History of the Norman Conquest, vol. 1

CHAPTER II. THE FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF ENGLAND. 449–975. — § 1. The Heathen period of English Conquest. 449–597. — § 2. Conversion of the English to Christianity. 597–681. — § 3. Fluctuations of dominion between Northumberland, Mercia, and Wessex. 577–823. — § 4. Permanent Supremacy of Wessex. 823–924. — § 5. The Imperial Sovereignty of the West-Saxon Kings of the English. 924–975.

The Norman invaders in the eleventh century found in the Isle of Britain, as any modern invader would find now, three nations, speaking three languages; and they found then, as would be found now, one of the three holding a distinct superiority over the whole land. Then as now, English, Welsh, and Gaelic were the three distinct tongues of the three races of the island; then as now, the dominant Teuton knew himself by no name but that of Englishman, and was known to his Celtic neighbour by no name but that of Saxon. The boundaries of the two races and of their languages were already fixed, nearly as they remain at present. The English tongue has made some advances since the eleventh century; but they are small compared with the advances which it had made between |Preservation of local names and divisions in England.| the fifth century and the eleventh. The main divisions of the country, the local names of the vast mass of its towns and villages, were fixed when the Norman came, and they have survived, with but little change, to our own day. While a map of France or Germany in the eleventh century is useless for modern purposes, and looks like the picture of another region, a map of England proper in the reign of Victoria hardly differs at all from a map of England proper in the reign of William. The Norman found in the land substantially the same English nation which still exists, 9occupying substantially the same territory which it occupies at present. He found it already exhibiting, in its laws, its language, its national character, the most essential |The Norman element absorbed in the English nation then and now existing.| of the features which it still retains. Into the English nation which he thus found already formed his own dynasty and his own followers were gradually absorbed. The conquered did not become Normans; but the conquerors did become Englishmen. It was by a very different process that the English themselves had made good their footing in the land in which the Norman found them, and to which they had long before given their name.

The details of the English Conquest of Britain, and the exact amount of historical truth to be found in them, are questions which hardly concern us here. It will be enough to point out the essential difference between the traditional narrative of the English Conquest, as contained in the English Chronicles,^[1] and the romantic narrative of which Geoffrey of Monmouth is the chief |General credibility of the traditional narrative.| spokesman. The narrative in the Chronicles is perfectly credible in itself, and perfectly consistent with all the undoubted phænomena of later history. It is also perfectly consistent with the record of all those living witnesses whose testimony may be mistaken, but which themselves cannot lie. Such are the evidence of language and local nomenclature, the evidence of the surviving antiquities, the camps, the dykes, the barrows, which chronicle this warfare as well as the warfare of earlier and of later times. The only question is whether an accurate narrative of details 10can have been handed on from the date assigned to Hengest to the ascertained date of Bæda, whether by oral tradition, by runes, or by written documents which are lost to us. And this really amounts to little more than a question whether, in the earliest part of the narrative, the exact names and the exact dates can always be trusted. Some of the earlier names may be mythical;^[2] some of the dates may have been reached by ingenious calculation rather than by genuine tradition. But granting all this, the main substance of the narrative remains essentially where it was.

Much learning and ingenuity has been spent, and, I venture to think, in many cases wasted, in attempts to show the untrustworthiness of the traditional account, by |Questions of earlier Teutonic invasions and settlements in Britain.| bringing forward proofs of Teutonic invasions, and even of Teutonic settlements, of an earlier date than that assigned by the Chronicles to the beginning of the English Conquest.^[3] The facts which are brought forward are in most cases probable and in some cases certain, but I cannot look on them as having that bearing on later history which they have sometimes been supposed to have. It is possible that, among the tribes which Cæsar found in Britain, some, especially in the eastern districts of the island, may have been of Teutonic origin, or in some degree mingled with Teutonic elements. It is certain that in Britain, as 11everywhere else, Teutonic soldiers largely served in the Roman armies, and that settlements of such soldiers sometimes grew into permanent colonies.^[4] It is certain that, long before the days of Cerdic or Hengest, Theodosius and Stilicho repelled Teutonic invasions; and it is probable that, by repelling such invasions, they hindered the formation of Teutonic settlements in Britain at that earlier |The course of the English Conquest not affected by them.| time.^[5] But these facts or probabilities do not affect the credibility of the recorded course of the English Conquest, or of the tradition which fixes its real beginning in the middle of the fifth century. Teutonic settlements before the Roman invasion, or under the Roman domination, would be something quite different from the Teutonic invasions recorded from the fifth century onwards. Teutonic tribes subdued by the Roman arms, Teutonic soldiers 12planted as colonists by the Roman government, would sink into the general mass of Roman subjects; they would retain no strong national feeling; they would most likely not even retain their national language. The only way in which they could possibly influence the later history would be by making the establishment of the later Teutonic settlers a less difficult matter in those parts of the country which they occupied than in those where the population was purely Celtic or Roman.^[6] We may admit the fact that the Teutonic, and even the distinctively Saxon, invasions began, not in the fifth century, but in |Light thrown on these events by the analogy of the Danish invasions.| the fourth. But the true bearing of this fact will be best understood by comparing the successive Saxon invasions with the later and better known invasions of the Danes both in England and in Gaul. In the Danish invasions I shall presently endeavour to establish three periods, one of mere plunder, one of settlement, one of political conquest. For the last of these three there was no opportunity under the circumstances of the earlier Teutonic invaders, but for the first two stages we may fairly look in the history of the English, as well as in that of the Danish, Conquest. The Saxon pirates against whom the Roman government found it needful to establish so elaborate a system of defence, find their parallels in those Danish plundering expeditions which ravaged various parts of England in the latter half of the eighth century and the former half of the ninth, and in the ravages inflicted on Gaul by chieftains earlier than Hasting. The Anglian, Saxon, and Jutish settlements of the fifth and sixth centuries answer to the |878.| settlements of Guthrum in East-Anglia in the ninth |912.| century and of Rolf in Neustria in the tenth. Even if it be held that the Saxons who were driven back by Theodosius and Stilicho designed settlement and not merely 13plunder, still, as they did not actually settle, the case remains much the same. The Teutons were baffled in their attempts at settlement in the fourth century; they succeeded in their attempts at settlement in the fifth. The general history of the Conquest, as handed down to us in the Chronicles, is therefore in no way affected by the certain fact of earlier incursions, by the possible fact of much earlier settlements. The really lasting effect of the Saxon invasions of the fourth century seems to have been this; the Saxon name became familiar to the Celtic inhabitants of Britain earlier than the Anglian name; consequently Saxon, and not Angle or English, has been the name by which the Teutonic immigrants in Britain have been known to their Celtic neighbours from that day to this.^[7]

What then the English Chronicles profess to record is, not these early and transient incursions which led to no permanent result, but that series of constant, systematic, successful attempts at settlement on the part of various Teutonic tribes which constituted the English Conquest of |418.| Britain. Early in the fifth century the Roman legions were withdrawn from the island, and the former provincials were left to defend their new and precarious independence |No improbability in the story of Vortigern’s invitation, but the tale not essential.| how they might. The Southern Britons were now exposed to the attacks of the Picts and Scots who had never submitted to the Roman yoke, and there is no absurdity in the familiar story that a British prince took Teutonic mercenaries into his pay, and that these dangerous allies took advantage of the weakness of their hosts to establish themselves as permanent possessors of part of the island. 14But if this account be rejected, the general narrative of the Conquest is in no way affected; and, if it be accepted, we may be sure that Vortigern’s imitation of many Roman precedents did but hasten the progress of events. The attempts which had been checked while the Roman power was flourishing were sure to be renewed when the check was withdrawn, and if a Welsh King did invite a Jutish chieftain to defend him, that invitation was only the occasion, and not the cause, of the Conquest which now |449–597.| began. We cannot seriously doubt that, in the course of the fifth and sixth centuries, a succession of tribes of kindred origin, all of them of the same Low-Dutch^[8] stock, and speaking essentially the same Low-Dutch language, landed at various points of the British coast, that they gradually forced their way inland, and founded permanent |Extent of the English dominion and of the independent British states at the end of the sixth century.| Teutonic kingdoms. Before the end of the sixth century the Teutonic dominion stretched from the German Ocean to the Severn, and from the English Channel to the Firth of Forth. The northern part of the island was still held by Picts and Scots, Celtic tribes whose exact ethnical relation to each other hardly concerns us.^[9] And the whole 15west side of the island, including not only modern Wales, but the great kingdom of Strathclyde, stretching from Dumbarton to Chester, and the great peninsula containing Cornwall, Devon, and part of Somerset, was still in the hands of independent Britons. The struggle had been long and hard, and the natives often kept their hold of a defensible district long after the surrounding country had been occupied by the invaders. It is therefore probable that, at the end of the sixth century and even later, there may have been within the English frontier inaccessible points where detached bodies of Welshmen still retained a precarious independence. It is probable also that, within the same frontier, there still were Roman towns, tributary to the conquerors rather than occupied by them.^[10] But by the end of the sixth century even these exceptions must |The English Conquest, as a whole, accomplished by 597.| have been few. The work of the Conquest, as a whole, was accomplished. The Teutonic settlers had occupied by far the greater part of the territory which they ever were, in the strictest sense, to occupy. The complete supremacy of the island was yet to be won; but that was to be won, when it was won, by quite another process.

The English Conquest of Britain differed in several important respects from every other settlement of a Teutonic people within the limits of the Roman Empire. Everywhere else the invaders gradually adopted the language and the religion of the conquered. If the 16conquerors were heathens at the time of their settlement, they gradually adopted Christianity. If they had already adopted Christianity in its Arian form, they gradually exchanged their heretical creed for that of the Catholic |Gradual Romanization of the conquerors elsewhere in religion, language, &c.| Church. Everywhere but in Britain the invaders gradually learned to speak some form, however corrupt, of the language of Rome. The Teutonic conquerors of Italy, Spain, and Gaul have indeed infused into the Romance languages of these countries a large proportion of words of Teutonic origin. Still the language of all those countries remains essentially Latin; the Teutonic element in them is a mere infusion. Everywhere but in Britain the invaders respected the laws and the arts of Rome. The Roman Law was preserved, side by side with the Barbarian codes, as the rightful heritage of the conquered people; and, in the process of ages, the Roman Law gradually recovered its position as the dominant code of a large portion of continental Europe. Everywhere but in Britain the local divisions and local nomenclature survived the Conquest. Nearly every Gaulish tribe recorded by Cæsar has left its name still to be traced on the modern map.^[11] In Britain everything is different. |Retention by the English of their Teutonic language and heathen worship.| The conquering English entered Britain as heathens, and, after their settlement in Britain, they still retained the heathen worship of their fathers. They were after a while converted to Christianity, but they were not converted by the Christians whom they found in the island, but by a special mission from the common ecclesiastical centre. Our bishoprics and ecclesiastical divisions are not, as they are in Gaul, an heritage of Roman times, representing Roman 17political divisions. Our oldest episcopal sees are foundations of later date than the English Conquest, and the limits of their dioceses answer, not to anything Welsh or Roman, but to the boundaries of ancient English |History of the English language—| principalities. And, as the English in Britain retained their religion, so they also retained their language, and they retained it far more permanently. A few Celtic, and a still fewer Latin,^[12] words found their way into English from the first days of the Conquest, and a somewhat larger stock of Latin ecclesiastical terms^[13] was |a Low-Dutch tongue with a Romance infusion.| naturally brought in by the Christian missionaries. But, with these two very small classes of exceptions, the English language retained its purely Low-Dutch character down to that great infusion of Romance words into our vocabulary which was a result, though not an immediate result, of the Norman Conquest. And to this day, though the Romance infusion divides the vocabulary of our dictionaries with our natural Teutonic speech, it still remains only an infusion, an infusion greater in degree, but essentially the same in kind, as the Teutonic infusion into the Romance languages.^[14] As we cannot put together the shortest French sentence without the use of Romance words, so we cannot put together the shortest English sentence without the use of Teutonic words. But we can put together sentence after sentence of French without a single Teutonic word, and we can equally put together sentence after sentence of English without a single Romance word. In Britain too the arts of Rome perished as utterly as the language and the religion of Rome; arts, language, and religion were all brought back again at a later time and in a corrupted form. 18|Slight and late influence of the Roman Law in England.| The laws of Rome perished utterly; they exercised no influence upon our insular jurisprudence, until, in times after the Norman Conquest, the Civil Law was introduced as something utterly exotic. And even then our insular jurisprudence proved too strong for it; the Imperial legislation never gained in England the same supremacy which it gained in most parts of the Continent, and even in the Scottish portion of our island. The municipal institutions of the Roman towns in Britain utterly perished; no dream of ingenious men is more groundless than that which seeks to trace the franchises of English |Local nomenclature of England essentially Teutonic.| cities to a Roman source. In England again the local nomenclature is everywhere essentially Teutonic. A few great cities and a few great natural objects, London on the Thames and Gloucester on the Severn, still retain names older than the English Conquest; but the great mass of the towns and villages of England bear names which were given them either by the Angles and Saxons of the fifth and sixth centuries or by the Danes of the |Probable extirpation of the Celtic inhabitants.| ninth and tenth. In short, though the literal extirpation of a nation is an impossibility,^[15] there is every reason to believe that the Celtic inhabitants of those parts of Britain which had become English at the end of the sixth century had been as nearly extirpated as a nation can be. The women would doubtless be often spared;^[16] but as far as the male sex is concerned, we may feel sure that death, emigration, or personal slavery were the only alternatives which the vanquished found at the hands 19of our fathers. The nature of the small Celtic element |Nature of the Celtic element in English confirms this view.| in our language would of itself prove the fact. Nearly every Welsh word which has found its way into English expresses some small household matter, such as women and slaves would be concerned with; nearly all the words belonging to the nobler callings, all the terms of government and war, and nearly all the terms of agriculture, are thoroughly Teutonic. In short, everywhere but in Britain an intruding nation sat down by the side of an elder nation, and gradually lost itself in its mass. In Britain, so far as such a process is possible, the intruding nation altogether supplanted the elder |Difference in the actual process of the Conquest in Britain and elsewhere.| nation. The process of the Conquest again, its gradual character, the way in which the land was won, bit by bit, by hard fighting, was of itself widely different from the Gothic settlements in Italy or Spain. This peculiar character of the English Conquest would of itself favour the complete displacement of the former inhabitants, by giving the remnant of the vanquished in any district the means of escape to those districts which were yet unconquered.

This remarkable contrast between the English Conquest of Britain and the other Teutonic settlements within the Empire seems to be due to two main causes. The position of Britain differed from that of Italy or Gaul or Spain, and the position of the Angles and Saxons differed from that of Goths, Burgundians, or even Franks. |Britain less thoroughly Romanized than Gaul and Spain.| The event alone might seem to show that the Roman occupation of Britain had not brought about so complete a Romanization of the country as had taken place in Gaul and Spain. The evidence of language looks the same way. In Spain and in Gaul the ante-Roman languages survive only in a few out of the way corners; the speech of the land is Roman. But in no part of Britain has any Roman language been spoken for ages; 20the speech of the land, wherever it is not English, is not Roman but Celtic. The surviving Britons kept, and still keep, their own native language and not the language of their Roman conquerors. It would therefore seem that the Roman occupation of Britain was, after all, very superficial, and that, when the legions were withdrawn, the natives largely fell back into their ancient barbarism. The English therefore found in Britain a more stubborn, because a more truly national, resistance than any that their Teutonic kinsmen found elsewhere. But on the other hand, they did not find that perfect and striking fabric of Roman laws, manners, and arts which elsewhere impressed the minds of the conquerors, |Familiarity of the other Teutons with Roman civilization.| and changed them from destroyers into disciples. Again, the Goths above all, and the Franks in some degree, had long been familiar with Rome in peace and in war. They had resisted Roman attempts at conquest and they had repaid them in kind. They had served in the Roman armies, and had received lands and honours and offices as the reward of their services. They were, in short, neither wholly ignorant of Roman civilization nor |The English utterly ignorant of it.| utterly hostile to it. But our forefathers came from lands where the Roman eagle had never been seen, or had been seen only during the momentary incursions of Drusus and Germanicus. They had never felt the charm which led Gothic kings to glory in the title of Roman generals, and which led them to respect and preserve the forms of Roman civilization and the monuments of Roman art. Our forefathers appeared in the Isle of Britain purely as destroyers; nowhere else in Western Europe were the existing men and the existing institutions so utterly swept away. The English wiped out everything Celtic and everything Roman as thoroughly as everything Roman was wiped out of Africa by the Saracen conquerors of Carthage. A more fearful blow 21never fell on any nation than the landing of the Angles |Results of the peculiar character of the English Conquest.| and Saxons was to the Celt of Britain. But we may now be thankful for the barbarism and ferocity of our forefathers. Had we stayed in our earlier land, we should have remained undistinguished from the mass of our Low-Dutch kinsfolk. Had we conquered and settled only as Goths and Burgundians conquered and settled, we should be simply one more member of the great family of the Romance nations. Had we been a colony sent forth after the mother country had attained to any degree of civilization, we might have been lost like the Normans in Sicily or the Franks in Palestine. As it was, we were a colony sent forth while our race was still in a state of healthy barbarism. We won a country for ourselves, and we grew up, a new people in a new land, bringing with us ideas and principles common to us with the rest of our race, but not bringing with us any of the theories and prejudices which have been the bane of later colonization. Severed from the old stock, and kept aloof from intermixture with any other, we ceased to be Germans and we did not become Britons or Romans. In our new country we developed a new system for ourselves, partly by purely native growth, partly by independent intercourse with the common centre of civilization. The Goth is merged in the Romance population of Italy, Spain, and Aquitaine; the Old-Saxon has lost his national being through the subtler proselytism of the High-German; but the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, transplanted to the shores of Britain, have won for themselves a new name and a new national being, and have handed on to us the distinct and glorious inheritance of Englishmen.

