ill, ^ li i! iii:^ ^ „^ - " ^ ^■^ >^^. .^^ CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, CHARLES DICKENS. SYNDICATE TRADING COMPANY NEW YORK 486555 CONTENTS. A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. CHAP. _ L Ancient England and the Romans ' 7 II. Ancient England under the early Saxons 15 III. England under the good Saxon,' Alfred 19 IV. England under Athelstan and the six boy kings. . 25 V. England under Canute the Dane 35 VI. England under Harold Harefoot, Hardicanute, and Edward the Confessor 36 VII. England under Harold the Second, and conquered by the Normans 43 VIII. England under William the First, the Norman Conqueror 47 IX. England under William the Second, called Rufus 53 X. England under Henry the First, called Fine-Scholar 59 XI. England under Matilda and Stephen 68 XII. England under Henry the Second ... 71 XIII. England under Richard the First, called the Lion- Heart 88 XIV. England under King John, called Lackland 96 XV. England under Henry the Third, called Henry the Third of Winchester 107 XVI. England under Edward the First, called Xong- shanks .;..... 118 XVII. England under Edward the Second 133 XVIII. England under Edward the Third 141 XIX. England under Richard the Second 152 XX. England under Henry the Fourth, called Boling- broke i52 XXI. England under Henry the Fifth , . . 167 XXII. England under Henry the Sixth 176 XXIII. England under Edward the Fourth 193 CVATJEArS CMAr ?** XXIV England mder Edward the Fifth < ... ,. ,. 200 XXV England inder Richard the Third .. 204 XXVI England under Henry the Seventh- , » . 208 XXVI I England under Henry the Eighth, called Bluff King Hal, and Burly King Harry 2ir. XXVIII. England under Henry the Eighth 228 XXIX. England under Edward the Sixth 237 XXX. England under Mary 244 XXXI. England under Elizabeth 255 XXXII. England under James the First 277 ^XXIII. England under Charles the First . . , 292 XXX IV. England under Oliver Ciomwell 317 XXXV, England under Charles the Second, called the Merry Monarch 332 XXXVT. England under Tames the Second. 351 KJCXVII r;o;idus'on. . ...^ .... - ... .. 363 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. CHAPTER I. ANCIENT ENGLAND AND THE ROMANS. If you look at a map of the world, you will see, in the left* hand upper corner of the Eastern Hemisphere, two islands ?ying in the sea. They are England and Scotland, and Ireland. England and Scotland form the greater part of these islands, ireland is the next in size. The little neighboring islands, which are so small upon the map as to be mere dots, are chiefly little bits of Scotland, — broken off, I dare say, in the course of a great length of time, by the power of the restless water. In the old days, a long, long while ago, before our Saviour was born on earth, and lay asleep in a manger, these islands were in the same place ; and the stormy sea roared round them, just as it roars now. But the sea was not alive then with great ships and brave sailors, sailing to and from all parts of the world. It was very lonely. The islands lay solitary in the great expanse of water. The foaming waves dashed against their cliffs, and the bleak winds blew over their forests. But the winds and waves brought no adventurers to land upon the islands ; and the savage islanders knew nothing of the rest oi the world, and the rest of the world knew nothing of them. It is supposed that the Phoenicians, who were an ancient people, famous for carrying on trade, came in ships to thesff islands, and found that they produced tin and lead ; both very useful things, as you know, and both produced to this very hoar upon the sea-coast. The most celebrated tin-mines in Corn W^ l^re still close to the sea. One of them^ which I have seen, 8 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. is SO close to it that it is hollowed out underneath the ocean ; and the miners say that in stormy weather, when they are at work down in that deep place, they can hear the noise of the Waves thundering above their heads. So the Phoenicians, coast- ing about the islands, would come, without much difficulty, to where the tin and lead were. The Phoenicians traded with the islanders for these metals, and gave the islanders some other useful things in exchange. The islanders were, at first, poor savages, going almost naked, or only dressed in the rough skins of beasts, and staining their bodies, as other savages do, with colored earths and the juices of plants. But the Phoenicians, sailing over to the opposite coasts of France and Belgium, and saying to the people there, " We have been to those white cliffs across the water, which you can see in fine weather ; and from that country, which is called Britain, we bring this tin and lead," tempted some of the French and Belgians to come over also. These people settled themselves on the south coast of England, which is now called Kent ; and, although they were a rough people too, they taught the savage Britons some useful arts, and improved that part of the islands. It is probable that other people came over from Spain to Ireland, and settled there. Thus, by little and little, strangeis became mixed with the islanders, and the savage Britons grew into a wild, bold people ; almost savage still, especially in the interior of the country, away from the sea, where the foreign settlers seldom went ; but hardy, brave, and strong. The whole country was covered with forests and swamps. The greater part of it was very misty and cold. There were no roads, no bridges, no streets, no houses that you would think de- serving of the name. A town was nothing but a collection of straw-covered huts, hidden in a thick wood, with a ditch all round, and a low wall made of mud, or the trunks of trees placed one upon another. The people planted little or no corn, but lived upon the flesh of their flocks and cattle. They made no coins, but used metal-rings for money. They were clever in basket- work, as savage people often are; and they could make a coarse kind of cloth, and some very bad earthenware. But in building fortresses they were much more clever. They made boats of basket-work, covered with the skins of animals, but seldom, if ever, ventured far from the shore. They made swords of copper mixed with tin ; but these swords we>e of an awkward shape, and so soft that a heavy blow would bend one. They made light shields ; short, pointed dag^gers ; a ANCIENT ENGLAND AND THE ROMANS. 9 gpears, which they jerked back, after they had thrown them at an enemy, by a long strip of leather fastened to the stem. The butt-end was a rattle, to frighten an enemy's horse. The ancient Britons, being divided into as many as thirty or forty tribes, each commanded by its own little king, were constantly fighting with one another, as savage people usually do ; and they always fought with these weapons. They were very fond of horses. The standard of Kent was the picture of a white horse. They could break them in and man- age them wonderfully well. Indeed, the horses (of which they had an abundance, though they were rather small) were so well taught in those days, that they can scarcely be said to have im- proved since ; though the men are so much wiser. They un- derstood and obeyed every word of command ; and would stand still by themselves, in all the din and noise of battle, while their masters went to fight on foot. The Britons could not have succeeded in their mdst remarkable art without the aid of these sensible and trusty animals. The art I mean is the con- struction and management of war-chariots, or cars, for which they have ever been celebrated in history. Each of the best sort of these chariots, not quite breast-high in front, and open at the back, contained one man to drive, and two or three others to fight, — all standing up. The horses who drew them were so well trained, that they would tear at full gallop, over the most stony ways, and even through the woods ; dashing down their masters' enemies beneath their hoofs, and cutting them to pieces with the blades of swords, or scythes, which were fastened to the wheels, and stretched out beyond the car on each side, for that cruel purpose. In a moment, while at full speed, the horses would stop at the driver's command. The men would leap out, deal blows about them with their swords, like hail, leap on the horses, on the pole, spring back into the chariots anyhow ; and, as soon as they were safe, the horses tore away again. The Britons had a strange and terrible religion, called the religion of the Druids. It seems to have been brought over, in very early times indeed, from the opposite country of France, anciently called Gaul, and to have mixed up the worship of the Serpent, and of the Sun and Moon, with the worship of some of the heathen gods and goddesses. Most of its ceremonies were kept secret by the priests, — the Druids, — who pretended to be enchanters, and who carried magicians' wands, and wore, each of them, about his neck, what he told the ignorant people, was a serpent's ^%g in a golden case. But it is certain that tha 10 A CHILD'' S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Druidical ceremonies included the sacrifice of human victim% the torture of some suspected criminals, and, on particular oo casions, even the burning alive, in immense wicker-cages, of a number of men and animals together. The Druid priests had some kind of veneration for the oak, and for the mistletoe (the same plant that we hang up in houses at Christmas-time now) when its white berries grew upon the oak. They met to- gether in dark woods, which they called sacred groves ; and there they instructed, in their mysterious arts, young men who came to them as pupils, and who sometimes stayed with them as long as twenty years. These Druids built great temples and altars open to the sky, fragments of some of which are yet remaining. Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, is the most extraordinary of these. Three curious stones, called Kits Coty House, on Blue- bell Hill, near Maidstone, in Kent, form another. We knov/, from examination of the great blocks of which such buildings are made, that they could not have been raised without the aid of some ingenious machines which are common now, but which the ancient Britons certainly did not use in making their own uncomfortable houses. I should not wonder if the Druids, and their pupils who stayed with them twenty years, knowing more than the rest of the Britons, kept the people out of sight while they made these buildings, and then pretended that they built them by magic. Perhaps they had a hand in the fortresses too ; at all events, as they were very powerful, and very much believed in, and as they made and executed the laws, and paid no taxes, I don't wonder that they liked their trade. And, as they persuaded the people that the more Druids there were the better off the people would be, I don't wonder that there were a good many of them. But it is pleasant to think that there are no Druids fiow, who go on in that way, and pretend to carry enchanters' wands and serpents' eggs ; and, of course, there is nothing of the kind anywhere. Such was the improved condition of the ancient Britons fifty-five years before the birth of our Saviour, when the Romans, under their great general, Julius Caesar, were masters of all the rest of the known world. Julius Caesar had then just conquered Gaul ; and hearing, in Gaul, a good deal about the opposite island with the white cliffs, and about the bravery of the Britons who inhabited it (some of whom had been fetched o\er to help the Gauls in the war against him), he resolved, as he was so near, to come and conquer Britain next. So Julius Caesar came sailing over to this island of ours, ANCIENT ENGLAND AND THE ROMANS 1 1 with eighty vessels and twelve thousand men. And he came from the French coast between Calais and Boulogne, " because thence was the shortest passage into Britain ; " just for the same reason as our steamboats now take the same track every day. He expected to conquer Britain easily. But it was not such easy work as he supposed ; for the bold Britons fought most bravely. And what with not having his horse-soldiers with him (for they had been driven back by a storm), and what with having some of his vessels dashed to pieces by a high tide after they were drawn ashore, he ran great risk of being totally de- feated. However, for once that the bold Britons beat him, he beat them twice ; though not so soundly but that he was very glad to accept their proposals of peace, and go away. But in the spring of the next year, he came back ; this time with eight hundred vessels and thirty thousand men. The British tribes chose, as their general-in-chief, a Briton, whom the Romans in their Latin language called Cassivellaunus, but whose British name is supposed to have been Caswallon. A brave general he was ; and well he and his soldiers fought the Roman army ! So well, that, whenever in that war the Roman soldiers saw a great cloud of dust, and heard the rattle of the rapid British chariots, they trembled in their hearts. Besides a number of smaller battles, there was a battle fought near Canterbury, in Kent ; there was a battle fought near Chertsey, in Surrey ; there was a battle fought near a marshy little town in a wood, J^he capital of that part of Britain which belonged to Cassivellaunus, and which was probably near what is now Saint Albans, in Hertfordshire. However, brave Cassivellaunus had the worst of it, on the whole ; though he and his men always fought like lions. As the other British chiefs were jealous of him, and were always quarrelling with him and with one another, he gave up, and proposed peace. Julius Caesar was very glad to grant peace easily, and to go away with all his remaining ships and men. He had expec- ted to find pearls in Britain, and he may have found a few for anything I know ; but, at all events, he found delicious oysters. And I am sure he found tough Britons ; of whom, I dare say, he made the same complaint as Napoleon Bonaparte, the great French general, did, eighteen hundred years afterwards, when he said they were such unreasonable fellows that they never knew when they were beaten. They never did know, I believe, and never will. Nearly a hundred years passed on ; and all that time there W38 p^ace in Britain, The Britons improved their towns and I a A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. mode of life, became more civilized, travelled, and learned % great deal from the Gauls and Romans. At last, the Roman Emperor Claudius sent Aulus Plautius, a skilful general, with a mighty force, to subdue the island ; and shortly afterwards arrived himself. They did little ; and Ostorius Scapula, another general, came. Some of the British chiefs of tribes submitted. Others resolved to fight to the death. Of these brave men, the bravest was Caractacus, or Caradoc, who gave battle to the Romans with his army among the mountains of North Wales. " This day," said he to his soldiers, " decides the fate of Britain ! Your liberty, or your eternal slavery, dates from this hour. Remember your brave ancestors, who drove the great Caesar himself across the sea." On hearing these words, his men, with a great shout, rushed upon the Romans. But the strong Roman swords and armor were too much for the weaker British weapons in close conflict. The Britons lost the day. The wife and daughter of the brave Caractacus were taken prisoners ; his brothers delivered them- selves up; he himself was betrayed into the hands of the Romans by his false and base stepmother ; and they carried bim, and all his family, in triumph to Rome. But a great man will be great in misfortune, great in prison, great in chains. His noble air and dignified endurance of dis- iress, so touched the Roman people who thronged the streets to see him, that he and his family were restored to freedom. No one knows whether his great heart broke, and he died in Rome, or whether he ever returned to his* own dear country. English oaks have grown up from acorns, and withered away when they were hundreds of years old, — and other oaks have sprung up in their places, and died too, very aged, — since the rest of the history of the brave Caractacus was forgotten. Still the Britons would not yield. They rose again and again, and died by thousands, sword in hand. They rose on every possible occasion. Suetonius, another Roman general, came and stormed the Island of Anglesey (then called Mona), which was supposed to be sacred ; and he burnt the Druids in their own wicker-cages, by their own fires. But even while he was in Britain with his victorious troops, the Britons rose. Because Boadicea, a British queen, the widow of the King of the Norfolk and Suffolk people, resisted the plundering of her property by the Romans, who were settled in England, she was scourged by order of Catus, a Roman officer ; and her two daughters were shamefully insulted in her presence ; and h^ husband's relations were made slaves. To avenge this ANCIENT ENGLAND AND TtfE ROMANS. n iniury, the Britons rose with all their might and rage. They drove Catus into Gaul ; they laid the Roman possessions waste ; they forced the Romans out of London (then a poor little town, but a trading-place) ; they hanged, burnt, crucified, and slew by the sword, seventy thousand Romans in a few days. Suetonius strengthened his army, and advanced to give them battle. They strengthened their army, and desperately at- uicked his, on the field where it was strongly posted. Before the first charge of the Britons was made, Boadicea, in a war- chariot, with her fair hair streaming in the wind, and her in- jured daughters lying at her feet, drove among the troops, and cried to them for vengeance on their oppressors, the licentious Romans. The Britons fought to the last ; but they were van- quished with great slaughter, and the unhappy queen took poison. Still, the spirit of the Britons was not broken. When Suetonius left the country, they fell upon his troops, and re-took the Island of Anglesey. Agricola, came fifteen or twenty years afterwards, and re-took it once more, and devoted seven years to subduing the country, especially that part of it which is now called Scotland ; but its people, the Caledonians, resisted him at every inch of ground. They fought the bloodiest battles with him ; they killed their very wives and children, to prevent his making prisoners of them ; they fell, fighting, in such great numbers that certain hills in Scotland are yet supposed to be vast heaps of stones piled up above their graves. Hadrian came thirty years afterwards ; and still they resisted him. Severus came nearly a hundred years afterwards ; and they worried his great army like dogs, and rejoiced to see them die, by thousands, in the bogs and swamps. Caracalla, the son and successor of Severus, did the most to conquer them, for a time ; but not by force of arms. He knew how little that would do. He yielded up a quantity of land to the Caledonians, and gave the Britons the same privileges as the Romans possessed. There was peace after this for seventy years. Then new enemies arose. They were the Saxons, a fierccj seafaring people from the countries to the north of the Rhine, the great river of Germany, on the banks of which the bejx grapes grow to make the German wine. They began to ca^ in pirate ships, to the sea-coast of Gaul and Britain, T^n^ plunder them. They were repulsed by Carausius, a na\ either of Belgium or of Britain, who was appointed by V Romans to the command, and under whom the Britons fik began to fight upon the sea. But after this time they renew^A H A CmiD'S HtSTOkV OF EI^GLAND. their ravages. A few years more, and the Scots (which was then the name for the people of Ireland) and the Picts, a northern people, began to make frequent plundering incursions into the South of Britain. All these attacks were repeated, at intervals, during two hundred years, and through a long succes- sion of Roman emperors and chiefs ; during all which length of time, the Britons rose against the Romans over and over again. At last, in the days of the Roman Honorius, when the Roman power all over the world was fast declining, and when Rome wanted all her soldiers at home, the Romans abandoned all hope of conquering Britain, and went away. And still, at last as at first, the Britons rose against them in their old, brave manner ; for, a very little while before, they had turned away the Roman magistrates, and declared themselves an independent people. Five hundred years had passed since Julius Caesar's first in- vasion of the Island, when the Romans departed from it forever. In the course of that time, although they had been the cause of terrible fighting and bloodshed, they had done much to im- prove the condition of the Britons. They had made great military roads ; they had built forts ; they had taught them how to dress and arm themselves much better than they had ever known how to do before ; they had refined the whole British way of living. Agricola had built a great wall of earth, more than seventy miles long, extending from Newcastle to beyond Car- lisle, for the purpose of keeping out the Picts and Scots ; Ha- drian had strengthened it ; Severus finding it much in want of repair, had built it afresh of stone. Above all, it was in the Roman time, and by means of Roman ships, that the Christian religion was first brought into Britain, and its people first taught the great lesson, that, to be good in the sight of God, they must love their neighbors as themselves, and do unto others as they would be done by. The Druids declared that it was very wicked to believe in any such thing, and cursed all the people who did believe it very heartily. But when the people found that they were none the better for the blessings of the Druids, and none the worse for the curses of the Druids, but that the "^n shone and the rain fell without consulting the Druids at all, t«w just began to think that the Druids were mere men, and that^t signified very little whether they cursed or blessed. After whicl\the pupils of the