonists. This inroad of a kindred yet different tribe was successful on the south, as the Kymry had already been on the west; the actual settlers were subdued or driven out of Hampshire, Sussex, and Kent, and the great fortified fosse (Grim’s Dyke) which encloses Salis- bury and Silchester, was probably at once the rampart and the march of the new nationality.! Divitiacus, chief of the Suessones (Soissons) was reported to have been king of Britain a few years before Caesar crossed the Channel.2 The sovereignty of the entire island can scarcely have been enjoyed bya barbarous prince of Gaul. Itseems natural, therefore, to surmise that his position was like that of William the Conqueror in the first year of the Conquest, and that he only held a portion of England, south of the Thames and east of Salisbury, as an appendage to his con- tinental dominions. Death or the Roman sword hindered Divitiacus from pursuing and consolidating his conquests, if he ever meditated the passage of the Thames. It is a question still undecided,? whether there were not Frisian or Saxon tribes on the eastern coasts of Britain before the landing of Caesar. This theory would place the Saxon invasion some five hundred years before its customary date. It rests chiefly on the supposed Germanic names of two tribes, the Coritavi* and the Catieuchlani, on the title Comes Litoris Saxonici,> given to the Roman officer who governed the littoral from the Wash to the Adur, and on the fact 1 On the Belgic Ditches, Dr. Guest. Archseol. Journ., No. xxx., pp. 143-157. 2 Cesar, De Bell. Gall., lib. ii., c. 4. 3 Kemble’s Saxons in England, vol. i. chap.i. Merivale’s Romans under the Empire, vol. vi., p. 29. 4 In the Mabinogi of Lludd and Lievelys the Coranians, who are pro- bably the Coritavi, are mentioned as a foreign race in Britain, and as the enemies of Lludd, whose legendary pedigree makes him brother of Cassibellaun. Guest’s Mabinogion, vol. iii. The seventh Triad brings them from Germany. The position of the district from which they spread, Lincolnshire, would favour the theory of a foreign origin. °In the Notitia Imperii, the date of which is uncertain, but which pro- bably belongs to the 4th century. THE SAXONS IN BRITAIN. 5 that the Saxons in the fifth century seem to have found a kindred people already established in East Anglia, since no definite conquest of that district is on record. But the mere names of tribes are at best weak proof, and in the instances quoted we do not know whether they were recog- nized in the language of the people who bore them, or were sobriquets affixed by their neighbours. The second and third arguments are more reliable, but they must not be strained. They only tend to establish the presence of Teutonic tribes under the Roman dominion. Now, we know that Marcus Aurelius,! at the close of the Marcomannic war, transplanted a number of Germans into Britain, while Probus a little later brought in Burgundians, and colonies thus planted are generally on a large scale. Apart from imperial policy, it is possible, and perhaps probable, that Frisian immigrants settled in England under the rule of Roman prefects, just as a tribe of the Sioux Indians might cross into Canada, and expel the Delawares from their hunting grounds, without any hindrance from us. Such displacements of peoples occurred very often during the decadence of the empire; and when a native rebellion, such as that of the Iceni, had been put down, immigration into the desolated districts would probably be encouraged. Appian, Strabo, and Tacitus,? believed the Britons, without exception, to be Keltic. It is true that the Romans were no philologists, but they could hardly be mistaken in supposing that their interpreters employed only one language in conversing with Gauls and Britons. It is more likely that dialects would be mistaken for independent languages ; the Welsh, in the ninth century, already spoke of the Britons? as “semi-articulate.” With the one exception of the Coritavi, who, however, occupied six counties, stretching inland over Derbyshire, we may probably place the first great immigration of the Saxons between the death of Agricola, a.p. 1 Dio Cassius, 71, 72, quoted by Kemble.—Saxons in England, vol. i., p.12. Appian, De Bell. Civ., ¢. 2. 8. 17. 2 Strabo, p. 271. Tacitus, Agricola, c. 11. Appian, De Bell. Civ., c. 11, 8. 17. 3 Nennius, Hist. Brit., c. 27. My argument will not be much affected if the date of Nennius be more recent. 6 PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BRITONS. 84, and the insurrection of Carausius, a.p. 287. The success of the Belgo-German usurper, and his dependence on foreign auxiliaries, are best explained by the supposition that a part of his subjects were his countrymen by descent. It appears to simplify history when we reduce the first inhabitants of our country to four main divisions—the Gaelic, Kymric, Gaulish, and Belgic, of one great Keltic family. The simplicity is fallacious. It is probable that these tribes differed from one another in habits, polity, and civilization ; 1t is certain that we have no right to confound them with the Gauls of the continent, or to patch up a mosaic of notices from Greek and Roman authors in different centuries. The England of Queen Elizabeth could hardly be reproduced from a know- ledge of the United States under President Buchanan. What we really know of our British ancestors is derived from the vestiges of their homes, from a few skulls and other bones, and from the evidence of fossil words, quite as much as from any historical record. The British physique, if we may judge from the better specimens of the human remains found in barrows, was that of a weak and impulsive, but not an unintelligent race. The average capacity of the skull is smaller than that of Saxon and Roman crania, but its form is less irregular; and, indeed, is often exquisitely symmetrical. The predominance of the middle or emotional compartment, and a certain deficiency in the back part, indicating a weak will, are its chief features: the frontal developement is commonly good, though not equal to the Greek type. Modern theory would view with suspicion the prehensile thumb, equalling in length the forefinger of the hand, asif something of a lower nature had not yet been worked out in the growth of the race. But our scanty facts must not be pressed ; even in the island itself the extremes of civiliza- tion were far apart. Czesar heard of tribesin the interior? who were still unacquainted with tillage, and whose wives were com- mon in the family; but the Belgic peoples among whom he penetrated, though they tattooed their bodies with woad, 1 Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. i.,p.12. ? Cesar, De Bell. Gall., lib, v.,0. 14. BRIVISH CIVILIZATION. 7 were almost as civilized as the Gauls of the continent. The tribes highest in the scale seem to have made use of coined money,! to have been able to work tin and lead mines,? to make bronze, to cement stones by glazing them with fire, to manufacture wicker-work, to make war-chariots, to train horses and dogs, to ornament their arms, and to correct the deficiencies of a clay soil by dressing it with lime. These are rather higher arts than belong to mere savages. But their artistic percep- tions were weak; they had no architecture or sculpture; they traded with Gaul for ivory bracelets and necklaces, for amber and vessels of glass; and trinkets of this kind made up their entire commerce. Their homes were circles of huts hollowed out of the hills or heath, with wattled sides and thatched roofs, secured against a sudden attack by a palisade and ditch; only among the more advanced tribes the houses had low stone walls, conical roofs, and a single arched entrance, at once doorway and window. ‘The teeth found in skulls are commonly sound in texture, but are often worn away, as if with exercise upon parched peas or grain, or with gnawing bones.* As they eat coarsely, they drank largely of the beer and mead which took the place of wine in the north.6 Huntsmen and . fishermen they would be by necessity ; their skill in training dogs seems to show that they took kindly to the sports of the field; and the implements of a game like nine- pins have been found in the north, deep down, almost fossil- ized in a bog,® as the players no doubt left them when ' Hawkins (English Silver Coins, pp. 8, 9,) thinks the money was coined in Britain. Akerman thinks it was brought over from Gaul, Archzeologia, vol. 33. ? A plate of lead has been found in Yorkshire with the name of the Em- peror Claudius, and the date a.p.49. As this was only five years after his in- vasion, it is inferred that the mines had been opened by the Britons —Univer- sal Review, March, 1860. Again, the primitive Welsh word gof, a smith, is some proof of the capacity to work metals.—Sat. Review, Dec. 26, 1857. 3 Pliny, lib. xvii, s. 4. 4 Wilson’s Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, pp. 187-188. Crania Britannica, Decade ii., p. 74. 5 Dioscorides, lib. ii., c. 110. 6 Wilson’s Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, pp. 563-564. 8 DRUIDICAL RELIGION. the final summons hurried them away to that battle-field which was to be their last. To complete the imperfect details of this picture of early life, we may reproduce in fancy the British chief, with his “glib” of matted chestnut hair and his moustache, with the broad chest, and long arms, and high cheek-bones of his race, and with the plaid thrown loosely about him, controlling his clan with traditional authority, which only the Druid and Bard could mitigate. Not, indeed, that all dis- tinctions of rank must be supposed wanting. Grentle, free, and serf, were no doubt to be found in the British clans, as in those of Gaul at that very time, and in the Welsh afterwards. But for all practical purposes the chief was probably supreme, so long as he did not outrage justice or violate public opinion. Cesar tells us distinctly that the religious faith of Britain and Gaul was one, that it had originated in Britain, and that students from Gaul still went there, as to the holy island, for instruction. It is more probable that the colonists retamed their traditions with less of change than the mother country, which Greek traders and Roman legions traversed. From what we know of it, their religion indicates a low stage of intellectual developement. They had reached the first article of a creed, the belief in a human personality that should outlast the body; but they held it in its lowest form, the doc- trine of the transmigration of souls.1 While the Norseman supposed the gods to be in perpetual strife with the powers of nature, the Keltic tribes seem to have inclined to the sickly fatalism of the East, and worshipped the solar system.? Traces of Fetichism are still perceptible in the Gaelic legends: the horse, dog, and pig, the most common animals, were also Sacred ; the iron swords with which they slew their enemies, the very combs used for the hair, were at once so precious. 1 Mr. Nash, in his Taliesin, p. 134, disputes the belief in the Metempsy- chosis. But the evidence of Caesar and Diodorus Siculus is express. I do not think it necessarily implies a purification through different animal forms; it seems rather to be the idea in Plato’s Phado of a soul that clothes itself in different bodies, and survives their decay. ? Cesar, De Bell. Gall., lib. vi., c. 14. BRITISH MYTHOLOGY. 9 as to be buried with them, and so wonderful that mystic powers were ascribed to them; the mistletoe was reverently collected with a golden sickle; the voices of birds and horses were ominous of coming events.' They had a personal mythology ; but its names for the most part are insignificant and doubtful, often apparently borrowed from Teutonic tribes. Belin seems to correspond to the Pol or Baldr of the Norse- men, and to typify the reproductive powers of nature: per- petual self-generated fire was his symbol in the religious liturgy, and it lasted down to a late period in the sacred fire of St. Bridget’s? Chapel at Kildare, and still survives in the Beltane fires of St. John’s Eve. Caturix, the British Mars, has a name suspiciously like the German Hadurich: while Taranis the Thunderer, by his name and attributes, reminds us of Thor. Andraste is mentioned as the Goddess of Victory ; and Arthur seems to have been an ancient name of one among several deities, who presided over war.* Teutates, the father of the gods, Hasus, and Ceridwen, were also of the celestial hierarchy; while Epona, the goddess of horses, attests the national predilections, and enjoyed the solitary distinction of becoming naturalised at Rome, in the language of grooms and young patricians.* But the god most characteristic of the race was Oghum,® at once Hercules and Mercury. He was painted in the second century of our era, by men acquainted with Roman art, as an old man clad in a lion’s skin, with a club in the right hand, and a bent bow in the left. The ears of a crowd of worshippers were bound by chains of gold and 1Campbell’s Tales of the Highlands, vol. i., pp. lxxii-lxxx. Pliny’s Hist. Nat., lib. xvi., 8. 95. ? Giraldi Cambrensis, Topographia Hibernic, c. 35. 3 Sat. Rev., Dec. 26, 1857. 4 Divinité Guerriére, says M. de la Villemarqué.—Barzas Briez. i. p. 83. I believe, however, the Arthur’s Seats, &c., found all over Britain, were so named in the middle ages. Thus the triumphal arch built by Carausius on the bank of the river Carun, as late as the third century, came to be known as Ar- thur’s Oven.—Nennius, c. 24, 5 Juvenal, Satire viii., 1. 155-7. ® Lucian, Ed. Dind. p. 598-9, quoted by Zeuss, Grammatica Celtica, vol. i, p. 2. Deum maxime Mercurium colunt.—Cwsar, De Bell. Gall, lib. vi., ¢, 17. ’ 10 THE DIVINITY OF THOUGHT. amber to his tongue. For the Kelts, as they told Lucian, believed that reason and persuasion were the real forces by which the world was governed, and that “winged words” were keener and truer than even the shafts of war. The legend happily completes our knowledge of the race, a people neither strong nor self-reliant, but with quick intellectual instincts and a timid faith in law. They shrunk before the unseen Powers, and propitiated them with the blood of men.! 1 Cesar, De Bell. Gall., lib. vi. c. 16. Il. THE ROMAN CONQUEST. CHSAR’S INVASION.—BRITISH INDEPENDENCE AND CYMBELINE.—THE CLAUDIAN CONQUEST.—CARACTACUS.—THE REVOLT OF BOADICEA.—WARS AND PUBLIC POLICY OF AGRICOLA.—SEVERUS. Csar’s sudden invasion of Britain, a.c. 55, must be ascribed to purely personal motives. Whatever legends were rife in Italy, of Phcenician and Carthaginian trade in years gone by with the tin-producing island, the Roman general at least can have had no illusions. In fact, the commerce of the island was already in the hands of one who commanded the ports of Gaul. Nor was the Republic constrained to enlarge its boundaries for its own safety. The harvest of conquest and oppression was enjoyed peaceably; no man foresaw the retribution which was one day to visit the Romans by the inroad of barbarous tribes and the insurrection of outraged nationalities. But Cesar wished to add the romance of a brilliant adventure to the fame of great campaigns. Viewed thus, his expedition is only important as affording us the first certain knowledge of Britain, and because it designated the island as the prey of future con- quests. The first expedition only proved that in Britain as in Gaul the undisciplined valour of barbarians was incapable of resisting the Roman legions. The second does not seem to have carried the conqueror farther than to the mouth of the Med- way.! Even that success had been almost bought with the 1 Universal Review, March, 1860. 12 CAIUS CALIGULA. ruin of the army. Cassibellaun, the chief of the Britanno- Belgic confederacy, had the instincts of genius, and attempted to burn the Roman fleet, that the invaders might be shut off from a retreat. He failed, and consented to purchase peace by submission, and a nominal tribute. A few hostages, a girdle of British pearls for Venus, anda splendid triumph, were the only fruits which Caesar reaped from his victory. During nearly a hundred years, no Roman soldier set foot on the English shore. The fear of a fierce people and the tradition of a poor country proved stronger than the lust of territorial conquest. Three several times did Augustus resolve to enforce the promised and intermitted tribute; but, delayed by revolts in the empire, or appeased by an embassy from Britain, he never executed his intention. The mad expedition of Caius Caligula to the shore of Boulogne, had the joint object of restoring an exiled prince to his country, and of asserting foreign dominion. Probably the Britons offered sub- mission as they had before done to Augustus ;! they may even have paid tribute ; but the whole transaction has been disguised by the boastful exaggerations of the Emperor, and the hatred of his historians. Itis difficult to believe that the rough veterans of the German wars consented to pick up shells on the coast ; and the experience of the Britons might well have taught them to avert attack by a submission which left them free. During all this interval the island seems to have flourished. The partial supremacy of a Belgic prince had been shaken off; and Cuno- belin, king of the Trinobantes in Essex and Hertfordshire, had established a federal jurisdiction, which was probably recognized by all the island south of the Humber.? Camulodunum, near Colchester in Essex, was his capital, but London seems to have been the real centre of trade. From it highways radiated across the island, especially along the Anglian and south-eastern 1 Merivale’s Romans under the Empire, vol. v. chap. 48, ? His coins have been found as far north as Norwich and Chester. Aker- man on the condition of Britain from Cesar to Claudius.—Archeologia, vol. 33. More than forty varieties of this king’s coins still exist, and attest his import- ance.—Mon. Brit., pp. cliii., cliv. THE KINGSHIP OF CYMBELINE. 13 coasts, where the commerce with the north and with Gaul was already important. A small custom’s duty was levied at the Roman ports, and apparently paid without difficulty. The rude coinage, copied from Macedonian money, was replaced by more elaborate imitations of the Roman mint.! To strengthen the feeling of common nationality, religious fugitives from the province of Gaul came over to the sacred island, where no pretor could forbid their bloody sacrifices, and no foreign soldier invade their sacred groves. This tranquillity was not destined to endure. Neglecting the precedents of the first two Emperors, who had seen the danger of extending their boundaries, Claudius sent an army into Britain. So high was the reputation of British valour, that four legions under an able commander, Aulus Plautius, were con- sidered necessary for the enterprise, and the mere announcement of the service required, at first caused a mutiny in the camp. Nevertheless, the Roman army was unopposed on the southern strand, and advanced, after two slight victories, to a river, pro- bably the Medway.? Plautius sent his horse across the stream and followed up his victory to the Thames. There he halted, and sent to Claudius for support. The Emperor, probably not unpre- pared for the call, responded to the summons in person. Camu- lodunum was invested by the imperial army, and the Trinobantes, routed before their entrenchments, were panic-stricken and sur- rendered. Claudius retired to enjoy a triumph and the sur- name of Britannicus. But the sovereignty of Cunobelin had been too firmly established to be destroyed by a defeat, even at the gates of his capital. His son, Caractacus, to whose share the western part of the kingdom had perhaps been assigned at his father’s death, took up the struggle in which his brother, the partner of his throne, had fallen. Vespasian, the best 1 Hawkins on English Silver Coins. 2 Can BOATHOI, in Dion, be a clerical error for PETHOI? Some such correction is necessary for the sense, but perhaps it is safer, with Mr. Merivale, simply to regard Dion as inaccurate. 3 The loyal support which the Silures lent to a prince not of their own race seems to imply a close previous connection with him as a governor. 14 CARACTACUS. DRUIDISM. general of the age, beat the British prince before him to the hills of Wales, in a bloody conflict which cost more than thirty battles, and the storming of more than twenty towns. Britain, south of the Thames, was then Roman, but Caractacus was unsubdued. For nine years he hung upon the onward Roman march, never able to advance far from his Welsh stronghold, and from the tribes still faithful to his cause, never willing to intermit the contest, and live unmolested in a mountain principality. Such a struggle could only have one end. In an attempt to intercept Ostorius Scapula, who had penetrated into North Wales, Caractacus sustained a decisive rout. The worthless Queen of the Brigantes, to whom he fled for shelter, betrayed him to the invader. Caractacus graced a Roman triumph; but his courage commanded the respect of his enemies, and he and his family were allowed to live in an honourable captivity. The fortified towns of the Romans, more numerous rela- tively in Britain than in any other province of the empire, attest the obstinate nature of the struggle by which their dominion was won inch by inch from the foe. The strength of the national movement lay in Druidism; the professors of that faith could not hope for tolerance from Roman contempt. Human sacrifices were forbidden in Gaul: the very possession of a Druidical amulet had been punished by Claudius with death.1 Accordingly, eleven years (A.D. 61) after the capture of Caractacus, the new preefect, Suetonius Paulinus, penetrated to the sacred island of Mona, exterminated the priests and white- robed Sibylline women who thronged the shores, and cut down the sacred groves. Druidism disappears from this time as a historical religion. It is probable that it was still a recognized faith in Ireland, and that it lingered on in England, for cen- turies after altars had been raised to other faiths, a superstition without temples or rites. The Bards, whom Roman policy 1 Pliny, lib. xxix., 8.12; lib. xxx., ss. 3-4. Suetonius, i, lib. v., ¢. 25. It is worth while to observe that the Romans, much to their honour, put down human sacrificesin Africa as well. We must not, therefore, assume any excep- tional hatred to Druidism. Compare Juvenal, Satire xv., 1. 115-119. THE REVENGE OF BOADICEA. 15 proscribed as vigorously as the Druids, re-appear to exult in the fall of the Roman empire; but the priestly caste, if it was ever distinct from the poetical, perished absolutely. During the absence of Paulinus in the west, a rebellion had broken out which threatened to sweep the invaders back into the sea. During twenty years of dominion, the Romans had organized tyranny till it became insufferable. Independent princes were controlled by Roman residents ; the flower of the British youth was drafted into the legions; heavy taxes were exacted from a people little accustomed to bear taxation ; and money lent out on usury to the needy provincials by rich capitalists, such as Seneca, the moralist and the sycophant, was recovered by the stringent processes of Roman law. So complete was the subjugation of the conquered, that Prasutagus, king of the Iceni, inscribed the republic as his heir, in the hope of securing an honourable provision for his wife and daughters. That hope was deceived. Boadicea, the widowed queen, was publicly scourged, and her daughters given to the camp. Roused by this unutterable shame, and fired by the passionate eloquence of their Queen, the Iceni sprung to arms. The Roman colony of Colchester, deceived by the Trinobantes with friendly assurances, was stormed on the second day of the siege, and the happiest of its defenders were those whom the sword did not spare for the torture. The insurrection was now national, and the British forces successively sacked Camulo- dunum (Lexden), Verulam, and London, turning round fiercely on the ninth legion, which hung in their rear, and defeating it at Wormingford on the Stour. The commander of the second legion was panic-sttuck, and remained inactive at Caerleon (Isca Silurum). But while the insurrection wasted its strength in storming towns, Suetonius, rapidly marching up from 1 Villemarque’s Bardes Bretons, pp. xxii., xxiii. Mr. Davis denies the ex- tinction of Druidism, but I think on insufficient grounds. The “rusticus Aruspex,’” who misled Severus, can hardly have been a Druid, if the word is con- strued literally, and was probably either the “‘spae man” of the district, or the priest of an imported religion.—Crania Brit., Decade v., pp. 120, 121. 2 Quarterly Review, vol. xcyii., ““The Romans at Colchester.” 16 SUPPRESSION OF THE REVOLT. Chester at the head of the fourteenth legion, and a few picked soldiers from the twentieth, had deliberately left London to its fate, and stood at bay with his back to the sea, having probably been intercepted on his march to Colches- ter. This position, in which the Roman flanks were secured by wood, hill, and fortified lines, gave no advantage to the numbers of the Britons. Their disorderly masses were soon penetrated by the Roman wedge, and a fearful massacre of eighty thousand! avenged the seventy thousand Roman colo- nists whom the insurrection had slain. Boadicea died by her own hands. Order reigned again in Britain; but the Romans had learned by fearful experience that they were not dealing with the soft men of the south. Suetonius was speedily re- called, and a milder policy inaugurated. The next critical epoch in British history, is the government of Caius Julius Agricola, a.p. 78. Agricola found the marches of Wales in insurrection, and the country north of the Humber still unsubdued. In a series of masterly campaigns, he reduced the whole of the island south of the Tay, forced the passage of the Grampians, and secured the northern frontier of the empire by a line of forts, between the Frith of Forth and the Clyde. It is strange that a statesman so able, and as reckless of human life as his countrymen in general, should not have exterminated the tribes of the north, whom no barrier could long restrain from forays upon the Lowlands. The difficulty, 1 Mr. Merivale (Romans under the Empire) thinks that only the Iceni took part in this insurrection, and infers that they were of a different race to the other tribes. Their position on the Anglian coast certainly favours the surmise of a Teutonic origin, But it is difficult to believe that an army of one hundred thou- sand men could be recruited exclusively from Norfolk and Suffolk, and yet main- tain itself in Essex and Hertfordshire, unless either supported by the natives or preying uponthem. If, indeed, the Catieuchlani were Teutonic, as Mr. Kemble conjectures, they may have furnished recruits or provisions. But the more we extend the area of Teutonic races, the more difficult it isto understand why their presence was not recognized. Moreover, the capital of the Iceni, Gwenta Ice- norum, has a distinctly Keltic name. Ifthe tribe was nearly extirpated in this rebellion, their place may have been supplied by Frisian colonists, perhaps from the Coritavi, who, of all people settled in England before the time of Agricola, appear to have the best claim to Teutonic ancestry. THE POLICY OF AGRICOLA. 17 in fact, applies to the whole policy of the Romans in Great Britain. It seems as if less labour than constructed the two fortified lines of the north, and less expenditure of men than the perpetual presence of an armed foe involved, would have carried roads through the Highlands, and destroyed every bar- barous clan in the mountain glens. The answer probably is, that without an efficient fleet, the Romans could not pursue the fugitives into the Hebrides, or hope to prevent a fresh immi- gration from Ireland. The disappearance of several tribes in the south of Scotland, of the Attacotti and the Meate, from history, and their replacement in the third and fourth centuries by the Picts! of the Cumbrian districts, looks very much as if the Roman sword did its work with terrible thorough- goingness at times. Indeed, we find that the Irish difficulty did actually suggest itself to Agricola. He resolved to conquer that island, in order that his British subjects might no longer see any free country from their own shores. He even enter- tained a fugitive Irish chief, as a pretext for invasion. But the jealousy of Domitian recalled the successful governor, a.p. 86, while his work was yet undone. Nevertheless, the eight years of Agricola’s government had effectually reduced England to a province of the empire. By a fresh arrangement of the taxation, the people had been relieved of their heaviest burdens, and men of character had been chosen as officials. Hitherto the public granaries had been grossly mismanaged ; districts had been compelled? to send their coa- 1 Mr. Herbert (Britannia after the Romans), whose view has been followed by the best modern critics, regards the name Pict (painted) as merely the Latin translation of Briton. What we know of the language and history of the people, indicates that they belonged to the Kymric variety. 'The words of Tacitus (Agricola, cap. 19) are very difficult. I translate them: “They (the Britons) were constrained in mockery to sit before closed granaries, and to buy whether they wanted or not. Bye-paths and distant places were assigned, so that the cities might carry the supplies commanded for the next winter-quarters into distant and difficult parts.’ It would seem that the communes were compelled to furnish rations to the Roman troops; and that the corn thus supplied was called in, in a vexatious manner, and sometimes forced back upon the natives at arbitrary prices by the officials, Cc 18 THE WARS OF SEVERUS. tributions of corn to a distance, and even to buy it back again from private speculators at fancy prices. Agricola crushed the whole system at a blow. As fortified towns sprung up every- where in the tracks of the legions, the tribes were awed into peace. Conciliated by a sound policy, and dazzled by the magnificence of their civilized conquerors, they began to copy the arts they saw around them. The sons of the chiefs learned to speak Latin, affected the use of the toga, and began to accustom themselves to the bath and banquet. The large- minded statesman was civilizing a new people, while he seemed to be only attaching them to the empire. For two centuries after the time of Agricola, the history of Roman Britain is without a single dramatic episode. Between the Forth and the Tyne there was almost incessant war with the northern tribes. In 120 a.p., Hadrian thought it necessary to visit the island in person, and constructed a vallum, or forti- fied earthen mound, strengthened with a ditch, from Bowness to Tynemouth, across the Northumbrian hills.1 Twenty years later, under Antoninus, the praetor Lollius Urbicus completed the lines of Agricola by a similar rampart between Caer-riden on the Forth and Alcluith (Dunbarton) on the Clyde. The disorders of the empire, in which the British legions took a full share, under Commodus, a.p. 190, encouraged the northern marauders to renew their attacks. But their dangerous success provoked the Emperor Severus to take the field in person. He found a Roman province, probably Valentia, comprising the Lowlands and Northumberland, overrun by the barbarians; they retired before the Roman army, and Severus dictated peace at the Frith of Cromarty. But he had bought his success dearly : fifty thousand soldiers had perished in that terrible war, in which the enemy never appeared in the field, never ceased to pursue the march, and spared none whom they overtook. Severus retired to York, and strengthened the work of Hadrian with a new vallum. The fatigues of the late campaign were fast killing him; his last moments were disturbed with the ' Quarterly Review, No. 213, “The Roman Wall in Britain.” LAST WORDS OF SEVERUS. 19 news of a fresh incursion by the barbarians, and his last advice to his son was to extirpate the whole race mercilessly. That advice Caracalla neglected, and withdrew, leaving Britain to the care of its prefects. IIT. THE ROMANS IN ENGLAND. ROMAN PROVINCES.—MUNICIPAL CHARACTER OF THE ROMAN OCCUPATION. CONSTITUTION OF THE TOWNS.—-ROMAN ROADS.—ROMAN ARTS AND INSTITUTIONS.—NATIONALITY OF THE COUNTRY DISTRICTS.—GENERAL INFLUENCES OF THE OCCUPATION. Tur Roman divisions of Britain are the great territorial land- marks of our history. The country, before they came, was parcelled out among different tribes, who had come in on every side, and were struggling in the centre for supremacy. The Romans seem to have disregarded the limits of the existing king- doms, and the more natural features of mountain chains. In all, they constituted five great provinces:—Britannia Prima, south of the Thames, the Saxon Wessex; Flavia Casariensis, between the Severn and the sea, the Mercian kingdom of Offa; Britan- nia Secunda, west of the Severn, comprising Wales and the Welsh Marches; Maxima Cesariensis, between the Humber and the Tyne, the Northumbrian kingdom of Edwin; and Valentia, between the Tyne and the Frith of Forth, comprising the Lowlands of Scotland and Northumberland. The capitals of these provinces were Canterbury or Winchester in the south, Verulam or London for Flavia; and Caerleon (Isca Silurum), York and Whithern for the west and north. But the real capitals of the country were York and London; and in these probably the two preefects resided, when the jealousy of Severus divided what had at first been a single command. Even if Verulam were the official capital of the south, London is his- ROMAN COLONIES. 21 torically more important, as the point from which the Roman roads radiated. ‘ The first occupation of England had been through a series of desperate wars; and the type of every Roman city was the camp. An oblong or square area was intersected by two main streets, cutting one another at right angles (the north gates and east gates of Saxon times), and protected by massive walls from the fate of the first Claudian colony near Colchester. The nucleus of the town population consisted of legionarics, who obtained a settlement in return for their services ; a motley array of traders and camp followers grew up around these ; while the old occupants were dispossessed and expelled by the new comers. Among the new citizens, the soldiers had been drafted out of every nation: Moors were settled at Watchcross, Spaniards at Pevensey, Dalmatians at Broughton ;* and these discordant materials were only moulded into a certain unity by their com- mon service, the use of the Latin tongue and laws, and the presence of Roman traders and officials. To the last, there- fore, these colonists remained distinct from the Britons of the country districts, although every year must have added a British element to the population. It is probable, also, that for a long time the towns retained their military character ; the comparative absence of civic inscriptions in Britain is best explained by the supposition that they were governed by soldiers rather than by civil magistrates. During this period, they were no doubt towns, in the sense that they were not country; fortresses in the midst of an alien population ; busy with the stir of trade, possessing the bath and forum, sometimes even the amphitheatre; but centres of corporate life, self-governing 1 Quart. Rev., vol. 97, ‘The Romans at Colchester.” ? Wright’s Celt, Roman, and Saxon, pp. 250-1. 3 “ Other countries teem with notices of duumvirs, decurions, quinquennales, augustales, and flamens, but Britain is literally all but destitute of them. The solution seems to be forced upon us, though we can pretend to no historical evi- dence in support of it, that the government of the Roman towns in Britain was generally purely military.”—Quart. Rey., vol. 97. This is true, I think, of the first two or three centuries of Roman rule. 22 MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION. communities of citizens, they could not be in any true sense. Before the end of the Roman dominion they had probably changed their character; the warlike habits of the first colon- ists had given way to the arts of peace; the framework of civic institutions had been introduced, and the people left to govern themselves, perhaps by very Jaches of the imperial government. But the liberty which they had at last received wanted time and peace to strike root; they never seem to have risen to the spirit of independence which carried the cities of South Gaul triumphantly through the shock of invasion ; their municipal constitution, their laws, their mercantile guilds, have all, indeed, been transmitted to us, with more or less change, through the stormy Saxon times; but they were informed with a new spirit, and disguised under new names. The prefects, scabini, and curiales of our old cities are no more connected by popular apprehension with the mayor, aldermen, and common council of our own times, than Saxon architecture with its - exemplars of Roman art. Yet, in fact, the constitution of our towns is as Roman as the bricks of St. Martin’s church at Canterbury. Still, in the absence of definite records, it is not easy to say with precision in what manner the towns of Britain were organized. We may gather from inscriptions that there were at least three orders above the lowest; the gentry (equites), the bourgeoisie (decuriones), and artizans enrolled in corporations. The equites may be regarded as a nobility of office; property was their only qualification ; but their rank designated them as the class from whom the higher magistrates should be chosen. They differed rather as a sub- division than as an order from the decuriones, whose unhappy dignity was either inherited, or derived from a landed pro- perty of more than twenty-five acres. On these men fell the whole duty of discharging the smaller and unprofitable municipal magistracies, which knights and senators disdained ; all arrears in the taxes imposed were made good by them ; and they were not allowed to take refuge from their responsi- bilities by service in the camp or church. It is probable that in the larger cities a senatus or common council was MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION. 23 formed from this class to transact business; but in great emergencies the whole body of those qualified was convened. The chief magistracy was that of the consuls, prefects, or duumvirs, and varied from one to four; they were named by the privileged class, appointed for short terms of office, and their nomination was confirmed by the emperor, or perhaps in Britain by his deputy. Their jurisdiction in civil matters, ’ especially in the later times of the empire, was restricted to in- ferior cases; but they seem often to have acted as umpires. In criminal cases they could scourge, imprison on suspicion, and set free; and during their tenure of office no action could be brought against them. The defensor civitatis was properly chosen from the ranks below the bourgeoisie: in towns, he was a sort of people’s advocate or tribune ; in the country, he acted as a village magistrate, like the tithing man of the Saxon period. The curators who presided over taxation, and the zediles who controlled public works, but whose office was re- garded as contemptible, are found universally in the towns of the empire, and may be assumed to have existed in Britain. Below the privileged classes and the magistrates, was the great bulk of the commonalty (plebs). The importance of the trade corporations may be judged from the fact, that no fewer than forty-four varieties are known to have existed in the empire, ranging in importance from physicians and sculptors to carpenters and potters. They were probably not as numer- | ous in Britain, where the only inscriptions found relate to smiths, and where the wants of the few large proprietors were supplied by trained slaves in their own households. Viewed as a whole, the corporate life of the Roman towns was execu- tive, not political; it resembled that of the French towns under Louis XV. But a system, elaborated by sensible men, however perverted by despotism, is invaluable in times of revolution, as preserving the rudiments of law, into which the next occupants of power may breathe their own spirit. The basilica, or cour de justice, of the imperial system, was transformed in Saxon times into the guildhall; the forum became the market-overt of our ancestors, within which sales - 24 ROMAN ROADS. were legal; and the mectings of the decuriones were replaced by corresponding gemots. The magistracies and customs of Roman law were preserved and changed in the same manner as the buildings. But the distinction of the judge of law from the judge of fact or juryman, was derived from Italian sources many hundred years later, when men reverted to the fountain of legislation. Next to their fortified cities (the castra or chesters), the roads were the great mechanism of Roman government. In Britain, a distant, and for some time a poor province, they were not constructed with the same massive solidity as the Via Appia; it is only near the large towns that they rest on stone or on a thick bed of concrete. In other respects, they display the characteristic features of Roman engineering; crossing morasses on causeways, and climbing over hills with un- swerving directness of purpose. These causeways were con- nected by transverse lines of communication (limites) ; and on wild borders the dimes was often a broad strip of cleared land, drained by a fosse on each side; the roadway bemg raised in the middle, perhaps with a parallel line of rampart.® Castles in front of the limes protected it at intervals. Thus the whole system was military, and was primarily intended to connect the chief strategical points in the island. Two? great roads connected London with the lines of Hadrian; one going westward to Chester, swerving cast to York (the northern prefect’s resi- dence), and then going westward again to Bowness: this is the famous Watling Street of Anglo-Saxon times. The second 1 Inscriptiones 124, 127, 128, Mon. Brit.; Wright’s Celt, Roman, and Saxon, chaps. xii. and xv.; Guizot’s Civilisation en France, tom. i., iiéme lecon; Pancirollus de Magistratibus Municipalibus; Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities—articles, Colonia, Equites, Basilica. From a curious passage in Tertullian, we learn that such a society as the Christian church was subject to the law of corporations, licite factiones. He makes edilitas his contrast to tyrannis.—Apologia, caps. 88.46. So Juvenal, Satire x., 1. 102, speaks of “the ragged Aidile,” but mentions the office more respectfully, Satire iii., 1. 162-179. ? Sat. Rev., May 22, 1858. 3 Itinerary of Antonine, a.p. 320. ROMAN ROADS. 25 road passed through the eastern counties, where the largest fortified camps were built, probably against Saxon invaders; turned off through Lincoln to York, and then went eastward to Wallsend. A third more direct road (afterwards Ermine Street) went. from London to York, passing north through Bed- fordshire. Akeman street, whose Saxon name commemorates the healing powers of the Bath waters, connected that city with London. The line from Chester to Caerleon, important as a military frontier, and because it led through a mining district, was fringed with Roman towns; while a second road (the Ryk- nield Way), running through Doncaster, and passing down east of Droitwich, connected York with the estuary of the Severn. London and Richborough, London and Chichester, and London and Dorchester, were the chief highways of the south-east. It would seem as if the midland districts, being simply agricultural, were the least cared for; or rather, perhaps, they lay! (mécontents mais contenus) in helpless quiet within the great military pentagon, whose points are York, London, Winchester, Caerleon, and Chester. Before any one of these cities, the troops quartered in the others could be concentrated at the shortest possible notice; and the districts that lay out- side the lines, the Anglian and south-eastern counties, the line of the Severn, and along the vallum, are the parts of Britain which were most jealously guarded, and where Roman remains abound most. It may seem strange that the bleak north should have had a larger population under Constantine and Honorius than at any time since, till our own century. But the neighbourhood of the wall, wrongly called of Hadrian, required the presence of many workmen, and of a large garrison; while Roman avarice and energy conspired to open up the rich mines of the northern districts. The life of the Roman colonists in Britain, was of course much the same as that of Romanized citizens elsewhere. They 1 Louis Napoleon’s comparison of the French bourgeoisie to the area ofa triangle, whose lines are the clergy, the army, and the people—A Few Words on France, by a Scotch M.P. 26 ROMAN TRADE AND VILLAS. brought into England the manufactures in which they antici- pated fourteen hundred years of Germanic civilization—the tinted glass, the Samian potteries, and the sculptured bronze. They were skilled in the tricks of trade; the inscribed boxes of their quack medicines are still disinterred ; spurious coin is found in quantities that induce us to regard it as a device of the imperial treasury; and locks, with contrivances in the wards which have been re-invented and patented in the last thirty years, attest alike the art of their thieves and of their smiths! Roman bricks and Roman mortar have furnished inexhaustible materials for Saxon towns, Norman castles, and even for English farm-houses. The great number of the Roman villas whose remains can still be traced, is a proof that the lords of the soil were in easy circumstances; while the fact that the structures were commonly of wood, raised upon a brick or stone foundation, is an argument against large fortunes. Probably no rich man would have chosen to spend his life so far from Rome, and under a British sky. Nor can the towns have been magnificent, even in cases like Sil- chester, where the walls enclose an area three miles in circuit. The amphitheatres, still known to us, never equal the colossal dimensions of those of Verona or Treves;? only one instance is at present known in which the sides are not appa- rently of turf. The houses were probably thatched.* And ' Roach Smith’s Antiquities of Richborough, p. 102. 2 This was first pointed out in King’s Munimenta Antiqua. Generally speaking, English villas are inferior to those of the continent, both in size and in the magnificence of their remains. But there are remains of brick and stone highly ornamented on the line of Hadrian’s vallum, espe- cially at Borcovicus or Housesteads.—Wellbeloved’s Eburacum. *Probably, however, some have been destroyed or covered up, as Giraldus Cambrensis speaks of ‘‘loca theatralia muris egregiis partim adhuc extantibus.” —lItin. Camb.,c. 5. But their dimensions are more certain, and are never very large, unless the curious cavity at Cheriton is really the remains of an old circus. 4 They were so at Rome itself tillthe time of Nero. Merivale, book vi., p.171. There is a legend that Silchester, and I think Wroxeter, were set on fire by sparrows with lighted matches tied to them, whom the native tribes, unable to storm the walls, collected and let fly. Tiles, however, must have been used as well. That splendid fragment, “The Ruin,’ speaks of “the purple arch with its tiles.”—Codex Exoniensis, p. 477. COUNTRY LIFE IN THE PROVINCES. 27 except where the main streets ran, giving passage for horses and troops, the Roman towns were probably grouped in eon- tinuous masses of buildings, intersected by narrow alleys! like modern Venice. In some sanitary details the civilization of several centuries had told upon the customs of the people. Large sewers, large aqueducts, and extramural interment, are common features. At first the bodies of the dead were burned, and their ashes preserved in mortuary urns. In the third or fourth centuries, the Christian belief in the resurrection of the body caused the old Roman practice of interment to be revived. But no kindly superstition was allowed to sanction burial in the crowded thoroughfares of the cities; the dead body, often covered up with lime, was carried out of the city gates; and the great highways were lined with tombs, whose inscriptions appealed to the passer-by for sympathy.® But the traveller in Roman England, who wandered away from the main road, or from the cities, would find himself among villages which had known little change since the days of Cunobelin. Probably to the last, native chiefs like Cogi- dubnus of Chichester, were allowed to retain the shadow of their old royalty, and enjoyed the loyal allegiance of their clans. Between the British gentry and the Roman officials and merchants, there would be constant intercourse in the towns, and at last frequent intermarriages. It is just possible that in such a county as Kent, which lay in the line of traffic between Britain and Gaul, the old British tongue may have died out, and been replaced by a debased Latin, like that a “‘Vicinus meus est manuque tangi De nostris Novius potest fenestris.’””—Martial, lib. i., Epig. 77. 2 Wellbeloved’s Eburacum, pp. 96-116. 3 Mr. Akerman has shown ground for supposing that money was coined by several native princes under the Romans, ¢.g., by Bodroc in Gloucester, and by Veric in Surrey. He thinks, however, that these dynasties soon died out or were dethroned.— Wendover, vol. i. pp. 261, 262. EADBURGA’S TRAGEDY. 97 mysterious fate visited his crimes in his family. His only son, Ecgferth, died without issue a few months after his father ; the blood-stained sceptre passed into another line. Of his daugh- ters, one became an early widow, a second died in a cloister, and the third, Eadburga, had perhaps the most tragical fate any English princess has known. She had married Brihtric, the reigning, though not the lawful, king of Wessex. Jealous of one of her husband’s favourites, and frenzied with the hereditary taint of murder in her veins, Kadburga poisoned a cup for her rival, which her lord accidently drained. The west Saxons, in their grim horror of the crime, divested by a prospective law all queens to come of the honours of royalty. But Eadburga escaped from their justice to the continent. Appointed by Charlemagne abbess of a convent, she became a scandal by her life, and was expelled; the second disgrace was irretriev- able, and she died a beggar in the streets of Pavia.! 1 Asser, M.B., pp. 471-472. X. THE DANES. EGBERT’S SUZERAINTY.—ETHELWULF.—FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE DANES.— CONFLICT OF PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY.—INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIAN IDEAS UPON ODINISM.— LEADING FEATURES OF NORSE CHARACTER.—EVROPE SAVED FROM IMPERIALISM AND ROTTENNESS BY THE DANES.—SAGAS OF RAGNAR LODBROC, AND BEORN.—DANISH CONQUEST OF NORTHUMBRIA AND ANGLIA. Tux consequences of Offa’s death were soon felt by the Mer- cians. The ascendancy passed from them to Wessex, where the crown, left heirless by the death of the usurper Brihtric, had devolved on the rightful heir, Egbert, who had passed his years of exile at Charlemagne’s court. Yet more than twenty years elapsed between Egbert’s accession (800 a.p.) and the battle of Ellendune, 821 a.p., in which the supremacy of Wessex as the dominant state of the English name was established. A revolt of the East Angles against their oppressors contributed to this success, and Egbert, after six years’ warfare, penetrated to the borders of Northumbria and received the submission of their princes, 828 a.p. But his power over the subject- peoples did not differ in kind from that which Offa had exer- cised; the different provinces were still governed by their own laws, administered by their own kings; they perhaps paid a nominal tribute; they were bound to contribute troops against the foes of their suzerain;! and in the case of Kent, at least,? an important public grant would be made by Egbert’s authority, and only subscribed by the local prince. But although in sanctioning the acts of his Anglian vassals, 1 Quando Ecgbertus Rex exercitum Gewissorum movit contra Brittones.— Cod. Dip, 1035. + ? Cod. Dip., 223, 224. CHARACTER OF ATHELWULF. 99 Egbert called himself king of the Angles,! to indicate his title to authority, he usually preserved the style of his ances- tors, and subscribed himself king of the West Saxons ; king of England or king of Britain, are titles expressing facts which belong to a later age. Monarchy in the ninth century was the headship of a people, not the government of a territory.? Neither Egbert nor his successor Aithelwulf, who had been withdrawn from the service of the church to discharge the difficult duties of royalty, are of any high importance in English history. Both seem to have been competent generals and popular with their subjects; Adthelwulf’s devout liber- ality, which imposed a rent charge on his kingdom for the church, his pilgrimage to Rome, and his marriage late in life to a Frankish princess only twelve years old, make his por- trait a little more life-hke, and explain why he failed to push forward the limits of the kingdom. But the - times were not such as allowed either king or people to rest on the advance of their predecessors with impunity. Already under Offa the Danes had settled colonies in Ireland, where they were known as Ostmen; they thus came into inter- course with the British tribes of the west, and cast as it were their arm round England, before they proceeded to strangle 1 T only find this title in two charters, one relating to Kent, the other to the Isle of Wight.—Cod. Dip., 223, 1037. 2 The fiction that Egbert caJled himself king of England, was invented at a very late period. Its first mention is in terms that ought to have shown its spuriousness :—Egbertus rex totius Britannia in Parliamento apud Winto- niam mutavit nomen regni de consensu populi sui et jussit illud de ccet:ro vocari Angliam.—Hist. fund. hosp. S. Leon. Monasticon, vol. vi., p. 608. It would seem, however, that Egbert has been confounded with Alfred in this deed, which is much later than Stephen’s time. The name Brittannia is always used for the island in early charters; tamdiu fides Christiana in Brittannia per- duret, or, apud Anglos in Brittannié.—Cod. Dip., 140, 166, 242, 258, 261. 3 Professor Maine observes, “‘The descendants of Clovis were not kings of France, they were kings of the Franks. The alternative to this peculiar notion of sovereignty appears to have been—and this is the important point—the idea of universal dominion.””—Ancient Laws, p. 104. There are some exceptions to this rule in Kentish charters, possibly to distinguish the king from the regulus.—Cod. Dip., 108, 113, 114, 135, 160, 190, 234, 100 APPEARANCE OF THE DANES. it. A few adventurers even sailed to Dorchester, 787 a.p., and slew the town-reeve when he sought to call them to account. But they were routed by the local forces, and their prisoners dismissed contemptuously by the king. Ten years later we hear of their ravaging the Anglian coasts,’ encouraged by the civil anarchy which desolated Kent, Anglia, and Northumbria, where the native line of kings was altogether or nearly extinct. Then came an interval of quiet, the result of their occupation elsewhere. But in 828 a.p. they appeared again in Somersetshire and on the east coast of Kent. Atlength in 851 a.p., having sailed up the Thames, and plundering, as was their wont, they received a tremendous overthrow at Ockley in Surrey, and withdrew broken and dismayed, leaving the land a respite of a few short years. It was not possible that this quiet should endure. The feud of Saxon and Angle still rent the land, at a time when unity was imperative. thelwulf’s last years were distracted by a rebellion, in which his hereditary dominion, Wessex, took part with his eldest son against him ; and Atthel- bald on his accession, 858 a.p., put himself in feud with the church by reviving the pagan custom, and marrying his young and imperial step-mother. Northumbria was in its normal state of anarchy, and Anglia was governed by a prince who ought to have worn the tonsure rather than the crown. On the other hand, the piracy of Denmark was animated by an idea, and organized by a code of laws, which framed the pro- fession of murder and rapine into a civil polity. The Norse paganism had not originally been a conquering faith, like Islam ; it did not seek to impose its doctrines upon the world ; but when it was attacked in its shrines, when its feasts were proscribed, and its sacred days blotted out or transferred to another god, the rude instinct of the worshipper was quickened into fanaticism and revenge. Even the Christian missionaries 1 Populus paganus solet vastare piratico latrocinio littora nostra; et illi ipsi populi Anglorum et regna et reges dissentiunt inter se.—Alcuini Opera, p. 78, Ep. 74. CHARACTER OF NORSE PAGANISM. 101 were violently aggressive; they delighted in killing the sacred ‘oxen or burning a temple ;! and their new converts were be- yond measure unruly and barbarous, slaying freely in God’s honour, as they would have slain formerly in a private feud.* Thus the march of the new faith was the passage of a sword upon earth; and when the banner of the cross was the ensign of Charlemagne’s army, and the excuse of all his attacks on native liberty, heathendom became another word for patriotism. To the Old Saxon and Norseman “the white Christ” was only a new Avatar, who claimed a higher power than the old gods;3 even those who admitted his divinity, would still murmur verses to Thor,‘ if their prayers were not granted by Christ. The whole conception of the conflict of faiths was therefore one of relative advantages much more than of right or wrong: it was a question of calcu- lation, not of conscience ; and the Christian priests unhappily pressed this poimt in a way that disgusted the nobler minds among their adversaries. When Radbod, the Frisian prince, was already stepping into the font, he bethought him- self of asking what fate his unbaptized ancestors were under- gomg. “They are all burning in the flames of hell,” was the ready answer of the monk at his side. ‘“ Wherever they are, I will be also,” said the true-hearted chief, and straightway drew back into heathendom.® In fact, the moral aspects of Christianity in the ninth century were little better than 1 Alcuini Vita Willibrordi, lib. i, c. 10; Sulpicii Severi Dialogus, lib. ii, c. 4, 5, 6; Dasent’s Tales from the Norse, pp. xxxvii.-xxxix. 2 Bishop Frederic the First, missionary to Iceland, quitted the country in disgust, at not being able to restrain his first convert from murder.—Kristni- Saga, cap. iv. 3 Thus, in Iceland, Kodran refused to be baptized till he had seen a trial of strength between the bishop and a sacred stone in the neighbourhood. The bishop intoned church hymns over it till it split in two.—Kristni-Saga, cap. ii. + On a voyage to Greenland, the first ever made from Europe, the crew, who had been in want of food, ‘found a whale; while they were eating it, one of the party said, ‘“The red-beard Thor has been more helpful to us than your Christ. I have got this for my verses.”—Blackwell’s Mallet, p. 257. ° Annales Xantenses, A, 718; Pertz, vol, ii., p. 271. 102 CHRISTIAN INFLUENCES IN ODINTSM. those of Odinism. An unbeliever might fairly balance the persecuting tendencies of the one with the murderous instincts which animated the other; the acquisitiveness of the monks with the pirates’ love of plunder; the cowardice and impurities engendered by the monastic theory with the manliness and martial training of the sea-rover. Christianity attracted men by the simple consistency of its narrative, and by laying open the invisible world; it supplanted Odinism, as peace and order in the long run must always supplant war; but its peculiar doctrines, the forgiveness of injuries, the inner spiritual life, are those which, even if the teachers understood them, the barbarous hearers were least likely to appreciate. Again, in the fusion of men and ideas, the Norse religion developed a new life, and transfused a grander spirit into its old mythes. It had always been essentially human, conceiving the powers of nature under personal forms,! and regarding every tree and stone as instinct with hidden life; and it had been essentially manly, viewing the struggle against time and fate as the real life of the gods. Time and fate were to conquer in the end; but the Norseman still venerated, for he felt that there were greater things than success. In fact, the superstition of all strong characters, a belief in some supreme law directing the outward events of life, was combined with a belief in the entire freedom of will in its own ap-— propriate sphere, the formation of character. Yet while Odinism, in these respects, takes perhaps the highest rank among all mythologies, it had hitherto wanted tenderness: the very sentiment of proud despair with which it looked forward to the crash of the world, made it stern and sombre in its estimate of the unseen. It was now irradiated in its decline by gleams of love and hopefulness from Christianity. The old story of the death of Baldr, the sun-god, told how he struggled with Hodr, the god of war, for the love of the beauti- - ful Nanna; Hodr triumphed through an enchanted sword; 1 Thus in Thor’s visit to the Giants, he meets the Earth, Fire, and Old Age. —Prose Edda, cap. 47. LATER MYTHE OF BALDR. 