Thus, before the end of the sixth century, by far the greater and more fertile portion of Britain had become 22heathen and Teutonic. The land had been occupied by various tribes; and most probably, as always happens in such migrations, few bodies of settlers had been perfectly homogeneous. A certain following of allies or subjects of other races is almost sure to come in under the shadow of the main body. But it is clear that that main body was everywhere so distinctly and predominantly of Low-Dutch blood and speech as to swallow up any foreign elements which may have accompanied it during its migration, as well as any that it may have incorporated during the |The country occupied by various kindred tribes, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians.| process of the Conquest or after its completion. Three kindred tribes, Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, are, in the common national tradition, said to have divided the land among them in very unequal proportions. For Saxons a contemporary foreign notice substitutes Frisians.^[17] But Angles, Saxons, Frisians, were all tribes of one common stock; all spoke mere dialectic varieties of one common tongue. From the very beginning of the Conquest, all the Teutonic settlers, without distinction, are spoken of as belonging to “the English kin.”^[18] To trace out, by the evidence of local nomenclature or otherwise, the exact extent of the settlements of these various kindred tribes is highly interesting and important as a matter of antiquarian and philological research. But the results of such inquiries are of little moment for the purpose of such a sketch as the present. |The various Teutonic tribes in Britain fused into one nation before the Norman Conquest.| Long before the Norman Conquest the various Low-Dutch tribes in Britain had been fused into one English nation. The distinction between Angle and Saxon had become a merely provincial distinction, and the 23jealousies which undoubtedly survived between them had become merely provincial jealousies. To the united nation the Angle had given his name, the Saxon had given his royal dynasty; the Jute, the least considerable in the extent of his territorial possessions, had been, according to all tradition, the first to lead the way to a permanent settlement, and he had undoubtedly been honoured by supplying the ecclesiastical centre from which Christianity was spread over the land. If Wessex boasted of the royal capital of Winchester, Kent boasted no less proudly of the spiritual metropolis of Canterbury.

The old notion of an Heptarchy, of a regular system of seven kingdoms, united under the regular supremacy of a single over-lord, is a dream which has passed away before the light of historic criticism. The English kingdoms in Britain were ever fluctuating, alike in their number and in their relations to one another. The number of perfectly independent states was sometimes greater and sometimes less than the mystical seven; and, till the beginning of the ninth century, the whole nation did not admit the regular |yet seven kingdoms more conspicuous than others.| supremacy of any fixed and permanent over-lord. Yet it is no less certain that, among the mass of smaller and more obscure principalities, seven kingdoms do stand out in a marked way, seven kingdoms of which it is possible to put together something like a continuous history, seven kingdoms which alone supplied candidates for the dominion of the whole island. First comes the earliest permanent |Kent. 449–825.| Teutonic settlement in Britain, the Jutish kingdom of Kent. The direct descendants of Hengest reigned over a land, which, as the corner of Britain nearest to the continent, has ever been the first to receive every foreign immigration, but which, notwithstanding, prides itself to this day on its specially Teutonic character and on the retention of various old Teutonic usages which have vanished elsewhere. Besides Kent, the Jutes formed no 24other strictly independent state. Their only other settlement |[The Jutes of Wight. 530–686.]| was a small principality, including the Isle of Wight and part of Hampshire, whose history is closely connected with that of the great Saxon kingdom in its immediate |The three Saxon kingdoms.| neighbourhood, in which it was at last merged. The remainder of the English territory south of the Thames, together with some districts to the north of that river, formed the three kingdoms of the Saxons, the East, the South, and the West, whose names speak for themselves. Among these Sussex and Essex fill only a secondary part in |Sussex. 477–825.| our history. The greatness of Sussex did not last beyond the days of its founder Ælle, the first Bretwalda. Whatever |Essex. 526–825.| importance Essex, or its offshoot Middlesex, could claim as containing the great city of London was of no long duration. We soon find London fluctuating between the condition of an independent commonwealth and that of a dependency of the Mercian Kings. Very different was |Wessex. 519–869.| the destiny of the third Saxon kingdom. Wessex has grown into England, England into Great Britain, Great Britain into the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom into the British Empire. Every prince who has ruled England before and since the eleventh century^[19] has had the blood of Cerdic the West-Saxon in his veins. At the |577–584.| close of the sixth century Wessex had risen to high importance among the English kingdoms, though the days of its permanent supremacy were still far distant. Step by step, from a small settlement on the Hampshire coast, the West-Saxons had won their way, fighting battle after battle against the Welsh, and, after nearly every battle, extending their borders by a new acquisition of 25territory. At the time of which I speak they held the modern shires of Hampshire, Berks, Wilts, Dorset, part of Somerset, with a considerable dominion north of the Thames and Avon, including the shires of Buckingham, Oxford, Gloucester, and Worcester, and an undefined territory stretching northwards along the valley of the Severn.^[20] But this northern dominion was not lasting; the Thames and the Avon became the permanent boundaries of Wessex to the north, and the later extension of the West-Saxon dominion was wholly westward. At this time the Somerset Axe, and the forests on the borders of Somerset and Wiltshire, separated the kingdom from the independent |The three Anglian kingdoms.| Britons to the West. North of the Thames lay the three great kingdoms of the Angles. One of these, probably the most purely Teutonic realm in Britain,^[21] occupied the great peninsula, or rather island,^[22] between the fens and |East-Anglia. 571–870.| the German Ocean, which received from them the name of East-Anglia. Far to the north, from the Humber to the |Northumberland. 547–876.| Forth, lay the great realm of the Northumbrians, sometimes united under a single prince, sometimes divided by the Tyne or the Tees into the two kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira. Both these kingdoms have a large sea-board, but they are not, like Wessex, distinctly attributed to a personal founder from beyond sea. The first recorded King of the Northumbrians is Ida, who began to reign in 547;^[23] 26the first recorded King of the East-Angles is Offa, who began to reign in 571.^[24] These dates give the beginnings of the kingdoms, but they do not give the beginnings of the English settlements in those countries. What Ida and Offa did was apparently to unite districts ruled by several independent, or at most confederated, Ealdormen into a |Mercia. 584?–877.| single kingdom. Meanwhile, in the middle of Britain, a power equal to any of the others was growing up, in which the same process is still more plainly to be discerned. The kingdom of the Mercians, the march or border land against the Welsh, appears at the end of the sixth century as a powerful state, but it has no distinctly recorded |Peculiar character of Mercia, as an union of small states of different origins.| founder, no distinctly recorded date of origin.^[25] It seems to have grown up through the joining together of a great number of small principalities, probably of much more varied origin than the different portions of the other kingdoms. The prevailing blood was Anglian; but it is certain that the Mercian kingdom was considerably enlarged by conquest at the expense of the Saxon race. The West-Saxon conquests north of the Thames and Avon were gradually cut off from the West-Saxon body, and 27were constrained, along with all the other states of Mid-England, to admit the Mercian supremacy. Mercia, throughout its history, appears far more divided than any other part of England, the result, no doubt, of its peculiar |Minor principalities in the other kingdoms.| origin. But it must not be supposed that the other kingdoms formed compact or centralized monarchies. Wessex was an union of several kindred principalities, each having its own Ealdorman or Under-king, though all were united under one supreme chief. At one time five West-Saxon Kings appear in a single battle.^[26] So in Kent there were Kings of East and West Kent, a fact which has left its memory in our ecclesiastical arrangements to the present day. No other English shire contains two bishoprics; the two sees of Canterbury and Rochester still bear witness to the former existence of two distinct kingdoms within the present shire. So, in East-Anglia, the two divisions of the race, the North and the South Folk, have left their almost unaltered names to two modern counties. But in these cases the principalities seem to have been formed by separate, though kindred, detachments of colonists, each of them ruled by a prince of the one royal house. In Wessex each successive conquest from the Welsh seems to have formed a new principality; but the national unity of the West-Saxon people was never lost, and it does not appear that any but princes of the line of Cerdic ever ruled within their borders. But in Mercia a crowd of wholly independent principalities seem to have been gradually united under one common rule—a type of the fate which the whole island was destined to undergo, though not at the hands of Mercia.

Such were the territorial divisions of Teutonic Britain at the end of the sixth century. Among a crowd of lesser states seven principal Kingdoms stand out conspicuously. And I do not hesitate to add that it was by no means 28unusual for the sovereign of one or other of these states |The supremacy of the Bretwaldas.| to win, whether by arms or by persuasion, a certain dominion over the rest, a dominion which presented the aspect of an acknowledged, though probably not a very well defined, supremacy. The famous title of Bretwalda^[27] appears to have been borne by the princes in whom such a supremacy was successively vested. Eight kings, of five different kingdoms, including all the seven except Essex and Mercia, are said to have possessed this supremacy over the rest of their fellows. The list, it should be remarked, does not form a continuous series, and it ends, after a considerable gap, with the prince who established in one kingdom a lasting supremacy over all the rest. The earlier names probably represent earlier attempts at establishing a supremacy of the same kind, a supremacy which was more or less fully acknowledged at the time, but which the princes who held it failed to hand on to their successors. The early Bretwaldas and their dominion present us with the first foreshadowings of that union of the whole English race which was at last carried out by the West-Saxon Kings of the ninth and tenth centuries.

The last years of the sixth century were marked by a change hardly less important than the first settlement of the Teutonic tribes in Britain. The Christian faith, which the English had hitherto despised or passed by unheeded as the creed of the conquered Welsh, was now set before them by a special mission from the city which still commanded the reverence of all Western Europe. Kent, under its King Æthelberht, who then 29held the rank of Bretwalda, became the first Christian |597.| kingdom, and Canterbury became the first Christian city, the spiritual metropolis of the English nation. To the vanquished Welsh the conquering Saxons and Angles |Controversies between the Roman and Scottish parties.| had never listened; but no sooner had the Roman missionaries begun their work than another Christian element was brought in from the North, at the hands of the already converted Picts and Scots. Sectarian differences divided the two parties, and led to controversies which threatened to tear the infant Church in pieces. Christian Kings and kingdoms apostatized; heathen Kings overthrew the champions of the new faith |Christianity makes its way in England without violence.| in battle; but, amidst all these fluctuations, Christianity gradually but steadily made its way. And in no part of the world did Christianity make its way in a more honourable manner. We nowhere read of any of those persecutions, those conversions at the point of the sword, which disgraced the proselytizing zeal of the Frankish and Scandinavian apostles of the faith. Of the first Christian prince in England, it is distinctly told us that, while still a heathen, he hindered none of his subjects from embracing Christianity, and that, after he was himself converted, he constrained none to forsake their ancient faith.^[28] In less than a century all the English kingdoms had fully accepted Christianity, and they had distinctly preferred its Roman to its Scottish form. |Conversion of Sussex, the last heathen part of Britain. 681| Before the end of the seventh century, the spiritual conquest of Britain was completed by the entrance of the South-Saxons into the fold of Christ; and, in the course of the eighth century, the insular Teutons showed themselves the most zealous of missionaries for the |English missionaries on the Continent.| conversion of those of their continental brethren who still remained in heathen darkness. Bishoprics were gradually founded, the limits of each diocese commonly 30answering to those of a kingdom or principality. The |597.| supremacy of Kent at the beginning of the conversion, |627.| the supremacy of Northumberland at the stage when Christianity was first preached to the northern English, is still shown to this day in the metropolitan position of Canterbury, the city of the Bretwalda Æthelberht, and of York, the city of the Bretwalda Eadwine. The land was speedily covered with churches and monasteries, the distinction between regulars and seculars being, during the missionary period, not very accurately drawn. Our forefathers soon acquired a fair share of the learning of the age, and the first two centuries after the conversion form a brilliant period in our ecclesiastical history, one which seems the more brilliant from the contrast with the time of renewed heathenism and darkness, which, in a large portion of Britain, was to follow it.

The conversion of the English to Christianity at once altered their whole position in the world. Hitherto our history had been almost wholly insular; our heathen forefathers had had but little to do, either in war or in peace, with any nations beyond their own four seas. We hear little of any connexion being kept up between the Angles and Saxons who were settled in Britain, and their kinsfolk |Instances of connexion with the Franks in Gaul.| who abode in their older land.^[29] The little intercourse that we read of with the mainland seems to be wholly with the Franks who now bore rule on the opposite coast of Gaul. Englishmen seem once, in the sixth century, to have found their way to the Imperial court, but it was in company with the ambassadors of a Frankish prince, who at least tried to represent himself as the over-lord of Britain.^[30] One instance of connexion 31between Britain and Gaul may have had some indirect effect in promoting the work of conversion. English Kings then, and long after, commonly intermarried with English women, the daughters either of other English princes or of their own nobles. But the Bretwalda Æthelberht, before the landing of Augustine, was already married to a Frankish princess, who retained her Christian religion in his heathen court. Such a fact is chiefly remarkable for its strangeness; yet it points to a considerable amount of intercourse between Kent and the Franks of Paris at this particular moment. Still, up to the end of the sixth century, Britain, as a whole, was cut off from the rest of the world. It was a heathen and barbarous island, where the Christian faith was professed only by an obscure remnant, which, in some remote corners beyond the reach of the invaders, still retained a form of Christianity which, after all, was not the orthodoxy of the Old or of the New Rome. It was the conversion of our forefathers which brought England for the first time, not only within the pale of the Christian Church, but within the pale of the general political society of Europe. But our insular position, combined with the events of our earlier history, was not without its effect on the peculiar character of |England the first strictly national Church in the West.| Christianity as established in England. England was the first great territorial^[31] conquest of the spiritual power, beyond the limits of the Roman Empire, beyond the influence of Greek and Roman civilization. Italy, Spain, Gaul, Africa, the Greek East and the remoter Churches of doubtful loyalty and orthodoxy, were all either actually under the sway of Cæsar, or retained distinct traces of the 32recent times when they had been so. When Æthelberht received baptism, the political sway of Rome still reached from the Ocean to the Euphrates, and the language of Rome was the one civilized speech from the Ocean to the Hadriatic. Strictly national Churches existed only in those lands of the further East, where the religious and the political loyalty of Syrians and Egyptians was already equally doubtful, and which were destined to fall away at the first touch of the victorious Saracen. In England, |Error of not employing the English language in public worship.| alone in the West, a purely national Church arose. One great error indeed was committed; the vernacular tongue did not become the language of public worship. The mistake was natural. It had occurred to no man to translate the Latin services, drawn up at a time when Latin was the universal language of the West, into those provincial dialects, the parents of the future Romance tongues, which were already growing up in Gaul and Spain. We should as soon think now of translating the Prayer-Book into the dialects of Somerset or Yorkshire. Led thus to look on Latin as the one tongue of worship, as well as of literature and government, Augustine and his successors failed to see that Teutonic England stood in a wholly different position from Romanized Gaul and Spain. They failed to see that the same reasons which required that men should pray in Latin at Rome required that they should pray in English at Canterbury. The error was pardonable, but in its effects it was great. Still, though England had not vernacular services, she soon began to form a vernacular literature, sacred and profane, poetical and historical, to which no other nation of the West can supply a parallel. The English Church, reverencing Rome, but not slavishly bowing down to her, grew up with a distinctly national character, and gradually infused its influence into all the feelings and habits of the English people. By the end of the seventh century, the independent, 33insular, Teutonic Church had become one of the brightest lights of the Christian firmament.