Druids fell off greatly in numbers, and the Dr\ds took to other trades. Thus I have come to the end of the Roman time in England. It is but little that is known of those five hundred years ; but J ANCIENT ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS. IS some remains of them are still found. Often, when laborers are digging up the ground to make foundations for houses or churches, they light on rusty money that once belonged to the Romans. Fragments of plates from which they ate, of goblets from which they drank, and of pavement on which they trod, are discovered among the earth that is broken by the plough, or the dust that is crumbled by the gardener's spade. Wells that the Romans sunk still yield water ; roads that the Romans made form part of our highways. In some old battle-fields, British spear-heads and Roman armor have been found, mingled to- gether in decay, as they fell in the thick pressure of the fight. Traces of Roman camps, overgrown with grass, and of mounds that are the burial-places of heaps of Britons, are to be seen in almost all parts of the country. Across the bleak moors of Northumberland, the wall of Severus, overrun with moss and weeds, still stretches, a strong ruin ; and the shepherds and their dogs lie sleeping on it in the summer weather. On Salis- bury Plain, Stonehenge yet stands, — a monument of the earlier time, when the Roman name was unknown in Britain, and when the Druids, with their best magic-wands, could not have written it in the sands of the wild sea-shore. CHAPTER II. ANCIENT ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS. The Romans had scarcely gone away from Britain when the Britons began to wish they had never left it. For the Roman soldiers being gone, and the Britons being much reduced in numbers by their long wars, the Picts and Scots came pouring in over the broken and unguarded wall of Severus in swarms. They plundered the richest towns, and killed the people ; and came back so often for more booty and more slaughter, that the unfortunate Britons lived a life of terror. As if the Picts aW^ Scots were not bad enough on land, the Saxons attacked e, rode at a furious gallop in sight of all the people to the and flung his lance against it as an insult. From that :he Christian religion spread itself among the Saxons, and their faith. next very famous prince was Egbert. He lived about and fifty years afterwards, and claimed to have a to the throne of Wessex than Beortric, another ice who was at the head of that kingdom, and who I^Durga, the daughter of Offa, king of another of the loms. This Queen Edburga was a handsome 'lo poisoned people when they offended her. One ' a cup of poison for a certain noble belonging to ^^y^^Ji^tX yhviX. her husband drank of it too, by mistake, and died. Upon this, the people revolted in great crowds ; and running to the palace, and thundering at the agates, cried, " Down with the wicked queen who poisons men ! " They drove her out of the country, and abolished the title she had disgraced. When years had passed away, some travellers came home from Italy, and said that in the town of Pavia they had seen a ragged beggar-woman — who had once been handsome, but was then shrivelled, bent, and yellow — wandering about the Stress, crying for bread ; and that this beggar-woman wa,§ the ENGLAND UNDER THE GOOD SAXON, ALFRED. i^ poisoning English queen. It was, indeed, Edburga ; and so she died, without a shelter for her wretched head. Egbert, not considering himself safe in England, in conse- quence of his having claimed the crown of Wessex (for he thought his rival might take him prisoner and put him to death), sought refuge at the court of Charlemagne, King of France. On the death of Beortric, so unhappily poisoned by mistake, Egbert came back to Britain, succeeded to the throne of Wessex, conquered some of the other monarchs of the seven kingdoms, added their territories to his own, and, for the first time, called the country over which he ruled England. And now new enemies arose, who, for a long time, troubled England sorely. These were the Northmen, — the people of Denmark and Norway ; whom the English called the Danes. They were a warlike people, quite at home upon the sea ; not Christians ; very daring and cruel. They came over in ships, and plunde-red and burned wheresoever they landed. Once they beat Egbert in battle. Once Egbert beat them. But they cared no more for being beaten than the English themselves. In the four following short reigns, of Ethelwulf and his sons Ethelbald, Ethelbert, and Ethelred, they came back again, over and over again, burning and plundering, and laying Englai}^/ waste. In the last-mentioned reign, they seized Edmund, K/ji' of East England, and bound him to a tree. Then they propof to him that he should change his religion ; but he, being a g' Christian, steadily refused. Upon that they beat him ; rr: cowardly jests upon him, all defenceless as he was j shot ar/ at him ; and finally struck off his head. It is impossible tc whose head they might have struck off next, but for the d ^S of King Ethelred from a wound he had received in fig' ^^^ against them, and the succession to his throne of the best'^^ ^ wisest king that ever lived in England. ^"^^ him» 3 god- CHAPTER III. ENGLAND UNDER THE GOOD SAXON, ALFRED. Alfred the Great was a young man three-and-twenty years of age when he became king. Twice in his childhood he had b^en taken to Rome, where the Saxop. nobles were in thf habit 20 ^ CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. of going on journeys which they supposed to be religious ; and once he had stayed for some time in Paris. Learning, however, was so little cared for then, that at twelve years old he had not been taught to read ; although, of the sons of King Ethel wulf, he, the youngest, was the favorite. But he had — as most men who grow up to be great and good are generally found to have had — an excellent mother : and one day this lady, whose name was Osburga, happened, as she was sitting among her sons, to ) read a book of Saxon poetry. The art of printing was not known \ until long and long after that period ; and the book, which was I written, was what is called " illuminated " with beautiful bright letters, richly painted. The brothers admiring it very much, their mother said, " I will give it to that one of you four princes who first learns to read." Alfred sought out a tutor that very day, applied himself to learn with great diligence, and soon won the book. He was proud of it all his life. This great king, in the first year of his reign, fought nine battles with the Danes. He made some treaties with them too, by which the false Danes swore they would quit the country. They pretended to consider that they had taken a very solemn oath, in swearing this upon the holy bracelets that they wore, _JLad which were always buried with them, when they died. But ^*^^eY cared little for it ; for they thought nothing of breaking ^\s, and treaties too, as soon as it suited their purpose, and g back again to fight, plunder, and burn, as usual. One V%inter, in the fourth year of King Alfred's reign, they ''^emselves in great numbers over the whole of England ; "'ispersed and routed the king's soldiers, that the king ''one, and was obliged to disguise himself as a common d to take refuge in the cottage of one of his cow- id not know his face. ^g Alfred, while the Danes sought him far and near, \ one day by the cowherd's wife, to watch some /ve put to bake upon the hearth. But being at bow and arrows, with which he hoped to punish the lai^e Danes when a brighter time should come, and thinking deeply of his poor, unhappy subjects, whom the Danes chased through the land, his noble mind forgot the cakes ; and they were burnt. " What ! " said the cowherd's wife, who scolded him well when she came back, and little thought she was scold- ing the king, " You will be ready enough to eat them by and by ; and yet you cannot watch them, idle dog !" At length the Devonshire men made head against a new host ©f Danes who landed on their coast \ killed their chiaf, an»d ENCLANr) UNDER THE GOOD SAXON, ALFRED. ! \ captured their flag (on which was represented the likeness of 1 1 raven, — a very fit bird for a thievish army Uke that, I thi/ j , ' The loss of their standard troubled the Danes greatly ; for /; 'j '^ believed it to be enchanted, — woven by the three daughter ( { one father in a single afternoon. And they had a story an^ \ themselves, that when they were victorious in battle, the ra^-^ stretched his wings, and seemed to fly ; and thai when they W defeated, he would droop. He had good reason to droop ri -V "> if he cpuld have done anything half so sensible ; for King Al^ "^ ♦* joined the Devonshire men, made a camp with them on a pf *^1 of firm ground in the midst of a bog in Somersetshire, and j ' j pared for a great attempt for vengeance on the Danes, and' ^ deliverance of his oppressed people. j J^, But first, as it was important to know how numerous tj ;^ pestilent Danes were, and how they were fortified. King Ali"-- ly being a good musician, disguised himself as a glee-man or ^ t| strel, and went with his harp to the Danish camp. He pi ^ ii and sang in the very tent of Guthrum, the Danish leaderj I entertained the Danes as they caroused. While he seemt think of nothing but his music, he was watchful of their t\. their arms, their discipline, — everything that he desired to ki ! And right soon did this great king entertain them to a diffe tune , for, summoning all his true followers to meet him atl \ appointed place, Vv^here they received him with joyful shouts a| 'i tears as the monarch whom many of them had given up for Iq i or dead, he put himself at their head, marched on the Danij * camp, defeated the Danes with great slaughter, and besieg| i them for fourteen days to prevent their escape. But, being as merciful as he was good and brave, he then, instead of killing them, proposed peace, — on condition that they should altogether depart from that western part of England, and settle in the East ; and that Guthrum should become a Christian, in remembrance of the divine religion which now taught his conqueror, the noble Alfred, to forgive the enemy who had so often injured him» This Guthrum did. At his baptism. King Alfred was his god- father. And Guthrum was an honorable chief, who well deserved that clemency ; for ever afterwards he was loyal and faithful to the king. The Danes under him were faithful too. They plundered and burned no more, but worked like honest men. They ploughed and sowed and reaped, and led good, honest English lives. And 1 hope the children of those Danes played many a time with Saxon chUdren in the sunny fields ; and that Danish young men fell in love with Saxon girls, and married them ; and that English travellers, benighted at the doors ol f 9 A CtrtLD'S msTORY OF ENGLAND. Danish cottages, often went in for shelter until morning ; and that Danes and Saxons sat by the red fire, friends, talking of King Alfred the Great. AH the Danes were not