103 and Hel, the daughter of Evil, clasped the slain god in her inexorable embrace under earth. Very different was. the belief of a later century. In this, the sun-god appears the husband of Nanna, shedding life and light upon earth, and joy among the gods. But evil dreams warn Freia, the mother of the gods, of a dark fate impending over her son. She wan- ders through heaven and earth, and binds all nature with a sacramental oath, never to harm the sun-god; only she forgets to pledge the mistletoe. Then there is high joy in heaven; the gods place Baldr in their midst, and amuse them- selves with seeing how the darts and stones they hurl at him refuse to touch him. But Loki, the spirit of evil, points a twig of mistletoe, places it in the hand of Hédr, the blind god of war, and guides his aim. Baldr falls to the ground, slain; and Nanna’s heart breaks with grief, as she sees her husband’s body on the funeral pile. An envoy from the gods rides nine days and nights through the dark abysses of the _ earth, to the gates of Hel, and implores the goddess to give back Baldr to the heavens. Hel promises to restore him, if all nature, living and lifeless, will weep for him. Then man and beast, fountain and tree, lift up their voices, and weep aloud for the sun-god. The envoy returns to claim him, but finds crouched, near the very portal of Hel, a gray witch, who refuses to weep; she can gain nothing by the life or death of any man. Thus Loki’s enchantments have prevailed, and the joy-giving god has been withdrawn from the world. “The sword-age, the wolf-age’’ is coming, when the love of money shall scatter murder and harlotry over the earth; the powers of evil will be unloosed; the gods themselves fall in the desperate death-struggle; fire consume the tree of life and the solid earth; and the dimmed sun sink for ever in the ocean. But a greener earth will rise out of the sea, lighted up by a brighter heaven; and Baldr will ascend from Hel to reign over new gods and nobler men.® 1 Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie, p, 201. ? Prose Edda, cap. 49-51. Other and somewhat grotesque instances of the temporary fusion of Christianity and paganism may be seen in Dasent’s Tales 104 NORSE INSTITUTIONS. The institutions of the Norsemen in their own country resembled those of the Anglo-Saxons in their main features. There were the same distinctions of classes; similar popular assemblies ; and the system of money measurement for ranks and offences, was even more complicated in Norway and Ice- land than in England. Among Scandinavian specialties, we may class the duel as a form of judicial process ;! and on the other hand, the frith-guild system was first organized in England, and transplanted from our shores to Norway and Denmark.2 But the necessities of a seafaring life and of incessant war, developed the military qualities of daring and discipline among the Norsemen to an extent that perhaps has never yet been equalied. The captive sea-rover would sometimes refuse life upon any, even the most honourable terms; as a Danish king expressed it, life with all its old enjoyments, but with the sentiment of a single defeat, would be unbearable.’ In fact, any death, if it were only in battle, was the crown of an honourable life ; failing this, the pagan of the north threw himself from a cliff; Siward, of Northumbria, whose Christian- ity deterred him from suicide, stood armed and erect out of bed in his last moments, that at least he might not die huddled up like a cow.* Men thus minded, who compared the joy of battle to the raptures of love, were not likely to be more careful of others’ lives than of their own; their very jests had a terrible grimness; they were silent when they suffered, and from the Norse, Nos. ii., xiv., xxi., and xxviii. In the fragment of the Edda called ‘‘Bragi’s telling,” there are twelve Asa or gods, who are preserved in perpetual youth by eating apples—Dasent’s Prose Edda, pp. 85-88. In the saga of Haco the Good, he is represented as making the sign of the cross on a beaker which he was called upon to drain in honour of Odin. The act was remarked, and he explained it away as the sign of Thor’s hammer. This must surely have been imitated from Christian practice.—Wilda’s Gilden-Wesen, p. 9. 1 The duel was probably introduced into English law-procedure before the Conquest, but certainly not before the Danish invasions.—See Palgrave’s Eng. Com., pp. 223-5. ? Wilda’s Gilden-Wesen; Drittes Haupt-stueck. 3 Blackwell’s Mallet, chap, viii. 4 Huntingdon, lib. vi, M.B. 760. NORSE CHARACTER. 105 laughed in death. When Sigurd, the pirate, who had seen his comrades butchered, was asked what he thought of their fate, he answered, “I fear not death, since I have fulfilled the greatest duty of life; but I pray thee not to let my hair be touched by a slave, or stained with blood.” His request was granted, and a freeman held up his hair for the fatal stroke; but as the axe descended, Sigurd swayed himself forward, and the blow fell upon his captor’s hands. The rough humour of the joke so completely fell in with the spirit of their conquerors, that Sigurd and his remaining companions were spared.! It was one of the better results of this fearlessness, that it en- couraged a punctilious love of truth, resembling honour. The beaten warrior, bound by his word, would remain on the ground while his adversary fetched a weapon to despatch him. Moreover, the pursuit of arms, though it excluded labour from the ideal of life, involved a severe discipline as the condition of success. It would be absurd to say that northern society was pure: the women were guarded in separate quarters till mar- riage ;? they were commonly married to the rich, and intrigued with the strong; and adultery, though it involved slavery in Denmark, was chiefly reprobated as a breach of the laws of property, was practised by heroes, and praised by bards. But allowing for the necessary absence of all Christian ideas upon this subject, we may fairly say that the Norsemen, if not moral, were not eminently impure; and their crimes were rather those of passion, than of that deliberate vice which eats into the soul. Although the more prominent aspect of the struggle be- tween Christendom and the Danes was the question which of two religions should prevail, the political results of the contest are not less important. The greatness of Charlemagne’s character can scarcely be overrated, but his ideas and policy were Byzantine ; he aimed at re-uniting the nations of the 1 Blackwell's Mallet, chap. viii. ? Thus, in the beautiful Frithiof-Saga, Ingibiérg is placed with her eight maidens within the precincts of Baldr’s temple for greater security. 106 CENTRALIZATION AVERTED. world under one empire; at crushing local freedom in every state. Had he succeeded more entirely : if his captains, sated with conquest, had been capable of loyal allegiance; if his sons had been more united, or one of them truly imperial, the path of the world would have been arrested ; the monotonous unity of the Roman empire would have been reproduced at a lower level of civilization; and thought and faith, imprisoned within a system whose confines were the limits of the earth, would have beaten out their lives against the bars of their cage. God and the Danes saved us from that calamity. The plunderers became conquerors, and carved half-a-dozen king- doms out of the Europe that was to have been one. Even as regards England, we may see that the country was not yet ripe for consolidation: its tendencies were always to form a world apart, and to separate itself from the struggles and progress of its neighbours. At the very moment when it was lapsing into centralization and weakness, its provinces were roused into new life by the necessity of self-defence. The success of the Danes against a brave people sometimes appears wonderful. It must be remembered that by these expeditions the whole commercial marine of the north was turned into ships of war.’ The long vessels, with their gaudy painted sails, bounding over the foam, disembarked troops suddenly where they were least ex- pected, or sailed up the rivers into the heart of the country. It was never a war between the Danes and a national army, but between the Danes and a local militia. Defeat to the Saxons was ruin; but the Norsemen easily repaired their losses, for their fleets were recruited from every nation of the North.? For some two hundred years every district of Eng- land was traversed by troops, and every man forced to fight. The commonwealth was shattered in the contest, but the people regenerated. Towards 867 a.p., an organized expedition of Norsemen, ' Dasent’s Norsemen in Iceland; Oxford Essays, 1858. 2 Immisit Dominus Dacos cum Gothis, Norwagenses cum Suathedis, Wan- dalos cum Fresis.—Huntingdon, lib. v., M. B., p. 736. SAGAS OF RAGNAR AND BEORN. 107 under Ingvar and Ubba, two of their kings, landed in North- umbria with a settled intention of conquering the country. The father of the two leaders, Ragnar Lodbroc, had shortly before been taken prisoner in a piratical descent on the English coast, and cruelly put to death by the Northumbrian king ‘Ella. Local tradition has preserved the remembrance of a Northumbrian noble, Beorn or Bruern, who avenged the dis- honour of his wife, by reporting the circumstances of Ragnar’s death to the Danes, and promising them the support of his own kin The Danish gesith of Ragnar burst passionately into tears at the news of their lord’s death, and swore to take a terrible revenge. -They wintered in Anglia, where the people of the country, mixing freely with them as men of a common origin, supplied them with provisions and horses.? Next year the invaders advanced northwards, and were admitted into York. Osbert, Beorn’s enemy, and Atlla, a rival king, besieged them there, but incautiously broke down the walls of the town, and entangled their forces in the narrow streets, where they were routed, with the loss of all their leaders, by a desperate rally of the Danes.* Aélla fell into the hands of the foe, and experienced the worst fate of the con- quered : a blood-eagle was carved on his back. The Northum- brians had been demoralized by constant civil war; of their 1 Brompton gives the story of the Northumbrian noble, Bruern Brocard, who calls over the Danes to avenge his wrongs.—Twysden, pp. 802, 803. In Roger of Wendover, Bern is a huntsman in Norfolk, who murders Lodbroc from jealousy, is exposed by the Anglian king in a boat, drifts over to Denmark, and denounces his own sovereign as the murderer.—Vol. i., pp. 303-307. This agrees with the Danish accounts in representing Lodbroc’s death as the cause of the invasion. As the two English stories agree in representing Bern or Bruern as a traitor, I have ventured to harmonize the different narratives into what seemed the most probable account. But its details will not bear critical examination. The word “‘ Beorn” means “nobleman,” and is chiefly used in poetry. The date of Ragnar Lodbroc’s reign is unknown, but Geijer places him towards the end of the eighth century; and a whole cycle of legends has been woven into his history.—Geijer’s History of the Swedes, p. 14. 24.8. Chron., A., 866. 3 A.S. Chron., A. 867. William of Malmesbury, however, makes the North- umbrians garrison the town against the Danes.—Lib. ii., p. 178. 108 DEFEAT OF ST. EADMUND. kings one had provoked rebellion, the other was an usurper ; it is scarcely wonderful, if the people passed easily to the sway of anewlord. Having thus obtained the dominion of the north, the Danes advanced against Mercia, but were forced, when the army of Wessex came up, to make terms. The inva- ders next turned their arms against East Anglia; they first attacked Lincolnshire, where, supported by new adventurers under Guthrum, they at last overwhelmed the local forces which the valiant ealdorman Algar led, and sacked the monastery of Peterborough. They then demanded submission from the king; Eadmund had sufficient sense of honour to decline to hold his crown as a vassal of the pagans; but his subjects did not muster ‘in sufficient force to give any hope of success; Eadmund fell into the hands of the Danes, and suffered the fate of St. Sebastian, a.p. 871.1 The pagans were now masters of the Anglian parts of England; it was only a question of time, how soon Mercia should become tributary to them. But the south and part of the west of England were inhabited by a different race, with no Scandi- navian sympathies, with a civilization too deeply rooted to be easily effaced, with an utter horror of paganism ; above all, with a man among them who could lead in battle, guide in council, and inspire confidence in defeat. The people was the Saxons of Wessex ; the man was Alfred. 1 The accounts of Eadmund’s defeat are difficult to understand. He is repre- sented as successful in an obstinate battle at Thetford; but refusing, from scruples of conscience, to shed any more blood, he is surrounded and taken by the Danes. Objecting to fight was a common and praiseworthy form of con- scientiousness, but fighting first and objecting afterwards would be conduct too foolish to be credible. A second victory would have cleared the coun- try of the pirates. We probably owe this gloss on the meagre account in the Saxon Chronicle, to the monks of later and more warlike times, who wished their patron to be brave as well as pious.— Wendover, p. 308-311. XI. ALFRED. ALFRED’S YOUTH.—WARS WITH THE DANES UNDER THELRED.—CHARACTER OF ALFRED'S GOVERNMENT.—THE DANES OCCUPY MERCIA, AND ENTER WESSEX FROM THE SOUTH.—ALFRED’S EXILE.—DEFEAT OF THE DANES AT EDINGTON, AND TREATY OF WEDMOR.—LATER INVASIONS AND REPULSES OF THE DANES. —ALFRED’S PUBLIC WORKS.—ALFRED AS LAWGIVER.—OLD AND NEW INSTI- TUTIONS.—FORMATION OF A FLEET.—REVIVAL OF LEARNING.—THE KING’S PRIVATE LIFE.—RELIGIOUS AND ARISTOCRATIC TENDENCIES OF ALFRED’S MIND. ALFRED was the youngest son of Althelwulf, by Osburh, daughter of a Jutish noble, the king’s cupbearer; and was born at Wantage about the beginning of the year 849 a.p. So long as his mother lived, he appears to have been well cared for: and when at most only six years old, was induced to learn by heart some of the Saxon ballads, by a promise of the illuminated book which contained them.! In 855 a.p. Alfred accompanied his father on a pilgrimage to Rome, where he remained a year. The early influences of his life had no doubt some share in impressing him with a vivid sense of religion. After his father’s death, Alfred was probably left to grow up pretty much as he chose. He became a keen sports- man; and a strong animal nature, tempered but not subdued by his piety, seems to have led him into irregularities, which affected his health through life. In his twentieth year he married Kalhswitha, the daughter of Aithelred the Big, earl of 1 Pauli’s Life of Alfred, pp. 85-90. Dr. Pauli’s view, that Alfred only learned the poems by heart, appears to me certain from the context, in which Asser says distinctly that the prince did not learn to read in his youth. The only difficulty is in the word “legit,” which probably means, “ went over,’ perhaps “spelt over.’—Asser, M. B., 474. 110 BATTLES WITH THE DANES. the Gainishmen.! On the death of his two eldest brothers, and the accession of Aithelred in 866 a.p., Alfred ought, by his father’s will, to have been invested with the kingdoms of Kent and Sussex. The urgent need of united action forced king and witan to disregard the foolish bequest ; and Alfred, to his high honour, acquiesced in the arrangement, perhaps with an understanding that he should succeed his brother on the throne. Although the Danish kings of Northumbria were by this time sated with conquest, or chiefly desired to extend their limits toward the north, the allies, under Guthrum, who had just assisted them to conquer East Anglia, and to whom it had been assigned as recompense, were resolved to push their successes south of the Thames. Accordingly, in the winter of 871 a.p., they suddenly sailed up the Thames, not pausing before the strong walls of London or in the Surrey fields, but announcing their arrival by the storm of Reading. They were still so weak that their first sally into the country was repelled by the ealdorman of the district near Englefield. But when Athelred and Alfred arrived, and attempted to storm the town, the Danes regained their superiority ; and the royal brothers were forced to fly across the Thames. The next battle took place on the unknown common of Ashdown, pro- bably in Hampshire. Alfred commenced the fight by a vigor- ous charge up the slope which the Danes crowned; for a time the issue was doubtful, as Aithelred was hearing mass in his tent, and left his brother unsupported ; but at last reinforce- ments came up; the Danes were routed, and most of their captains slain. The pursuit lasted through the night and the next day to the very walls of Reading, where the fugitives found shelter. But before another fortnight the Danes were sufficiently reinforced to fight again at Basing, where they kept the battle-field. It was their great advantage throughout these wars that they were able to concentrate their whole strength on any given point, while the Saxons trusted too ' Of Gainsborough in Lincolnshire.—Pauli’s Life of Alfred, p. 121. ALFRED AS RULER. 111 much to the local militia, which did not even include the citizens of the towns.! Hence in a fresh battle at Merton, although the Saxons claim to have conquered during the day, they were forced at nightfall to leave the field to the enemy. Five battles in about as many weeks, and the loss of their best soldiers and nobles, dispirited the Saxons; and Atthelred, who had shown himself a brave and honourable king, died about this time. The whole burden of monarchy devolved upon Alfred when he was only twenty-two. His succession had long been regarded as matter of course; it does not seem that any fresh meeting of the witan was held to sanction it. Like most men of strong organizing capacity, Alfred was inclined to carry out with a high hand what he saw to be right and necessary. The times were thoroughly out of joint. Castles had to be built everywhere, fleets constructed, the terms of military service lengthened and drawn closer ; and in order to do all this, it was necessary to strengthen the authority of the king and of the nobles, while the judicial powers of the great lords were yet the great curse of the country.2 It is scarcely wonderful, if the most contradictory complaints were brought against Alfred’s government. The oppressive demands for service of every kind wearied his followers. The poor complained that they could get no justice, while the reeves saw with horror that forty-four of their number had been hanged on slight charges in a single year: one for punishing contempt of court with excessive severity, another for acquitting a sheriff who had seized goods to the king’s use unjustly. Alfred became unpopular, and nobles and people fell away from him for a time.t But necessity ! This is not certain, but is highly probable; the citizens could scarcely have left their walls undefended, and the analogies of the Anglo-Norman period favourthe supposition. See A. 8. Chron., A., 994, for the contempt with which the Danes regarded the civic militias. ?In toto illo regno preter illum solum, pauperes aut nullos aut etiam paucissimos habebant adjutores.—Asser, 497, M. B. 3 Miroir des Justices, p. 296, quoted by Lingard, vol. i., p. 178. 4 Athelweard, M. B., lib. iv.,p.517. Asser, M. B., p. 481, cum adhuc juvenis erat * * homines sui regni + * suum auxilium ac patrocinium implorabant ; 112 ROLLO’S ATTEMPT ON ENGLAND. brought them round his standard again, and he was able in later life to extend the powers of English royalty while he learned to administer them with greater gentleness. During the next seven years the contest continued without any decisive results. In Northumbria, Halfdene rewarded his followers with grants of land. The settlement was some- thing like that of the Norman conquest two hundred years later; and its extent may be gathered from the fact that in the four counties of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Cumberland, and Westmoreland, there are nearly a thousand places which have Dano-Norwegian names, against less than four hundred in all the rest of England! This endowing of the first adven- turers would no doubt stop the supply of recruits to Guthrum’s army. Guthrum himself seems to have felt the need of a larger basis of operations, and already in 874 a.p. had expelled the king of Mercia, and handed the province over to a creature of his own, “the unwise thane,” Ceolwulf. To add to Alfred’s perplexities a new sea-rover, Rollo, attacked the southern coast, 876 a.p. Fortunately he had only six ships; and the success of his first attempts was not such as to encourage a longer stay. The sea-rover looked longingly across the waters to the fruitful coasts of France; a dream interpreted by a captive promised success; and Alfred was induced to purchase peace by supply- ing him with fresh ships, which were nominally to be employed in trade.* Rollo departed to found a dynasty in Normandy. But ille vero noluit eos audire, &c. The passage is probably not by Asser, but the writer of St. Neot’s life lived near enough to Alfred’s times to know his char- acter by report. 1 Worsaae’s Danes in England, p. 71. Mr. H. Coleridge has given a list of more than a hundred words of distinctly Danish origin in Anglo-Saxon.— Philolog. Trans., 1859, pp. 18-31. Dr. Lottner has followed this up by a paper arguing that “are,” the plural present of “to be,” is Scandinavian.—Philolog. Trans., 1860, p. 63. 2 So, at least, say the vague and uncertain accounts of this transaction. The pretext was not an unlikely one, as the same vessels might then serve for com- merce or for war. (See p. 106.) Depping, however, assumes that commerce was the diplomatic phrase for piracy ; comments on Alfred’s wickedness, and accounts for it by the difficulties of his position and by English jealousy ALFRED OVERPOWERED YET UNSUBDUED. 113 the Saxons had no respite, for about this time Guthrum, finding that resistance was organized along the line of the Thames, had sailed round the coast, and disembarked his troops at Warham, in Dorsetshire. The Danes had now a new country to lay waste; they formed a junction with a fresh host of their countrymen,! and as they advanced into Devonshire were supported by the Britons of the district. Treaties, even con- firmed by hostages, bribes, battles, seemed alike unavailing to check the progress of the enemy. At last in 878 a.p. the Saxons, worn out with war and with no hearty love for their king, could no longer be mustered in force to meet the enemy ; the Danes overran Wessex securely, and Alfred wandered in the marshes of Somersetshire. National minstrels delighted to record afterwards, how the neatherd’s wife chided him for burning the cakes which he had been set to turn; and how, when he had shared his last loaf with a beggar, St. Cuth- bert appeared to him in a dream by night, and foretold his «speedy deliverance from his sufferings. Anyhow, in Easter 878 a.p. a new army began to gather round their king in the strong position of Athclney amid the Somersetshire marshes. Alfred led them through Selwood forest, and along the line of the Wiltshire hills, till they came in sight of the Danish host at Edington. The firm line of the Saxons sus- tamed without breaking the furious charges of the Danes; and the Northmen were routed with tremendous loss, and pur- sued to their entrenchments in Chippenham. After a fort- night’s siege the Danes purchased their lives, by terms which equally show the extremities to which they were reduced, and of France. He winds up with a romantic story from an unpublished MS., that Rollo afterwards returned, and assisted Alfred to subdue his rebellious subjects. The fiction may at least serve to show how widely the story of their disaffection at one time had spread.—Depping, Expeditions Maritimes des Normands, vol. i., chap. 6. Cf. Gul. Gemit, lib. ii., c. 4-13, where Alfred is called Athelstane ; and Dudo, who inverts their relations, and makes Alfred, whom he calls Alstem, assist Rollo with men and provisions against the Flemings.—Duchesne, p. 74. 1 Conjecit statum communem cum occidentali exercitu.—/ithelweard, lib. iv. M. B., 616. I 114 TREATY OF WEDMOR. the respect they had inspired. The treaty of Wedmor, July, 878 a.D., provided that the kingdoms of Wessex and Anglia should be separated by a line from the source of the Thames to the Lea, along the Lea to Bedford, and along the Ouse to Watling Street. Of course Halfdene’s kingdom of Nor- thumbria was no subject of negotiation ; but by this agreement the whole of Mercia was restored in its former dependent con- dition to Wessex. Freeman and villain were to be rated at equal values in the two nations; and the system of com- purgation was to be common to both. As a pledge that — they would keep the peace, the Danes gave hostages while they received none. But the most important consequence of their defeat, perhaps a condition of the treaty, was that Guthrum consented to be baptized. Alfred stood as his god- father. Thirty of the chief men among the Danes followed their chief’s example ; and paganism was no longer the battle- ery of the Danes in Anglia. The great result of the treaty of Wedmor was to ensure quiet in the country itself. But England could never be safe from attack, so long as piracy was the great profession in the north. In 885 a.p., a fresh body of sea-rovers landed in Kent. They were driven back from the walls of Rochester by the citizens, and took shelter in Anglia, relying on the sympathies of their countrymen. But the English fleet pursued and defeated them at the mouth of the Stour; and though the conquerors as they returned home sustained a reverse from a fresh squadron of adventurers, they had broken the power of the enemy for a time. Eight years later, 893 a.p., Hastings,’ who had gathered most of the pirates of the time under his flag, established his troops in for: tified works at the mouths of the Lymneand Thames. The danger was great, for the Danes of Anglia and Northumbria, in defiance of sworn treaties, prepared to assist theircountrymen. But the resources of the Anglo-Saxon king were also greater than they 1It is uncertain whether this was the great sea-rover of that name or an- other, possibly his son. See Mr. Coxe’s note ; Wendover, vol. i., p. 349, and Mr. Hardy’s note; Malmesbury, vol. i., p. 182. * INVASION OF HASTINGS. 115 had been in his first struggles. Wherever the Danes appeared in the open field they were beaten, and they never succeeded in taking a walled town; but they did fearful mischief in the open country, sailing round the coasts and attacking Exeter and Chester. At last in 896.4.p.,they ventured some 20 miles up the.Lea; Alfred rode to inspect their position ; and hit upon the expedient of diverting the course of the river, so as to strand their ships.!' Hastings and his men were now glad to escape into the friendly Anglian districts; and in the summer of the next year, having made such shift fora fleet as they best could, they set sail for France. They had made little profit on nearly four years’ stay in England. But they had kindled anew the love of piracy; and the southern. shores for another year were infested with little squadrons of from three to twenty ships. Some of these were destroyed in battle; twenty were sunk in a storm; and the crews of two that were cast on the Sussex coast, were very deservedly hanged at Winchester. It confounds all ordinary notions to know that these desolat- ing wars had rather affected the civilization than the wealth of the kingdom. Asser, the native it is true of a poor country, Wales, assigns the great riches of the people as a reason why the monastic profession had declined in honour among the Saxons. Still more wonderful is it to hear of Alfred, with the limited revenue of a Saxon king, initiating and often complet- ing great public works; restoring London, which had been burned down’, with suitable magnificence; building stone 1 Tt has been surmised, with great probability, that Alfred derived the idea of this from the story of Cyrus draining the Gyndes, which he had himself translated.—Alfred’s Orosius, book ii., chap. 4-5. ? How London was burned down is uncertain. thelweard says, ‘“ obside- tur a rege ZElfredo urbs Lundonia.”—M.B., 517. Roger of Wendover gives a strange account of Alfred’s preparations for a siege, of the citizens throwing open the gates, and of Alfred then restoring the city.—Voli., p. 345. It seems that in 872..p., London was the head-quarters of the Danes (A. S. Chron., A. 872), and this might account either for the city wanting repair, or for its citizens being in the Danish interest, according as we suppose that the Northmen took it, or made terms with the townsmen. In this latter case, the fire may have been accidental, or may have been Alfred’s work. The Saxon Chronicle, A. 116 ALFRED'S LAWS. palaces, and gilding or otherwise decorating their halls. He sent costly gifts to Rome, and even, it is said, to the shrine of St. Thomas in India. His munificence to his friends was on an equal scale; Asser, in addition to two monas- teries, was presented with a rich silken pallium and with a porter’s load of incense. The explanation probably is, that wealth up to a certain pomt was a fixed quantity in a state, consisting not as now of factories, farms, and busi- nesses, which a few years’ neglect would ruin, but of plate and jewels and wrought fabrics, which a conquest only trans- ferred from one man to another. Perhaps, too, the rent of the king’s tenants was frequently paid in labour, and to employ this would be a matter, not of expense, but of economy. Alfred’s fame as a man has obscured his position in history asa king; his grateful people‘in the after time ascribed to him whatever they found of good or great in the institutions of their land. Probably nothing bas been thus attributed without some real fact underlying the mythical narrative ; but it is not always easy to disentangle one from the other. As a lawgiver, he seems to have been the first of our English kings who distin- guished the great principles of law from the local customs that modified their application. His code may be said to consist of three parts. The first is an abstract of Hebrew law, indicating the divine foundations of society, and blending the secular view of offences as damage with the Christian view of them as sin. The conception of the state as an ideal commonwealth, which regarded the right living of man as its first object, is therefore due to Alfred; and he indicates a standard so high that he could not dream of enforcing it—the gradual extinction of slavery, the duty of hospitality, and the Christian law of love. In the second part are contained the general principles of Eng- lish law, put down a little confusedly, as the witan sanctioned or the scribe copied them out. The king is now for the first time treated as the inviolable head of the state, to plot against 886, only says, “That same year king Alfred repaired London; and all the English submitted to him.” FRANK-PLEDGE SYSTEM AND JURIES. 