In short, the introduction of Christianity completely changed the position of the English nation both within its own island and towards the rest of the world. From this time the amount of intercourse with other nations steadily increased, and the change of religion had also a most |Practical effect of Christianity.| important effect within the island itself. The morality of the Gospel had a direct influence upon the politics of the age. The evangelical precepts of peace and love did not put an end to war, they did not put an end to aggressive conquest, but they distinctly humanized the way in which |The wars with the Welsh no longer wars of extermination.| war was carried on. From this time forth the never-ending wars with the Welsh cease to be wars of extermination. The heathen English had been satisfied with nothing short of the destruction or expulsion of their enemies; the Christian English thought it enough to |Advance of Wessex.| reduce them to political subjection. This is clearly marked in the advance of Wessex towards the West. Twenty |Conquests of Ceawlin. 577–584.| years before the coming of Augustine, Ceawlin, the West-Saxon Bretwalda, had won the great battle of Deorham; he had taken the cities of Bath, Gloucester, and Cirencester; he had then carried his arms northward, and in his northern march he had destroyed the Roman city of Uriconium. These northern conquests, as we have seen,^[32] were in a certain sense temporary; the districts overrun by Ceawlin beyond the Avon, like the other West-Saxon possessions north of the Thames, ceased for ever to be Welsh, but they did not become for ever West-Saxon. But the land between the Avon and the Axe, the northern part of modern Somerset, became an abiding part of the West-Saxon realm. This was the last heathen conquest, the last exterminating conquest, waged by the West-Saxons against the Britons. During a space of 34three hundred years, the process of West-Saxon conquest |Further advances of the West-Saxons. 652–926.| still went on; step by step the English frontier advanced from the Axe to the Parret, from the Parret to the Tamar; Taunton at one stage, Exeter at another, were border fortresses against the Welsh enemy; step by step the old Cornish kingdom shrank up before the conquerors; till at last no portion of land south of the Bristol Channel was subject to a British sovereign. This was conquest; it was, no doubt, fearful and desolating conquest; but it was no longer conquest which offered only the dreadful alternatives of death, banishment, or personal slavery. The Christian Welsh could now sit down as subjects of the |In these later wars the Welsh are allowed to become West-Saxon subjects.| Christian Saxon. The Welshman was acknowledged as a man and a citizen; he was put under the protection of the law; he could hold landed property; his blood had its price, and his oath had its ascertained value.^[33] The value set on his life and on his oath shows that he was not yet looked on as the equal of the conquering race; but the Welshman within the West-Saxon border was no longer a wild beast, an enemy, or a slave, but a fellow-Christian living under the King’s peace. There can be no doubt that the great peninsula stretching from the Axe to the Land’s End was, and still is, largely inhabited by men who are only naturalized Englishmen, descendants of the old Welsh inhabitants, who gradually lost their distinctive language and were merged in the general mass of their |Celtic element still remaining in the western shires of Wessex.| conquerors. In fact, the extinction of the Cornish language in modern Cornwall within comparatively recent times was only the last stage of a process which began with the conquests of Cenwealh in the seventh century. The Celtic element can be traced from the Axe, the last heathen frontier, to the extremity of Cornwall, of course increasing in amount as we reach the lands which were more recently conquered and therefore less perfectly Teutonized. Devonshire is less Celtic than Cornwall, and Somerset is less Celtic than Devonshire, but not one of those three shires can be called a pure Teutonic land like Kent or Norfolk. The same rule would doubtless apply to those less accurately recorded conquests by which the Mercian Kings extended their dominion from the Severn to the modern boundaries of Wales. We have now everywhere passed the age of extermination, and have entered on the age marked by the comparatively harmless process of political conquest.

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

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

Ecgberht was chosen King of the West-Saxons two years after Charles the Great was chosen Emperor. And we can hardly doubt that the example of his 40illustrious friend and host was ever present before his eyes. He could not indeed aspire, like Charles, to the diadem of the Cæsars, but he could aspire to an analogous rank in an island which men sometimes counted for another world. He could win for his own kingdom a lasting superiority over all its neighbours, and so pave the way for the day when all England and all Britain |Permanent supremacy of Wessex now established.| should acknowledge only a single King. The eighth Bretwalda not only established a power over the whole land such as had been held by no other prince before him, but he did what no other Bretwalda had ever done, he handed on his external dominion as a lasting possession to his successors in his own kingdom. From this time forward, Wessex remained the undisputed head of the English nation. The power of the West-Saxon Kings might be assaulted, and at last overthrown, by foreign invaders, but it was never again disputed by rival |Ecgberht the founder of the kingdom of England.| potentates of English blood. In short, as Charles founded the Kingdom of Germany, Ecgberht at least laid the foundations of the Kingdom of England. In his reign |Gradual submission of the other states. 802–837.| of thirty-six years he reduced all the English kingdoms to a greater or less degree of subjection. The smaller states seem to have willingly submitted to him as a deliverer from the power of Mercia. East-Anglia became |Kent, &c. 823. [See Chron. in anno.]| a dependent ally; Kent and the smaller Saxon kingdoms were more closely incorporated with the ruling state. While in East-Anglia Kings of the old line continued to reign as vassals of the West-Saxon over-lord, Kent, Essex, and Sussex were united into a still more dependent realm, which was usually granted out as an apanage to some prince of the West-Saxon royal house.^[43] Northumberland, torn by civil dissensions, was in no position 41to withstand the power which was growing up in the |Submission of Northumberland. 829.| south of Britain. At the approach of a West-Saxon army the Northumbrians seem to have submitted without resistance; keeping, like East-Anglia, their own line of |Final struggle with Mercia. 802–829.| vassal Kings. But Mercia was won only after a long struggle. Ecgberht had inherited war with Mercia as an inheritance from his predecessors. The first year of his reign, before he had himself come back to assume the crown to which he had been chosen, was marked by a successful resistance to a Mercian inroad.^[44] And even |825.| many years after, one of the greatest victories of his reign, the fight of Ellandun, was a victory over Mercian invaders within the West-Saxon realm. That victory deprived Mercia of all her external dominion; it was immediately after it that Ecgberht annexed the smaller |Submission of Mercia. 829.| kingdoms which had become Mercian dependencies. Four years later, Mercia herself had to submit to the conqueror; |830–874.| she kept her Kings for nearly another half century, but they now received their crown at the hands of the West-Saxon over-lord. It is immediately after recording this greatest of Ecgberht’s triumphs that the Chronicles give him in a marked way the title of Bretwalda.

It was immediately after the submission of Mercia that Ecgberht received the far more easily won submission of Northumberland, which completed his work of welding all the Teutonic kingdoms of Britain into one whole. |Successes of Ecgberht over the Welsh. 815–837.| But, while thus occupied, he had also to carry on the usual warfare with his Celtic neighbours. The power of the Cornish Britons was now utterly broken. The long struggle which had gone on ever since the days of Cerdic was now over; the English frontier seems to 42have been extended to the Tamar,^[45] and the English |825.| supremacy was certainly extended to the Land’s End. The Welsh however within the conquered territory still |835.| kept their distinct being, and they sometimes, with the aid of foreign invaders, strove to cast off the yoke. Against the North-Welsh,^[46] that is the inhabitants of Wales proper, Ecgberht was equally successful. As Lord of Mercia he inherited from the Mercian Kings a warfare against them as constant as that which he had inherited from his own ancestors against the Welsh of Cornwall. As soon therefore as he had established his supremacy |828.| over Mercia, he went on to require and to receive the submission of the Celtic neighbours of his new dominion. |North and West Welsh vassals of Wessex.| From this time forth all the Celtic inhabitants of Britain south of the Dee were vassals of the West-Saxon King. But his power never reached to the Picts, the Scots, or |Independence of Picts, Scots, and Strathclyde Welsh.| the Strathclyde Welsh. In fact, the northern Celts, except so far as they came in for their share of the Danish invasions, enjoyed about this time a century of unusual independence. The power of Northumberland had long been unequal to maintaining its old supremacy over its Celtic neighbours, and the new over-lord of Northumberland seems not to have attempted to enforce it. Ecgberht therefore, even at the height of his power, was not Lord of the whole isle of Britain. To win that title was the work of the West-Saxon conquerors of the next century.

But just as the West-Saxon monarchy was reaching 43this pitch of greatness, it was threatened by an enemy |Invasions of the Danes. 789–1070.| far more formidable than any that could be found within the four seas of Britain. We have now reached the time of the Danish invasions. The Northern part of Europe, peopled by a race closely akin to the Low-Dutch and speaking another dialect of the common Teutonic speech, now began to send forth swarms of pirates over all the seas of Europe, who from pirates often grew into conquerors. They were still heathens, and their incursions, both in Britain and on the Continent, must have been |787. [Chron. in anno.]| a scourge almost as frightful as the settlement of the English had been to the original Britons. The Scandinavian incursions began before the accession of Ecgberht, and even his power did not keep them wholly in check. It must however have had some considerable effect, as it is only quite towards the end of his reign that we hear of them again. In his last years their incursions |833.| became frequent and formidable, and in one battle the Bretwalda himself was defeated by them. But he afterwards gained, over the united forces of the Danes and |836.| the revolted Welsh, the battle of Hengestesdun in Cornwall, which may rank with Ellandun as the second great victory of his reign. Soon after this success, which barely checked the Danish invasions, but which completed |837.| the submission of the West Welsh, King Ecgberht died, like his model Charles, with, his own power undiminished, but perhaps foreseeing what was to come when his sceptre should pass into weaker hands.

The Danish invasions of England, as I have already said,^[47] fall naturally into three periods, each of which finds its parallel in the course of the English Conquest of Britain. As the Saxons and Angles plundered and desolated long before they actually settled, so now their 44|First Period, of simple plunder. 789–855.| Northern kinsmen followed the same course. We first find a period in which the object of the invaders seems to be simple plunder. They land, they harry the country, they fight, if need be, to secure their booty, but whether defeated or victorious, they equally return to their ships, and sail away with what they have gathered. This period includes the time from the first recorded invasion |Second Period, of settlement. 855–897.| till the latter half of the ninth century. Next comes a time in which the object of the Danes is clearly no longer mere plunder, but settlement. They now, just as the English had done before them, come in much stronger bodies, and instead of sailing away every winter with their plunder, they make lasting settlements in a large part of the country. This took place in the second half of the ninth century. During the greater part of the tenth century we read of few or no fresh invasions from Scandinavia; the energies of the Northern tribes were just now mainly devoted to those successive settlements in Gaul which formed the Duchy of Normandy. |Struggle of the West-Saxon Kings with the Danes settled in Britain. 902–954.| But the West-Saxon Lords of Britain were engaged for more than fifty years in a constant struggle to subdue and keep in obedience the Danes who had already settled in the island. And the Danes in Britain were often helped by the Scandinavian settlers who had occupied the eastern coast of Ireland and the islands to the west and north of Scotland. A short interval of peace, the glorious reign of Eadgar, now follows; |Third Period of Danish invasion. Period of political conquest. 980–1016.| towards the end of the tenth century the plundering invasions of the Danes begin again; but they soon assume altogether a new character. The North of Europe, hitherto divided among a crowd of petty princes, had now, like England, like the Empire, settled down into a more regular order of things. Three great kingdoms, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, had arisen. With Sweden we had nothing directly to do; the conquests 45of that power were made to the East. With Norway also England proper had comparatively little to do, though the Northmen who ravaged and settled in Scotland and Ireland seem to have come mainly from that part of Scandinavia. But the history of England for a long term of years is one record of constant struggles with the power of Denmark. This forms the third period. We have passed the time of mere plunder; we have passed the time of mere local settlement. We have now reached the time of political conquest, the |994–1013.| time analogous to the conquests of the West-Saxon Kings from Cenwealh to Eadred. We now see a King of all Denmark bent on achieving the conquest of all England. We at last see the foreign invader succeeding |1013–1016.| in his attempt, and reigning as King of the English, with the formal, though no doubt the constrained, assent of the English nation. Of these three periods, the third, as furnishing some of the immediate causes of the Norman Conquest, I must deal with in greater detail at a later stage of this history. The two earlier periods, those of mere plunder and of mere settlement, come within the bounds of the present preliminary sketch.

The reigns of the son and the grandsons of Ecgberht were almost wholly taken up by the struggle with the |Reign of Æthelwulf and his sons. 837–901.| Northmen. In the reign of Æthelwulf the son of Ecgberht it is recorded that the heathen men wintered for the first time in the Isle of Sheppey. This marks |855.| the transition from the first to the second period of their invasions. Hitherto they had plundered and had gone away with their plunder; to spend the winter on English soil was the first step towards a lasting |866.| settlement. It was not however till about eleven years from this time that the settlement actually began. Meanwhile the sceptre of the West-Saxons passed from 46one hand to another. It is remarkable that no English king of this or of the following century seems to have reached old age. After Æthelwulf, whose age is uncertain, only one or two of his descendants for several generations reached the age of fifty, and the greater part of them were cut off while they were quite young. Four sons of Æthelwulf reigned in succession, and the |858–871.| reigns of the first three among them make up together |Reign of Æthelred. 866–871.| only thirteen years. In the reign of the third of these princes, Æthelred the First, the second period of the invasions fairly begins. Five years were spent by the Northmen in ravaging and conquering the tributary |Conquest of Northumberland. 867–869.| kingdoms. Northumberland, still disputed between rival kings, fell an easy prey; one or two puppet princes did not scruple to receive a tributary crown at the hands |Invasion of Mercia. 868.| of the heathen invaders.^[48] They next entered Mercia, they seized Nottingham, and the West-Saxon King, hastening to the relief of his vassals, was unable to |Conquest of East-Anglia. 866–870.| dislodge them from that stronghold. East-Anglia was completely conquered, and its King Eadmund died a |First invasion of Wessex. 871.| martyr. At last the full storm of invasion burst upon Wessex itself. King Æthelred, the first of a long line of West-Saxon hero kings, supported by his greater brother Ælfred, met the invaders in battle after battle |Reign of Ælfred. 871–901.| with varied success. He died, and Ælfred succeeded, in the thick of the struggle. In this year, the last of Æthelred and the first of Ælfred, nine pitched battles, besides smaller engagements, were fought with the heathens on West-Saxon ground. At last peace was |872.| made; the Danes withdrew to London, within the Mercian frontier; Wessex was for a moment delivered, but the supremacy won by Ecgberht was lost. For a few years Wessex was subjected to nothing more than temporary incursions, but Deira or Southern Northumberland, 47and north-eastern Mercia were systematically |876–877.| occupied by the Danes, and the land was divided among them. In Bernicia or Northern Northumberland English princes still reigned under Danish supremacy. The last native King of the Mercians,^[49] Burhred, the brother-in-law |874.| of Ælfred, had already been deposed by the Danes, |Second invasion of Wessex. 878.| and had gone to Rome, where he ended his days. At last the Danes, now settled in a large part of the island, made a second attempt to add Wessex itself to their possessions. For a moment the land seemed conquered; Ælfred himself lay hid in the marshes of Somerset; men might well deem that the Empire of Ecgberht, and the kingdom of Cerdic itself, had vanished for ever. But the strong heart of the most renowned of Englishmen, the saint, the scholar, the hero, and the lawgiver, carried his people safely through this most |Peace of Wedmore and evacuation of Wessex. 878–880.| terrible of dangers. Within a few months the Dragon of Wessex was again victorious; the Northmen were driven to conclude a peace which Englishmen, fifty years sooner, would have deemed the lowest depth of degradation, but which now might fairly be looked upon as honourable and even as triumphant. By the terms of the Peace of Wedmore the Northmen were to leave Wessex and the part of Mercia south-west of Watling-Street;^[50] they, or at least their chiefs, were to submit to baptism, and they were to receive the whole land beyond Watling-Street as vassals of the West-Saxon 48|Reign of Guthrum-Æthelstan in East-Anglia. 880–890.| King. Guthrum, the Danish King, was accordingly baptized by the name of Æthelstan; he took possession of his new dominions, and observed the peace with decent fidelity down to his death.

A large part of England thus received a colony of Danish inhabitants. They gave their name to their conquest, and England is now divided into Wessex, Mercia, and Denalagu, the region where the Danish law was in force. This Danish occupation was a real settlement of a new people in the land. There is no reason to think that any extirpation or expulsion of the native inhabitants took place, such as that which accompanied the English Conquest. But the displacement of landowners and the general break-up of society must have been far greater than anything that was afterwards |Evidence of local nomenclature.| brought about by the Normans. How extensive the Danish occupation was is best seen in the local nomenclature and local divisions.^[51] The West-Saxon shires keep to this day the names and the boundaries of the principalities founded by the first successors of Cerdic. |Contrast between the West-Saxon and Mercian shires.| In some of them there is no one dominant town in a shire; several shires contain a town bearing a cognate name, but the shire is seldom called directly and solely after a town. In short, the local divisions of Wessex were not made but grew. Mercia, on the other hand, has every appearance of having been artificially mapped out. The shires, with at most two exceptions, are called after towns, and in most cases the shire groups itself round its capital, as round an acknowledged and convenient centre. The names of the old principalities vanish, and their boundaries are often disregarded. One principality is divided among several shires, and another shire is made up of several ancient principalities. We can hardly doubt that the old divisions were wiped out 49in the Danish invasions, and that the country was divided again by the English Kings after the reconquest.