like these under Guthrum ; for, after some years,more of them came over in the old plundering and burn- ing way, — among them a fierce pirate of the name of Hastings, Iwho had the boldness to sail up the Thames to Gravesend with weighty ships. For three years there was a war with these Danes \ rand there was a famine in the country, too, and a plague, both lupon human creatures and beasts. But King Alfred, whose \mighty heart never failed Jiim, built large ships, nevertheless, Iwith which to pursue the pirates on the sea ; and he encouraged this soldiers, by his brave example, to fight valiantly against them von the shore. At last he drove them all away ; apd then there fwas repose in England. t As great and good in peace as he was great and good in war, King Alfred never rested from his labors to improve his : people. He loved to talk with clever men, and with travellers " from foreign countries, and to write down what they told him, for his people to read. He had studied Latin after learning to read English ; and now another of his labors was, to translate ; Latin books into the English-Saxon tongue, that his people might be. interested and improved by their contents. He made just laws, that they might live more happily and freely ; he turned away all partial judges, that no wrong might be done them ; he was so careful of their property, and punished robbers so severely, that it was a common thing to say, that, under the great King Alfred, garlands of golden chains and jewels might have hung across the streets, and no man would have touched one. He founded schools ; he patiently heard causes himself in his court of justice. The great desires of his heart were, to do right to all his subjects, and to leave England better, wiser, happier in all ways, than he found it. His industry in these efforts was quite astonishing. Every day he divided into certain portions, and in each portion devoted himself to a certain pursuit. That he might divide his time exactly, he had wax torches or candles made, which were all of the same size, were notched across at regular distances, and were always kept burning. Thus, as the candles burnt down, he divided the day into notches, almost as accurately as we now divide it into hours upon the clock. But when the candles '^trit first in- vented, it was found that the wind and draughts of air, blowing into the palace through the doors and windows, and through the chinks in the walls, caused them to gutter and burn un- ENGLAND UNDER TItE GOOD SAXoN, ALFRED. // / equally. To prevent this, the king had them put into cr t^ ,' formed of wood and white horn. And these were thei K.. lanterns ever made in England. [^ 'i' > All this time he was afflicted with a terrible, unknowrt| [ ease, which caused him violent and frequent pain that not! ' - could relieve. He bore it, as he had borne all the troubles his life like a brave good man, until he was fifty-three y\ old ; and then, having reigned thirty years, he died. He d v. in the year 901 ; but, long ago as that is, his fame, and thl jf love and gratitude with which his subjects regarded him, are^. freshly remembered to the present hour. In the next reign, which was the reign of Edward, surnamed - The Elder, who was chosen in council to succeed, a nephew of/ King Alfred troubled the country by trying to obtain th< throne. The Danes in the east of England took part wit/^,, this usurper (perhaps because they had honored his undi | much, and honored him for his uncle's sake), and there \ ;{ hard fighting ; but the king, with the assistance of his s^ j gained the day, and reigned in peace for four-and-twenty y He gradually extended his power over the whole of Engl y ^ and so the seven kingdoms were united into one. When England thus became one kingdom, ruled ove one Saxon king, the Saxons had been settled in the count] more than four hundred and fifty years. Great chanefe^ ' taken place in its customs during that time. The Sax'' ,^ wei still greedy eaters and great drinkers, and their feasts we often of a noisy and drunken kind ; but many new comfort! and even elegancies, had become known, and were fast increas- ing. Hangings for the walls of rooms (where, in these modern days, we paste up paper) are known to have been sometimes made of silk, ornamented with birds and flowers in needlework. Tables and chairs were curiously carved in different woods ; were sometimes decorated with gold or silver ; sometimes even made of those precious metals. Knives and spoons were used at table ; golden ornaments were worn, — with silk and cloth, and golden tissues and embroideries; dishes were made of gold and silver, brass and bone. There were varieties of drinking-horns, bedsteads, musical instruments. A harp was passed round at a feast, like the drinking-bowl, from guest to guest ; and each one usually sang or played when his turn came. The weapons of the Saxons were stoutly made ; and among them was a terrible iron hammer that gave deadly blows, and was long remembered. The Saxons themselves were a handsome people. The men were proud of their long, 24 A CmLD'S HISTORY OP E]^GLAMD. fair hair, parted on the forehead ; their ample beards ; their fresh complexions and clear eyes. The beauty of the Saxon women filled all England with a new delight and grace. I have more to tell of the Saxons yet ; but I stop to say this now, because, under the Great Alfred, all the best points of the English-Saxon character were first encouraged, and in him first shown. It has been the greatest character among the nations of the earth. Wherever the descendants of the f Saxon race have gone, have sailed, or otherwise made their way, even to the remotest regions of the world, they have been patient, persevering, never to be broken in spirit, never to be turned aside from enterprises on which they have resolved. \w Europe, Asia, Africa, America, the whole world over ; in \ he desert, in the forest, on the sea ; scorched by a burning -^iun, or frozen by ice that never melts, — the Saxon blood re- tnains unchanged. Wheresoever that race goes, there law and industry, and safety for life and property, and all the great results of steady perseverance, are certain to arise. I pause to think with admiration of the noble king, who, in lis single person, possessed all the Saxon virtues ; whom mis- fortune could not subdue, whom prosperity could not spoil, whose perseverance nothing could shake j who was hopeful in defeat, and generous in success ; who loved justice, freedom, truth and knowledge ; who, in his care to instruct his people, probably did more to preserve the beautiful old Saxon language than I can imagine; without whom the English tongue in which I tell this story might have wanted half its meaning. As it is said that his spirit still inspires some of our best English laws, so let you and I pray that it may animate our English hearts, at least to this, — to resolve, when we see any of our fellow-creatures left in ignorance, that we will do our best, while life is in us, to have them taught ; and to tell those rulers whose duty it is to teach them, and who neglect their duty, that they have profited very little by all the years that have rolled away since the year 901, and that they are far be hind the bright example of King Alfred the Great. hNGLAND UNDER ATJIELSTAiV. / '( I V CHAPTER IV. ENGLAND UNDER ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINOS, i 1, Athelstan, the son of Edward the Elder, succeeded thV king. He reigned only fifteen years ; but he remembered the glory of his grandfather, the great Alfred, and governed Eng- land well. He reduced the turbulent people of Wales, and obliged them to pay him a tribute in money and in cattle, and to send him their best hawks and hounds. He was victorious over the Cornish men, who were not yet quite under the Saxoij government. He restored such of the old laws as were goodj and had fallen into disuse ; made some wise new laws and tool' care of the poor and weak. A strong alliance, made against him by Anlaf, a Danish prince, Constantine King of the Scots^ and the people of North Wales, he broke and defeated in on^ great battle, long famous for the vast numbers slain in * After that he had a quiet reign ; the lords and ladies ab(l iiim had leisure to become polite and agreeable ; and foreii princes were glad (as they have sometimes been since) to con to England on visits to the English court. \ When Athelstan died, at forty seven years old, his broth^ Edmund, who was only eighteen, became king. He was this first of six boy-kings, as you will presently know. They called him the Magnificent, because he showed a taste for improvement and refinement. But he was beset by the Danes, and had a short and troubled reign, which came to a troubled end. One night, when he was feasting in his hall, and had eaten much and drunk deep, he saw among the company a noted robber named Leof, who had been banished from Eng- land. Made very angry by the boldness of this man, the king turned to his cup bearer, and said : " There is a robber sitting at the table yonder, who, for his crimes, is an outlaw in the land, — a hunted wolf, whose life any man may take, at any time. Command that robber to depart ! " I will not depart ! " said Leof. " No ? " cried the king. " No, by the Lord ! " said Leof. Upon that the king rose from his seat, and, making passionately at the robber, and seizing him by his long hair, tried to throw him down. But the robber had a dagger underneath his cloak, and in the scuffle stabbed the king to death. That done, he set his back against the wall, and fought so desperately, that, 26 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. although he was soon cut to pieces by the king's armed men, and the wall and pavement were splashed with his blood, yet it was not before he had killed and wounded many of them. You may imagine what rough lives the kings of those times led, when one of them could struggle, half drunk, with a public robber in his own dining-hall, and be stabbed in presence of he company who ate and drank with him. Then succeeded the boy-king Edred, who was weak and sickly in body, but of a strong mind. And his armies fought the Northmen, — the Danes and Norwegians, or the Sea-Kings, as they were called, — and beat them for the time. And in nine years Edred died, and passed away. Then came the boy-king Edwy, fifteen years of age ; but i^he real king, who had the real power, was a monk named jDunstan, — a clever priest, a little mad, and not a little proud iand cruel. Dunstan was then Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, whither the body of king Edmund the Magnificent was carried to be buried. While yet a boy, he had got out of his bed one night (being then in a fever), and walked about Glastonbury Church when it was under repair ; and because he did not tumble off some scaffolds that were there, and break his neck, it was re- ported that he had been shown over the building by an angel. He had also made a harp that was said to play of itself; which it very likely did, as ^olian