117 whom is death. Loyalty to the great lords is established upon the same footing. The frank-pledge system, by which every man was bound to give some guarantee for his good conduct, is spoken of for the first time as of universal obligation. The right of feud is limited, and the powers of the courts of justice are extended.! An over love of legality, the curse of these and of later times, is apparent in these regulations, and was partly perhaps due to the remembrance of late disorders. Lastly, Alfred subjoins a copy of the ancient laws of Wessex, no doubt to explain the customs of that province. Unfortunately, we do not possess a similar transcript of the Mercian code, which was probably appended to the copy for that province. The statement of popular histories, that Alfred divided England? into shires and hundreds, has been generally rejected by modern scholars. The origin of those divisions was cer- tainly independent of the central authority, and coeval with the Saxon settlement. Moreover, shires are mentioned in Ine’s laws, and names, such as shire-oak, and shire-bourne, attest their antiquity.* Perhaps the enforcement of the frank-pledge system, which had hitherto been irregular and voluntary, and which was connected with these divisions, has been confounded with their establishment.* But it is not impossible that the old divisions had in some instances been effaced by the late wars, and were now restored. Perhaps, too, the use of the word shire had originally been confined to Wessex, and the parts bordering on it, and was now made general.® That Alfred introduced trial by jury, is even more certainly false. The appointment of a distinct and popular magistracy, to determine questions of fact as distinguished from questions of law, belongs to the Anglo-Norman times, when Roman law was studied as a science, and was probably derived from a 1 Laws of Alfred, 4, 27, 28, 37, 42; Laws of Edward, 4; A. S. Laws, vol. i., pp. 64, 79, 80, 87, 91, 163, ? This statement is derived from Ingulfus—Gale, vol. i., p. 28. 3 Ine’s Laws, 39; A. 8. Laws, vol. i. p. 127; Cod. Dip., 951, &e. * Malmesbury’s language seems to favour this supposition.—Lib. ii., p. 186. 5 See, however, Kemble’s Saxons in England, vol. i., pp. 247, 248. 118 ESTABLISHMENT OF A NAYY. Latin original. It cannot be traced further back than to the thirteenth century.' Of Alfred’s political capacity there can be no doubt. Wield- ing only the resources of a third of the kingdom, he contended against the most powerful foe then known to the nations of Europe, exacted honourable peace, and literally enlarged his dominions by Mercia, which had been free rather than depen- dent under his brothers, and under him became dependent rather than free. By forcing his cities to repair their walls, he foiled the furious ravages of Hastings. But above all, to Alfred belongs the credit of having “first seen that an island must be defended by sea. Had he merely established a national navy where none existed, it would be sufficient proof of his states- man-like sagacity. But he seems further to have discerned the modern theory, by which war is only a question of momen- tum and impact. The ships of the Danes were constructed pri- marily as transports to carry the greatest number of men, and as platforms from which they might fight. Alfred built a fleet on a new model of his own, by which the ships were narrower, and of double the length, and impelled by sixty instead of twenty rowers; they were thus able to pursue, overtake, and run down the enemy. It was a revolution in naval warfare.’ Alfred’s zeal for learning is one of his most honourable titles to remembrance. Incessant war had made every man a soldier. When the king looked round England, after the peace of Wedmor, he could find no man south of the Thames who understood the Latin in which he prayed ;3 and few, indeed, were the learned men among the Mercians. He himself was probably unable to read or write to his last days, though he repeatedly put himself under masters, and perhaps got so far as to attach a certain sense to the words in the little book of prayers which he carried about him.‘ 1 Hallam’s Middle Ages, vol. ii., note viii. 2 A. S. Chron., A. 897. 2 Deneulf, bishop of Winchester, is said to have been a swineherd origi- nally. Alfred, falling in with him, perceived his talent, caused him to be educated, and finally made him bishop.—B. de Cotton. de Episc., p. 376. 4 The history of Asser, in the patch-work form which has come down to us, REVIVAL OF LETTERS. 119 He made it the first care of his years of peace to attract scholars from old Saxony, from Gaul, and from Ireland, to the court ; and he founded schools at Shaftesbury and Athelney, with perhaps another at Oxford,! as centres of liberal learning. Even scholars as well as teachers were imported from other countries when the love of learning proved deficient among the Saxons. But above all, Alfred served in the great army of learning himself as a translator. His translations do not pre- tend to servile accuracy: sometimes he expands to explain a difficulty, or inserts a fuller account from his own knowledge, or from the report of travellers at his court; more often he epitomizes, as if he were giving the pith of a paragraph that had just been read out to him. The books he chose were the best fitted of all to form the library of an Englishman in the ninth century: they consist of a history of the world on Christian principles by Orosius; the History of the Anglo- Saxon Church, by Bede; the Consolation of Philosophy, by Boetius. The historical and ethical character of the king’s mind is apparent in his choice of authors. Pauli’s Life of Alfred, p. 384. M. Pauli adopts the idea from Bicknell’s Life of Alfred the Great, pp. 290-294. XII. THE SAXON SOVEREIGNTY. ACCESSION AND REIGN OF EDWARD.—ATHELSTANE 8 PARENTAGE.—SUBJUGATION OF NORTHUMBRIA.—RELATIONS OF ENGLAND WITH THE CONTINENT.—ATHEL- STANE’S LAWS.—EDMUND.—EDRED,— REVIVAL OF THE MILITARY SPIRIT. Tuer sons of Ethelred had submitted without opposition to their uncle’s sovereignty ; but on Alfred’s death, 901 a.v., Aithel- wald put in his claim as heir to the eldest son of Athelwulf. The witan, however, confirmed the succession in Alfred’s line, partly, no doubt, influenced by the glory of their late king ; partly by respect for Edward’s ability, of which he had given signal proof in the defeat of Hastings at Farnham.! The decision is a memorable instance of the power claimed by the witan to appoint their king. -Aithelwald, a licentious, violent man, retired into Kast Anglia, and allied himself with the Danes. The restless warriors acknowledged his title as lord- paramount, crossed the marches again, and penetrated into Berkshire, laymg waste as they went, till recalled by the news that Edward was ravaging Anglia. The Saxon king resolved to withdraw without a battle; but the men of Kent, who formed a separate corps, refused to obey orders, and were overtaken by the enemy. The victory remained with the superior numbers of the Danes, but they bought it with the loss of their king and his chief nobles. Fortunately, the Pretender Aithelwald was among the slain. Edward followed up and consolidated his father’s conquests. On the death of his brother-in-law, the king of Mercia, 910 A.D., Edward annexed the province, allowing it, indeed, to ' Aithelweard, lib. iv., M.B., p. 518. 124 EDWARD’S CONQUESTS. remain under the government of his sister, the dowager-queen, Aéthelfled ; but incorporating London and Oxford at once, and the whole of the province finally, when Athelfled died in 919 A.D. Between 910 a.v. and 921 a.p., there was almost incessant war with the Danes of the north and east, with Danish sea- rovers, and with the Welsh. -Aithelfled seems to have been as good a general as her brother; after bearing one child, a daughter, she had of her own accord renounced motherhood ; and now that her husband’s death and her brother’s appoint- ment made her lady of her own land, she did justice to the appointment in several hard-fought battles: defeating the Welsh at Brecknock, and storming Derby, which its Danish citizens defended with obstinate courage. It was part of Edward's policy to consolidate all his conquests with walled towns. The advantage of this was soon seen in the repeated failures sustained by the enemy ; in one last effort, 921 a.p., the Danes attempted to destroy four of the fortresses built against them; they were foiled, and made submission from Northamptonshire southward. In the three next years, Edward penetrated to Manchester and Stamford. At his death in 925 a.p., Northumbria and Wales were tributary, and most of the country south of the Humber might be regarded as a single state. Edward’s successor, Athelstane, was his son by a first marriage with a woman not of high birth ; Anglo-Saxon legend says a shepherd woman. It was doubtful whether the son of such an union had any right to succeed. But Athelstane had been the favourite of his grandfather Alfred, who delighted to see the young prince dressed up in the royal purple, with studded belt, and sword in a gold sheath. After Alfred’s death, the boy had been brought up by his aunt Atthelfled, whose memory was still dear to all Englishmen, and especially to all Mercians. Lastly, Edward, anticipating dispute, had expressly declared Athelstane his successor; and Athelstane’s age and reputation of themselves pointed him out as fitter for royalty than his young half-brothers. Accordingly, first the Mercian and then the West Saxon witan acknowledged him as their ATHELSTANE’S DOMINION. 125 king. Unhappily, the AAtheling Alfred, in spite of the judge- ment of the nobles, attempted to seize his brother in Win- chester, and unfit him for the crown by putting out his eyes. The plot was discovered, but as Alfred protested his innocence, he was sent to Rome to stand trial before the Pope. As he took the holy wafer in his mouth, in pledge that he was un- justly accused, the judgement of God overtook him: he fell to the ground, and died two days afterwards. The death of a younger brother, Edwin, at sea, 933 a.p., has been ascribed in legend to Athelstane’s jealousy ; history knows nothing of the crime, and it would have been useless while other sons of Edward survived. Athelstane carried the nation forward in its career of con- quest. His sister Edith, in the first year of his reign, was married to Sigtric, king of the western and northern portions of Northumbria! Sigtric had been baptized as a condition of the alliance, but he very soon deserted his wife, and relapsed into paganism.? His death, and Athelstane’s occupation of his king- dom, are events that probably have a close connection with the apostasy and insult to the Saxon princess. Of the sons of Sigtric, Anlaf fled into Ireland; Godfrid, after a vain attempt to recover York from its Danish prince, Ragnald, appeared at Athelstane’s court, and was hospitably entertained. But in four days, from suspicion or mere restlessness, he fled and took up the trade of a sea-king. Athelstane now completed the subjugation of the north and west. Constantine, king of Scotland, and Hoel-Dda, the great Welsh lawgiver, were forced to do homage to the English king; the Britons of the west were made to retire from Exeter, and to take the Tamar instead of the Exe as a boundary; while an attempt on the part of the Scotch to shake off the English yoke, was punished ' Northumbria was now split up into three principal dominions: East York- shire, including York, had been conquered by Ragnald, a Danish adventurer, 912 A.D.; Cumberland was governed by a British prince, Owen; while the remain- ing provinces were those which Sigtric’s sons laid claim to.—Palgrave’s Eng. Com., ccexvi.; Lappenberg, band i., p. 382. 2 Wendover, vol i., p. 385. 126 BATTLE OF BRUNAN-BEORH. by an expedition that penetrated to Caithness. At last, the oppressed nations combined in one vigorous effort to destroy the Saxon power. Anlaf appeared in the Humber with a fleet of more than six hundred ships from Ireland; while Con- stantine of Scotland, and Owen, a petty prince of the Cumbrians, effected a junction with him from the north and west. But the invaders were detained by the siege of York, which remained faithful to Athelstane ;! and by the time the city was reduced, the Saxon king had crossed the Humber with his army. Like Baldulph? and Alfred, Anlaf is said to have explored his enemy’s camp in the disguise of a harper; and northern tradition commemorates the fidelity of a soldier, who recognized his former lord, but disdained to denounce him till he had quitted the camp. Neither skill nor courage saved Anlaf from an overwhelming defeat at Brunan-beorh, near Beverley ; and Saxon song long commemorated the field on which five princes were routed, with greater slaughter than had been known since the Saxon invasion. The relations of England with the continent had long since been more intimate than might appear at first sight. In the seventh century,> it was the custom in Northumbria for many Angles to send their children to be educated in French convents. Before Offa’s accession, we find Pepin sending gifts to Eadbert, a king of Northumbria.* This con- nection with the northern province was continued in the reign of Charlemagne, who despatched an embassy with presents to king Ethelred, and would have taken measures to avenge his death by rebels, had not Alcuin interposed (796 a.p.) A little later (808 a.p.) the emperor actually interfered to procure the restoration of Eardulf, a Northumbrian king, to his throne. If we pass to the monarchies of the south, the rupture which ensued when proposals of alliance with Charlemagne were rejected, shows how closely learning and commerce were ' The siege and the loyalty are explained by the fact, that Ragnald had won his principality from Anlaf’s father. 2 Geoffrey of Monmouth, lib. ix., cap 1. 3 Bede, H. E., lib. iii., cap. 8. ‘Sim. Dun., Hist. Dun., ii. 3; Twyeden, p. 11. FOREIGN ALLIANCES. 127 allied in the two countries! Ethelwulf’s marriage to a daughter of Charles the Bald, indicated that England was rising, and that France was sinking, relatively, in the scale of nations. Alfred, however, found no more noble match than a Count of Flanders for his daughter. But under Edward and Athelstane, England had risen to the first rank among nations. Accordingly, of seven daughters whom Edward left behind him, Eadgiva was married to Charles the Simple, Carlovingian and titular king of France ; Eadhilda to Hugh the Great, founder of the intrusive Capetian dynasty; Edith to Otho, emperor of Germany; Elgiva to Louis, king of Arles in Aquitaine; and Adive to the nameless head of the house of Montmorency.® Nor were these diliances barren of result; Hadgiva’s son, Louis d’Outremer, brought to England and there educated, was 1 Kinhardi Annales, A. 808 ; Alcuin, Epist. 47, p. 57. In Carlovingian ro- mance, Charlemagne is made to conquer England. Diplomatic writers of the 16th and 17th century, assert gravely that our kings, down to William the Conqueror, did homage to the kings of France ; and Mezeray intimates his belief (tom. i., p.197,) that England was included in Charlemagne’s empire. M. Depping, in accounting for Alfred’s imaginary compact with Rollo, that he should invade France, quietly observes, ‘Tl régnait de la jalousie entre les rois Carlovingiens, et les rois Anglo-Saxons. Les prétentions qu’ énoncaient autrefois lors de leur sacre les rois de France sur les royaumes des Merciens et des Anglo-Saxons se rapportent évidemment 4 des contestations trés anciennes entre les souverains des deux pays.”—Expeditions des Normands, tom. i., pp. 215, 216. French authors are too apt to forget that the imperial pretensions of Charlemagne devolved, not on the kings of France, but on the emperors of Germany. The source of M. Depping’s mistake is curious. It seems that about 980 a.v., Ratold, abbot of Corbie, caused the Anglo-Saxon form of consecration to be copied for the use of the French kings. It is difficult to know why this was done, as aservice of their own is preserved in Baluzius. The scribe, probably not understanding Latin, copied servilely the titles of the kings of England, inserting at the eame time the French titles which his superior had given him ; thus: quem in regnum Albionis totius videlicet Francorum eligimus. This form was used as late as the year 1365 a.p.; the mistake was repeated in the new copy then made; and has naturally misled M. Depping, who was not aware that the service had been first used at king Ethelred’s consecration. See Lingard’s A. 8. Church, vol. ii., p. 368. 2 It appears from a charter that Bouchard, the first known count of Montmorency, was nephew by his mother to Edred, and therefore to Athelstane. During Edred’s reign (953 a.p.) Bouchard visited England, and brought away the relics of St. Payace, and a certain number of monks from Pershore, in Wor- 128 ATHELSTANE’S LAWS. restored by Athelstane’s influence, and perhaps partly by English arms, to the throne, which his uncles Otho and Hugh had assailed.1 The power of the dukes of Normandy already appeared to threaten English interests. Athelstane entertained at his court the exiled Alan of Brittany, whom Rollo had dispossessed of his dominions; and when the young prince had come to man’s estate, assisted him with English arms to recover his inheritance. Nevertheless, later on we find Athelstane on friendly terms with the duke of Normandy, who co-operated with the English policy in behalf of the Car- lovingian line. Perhaps both countries preferred that a weak sovereign should reign in Paris. Athelstane’s laws exhibit in a fuller degred@tthe same tenden- cies that prevailed under Alfred. They begin with enforcing the obligation to pay tithes and the Martinmas dues to the church ; and Athelstane charges the royal revenue with the support of a pauper to every two of his farms. The frank-pledge or frith-guild system had been vigorously enforced under Edward ; its laws are codified under Athelstane; and every freeman is now obliged to belong to some guild or to some lord.* The beginnings of feudalism appear in a regulation which forbids the nobles to receive the vassals of other men, except with the leave of their first lord. The restriction of all trade, except for articles under twenty pence value, to the cities, is a great step towards the rigid protective system which another century saw established ; and the same tendency appears in a law that two horses are to be kept to every plough, and that none are to be sold beyond sea. The processes of law seem to have been found ineffective in many cases, for a law is passed fining all who absent themselves three times from the gemot cestershire.—Bouquet, vol. ix., p. 622, cited in the Art de Vérifier les dates, tom. xii, Art. Montmorency. Adive accompanied her sister to the German court, and we can account for every other known sister of Edred. 1 Lappenberg, band i., pp. 380, 381. 2 Laws of Edward, 4; Laws of Athelstane, 2,8; A. 8. Laws, vol. i., pp. 161, 201, 205. 3 Laws of Athelstane, 22; cf. Laws of Alfred, 87; A. S. Laws, vol. i, pp. 211, 87. REIGN OF EDMUND. 129 to which they have been summoned.' Lastly, as trade is spreading, a regulation of the comage has become necessary ; it is decreed that all money be of uniform weight, that it be only struck at certain recognized mints in privileged cities ;* and the illicit coiner is to have his hand struck off. The larger powers of the laws and the moral view of offences are clearly unfavourable to mercy no less than to liberty. Athelstane’s strong, stern dominion, was endured with im- patience by his new subjects; and his death, 940 a.p., proved the signal for a rising. The new king, Athelstane’s brother Ed- mund, found himself in a few weeks menaced by a revolt which was headed by the pagan Anlaf, who sought to recover his inheritance, and favoured by the archbishop of York, who preferred the interests of Anglian independence to a Christian but Saxon king. A great battle at Tamworth ended in a decisive triumph for the Dano-Anglian forces: the provinces north and east of Watling Street were ceded to Anlaf, and Edmund was reduced for a time to the dominions which Alfred had enjoyed forty years before. But the death of Anlaf a year later gave Edmund an opportunity of retrieving his losses, which he did the more readily as York was still the metropolis of a separate principality, which divided the strength of the north. The inhabitants of the five Danish towns, Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, Stamford, and Lincoln, were éxpelled and replaced by Englishmen; the two princes of the north, \nlaf the younger and Reginald, were compelled to do homage and embrace Christianity ; and the archbishop of York was con- firmed, probably by some concessions, in a more loyal allegiance.* The Cumbrian dynasty was next reduced, and the province made over to Scotland as the price of homage and support. But in the midst of his victories, Edmund perished in a brawl at his own table. Liofa, a noted outlaw, had entered the 1 Laws of Athelstane, 20; A. S. Laws, vol. i., p. 209. So in Anglo- Norman times there were three reasonable essoins or causes of default from a summons.—Glanville, book i., chap. vii. ? A. 8. Chron., A., 943. 3 Aithelweard, lib. iv., M. B., p. 520. K 130 NORTHUMBRIA REDUCED TO A PROVINCE. royal hall,! and seated himself at table; Edmund interfered in person to turn him out, and was stabbed to the heart, 946 a.p. By a natural arrangement, Edmund’s brother, Edred, was appointed king, as Edwi and Edgar, the sons of Edmund, were minors. The new king inherited the warlike ability, the devout tendencies, and unhappily also the sickly con- stitution, of his race. The nine years of his reign were on the whole prosperous, although the Northumbrians, in default of their natural leaders, rose up again in insurrection under Eric, whom his father Harald Blaatand of Denmark had sent over to seek his fortunes. The archbishop of York again joined the insurgents. But the native prince, Anlaf’s son Maco, did not submit to be despoiled of his inheritance, and failing to cope with Eric by force of arms, assassinated him in a desert place, by the treachery of one of his gesith. dred profited by these dissensions, and in two campaigns laid waste the whole of the north; threw Wulfstan of York into prison, carried off the chief nobles as hostages, divided the province into shires and baronies, and entrusted it to the charge of Osulf, the traitor, who had betrayed Eric. From this time forward, Nor- thumbria, parcelled out into earldoms, ceases to have any proper history of its own, and is only a turbulent part of the Saxon dominion. The martial character of the Saxon line since the time of AXthelwulf, had re-acted upon the court; and religion and war had become for a time as closely united in popular estimation as religion and peace had been under the first converts. The necessities of the national struggles, and the peculiar character of the war waged against the Danes, whose treaties were never so sacred as when they were guaranteed by their kings’ baptisms, had no doubt contributed to this result. Turketul, 1The hall was open to all guests. In the Frithiof-Saga, Frithiof, a stranger and a beggar, enters king Ring’s hall. Liofa’s offence lay in appearing while he was under ban. 2 Lappenberg, Eng. Gesch., bandi., p. 92. 3 Palerave’s Eng. Com., p. cecxyiii. EUROPEAN INFLUENCES. 131 chancellor under three kings, who had led the London militia at Brunan-beorh, and who at last resigned his dignities to become abbot of the ruined monastery of Croyland, is a good instance of the way in which secular offices were discharged by men who at another time would have shrunk from performing the duties of citizens! It was not in the nature of things that this should last: if religion was the path to promotion, the chureh would either become worldly or it would absorb the state. Both effects were in fact produced ; religion was a more active principle than before; and worldly profit came to be connected with its profession. The results were seen more fully in the next reign. Neither thought nor scholarly learning could flourish amid the din of arms. But the European connections of Athelstane%seem to have drawn the attention of Englishmen to the splendour and cere- monial of foreign courts; an inflated Byzantine style charac- terizes the charters of the tenth century; the Saxon kings call themselves basileus and imperator; while a pompous humility is affected in the style of the English clergy.2 If the laws of Hoel-Dda were really derived from Anglo-Saxon practice, it would seem as if the English court had affected the minute etiquette and unmeaning dignities of the em- ' perors of the east.2 We may hope that English good sense a little tempered these extravagances. They are so entirely exotic, that they do not, I” think, indicate the attempt of weakness to disguise itself in purple ; rather they are an affec- tation of forms supposed to be diplomatically correct ; and their chief interest is that they show in unbroken continuity the conviction which six centuries of habit impressed upon Europe, that all dominion, to be lawful, must be derived from Rome. 1 So, too, St. Odo is said to have been present, praying, though not fighting, at Brunan-beorh.—Anglia Sacra, vol. ii., pp. 80, 81. 2 Ego Alfred episcopus hoc deo instigante donum, &c. Ego Dunstan indig- nus Abbas hance, &c.—Cod. Dip., vol. i., p. xevii. 3 The Venedotian code gives the titles, duties, privileges, and perquisites of forty-two officers, male and female, attached to the royal household of Wales.— Ancient Laws of Wales, vol. i., pp. 4-77. XIII. DUNSTAN. e EARLY LIFE OF DUNSTAN.—STATE OF THE CHURCH.—REASONS FOR CLERICAL CELIBACY.—QUARREL WITH EDWI.—EDWI’S CONDUCT AND DEPOSITON,— CHARACTER OF EDGAR AND HIS REIGN.—EDWARD THE MARTYR.—RE- ACTION AGAINST THE MONASTIC MOVEMENT.—DUNSTAN’S TRIUMPH.—MUR- DER OF EDWARD. For nearly forty years after Edred’s death, the history of England is no longer that of its kings, but of a religious reformer, who forced a change of the greatest moment upon an unwilling nation ; and having been the trusted servant of one king, deprived .a second of half his dominions, established a third on the throne, and moulded the character both of that sovereign and of his successor. Unhappily Dunstan’s biography has suffered as much from the praise of his friends, as from the censure of his enemies; and the whole history of the | struggle which placed him in power, must be constructed out of conjectural criticisms. The very records of his early life are disfigured with improbable miracles, which even Catholic biographers are glad quietly to pass by. Dunstan was born! in the reign of Edward, and is said to 1925 a.p., is given as the date of his birth by Osbern, Anglia Sacra, vol. ii., p. 90; and A.S. Chron., A., 925. This date cannot be reconciled with the early accounts of Dunstan’s life, which state that Athelstane employed him in public af- fairs, or with Dunstan’s own speech at the Synod of Calne, 978 a.p., where he complains of being an old man. Nor does it seem likely that Edward would have offered him a bishopric, if he was only 28 in 953 a.p., the year of the bishop of Crediton’s death, thirty being the canonical age at which priests’ orders were given —Stevenson’s Introduction to Bede, pp.ix.,x. Moreover, Malmesbury says that Dunstan was abbot of Glastonbury for twenty-two years. This seems to extend down to 962 a.p., when he was made archbishop of Canterbury, the DUNSTAN’S YOUTH AND TRAINING. 133 have been of Saxon extraction, and nephew of Athelm, arch- bishop of Canterbury. Placed for education in the school of Glastonbury, the boy studied with so much zeal, that his nervous system was prostrated by a fever, attended with som- nambulism. Through his uncle’s influence, he was early intro- duced at court; his nature was passionate and artistic; his tastes secular ; he delighted in music and ladies’ society ;! his fondness for the old ballad literature exposed him to the charge of using pagan charms: the suspicion was not in itself unna- tural, for many heathen rhymes had been degraded to uses of sorcery.2 A more likely danger for such a man as Dunstan, lay in the attractions of marricd life; and although destined for orders from youth upwards, and strongly urged by his uncle to make his profession, he for some time hesitated, arguing that a Christian life in the world was the higher and nobler discipline.? At this critical period he was again visited by illness, which seemed the judgement of Heaven; his uncle improved the opportunity, and Dunstan rose from his sick- bed pledged to a monastic life. He threw himself into his new vocation with all the energy of a man who feels that he has left behind him whatever of life was most valuable ; and building a little cell more than half under-ground, near the church of Winchester, divided his time, as the Bene- dictine rule required, between prayer and manual labour, chiefly as a smith. Later legend told of the strange sounds that were heard issuing from the saint’s retreat at night; and of his grim answer to the enquiring multitude, “The devil hath tried to drive me out of my cell. Beware, for if ye cannot endure his voice, how will ye bear to look upon him hereafter ? ” usurpation of the pseudo-Abbas not being reckoned. Even with this allowance, it is clear that his birth must be put back several years.—De Antiq. Glas. Ecc., Gale, vol. iii., pp. 817, 319. 1 Bridferth, Acta Sanct., Mai. 19. 2 Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie, pp. 1180-1182. 3 Respondit ille excellentioris gratiz esse, qui in secculo consenuit, et tamen que monacho digna sunt fecit.