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

Ælfred, the unwilling author of these great changes, is the most perfect character in history. He is a singular instance of a prince who has become a hero of romance, who, as a hero of romance, has had countless imaginary exploits and imaginary institutions attributed to him, but to whose character romance has done no more than justice, and who appears in exactly the same light in history and |Singular union of virtues in him.| in fable. No other man on record has ever so thoroughly united all the virtues both of the ruler and of the private man. In no other man on record were so many virtues disfigured by so little alloy.^[52] A saint without superstition, 50a scholar without ostentation, a warrior all whose wars were fought in the defence of his country, a conqueror whose laurels were never stained by cruelty,^[53] a prince never cast down by adversity, never lifted up to insolence in the hour of triumph—there is no other name in history |Comparison with Saint Lewis;| to compare with his. Saint Lewis comes nearest to him in the union of a more than monastic piety with the highest civil, military, and domestic virtues. Ælfred and Lewis alike stand forth in honourable contrast to the abject superstition of some other royal saints, who were so selfishly engaged in the care of their own souls that they refused either to raise up heirs to their throne or to strike a blow on behalf of their people. But even in Saint Lewis we see a disposition to forsake an immediate sphere of duty for the sake of distant and unprofitable, however pious and glorious, undertakings. The true duties of a King of the French clearly lay in France and not in Egypt or at Tunis. No such charge lies at the door of the great King of the West-Saxons. With an inquiring spirit which took in the whole world, for purposes alike of scientific inquiry and of Christian benevolence, Ælfred never forgot that his first duty was to his own people. He forestalled our own age in exploring the Northern Ocean, and in sending alms to the distant Churches of India; but he neither forsook his crown, like some of his predecessors, nor neglected its |with Washington;| duties, like some of his successors. The virtue of Ælfred, like the virtue of Washington, consisted in no marvellous displays of superhuman genius, but in the simple, straightforward, discharge of the duty of the moment. But 51Washington, soldier, statesman, and patriot like Ælfred, has no claim to Ælfred’s character of scholar and master |with William the Silent;| of scholars. William the Silent, like Ælfred the deliverer of his people, had no call to be also their literary teacher; and in his career, glorious as it is, there is an element of intrigue which is quite unlike the noble simplicity of both Ælfred and Washington. The same union of zeal for religion and learning with the highest gifts of the warrior and the statesman is found on a wider field of |with Charles the Great;| action, in Charles the Great. But even Charles cannot aspire to the pure glory of Ælfred. Amidst all the splendours of conquest and legislation, we cannot be blind to an alloy of personal ambition and personal vice, to occasional unjust aggressions and occasional acts of cruelty. |with Edward the First.| Among our own later princes, the great Edward alone can bear for a moment the comparison with his glorious ancestor. And, when tried by such a standard, even the great Edward fails. Even in him we do not see the same wonderful union of gifts and virtues which so seldom meet together; we cannot acquit Edward of occasional acts of violence, of occasional recklessness as to means; we cannot attribute to him the pure, simple, almost childlike disinterestedness which marks the character of Ælfred. The times indeed were different; Edward had to tread the path of righteousness and honour in a time of far more tangled policy, and amidst temptations, not harder indeed, but far |Ælfred’s position as a legislator;| more subtle. The legislative merits of Edward are greater than those of Ælfred; but this is a difference in the times rather than in the men. The popular error which makes Ælfred the personal author of all our institutions hardly needs a fresh confutation. Popular legends attribute to him the invention of Trial by Jury and of countless other portions of our law, the germs of which may be discerned ages before the time of Ælfred, while their existing shapes cannot be discerned till ages after him. Ælfred, like so 52many of our early kings, collected and codified the laws of his predecessors; but we have his own personal witness^[54] that he purposely abstained from any large amount of strictly new legislation. The legislation of Edward, on the other hand, in its boldness and originality, forms the most |as scholar.| marked of all epochs in the history of our law. It is perhaps, after all, in his literary aspect that the distinctive beauty of Ælfred’s character shines forth most clearly. The mere patronage of learning was common to him with many princes of his age. Both Charles the Great and several of his successors had set brilliant examples in this way. What distinguished Ælfred was his own personal appearance as an author. Now, as a rule, literary kings have not been a class deserving of much honour. They have commonly stepped out of their natural sphere only to display the least honourable characteristics of another calling. But it was not so with the Emperor Marcus; it was not so with our Ælfred. In Ælfred there is no sign of literary pedantry, ostentation, or jealousy; nothing is done for his own glory; he writes, just as he fights and legislates, with a single eye to the good of his people. He shows no signs of original genius; he is simply an editor and translator, working honestly for the improvement of the subjects whom he loved. This is really a purer fame, and one more in harmony with the other features of Ælfred’s 53character, than the highest achievements of the poet, the historian, or the philosopher. I repeat then that Ælfred |Happiness of Ælfred in his successors.| is the most perfect character in history. And he was specially happy in handing on a large share of his genius and his virtue to those who came after him. The West-Saxon kings, for nearly a century, form one of the most brilliant royal lines on record. From Æthelred the Saint to Eadgar the Peaceful, the short and wretched reign of Eadwig is the only interruption to one continued display of valour under the guidance of wisdom. The greatness of the dynasty, obscured under the second Æthelred, flashes forth for a moment in the short and glorious career of the second Eadmund. It then becomes more permanently eclipsed under the rule of Dane, Norman, and Angevin, till it shines forth once more in the first of the new race whom we can claim as English at heart, till, if not Ælfred himself, at least his unconquered son, seems to rise again to life in one who at once bore his name and followed in his steps.

There can be little doubt that the Danish settlement in England, which seemed at first to be the utter destruction of the West-Saxon monarchy, tended in the end to the consolidation of England and of all Britain under the West-Saxon kings. Looking at Ælfred as Bretwalda, a title which had passed away, or as King of the English, a title which he hardly ventured to assume, his loss was beyond expression. But, as local King of the West-Saxons, he undoubtedly gained. The Danes were nominally his vassals;^[55] but their vassalage was so purely nominal that 54we may look on Ælfred as having lost all authority over East-Anglia, Northumberland, and the larger half of |Closer union between Mercia and Wessex.| Mercia. But the remainder of Mercia was more closely united to Wessex than it had been since the seventh century. The new frontier gave to Ælfred nearly the whole of the old extent of Wessex beyond the Thames and Avon, while it added a large region in the centre of England which had never been West-Saxon before.^[56] Still this great acquisition was not absolutely incorporated with the West-Saxon kingdom. The over-lord no longer entrusted the dependency to a vassal King, but English |Before 886.| Mercia still had an Ealdorman of her own, a man of princely descent within the land over which he ruled. But Æthelred, the new ruler of south-western Mercia, was the son-in-law of the West-Saxon King and ruled by his |Recovery of London. 886.| father-in-law’s appointment.^[57] And along with the recovered portion of Mercia, Ælfred also regained London, a city which we shall henceforth ever find to be one of the firmest strongholds of English freedom and one of the truest bulwarks of the realm.

We may therefore look on the immediate West-Saxon territory as actually increased by the Danish invasion. The recovered part of Mercia was reduced to the form of a province; we hear no more of even dependent Kings in Kent and Sussex, but at most of Ealdormen of the King’s appointment. All England south-west of Watling-Street was fast growing into a compact and homogeneous kingdom. |Progress of the West-Saxon power aided by the Danish| And the very fact of the foreign occupation of the rest of England paved the way for its easier incorporation with the one kingdom which remained independent. The wars of Wessex with the Danes of Mercia and Northumberland 55were wars of quite another character from the |settlements.| old border strife between the English inhabitants of the several kingdoms. They were in the strictest sense national wars, wars of religion and patriotism. The West-Saxon Kings were, in the eyes of all Englishmen in whatever part of the island, the champions of the national independence and the national faith. Their conquests brought with them deliverance from the Danish yoke, and we therefore find them everywhere welcomed as deliverers by the subject English population. One or two attempts at a division of the kingdom^[58] show that the old local feelings had not fully died out; but their ill success shows no less clearly that such divisions no longer rested on any strong national basis. The successors of Ælfred were gradually enabled to win back the supremacy established by Ecgberht, and to enlarge it into an actual sovereignty over all England and an acknowledged supremacy over all Britain. The kingdom so formed was at last overcome by a Danish conqueror; but it was overcome by a very different process from the settlement of this or that wandering pirate. It was the transfer of the crown of a consolidated English kingdom to the head of the King of a now no less consolidated kingdom of Denmark.

The reign of Ælfred contains two intervals of nearly |897–901.| perfect peace. After the great deliverance of Wessex |Later Danish Wars of Ælfred. 893–897.| there was no very serious warfare with the Danes till quite towards the end of Ælfred’s life. Then came five years of a struggle almost as fearful as that of the early days of his reign. But in the end Ælfred and England were again victorious. During the years of peace Ælfred had seen the need of forming a naval force to meet the 56wikings on their own element. It is wonderful how wholly the old sea-faring spirit of the Angles and Saxons |Ælfred the founder of the English navy.| seems to have died out before his time. But both Ælfred and his successors diligently fostered the naval power of England, alike for war, for commerce, and for discovery. In short, Ælfred laid the foundations of that naval greatness which is the special pride of Englishmen. His fleet seems to have preserved Wessex itself from anything more than a few landings for plunder. But for three years, Danish invaders, helped by the Danes settled in the country, marched to and fro through all Britain |Death of Ælfred. 901.| north of the Thames. But at last Ælfred succeeded in reducing them at least within the terms of the Peace of Wedmore, and he again enjoyed a few years of quiet before his death.

Ælfred’s successor, Eadward the Elder, completed the work which Ecgberht had begun, by first extending the supremacy of Wessex over the whole island of Britain. |Reigns of his sons. 925–955.| Under his sons, Æthelstan, Eadmund, and Eadred, that supremacy was maintained and consolidated at the point |Reign of Eadgar. 958–975.| of the sword. His grandson, Eadgar the Peaceful, enjoyed the fruit of their labours, and further strengthened their work by a reign of strong and orderly government, by holding himself in constant readiness for war during a time, for those days, of most unusual peace. Thus, from |800–975.| Ecgberht to Eadgar, it took a hundred and seventy years to build up the Kingdom of England, a kingdom which, as coming events showed, could still be conquered, but which could no longer be permanently divided. The twenty-five years of Eadward are the turning-point; what he won his successors had only to keep. It is only |Importance of the reign of Eadward.| the unequalled glory of his father which has doomed this prince, one of the greatest rulers that England ever beheld, to a smaller degree of popular fame than he deserves. His 57whole reign bears out the panegyric passed on him by an ancient writer,^[59] that he was fully his father’s equal as a warrior and ruler, and was inferior to him in nothing except those literary labours which were so peculiarly Ælfred’s own. The work of Eadward was twofold; he enlarged the borders of his immediate kingdom, and he brought the whole island under vassalage. His wars, and those of his three successors, were, it should be remembered, waged mainly against the Danes settled in Britain. These settlers were sometimes helped by their brethren from Denmark, and more commonly by the Danes and Northmen settled in Ireland; but, on the whole, foreign invasions do not form an important feature in the |Alliance of Æthelwald with the Danes. 901–905.| events of this half century. The war began when the Northumbrian Danes took the part of a defeated candidate for the West-Saxon crown,^[60] who did not scruple to accept their alliance, and to lead them to plunder and attempted conquest against his own countrymen. But Eadward, when thus put on the defensive, did something more than merely defend the kingdom which he had received |Recovery of Mercia, &c. by Eadward and Æthelflæd. 905–922.| from his father. With the help of his sister Æthelflæd, the famous Lady of the Mercians, the widow of their Ealdorman Æthelred, he recovered from the Danish yoke the whole of Mercia, East-Anglia, and Essex, and the brother and sister secured their conquests by building |Annexation of Mercia. 922.| fortresses in all directions. By the English population of all these districts Eadward was welcomed as a deliverer, and he found no difficulty in annexing the liberated lands 58to his own kingdom. After the death of Æthelflæd, who was her brother’s close ally rather than his subject, the separate being of Mercia came to an end. The whole Mercian land on both sides of the Watling-Street was |Eadward’s kingdom extended to the Humber.| incorporated by Eadward with his own kingdom. He thus became, what no West-Saxon King had been before him, immediate sovereign of all England south of the Humber. Having thus extended his immediate dominion beyond all precedent, he was able to extend his more general supremacy equally beyond anything possessed by |All the Princes of Britain submit to him. 922–924.| his predecessors. The princes of Wales, Northumberland, Strathclyde, and Scotland, all submitted to him by a voluntary act; “they chose him to father and to lord.”^[61] The Welsh and Northumbrian princes only renewed a homage which they had already paid both to Ecgberht and to Ælfred; but the relation with Strathclyde and Scotland was new. No warfare with either country is spoken of; the act of submission seems to have been made by the free consent of the rulers and people of the two |Probable causes of their voluntary submission.| Northern kingdoms. The motive to such an act is doubtless to be found in a dread of Eadward’s power, combined with a sense of the necessity of his position as the general champion of Britain against the Danes. Scotland and Strathclyde had suffered as much from Scandinavian invasions as England had. To choose the West-Saxon King as their over-lord might involve some national humiliation, but it was better to receive the champion of Christendom as an over-lord than to be exposed without defence to the |Novelty and greatness of his position.| incursions of the heathen. Eadward thus obtained a far greater extent of dominion than had been held by Ecgberht himself. Ecgberht’s immediate kingdom stopped at the Thames, and his over-lordship reached only to the Forth. Eadward’s immediate kingdom reached to the Humber, and his over-lordship extended over the whole 59island. The submission of Scotland and Strathclyde to Eadward is the most distinctive feature in Eadward’s reign. It was something which surpassed the greatest exploits of his predecessors. The Scots had recognized a precarious supremacy in the old Northumbrian Kings. They had recognized a supremacy yet more precarious still in the great Frankish Emperor. But their submission to Wessex was wholly new; the days had long passed when they had bowed to an over-lord at York, and they had never before bowed to an over-lord at |Vassalage of Scotland. 924–1328.| Winchester. This commendation of Scotland to the West-Saxon King is an event so important for the history of the next four hundred years, and it is an event which is often so completely misunderstood, that I must reserve some consideration of its exact bearing for my next Chapter. It is enough to say here that, from this time to the fourteenth century, the vassalage of Scotland was an essential part of the public law of the isle of Britain. No doubt many attempts were made to cast off the dependent relation which had been voluntarily incurred; but when a King of the English had once been chosen “to father and to lord,” his successors never willingly gave up the position which had thus been bestowed upon them. Whenever the King of the English is strong enough, he always appears as the acknowledged |973.| superior of the King of Scots. Kenneth acts the part of a faithful vassal to Eadgar. Eadward the Confessor, like his nobler namesakes before and after, acts as superior |1054.| lord and, as such, transfers the tributary crown from an |1072.| usurper to the lawful heir. When the Norman William had subdued England, he claimed and received the homage of Scotland as one of the undoubted rights of the crown |Homage paid for Scotland proper.| which he had won. And nothing is clearer than that this homage was paid, not only for Cumberland or Lothian, but for the true kingdom of the Celtic Picts and Scots. 60In the days of Eadward and Æthelstan, Lothian was still English or Danish, an integral part of the kingdom of Northumberland, and the submission of Strathclyde was the separate act of another independent prince. The facts are undoubted; they are plain matters of history, which ought never to be looked at through the medium of provincial prejudice. The vassalage of Scotland to England is as certain as the earlier vassalage of Mercia to Wessex; but, for the last hundred and sixty years, one fact has been of as little practical importance as the other.