harps, which are played by the wind, and are understood now, always do. For these wonders he had been once denounced by his enemies, who were jealous of his favor with the late King Athelstan, as a magician ; and he had been waylaid, bound hand and foot, and thrown into a marsh. But he got out again, somehow, to cause a great deal of trouble yet. The priests of those days were generally the only scholars. They were learned in many things. Having to make their own convents and monasteries on uncultivated grounds that were granted to them by the crown, it was necessary that they should be good farmers and good gardeners, or their lands would have been too poor to support them. For the decoration of the chapels where they prayed, and for the comfort of the refecto- ries where they ate and drank, it was necessary that there should be good carpenters, good smiths, good painters, among them. For their greater safety in sickness and accident, living alone by themselves in solitary places, it was necessary that they should study the virtues of plants and herbs, and should know how to dress cuts, burns, scalds, and bruises, and how to t^t ENGLAND UNDER ATHELSTAN. / '! broken limbs. Accordingly, they taught themselves and oj ^ another a great variety of useful arts, and became skilful p agriculture, medicine, surgery, and handicraft. And when tn-, A wanted the aid of any little piece of machinery, — which woii | be simple enough now, but was marvellous then, — to impose \ trick upon the poor peasants, they knew very well how to mal j it ; and did make it many a time and often, I have no doubt. >^ Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, was one of the most^ sagacious of these monks. He was an ingenious smith, and worked at a forge in a little cell. This cell was made too short to admit of his lying at full length when he went to sleep ; ( as if that did any good to anybody ! ) and he used to tell the most extraordinary lies about demons and spirits, who, he said, came there to persecute him. For instance, he related, that, one day when he was at work, the Devil looked in at the little window, and tried to tempt him to lead a life of idle pleasure ; where- upon, having his pincers in the fire, red-hot, he seized the Devil by the nose, and put him to such pain, that his bellowings were heard for miles and miles. Some people are inclined to think this nonsense a part of Dunstan's madness (for his head never quite recovered the fever) ; but I think not. I observe that it induced the ignorant people to consider him a holy man, and that it made him very powerful ; which was exactly what he always wanted. On the day of the coronation of the handsome boy-king Edwy, it was remarked by Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury (who was a Dane by birth), that the king quietly left the coronation- feast, while all the company were there. Odo, much displeased, sent his friend Dunstan to seek him. Dunstan, finding him in the company of his beautiful young wife Elgiva, and her mother Ethelgiva, a good and virtuous lady, not only grossly abused them, but dragged the young king back into the feasting-hall by force. Some, again, think Dunstan did this because the young king's fair wife was his own cousin ; and the monks objected to people marrying their own cousins ; but I believe he did it because he was an imperious, audacious, ill-condi- tioned priest, who, having loved a young lady himself before he became a sour monk, hated all love now, and everything be- longing to it. The young king was quite old enough to feel this insult. Dunstan had been treasurer in the last reign ; and he soon charged Dunstan with having taken some of the last king's money. The Glastonbury abbot fled to Belgium (very narrowly escaping some pursuers who were sent to put out his eyes, as jj8 ^ CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. you will wish they had, when you read what follows), and his abbey was given to priests who were married ; whom he always, both before and afterwards, opposed. But he quickly conspired with his friend Odo, the Dane, to set up the king's young brother Edgar, as his rival for the throne ; and, not content with this revenge, he caused the beautiful queen Elgiva, though a lovely girl of only seventeen or eighteen, to be stolen from one of the royal palaces, branded in the cheek with a red-hot iron, and sold into slavery in Ireland. But the Irish people pitied and befriended her ; and they said, " Let us restore the girl-queen to the boy-king, and make the young lovers happy ! '* And they cured her of her cruel wound, and sent her home as beautiful as before. But the villain, Dunstan, and that other villain, Odo, caused her to be waylaid at Gloucester as she was joyfully hurrying to join her husband, and to be hacked and newn with swords, and to be barbarously maimed and lamed, and left to die. When Edwy the Fair (his people called him so because he was so young and handsome) heard of her dread- ful fate, he died of a broken heart ; and so the pitiful story of the poor young wife and husband ends. Ah ! Better to be two cottagers in these better times, than king and queen of England in those bad days, though never so fair ! Then came the boy-king Edgar, called the Peaceful, fifteen years old. Dunstan, being still the real king, drove all married priests out of the monasteries and abbeys, and replaced them by solitary monks like himself, of the rigid order called the Bene- dictines. He made himself Archbishop of Canterbury for his greater glory ; and exercised such power over the neighboring British princes, and so collected them about the king, that once, when the king held his court at Chester, and went on the River Dee to visit the monastery of St. John, the eight oars of his boat were pulled (as the people used to delight in relating in stories and songs) by eight crowned kings, and steered by the king of England. As Edgar was very obedient to Dunstan and the monks, they took great pains to represent him as the best of kings ; but he was really profligate, debauched, and vicious. He once forcibly carried off a young lady from the convent at Wilton ; and Dunstan, pretending to be very much shocked, condemned him not to wear his crown upon his head for seven years, — no great punishment, I dare say, as it can hardly have been a more comfortable ornament to wear than a stewpan with- out a handle. His marriage with his second wife, Elfrida, is one of the worst events of his reign. Hearing of the beauty of this lady, he despatched his favorite courtier, Athelwold, to her ENGLAND UNDER Al^HELSTAN 4 father's castle, in Devonshire, to see if she were really i^ charming as fame reported. Now she was so exceedinglv r beautiful, that Athelwold fell in love with her himself, an^ married her ; but he told the king that she was only rich, no' handsome. The king, suspecting the truth when they camtj home, resolved to pay the newly married couple a visit ; and suddenly told Athelwold to prepare for his immediate coming.S, Athelwold, terrified, confessed to his young wife what he had said and done, and implored her to disguise her beauty by some ugly dress or silly manner, that he might be safe from the king's anger. She promised that she would ; but she was a proud woman, who would far rather have been a queen than the wife of a courtier. She dressed herself in her best dress, and adorned herself with her richest jewels ; and when the king came presently, he discovered the cheat. So he caused his false friend Athelwold to be murdered in a wood, and married his widow, this bad Elfrida. Six or seven years afterwards he died, and was buried (as if he had been all that the monks said he was) in the abbey of Glastonbury, which he — or Dunstan ior him — had much enriched. England, in one part of this reign, was so troubled by wolves, which, driven out of the open country, hid themselves in the mountains of Wales, when they were' not attacking travellers and animals, that the tribute payable by the Welsh people was forgiven them, on condition of their producing every year, three hundred wolves' heads. And the Welshmen were GO sharp upon the wolves, to save their mone}., that in four years there was not a wolf left. Then came the boy-king Edward, called the Martyr, from the manner of his death. Elfrida had a son, named Ethelred, for whom she claimed the throne ; but Dunstan did not choose to favor him, and he made Edward king. The boy was hunt- ing one day down in Dorsetshire, when he rode near to Corfe Castle, where Elfrida and Ethelred lived. Wishing to see them, kindly, he rode away from his attendants, and galloped to the castle-gate, where he arrived at twilight, and blew his hunting- horn. " You are welcome, dear king," said Elfrida, coming out, with her brightest smiles. " Pray you dismount and enter." " Not so, dear madam," said the king. " My company will miss me, and fear that I have met with some harm. Please you to give me a cup of wine, that I may drink here in the saddle to you and to my little brother, and so ride away with the good speed I have made in riding here." Elfrida, going in to bring the wine, whispered to an armed servant, one of h^| 3® A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. attendants, who stole out of the darkening gateway, and crept round behind the king's horse. As the king raised the cup to bis lips, saying " Health ! " to the wicked woman who was smiling on him, and to his innocent brother whose hand she held in hers, and who was only ten years old, this armed man made a spring, and stabbed him in the back. He dropped the cup, and spurred his horse away ; but soon, fainting with loss of blood, dropped from the saddle, and, in his fall, entangled one of his feet in the stirrup. The frightened horse dashed on, trailing his rider's curls upon the ground, dragging his smooth young face through ruts, and stones, and briers, and fallen leaves, and mud ; until the hunters, tracking the animal's course by the king's blood, caught his bridle, and released the disfigured body. Then came the sixth and last of the boy-kings, Ethelred ; whom Elfrida, when he cried out at the sight of his murdered brother riding away from the castle-gate, unmercifully beat with a torch which she snatched from one of the attendants. The people so disliked this boy, on account of his cruel mother, and the murder she had done to promote him, that Dunstan would not have had him for king ; but would have made Edgitha, the daughter of the dead king Edgar and of the lady whom he stole out of the convent at Wilton, queen of England, if she would jave consented. But she knew the stories of the youthful dngs too well, and would not be persuaded from the convent where she lived in peace ; so Dunstan put Ethelred on the throne, having no one else to put there, and gave him the nick- name of " The Unready," knowing that he wanted resolution and firmness. At first Elfrida possessed great influence over the young king ; but as he grew older, and came of age, her influence declined. The infamous