—Osbern, Anglia Sacra, vol. ii., p. 95. 4 He is said to have made two large bells for Abingdon monastery.—Monas- ticon, vol. i., p. 516. 134 EARLY MONACHISM IN ENGLAND. It is easy to understand that Dunstan’s solitude, like that of Luther at the Wartburg, was peopled by the creations of a dis- ordered fancy ; and that the struggle between good and evil, intensified by his solitary life, would present itself in a drama- tic embodiment to one who believed that the angels of God and Satan were always watching around him. Under Edred, Dunstan speedily rose into notice and dignity. By his own wish, for a bishopric was offered him, he remained abbot of Glastonbury. His intention no doubt was to reform the monastic rule; which had gone through several phases of prosperity and decline. The first missionaries to the Saxons had been monks, and a central conventual establishment, from which priests went out on circuits to the remote parishes, had formed the nucleus of every diocese.! Gradually monasteries had been established on a rule resembling the Benedictine, but modi- fied as he thought best by their English founder, Bennet.? Un- fortunately the ideas of the eighth century, while they made the alienation of public land for private purposes difficult, favoured it in the interests of religion ; and it became the custom for the great nobles to obtain grants from the witan on condition of founding monasteries or convents, over which they them- selves presided, superintending the discipline, but living within the walls with their wives and families. We scarcely need Bede’s evidence to be assured that this practice gave rise to gross irregularities, especially when convents were the frequent resting-places of rich and royal travellers. It was a minor but a great evil, that the state was thus deprived of its means for maintaining and rewarding soldiers, and the fact helps to explain the repeated triumphs of invaders.? When the country at last recovered itself under Alfred, the Chris- tian church had almost to be reconstructed; it was no ques- tion at first of restoring monasteries, but of providing parish priests and schoolmasters. A liturgical service like that of the missal, has the great advantage that it makes no 1 Kemble’s Saxons in England, vol. ii., pp. 414, 415. * Lingard’s Anglo-Saxon Church, vol. i., p. 208. > Bede, Ad Ecgbert Antist., ss, 11, 12. QUESTION OF CLERICAL MARRIAGES. 135 high demands upon intellect; a number of untrained men were hastily ordained to supply vacancies; and were allowed to retain their wives by a breach of early custom. Similarly, but with less reason, the members of the old monasteries trans- formed themselves into canons,! and asserted their right to marry. The innovation was probably on the whole beneficial to public morality ; for there is evidence, too full to be doubted, and too monstrous to be detailed, that the enforcement of celi- bacy among men with the passions of savages, and without the restraining influences of civilized life and public opinion, had produced a fearful harvest of crime. But the change had sprung from circumstances, not from conviction ; it had never been sanctioned by the church; the conscience of the best men of the time was against clerical marriages; and a certain sense of guilt seems accordingly to have demoralized those who accepted the new privilege; they even appear to have availed themselves of the doubtful legality of their marriage contracts to annul them at pleasure and take second wives.? More- over, earnest men complained that the priest no longer thought of enriching the church, but of -providing for his family ; and without reference to the questionable duty of endowing the establishment, it is easy to see that the incomes calculated to support single men, would leave little margin for charity, when strained to sustain households. Lastly, the tendency of those times on the continent and in England was to feudal- ism: the fiefs, granted in theory for a life’s service, in prac- tice became everywhere hereditary. No good man could desire to see hereditary bishops and abbots, enjoying the highest rewards of learning and piety. Merely from a political point of view, to preserve a counterpoise to the state, and an out- let for the intellectual energy of the lower classes, it was of the highest importance that the church should not be feudalized. The most certain means to save it was to hew down the evil, 1 The tendency to this change was very general.—Alcuini Epist., 23, 158; Asser, M. B., p. 493. ? Ethelred, ii., 5; A.S. Laws, vol. i, p. 317. “ Some priests have two wives and more.”—Wolstan, 614, quoted by Lingard, A. 8. Church, vol. ii., p. 296. 1386 CHARACTERS OF DUNSTAN AND EDWI. root and branch—to prevent the priest from having a family. Considering all these practical reasons, which no clergyman could then fail to appreciate keenly ; considering, moreover, that in the re-action against the gross vices of the flesh which the polished Roman society had practised, the superstitious. purism of the Essenes and Montanists had been taken up into popular Christianity ; we can hardly wonder that Dunstan and the best men of his time should make it the great work of their lives to put down marriage among the clergy. That their very triumph laid the foundation for other forms of evil and misery is certain. That Dunstan’s character was disfigured by little affectations, was impulsive and wanted quiet strength, was harsh when he thought God’s cause in danger, and superstitiously prone to mistake his own views for God’s will, may be established from his words and acts. But he belongs none the less to the splendid army of idealists, who risk everything to destroy the habits in which vulgar men find happiness; it was only the fault of a narrow intellect, if the man was greater in himself than in his works. Dunstan was summoned to attend the death-bed of Edred, 955 a.p., and receive the last instructions about some pro- perty that had been confided to his care. He arrived too late to find his patron alive, but thought himself qualified by a knowledge of Edred’s intentions to discharge the trust.! The new king, Edwi, was a boy of only eighteen ;. the secular historian of the times calls him loveable ;? the monk- ish biographers of Dunstan describe him as weak and pro- fligate. Both accounts may be easily reconciled. Nearly fifty charters of donations to friends and monasteries m a single year attest Edwi’s liberality; but at the same time indicate a weak and profuse prince; it would scarcely be won- derful if such a man, so early king, and endowed with singular beauty, attracted and yielded to the love of women in times which were certainly rather devout than moral. But Edwi’s 1 Allen’s Enquiry, pp. 238, 239. 2 AAthelweard, M. B., p. 520. 3 Cod. Dip., vols. ii. and vy. . QUARREL WITH EDWI. 137 great offence in the eyes of the church was an uncanonical marriage with his cousin. On the very day of the coronation, he deserted his guests for his wife; the nobles murmured, and Dunstan and Bishop Cynesige penetrated into the king’s apartment, and brought him back into the banquet-hall ; Anglo-Saxon decorum was scandalized with the news that their sovereign, probably tired out with the day’s ceremony, had thrown the crown of state upon the ground. The breach between the king and queen and Dunstan was now irreparable. Edwi demanded an account of the treasures confided to Dun- stan, and when the abbot refused, sequestered his property. The Glastonbury canons took part with royalty against their severe and unpopular abbot; Dunstan was deprived of his preferment, and fled in haste to Flanders, fearing personal violence (956 a.p.) That Edwi now persecuted the monks is false. There were only two monasteries in the kingdom, those of Glaston- bury and Abingdon, in which the Benedictine rule was established, and Edwi was the benefactor of both.t But being himself uncanonically married, he was not likely to enforce measures against the married clergy whose crime was his own; and the refusal to reform irregularities was no doubt considered persecution by the high churchmen. The right to certain property had been contested, during more than thirty years, between his grandmother Eadgifa and a Kentish landowner; Edwi gave sentence against the queen- dowager ; the case was one in which each party swore flatly against the other, and Eadgifa’s best title was derived from an act of confiscation. But the monks declared that Edwi was robbing his grandmother, to punish her for her love of the church, and Edgar reversed the decision after his brother’s death.* 1 Cod. Dip., 441, 1194, 1208, are grants to Abingdon; the first mentioning “the Blessed Benedict, the most glorious patron of the monks.” 438, to Glaston- bury, is marked spurious by Mr. Kemble; but Mr. Allen quotes the Monasticon, to prove that a grant of sixty hides was made to that monastery.—Allen’s En- quiry, p. 240; Cf. Malmesbury, De Antig. Glas. Eccl., Gale, vol. iii., p. 319. 2 We only know Eadgifa’s story from herself and her partisans. She accused Goda of foreclosing a mortgage which had been already paid off. After 138 EDWI’S MISGOVERNMENT. Edwi is taxed with other acts of wholesale spoliation ; that he took away crown lands from his opponents and gave them to his friends, is the natural explanation of this charge. It is pro- bable that the public property might in many cases be resumed legally by a new king, or seized for trifling offences? A wise man in a critical period would have been careful how he meddled with property ; but Edwi was profuse, and not wise. The fact that the grants in the first year of his reign were mostly made in Wessex, perhaps shows that he chiefly favoured the men of the southern province. Anyhow, in 957 a.p., a rebellion promoted by the Primate and Dunstan broke out : Mercia and Northumbria declared in favour of the king’s brother Edgar ; the Saxons were faithful to Edwi. At a time when insurrections were so frequent, and when provinces changed their master in a battle, we need scarcely wonder at Edgar’s success ; from viceroy he became joint-king,? with the he had occupied the estate nearly six years, the witan gave sentence in her favour; this king Edward enforced; and presently confiscating all Goda’s estates, gave them to Eadgifa, who from pity restored to Goda all except her original property and one other manor, but kept the title-deeds. Under Athel- stane, even these, deeds were given back at the king’s intercession, the queen- dowager still keeping the two manors to herself. These Goda’s sons prevailed on Edwi to assign them. When Edgar reversed this decision, Eadgifa presented the title-deeds to Christchurch monastery.—Cod. Dip., 499, 737. In this story it is noteworthy that Eadgifa only professes to have proved her father’s pay- ment by an oath of thirty pounds value (i.e. sworn to by persons whose witnessing capacity was rated at that value); that, as Edward’s wife, the king’s verdict in her fayour is not exempt from suspicion; and that the restoration of the deeds at her step-son’s intercession, looks very much as if she were conscious of some illegality. Curiously enough, a charter of Edward’s is extant, which gives the estates in question to Christchurch monastery, mentions Goda as the original owner, but gives no hint of Eadgifa. If the charter is genuine (and Mr. Kemble accepts it), it looks as if the queen had begged the forfeited pro- perty for life, with reversion to the monastery, and without respect to her original claim.—Cod. Dip., 896. 1 After the Conquest the crown-lands were constantly resumed by a new king. They were apparently liable to forfeiture in Anglo-Saxon times, if the lessee’s tenant committed a crime involving slavery or death as its punishment. —Cod. Dip., 1090. * Mr. Allen inclines to think that Edgar was joint-king from the first. But such an arrangement was not natural, and Edgar was only twelve years old when his brother became king. CHIARACTER OF EDGAR. 139 northern provinces for his share; and one of his first acts was to recall Dunstan. Edwi seems, moreover, to have been forced to consent to a divorce from his queen; and a doubtful tradi- tion asserts that she or some other lady, a royal mistress, died from the horrible mutilations which the clerical party inflicted on her. At this distance of time it can only be said, that rebels in the cause of religion have been capable of the worst atrocities, but that monkish biographers were quite as likely to mvent a crime to do credit to their heroes. The infamy of this transaction, if true, would rest on archbishop Odo,! not on Dunstan. In 958 a.p. Edwi died. The manner of his death is unknown, but it is said to have been tragical, and his subjects’ love followed him. The real government of England was now in the hands Dunstan, whom Edgar’s witan had made bishop of Wor- cester and London successively (957, 958 a.p.), and who succeeded a little later to the primacy (962 a.p.) Edgar, whom his brother’s death had left sole monarch of Eng- land, was still only fifteen years old. He has been de- scribed to us by the Saxon poets in terms that seem strangely inconsistent, as a devout man who honoured God’s law and promoted his glory, but who was fond of foreign vices and heathen customs. The inconsistency really lies in Edgayr’s character and public acts. He had the brute courage of a soldier, and a fair portion of official activity, but wanted strength of will and political foresight. He put down rebellions when they broke out, and even ex- tended his power by sea; but he never tried to reduce the Anglo- 1 Odo was called popularly Odo the Good. But as a boy he quarrelled with his father, and as a bishop he asserted the rights of the church in a most offen- sive style. ‘‘ We warn the king and princes and all who are in power, that they obey the archbishop and other bishops with great reverence.” —Const. ii., Wil- kins, vol.i., p. 212. The wild Danish blood in his veins might lead him to an act which perhaps was legal, and which he would certainly think righteous. By Ethelred’s Laws, a little later—vi., 7, A. S. Laws, vol. i., p. 317—it is decreed that all whores be banished, or in case of contumacy, put to death. Now, whether the victim were Edwi’s uncanonical wife or a mistress, would make no difference in the eyes of an ecclesiastical lawyer. 140 EDGAR’S REIGN. Danish provinces to any orderly subjection ; the first settlers had been military colonists, and under Edgar they are still designated as “the army.”! The organization of a fleet, and some petty wars against the Welsh and the Ostmen of Dublin,? are the great achievements of Edgar’s reign, over which the vain-glorious language of his charters, the friendly praises of monkish chroniclers, and the homage of eight tributary kings at Chester, have cast a false lustre. In his court Edgar, himself educated among the Anglian Danes,* seems to have affected the habits of foreign civilization, which was now outstripping the progress of the insular Saxons. In his morals, the young king was the most infamous of Anglo-Saxon sovereigns ; woman’s honour was not safe from his lust, nor his friend’s life from his violence. It is to Dunstan’s credit, that in one flagrant case, where the protection of a convent had been violated, he condemned the guilty king to a penance which Edgar’s vanity no doubt felt keenly, forbidding him to wear the royal crown for a space of seven years. But Dunstan was not in a condition to break with Edgar; the king condoned a series of crimes, far more atrocious than those which had lost Edwi half a kingdom, by enforcing the dues of the church, and supporting the monks against the married clergy.+ Yet, in spite of all drawbacks, Edgar’s reign was long looked back upon with affection by the Saxons. His Danish ! Edgar’s Laws, Sup. 15; A. 8. Laws, vol. i, p. 279. ? Edgar’s panegyrists magnified this into the conquest of the greater part of Ireland.—Cod. Dip., 514, and vol. vi., p. 237. The charter is probably spurious, and Moore rejects the whole story indignantly. —Hist. of Ireland, vol. ii., p. 88. Lappenberg, however, accepts the fact of an expedition.—Eng. Gesch., bandi., p. 407; and I think a forger would have taken care to introduce nothing that should be startlingly new. Ecgfrith, king of Northumbria, had already invaded Treland in 684 a.p.—Bede, H.E., lib. iv., c. 26. 3 Lappenberg, Eng. Gesch., band i., p: 403. +In accepting the story of Osbern about Edgar’s penance, it is quite un- necessary to assume that he had not been crowned before, and the connection of the end of his penance with the second coronation may be imaginary. The story in Malmesbury of the mother who substitutes a slave for her daughter, appears slightly changed in Hemingburgh, and is there told of king John.—Malmesbwy, lib. ii., 159; Hemingburgh, vol. i., p. 248. EDGAR’S HOME GOVERNMENT. 141 sympathies conciliated the most turbulent portion of his subjects; and the country enjoyed a peace of sixteen years. Trade flourished, and population increased; the complaints that begin to be heard of luxury, are a proof of material well- being, as much at least as of a deficient moral tone. The legend of a law to restrain drunkenness, by providing that no man should drink more than a fixed measure in a tavern, was probably invented to explain the pins or pegs which the Danes placed in their cups; but true or false, the story is a fair instance of the meddlesome legislation of those times.! The tax of three hundred wolves’ heads, which Edgar imposed upon the Welsh, though it certainly did not extirpate the wolves, who were still a nuisance in England in the fourteenth century, shows a certain regard for the interests of agriculture.* The laws of police and trade were enforced; an uniform coinage decreed ; and it was ordered that weights and measures should be one throughout the kingdom. Moreover, Edgar fre- quently moved his court, visiting and inspecting the different provinces, and providing for the better administration of justice. Dunstan sustained the police of the country with all the powers of religion. In a transport of harsh enthusiasm, he once refused to perform mass on Whit-Sunday, till sentence of mutilation for false coining had been executed on three of his own vassals. The party of movement in the church had triumphed, and they stamped their victory on the laws. The tithes, which were due three times a year—at the lambing season, at harvest- time, and at Martinmas—were now enforced under a ninefold penalty ; and whoever failed to pay the hearth-penny or Peter’s pence, was to repair in person to the throne, to be fined heavily, and in case of contumacy to forfeit all his goods. But above ! Malmesbury, lib. ii, p.149. The origin of the regulation is perhaps con- firmed by the 10th article of the Council of London, 1102 a.v. ; “ut presbyteri non eant ad potationes nec ad pinnas bibant.”—Wilkins, vol. i., p. 382. ? In 1281 a.p. a royal commission was issued for their destruction —Rymer, vol. ii., p. 168. A century later, the author of Piers Plowman’s Creed, ll. 913, 914, speaks of “ wild were-wolves that will the folk robben.”’ 3 This is the first authentic mention of Peter’s pence. It was probably no new 142 ‘ RE-ACTION AGAINST CHURCH REFORMS. all, Dunstan followed up his contest with the married canons and clergy. Not satisfied with Edgar’s lavish piety, he suc- ceeded in procuring an order (964 a.p.) that the canons of Winchester, Chertsey, and Middleton, should revert to the monastic rule or give up their stalls: they preferred expulsion, and were replaced by professed monks. Aided by Oswald, bishop of Worcester, and by A&thelwold, bishop of Winchester, Dunstan carried out his reforms throughout the land. The nobles followed the king’s example, or were influenced by the archbishop’s zeal, and founded abbeys everywhere; nearly fifty new or reformed foundations illustrated Dunstan’s success. It was ordained that married men who took orders and continued to live with their wives, should do penance asif for homicide. But the contest between enthusiasm and habit, between impulse and appetite, is not easily decided on either side. On the death of Edgar, 975 a.p., Alfere, the ealdorman of Mercia, put himself at the head of a strong party, who opposed the succession of the eldest son, Edward, putting forward Ethelred, the young son of /Elfride the queen-dowager, as a candidate. The question was really whether Dunstan should remain minister, and whether the church reforms should not be undone. By a general revolt in Mercia, the married clergy were replaced in their benefices; and so strong was party feeling, that it was unsafe for any man to be seen in the dress of a monk. But the nobles of East Angha armed to prevent the movement from extending to their parts; and in a great meeting, Dunstan decided the witan to elect Edward. Nevertheless, the re-action was spreading in Wessex; and the landowners took part against Dunstan, disliking his violent interference with the rights of property. A council was called at Winchester, tilfere supported the refractory clergy; while the monks declared that a crucifix on the wall had denounced the pro- posed backsliding. The meeting was adjourned to Calne, in Wiltshire. In the synod there held, 978 a.p., the thing, though it was seemingly paid with reluctance; but when or why it was established cannot certainly be known. See p. 95. SYNOD OF CALNE. 143 clerical party brought forward a foreign champion, Beorn- helm, whose eloquence and arguments proved more than equal to Dunstan’s.! The practice, which had crept in loosely, was now defended as apostolical, on the precedent of St. Peter; and the charge of Manicheism was brought against the promoters of celibacy. The charge was certainly false; a belief in the eternity of matter could hardly be ascribed to men whose contempt for the body was based on its perishable nature ; but a certain advantage always rests with those who can call their brothers Raca with a degree of logical plausibility. Nor can we doubt that to the secular clergy it was a real benefit to have a moral standing-pomt. At once clamoured and argued down, Dunstan gave up the unequal controversy in despair, declaring that he referred his cause to God’s judge- ment. Suddenly the overcrowded building gave way ; the mass of the meeting were killed or maimed in the general crash ; while Dunstan escaped by clinging to a beam. The incidént was considered decisive; God had answered his servant by a miracle; and the Anglo-Saxon priests were compelled hence- forth to allow that marriage was wrong, and to practise it with a sense of guilt.* But Dunstan’s hopes were again dashed by the news of Edward’s death. The young king, returning from the chase, had visited his step-mother at Corfe Castle, and had been stabbed in the back by Atlfride’s orders, 978 a.p., while he drank the stirrup-cup.? The crime was no doubt the work of a faction; Ailfere of Mercia is said to have had a share in it; Dunstan expressed the public suspicions on the day of the ' 1 Beornhelm was Scotorum Pontifex.—Osbern, Anglia Sacra, vol. ii., p. 112. Another champion of the clergy was Fothad.—Wright’s A. S. Literature, p. 456. ? T agree with Mr. Hallam, in opposition to Dean Milman, in thinking the accident better explained by the defective mechanics of the time, than by any plot. Setting aside the moral improbabilities, which I think conclusive against Dunstan’s share in it, it is difficult to understand how the props of a floor could be so sawn away, as to support a large meeting till a preconcerted signal should be given, and should fall so as not to endanger the primate. 3 Edward’s name of “the Martyr,” was derived from the miracles said to be wrought by his body.—Wendover, vol. i., pp. 419, 420. 144 FATE OF EDWARD’S MURDERERS. coronation, when he stood up in the spirit of prophecy, and declared that such woes should come upon England and its blood-bought royalty as the land had never yet known. Never- theless, the primate maintained his ascendancy, and the education of the young king, a boy only ten years old, was completed by monks. It seems as if public feeling had been stirred in all its depths by the late murder. Men said that the guilty Ailfere died the death of Herod, eaten by worms; and A¢lfride, erushed by the public horror at her guilt, at last retired to a convent, and spent her last days in expiating the misdeeds of her life: the betrayal of a first husband, adultery, and assassi- nation. XIV. THE DANISH CONQUEST. EFFECTS OF DUNSTAN’S POLICY.—RENEWED DANISH INVASIONS.—WORTHLESS CHARACTER OF ETHELRED.—THE DANISH MASSACRE.—MARTYRDOM OF JELTEG.—SWEYN OVERRUNS THE COUNTRY.—EADRIC STREONA.—REIGN OF EDMUND IRONSIDES.—ACCESSION OF CANUTE.—POLITICAL REVIEW OF THE REIGN. How fatal the triumph of an idealist can be to the interests which he himself has at heart, may be seen from the issue of Dunstan’s political career. He remained to the end of his life supreme in the church, and the chief man in the state. To him it is due that the celibacy of the regular clergy was hence- forth enforced more or less rigidly in England, and that theory was in favour of extending that rule to the secular clergy, as was done about a hundred years later. But he himself must have felt that the battle was only half won, while livings, and even bishoprics, were enjoyed by married men;' and he himself would probably have thought that feudalism had been shut out of the church at too great a cost, had he lived to see the un- 1 “ Almar, bishop of Elmham, (at the Norman Conquest) was a married man, and held the manor of Blofield in right of his wife, before and after he was made bishop.” —Munford’s Domesday of Norfolk, p. 94. As late as 1194 a.p., ‘the in- cumbents of Dunston held the church by inheritance.” “Pope Pascal (1107 a.D.), while using his utmost endeavours to prohibit the marriage of the priesthood, was compelled to allow that the sons of the clergy should be instituted to ecclesias- tical benefices.’’ —Palgrave’s Introd. Rot. Cur. Regis., pp. xxviii.-xxx. “Itseems to yourselves that ye have no sin in so living in female intercourse as laymen.””— ZElfric’s Pastoral, s. 32; A.S. Laws, vol.ii., p.377. Lichfeldensis episcopus * * cui uxor publica habita fillique procreati—Lanfranc, Epist. 4, vol. i, p. 22. I know not if it was a wife with whom Walter bishop of Hereford lived, 1075 AD. ‘Hic infamiad cujusdam mulieris statum suum multum denigravit.’—B. de Cotton. de Episc., p. 407. L 146 DEATH OF DUNSTAN. bounded dissolution of morals that prevailed in the eleventh cen- tury among the clergy, who sank under the weight of a doctrine which they had neither strength to live up to nor to contest.! Still more important for England was Dunstan’s influence in training the young king. It is doubtful if Ethelred could ever have been good for much; the race of Alfred was rotting away under vices which seemed to be sapping energy and intellect ; but in the character of a man who combined the superstition of a monk * and unbridled passions with incapacity to act, it is impossible not to recognize the results of that rigid nar- row-minded training which destroys the will in order to save the soul. So long as Dunstan lived, all was outwardly well. His pupil indeed was not always obedient; he once ravaged the church lands in a quarrel with the citizens of Rochester, and forced the primate to buy him off; but the ascendancy of un- worthy favourites had not yet brought treason and anarchy into the land. But in 988 a.p. Dunstan died ; the Danish ships had already appeared on the seas to ravage the English coasts ; and men were looking forward with awe to the completion of the first thousand years since the birth of Christ, and believing that their Lord would return to judge the world. The death of Dunstan seemed to be the beginning of woes. The event soon corresponded to these presages. In 988 ap. the Danes appeared at Watchet, and in 991 a.p. they burned Ipswich ; the fatal precedent was then introduced, by the counsel of the archbishop Siric, of buying them off. Of course, claim- 1 Malmesbury’s evidence on this point (lib. iii., p. 418) has been called in question, on account of his tendency to flatter the Normans. But it is ‘confirmed by the general tone of HElfric’s Pastoral Canons, by the Institutes of Polity, and by the sermon of Wulfstan, quoted in the Biog. Ang. Sax., pp. 507, 508. Inthe history of the Abbey of Ramsey, there is a curious story of a bishop Etheric, under Canute, who makes a Dane with whom he is dining drunk, and so cheats him of an estate.—Cap. 85; Gale, vol. iii., p. 441. *Ethelredus + + monachum potius quam militem actione pretendebat.—Vita S. Elphegi, Ang. Sac., ii, 181. One of the most curious transactions of the reign is, that in 1013 a.p., when Ethelred and his family were fugitives, Abbot Ailfsige, who was in attendance on the queen, found means to purchase the body of St. Florentine, all but the head, for five hundred pounds.—A. 8. Chron., A., 1013. WARS WITH THE DANES AND NORMANS. 147 ants for the tribute of cowards were never wanting, and during the next ten years, 991-1001 a.p., the Danes ravaged the country far and wide. It was no one leader with views of ultimate conquest ; but men whose only object was to destroy and plun- der. Anlaf was bought off; the Christian feelings of the ferocious Olaf were successfully appealed to; but Sweyn and a host of inferior captains kept the field. With inexplicable baseness the nobles of the Anglo-Saxons, sometimes actuated by Danish affinities, more often by the sordid lust of gain, betrayed the trusts committed to them, and sent private intelli- gence to the enemy, or refused to lead their soldiers into battle. The city militias, on the other hand, appear to have done their duty nobly, and London in particular beat back the invaders with more loss than they ever thought to have sustained from townsmen.! But the country was paralyzed by the conduct of the king. At times sunk in pleasure, at times rousing himself with a flash of activity to some effort which proved useless because isolated, he completed the ruin of the country by the gigantic measures taken to defend it; and the fleet starved while it waited for the forces that were not yet mustcred.? The crisis was complicated in the year 1000 a.p. by a war with Normandy. The war was impolitic, for the Normans were the natural allies of England against the Danes; and the English forces were repulsed with loss by the men of the Cotentin, whom their wives assisted to do battle against the invaders. It would seem that the relations of the two countrics were ex- tensive, for Richard imprisoned a number of Englishmen who were in his dominions for the sake of commerce or of good government. Already once before, in 991 a.p., Pope John XV. had interfered in the interests of Christendom, and negotiated a peace; on this occasion a marriage was arranged between Ethelred, now a widower, and Emma, the sister of the Norman duke (1002 a.p.)3 This connection of the two courts alarmed the 1 AS, Chron., A., 994. 