Eadward the Elder then was the first prince who could really claim to be King of the English and Lord of the |Reign of Æthelstan. 925–940.| Isle of Britain. His son Æthelstan added the finishing stroke to the work of his father, by first making Northumberland |926.| an integral portion of the realm. He thus became immediate King of all the Teutonic races in Britain, and superior Lord of all the Celtic principalities. |Renewal of homage by the vassal Kings. 926.| In his second year, all the vassal princes, Welsh and Scottish, and the English prince of Northumberland beyond the Tyne,^[62] renewed their homage. It is expressly mentioned that they renounced all idolatry; many of the Danes no doubt still clave to their ancient worship. But Æthelstan had to fight to retain the empire which his father had won. Neither Danes, Welsh, nor Scots were very faithful vassals; but the power of the King of the |933.| English was too much for them all. Scotland was ravaged by land and sea; Wales was constrained not only to 61homage but to tribute. At last the rebellious Danes and their kinsmen from Ireland who came to their help, together with Constantine of Scotland and Owen of Strathclyde, who did not scruple to league themselves with the |Battle of Brunanburh. 937.| heathen barbarians, were all overthrown by Æthelstan and his brother Eadmund in the glorious fight of Brunanburh. That fight, looked on at the time as the hardest victory that Angles and Saxons had ever won, still lives in the earliest and noblest of those national lays with which the Chronicles, especially at this period,^[63] relieve the direct |Foreign connexions of Æthelstan.| course of their prose narrative. The reign of this great prince is also remarkable for the brilliant position which England now held with regard to foreign countries. Contrary to the usual custom of English Kings, Æthelstan, himself childless, systematically formed family connexions with the chief powers of Europe. His numerous sisters |[Marriage 929. Otto King, 936. Emperor, 962.]| were married to a crowd of princes, ranging in dignity from Sihtric, the momentary King of the Northumbrians, to Otto, who placed his English wife on the throne of the East-Franks and who lived to be the restorer of the Roman Empire. With some degree of exaggeration of the real facts, the court of “glorious Æthelstan” is painted to us as the common refuge of oppressed princes and as the school where the scions of royalty learned the lessons which befitted kings and warriors. But putting aside glories which are at least partly fabulous, it is certain that the reign of Æthelstan was a time of vigorous government and successful warfare at home, and that in his days England had an unusual amount of connexion with foreign countries, and enjoyed an unusual amount 62of consideration among them.^[64] The reigns of his two |Reigns of Eadmund and Eadred. 940–955.| younger brothers, Eadmund the Magnificent and Eadred the Excellent,^[65] form a continuation of the same tale. The Northumbrian Danes were constantly revolting, constantly setting up kings of their own, and they were as constantly brought back to submission by the superior power of the |Final submission of Northumberland. 954.| Emperor^[66] of Britain. At last, under Eadred, the rebellious land was finally subdued, the last phantom of Northumbrian royalty vanished, and the whole land beyond the Humber was for the future ruled by Earls of the King’s appointment. Another success, hardly less valuable, |Final recovery of the Five Boroughs. 941.| was the final recovery of the Five Boroughs by Eadmund; a poetical entry in the Chronicles vividly paints the delight of their English inhabitants at their |Period of friendly relations with Scotland. 937–1000.| deliverance from the yoke of their heathen masters.^[67] The relations of Scotland to the Imperial power seem, after the great defeat of Brunanburh, to have remained friendly for many years. Several Scottish Kings in succession had the wisdom to avoid following the suicidal policy of Constantine. Indeed the Scottish King Malcolm received a considerable extension of territory at the hands of Eadmund. The Kingdom of Strathclyde was conquered and 63abolished, and part of it, under the name of Cumberland, |Grant of Cumberland to Malcolm. 945.| was granted by Eadmund to Malcolm, on the usual tenure of faithful service in war.^[68] This principality remained for a long time the apanage of the heirs-apparent of the Scottish crown, much as Kent had been to Wessex in the |946.| days of Ecgberht and Æthelwulf. That the Scots renewed their oaths on the accession of Eadred is no proof of hostile feelings on either side; it was merely an usual and necessary precaution at the beginning of a new reign, doubly necessary when Northumberland was in rebellion. The work begun by Ecgberht was now finally accomplished. The King of the West-Saxons had grown step by step into the acknowledged King of the English and Emperor of the Isle of Albion. A time now came when it seemed for a moment that that work was about to be undone, and that the blow was struck in the very hearth and home of the English Empire. For a moment Wessex and Mercia were again divided. The events of the next reign are recorded with a singular amount of contradiction,^[69] and the voice to which we should have listened with undoubting |Succession of Eadwig in Wessex and Eadgar in Mercia. 955.| confidence is all but silent.^[70] But as far as can be made out, the two young sons of Eadmund succeeded their uncle Eadred, the elder, Eadwig, reigning in Wessex as superior lord, while the younger, Eadgar, reigned as Under-king north of the Thames. From the stirring tale of an Empire saved, consolidated, and defended by the unwearied efforts of six wise and valiant monarchs, we turn to find ourselves involved in the thick of an ecclesiastical controversy. |Dunstan. 925–988.| Dunstan, a name known to too many readers only as the subject of one of the silliest of monastic legends, stands forth as the leading man in Church and State. As the 64minister of Eadred and of Eadgar, as the Jehoiada or |Character of his policy.| Seneca who watched over the still harmless childhood of the second Æthelred, Dunstan is entitled to lasting and honourable renown. The ecclesiastical changes which are commonly connected with his name, but which perhaps rather belong to contemporary prelates like Oda of Canterbury and Æthelwald of Winchester, are of a more doubtful character. To bring back the monks to the observance of their rule, to raise the character of the secular clergy, often no doubt ignorant and worthless enough, were thoroughly praiseworthy undertakings. But the complete prohibition of clerical marriage, the substitution of regulars for seculars in many of the cathedral and other chief churches of England, were certainly the works of a zeal which had far outrun discretion. And these measures had also the effect of dividing the nation into two parties, and of producing an amount of mutual hostility which might well have led to even greater evils than it did lead to. The whole of the short reign of Eadwig is shrouded in mystery; but it is clear that he was the enemy of Dunstan, perhaps to some extent the enemy of the monks generally, and it is certain that he was the vigorous opponent of the policy which strove everywhere to substitute monks for secular |956.| canons. The banishment of Dunstan, combined with an uncanonical marriage, seems to have roused popular feeling against a prince on whose real merits we are hardly in a |Eadgar chosen King of the Mercians. 957.| position to pronounce a judgement. The Mercians chose their Under-king Eadgar King in his own right, and in his separate dominions Dunstan was recalled and his policy vigorously carried out. The death of Eadwig soon followed, |Eadgar succeeds to the whole kingdom. 958–975.| and the Kingdom of England and the Empire of all Britain were again united under the sceptre of Eadgar the Peaceful. His reign of seventeen years is a period of almost unbroken peace; we hear, almost unavoidably, of wars with the Welsh, of moment enough to be recorded 65by Welsh chroniclers, but which the English writers pass by.^[71] Of Danish invasions we hear nothing for certain; but Westmoreland, a part of the Cumbrian fief of the Scottish |966.| King, was once ravaged, seemingly by Eadgar’s orders,^[72] |958| and we hear also more distinctly of a portion of Eadgar’s own kingdom, the Isle of Thanet, being treated in the like way at his bidding. These last facts point to some local |His peaceful and vigorous government.| revolts or disturbances.^[73] With these exceptions, weapons of war seem to have hung useless throughout the English dominions for a time which, short as it seems to us, was in those days a wonderfully long interval of repose. But if Eadgar’s sword hung useless, it at least did not rust. Eadgar, like Ælfred, knew how to guard his Empire, and a fleet which yearly sailed round the whole island, and which often carried the King in person, was a sufficient |His effective supremacy over all Britain.| safeguard of Britain against foreign foes. And no West-Saxon Basileus ever made his supremacy so fully felt by all the races of the island as the one West-Saxon Basileus who never drew his sword against a Scottish or Northumbrian enemy. After a single inroad early in his reign,^[74] Kenneth of Scotland remained on good terms with his over-lord, and, according to some statements, Eadgar even increased his dominions by a most important grant of territory.^[75] To the Danes of Northumberland he was 66anxious to show that he had no mind to deal with them as with a conquered people, and that he remembered their services in helping to raise him to the crown.^[76] In his legislation he takes care to assert their perfect equality with the English and their right to be governed only by laws of their own choosing.^[77] He delighted in pomp and splendour, and there seems no reason to doubt the historic truth of the tale of that famous pageant in which |973.| the Emperor of Britain was rowed on the Dee by eight vassal kings.^[78] But if the tale were only a symbolical expression, it would still be a most true and speaking symbol of the days of the greatest glory and prosperity of |He encourages intercourse with foreign countries.| the West-Saxon Empire. Under Eadgar too England held a high place in the estimation of foreign lands, and intercourse with them, commercial and otherwise, was carefully promoted by his enlightened policy.^[79] In ecclesiastical matters the party of the regulars was steadily favoured. This fact may perhaps have won for Eadgar more than his due share of praise at the hands of monastic writers. But exaggeration itself cannot obscure the real glory of such a reign as his.^[80]

But with Eadgar the glory of England sank. The reign of his elder son Eadward was short and troubled, 67and the young prince himself died by violence, most probably through the intrigues of an ambitious step-mother. |Reign of Æthelred the Unready. 979–1016.| He was succeeded by his brother Æthelred, a child, and one who would have been happy if he had always remained a child. In his time the Danish invasions began again, in a new form and with a more terrible effect than ever. In his time too begins that direct and intimate connexion between English and Norman history which shows that we are now approaching the days of the Norman Conquest, and that we have reached the first links in the chain of its direct causes. The reign of Æthelred will therefore claim a somewhat fuller treatment than that of a preliminary sketch.

We have thus traced out the steps by which the West-Saxon Kings, from Ecgberht onwards, founded that Kingdom of England which one conquest was to hand over to the King of the Danes and another conquest to the Duke of the Normans, but which was never again to be permanently divided, and which each conquest only served to unite more firmly. We have seen also how, along with the consolidation of their Teutonic kingdom, the same West-Saxon princes obtained a more extended and more precarious Empire over their Celtic neighbours. The later fate of the various Celtic portions of Britain has been widely different. In Cumberland no sign is left, and in Cornwall not many, that the dominion of the English King was once that of an external over-lord and not that |Union of Wales; [1293. 1536. 1830.]| of an immediate sovereign. On Wales the English dominion was pressed closer and closer, till all political and civil distinctions between Wales and England were wiped out, though the ancient language, and with it a distinct |of Scotland; [1328. 1707.]| and strong provincial feeling, still remains. Scotland, after various fluctuations, at last won complete independence of the English over-lord, and was finally united 68with England on equal terms as an independent kingdom. |Man still distinct.| Strange to say, the little realm of Man is the only part of the Empire of Eadgar which is not now thoroughly fused into the general mass of the United Kingdom.^[81] But different as has been the later fate of the various portions of the dominions of Eadgar, his Teutonic Kingdom and his Celtic Empire both passed nearly untouched into the hands of the Norman Conqueror. In another preliminary Chapter I shall attempt a general picture of the condition and constitution of the Kingdom and Empire which were thus transferred. I shall then give some account of the history of Normandy up to the point which I have now reached in the history of England. I shall then be ready to go on with the more detailed history of the Norman Conquest itself and of the causes which immediately led to it, beginning with the reign of Æthelred the Second.

CHAPTER III. THE CONSTITUTION OF ENGLAND IN THE TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES. [82] — § 1. Origin of the Old-English Kingship. — § 2. The Early Teutonic Constitution and its Decay. — § 3. Origin and Powers of the Witenagemót. — § 4. The Imperial power of the King and his relation to the Dependent Kingdoms.

I have no intention whatever of entering, in the present Chapter, into any examination of the minute details of our early English legal antiquities, still less into the controversies to which many points relating to them have 70given rise. I wish merely to give such a sketch of the political condition of England, at the time when England and Normandy began to influence each other’s affairs, as may make the narrative of their mutual intercourse intelligible. |The Old-English constitution survived the Norman Conquest.| What the constitution was under Eadgar, that it remained under William. This assertion must be taken with all the practical drawbacks which are involved in the forcible transfer of the crown to a foreign dynasty, and in the division of the greater part of the lands of the kingdom among the followers of the foreign King. But the constitution remained the same; the laws, with a few changes in detail, remained the same; the language of public documents remained the same. The powers which were vested in King William and his Witan remained constitutionally the same as those which had been vested in King Eadgar and his Witan a hundred years before. |The changes immediately following on the Conquest practical, not formal.| The change in the social condition of the country, the change in the spirit of the national and local administration, the change in the relation of the kingdom to foreign lands, were changes as great as words can express. The practical effect of these changes was a vast increase of the royal power, and the introduction of wholly new relations between the King and every class of his subjects. But formal constitutional change there was none. I cannot too often repeat, for the saying is the very summing up of the whole history, that the Norman Conquest was not the wiping out of the constitution, the laws, the language, the national life of Englishmen. The changes which distinguish 71the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries from the |Various causes of the ultimate results of the Conquest.| tenth and eleventh are not owing to any one cause. Many of them are merely the natural results of altered circumstances. Many of them are the work of lawgivers legislating for a new state of things, and, in not a few cases, confirming or restoring ancient English institutions under foreign names. Many of them are due to the ingenuity of lawyers whose minds were full of theories of law wholly alien to the principles of ancient English jurisprudence. All these changes were in some sort the final results of the Conquest. Some of them were actually caused by the Conquest; others were hastened by it. But of very few |Change in the monarchy from the old Teutonic to the later mediæval type.| indeed was it the direct and immediate cause. The English kingship gradually changed from a kingship of the old Teutonic type into a kingship of the later mediæval type. The change began before the Norman Conquest; it was hastened by the Norman Conquest; but it was not completed till long after the Norman Conquest. Such a change was not, and could not be, the work of one man or of one generation. But English kingship, like the other main features of the English polity, may be said to have fully put on its later form when the absent Edward was proclaimed in the place of his father, when the King was for the first time held to reign before he had received the rite which clothed him with the kingly office.

What then was the nature, and what was the origin, of that kingship, which the election—the constrained and unwilling election, but still the election—of the Witan of all England did, on Midwinter-day, eight hundred years back,^[83] entrust to William, Duke of the Normans—from that day forward William, King of the English? That 72election transferred to him the same internal power over his own kingdom, the same external power over the dependent kingdoms, which had been held by Eadgar and Æthelred, and which an earlier forced election of a foreign conqueror had transferred to the hands of Cnut the Dane. |Summary of the growth of Wessex.| We have already traced the course of the events by which those powers, internal and external, grew up. Two Saxon chiefs, Ealdormen or Heretogan, formed a settlement on the |495.| south coast of Britain. After some years of successful |519.| warfare, they assumed the kingly title over their own tribe.^[84] One of their successors incorporated some of the |823–828.| other Teutonic kingdoms with his own realm, and obtained an external supremacy over all the other Teutons in the island and over a portion of the Celts. A series of his |878–954.| successors, after long struggles, incorporated all the Teutonic states into one kingdom, and obtained an external Empire over all the Celtic states. The Ealdorman of the Gewissas thus gradually grew into the King of the West-Saxons, the King of the Saxons,^[85] the King of the English, the Emperor of all Britain. The external aspect of this process, the dates of its several stages, I have already marked. I must now dwell a little longer on the real origin and nature of the various powers implied in those different descriptions of the ruler. Each stage marks an advance in the extent of territorial dominion; each stage marks also an advance in the amount of political authority enjoyed by the sovereign.

In following up these researches into our earliest political antiquities it is absolutely necessary to cast away all thoughts of modern political controversies. Time was when the whole fabric of our liberties was held to depend 73on the exact nature of the entry made by William the Bastard. Time was when supporters and opponents of parliamentary reform thought to strengthen their several positions by opposite theories as to the constitution of the Witenagemót. To this day a popular orator will sometimes think that he adds point to a declamation by bringing in Saxon Ælfred as the author of Trial by Jury, perhaps of every other privilege which other lands are held either not to possess or to have borrowed from ourselves. Every notion of this kind must be wholly cast away, if we would fairly and impartially learn what the institutions of our Teutonic forefathers really were. The lover of freedom certainly need not shrink from the inquiry. |The present shape of our political institutions not to be looked for in early times,| He will not indeed find that the finished systems of the nineteenth or of the seventeenth century were brought over ready made in the keels of Hengest and Horsa. He will not even find that they appeared in their perfect form in the Imperial Witenagemót of Eadgar the Peaceful. He will not find the legislative authority vested in a representative assembly to which every shire and borough sends the men of its choice. He will not find a King the freedom of whose will is at once hampered and protected by the tutelage of ministers responsible to that representative assembly. He will not find tribunals in which issues of law are determined by Judges independent alike of King and people, while issues of fact are determined by the people themselves in the form of jurors taken at haphazard from among them. Not one of these things will he find in the finished shape in which he is familiar |but the germs of later institutions may be traced from the beginning.| with them. But he will find the first principles from which all of them were derived; he will find the germs out of which all of them were developed. He will not find the relations of King, Lords, and Commons accurately balanced in the first Teutonic settlement on the shores of Kent. But he will find the rudiments of all three in days 74which were ancient in the days of Hengest. Let him go as far back as history or tradition throws any light on the institutions of our race, and he will find the germs alike of the monarchic, the aristocratic, and the democratic |Necessity of comparison with other Teutonic nations.| branches of our constitution. When positive evidence within our own land fails us, we must go for illustration and explanation, not to the facts, the theories, the controversies, of modern politics, but to the kindred institutions of the kindred nations of the mainland. Our Parliament is the true and lawful representative, by true and lawful succession, of the ancient Meeting of the Wise; but, if we would search out the origin and constitution of that Meeting of the Wise, we must go, not to the parliamentary traditions of the last six hundred years, but to the Marzfeld of the Frankish Kings, to the Landesgemeinden of Schwyz and Uri, to those yet earlier assemblies which still rise before us in full life in the pages of the first inquirer into the habits and institutions of our |Records of Teutonic Law from Tacitus onwards.| race. From the Germania of Tacitus onwards, through the Barbaric Codes, through the Capitularies of the Frankish Kings and Emperors, through the records of our own insular legislation from the Dooms of Æthelberht to the so-called Laws of Henry the First, we have a series of witnesses, showing what were the general principles of Teutonic law, and what were the particular forms which it took in particular times and places. In truth we may go beyond the records of our own immediate race. The early history of the Teuton is constantly illustrated by |Analogies with the Homeric Achaians.| the early history of his Aryan kinsmen, and the living picture of the old Achaians of Homer brings vividly before us many an institution of our own forefathers and many an incident of their early history.