woman, not having it in her power to d(? any more evil, then retired from court, and according to the fashion of the time, built, churches and mon- asteries to expiate her guilt. As if a church with a steeple reaching to the very stars would have been any sign of true re- pentance for the blood of the poor boy whose murdered form was trailed at his horse's heels ! As if she could have buried her wickedness beneath the senseless stones of the whole world piled up one upon another for the monks to live in ! About the ninth or tenth year of this reign, Dunstan died. He was growing old then, but was as stern and artful as ever. Two circumstances that happened in connection with him, in this reign of Ethelred, made a great noise. Once he was pres- ent at a meeting of th§ Church, when the (question was dis ENGLAND UNDER ATHELSTAN 31 cussed whether priests should have permission to marry ; and as he sat with his head hung down, apparently thinking about it, a voice seemed to come out of a crucifix in the room, and warn the meeting to be of his opinion. This was some juggling of Dunstan's, and was probably his own voice disguised. But he played off a worse juggle than that soon afterwards ; foi another meeting being held on the same subject, and he and his supporters being seated on one side of a great room, and their opponents on the other, he rose and said, " To Christ himself, as Judge, do I commit this cause ! " Immediately on these words being spoken, the floor where the opposite party sat gave way ; and some were killed, and many wounded* You may be pretty sure that it had been weakened under Dunstan's direction, and that it fell at Dunstan's signal. His part of the floor did not go down. No, no ! He was too good a workman for that. When he died, the monks settled that he was a saint, and called him St. Dunstan ever afterwards. They might just as well have settled that he was a coach-horse, and could just as easily have called him one. Ethelred the Unready was glad enough, I dare say, to be riH of this holy saint \ but, left to himself, he was a poor, weak king, and his reign was a reign of defeat and shame. The restless Danes, led by Sweyn, a son of the king of Denmark, who had quarrelled with his father, and had been banished from home, again came into England, and year after year attacked and despoiled large towns. To coax these sea-kings away, the weak Ethelred paid them money ; but the more money he paid, the more money the Danes wanted. At first he gave them ten thousand pounds ; on their next invasion, sixteen thousand pounds ; on their next invasion, four-and-twenty thousand pounds j to pay which large sums, the unfortunate English people were heavily taxed. But as the Danes still came back and wanted more, he thought it would be a good plan to marry into some powerful foreign family that would help him with soldiers. So in the year 1002, he courted and married Emma, the sister of Richard, Duke of Normandy, — a lady who was called the Flower of Normandy. And now a terrible deed was done in England, the like of which was never done on English ground before or since. On the 13th of November, in pursuance of secret instructions sent by the king over the whole country, the inhabitants of every town and city armed, and murdered all the Danes who were their neighbors. Young and old, babies and soldiers, men and |2 A CHILD'S MISTORY OF ENGLAND. women, — every Dane was killed. No doubt there were among them many ferocious men, who had done the English great wrong, and whose pride and insolence, in swaggering in the houses of the English, and insulting their wives and daughters, had become unbearable ; but, no doubt, there were also among them many peaceful Christian Danes, who had married English women, and become like English men. They were all slain, even to Gunhilda, the sister of the King of Denmark, married to an English lord ; who was first obliged to see the murder of her husband and her child, and then was killed herself. When the king of the sea-kings heard of this deed of blood, he swore that he would have a great revenge. He raised an army, and a mightier fleet of ships than ever yet had sailed to England. And in all his army there was not a slave nor an old man ; but every soldier was a free man, and the son of a free man, and in the prime of life, and sworn to be revenged upon the English nation, for the massacre of that dread 13th of No- vember, when his countrymen and countrywomen, and the little children whom they loved, were killed by fire and sword. And so the sea-kings came to England in many great ships, each bearing the flag of its own commander. Golden eagles, ravens, dragons, dolphins, beasts of prey, threatened England from the prows of those ships, as they came onward through the water ; and were reflected in the shining shields that hung upon their sides. The ship that bore the standard of the king of the sea-kings was carved and painted like a mighty serpent \ and the king, in his anger, prayed that the gods in whom he trusted might all desert him, if his serpent did not strike its fangs into England's heart. And indeed it did. For the great army, landing from the great fleet near Exeter, went forward, laying England waste, and striking their lances in the earth as they advanced, or throwing them into rivers, in token of their making all the island theirs. In remembrance of the Black November night when the Danes were murdered, wheresoever the invaders came, they made the Saxons prepare and spread for them great feasts ; and when they had eaten those feasts, and had drunk a curse to England with wild rejoicings, they drew their swords, and killed their Saxon entertainers, and marched on. For six long years they carried on this war ; burning the crops, farm- houses, barns, mills, granaries ; killing the laborers in the fields ; preventing the seed from being sown in the ground ; causing famine and starvation ; leaving only heaps of ruin and smoking ashes, where they ha4 found rich towns. To crown ENGLAND UNDER ATHELSTAN. 33 this misery, English officers and men deserted ; and even the favorites of Ethelred the Unready, becoming traitors, seized many of the English ships, turned pirates against their own country, and aided by a storm, occasioned the loss of nearly the whole English navy. There was but one man of note, at this miserable pass, who was true to his country and the feeble king. He was a priest, and a brave one. For twenty days the Archbishop of Canter- bury defended that city against its Danish besiegers ; and when a traitor in the town threw the gates open, and admitted them, he said, in chains, " I will not buy my life with money that must be extx)rted from the suffering people. Do with me what you please ! " Again and again, he steadily refused to pur- chase his release with gold wrung from the poor. At last the Danes, being tired of this, and being assembled at a drunken merry-making, had him brought into the feasting hall. " Now, bishop," they said, " we want gold." He looked round on the crowd of angry faces, — ^from the shaggy beards close to him, to the shaggy beards against the walls, where men were mounted on tables and forms to see him over the heads of others, — and he knew that his time was come. " I have no gold," said he. " Get it, bishop ! " they all thundered. " That I have often told you I will not," said he. They gathered closer round him, threatening ; but he stood unmoved. Then one man struck him ; then another ; then a cursing soldier picked up from a heap in the corner of the hall, where fragments had been rudely thrown at dinner, a great ox-bone, and cast it at his face, from which the blood came spurting forth ; then others ran to the same heap, and knocked him down with other bones, and bruised and battered him ; until one soldier whom he baptized (willing, as I hope for the sake of that soldier's soul, to shorten the sufferings of the good man) struck him dead with his battle-axe. If Ethelred had had the heart to emulate the courage of this noble Archbishop, he might have done something yet. But he paid the Danes forty-eight thousand pounds, instead ; and gained so little by the cowardly act, that Sweyn soon afterwards came over to subdue all England. So broken was the attachment of the English people by this time, to their in^ capable King and their forlorn country, which could not pro- tect them, that they welcomed Sweyn on all sides as a deliv 34 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. erer. London faithfully stood out as long as the king was within its walls ; but when he sneaked away, it also welcomed the Dane. Then all was over; and the king took refuge abroad with the Duke of Normandy, who had already given shelter to the king's wife (once the flower of that country), and to her children. Still the English people, in spite of their sad sufferings, could not quite forget the great king Alfred and the Saxon race. When Sweyn died suddenly, in little more than a month after he had been proclaimed king of England, they generously sent to Ethelred, to say that they would have him for their king again, " if he would only govern them better than he had governed them before." The Unready, instead of coming him- self, sent Edward, one of his sons, to make promises for him. At last he followed, and the English declared him king. The Danes declared Canute, the son of Sweyn, king. Thus direful war began again, and lasted for three years ; when the Un- ready died. And I know of nothing better that he did in all his reign of eight-and-thirty years. Was Canute to be king now ? Not over the Saxons, they said : they must have Edmund, one of the sons of the Unready, whr was surnamed Ironside because of his strength and stature. Edmund and Canute thereupon fell to, and fought five battles. O unhappy England ! what a fighting-ground it was ! And then Ironside, who was a big man, proposed to Canute, who was a little man, that they two should fight it out in single combat. If Canute had been the big man, he would probably have said yes ; but^ being the little man, he decidedly said no. However, he declared that he was willing to divide the king- dom, — to take all that lay north of Watling Street, as the old Roman military road from Dover to Chester was called, and to give Ironside all that lay south of it. Most men being weary of so much bloodshed, this was done. But Canute soon be- came sole king of England ; for Ironside died suddenly within two months. Some think that he was killed, and Icilled by Canute's orders. No one knows. ENGLAND UNDER CANUTE THE DANE. ^ CHAPTER V, ENGLAND UNDER CANUTE THE DANE. Canute reigned eighteen years. He was a merciless king at first. After he had clasped the hands of the Saxon chiefs, in token of the sincerity with which he swore to be just and good to them in return for their acknowledging him, he de- nounced and slew many of them, as well as many relations of the late king. " He who brings me the head of one of my ene- mies," he used to say, " shall be dearer to me than a brother." And he was so