2 A. 8. Chron., A., 999. 3 Gul. Gemit., lib. iv., cap. 4, who, however, places the marriage before the war. The Saxon Chronicle gives the true date, 1002. a.p. 148 THE DANISH MASSACRE. jealousy of the Danes; they had lately sustained a defeat in Devon from the ealdorman Palig, and had agrced to sell peace ; but they had not left the country ; only they were scattered up and down it in no regular military array ; and they were quite resolved at no very distant date to effect its conquest. They now resolved to anticipate, by the murder of the king and witan, any league that might be formed against them.! Their plan was disclosed, and Ethelred and his nobles, panic-struck and frenzied, took refuge in the last resource of cowards, assas- sination. Orders were sent over the country to exterminate the Danes on the next St. Bride’s day, November 18. The people, who had seen their wives and daughters insulted, their houses occupied, and their stores consumed by the invaders in time of peace, executed their commission with fearful secrecy, sparing none, however exalted, and sometimes torturing their victims. Even Gunhilde, the sister of Sweyn, saw her chil- dren and husband put to death before she herself was mur- dered. When all excuses have been exhausted, it remains certain that the crime revolted the public feeling of the times ; “it was such wickedness as the heathen themselves knew not of ;”? the Sicilian vespers and the Irish massacre are its appro- priate parallels. But the extent of the slaughter must not be overrated ; it was probably confined tothe countries south and west of Watling Street ; and it certainly only aimed at the invading soldiery, for names that indicate a Danish origin are still to be found as before in the charters of the witan. The Danes yowed revenge, and for the next four years kept their vow terribly. Scarcely anywhere were they met in the field : Hugo a Norman had been appointed governor of Exeter, and betrayed his trust; A&lfric of- Mercia deserted to the invaders; Wulf- noth of Sussex, threatened with ruin by a court intrigue, turned pirate, with the fleet under his charge. Only the caldorman of East Anglia, Ulfkytel, did his duty manfully ; and though 1 “ Because it was made known to the king that they would treacherously bereave him of his life, and afterwards all his witan.”—A. 8. Chron., A., 1002 Flor. Wig., vol. i, p. 156. 2 Gul. Gemit., lib. iv., cap. 6. MARTYRDOM OF ALFEG. 149 his forces were half-hearted, he succeeded in driving Sweyn back to his ships. Amid the miseries of the time, few im- pressed the popular mind more deeply than the murder of the primate. Elfeg was captured by the Danes, when Canter- bury was betrayed to them by Atlfmer, one of the superior clergy, and was saved from the horrible sack of the town that aransom might be extorted from him. After seven months captivity, they fixed the sum at three thousand pounds of gold, calculating, no doubt, on the people’s attachment to him. Elfeg answered that he had no private property; and that he would never take the money of Christian men to give it to pagans, or counsel the king to an act so inconsistent with the honour of the kingdom. He proceeded to preach to the hus-ting ; a blow from an axe cut his sermon short, and he was struck and stoned to death.! Ten equally resolute men in high place might have saved the monarchy. Sweyn now aimed at establishing a kingdom. The Angles had gone over to his side, and proved among the most bitter foes of the Saxons.* Above all, the fortunes of the kingdom were now swayed by a family of remarkable men, who had risen from the ranks by merit, and aimed at establishing their position by holding the balance between conflicting interests. Eadric Streona had married Ethelred’s daughter, Eadgitha, and in 1007 a.p. had been made ealdorman of Mercia. His brother Brihtric had been the cause of Wulfnoth’s revolt; from another brother, AXgelmer, Godwin, afterwards so celebrated, de- scended.? Eadric was distinguished by craft and cloquence : 1 Lapidibus.—Vita 8. Elph., Ang. Sac., ii., p.140. ‘They led him to their hus-ting, and cast upon him bones and the heads of oxen,” (A.S. Chron., A., 1012,) as if a banquet were going on at the time. ? Angli quo amplius cognatum populum afflictari cernebant co ferociores instare.—Vita 8. Elph., Ang. Sac., ii., p. 135. 5 This relationship has been doubted, but the language of Florence of Wor- cester is express.—Vol. i., p. 160. There is a great resemblance between the char- acter of Eadric, given by Florence, and that ascribed to Godwin and his sons, in the Westminster life of king Edward the Confessor, although the latter is from the favourable point of view. Caution, dissimulation, and treachery, are the main features, which are relieved in Harold and Tostig by courage and generosity.—Lives of Edw. Conf., L., p. 409. 150 TRIUMPHS AND DEATH OF SWEYN. he was treacherous and cruel above any man even in those dis- orderly times; he never shrunk from assassinating a rival, or betraying the national cause: on one occasion, when the Danes had been intercepted, and lay at Ethelred’s mercy, the weak king had been induced by Eadric’s counsels to spare them. Yet Ethelred’s cause was sufficiently hopeless without a traitor in the camp; Sweyn swept over England in the summer of 1018 A.D., taking hostages from the towns; and only foiled by the desperate resistance of London. It is characteristic of the Danes, that many of them were drowned in the Thames, be- cause they disdained to cross it by bridge or ford. At last even London gave way, and concluded peace; Ethelred fol- lowed his family to the Norman court ; and England remained in the hands of Sweyn and Thurkill, a Danish captain who had served Ethelred faithfully, but who now, on the king’s flight, indemnified himself by plunder for his short loyalty to the cause of order. Fortunately, next year, 1014 a.p., while Sweyn, in the midst of his ting, was blaspheming St. Edmund, the saint appeared armed, pierced through the ranks of warriors who crowded round their lord, and smote the monarch to the ground, as St. Mercury had slain Julian the Apostate The Danes now elected Canute as their leader, while the Saxon witan re- called Ethelred, on condition that he would follow good counsel, and govern mercifully. But Ethelred could not be false to his nature: the expedient of a new Danish massacre appeared to him the most easy way of terminating the war; and although it could not be carried out as fully as before, the more powerful Danish thanes were assassinated. -Thurkill, who once more had taken service against his countrymen, now joined them, fear- ing for his own safety ; while the English forces were headed 1 Flor. Wig., vol. i. p.168. The Saxon Chronicle says simply “Sweyn ended his days.” It is difficult not to suspect that the beautiful later legend must be rationalized into a sudden death by aneurism or apoplexy, resulting from over- work or a feast. So in the Yngl. Saga, cap. 16, king Vanlandi is trodden to death in sleep by the night-mare, while his gesith in vain press round him to help.—Deutsche Mythologie, p. 1194. TREATY BETWEEN EDMUND AND CANUTE. 161 by the Atheling Edmund Ironside, a lawless and violent,’ but brave man, and a patriot. By his father’s death, 1016 a.p., Edmund became king; bursting out of London, where he was besieged, he rallied the Saxon forces, and defeated the Danes at Pen in Dorsetshire, and at Sheerstone in Wiltshire. Eadric Streona, who had joined Canute, now deserted to the conquer- ing side; but the Danes, whose army was half English, were still in force to besiege London and ravage Mercia. An in- decisive battle at Brentford, was followed by a Saxon victory at Otford, in Kent; and the Danes were forced to make a last stand at Assington, m Essex. The defection of Eadric Streona with the Mercian forces at the critical moment, saved Canute from a ruinous overthrow ; while the chief nobles of the Saxon side fell in fight. Edmund was willing to try the chances of war again, but Eadric and other princes interposed to effect a lasting peace on honourable terms. It was agreed that Edmund should be king over Wessex, Essex, and East Anglia. Northumbria and Mercia were to be assigned to Canute. Mercia and East Anglia had changed sides in this division, from the old order under Alfred and Edward the Elder; the reason is probably to be sought in Eadric’s influence, and in the political troubles under Dunstan, whose partizans had been chiefly Anglian, and his enemies Mercian. The partition did not last long. In November of this year, Edmund died at London. His death, by later historians, was ascribed to the treachery of Eadric, but they differ as to its manner, and the fact is far from certain.® Canute was not slow to profit by the new opportunity. He 1He had carried off and married the widow of Sigferth, whom Eadric Streona had murdered.—Flor. Wig., vol. i., p. 170. ? The Saxon Chronicle and Florence of Worcester simply say that king Edmund died. The later historics are less reliable: some of them ascribe it to poison; Huntingdon to the dagger; Malmesbury to a spike put in his seat. Eadric was quite capable of the crime, but it was not his interest to see England in the hands of one man, unless he really expected to supplant Canute. In the Norman life of Edward the Confessor, lately published, the murder is ascribed to Earl Godwin, (ll. 778-780,) who was perhaps confounded with Godwin Porthund, one of Eadric’s emissaries.—Flor. Wig., vol. i., p. 158 152 CANUTE’S ACCESSION. declared that it had been part of the treaty, that whoever sur- vived the other, should succeed him as sole king for life, and should be guardian of the young princes. The witan, left;with- out a leader, were unwilling to renew the bloody struggle, and accepted Canute’s pretensions,! pledging faith to him and his captains by shaking hands with them. There were still some difficulties, but an energetic and unscrupulous man disposed of them easily. The young princes, whom Canute neither dared to keep in the country nor to kill there, were sent to the court of St. Olaf, of Sweden, to be educated, with a hint that they had better die young; Olaf declined the dangerous charge and unprofitable crime; and sent the children to the court of king Stephen, of Hungary, apparently that they might be kept at a distance. Eadwig, Edward’s brother, who was called con- temptuously the churl-king, because only the people were for him, was banished and finally murdered by Canute’s orders. Several of the chief nobles of the English party were got rid of by similar means in the first two years, but the nation almost forgave Canute his other crimes, in their delight at the death of Eadric. The Danish king was resolved to rid himself of a man whose treachery was inveterate, and whom he perhaps at the moment suspected of some plot. But Canute dis- eriminated in his acts of violence: he had no intention of governing by the sword. By marrying Emma, the queen- dowager, he connected himself with the old history of the country. Englishmen who could be trusted, were advanced to honour. Godwin, Eadric’s great nephew, but a man more re- liable than his uncle, was married to Gytha, the sister of 1 Flor. Wig., vol. i., p. 180. Dr. Lappenberg, whose high merits are some- times blemished by inaccuracy, gives Florence as his authority for a statement that the witan deprived Edmund’s sons for ever of the succession. Itis a sin- gular expansion of “‘omnino despexerunt,” “altogether disregarded” the claims of. 2 If any account of the transaction is trustworthy, I should prefer that of Malmesbury, that Eadric quarrelled with the king, reproached him with in- gratitude, and was strangled on the spot by Canute’s orders, “ that there might be no disturbance,” and thrown into the Thames.—Lib. ii., pp. 304, 305. REVIEW OF ETHELRED’S REIGN. 153 Canute’s brother-in-law, and obtained the dignity of an earl at least as early as 1018 a.p.! It is difficult to understand the political history of Ethel- red and Edward’s reigns. The nobles appear causelessly trea- cherous, the kings stupidly trustful to a degree that our pre- sent knowledge of events does not suffer us to understand. That Northumbrian chiefs with Danish blood in their veins should betray the forces entrusted to them, is intelligible; but what had an ealdorman of Mercia or Southampton to gain by allowing his province to be ravaged and his country made tributary? Again, why was Eadric Streona so often trusted by two kings, one of whom was his personal enemy,” and so unreservedly followed by the Mercians? Dr. Lappen- berg conjectures, that even the variations of his policy may have represented shifting provincial interests; that he may have been most Mercian when he was least English. It is difficult to believe that any intelligible principle, except im- dividual interest, prevailed during those times. Southamp- ton was the first city stormed by the Danes in 980 a.p., when most of its burghers were either slam or enslaved; in 994 A.p. it was the Danish head-quarters ; in 1018 a.p. the people of the district went out gallantly against the Danes; yet in 1016 a.p., they fought on Canute’s side against the Saxon king at Sheerstone. Similarly, we find the Anghans in 1004 a.p. inflicting severe losses upon Sweyn, in 1012 4.p. storming Canter- bury, and in 1016 a.p. assigned to Edmund as part of the Saxon kingdom. The Northumbrians in the spring of 1016 a.p. sup- ported Edmund, when his own people of Wessex had made sub- mission to the Danes and horsed their army, but in the autumn of that same year, Northumbria was handed over to Canute. These facts can only be explamed on the supposition that the 1 Freeman’s Life and Death of Earl Godwin.—Archeol. Journal, 1854.—Cod. Dip., 7 38, subscribed by Godwine Dux. He can hardly have been a shepherd boy at the battle of Sheerstone, in 1016 a.p., as Mr. Sharon Turncr and Thierry suppose.—Conquéte des Normands, tom. i. p. 159. The story probably origi- nated in his connection with the low-born Eadric Streona. Modis omnibus insidias clitoni dux tetendit——Flor. Wig., vol. ii., p. 171. 154 CAUSES OF ENGLISH WEAKNESS. power of the great nobles was almost absolute ; a supposi- tion which is confirmed by all we know of the times, and not least by the contemptuous epithet applied to Eadwig, “ king of the ceorls,” as if ceorl or freeman were no longer a name of honour. In fact, the nation groaned under feudalism, un- relieved by chivalry; war had become a trade; and the man who from property or position could bring most soldiers into the field, made market of his advantages, without regard to his country. There were other causes at work: the different races were always at feud; and city and country were still almost as distinct as in the old Roman times. But the chief cause lay in the fact that power now centred in the hands of a few men, and that those men ‘were for the most part irredeemably bad and base. A single Alfred or Athelstane might have reclaimed the national honour. But the well-meaning men of this century were the churchman ‘lfeg, and the weak-minded ling Edward the Confessor. England lay in the hands of the family of Eadric Streona. XY. THE ANGLO-DANISH EPOCH. CHARACTER OF CANUTE.—FAVOUR SHOWN TO THE CHURCH.—FEUDALISM AND GAME LAWS.—HAROLD HAREFOOT.—MURDER OF ALFRED, AND QUESTION OF GODWIN’S COMPLICITY.—HARDICANUTE’S REIGN.—ACCESSION OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.—GODWIN’S ASCENDANCY THREATENED BY NORMAN IN- FLUENCES.—BANISHMENT AND RETURN TO POWER OF GODWIN,—RIVALRY OF HAROLD AND TOSTIG.—EDWARD’S DEATH AND CHARACTER, Canutr’s is not one of the great names in English history. He triumphed rather by the weakness of his opponents than by the strength of his following, or by his own ability. Accord- ingly, during the first years of his reign, the petty prince of Scotland was able to annex the Lothians, with which Canute had invested an earl of his own, and to refuse homage for Cum- berland ;! Olaf of Sweden threatened the English coasts with a new conquest ; and a little before the king’s death, Robert the Devil of Normandy insultingly repudiated his sister, and was only prevented by a storm from invading England. Wielding the forces of England and Denmark, Canute was still unable to subdue the Wends, who, backed by the militant paganism of their countrymen, made the Baltic a Slavonian lake, and infested the Elbe provinces. Where war could be mixed with politics, the Anglo-Danish king was more formidable. As the champion of oppressed paganism, he succeeded, 1028 a.p., in expelling St. Olaf from Norway,? and established a son in his place. He was even able, 1032 a.p., to compel Duncan the 1 Palgrave’s English Commonwealth, cccxxi.; Fordun’s Scoti-Chronicon, lib. iv., cap. 41. 2 Geijer’s History of the Swedes, p. 39; Menzel’s History of Germany, cap. 122. 156 CANUTE WANTING IN STATESMANSHIP. prince of Cumberland, although backed by the forces of Scot- land, to renew the fealty due to the English crown, which Duncan had professed to owe only to the kings of English race. Canute, therefore, to a certain degree, restored the lustre of the British crown, and commanded the respect of the German emperor, who granted free entrance and protection to the Eng- lish pilgrims to Rome. But the type of man was low. He had the cunning of a fox, the passions of a child, and the vin- dictive memory of a savage; he murdered the friend who had saved his life, for using a few bitter words, and for beating him at chess. He might have anticipated the union of Eng- land and Normandy by a great Scandinavian federation, of which England should be the nucleus: he contented him- self with assigning a sort of patriarchate to the English church over Denmark, and with giving a few foreign bishoprics to Englishmen ; but so ordered his vice-royalties, that after his death his three sons were able severally to seize the countries they governed. He established order and peace in England, and freed the country from the presence of the Danish army. Though a heavy sum was paid for their departure, the benefit was incalculable; and Canute deserved the gratitude which rewarded him. But he had not the power of organization which William the Conqueror possessed; Canute left the country as he found it, parcelled it into little sovereignties, with no common name or system, which might blend together the hostile nationalities. To have made the immediate feudatories of the crown fourteen hundred instead of three, would have been a work that might have compensated the bloodshed of Ethel- red’s reign, and the murders of his own accession: Canute continued to govern by dukes; and by one of his great. peers the Anglo-Danish dynasty was overthrown. Followmg the common policy of usurpers, Canute allied himself with the strong church party ; a proof among others that the monastic movement was still supported by the public opinion of the best men of the times. In fact, the English church was again doing missionary work among the heathen ; the labours of its clergy in Sweden and Norway will serve to ALLIANCE WITH THE CHURCH. 157 excuse their literary sterility, and cemented the union of Britain with the north; the very Danes in England were carried away by the contagion, and joined in propagating the faith, or founding monasteries. Canute’s own pilgrimage to Rome, 1026 A.D., with scrip and staff in hand, is a striking proof how much his policy was influenced by respect for the faith of his subjects, though it did not prevent him from restoring paganism in Nor- way two years later. Once, he even interfered at some political risk to transfer the body of St. 4#lfeg from London to Canter- bury ; the bridges and banks of the Thames were lined with the royal hus-carles, while others of the troops were ordered to oceupy the sturdy Londoners with seuffles at the city gates; under cover of this strategy, the translation was happily accom- plished, and the royal barge, with gilt dragons on its prow, carried off the imperishable remains to Plumstead, where the, army of Kent secured them from farther pursuit! In one im- portant particular the king’s connection with the church was productive of unmixed good: he forbade that Christian men should be sold too readily out of the land into service among the heathen. More substantial benefits to the church as a cor- poration were the stringent enforcement of Peter’s pence and of tithes ; and an enactment that the guilty priest was to receive sentence from his bishop or from the pope ;*it is the first estab- lishment of an ecclesiastical jurisdiction in criminal matters. The gratitude of cloistered chroniclers has rewarded the king with a reputation which his moral character certainly did not deserve. Yet the sternest critic of Canute may wish to believe the beautiful story of the rebuke given to his courtiers’ flattery, when he showed how little the waves regarded his royalty ; it is hard to know that the legend has a Welsh original. At 1 Osbern, De Trans, 8. Elpheg., Anglia Sacra, vol. ii., pp. 145, 146. 2Canute’s Laws, Ecc., 5, 29. He forsakes his law of kin when he submits to”’monastic law.—Sec. 41, 42, 43, 29. If a man in holy orders defile himself with a crime worthy of death, let him be seized and held to the bishop’s doom according as the deed may be.—A. 8. Laws, vol. i., pp. 363, 401, 408. 3 In the Welsh story, the trial on the sea-shore is made by several princes to see who shall be supreme king; and Maelgwn, the Lancelot of romance, triumphs by means of a chair with waxed wings under it—_Welsh Laws 158 FEUDALISM AND GAME-LAWS. least Saxon poetry has made the story its own by its beautiful conclusion : Canute, bowing before a greater King than himself, takes the crown from his head, never more to be worn there, and places it over the twisted thorns of a crucifix. The civil government of Canute was that of a feudal sove- reign; and we seem to be reading the record of Norman times in his enactments about purveyance, heriots, and the rights of wardships and succession. ‘The institution of the murdrum, an extension of the Frank-pledge system from property to life, by which the district was made responsible for the were of lives lost within it if it could not give up the offender, was intro- duced in this reign to secure the Danes when their army had left England.! The first codification of stringent forest laws, for estates everywhere, but especially for the royal parks, is due to Canute, who must have had a Norse passion for the chase ; four thanes were appointed in every province to control the jurisdiction of “venery and vert;” and the free Englishman who killed a stag was to be punished with loss of liberty, the serf with loss of life. Modern sportsmen will be scan- dalized to hear that foxes were treated as vermin whom any man might slay. Bishops and barons were allowed the range of the royal preserves, but were to pay for any stag they might lall. Only a gentleman might keep grey-hounds on the bor- ders of the forest ; and then their fangs must be drawn.? Itis clear that Canute, like William the Conqueror, is open to the reproach of loving “ the tall deer as if he were their father.” On the death of Canute, 1035 a.p., several claimants ap- peared for the vacant crown. The eldest son of Canute was Harold Harefoot, whom the Danish party and the citizens of London, now in the Danish interest, supported;? but the vol. ii., book v., cap. 2, pp. 49, 51. The story as told of Canute occurs first in Henry of Huntingdon, who was well versed in British legend. 1 Leges Edw. Conf.,c. 16; A. 8. Laws, vol. i., p. 449. ? Const. de Forest., 1, 11, 24, 26,27; A. &. Laws, vol. i., pp. 426, 427, 429. 3A. 8. Chron., A., 10386. Elegerunt eum Dani et Lundonie cives qui am pene in barbarorum mores propter frequentem convictum transierant.— Malmesbury, lib. ii., p. 318. USURPATION OF HAROLD HAREFOOT. 159 Saxons disliked the prospect of a Danish king, and declared that Harold was a cobbler’s son, and that Canute’s first wife had been barren. The Saxon nobles inclined towards Hardicanute, the son of Canute and Emma, who appeared to conciliate Danish and English interests, but who at this critical moment was absent in Denmark, where he was acknowledged king. But the Saxon people wished for the AKtheling Alfred, Emma’s eldest son by Ethelred, who was still the legitimate heir, and whom it was believed in Normandy Canute had promised to designate his successor in half of the kingdom, as the price of peace with Robert the Devil! In this confusion of interests, with the nobles demoralized by long anarchy, and with no statesman of settled views at the helm, Harold easily procured his acknowledgement in the provinces north of the Thames, while the kingship of Wessex and Kent was entrusted to Emma in custody for her son, who was still under age; Godwin, the earl of Kent, was her minister ;? and the body-guard of Canute, the hus-carles, were in her service.? Matters seem to have remained thus for a few months, but Emma’s power was uncertain, and Harold contrived to seize the greater part of the royal treasure at Winchester. Suddenly the Atthelings Alfred and Edward? arrived in England with a body of several hundred Frenchmen and Normans, who had partly been furnished by their brother-in-law, Eustace of Boulogne. It is quite possible that Emma, disliking her peril- ous position, or preferring Alfred, educated in the Norman court, to her Danish son, Hardicanute, had sent for the A®the- ling; but it is probable that he had not been invited by any large party among the nobles, who were more than half Danish, and who had nothing to gain from a prince with foreign * Wendover, voli. p. 474; Flor. Wig., vol. i, p. 257. 2 Gul. Gemit., lib. v., cap. 12. 3A, §. Chron., A., 1036. 4 Whether Edward landed is alittle uncertain. One account represents him as repulsed from Southampton.—Gul. Gemit., lib. vi, cap. 8. The Encomium Emme says that he did not attempt to leave Normandy.—Duchesne, p, 175. The Saxon Chronicle, however, and Florence of Worcester, represent both as coming over. 160 SEIZURE OF THE #ZTHELING ALFRED. favourites. Still Alfred was a dangerous rival toa king with an uncertain title, and Harold proposed a conference to adjust their claims. The theling set out with six hundred men as an escort ; he was surrounded and seized in Guildford ; his fol- lowers cruelly put to death or enslaved ; and he himself blinded and sent to the monastery of Ely, in which he presently died. By whom the foul crime was perpetrated, is one of the darkest riddles of history. Six years later, Earl Godwin and Lyfing, bishop of Worcester, were denounced by Atlfric, arch- bishop of York, as guilty of this treason ; and Godwin seems to have admitted the charge, as far as surprizing the Aitheling’s retinue and seizing his person were concerned, while he strenuously denied any share or consent in his mutilation or death. The answer is not unlikely to be true. Godwin’s interests lay m supporting Hardicanute, with whom he was remotely connected by marriage; he may very likely have thought it expedient to prevent the beginnings of civil war; we need not suppose that he conducted the expedition against Guildford himself; he probably, on a promise that Alfred should have no harm done to him, agreed to leave his followers to their fate, perhaps ordering the gates of Guildford to be opened to Harold’s soldiers, perhaps only keeping back the Saxon forces to which Alfred looked for support. If this view of the trans- action be true, and it is in keeping with Godwin’s politic char- acter, it accounts for the long concealment of the carl’s com- plcity ; it gives the reason why Harold never molested him; it explains why Hardicanute was willing to condone the offence, and why Edward, at a time when he would not forgive was yet never able to punish it; it allows us to reconcile Godwin’s posi- tion as Emma’s minister and support in Saxon chronicles, with the infamy which Norman writers attach to his name. Our judgement would be a little clearer, could we decide certainly whether Alfred was on his way from Winchester to London, or 1 Non sui consilii nec sux voluntatis fuisse quod frater ejus cacatus fuisset, sed dominum suum regem Haroldum illum facere quod fecit jussisse cum totius fere Anglic principibus et ministris dignioribus regi juravit.—Flor. Wig., vol. i., p. 198. CHARACTER OF HAROLD’S REIGN. 161 from some Kentish port to Oxford: the former is the story of the Saxon party, the latter of Norman historians ; and it makes the difference whether we suppose that the Earl of Kent had no share in promoting the enterprize, or that he received the prince with flattering promises and lured him on to his destruction.!. The shield has its white and its black side; it depends on which side we stand, whether Godwin is a traitor or only a partizan, who, like many not over-scrupulous men, meditated a small villany, and was entangled in the con- sequences of a great crime. Alfred’s death put England at Harold’s feet. He pro- ceeded to banish Emma, who fled to Bruges, where Baldwin of Flanders, her great-nephew, supported her; that she did not in her poverty take refuge with her son in Denmark, is perhaps some proof that she had conspired against him; the AXtheling Edward returned to Normandy. The queen, however, entered into fresh plans for expelling Harold, and Hardicanute had come with his fleet to Bruges, which was then almost a seaport, when the news of Harold’s sudden death, 1040 a.p., relieved them from further difficulty. In the weakness of his uncertain rule, the country had been without law, the fen lands filled with fugitives, and the marches ravaged by the Welsh,® but personally the king had not been oppres- sive, and had freely lavished the treasures which he had 1 Florence of Worcester takes the prince from Winchester to London, but strangely enough both he and the Saxon Chronicle lay the blame on Godwin; William of Jumiéges and William of Poitou make Dover the port; and the author of the Encomium Emme probably had a Kentish port in his mind, as he makes Godwin lead the prince aside from London to Guildford; he, how- ever, brings no charge of treason against the earl.—Gul. Gemit., lib. vi., c. 9; Gul. Pict., p. 78; Enc. Emm., Duchesne, p. 175. To complete the confusion, Malmesbury, generally on the Norman side, regards the charges against Godwin as unproved, and calls him ‘“justitice propugnator.”