The sketch which has been given in the last Chapter has shown that the Imperial lordship of all Britain, as 75held by Æthelstan and his successors, and even the supremacy of Wessex over the other English kingdoms, as established by Ecgberht, were institutions of comparatively late growth. But it must not be thought that even the full-grown local kingship, such as we find it held by Æthelberht in Kent and by Eadwine in Northumberland, was a thing which had been from the beginning. In the days of Tacitus some of the Teutonic tribes had kings and |Kingship not universal; government by Ealdormen or Heretogan.| others had not; in the time of Cæsar it would seem that kingship was the exception and not the rule.^[86] The chieftains of the first settlers in our own island bore no higher title than Ealdorman or Heretoga. These two names express two different sides of the same office. The same man is Ealdorman as a civil ruler and Heretoga as a military chieftain. The former name survives in our |Force and history of the names.| language, but with sadly diminished dignity; the title which once expressed a rank which, among worldly dignities, was inferior to kingship alone, has taken refuge with a class of municipal magistrates, reaching downwards to the pettiest boroughs. The other name, always much more rarely in use, has dropped altogether out of our tongue, while, among the continental Teutons, the cognate word Herzog expresses a dignity the distinction between which and modern kingship must be drawn by the courtier and not by the politician. The name of Ealdorman is one of a large class; among a primitive people age implies command and command implies age; hence, in a somewhat later stage of language, the elders are simply the rulers, and the eldest are the highest in rank, without any thought of the number of years which they may really have lived. |Import of the change from Ealdormen to Kings.| It is not perfectly clear in what the authority or dignity of the King exceeded that of the Ealdorman, but it is clear that the title of King did carry with it an advance in both respects. Even the smallest kingdom was probably 76formed by the union of the districts of several Ealdormen. It is probable too that the King was distinguished by some religious sanction of heathen times, analogous to the ecclesiastical consecration which in later times the Church bestowed on kings, but not on princes of lower rank. It is certain that kingship required descent from the Gods; it may be that no such divine origin was |Instances in Britain and elsewhere.| needed by the mere Ealdorman. At all events, we find the change from Ealdorman to Kings taking place in more than one kingdom of Teutonic Britain, as well as among many of the kindred tribes on the mainland. We have already seen that the kingdoms of Northumberland and East-Anglia were formed by the union of several smaller |The West-Saxon Ealdormen become Kings. 495–519.| states whose rulers did not assume the royal title.^[87] In Wessex the account is still more remarkable. Cerdic and Cynric entered the land with the title of Ealdorman; they did not assume kingship till after the arrival of fresh reinforcements, and till a decisive victory over the Welsh had strengthened their position in the country. During the whole period commonly called that of the Heptarchy the whole land was full of petty princes, some of whom undoubtedly bore the title of King, though others may have |Alleged return of Wessex to ealdormanship. 673–685.| reigned simply as Ealdormen. According to one account, the West-Saxons, as late as the seventh century, were for ten years without any common sovereign, while the Ealdormen or Under-kings reigned independently. This falling back on an older system has its parallels; there is one noted case in Lombard history; but it would be specially remarkable in a kingdom which had, from the beginning, greater |Distinction between King and Ealdorman from Ecgberht onwards.| unity than most of its fellows. But at least from the time of Ecgberht onwards there is a marked distinction between the King and the Ealdorman. The King is a sovereign, the Ealdorman is only a magistrate. The King may be hampered in the exercise of his power by the rights of his 77people or by the joint action of the great men of his realm; he may be chosen by his Witan and he may be liable to be deposed by them; still he is a sovereign, inasmuch as he does not rule by delegation from any personal superior. |Distinction between the Ealdorman and the dependent King.| He may even be, by original grant or more probably by commendation, dependent on some more powerful King; but even such dependence does not degrade him from his sovereign rank. His relation to his over-lord binds him to certain external services, but in his internal government he remains perfectly independent, with his power limited only by the laws of his own realm. But the Ealdorman has become distinctly a subject. He may hold the fullest royal power within his own district; he may be the descendant of former Ealdormen and even of former Kings; he may have a reasonable hope that he may hand on his dignity to his own children; still he is not a sovereign, but a subject. The King is supreme; the Ealdorman is simply sent by him. He is a Viceroy appointed by the King and his Witan; he is liable to be removed by them, and he is responsible to them for the exercise of his |Position of Ealdorman Æthelred in Mercia. 880–912.| authority. When the kingdom of Mercia was broken up, Ælfred entrusted the government of the part which fell to his share to his son-in-law Æthelred as Ealdorman. Æthelred was a man of royal descent; he exercised full royal power in Mercia; but he exercised it simply as a Governor General or Lord Lieutenant, the representative of a sovereign whose higher authority he carefully acknowledges |Case of Northumberland. 954.| in his charters.^[88] So, when Northumberland was finally incorporated with England under Eadred, kingship 78was abolished, and the government was entrusted to a magistrate with the title of Ealdorman or its Danish |Contrary process in the Empire.| equivalent Earl.^[89] By the exactly contrary process, Princes of the Empire, Dukes—that is, Ealdormen or Heretogan—and not only Dukes, but Counts, Margraves, Landgraves, all of them originally mere magistrates under the Emperor-King, have gradually grown into sovereign princes, and have at last, in several cases, ventured to assume the kingly title.^[90]

The mere title of King seems to be comparatively recent among the Teutonic nations. It is not found in the earliest Teutonic prose writing, the Gothic Gospels; but in our own language it seems to be as old as the English settlements in Britain. Most of the questions which have arisen as to the etymology of the word only show how modern a thing scientific etymology is.^[91] Cyning, by contraction King, comes from the same root as the word cyn or kin. And the connexion is not without an important meaning. The King is the representative of the race, |The Teutonic kingship national, not territorial.| the embodiment of its national being. A King, in the old Teutonic sense, is not the King of a country, but the King of a nation. Such titles as King of England or King of France are comparatively modern, and the idea which they express is equally so.^[92] The Teutonic King is not the lord of the soil, but the leader of the people. The idea of the King of a country would have been hardly intelligible to our forefathers. Every King is King of a people. He is King of Goths, Franks, Saxons, wherever Goths, Franks, Saxons, may happen to settle. The Goths 79and their Kings moved from the Danube to the Tiber, and from the Tiber to the Tagus; but Alaric and Athaulf were equally Kings of the Goths, in whatever quarter of the world the Goths might be. So in our own island, the King is King of the West-Saxons, Mercians, or Northumbrians. |No names for the English kingdoms as distinguished from the people.| In truth the countries themselves, as distinguished from their inhabitants, can hardly be said to have any names. We talk for convenience’ sake of Wessex, Mercia, and so forth; but the correct description is the Kingdom of the West-Saxons, the Kingdom of the Mercians. |The King is King of the English (not of England), but Emperor of Britain.| So, when the West-Saxon King had swallowed up all his brethren, he became, not King of England, but King of the English. It is only in their Imperial character, in their character, not as chiefs of a nation, but as lords over all the dwellers within the isle of Britain, that our Kings ever assume the territorial description. Indeed |Name of England hardly known.| England itself has hardly yet found a geographical name. Englaland is a late form, scarcely found before the Danish Conquest. The common name for the land is the name of the people, Angel-cyn.^[93]

The King’s power and dignity gradually grew. They grew by the mere extension of his dominions. The larger a prince’s territory becomes, the greater is the distance at which he finds himself from the mass of his subjects. He becomes more and more clothed with a sort of mysterious dignity; he comes to be more and more looked upon as something different from ordinary men, even from ordinary civil magistrates and military leaders. The prince of a small territory is known to all his people; he is, according to the character of his government, their personal 80friend or their personal enemy; if worthy himself and the descendant of worthy ancestors, he may command a strong feeling of clannish loyalty, but he cannot hedge himself in with the fence of any special divinity. A King who reigns over all Wessex is, in the nature of things, more of a King^[94] than one who reigns only over Wight, and a King who reigns over all England is more of a King than one who reigns only over Wessex. Through this cause only, every fresh addition of territory added fresh power and dignity to the Kings of the House of Cerdic in their progress from the ealdormanship of a corner of Hampshire to the Imperial crown of the Isle of Britain. But this cause was by no means the only one. The growth of the royal power was greatly helped by another cause, fully to understand which we must go back to the very earliest accounts which we have of the political |Two elements in Teutonic political life, the free Community and the Comitatus.| institutions of the Teutonic race. From the very beginning of our history two opposing elements may be seen, one of which in the end gained the complete mastery over the other. The one is the original self-governing Teutonic community; the other is the King or other lord with his personal following.^[95]

I said above that, in the very earliest glimpses of Teutonic political life, we find the monarchic, the aristocratic, and the democratic elements already clearly marked. There are leaders, with or without the royal title; there are men of noble birth, whose noble birth, in whatever 81the original nobility may have consisted, entitles them to pre-eminence in every way; but beyond these there is a free and armed people, in whom the ultimate sovereignty resides. Small matters are decided by the chiefs alone, great matters are submitted by the chiefs to the assembled nation.^[96] Such a system is far more than Teutonic; it |Analogy of the Homeric Achaians,| is a common Aryan possession; it is the constitution of the Homeric Achaians on earth and of the Homeric Gods on Olympos. Zeus or Agamemnôn is King; he has his inner Council of great Gods or of great leaders; he has his general Assembly of all the divine race or of all the |and the historical Macedonians.| warriors who fought before Ilios.^[97] The constitution of legendary Hellas remained the constitution of historical Macedonia; the assembly of the Macedonian nation—in war-time of the Macedonian army—remained, even under Philip and Alexander, the constitutional authority to decide on questions of succession to the throne and the tribunal in which was vested the power of adjudging a |The system a natural one in a small state.| Macedonian to death.^[98] In short, the division of powers between the supreme leader, the Council, and the general Assembly, is the form into which the government of a small state or independent tribe almost necessarily throws itself. The hereditary prince and the aristocratic council may be exchanged for an elective chief magistrate and an 82elective council; but the division of powers remains the same, and in either case the ultimate sovereignty remains in the general Assembly, in the Agorê, the Ekklêsia, the Comitia, the Marzfeld, the Landesgemeinde. Of the nature and functions of such an assembly I shall have presently to speak, when I trace out the origin and nature of the Old-English Witenagemót. My present point is the distinction |Distinction of Eorl and Ceorl.| of orders in the state. Tacitus sets before us a marked distinction between the noble and the common freeman, that is, in Old-English phrase, between the Eorl and the Ceorl. The modern English forms of these words have altogether lost their ancient meaning. The word Earl, after several fluctuations, has settled down as the title of one rank in the peerage; the word Churl has come to be a word of moral reprobation, irrespective of the rank of the person who is guilty of the offence. But in the earlier meaning of the words, Eorl and Ceorl—words whose happy jingle causes them to be constantly opposed to each other—form an exhaustive division of the free members of the state. The distinction in modern language is most nearly expressed by the words Gentle and Simple. The ceorl is the simple freeman, the mere unit in the army or in the assembly, whom no distinction of birth or office marks out from his fellows. It must not be forgotten that, among the ancient English, as among all other Teutonic nations, the system of slavery was in full force. The ceorl therefore, like the ancient Greek citizen, though he might be looked down upon by an aristocratic class, was actually a privileged person as compared with a large number of human beings in his own city or district.^[99] The origin of the distinction it is in vain to search after; the difference of the eorl and the ceorl is a primary fact from which we start; it is as old as the earliest notices of Teutonic institutions, and the 83only attempt at its explanation is to be found in an ingenious mythical story in a Northern saga.^[100] Nor is it very easy to see in what the privileges of the eorl consisted, or how far they were secured by definite laws. |Analogy of the democratic Cantons of Switzerland.| Perhaps we may gain some light by looking at those communities which have preserved the old Teutonic system of government with the least alteration, the democratic |Traditional predominance of certain families.| Cantons of Switzerland.^[101] There, amid the purest democracy in the world, where every adult freeman has a direct and equal vote in the Assembly, we still find that certain families, enjoying no legal privileges above their fellows, were long held in a kind of hereditary reverence, and that members of those families were preferred above all others to the highest offices in the state. Such were the houses of Reding in Schwyz, of Tschudi in Glarus, of the Barons of Attinghausen in Uri. The office of Landammann, the chief magistracy of the commonwealth, conferred by the yearly vote of the Landesgemeinde, commonly fell to the lot of members of these great houses; the same man was constantly re-elected year after year, and, when he died, |Comparison of old county families among ourselves.| his son was often elected in his place. Or without going so far from home, we may see what is essentially the same thing in the position of old county families, holding no legal advantages above their fellows, but which still enjoy 84an hereditary respect and preference at their hands. The eorl and the ceorl in fact answer pretty nearly to the esquire and the yeoman;^[102] the modern artificial peerage is something quite different, and we shall presently perhaps see its beginnings.

The primitive Teutonic community is thus set before us as one consisting of eorls and ceorls, headed by a King, Ealdorman, or other leader, temporary or permanent, elective or hereditary. Such a community occupies its own territory, its Mark,^[103] which territory consists of land of two kinds. There is the common land, either applied to the general use of the community or else held by individuals on such terms as the community, in its character of landowner, may think good to allow. There are also the particular possessions of individuals, portions assigned to them by common consent, which are the absolute property of their owners, held of no superior, but simply subject to such burthens as the community, in its political character, may think good to impose on its members. All this again is in no way distinctively Teutonic; it is the story of the ancient commonwealths of Greece and Italy over again. |Folkland or Ager Publicus.| The folkland^[104] of England and the ager publicus of Rome are the same thing. The English and the Latin names translate one another; they both describe the land which 85still belongs to the community as a body, and of which individuals cannot be more than the occupiers.^[105] The whole history of the Roman Agrarian Laws, so long misunderstood, turns simply on the regulation of this common land of the state. In the time of Cæsar it would seem that the whole territory of a Teutonic community was folkland; individuals could obtain no right in it beyond that of a yearly tenancy.^[106] But the custom of allotting portions of the common stock in absolute property gradually advanced. A conquest like that of Britain would be highly favourable to the growth of the practice. When a band of Teutonic warriors took possession of a district and slew or dispossessed its former inhabitants, we cannot doubt that, besides |Allodial property, eðel or odal.| the stock reserved as common property, each man who had borne his share in the labours and dangers of the conquest would claim his reward in the absolute ownership of some portion of the conquered territory. The eorls, who would doubtless act as the leaders of the expedition, may well have received a larger allotment; but we may be sure that no freeman bearing arms went altogether without some share of the spoil. Such an allotment in absolute property, held of no superior, subject to nothing but the laws of the state, is called in different Teutonic dialects eðel, odal, or alod. It is an estate, great or small, which the owner does not hold either of the King or of any other lord, but in regard to which he knows no superior but God and the law.