severe in hunting down his enemies, that he must have got together a pretty large family of these dear brothers. He was strongly inclined to kill Edmund and Ed- ward, two children, sons of poor Ironside ; but, being afraid to do so in England, he sent them over to the king of Sweden, with a request that the king would be so good as to " dispose of them." If the king of Sweden had been like many, many other men of that day, he would have had their innocent throats cut J but he was a kind man, and brought them up tenderly. Normandy ran much in Canute's mind. In Normandy were the two children of the late king, — Edward and Alfred by name ; and their uncle, the duke, might one day claim the crown for them. But the duke showed so little inclination to do so now, that he proposed to Canute to marry his sister, the widow of the Unready ; who, being but a showy flower, and caring for nothing so much as becoming a queen again, left her children, and was wedded to him. Successful and triumphant, assisted by the valor of the Eng- iish in his foreign wars, and with little strife to trouble him at home, Canute had a prosperous reign, and made many improve- ments. He was a poet and a musician. He grew sorry as he grew older, for the blood he had shed at first ; and went to Rome in a pilgrim's dress, by way of washing it out. He gave a great deal of money to foreigners on his journey ; but he took it from the English before he started. On the whole, however, he certainly became a far better man when he had no opposi- tion to contend with ; and was as great a king as England had known for some time. The old writers of history relate how that Canute was one day disgusted with his courtiers for their flattery ; and how he 36 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGI AN'b. caused his chair to be set on the sea-shore, and feigned to ctf/n* mand the tide as it came up not to wet the edge of his robe, foi the land was his ; how the tide came up, of course, without re- garding him j and how he then turned to his flatterers, and re* buked them, saying, what was the might of any earthly king to the might of the Creator, who could say unto the sea, " Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther ! " We may learn from this, I think, that a little sense will go a long way in a king : and that courtiers are not easily cured of flattery, nor kings of a liking for it. If the courtiers of Canute had not known, long before, that the king was fond of flattery, they would have known bet- ter than to offer it in such large doses. And if they had not known that he was vain of this speech, (anything but a wonder- ful speech, it seems to me, if a good child had made it), they would not have been at such great pains to repeat it. I fancy I see them all on the sea-shore together ; the king's chair sink- ing in the sand ; the king in a mighty good-humor with his own wisdom ; and the courtiers pretending to be quite stunned by it! It is not the sea alone that is bidden to go "thus far, and no farther." The great command goes forth to all the kings upon the earth; and went to Canute in the year 1035, and stretched him dead upon his bed. Beside it stood his Norman wife. Perhaps, as the king looked his last upon her, he, who had so often thought distrustfully of Normandy long ago, thought once more of the two exiled princes in their uncle's court, and of the little favor they could feel for either Danes or Saxons ; and of a rising cloud in Normandy that slowly moved towards England. CHAPTER VI. itNGLAND UNDER HAROLD HAREFOOT, HARDICANtTTE. A WARD THE CONFESSOR. Canute left three sons, by name Sweyn, Harold, and Hardi-^ Canute ; but his queen, Emma, once the Flower of Normandy, was the mother of only Hardicanute. Canute had wished his dominions to be divided between the three, and had wished Harold to have England ; but the Saxon people in the south ^\ ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD HAREFOOT, ETC. 37 England, headed by a nobleman with great possessions, called the powerful Earl Godwin (who is said to have been originally a poor cow-boy), opposed this, and desired to have, instead, either Hardicanute, or one of the two exiled princes who were over in Normandy. It seemed so certain that there would be more blood shed to settle this dispute, that many people left their homes, and took refuge in the woods and swamps. Hap- pily, however, it was agreed to refer the whole question to a great meeting at Oxford, which decided that Harold should have all the country north of the Thames, with London for his capital city, and that Hardicanute should have all the south. The quarrel was so arranged ; and as Hardicanute was in Den- mark, troubling himself very little about anything but eating, and getting drunk, his mother and Earl Godwin governed the south for him. They had hardly begun to do so, and the trembling people who had hidden themselves were scarcely at home again, when Edward, the elder of the two exiled princes, came over from Normandy with a few followers, to claim the English crown. His mother Emma, however, who only cared for her last son Hardicanute, instead of assisting him, as he expected, opposed him so strongly with all her influence, that he was very soon glad to get safely back. His brother Alfred was not so fortu- nate.. Believing in an affectionate letter, written some time afterwards to him and his brother, in his mother's name (but whether really with or without his mother's knowledge is now un- certain), he allowed himself to be tempted over to England, with a good force of soldiers j and landing on the Kentish coast, and being met and welcomed by Earl Godwin, proceeded into Sur- rey, as far as the town of Guildford. Here he and his men halted in the evening to rest, having still the earl in their com- pany j who had ordered lodgings and good cheer for them. But in the dead of the night, when they were off their guard, being divided into small parties, sleeping soundly after a long march and a plentiful supper, in different houses, they were set upon by the king's troops, and taken prisoners. Next morning they were drawn out in a line, to the number of six hundred men, and were barbarously tortured and killed, with the excep- tion of every tenth man, who was sold into slavery. As to the wretched Prince Alfred, he was stripped naked, tied to a horse, and sent away into the Isle of Ely, where his eyes were torn put of his head, and where in a few days he miserably died. I am not sure that the earl had wilfully entrapped him, but I sus- pect it strongly. 38 ^ CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Harold was now king all over England; though it is doubt ful whether the Archbishop of Canterbury (the greater part of the priests were Saxons, and not friendly to the Danes) ever consented to crown him. Crowned or uncrowned, with the Archbishop's leave or without it, he was king for four years ^ after which short reign he died and was buried, having never done much in life but go a-hunting. He was such a fast run- ner at this, his favorite sport, that the people called him Harold Harefoot. Hardicanute was then at Bruges, in Flanders, plotting with his mother (who had gone over there after the cruel murder of Prince Alfred) for the invasion of England. The Danes and Saxons, finding themselves without a king, and dreading new disputes, made common cause, and joined in inviting him to occupy the throne. He consented, and soon troubled them enough ; for he brought over numbers of Danes, and taxed the people so insupportably to enrich those greedy favorites, that there were many insurrections, especially one at Worcester, where the citizens rose, and killed his tax-collectors ; in revenge for which he burned their city. He was a brutal king, whose first public act was to order the dead body of poor Harold Harefoot to be dug up, beheaded, and thrown into the river. His end was worthy of such a beginning. He fell down drunk, with a goblet of wine in his hand, at a wedding-feast at Lam- beth, given in honor of the marriage of his standard-bearer, a Dane named Towed the Proud. And he never spoke again. Edward, afterwards called by the monks. The Confessor, succeeded ; and his first act was to oblige his mother Emma, who had favored him so little, to retire into the country, where: she died, some ten years afterwards. He was the exiled prince; whose brother Alfred had been so foully killed. He had been invited over from Normandy by Hardicanute, in the course of his short reign of two years, and had been handsomely treated at court. His cause was now favored by the powerful Earl Godwin, and he was soon made king. This earl had been sus- pected by the people, ever since Prince Alfred's cruel death : he had even been tried in the last reign for the prince's murder, . but had been pronounced not guilty ; chiefly, as it was supposed,* because of a present he had made to the swinish king, of a; gilded ship with a figure-head of solid gold, and a crew of eighty splendidly armed men. It was his interest to help the new king with his power, if the new king would help him against the popular distrust and hatred. So they made a bargain. Edward,' the Confessor got the throne , The earl got more power and ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD HAREFOOT, ETC. 39 more land, and his daughter Editha was made queen ; for it was a part of their compact, that the king should take her for his wife. But although she was a gentle lady, in all things worthy to be beloved, — good, beautiful, sensible, and kind, — the king from the first neglected her. Her father and her six proud brothers, resenting this cold treatment, harassed the king greatly, by exerting all their power to make him unpopular. Having lived so long in Normandy, he preferred the Normans to the English. He made a Norman archbishop, and Norman bishops ; his great officers and favorites were all Normans ; he introduced the Norman fashions and the Norman language ; in imitation of the state custom of Normandy, he attached a great seal to his state documents, instead of merely marking them, as the Saxon kings had done, with the sign of the cross, — ^just as poor people who have never been taught to write now make the same mark for their names. All this, the powerful Earl Godwin and his six proud sons represented to the people as disfavor shown towards the English ; and thus they daily in- creased their own power, and daily diminished the power of the king. They were greatly helped by an event that occurred when he had reigned eight years. Eustace, Earl of Boulogne, who had married the king's sister, came to England on a visit, /fter staying at the court some time, he set forth, with his numerous train of attendants, to return home. They were to embark at Dover. Entering that peaceful town in armor, they took possession of the best houses, and noisily demanded to be lodged and entertained without payment. One of the bold men of Dover, who would not endure to have these domineer- ing strangers jingling their heavy swords and iron