—Lib. ii, p. 321. The charter in which Edward the Confessor is made to ascribe his brother’s death to Harold and Hardicanute, need no longer perplex the question, as Mr. Kemble considers it spurious.—Cod. Dip., 824. Even if it be genuine, I believe the charge is, by an ungrammatical construction, really brought against the Danes as in charter 825, not against the two kings. 2 Ingulfi Hist. Gale, vol. i. p. 61. M 162 REIGN OF HARDICANUTE. acquired by murder. Only the one unpardonable crime black- ened his memory with a stain, which the interested praises of monkish chroniclers could never efface in the estimation of the people. Hardicanute was welcomed joyfully in England, but he soon estranged the people’s affections by imposing a heavy tax for the benefit of his Danish fleet. The other acts of his short reign show him to have been a weak and unprincipled man. He ordered the body of Harold to be disinterred from its grave in St. Clement Danes, and thrown into the Thames ; he brought Godwin and Lyfing to trial for the death of Alfred, condoned Godwin’s offence for the present of a splendid ship, and de- prived Lyfing of his bishopric, but restored him again after a year; lastly, by his extortionate taxation, the king excited a rebellion in Worcester, which he punished with fire and sword, as if he were in an enemy’s country. Fortunately for the kingdom which he misgoverned, Hardicanute died of his excesses at a marriage banquet given by one of his nobles, A.D. 1042.1 Among the better points of the late king’s character, had been his conduct to his mother Emma and his half-brother Edward, who were both resident at the English court at the time of his death. Edward, fortunately for his own interests, had yielded to the ascendancy of Earl Godwm ; Emma seems not to have been reconciled to a man whom she esteemed the murderer of her favourite son, and she had never been on good , terms with Edward. She was evidently a daring, resolute woman ; her first husband had treated her badly, and she can have had little sympathy with his well-meaning but feeble second son. After a short interregnum, the interest of Godwin and Lyfing prevailed in raising Edward to the throne, to the exclusion of the Danish candidate, Svend, Canute’s nephew, and of Edward, son of Edmund Ironsides, the legitimate heir, but absent in Hungary. ‘The first act of the new king was to 1 The story of a war between Danes and Saxons in Hardicanute’s time, (Lives of Edw. Conf., pp. 40, 41) must probably be referred back to the days of Sweyn, ASCENDANCY OF GODWIN. 163 take away all his mother’s property; a decent maintenance was allowed her, and Winchester assigned her as a resi- dence; a similar act of confiscation despoiled her adherent, Stigant, bishop of Norwich. The excuse of the Saxon Chro- nicle, that Emma had dealt ungenerously with her son, is clearly insufficient, although weak impulses and petty malice make up much of Edward’s character; the act was one of a party headed by Godwin, and was meant to place an impass- able gulf between the king and the earl’s most implacable enemy. Other events indicate the accession of Godwin to power. He becomes about this time earl of Wessex, the one important province of England which the crown had always kept hitherto in its own hands. Above all, his daughter Edith was married to the king. It is probable Edward did not desire the union; he had all the feelings of a monk, and lived to the last day of his life separate from his queen. But it is impossible to believe that at this time he regarded Godwin as the murderer of his brother; or if, as his Norman biographers state, he was only yielding in all he did to official necessities, he deserves a deeper infamy than the foulest sus- picions ascribe to Godwwin’s conduct. In spite of Edward’s weak character, the country was in some respects well governed. The claims of Magnus of Norway to the English crown, which Hardicanute was said to have pro- mised him, were rejected with dignity by the witan ; a powerful navy secured the shores of the island from outrage, and only twice did roving fleets achieve a temporary success; the incur- sions of the Welsh were repressed ; comparative order was main- tained generally, and commerce flourished again. The nobility were now half Danish, and although two or three Danes of eminence were outlawed, Danish blood was no impediment to holding the highest offices at court;! in fact, the Northumbrians were as well aware as the Southrons that their interests were English ; and when Godwin, influenced by his marriage con- nections, proposed interference im the civil wars of Denmark, 1 Worsaae’s Danes and Northmen, pp. 145, 146. \ 164 GODWIN’S DECLINE IN POWER. the witan unanimously refused. All, therefore, would have been well, but for the ambition of Godwin’s family, and for Edward’s partiality to foreign favourites. Not contented with Kent and Wessex for himself, Godwin had obtained an earl- dom on the Welsh marches for his eldest son Swegen, and the same dignity in East Anglia for his second son Harold. Swegen first fell, through his own violence: he seduced the abbess of Leominster, and was deprived of his earldom, 1046 A.v.; his brother Harold, and a cousin, Beorn, opposed his restoration at court; and Swegen enticed Beorn on board a ship, and foully murdered him. The rebel was now proclaimed a “nithing,’—the worst aggravation of judicial outlawry, and most of his men, horror-struck at the crime, deserted him, 1049 A.D. The odium of this act must in some degree have attached to Godwin, at whose house Swegen and Beorn had met for the last time. The carl had reason to feel that his influence was on the wane. The Norman Robert had been appointed arch- bishop of Canterbury instead of Ailric, whom the monks of Christchurch elected, and whom Godwin supported as a kins- man of his own. Godwin was soon involved in a quarrel with the primate about some estates in Kent ;! and Robert revived the old charge of the earl’s treason to Alfred, and persuaded Edward of its truth. The king evidently aimed at surrounding himself with creatures of his own. His nephew, Raoul, son of the earl of Mantes, by Goda, afterwards married to Eustace of Boulogne, was made a staller or lord chamberlain of the court, was invested with large estates in Norfolk, and seems to have succeeded Swegen as earl in the Welsh marches, where he built a castle in Norman fashion, and garrisoned it with foreign mer- conaries.? A host of hungry dependants had crossed into 1 Lives of Edw. Conf., L., pp. 399, 400. Eadmer accuses Godwin of frau- dulently obtaining the town of Folkestone by Archbishop Eadsy’s connivance. —Hist. Nov., lib. i., p. 350. 2 On Raoul de Gael, J. R. Planché, pp. 34, 35. The staller was superin- tendent of the court, or a sort of high steward; there were several at the time in England.—Worsaae’s Danes, p. 400. Lappenberg, with great probability, refers the castle built by ‘‘ Welisce menn,”’ foreigners in Herefordshire, to Raoul’s followers.—Gesch. Eng., band i., pp. 505-507. QUARREL OF EDWARD AND GODWIN. 165 England as into a land of promise, and found or expected preferment. It is even said that, under the king’s influence, the courtiers affected the use of the French language, and imitated Norman manners.! While matters were in this critical state, Eustace, count of Boulogne, happened to return by way of Dover from a visit to the English court. The count’s retinue dispersed themselves ina disorderly manner to seek quarters in the houses of the citzens: a quarrel broke out in one house, whose owner resisted the obnoxious claim; the Saxon was cut down, and Eustace and his followers rode through the narrow streets of the town, slay- ing men and women, and trampling children under foot. But they had to deal with men who had arms in their hands, and the burghers drove the foreigners with shame and loss into the castle, which was held by a French garrison.? “Eustace went back to his brother-in-law, and demanded vengeance for the insult. The king called upon Godwin, as ealdorman of the district, to inflict severe punishment upon Dover; but Godwin was not inclined to alienate his own people in an unjust cause and in the interest of strangers. He collected an army, indeed, but he led it against Gloucester, where the court was staying, and demanded that the foreign garrison should be expelled from Dover, the scene of the late outrage, and from Hereford, where Swegen’s adherents had been persecuted. Edward, however, was not unprepared for a contest; he had summoned the great northern earls, Siward and Leofric, to his assistance; and a numerous well-appoimted Anglian army was now in the field and burning to give battle. But the counsels of all wise men were against a civil war, and it was determined to refer the questions at issue to a meeting of the witan at Southwark. The change of place or the delay in time was fatal to Godwin, whose army melted from him. Edward pressed his advantage, revived the old charge of his brother’s murder, and demanded 1 Hist. Ingulf. Gale, vol. i., p. 62. 2 Florence of Worcester distinguishes the companions of Eustace from the Normans and men of Boulogne, who held the castle on the hill of Dover.—Vol. i, pp. 205, 206. « 166 GODWIN’S EXILE AND RETURN. that Godwin should stand his trial, while he refused to grant him hostages for his safety ; the earl was glad to compound for five days’ truce, during which he might leave the land. It is a proof of the absence of anything like international policy in those days, that Godwin and Swegen took refuge with Edward’s kinsman, the count of Flanders. Harold and Leofwin preferred exile in Ireland. The family were outlawed; and Edward, the unresisting victim of his counsellors, was induced to part from his wife, who retired with royal state to Wilton convent.! It is probable that the victory of the Norman party was pushed too far, for many Englishmen left the country to share Godwin’s exile. The earl himself had no thought but of return ; his sons Harold and Leofwin were the first to try the western coasts, but the ealdormen of the country were staunch to Edward, and Harold only gained a battle, and carried off plunder as if in an enemy’s country. Godwin was more fortunate. The sym- pathies of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey were with him; and when his sons jomed him, their united ships were able to force the royal fleet, under Raoul the Staller, to retire, and sailed vic- toriously up the Thames, while their army marched along the banks by favour of the citizens of London, who left their bridge unguarded. Edward’s army was small, for his cause was now unpopular, and the natives were all anxious to avoid bloodshed : negotiations were therefore begun, and the more unpopular of the Norman courtiers at once took flight for the continent, foresecing what the issue would be. In fact, Godwin fell at the king’s feet, and adjured him in Christ’s name to allow aman wrongfully accused to establish his innocence ; the king, at once touched and unable to resist, declared himself satisfied with the submission offered ; the earl and his sons were restored to their honours and possessions, with the one exception of Swegen, who had before this set out from Flanders on a pilgrimage to expiate his crimes, from which he never returned. Godwin did not long live to enjoy his recovered power. In the Easter 1 Lives of Edw. Conf., L., p. 403. Florence of Worcester, however, says that she was sent with only one maid to Wherwell convent, where a sister of Edward was abbess. - CHARACTER OF GODWIN. 167 of the next year he fell back in his seat at the royal table, and died within three days. The calumnies of Norman chroniclers declared that the judgement of God overtook him, as he swore to his innocence of Alfred’s death. Later history, in re- jecting this fable, has inclined to surround the character of the. great earl and his son, with the last sunshine of the Saxon monarchy. Yet Godwin, if he was no worse than other and smaller men of his time,was assuredly no better. Crafty, silent, and resolute, shrinking from unnecessary scandals, but careless of any means that might serve his end, he fought and schemed only for his own hand: he was mayor of the palace to a Mero- vingian king; and although he would never have copied Pepin in snatching at the externals of royalty, he undoubtedly meant to found a dynasty. The Danes were his stepping-stones to power; the Normans his rivals; he used the one and opposed the other accordingly; and if he was indeed a patriot, it was his singular fortune that his sympathies favoured his ambition. Godwin’s death and Swegen’s absence from the country promoted the fortunes of the family. Harold succeeded to his father’s earlship, and appears about 1056 a.p., in com- mand of the western district, once held by Swegen. He probably replaced Raoul the Staller, who had sustained a disas- trous defeat from the Welsh a year before, by horsing his un- trained Saxon infantry in the fashion of Norman cavalicrs.1 Edith’s favourite brother, Tostig, in 1055 a.p., succeeded to the government of the north, left vacant by Siward’s death with- out ason. The fortunate death of the Attheling Edward, 1057 A.D.,° removed a dangerous rival to the ambition of the 1 Raoul had commanded the fleet which Godwin drove before him. On his second failure, the earl, already unpopular as a foreign favourite, was accused of cowardice (Flor. Wig., vol. i., p. 218); and as we hear no more of him till his death, December, 1057 .p., (Planché on Raoul de Gael, p. 34,) it seems likely that he was replaced in his government by Harold, whom we find commanding there. 2 On his arrival in England, he was kept from seeing the king (A. 8. Chron., A., 1057), who had meant to declare him his heir.—Flor. Wig., vol. i., p. 215. Godwin’s sons must have had some share in preventing an interview; and it is difficult to believe that the death was natural, 168 QUARREL OF HAROLD AND TOSTIG. brothers; and a series of victories over the Welsh, whose war- like king, Griffin, was at last slain by his own people, 1063 a.p., raised the reputation of the two earls among their countrymen. They now became rivals for power. Tostig, however, at once secret in his designs, violent in his acts, and rapacious in his administration, had excited the hatred of the Northum- brians; he murdered two of his opponents, and his sister Edith caused another, Gospatric, to be assassinated at court. The people rose up in arms, murdered his officers, and drove him out of the north, advancing themselves in battle array southwards, where they plundered the country and made slaves. Harold headed a royal commission to arrange terms with the rebels, but secretly he supported their complaints against his brother ;! and in spite of the favour of the old king, Tostig was forced to leave England, and take refuge at Bald- win’s court, 1065 a.p. The shock of these family quarrels proved fatal to the king, who sickened and presently died, January, 1066 a.p. Public rumour said that on his death-bed he was rapt with the spirit of prophecy, and declared that on account of the crimes of the dukes and higher clergy of the country, the judgement of God would visit England within a year and a day, and devils lay waste the land with fire and sword. The courtiers and Harold himself were dumb with horror; but the primate Stigand, who had dared the thunders of Rome, holding Canterbury without a pall while its Norman archbishop was alive, whispered in the earl’s ear that the sick old man did not know what words he uttered. It is difficult to do justice to Edward’s character. He was the last of the golden-haired, blue-eyed race of Cerdic and Alfred, in whom Saxon sovereignty was symbolized ; and the people, who groaned under strong rulers, idealized their mild and saintly king. For Edward loved mercy and justice as a part of religion; when he saw the gold of the Dane geld in his treasury, it seemed to him that the devil was dancing gleefully 1So at least thought Tostig.—Lives of Edw. Conf., L., pp. 422, 423. The Saxon Chronicle, however, says that he tried to work a reconciliation. CHARACTER OF EDWARD. 169 on the money wrung from a toil-stricken people, and he caused it to be restored, and abolished the tax for ever. The first miracle he performed, from which was derived the custom of touching for the king’s evil, is proof of his goodness of heart: a poor scrofulous woman believed that the king could restore her to health by his prayers and touch; and Edward took the suppliant into his palace, and kept her there until good food had produced its natural results in her cure.! We can understand the love such a man would attract, the more as he joined a royal presence to easy, courteous manners, and dis- guised his weakness of will by his sensibility to passionate impulse, while his temper was kept within bounds by the gen- tleman’s habit of self-control. But in all that makes up intellect and character, Edward was little better than half- witted.? He knew that dishonesty to the state was a crying sin of the times, and yet he dismissed the thief whom he found plundering the treasury, with a warning that he had better not be found out. He knew that the great nobles and prelates misused their powers over the people, and yet he consented to a law which transferred the jurisdiction, in criminal matters, from the local courts to the feudal lords, in all cases where their dependants were concerned. Himself a warm-hearted man, clinging to old tics, and with a strong sense of duty, he plundered and disgraced his mother in obedience to one court faction, and separated from his queen to please another. He is a striking example how small an interval divides weakness from vice in the character of a king. That his reign was comparatively prosperous, is due to the acci- dent of his foreign connections, and to the ability of Godwin and his sons; the Normans had more to hope from peace than from war; the Englishmen who aspired to succeed their king were eager to win their spurs. Hence it came that Edward was on the whole well served: the Welsh were bloodily beaten back ; Macbeth of Scotland, who had thrown off the English 1 Lives of Edw. Conf., L., p. 428. ? “Rex simplex” he is called by Barth de Cotton—De Epise., p. 376. 3 Leges Edw. Conf., 21; A. 8. Laws, vol. i., p. 451. 170 ANARCHY OF ENGLAND. allegiance, was defeated, and replaced on the throne by Malcolm, the English nominee, and son of the murdered Duncan, (1055 A.D.) But the soldier whom Edward trusted and promoted, Raoul the Staller, sustained disgraceful reverses by sea and land, and was accused by the public voice of incapacity. When Ailfgar, the earl of Anglia, was outlawed by the witan, he replaced himself in his government by the aid of Danish mercenaries ; they were days when every man did what was right in his own eyes; the central authority was only respected when the sympathies or the interests of some powerful earl supported it. For England, for Europe, it was insufferable that this anarchy of a great country should endure. That a strong ruler would ultimately restore order, was probable; the kingdom was too small to admit of division, ike Germany; but who that.ruler should be—whether native, to confirm England in its insularity, or foreign, to bind it with Europe—was a question that Edward left undecided, or that he only settled on his death-bed; he had wishes, but no will; and his wishes were probably for his Norman cousin, his sense of duty for a Saxon. He had once tried to secure the succession to his cousin, the Autheling Edward; the judgement of God had interposed; and Edward died, having established nothing, presaging the worst, and leaving the event to Heaven. 1The positive statements of one of the Saxon Chronicles, of Florence, and of the writer of Edward’s Life, can hardly be said to settle the question, whether Edward made a nuncupative will. It was Harold’s interest to spread the story; and stronger evidence was produced in 1135 a.p., to show that Henry I. disinherited his daughter. Norman writers are equally positive that the Confessor had given the crown to his cousin. XVI. ANGLO-SAXON POLICE. BRITAIN DIVIDED ANEW.—HUNDREDS AND TITHINGS.—THE EALDORMAN AND COUNTY COURTS.—MUTUAL POLICE, OR FRANK-PLEDGE SYSTEM.—FEUDAL JURISDICTIONS.—A CASE OF CRIMINAL LAW.—NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE RE- QUIRED IN DOUBTFUL CASES.—TRIAL OF THURKILL AND HIS WIFE.—BINARY JURISDICTION OF STATE AND CHURCH: THE STATE ASSESSING DAMAGE, THE CHURCH PUNISHING SIN. Tue conquest of England by the Saxons was effected, as we have seen, by a series of petty invasions. It is probable that for many years it scarcely affected property in the towns, which often contracted with the invaders; and im which the con- querors did not care to dwell. But in the country the case was far different. The Anglo-Saxon not only required land for his support, but by the ancestral polity of his tribes, civil free- dom and nobility depended upon its possession.!_ Moreover, the people was sufficiently civilized to have certain principles of division; the allotments of land were probably made on a uniform scale to every freeman ;® and a portion was held in reserve by the state to be granted away in reward for public services, or to supply the wants of new generations. Probably, as at the Norman conquest, the more eminent of the British landowners were allowed to remain on a portion of their estates as tributaries ; while the peasants and prisoners of war were 1“ And if a ceorl thrived, so that he had fully five hides of his own land, church and kitchen, bell-house and burh-gate-seat, and special duty in the King’s hall, then was he thenceforth of thane-right worthy.” —Ranks: A.S. Laws, vol. i., p. 191. Thus, the abbot of Ely fraudulently conveyed some of the abbey lands to his brother, that he might have the forty hides of land requisite for the highest nobles.—Hist. Eliensis, Gale, vol. iii, p.113. Contrariwise, the landless man was regarded with suspicion by the law. 2 The hide or allotment contained from thirty to thirty-three acres.—Kem- ble’s Saxons in England, vol. i., chap. 4. 172 TITHINGS AND HUNDREDS. enslaved. Numberless differences of condition would arise in the several districts from accident. But generally, there can be little doubt that the ancient landmarks of estates were removed everywhere, and the country divided anew to suit the organiza- tion of its conquerors. To appreciate the Anglo-Saxon settlement, we must bear in mind that the conquering people were in every case a little army, composed of a number of companies, united by blood, by language, and by a common name. Each company, inits turn, was formed, in part at least, of men who bore the name of their chief, his gesith, or battle-brothers, if not actually his kin. Thus Kent was parcelled out among Alings and Banings, Billings and Derings, whose captains we may fairly assume to have had names such as Al and Bana, Bil and Deor.! But as the family bond was artificial, it was supplemented by a numerical principle of division. Ten families constituted a tithing, the self-governing unit of the state ;* and ten tithings were a hundred, whose court administered justice among the little communities themselves. As the people settled down, the terms tithing and hundred naturally came to stand for divisions of land, not for any specific number of families. An uncertain and probably fluctuating number of these constituted the shire, whose distinguishing feature seems to have been that its head,* the duke or ealdorman, was not the elect of the 1 Meaning respectively, Eel, Homicide, Axe, and Deer. 2 Savigny, dissenting from all his predecessors, has surmised that ten families constituted a frith-borh, ten frith-borhs a tithing, and ten tithings a hundred. His reasons are, that the frith-borh is spoken of as a division, and that a magis- trate to ten families seems excessive. But there is no need to assume that the frith-borh is anything more than another name for a tithing, especially as the citizen is sometimes called frith-borgus. A magistrate to ten privileged families, having tenants and slaves, and spread over the country, would not be excessive, even while the division was numerical. Athelstane’s laws place the matter beyond controversy. ‘That we count always ten men together; and the chief should direct the nine in each of those duties which we have all ordained, and count afterwards their hyndens together, and one hynden-man.’’—Judicia Civ. Lond., A. 8. Laws, vol. i., p. 238; Savigny’s Rémische Rechts-Geschichte, band iii., p. 82. 3 “Tf he be an ealdorman, let him forfeit his shire” (in case of compounding a felony).—Ine, 36; A. 8S. Laws, vol. i., p. 125. THE COUNTY AND ITS CHIEFS. 178 people in historical times, but either their hereditary chief, or, as royal families died out, their viceroy. As a consequence of this, the county had from the first all the organization of a state; its gemot included all the different orders of society ; it had its local army, and could make war ; it was fringed by a march or border of waste land, which no neighbour could violate without risk of war, and on which no squatter could acquire property by residence; which was, in a word, the sacred limit of a dominion. If we take modern names, perhaps none will so well express the position of a county duke, as our title of lord-leutenant. A degraded king, as it were, he sometimes styled himself, “by the grace of God;’! but by the conditions of Saxon roy- alty, his title was never indefeasible, however circumstances and prestige might tend to perpetuate it in a single family. Probably in most shires there were several families of ealdor- manic rank, from whom the holder of office was selected by the king, with advice and consent of his witan. Wielding an zn- perium in imperio, like the governor of an American state, the duke was chiefly important as military chief of his province, and as declaring to the county court the laws which the witan or court of the nation had passed. But his functions as supreme judge in the district, could be exercised in his absence by the scir-gerefa, or sheriff, who held his court twice a year, assisted by the bishop, as the duke’s deputy, and who seems practically to have controlled the police of the county. The importance of these functions in days when the royal perogative included a part of the fines of justice, purveyance, and heriot, will be easily understood ; the scir-gerefa came more and more to be regarded as a royal officer, especially since the imposition of oaths fell under his province; the king might depose him if he were negligent, and the analogy of Norman custom seems to show that the king appointed him. The only popular magis- ' trates in the country were therefore the tithing and hundred reeves ; the former of whom were always, the latter mostly, 1 Cod. Dip., 255, where the shire is spoken of as “sua propria hereditas.”’ 174 ORIGIN OF THE FRANK-PLEDGE SYSTEM elected by their respective communes. The smaller questions of debt and police were probably decided by these men in their respective courts; the freemen of the tithing would meet as occasion required ; the hundred court was summoned once a month. But besides this, the tithing and hundred reeves headed delegacies from their districts to sit in the higher courts, on questions for which their own powers were inadequate. This was probably an innovation on the old principle, which re- quired the attendance of all freemen. The increase of population, and the demands of labour on a people who had ceased to be soldiers receiving rent from their tenantry, will sufficiently explain why the right of attending the scir-gemot became an irksome duty, and fell gradually into disuse. It is clear that the functions of police must precede the administration of justice. The earliest practice no doubt com- mitted to the individual the charge of providing for his life and property ; the earliest legislation consisted in drawing up a tariff to assess the compensation incurred for crime; the only recognition of a commonwealth in the whole theory was in the assignment of a certain proportion of the penalty to the state. This wiht-gild, or crime-money, as it came to be called in dis- tinction from the were-gild, or life-money, was no return for a service rendered by the community, but value for a loss which it had sustained; the criminal had subtracted so much labour or life from the common stock, and was bound to indemnify his fellow-citizens. The only duty of the royal officers was to watch the contract between the aggrieved party and the offender, and see that a due proportion of the fine found its way to the treasury. In default of a national police, the tithings and hundreds formed unions for public safety among themselves. The ties of family which at first united their members, and a common religion, had given rise to periodical feasts ;} it was natural that clansmen, neighbours, and friends should unite to pursue a thief or a murderer, or even to wage war against an oppressive noble or public officer. It was 1 Wilda’s Gilden-Wesen, Erster Abschnitt. ANGLO-SAXON FEUDALISM. 175 equally natural that the people of a district, being thus re- garded as an association, should in turn be called upon by their neighbours to give up a criminal, and in default of this, to purge themselves legally of all complicity, or else to take the consequences of his offence upon themselves. Immemorial custom passed easily into law; and the English kings consoli- dated the frith-borh or frank-pledge system, by codifying its regulations and obliging all their subjects, if they were not vassals of some lord,! to be sworn members of some association. Private feud was thus prevented, and although crime could not be put down, it was certain that the sum of compensation would always be equal to the sum of injury. The mention of vassals and lords obliges me to digress to a new feature of Anglo-Saxon polity. The unit of the tithing and of the state was the head of the family, who governed his wife under contract, his children, saving life and freedom, till they became of age, and his slave to all time uncon- ditionally, except as regarded life and limb. . A control of this sort in itself implies responsibility, and the Anglo-Saxon was bound to pay the fines of his children and of his slave. By a natural analogy, it became customary for the English noble to pledge himself for his dependants; and these had a natural tendency to increase. The gesith, or military retainer, had been with him from the first; conquest had assigned him the tenant and the slave; and now, when every man required a pledge to the laws for his good conduct, the landless men, who wanted the condition of freedom, and whose birth was yet not servile, were forced to attach themselves to some lord. Their service was half voluntary, for if they disliked it, they might change their lord by appeal to the duke ;? they might even obtain a guarantee from their kinsmen who owned 1 Ethelred, i; A. S. Laws, vol. i., p, 281. “That every freeman have a true borh,” and “let every lord haye his household in his own borh.” 2 Alfred, 37; A. S. Laws, vol. i, p. 87. It was the duty of the kinsmen to find a lord in the folk-mote for the lordless men.