These communities of freemen, among whom some had 86a pre-eminence in rank, and doubtless in wealth, but among |The primitive democracy gives way to the institution of| whom every freeman was a member of the state, form one of the elements of Teutonic life as we see it in its very earliest pictures. But those same pictures set no less strongly before us another element, which grew up alongside of the primitive democracy, and which was destined in the long run to supplant it more or less completely in nearly every Teutonic country. The ancient Teutonic community can now be seen in its purity only in a few of the smallest Swiss Cantons, and in several even of these^[107] the ancient freedom had to be reconquered and was not uninterruptedly retained. Everywhere else it is as much as we can do to trace out some faint footsteps of the ancient system, such as we see in common lands, in some forms of communal institutions, in petty and half obsolete local |the Comitatus, the personal following of the Chiefs.| tribunals. The thing itself has given way to the other institution described by Tacitus, the Comitatus, the personal following of the chiefs. Every Teutonic King or other leader was surrounded by a band of chosen warriors, personally attached to him of their own free choice.^[108] The chief and his followers were bound together by the strongest ties of mutual trust, and a lack of faithfulness on either side was reckoned among the most shameful of crimes. The followers served their chief in peace and in war; they fought for him to the death, and rescued or avenged his |Nature of the relation.| life with their own. In return, they shared whatever gifts or honours the chief could distribute among them; and in our tongue at least it was his character of dispenser of |The Hlaford and his Gesiðas.| gifts which gave the chief his official title. He was the Hlaford, the Loaf-giver,^[109] a name which, through a series of 87softenings and contractions, and with an utter forgetfulness of its primitive meaning, has settled down into the modern form of Lord. His followers were originally his Gesiðas or Companions, a word which Ælfred uses to express the Latin Comes, but which must have dropped out of use |Origin of Þegnas (Thanes).| very early, as it is not found in the Chronicles. The Gesið or Companion became the Þegn (Thegn, Thane) or Servant, a change of name which might seem to imply a lowering of the nature of the relation, and which perhaps in a manner did so.^[110] As Kings grew in power and dominion, it was not unnatural that a certain element of servility should find its way into the relation of the Comitatus, of which there is no trace in the primitive shape of that institution. The service of the King or other great lord conferred dignity even on the freeman. This is a notion altogether foreign to the ideas of republican Greece and Rome; but here again the primitive Teuton is but the |Homeric analogies.| reproduction of the primitive Achaian. The Homeric Kings have their comitatus, their Gesiðas or ἑταῖροι, their Þegnas or θεράποντες, free, noble, the cherished companions of their lords, but who do for those lords, without any loss of their own dignity, services which in later Greece none but slaves would have rendered. Eteôneus, Automedôn,^[111] 88Mêrionês, the divine Patroklos himself, all appear in this relation; all are connected by this voluntary personal tie to a chieftain of higher rank. They are the very counterparts of Lilla, the faithful Thegn of Eadwine,^[112] and of those true companions who fought to the death for |Contrast with the republican Greeks and Romans.| Cynewulf and Cyneheard.^[113] The republican Greek knew no lord but the law.^[114] He was a member of a civil community, and as a good citizen he obeyed the magistrates whom the choice of the community clothed with a limited and temporary power. But personal dependence on another human being seemed to him the distinguishing mark of the slave as opposed to the citizen. The republican Roman shared the same feeling; the early Cæsars were served by slaves or freedmen;^[115] it was only as the Empire gradually grew into an avowed monarchy, and gradually assumed somewhat of the pomp of eastern kingship, that service about the person of the Emperor began to be looked upon as honourable in a man of free Roman birth. In the Teuton, as in the Homeric Achaian, the feeling of the civil community, though far from unknown, was less strong, and the tie of personal dependence was not felt to imply degradation. Indeed the Teuton carried the principle of personal service far further than the Roman ever did. It was held that purely menial services, when rendered to persons of higher rank, in no way degraded the ordinary freeman. It was even held that men of any rank short of the highest were actually honoured by rendering such services to those who were one degree higher than themselves. 89None of the old Cæsars ever held such lordly state |Developement of the principle in the later Empire and in modern Kingdoms.| as those among their successors who, while keeping hardly a trace of real Imperial power, still saw Kings and sovereign Dukes doing services about their person and household which, in the days of Augustus, would have been deemed a degradation to the meanest Roman citizen. So, among ourselves, offices about the person and household of the lord became high and honourable. The King’s dish-thegn, his bower-thegn, his horse-thegn or staller, all became great dignitaries of the kingdom, high in rank and influence,^[116] as some of them, among all the changes in our institutions, still remain. There thus arose a new kind of nobility, nobility by service, the nobility which gradually attached |The Thegns supplant the old Eorls.| to the Thegns or Servants of Kings and Ealdormen; and this nobility gradually supplanted the elder nobility of immemorial descent.^[117] Men pressed into the service of powerful leaders, till such service became the necessary badge of anything like distinguished rank. The Thegn, whose name might sound at first hearing like the exact opposite of the ancient Eorl, gradually took his place. The word Thegn became equivalent to noble or gentle. The King’s Thegns formed the highest class of gentry; the Thegns of Ealdormen and Bishops formed a lower class. Again to use a modern parallel, the ancient Eorl answers to the gentleman of ancient family, looked at simply as the descendant of certain forefathers and the owner of certain property; the Thegn answers to the gentleman, whether with or without such ancestry, looked at as holding, by royal commission, his place in the local magistracy and the local military force.

90The Comitatus—the Thegnhood, as we may call it—thus |Effects of the growth of the Thegnhood.| grew and developed, and became the central institution of the state. With every advance of the kingly power—and every accession of territory, every free or constrained union of one district with another, implied an advance of the kingly power—the dignity of the King’s Thegns rose along with the dignity of their Hlaford. In one way |Favourable to individual Ceorls, but depressing to the class.| the change was a liberalizing one. The Ceorl could not become an Eorl, simply because a man cannot change his forefathers; but several ways were open to him of becoming a Thegn.^[118] And now Thegn’s rank had become practically equivalent to Eorl’s rank. But though individual Ceorls might thus rise, there can be no doubt that the growth of the Thegnhood was on the whole depressing to the Ceorls, the simple freemen, as a class. The idea of the simple landman—I must borrow a word from our continental brethren, as the word citizen brings in quite other ideas—the undistinguished, but still free and, in a sense, equal member of a free community, gradually died out. The institution of the Comitatus, which in its origin was essentially voluntary, was pressed, as it were, upon all men, till at last it became a principle that no man should be without his lord. The freeman might choose his lord; he might 91determine to whom, in technical phrase, he should commend^[119] |Commendation.| himself; but a lord he must have, a lord to act at once as |Every man must have a Lord.| his protector and as his surety, at once to watch over him and to give a guaranty for his good behaviour. The lordless man became a kind of outlaw, while in the older state of things the whole community would be lordless, except those who might of their own free will have entered |Depression of the Ceorls towards the period of the Conquest.| the Comitatus of some chief.^[120] And there is little doubt that the condition of the Ceorls had greatly changed for the worse in the later times as we approach the Norman Conquest. Some classes among them seem to have been fast approaching to the condition of villainage or even to that of serfdom. This change is not peculiar to England; but it is the peculiar glory of England that the bondage of the mass of its people began later, and that it certainly ended sooner, than in any other western country where such bondage existed. The peasantry of Germany gradually sank into a lower state of serfdom than ours, and they remained in it much longer. The free peasantry of Russia did not sink into serfdom till villainage was nearly forgotten in England, but their deliverance from the yoke has been reserved for our own times.

This sketch of the growth of the Thegnhood and its effects at once suggests the question, Did the Feudal System exist in England before the Norman Conquest? One might perhaps be allowed to answer this question by another, Did the Feudal System ever exist anywhere? In England, before the Norman Conquest, the Feudal System most certainly did not exist. There was no systematic feudalism, but the elements of feudalism were there. |Two elements of Feudalism;| Feudalism consists of two main elements; the feudal relation implies the union of two other relations. There is 92|the relation of the Comitatus and the holding of land by military service.| the personal relation of lord and vassal, lord and man,^[121] bound together by mutual will and mutual fidelity, the one owing service, the other owing protection; there is in short the old Teutonic relation of the Comitatus, the relation of the Hlaford and his Thegn. But alongside of this, the feudal relation commonly implies the holding of land by military service. To grant land on such a tenure is in truth one form, one among several, of that bounty of the lord to his followers to which his very title of Hlaford is |Military tenures suggested by the relation of the Comitatus,| owing. The lord makes his follower a grant of land as the reward of past services, and he makes the continuation of those services the condition of his follower’s keeping the land so granted. But there can be no doubt that the tendency to this particular form of bounty was greatly strengthened by the example of the Roman practice of |and also by the Roman tenures on the frontier.| granting out frontier lands to be held by military service.^[122] The holders of such lands held them of the Roman Republic, and to the Roman Republic their service was due. They stood in no personal relation to the Emperor; they were not his men, his vassals, his Gesiðas, his Thegns; their service was due to him only so far as he was the head and |The two elements united produce Feudalism.| representative of the commonwealth. But the union in the same person of the Teutonic tie of the Comitatus and the Roman tie of land held by military service would produce a relation coming very near to the strictly feudal relation. The Roman custom would easily suggest to the Teutonic conquerors the practice of rewarding their followers with grants of lands—in short with benefices or fiefs—as the most convenient and honourable form which the bounty of the lord could take. In Britain indeed, 93|Growth of Feudalism slower in England than on the Continent.| where Roman institutions were so utterly swept away, this influence would hardly exist; at any rate it would be far weaker than it was on the continent. Hence we find feudalism growing up far more slowly in England than in Gaul or even in Germany; in our old constitution we find the elements of feudalism; but they were not as yet worked into a systematic shape; they had not as yet become the materials of an elaborate jurisprudence. Homage was there; for the relation of every man to his lord was a relation of homage. Heriots too and other incidents of a feudal character already existed. But these feudal elements had not yet been wrought together into any harmonious feudal system. The Comitatus, the germ of feudalism, had thriven and developed and was now dominant; but the old Teutonic constitution had not been |Feudal elements strengthened by the Norman Conquest.| utterly wiped out. The Norman Conquest no doubt strongly tended to promote the further developement of the feudal element; but, as in every other case, it only opened and prepared the way for further changes.

The military service due from land held by a feudal tenure is strictly due to the lord as the lord. That lord may be the King; but if so, the service is still in strictness owing to him, not as head of the state, but as lord of the fief. But there is another obligation to military service which is older than this. All land in England was, by the earliest Common Law, subject to three burthens, to contributions to the three works most necessary for the defence of the country. These were the famous Trinoda Necessitas, the obligation to service in the field (fyrd) and to a share in the repairs of fortresses and of bridges.^[123] 94But these are duties owed by the citizen to the commonwealth, or by the subject to the sovereign, not duties owed by a personal vassal to a personal lord. Land, in an age when there was little property except in land, is simply taken as the measure of the contribution due from each man to the common defence. From these burthens, as a rule, no land could be free; even church lands were regularly subject to them, though in some cases their owners contrived to obtain exemptions.^[124] These ancient obligations pressed alike on the ancient allodial possession and on the land held by any more modern tenure. They were not feudal services, but a tax paid to the state. They were in fact the price paid to the commonwealth for the protection which it gave; or rather they were the share which each member of the commonwealth was bound to take in the protection of himself and his neighbours.

I have already mentioned the folkland, the common land of the community or of the nation, out of which the ancient allodial possessions were carved. This process of turning public property into private went on largely in later times. The alienation was now commonly made by a document in writing, under the signatures of the King and his Witan; land so granted was therefore said to be booked to the grantee, and was known as bookland. Portions of the folkland were thus cut off from the public ownership, and were booked to private individuals or corporations. The greater number of the existing ancient charters consists of grants of this kind. |Conversion of Folkland into Bookland in favour of the Church and of the King’s Thegns.| A vast number are of course in favour of the Church, but those which are made to the King’s faithful Thegns are hardly less common. In either case portions of the folkland are 95alienated, booked, to private use with the consent of the Witan. The booking might of course be made on any terms; any sort of tenure might be created; but the great object of the grantee was to get the land on the same terms as an ancient eðel, subject only to the three burthens, which not even the most favoured Thegn, hardly the most favoured churchman, could hope to escape.^[125]

The folkland, the common property of the state, was of course at the disposal of the state, and of the state only. It was granted by the King, but only by the consent and authority of his Witan. That is to say, in modern language, the change of folkland into bookland required an Act of Parliament, but acts to that effect were passed constantly and without difficulty. The folkland belonged to the nation and not to the King. The King was only its chief administrator, enjoying its use, so far as he enjoyed it, only as the head and representative of the nation. |The King’s private estate.| But the King, like any other man, had his private estate. Like any other man, he might have his ancient allodial property, or he might, like any other man, have land booked to him, land which followed the ordinary course of legal succession or testamentary disposal.^[126] It was indeed needful that the King should have such private possessions; for, in our ancient elective monarchy, the reigning King had no certainty that the crown, and the possessions attached to the crown, would ever pass to |Folkland passes into Terra Regis,| his descendants. But after the Norman Conquest, as the royal power increased, and as the modern notion of hereditary right was gradually developed, these two kinds of possession got confounded. On the one hand, the nation was forgotten or merged in the person of its chief; the folkland was held to be the King’s land, Terra 96Regis; the King was led to look on the possessions of the nation as his own, and to grant them away at his own pleasure without the consent of Parliament. On the other hand, lawyers brought in the strange doctrine that the King could hold no private property, but that, on his accession to the crown, his private estate was merged in what was now held to be the royal domain. By one of those curious cycles which so often come round in human affairs, both these wrongs have been redressed, one formally, the other practically. Our modern Kings have recovered the ancient right, common to them with other men, of inheriting, purchasing, and bequeathing |and becomes Folkland again.| private estates. On the other hand, now that the royal domain is given up to the nation to be controlled by Parliament, it is practically brought back to its ancient condition of folkland. That is to say, after so many centuries of usurpation, the land of which the Kings had defrauded the nation has come back to its lawful owners.^[127]

By these various means the old system of free Teutonic communities gradually died out in England, as it died out in all parts of the continent save one. It lingered in Friesland till the fifteenth century;^[128] in the primitive Switzerland it lingers still. Everywhere else it has utterly |It yields in England to a real national monarchy, in Germany to the dominion of petty princes.| vanished, or has left only such faint traces as it has left among ourselves. But England did not suffer from the change as Germany did. Our free marks and shires gradually gave way, but they gave way before the developement of a real national life, before the establishment of a really national sovereignty. But in Germany local freedom was rooted out, not in favour either of the nation or of its sovereign, but for the advantage of that crowd of princes, 97great and small, which were for ages the curse of the land. The free communities of Germany vanished; but the German nation gained nothing, the German King gained nothing; the liberties and rights alike of the King, of the nation, and of the local communities, were confiscated to the profit of a brood of petty despots. The constitution which Tacitus saw and wondered at, the constitution for which Arminius fought and conquered, the constitution whose working may still be seen year by year in the free air of Uri and Appenzell, gave way in the great Teutonic realm to the dominion of princes who represented nothing but themselves, who embodied no national or provincial being, who were the mere creation of modern dynastic and diplomatic arrangements,—arrangements which did their best to wipe out every historic name and every national memory, and to assign to each of their princely creatures an arbitrary extent of dominion traced out at haphazard upon the map.^[129] Such was the fate of the Teutonic mainland; such was not the fate of the Teutonic island. The uprooting of the old free communities, the growth of the power of the King and of his Thegns, no doubt tended in England, as elsewhere, to the degradation, at least for a while, of the lowest class of |Ceorldom sinks into Villainage, but the Villains are gradually emancipated.| freemen. The ceorl was fast sinking into the villain. Still, even in the worst times, enough of the old spirit remained in our laws to give the villain those means of obtaining enfranchisement which gradually did enfranchise the whole class, without the institution of villainage ever being formally done away with. And the uprooting of the old |Change of the old constitution necessary.| communities was needful, if England was ever to become a great and united nation. We must remember that the kingdom, like all our ancient divisions, from the shire, perhaps from the hundred, upwards, was formed by the 98aggregation of smaller divisions.^[130] The unit is the mark, roughly represented by the modern parish or manor. The shire must not be looked on as a division of the kingdom,^[131] nor the hundred or the mark as a division of the shire. |Shires formed out of Marks, and Kingdoms out of Shires.| The hundred is in truth formed by an aggregation of marks, the shire by an aggregation of hundreds, the kingdom by an aggregation of shires. The aggregation of marks into shires is indeed mainly to be inferred from local nomenclature and from the analogy of other Teutonic countries; but the aggregation of shires into kingdoms is |The Mark-system probably less perfect in England than elsewhere.| matter of recorded history. It is even possible that the circumstances of the English Conquest of Britain may have hindered the mark from ever possessing the same amount of independence in England which it possessed in the older Teutonic lands. When every English settlement had to defend itself, and if possible to extend itself, in the teeth of a hostile Welsh population, the different settlements must have kept up a very close union; there must have been from the beginning, if not centralization, yet at any rate something like federation. The first followers of Cerdic no doubt settled themselves in marks, forming self-governing communities; but all must have held themselves ready to march at Cerdic’s bidding, whenever it was needful to repel an inroad of the Welsh, whenever things promised well for a fresh inroad upon them. Still such communities, the mark and the shire, however dependent externally on some central authority, were doubtless internally self-governed from the beginning. 99We have already seen^[132] how shires, ruled each one by its own Ealdorman, came together into kingdoms under a single |Formation of the greater Kingdoms.| King. We have seen also that the nature of the process differed in different parts of the country, that in Mercia, for instance, wholly independent states were thus brought into union, while in Wessex, though there were many Ealdormen and even many Kings, there was still a certain unity from the first. There was always a head King of the West-Saxons, and all the Under-kings were most likely Æthelings of the blood of Cerdic. Gradually the connexion became closer, the process no doubt being quicker in Wessex than in Mercia or Northumberland. The head King became the only King, the only independent executive; and the assembly of his Witan became the only independent legislature. In place of Kings, independent or dependent, the shires received Ealdormen, named by the King and his Witan, and liable to be removed by |Process of amalgamation; royal officers in the Shires.| them. The folkland of the shire became the folkland of the whole kingdom. A crowd of royal officers^[133] of various ranks, whose main duty was to look after the royal interests, were scattered over all parts of the country. The Ealdorman still remained, the shadow of ancient kingship, and so far the representative of local independence. But beside him arose a new officer, the Scírgerefa, Shirereeve, or Sheriff, the immediate officer of the King, the agent of the central authority, the representative of the dependence of each local division on the common King and Assembly of the nation. Once the shires were the units, out of 100the union of which the kingdom was formed; now the kingdom forms a new whole, of which the shires have sunk to be mere administrative divisions. In Mercia we have seen^[134] that, after the Danish conquest, the country was artificially mapped out again into fresh shires, which must have been felt to be still more completely mere administrative divisions than those West-Saxon shires which had once been separate principalities.