corselets up and down his house, eating his meat and drinking his strong liquor, stood in his doorway, and refused admission to the first armed man who came there. The armed man drew and wounded him. The man of Dover struck the armed man dead. Intelli- gence of what he had done spreading through the streets to where the Count Eustace and his men were standing by their horses, bridle in hand, they passionately mounted, galloped to the house, surrounded it, forced their way in (the doors and windows being closed when they came up) and killed the man of Dover at his own fireside. They then clattered through the streets, cutting down and riding over men, women, and chil- dren. This did not last long, you may believe. The men of pover set upon - them with great fury, killed nineteen of the 40 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. foreigners, wounded many more, and, blockading the road to the port, so that they should not embark, beat them out of the town by the way they had come. Hereupon Count Eustace rides as hard as man can ride to Gloucester, where Edward is, surrounded by Norman monks and Norman lords. " Justice ! " cries the count, " upon the men of Dover, who have set upon and slain my people ! " The king sends immediately for the powerful Earl Godwin, who happens to be near j reminds him that Dover is under his government ; and orders him to repair to Dover, and do military execution on the inhabitants. " It does not become you," says the proud earl in reply, " to con demn without a hearing those whom you have sworn to protect. I will not do it." ^ The king, therefore, summoned the earl, on^ain of banish- ment, and loss of his titles and property, to appear before the court to answer this disobedience. The earl refused to appear. He, his eldest son Harold, and his second son Sweyn, hastily raised as many fighting-men as their utmost power could collect, and demanded to have Count Eustace and his followers surren- dered to the justice of the country. The king, in his turn, re- fused to give them up, and raised a strong force. After some treaty and delay, the troops of the great earl and his sons began to fall off. The earl, with a part of his family and abundance of treasure, sailed to Flanders ; Harold escaped to Ireland \ and the power of the great family was for that time gone in England. But the people did not forget them. Then Edward the Confessor, with the true meanness of a mean spirit, visited his dislike of the once powerful father and sons upon the helpless daughter and sister, his unoffending wife, whom all who saw her (her husband and his monks ex- cepted) loved. He seized rapaciously upon her fortune and hei jewels j and, allowing her only one attendant, confined her in a gloomy convent, of which a sister of his, no doubt an unpleasant lady after his own heart, was abbess, or jailer. Having got Earl Godwin and his six sons well out of his way, the king favored the Normans more than ever. He in- vited over William, Duke of Normandy, the son of that duke who had received him and his murdered brother long ago, and of a peasant girl, a tanner's daughter, with whom the duke had fallen in love for her beauty as he saw her washing clothes in a brook. William, who was a great warrior, with a passion for fine horses, dogs and arms, accepted the invitation ; and the Normans in England, finding themselves more numerous than ever when he arrived with his retinue, and held in still greatei ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD BAREFOOT, ETC. 41 ftonor at court than before, became more and more haughty to wards the people, and were more and more disHked by them. The old Earl Godwin, though he was abroad, knew well how the people felt ; for, with part of the treasure he had carried away with him, he kept spies and agents in his pay all over England. Accordingly, he thought the time was come for fit- ting out a great expedition against the Norman-loving king. With it he sailed to the Isle of Wight, where he was joined by his son Harold, the most gallant and brave of all his family. And so the father and son came sailing up the Thames to Southwark, great numbers of the people declaring for them, and shouting for the English earl and the English Harold, against the Norman favorites ! The king was at first as blind and stubborn as kings usu- ally have been whensoever they have been in the hands of monks. But the people rallied so thickly round the old earl and his son, and the old earl was so steady in demanding, with- out bloodshed, the restoration of himself and his family to their rights, that at last the court took the alarm. The Norman Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Norman Bishop of London, surrounded by their retainers, fought their way out of London, and escaped from Essex to France in a fishing-boat. The other Norman favorites dispersed in all directions. The old earl and his sons (except Sweyn), who had committed crimes against the law, were restored to their possessions and dignities. Editha, the virtuous and lovely queen of the insensible king, was triumphantly released from her prison, the convent, and once more sat in her chair of state, arrayed in the jewels of which, when she had no champion to support her rights, her cold-blooded husband had deprived her. The old Earl Godwin did not long enjoy his restored for- tune. He fell down in a fit at the king's table, and died upon the third day afterwards. Harold succeeded to his power, and to a far higher place in the attachment of the people, than his father had ever held. By his valor he subdued the king's ene- mies in many bloody fights. He was vigorous against rebels in Scotland, — this was the time when Macbeth slew Duncan, upon which event our English Shakespeare, hundreds of years afterwards, wrote his great tragedy ; and he killed the restless Welsh King Griffith, and brought his head to England. What Harold was doing at sea, when he was driven on the French coast by a tempest, is not at all certain ; nor does it at all matter. That his ship was forced by a storm on that shore, and that he was taken prisoner, there is no doubt. In thos«? 43 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. barbarous days, all shipwrecked strangers were taken prisonerSj and obliged to pay ransom. So a certain Count Guy, who was the lord of Ponthieu, where Harold's disaster happened, seized him, instead of relieving him like a hospitable and Christian lord, as he ought to have done, and expected to make a very good thing of it. But Harold sent off immediately to Duke William of Nor- mandy, complaining of this treatment ; and the duke no sooner heard of it than he ordered Harold to be escorted to the an cient town of Rouen, where he then was, and where he received him as an honored guest. Now some writers tell us that Ed- ward the Confessor, who was by this time old and had no chil- dren, had made a will, appointing Duke William of Normandy his successor, and had informed the duke of his having done so. There is no doubt that he was anxious about his succes- sor j because he had even invited over, from abroad, Edward the Outlaw, a son of Ironside, who had come to England with his wife and three children ; but whom the king had strangely refused to see when he did come, and who had died in London suddenly (princes were terribly liable to sudden death in those days), and had been buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. The king might possibly have made such a will ; or, having always been fond of the Normans, he might have encouraged Norman Wil- liam to aspire to the English crown, by something that he said to him when he was staying at the English court. But cer- tainly William did now aspire to it ; and, knowing that Harold would be a powerful rival, he called together a great assembly of his nobles, offered Harold his daughter Adele in marriage, informed him that he meant, on King Edward's death, to claim the English crown as his own inheritance, and required Harold then and there to swear to aid him. Harold, being in the duke's power, took this oath upon the missal, or prayer-book. It is a good example of the superstitions of the monks, that this missal, instead of being placed upon a table, was placed upon a tub; which, when Harold had sworn, was uncovered, and shown to be full of dead men's bones, — bones, — as the monks pretended, of saints. This was supposed to make Harold's oath a great deal more impressive and binding. As if the great name of the Creator of heaven and earth could be made more solemn by a knuckle-bone, or a double-tooth, or a finger-nail of Dunstan ! Within a week or two after Harold's return to England, the dreary old Confessor was found to be dying. After wandering in his mind like a very weak old man, he died. As he had put ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD THE SECOND. 4S himself entirely in the hands of the monks when he was alive, they praised him lustily when he was dead. They had gone so far already, as to persuade him that he could work miracles ; and had brought people afflicted with a bad disorder of the skin to him, to be touched and cured. This was called " touch- ing for the king's evil," which afterwards became a royal cus- tom. You know, however, who really touched the sick, and healed them ; and you know His sacred name is not among the dusty line of human kings. CHAPTER VII. ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD THE SECOND, AND CONQUERED BY THE NORMANS. Harold was crowned king of England on the very day of the maudlin £!onfessor's funeral. He had good need to be quick about it. When the news reached Norman William, hunting in his park at Rouen, he dropped his bow, returned "to his palace, called his nobles to council, and presently sent am- bassadors to Harold, calling on him to keep his oath, and re- sign the crown. Harold would do no such thing. The barons of France leagued together round Duke William for the inva- sion of England. Duke William promised freely to distribute English wealth and English lands among them. The Pope sent to Normandy a consecrated banner, and a ring containing a hair which he warranted to have grown on the head of St. Peter. He blessed the enterprise, and cursed Harold ; and requested that the Normans would pay " Peter's Pence " — or a tax to himself of a penny a year on every house — a little more regularly in future, if they could make it convenient. King Harold had a rebel brother in Flanders, who was a vassal of Harold Hardrada, King of Norway. This brother, and this Norwegian king, joining their forces against England, with Duke William's help, won a fight in which the English were commanded by two nobles, and then besieged York. Harold, who was waiting for the Normans on the coast ai Hastings with his army, marched to Stamford Bridge upon the River Derwent to give them instant battle. He found them drawn ^p in a hollow cirele, mjtfked out b? 44 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. ^^ their shining spears. Riding round this circle at a distance, t