—Athelstane, 2; A. S. Laws, vol.i. p. 201. This duty they would be careful to perform, as otherwise they were responsible for part of the were. 176 A CASE FROM CRIMINAL LAW. land; but without a patron of some kind they were vagabonds, whom any man might lawfully slay as thieves. Having, there- fore, to protect and control a number of dependants, it was natural that the noble should attempt to withdraw them from the operation of the local courts, in which they had no voice. Special jurisdictions were hence created by the side of the townships and tithings, but with the mark-worthy difference that they were not popular, but aristocratic or feudal.' Their ' appropriate name was the soke, and the men subject to them were soc-men. Their powers were subordinate to the county gemots ;? their functions were mixed; and they have survived to the present day, the shadows of ancient feudality, as courts- baron for civil matters, and as courts-leet for the original frank-pledge purpose, the ordering of the police, by a view of the tenantry.° The country, then, being thus divided into little police federations or jurisdictions, the next poimt is to understand how justice was administered in criminal cases. One or two actual cases will explain the method of procedure. During the reign of Ethelred, 995 a.p., three brothers* were sitting at a feast in Oxford. Their servant, a man named Leofric, stole a halter; he was suspected, and the property found upon him; the owners proceeded to seize him, and the brothers defended him; but as the members of the frith-guild came up, two of the brothers were slain, while the third and Leofric escaped to the sanctuary of St. Helen’s, where they were watched by their pursuers. We do not know what actually became of them; but their sanctuary would only give them a respite of nine days, during which if they could not escape, they must make terms with their pursuers by paying the were. If they could not pay the were, they would forfeit their 1 It was seemingly the lord’s duty to maintain a recognized police in his domain, “who may lead those men who desire to seek their own.”’—Edward, 7; A. 8. Laws, vol. i., p. 163. 2 Cod. Dip., vol. i., p. xlvi. 3 Blackstone, book iii., chap. 4; book iy., chap. 19. 4 Cod. Dip., 789. DENIAL OF BURIAL. 117 freedom,! or, except in Wessex, if the pursuers preferred ‘it, their lives. But this case developes a curious feature of early English justice. The sheriffof Buckingham and the town-reeve of Oxford, who had probably come up on hearing of a breach of the peace, allowed the two slain brothers to be buried in holy ground. This was an illegal remission of an important part of the penalty, and the duke of the district accordingly reported the officers to the king, for neglect of duty. Ethelred, however, pardoned them; and, with characteristic weakness, gave fEthelwig, the sheriff, a grant of land to compensate him for the charge. In this case, where the thieves were slain in open breach of the peace, there could be no doubt as to the duty of the king’s officers. But if any man were slain red hand unjustly, and in consequence denied Christian sepulture, his kinsmen always had liberty of appeal to a court composed of freemen from the neighbourhood, and presided over by the local authority. Then if the appeal were sustained, the bishop went forth at the head of a solemn procession, with holy water and incense, to take the dead man out of his grave and transfer him to hallowed earth. The offender in such cases was mulcted in a triple fine, which was paid into the bishop’s hands.* Cases where the criminal was not taken in the fact, but was only suspected, were more complicated. To understand them, it must be remembered that circumstantial evidence was impossible in early times; the police who could col- lect it, the advocates who could arrange it, the court that could sift it, were almost as much unknown in the tenth century as our chemical and microscopical tests. Two points were therefore regarded by the Anglo-Saxon courts as mainly decisive: the respective positions of accusers and accused, and 1 They might either be made slaves or imprisoned.—Ethelred, 7, 16; A S. Laws, vol. i., p. 333. 2 Judicia Ciy. Lund., 1; Ine, 5; A. 8. Laws, vol. i, pp. 105, 228. But under Edward the Confessor, {he criminal was only obliged to make restitution, and could not be seized, except by the priest or the church servants.—Edw. Conf., 8; A. 8. Laws, vol. i., p. 445. Edw. Conf., 36; A. 8. Laws, vol. i, p. 460. 178 NATURE OF COMPURGATION. their characters in the district. The first was estimated by a graduated scale: a thane’s word, for instance, was as valuable as the assertion of six ceorls; a duke’s evidence might outweigh that of a whole township.! The question of character was decided by the good opinion of the neighbourhood ; the accused brought into court a certain number of compurgators, who swore to their belief in his innocence. The advantage of this system was that, in the case of ordinary men, it entrusted the question of their acquittal to those who would suffer hereafter if they let loose a scoundrel upon their village ; its disadvantage was, that a weak or unpopular man might be crushed for want of friends, and a great man escape by the number of his following. Still it will prevent confusion to remember that compurgators were neither witnesses to fact, nor a jury, nor part of the court; indeed, evidence was commonly given by simple affirmation ; and the imposition of an oath on the compurgators was cer- tainly not from a disregard to perjury, but because the compur- gators were scarcely held to incur any risk of forswearing them- selves, in declaring their opinion of the man who had selected them as his guarantees.* We learn how these principles were applied from a case that occurred under Canute. A wife, by a second marriage, wishing to secure her husband’s affections, administered a philtre to him, and afterwards murdered her step-son, and buried him privily.? But trusting that her rank would 1 Oaths, 13; A.S. Laws, vol. i., p. 183. When one Alfnoth challenged pro- perty belonging to the monastery of Ramsey, the ealdorman interrupted the case by pledging himself for the truth of the monk’s statements. The court, in consideration of his high position and character, at once gave verdict for the defendant, and declared all the plaintiff’s property forfeit to the king, as the penalty of a vexatious suit—Hist. Ram., Gale, vol. iii., pp. 416, 417. For a similar case in Norman times, see Chron. Mon. de Abingdon, vol. ii., p. 229. 2 This, however, would be less applicable to cases in which property was concerned.—Cod. Dip., 1237. Under the Normans perjury became so common, that it was said no man’s possessions would be, safe but for the duel, which was a stronger check than conscience. In civil courts, however, the oath was necessarily as to fact, not as to character. 3 Hist. Ram., Gale, vol. iii., pp. 438-441. A TRIAL FOR MURDER. 179 place her above suspicion, she refused to pay the witch who had assisted her the sum covenanted. The witch in her anger went to the bishop and denounced the crime. As the case was one in which canonical laws chiefly had been violated, by the use of witchcraft, and by murder of a child, who was still in his father’s power, the bishop cited husband and wife to appear before him. They at first refused to obey, and the bishop did not lke to insist, as the husband, Thurkill, was a Dane of high rank. The matter, however, came to the king’s ears; Canute first questioned the accused parties himself, and then ordered them to obey the bishop’s citation, and clear them- selves with compurgators of the crime laid to their charge. The trial took place in public, and in the open air, on account of the multitude who attended; the bishop took care that it should be held in the meadow where the child’s body had been con- cealed; but it is not clear whether he presided in his own right over a special court, or acted in his ordinary capacity as joint-president with the sheriff of the county court. To — give greater solemnity to the proceedings, a deputation from the neighbouring convent of Ramsey attended with a box of relics. Each of the accused had to bring eleven com- purgators, and the woman’s were of her own sex. The man, kneeling down, with outstretched hand, first swore to his own innocence, and then proceeded to swear to his wife’s, wishing to save her the necessity of an oath. Here the trial was interrupted by a miracle: Thurkill had sworn by his beard, and the beard came off in his hand! All were now convinced of the lady’s guilt, but as she still asserted her innocence, the bishop ordered the grave of the child, which the witch had 1The usual oath-formula would have been, ‘By the Lord, I am guiltless, both in deed and counsel, of the charge of which M. accuses me.” And the compurgators would then swear, ‘‘By the Lord, the oath is clear and unperjured which N. hath sworn,’ It seems, however, that sometimes, at least in civil cases, the old Roman form of swearing was used, by which the man, casting away a stone, prayed that he might be cast out of the city and his estate, if he were consciously forswearing himself—Leges Henrici I., v.,29; A.S. Laws, vol. i., p. 511, and note. 180 NATURE OF THE TESTS FOR CRIME. pointed out, to be opened; and the murderess confessed her crime, and was ordered the appropriate penance. This would be to abstain from food as on church fasts, during a term of from four to seven years, according to the circumstances of the homicide.! It is important to observe, that if the miracle had not occurred, the court would have had to decide whether or not the oath of compurgation was sufficient to clear the accused. In this case, where public feeling was violently excited, they would probably have declared it inadequate, and the ordeal by iron would then have been resorted to. Judg- ing from later custom, even those acquitted by the ordeal might still be expelled the district, if they were not free from sus- picion; but it may be questioned if this applied to any landowner who had soc of his own. Modern opinion would be scandalized by the oath of compurgation preceding the opening of the grave. Yet in fact, however suspicions might be confirmed by this verification of the witch’s story, it could prove nothing more than a murder of which the witch was cognizant; and if the lady’s courage had not broken down, her oath ought to have outweighed that of her accuser. It is probable, however, that under the strong excitement of the moment, her compurgators would have refused to swear for her. In this case she might still have claimed the ordeal.? To commute such a crime as murder for a fine and a penance, appears at first sight insufficient. It was the result of two principles, each more or less right in itself. The Anglo-Saxon state professed to deal only with the secu- lar aspects of society; with crime as a moral or religious offence it had nothing to do; it only assessed the losses which crime entailed on individuals or the community, and enforced, ' The term of penance for secret murder was four or seven years ; for secret murder by magic, seven years; and for perjury in a church or on relics, four years. In this case, therefore, eleven years’ punishment might be inflicted. — Ecgb. Conf., 22, 31, 34; A. S. Laws, vol. ii., pp. 149, 157, 159. ? Ethelred, ii. “If he dare not take the oath, let him go to the triple ordeal.”” The principle here affirmed of cases involving property, no doubt applied to those in which life was concerned.—A. S. Laws, yol. i., p. 280. JUDICIAL PROVINCE OF THE STATE. 181 or provided for the enforcement, of the penalty. To extirpate sin was the duty of the church, and the state assisted it with all its prestige and powers. Penance practically was compul- sory, not optional. But the canons forbade priests to take any part in the shedding of blood, and they had not yet learned to evade this provision by handing back the men they had sen- tenced to the temporal arm. The punishment of death was therefore unknown to the Saxon state, except for treason and lese-majesty, or for witcheraft and sacrilege, which followed the same analogy.! It is true there were a number of cases in which a man, detected in a crime, or refusing to surrender to the law, or having forfeited its protection, might be slain. But these are regulations of police rather than of justice. Similarly, the notorious thief might be mutilated ; but the punishment was probably designed to cripple him in his pecu- liar activity, and to designate him as a convict. It is doubtful, though the laws speak of prisons, whether during these centu- ries there was any place in which a criminal could be confined for life. Generally, it may be said that the tenour of the Anglo-Saxon laws was merciful, or at least not bloody. Much has been said about the barbarism of commuting offences for money punishments. It might be said that it is a barbarism which we have not yet outgrown: the rich man pays his five pounds at the police-court, while the poor man goes away in the van; even adultery is still matter of assess- ment. Yet until offences against life and property were dis- tinctly regarded as immoral no less than detrimental, it is difficult to see how the state could profess to do anything more than aim at prevention and compensation. In Christian times, the recognition of sin as a political evil changed the whole aspect of the question. But with a half-pagan population, a moral change in the laws could not be at once effected ; it was natural to leave the punishment for outraged religion to the church. If the church could enforce its decrees, could compel abstinence 1 Alfred, 4, 7; Ethelred, vi.,.7; vii, 9,13; A. 8. Laws, vol. i., pp. 68, 67, 317, 331, 333. 182 CORRECTIONAL POWERS OF THE CHURCH. from food, and brand the offender with infamy, it was certainly not inefficient as a correctional system. And in cases where the guilt had been great, it sometimes secluded the criminals from society, by compelling them to enter a convent.' 1Tn the absence of records of the Anglo-Saxon law courts, many instances of the exercise of church jurisdiction are not forthcoming; but some can be produced. In the case of Thurkill above given, “ vir de reatu perjurii, mulier de culpa homicidii solemnis penam penitentie exceperunt.” —Gale, vol. iii, p. 441. Dunstan forced a nobleman, who had made an uncanonical marriage, and bought a pardon from Rome, to do penance before a synod.—Anglia Sacra, vol. ii, p. 215. By the custom of Lewes, “rex habet hominem adulterum, archiepiscopus feminam.” At Guildford, ‘“ quandam viduam cujus erat domus accepit prepositus ville, et ideo misit episcopus demum illam in suo manerio.” —Gale, vol. iii, p. 762. This forfeiture of the dower was the enforcement of a church canon, by which the widow was not to marry within a year of her husband’s death.—Ecg. Excep., 118; A. S. Laws, vol. ii., p. 114. A man who perjured himself was to enter a monastery; one who killed his kinsman or a priest, to go to Rome.—Pzen. Eog., lib. ii., 24; lib. iv., 6; A. S. Laws, vol. ii, pp- 198, 205. This binary theory of justice is well expressed by the council of Enham (c. 50.) ‘He who, anywhere, henceforth shall corrupt just laws, either of God or of men, let him strictly make bot for it, in whatever manner is fitting, as well with divine bot, as with secular correction.” —A. 8. Laws, vol. i, p. 320. XVII. ANGLO-SAXON CIVIL LAW. ROMANO-BRITISH CHARACTER OF THE CITIES.—MUNICIPAL ORGANIZATION AND LAWS DERIVED FROM THE ROMANS.—TENURES OF LAND AND RIGHTS OF BEQUEST,—ACTIONS FOR LAND.—SALES OF CHATTELS REGULATED AS PUBLIC CONTRACTS.—PROFERTY INSURED BY THE STATE.—PRINCIPLE OF MUTUAL INSURANCE IN THE PRIVATE GUILDS.—ANGLO-SAXON AND WELSH CONTRASTS. Waits the country districts of England received a new orga- nization from their Saxon occupiers, the still numerous towns which had not been stormed and destroyed, remained in posses- sion of their old franchises, and only paid a quit-rent to their conquerors. Even where a portion of the Saxons clustered to- gether, instead of spreading over the country, they do not seem to have entered within the old walls; neither the splendour of Roman civilization, nor the neighbourhood of a large Romanic population, would have suited them; they settled down under roofs of their own rearing, defended by a few earthworks and a ditch, on some rising ground near the great cities and high- ways. In the course of one or two centuries, these British and Saxon townships would no doubt everywhere be fused into new cities. Meanwhile, the framework of municipal government, the laws affecting property and trade, the customs of local taxation, even regulations for building and burial, continued to bear the impress of their Roman origin. The corrupt language of the provincials, differing in every district, and without a literature of its own, gave way before the more uniform dialect of the dominant race, though several hundred words, in the three or four thousand which exhaust the needs of ordinary life, attest the intermarriages of the conquered people with their conquerors. But laws and habits of thought are longer-lived than speech. 184 ROMAN AND SAXON MUNICIPALITIES. A Roman colonia or municipium had consisted pretty generally of two main classes, the servile, and the free, who might by courtesy be called the self-governing. The free, if they were well-born or prosperous, might become decuriones, or common councilmen of their city, and in this capacity they elected magistrates, the prefectus, duumvir, or duum- viri, and their assessors or subordinates, from their own ranks. Under Roman rule, the police of the cities was maintained by men set apart for the purpose. This in- stitution was supplanted under the Saxons by the more congenial frank-pledge system, and except perhaps in the case of the kings, who might, like Edwin, maintain a small body of police, the preservation of the peace became the duty of the citizens at large, who were divided into tithings and hundreds at some unknown period. The degraded dignity of the decu- riones had now come to embrace every member of the tithing ; the duties of the inferior magistracy had been chiefly restricted to matters affecting property ; and under the new name of probi homines, or good men, they were now elected to attest the differ- ent acts of bargain and sale. The preefectus, or burh-gerefa, was rather a royal than a civic officer; representing, no doubt, in the first instance, the intrusive Saxon element, and seeing that the king’s dues were collected. But by the analogy of the scir-gerefa, it was also his place to look after the safety of the walls, and the organization of the militia. Like the mayor of Anglo-Norman times, he was probably elected by the citizens, and confirmed by the king. His term of office in Roman and Norman, and it is likely therefore in Saxon times, was for a year.! Naturally, there are few traces in the Anglo-Saxon laws of those peculiar powers which the ediles and other municipal officers exercised. Some offices no doubt died out; others were transacted noiselessly. A few vestiges remain, however, 1 The correspondence of the Saxon to the Roman municipal ranks was, I believe, first pointed out by Mr. Wright in a highly suggestive paper on Muni- cipal Privileges.—Archeologia, vol. xxxii. TRACES OF ROMAN MUNICIPAL ORGANIZATION. 185 of the civic polity inherited from the Romans. The duty of repairing walls and bridges, was a burden attached to all property, from which it could only be relieved by a decree of the state, whether Roman or English. It is clear that the walls in question were those of cities; and the fact that in Anglo-Saxon charters this obligation is invariably noticed or implied, shows how completely municipal the organization of Britain had been.! In the reign of Athelstane, a time was fixed in the spring of every year for the performance of this duty. The obligation to bury the dead beyond the city walls existed at least as late as the time of Augustine.* Again, the privilege of local mints, which the different cities enjoyed, if not immediately derived from the Romans, must at least have dated from the short period of British independence. It is difficult to state positively whether the laws affecting the possession and transfer of property, were derivedfrom Roman tradition, or formed spontaneously during the growth of the English commonwealth. The analogies of the two systems are, however, very great; probably many of them arose from similar circumstances, but were afterwards modelled to a more exact conformity, by men whose culture had been chiefly Latin. The Saxon fole-land is the Latin ager publicus ; the reserve of land, which the state keeps for future wants, and which it cannot properly alienate from itself, except for a time. Distinguished from this is the ager priratus, the share of the citizen in the first instance, when the spoils were divided after conquest. If he has full property in this (dominiwm), he may lease it out to his neighbour as gafol-land (possess¢o), or sell it. The act of sale in England, as in Rome, was at first 1 By Just. Novel., 131, c. 5, the clergy, who had been exempted under Constan- tine, were again compelled to take part in the itineris sternendi aut pontium zedificii vel reparationis opus. The Pontis et Arcis instauratio, brycg and burh- bot, is coupled in Anglo-Saxon law with the fyrd or expeditio, the duty of military service, which I think is certainly not of Roman, though it may be of ~ municipal as well as of Saxon origin. 2 St. Augustine himself was buried out of Canterbury, on the Dover road. — Stanley’s Memorials of Canterbury, p. 24; Bede, H. E., lib. i., c. 33. 186 ANGLO-SAXON TENURES. by verbal contract and symbols, before witnesses ; a staff, a horn, a twig, or a piece of turf represented a property, before written contracts were in use; and often accompanied the written deed afterwards.!_ From the fact that it could be transferred by a written instrument, private property came commonly to be called boc-land, as distinguished from the fole-land, which, even in later times, when the institution had been encroached upon, could only be granted away—in the first instance, at least —with the sanction of the witan. But the right to boc-land was not necessarily absolute; it might be limited by a sort of entail upon the family ; and in this case the occupier could not lease it away from them, and probably could not dispose of it.? What property could strictly be called his own is a little doubtful. I incline to think that all inherited land belonged, like the share of the original colonist, to the family, and that on the death of the head, it was equally divided among all males. But in the case of personalty, or of estates acquired during the testator’s lifetime, it would seem that the right of bequest was acknowledged, and practised pretty much without limitation, except, of course, that it could not bar any claims upon the property. In the case of a great man, the will was commonly made in the presence of the witan, as much, I think, for the sake of witnesses, as because the bequeathal of fole-land would require a guarantee from the state, if the right to dispose of it had been left doubtful. A certain preference to sons over daughters, and to elder over younger sons, is percep- tible in the wills of the great landowners. But the realty of a man who died intestate, was divided equally among his 1 Placuit mihi hanc paginam condere et una cum cespite terre predict tradere tibi—Cod, Dip., 114. 2 Alfred, 41; A. S. Laws, vol. i., p.89. Land might be tied up to almost any extent, especially if reversion to amonastery wasin question. Thus wefind land partly given, partly sold, to Eanwolf for himself and three heirs, with reversion to Stretford monastery.—Cod. Dip., 314. Under Canute, a Dane tries to recall ahasty sale of land, on the plea that he cannot prejudice his heirs.—Hist. Ram., c. 85; Gale, vol. iii., p. 442. Osbern says of Odo’s father, a Danish nobleman, “‘jus hereditatis quod ad illum lege primogenitorum venire debebat, subtrahit.”— Ang. Sacra, vol. ii, p. 78. LAWS OF WILLS. 187 sons; even the unmarried daughters were in all likelihood excluded from any share in it.! The tradition of modern times, that a son must be disinherited with a shilling to show that he was not forgotten, has probably been derived from a Roman origi- nal. But little customs of this sort cannot be pressed; Augus- tine or Vicarius may have imported them. Our marriage laws are very Roman, but were no doubt introduced by canonists, not copied from civil practice. It is curious that in England a will might be made by word of mouth, before witnesses, as easily as by a deed. The reason, no doubt, was a just suspicion that docu- ments might be forged, and that forgeries would be less easy of detection by unlettered and uncritical judges than perjuries.* How an action for land was conducted, we cannot now 1 §i quis pater-familias casu aliquo sine testamento obierit pueri inter se hereditatem paternam «equaliter dividant. For pueri, the French version reads les enfans.—Gul. Conq., 34; A.S. Laws, vol.i,p.481. The Kentish custom of gavel- kind is said to have been the practice of the county before the Norman conquest, confirmed by special favour to the men of Kent. By the custom of Hereford, the property of a man who died intestate escheated to the crown.—Consuetu- dines, Gale, vol. iii., p. 769. As late as Henry I.’s time, the eldest son only inherited the fief; boc-land was held to belong to the family; and acquired property might be disposed of at pleasure.—Leges Hen. I™/, Ixx., 21; A. 8. Laws, vol. i., p. 575. 2 A son haying impleaded his mother before the county court, a deputation was despatched to receive her answer; in her anger she disinherited him, and declared a kinswoman her sole legatee of “land and gold, gown and dress.” The deputation reportedthe answer; judgement to that effect was given in favour of the kinswoman’s husband, and a record of the judgement ordered to be made. —Cod. Dip., vol. i.. p. cix. A nuncupative will on a death-bed is recorded in the Domesday of Worcestershire—Consuetudines, Gale, vol. iii., p. 768. Under Henry II., Hamo Blund, of Bury-St.-Edmund’s, made a will by word of mouth, in presence only of his two legatees, and a priest. Sampson, abbot of St. Edmund’s, and some time justice in Eyre, declared it informal, on the ground that the ecclesiastical superior had not been informed, and forced the heirs to agree to a new disposition of the property.—Chron. Joc. de Brak, pp. 67, 68. Here, however, the real objection seems to have been that the transaction had been unduly private. The Council of Cashel, 1172 s.p., decreed that wills were to be made in presence of the confessor and neighbours, and the personalty divided into three parts: one for the children, one for the wife, and one for the burial expenses.—Wilkins, vol. i., p. 478. This, no doubt, represents English usage; and shows that in the twelfth century the power of bequest was singu- larly limited by custom. 188 ACTIONS FOR LAND. determine with any certainty. Judging from later analogy, we should say that in the absence of public prosecutors, the individual was bound in the first place to take his own remedy, and enter forcibly upon any property that was unjustly with- held from him. If again dispossessed, he would bring the question before the county court, or, if a noble, before the witan, or, if it were church property, before the synod.! The two parties would then bring forward their compurgators, and the case would probably be referred to a sort of committee or jury, composed of men from the district, who were likely to know the land-marks. A prescription of thirty years’ occupancy (longissimi temporis possessio)? was a bar to any recovery of the estate impleaded. In the procedures there seems to have been a certain looseness; we read of a deputation waiting upon a great lady to receive her answer, and we find the lawgivers trying, probably with as little effect as in later times, to fix a term in which suits should be ended? But the limits of land were defined with scrupulous accuracy, and a register of decisions and deeds was kept in the superior courts.* How chattels were bought, sold, and reclaimed, may be gathered from full and authentic notices. There were guilds of merchants and artizans, which congregated in the same quarters of their respective cities, in its Tanner, Fellmonger, and Flesher Streets, and enjoyed the monopoly of their re- spective branches of industry. In spite of the English names under which we know them, it is pretty certain that they only continued the old Roman collegia of the trades, with perhaps 1 Cod. Dip., 104, 184, 1237. 2 Cod. Dip., 184, triginta annis et eoamplius. This prescription of thirty years for secular, and forty for ecclesiastical property, barred any claim, even though founded upon fraud or violence in the tenant impleaded. It belongs to the times before Justinian.—Sandars’s Institutes of Justinian, pp. 236, 237. Mr. Long observes that under Constantine, a period of thirty or forty years—for it seems that the time was not quite settled—was to be considered as sufficient for a prescriptio.—Dict. of Antiquities, p. 789.. 3 “Tn the hundred, as in any other gemot, we ordain that folc-right be pro- nounced in every suit, and that a term be fixed when it shall be fulfilled.”—Edgar, 7; A. S. Laws, vol. i., p. 261. 4 See above, p. 187, note 2. ALL SALES WITNESSED. 189 somewhat larger powers for the protection of native industry. To effect this object, and prevent all possibility of fraud, every purchase had to be made in public and before wit- nesses; the very intention of purchase had to be declared to a man’s neighbours, before he went to buy anything at a distance ; and if an unexpected purchase were made on a journey, the buyer was bound to legalize it by a declaration to the township on his return