By these means those great kingdoms were formed which produced Bretwaldas and which strove for the supremacy of Britain. Each stage of union increased the kingly power; each stage lessened the independence of local communities and lessened the importance of their |Democratic constitution of the old Assemblies.| individual members. The democratic character of the old Teutonic system contained the seeds of its own destruction, whenever it should be applied to districts of any great extent. We may be sure that every Teutonic freeman had |The Assembly of the Mark,| a voice in the assembly—the Gemót, the Gemeinde, the Ekklêsia—of his own mark. In fact he in some sort keeps it still, as holding his place in the parish vestry. He had a voice; it might be too much to say that he had a vote; for in an early state of things formal divisions are not likely to be often taken; the temper of the assembly is found out by easier means. But the man who clashed his arms to express approval, or who joined in the unmistakeable sound which expressed dissent,^[135] practically gave as efficient a vote as if he had solemnly walked out into a lobby. The Homeric Agorê is the type of every 101such assembly, and the likeness of the Homeric Agorê may |of the Shire.| be seen in an English county-meeting to this day.^[136] The voice which the simple freeman, the ceorl, had in the assembly of his mark, he would not lose in the assembly of his shire, the Scirgemót. The county court is to this |The right becomes less valuable with each extension of area.| day an assembly of all the freeholders of the shire.^[137] But the right of attending the assembly of the shire would become really less valuable than the right of attending the assembly of the mark. The larger the assembly, the more distant the place of meeting, the more difficult, and therefore the more rare, does the attendance of individual members become, and the smaller is the importance of each individual member when he gets there. We cannot doubt that the assemblies of the mark, of the shire, and of the kingdom all went on side by side: but at each stage of union the competence of the inferior assembly |Every freeman had a theoretical right to attend the National Assembly.| would be narrowed. We cannot doubt that every freeman kept in theory the right of appearing in the assembly of the kingdom, no less than in the assemblies of the mark and of the shire. Expressions are found which are quite enough to show that the mass of the people were theoretically looked on as present in the national assembly and as consenting to its decrees.^[138] But such a right of |The right goes practically out of use.| attendance necessarily became a mere name. The mass of the people could not attend; they would not care to attend, they would find themselves of no account if they did attend. They would therefore, without any formal abrogation of their right, gradually cease from attending. The idea of representation had not yet arisen; those who did not appear in person had no means of appearing by deputy; of election or delegation there is not the slightest 102trace, though it might often happen that those who stayed away might feel that their rich or official neighbour who went would attend to their wishes and would fairly act in their interests. By this process an originally democratic assembly, without any formal exclusion of any class of its members, gradually shrank up into an aristocratic assembly. I trust that I have shown in another work^[139] how, under closely analogous circumstances, the Federal Assembly of Achaia, legally open to every Achaian citizen, was commonly attended only by those who were both rich and zealous, and how it often happened that the members of the inner body, the Senate, themselves alone formed the |The Assembly practically an Assembly of the King’s Thegns.| assembly. In the same way, an assembly of all the freemen of Wessex, when those freemen could not attend personally and when they had no means of attending by representatives, gradually changed into an assembly attended by few or none but the King’s Thegns. The great officers of Church and State, Ealdormen, Bishops, Abbots, would attend; the ordinary Thegns would attend more laxly, but still in considerable numbers; the King would preside; a few leading men would discuss; the general mass of the Thegns, whether they formally voted or not, would make their approval or disapproval practically felt; |Vestiges of the old popular rights.| no doubt the form still remained of at least announcing the resolutions taken to any of the ordinary freemen whom curiosity had drawn to the spot; most likely the form still remained of demanding their ceremonial assent, though 103without any fear that the habitual “Yea, yea,” would ever be exchanged for “Nay, nay.”^[140] It is thus that, in the absence of representation, a democratic franchise, as applied to a large country, gradually becomes unreal or delusive. |Primary Assemblies suited only to small commonwealths.| A primary assembly, an Ekklêsia, a Landesgemeinde, is an excellent institution in a commonwealth so small as to allow of its being really worked with effect. But in any large community it either becomes a tumultuous mob, like the later Roman Comitia or the Florentine Parliament, or else it gradually shrinks up into an aristocratic body, as the old Teutonic assemblies did both in England and on the continent. When the great statesmen of the thirteenth century, Earl Simon and King Edward, fully established the principle of representation, they did but |The Ancient right restored in another shape in the thirteenth century.| bring back the old state of things in another shape. The ordinary freeman had gradually lost his right of personal attendance in the national assembly; it was inexpedient and impossible to restore that right to him in its original shape; he may be looked on as having in the thirteenth century legally surrendered it, and as having received in its stead the far more practical right of attending by his representatives.

Thus was formed that famous assembly of our forefathers, called by various names, the Mycel Gemót or Great Meeting, the Witenagemót^[141] or Meeting of the Wise, sometimes 104the Mycel Getheaht or Great Thought.^[142] |The Witenagemót.| But the common title of those who compose it is simply the Witan, the Sapientes or Wise Men. In every English kingdom we find the royal power narrowly limited by the necessity under which the King lay of acting in all matters of importance by the consent and authority of his Witan, in other words, of his Parliament. |The Gemót of Wessex becomes the general Legislature, those, of the other kingdoms surviving as local bodies.| As the other kingdoms merged in Wessex, the Witan of the other kingdoms became entitled to seats in the Gemót of Wessex, now become the common Gemót of the Empire. But just as in the case of the assemblies of the mark and the shire, so the Gemóts of the other Kingdoms seem to have gone on as local bodies, dealing with local affairs, and perhaps giving a formal assent to the resolutions of the central body.^[143] |Lack of information as to the constitution of the Assembly.| As to the constitution of these great councils in any English kingdom our information is of the vaguest kind. The members are always spoken of in the loosest way. We find the Witan constantly assembling, constantly passing laws, but we find no law prescribing or defining the constitution of the assembly itself. We find no trace of representation or election; we find no trace of any property qualification;^[144] we find no trace of nomination by the crown, except in so far as all the great officers of the court and the kingdom were constantly present. On the other hand we have seen that all the leading men, Ealdormen, Bishops, Abbots, and a considerable 105body of other Thegns, did attend; we have seen that the people as a body had in some way a share in the legislative acts of their chiefs, that those acts were in some sort the acts of the people themselves, to which they had themselves assented, and were not merely the edicts of superiors which they had to obey. There is no doubt that, on some particular occasions, some classes at least of the people did actually take a part in the proceedings of the national council; thus the citizens of London are more than once recorded to have taken a share in the election of Kings.^[145] No theory that I know of will explain all these phænomena except that which I have just tried to draw out. This is, that every freeman had an abstract right to be present, but that any actual share in the proceedings of the assembly had, gradually and imperceptibly, come to be confined to the leading men, to the King’s Thegns, strengthened, under peculiarly favourable circumstances, by the presence of exceptional classes of freemen, like the London citizens.^[146] It is therefore utterly vain for any political party to try to press the supposed constitution of our ancient national councils into the service |The Witenagemót proves nothing in modern political controversies.| of modern political warfare. The Meeting of the Wise has not a word to utter for or against any possible Reform Bill. In one sense it was more democratic than anything that the most advanced Liberal would dare to dream of; in another sense it was more oligarchic than anything that the most unbending Conservative would dare to defend. Yet it may in practice have fairly represented the wishes of the nation; and if so, no people ever enjoyed more complete political freedom, than the English did in these early times. |Extent of the powers of the Assembly; greater than those of a modern Parliament.| For the powers of the ancient Witenagemót^[147] surpassed beyond all measure the powers which 106our written law vests in a modern Parliament. In some respects they surpassed the powers which our conventional constitution vests in a modern House of Commons. The King could do absolutely nothing without the consent of his Wise Men. First of all, it was from them that he derived his political being, and it was on them that he depended for its continuance. The Witan chose the King and the |Power of deposing the King.| Witan could depose him. The power of deposition is a power which, from its very nature, can be exercised but rarely; we therefore do not find many Kings deposed by Act of Parliament either before or since the Norman Conquest. But we do find instances, both before and since the Norman Conquest, which show that, by the ancient constitution of England, the Witan of the land did possess the right of deposing the sovereign, and that on great and emergent occasions they did not shrink from exercising that right. I will not attempt to grapple with the confused history of Northumberland, where at one time Kings were set up |Instances in Northumberland;| and put down almost daily. Such revolutions were doubtless as much the result of force as of any legal process; still we can hardly doubt that the legal forms were commonly observed, and sometimes we find it distinctly recorded that they were. Let us keep ourselves to the more certain history of the line of Cerdic. Five times—we |in Wessex.| might more truly say six times—thrice before and twice since the Norman Conquest, has the King of the West-Saxons or of the English been deprived of his |Sigeberht. 755.| kingly office by the voice of his Parliament.^[148] Sigeberht of Wessex, in the eighth century, was deposed by the vote of the general assembly of his kingdom, and another King |Æthelred deposed, 1013; restored, 1014.| was elected in his stead. Æthelred the Second was deposed by one act of the Legislature and restored by another. Harthacnut, in the like sort, was deposed, while still uncrowned, from his West-Saxon kingdom, though he 107|Harthacnut deposed, 1037; re-elected, 1040.| was afterwards re-elected to the whole kingdom of England. |Edward the Second deposed, 1327; Richard the Second, 1377.| Edward the Second was deposed by Parliament; so was Richard the Second. At a later time the Parliament |Case of James the Second.| of England shrank from the formal deposition of James the Second, and took refuge in a theory of abdication which, though logically absurd, practically did all that was wanted. But the Parliament of Scotland had no such scruples, and that body, in full conformity with ancient examples, declared the crown of Scotland to be forfeited. In a land where everything goes by precedent, a right resting on a tradition like this, though its actual exercise may have taken place only five or six times in nine hundred years, is surely as well established as any other. Under our modern constitution the right is likely to remain dormant. The objects which in past times required the deposition of the King, if not from his office, at least from his authority, can now be gained by a parliamentary censure of the Prime Minister, or in the extremest case by bringing an impeachment against him.

If the Witan could depose the King, still more undoubtedly did the Witan elect the King.^[149] It is strange how people’s eyes are blinded on this subject. It is not uncommon to hear people talk about the times before and shortly after the Norman Conquest as if the Act for the Settlement of the Royal Succession had already been in force in those days. It is strange to hear a number of princes, both before and since the Conquest, popularly spoken of as “usurpers,” merely because they came to the crown in a different way from that which modern law and |Popular misconceptions on this subject.| custom prescribe. It is strange that people who talk in this way commonly forget that their own principle, so far as it proves anything, proves a great deal more than they intend. If Harold, Stephen, John, were usurpers, Ælfred 108and Eadward the Confessor were usurpers just as much. Ælfred and Eadward, no less than John, succeeded by election, to the exclusion of nephews whom the modern law of England would look upon as the undoubted heirs of the crown. It is stranger still to hear others talk as if hereditary succession, according to some particular theory of it, was a divine and eternal law which could not be departed from without sin. Those who talk in this way should at least tell us what the divine and unchangeable law of succession is; for in a purely historical view of things, nearly every kingdom seems to have a law of succession of its own. Our forefathers at any rate knew nothing of any such superstitions. The ancient English kingship was elective. It was elective in the same sense in which all the old Teutonic kingdoms were elective. Among a people in whose eyes birth was highly valued, it was deemed fitting that the King should be the descendant of illustrious and royal forefathers. In the days of heathendom it was held that the King should come of the supposed |Kings commonly chosen out of a particular family.| stock of the Gods. Thus in every kingdom there was a kingly house, out of which alone, under all ordinary circumstances, Kings were chosen; but within that kingly house the Witan of the land had a free choice. The |The eldest son of the last King has a preference, but no more.| eldest son of the last King would doubtless always have a preference; if he was himself at all worthy of the place, if his father’s memory was at all cherished, he would commonly be preferred without hesitation, probably chosen without the appearance of any other candidate. But a preference was all to which he was entitled, and he seems not to have been entitled even to a preference unless he |Minors constantly passed by.| was actually the son of a crowned King.^[150] If he were too young, or otherwise disqualified, the electors passed him by and chose some worthier member of the royal family. 109Ælfred and Eadred were chosen in preference to the minor sons of elder brothers. Eadward the Confessor was chosen in preference to the absent son of an elder brother. At the death of Eadgar, when the royal family contained only minors to choose from, the electors were divided between the elder and the younger brother. Minors who had been once passed by might or might not be elected at a later vacancy. Æthelwold, the son of Æthelred the First, who had been passed by in favour of his uncle Ælfred, was again passed by on Ælfred’s death, because no claim could compare with that of Eadward, the worthy son of the most glorious of fathers. The children of Eadmund were passed by in favour of their uncle Eadred, but on Eadred’s death the |A certain preference acquired by the recommendation of the last King.| choice fell on the formerly excluded Eadwig. And as a certain preference was acquired by birth, a certain preference was acquired by the recommendation of the late King. So Eadgar recommended his elder son Eadward to the electors; so Eadward the Confessor recommended Harold. Æthelwulf had long before attempted, by the help of a will confirmed by the Witan, to establish a peculiar law of succession, which soon broke down.^[151] But it is clear that a certain importance was attached to the wishes of a deceased and respected King, as conveying a distinct preference. But it conveyed nothing more than a preference; the person who enjoyed such preference, whether by birth or by nomination, could still be passed by without breach of constitutional right. From these principles it follows that, as any disqualified person in the kingly house might be passed by, so, if the whole house were disqualified, the whole house might be passed by. |Harold the son of Godwine lawfully chosen.| That is to say, the election of Harold the son of Godwine, the central point of this history, was perfectly good in 110every point of view. The earlier election of Cnut was |Cnut’s election good in form, but made under duresse.| equally good in point of form; only it was an election under duresse—duresse a little, but not much, stronger than that under which an English Chapter elects its Bishop.

An ancient English King then was, not the father of his people, but their child, their creation. And the assembly which had elected him, and which could depose him, claimed to direct him by its advice and authority |Direct share of the Witan in every branch of government.| in almost every exercise of the kingly power. Every act of government of any importance was done, not by the King alone, but by the King and his Witan. The Great Council of the nation took an active share even in those branches of government which modern constitutional theories mark out as the special domain of the Executive. That laws were ordained, and taxes imposed,^[152] by the authority of the Witan, that they sat as the highest court for the trial of exalted and dangerous offenders, is only what we should look for from the analogy of modern times. It is more important to find that the King and his Witan, and not the King alone, concluded treaties, made grants of folkland, ordained the assemblage of fleets and armies, appointed and deposed the great officers of Church and State. Of the exercise of all these powers 111by the assembled Witan we shall find abundant examples in the course of this history. Now these are the very powers which a modern House of Commons shrinks from |Difference between the direct and indirect action of Parliament.| directly exercising. These are the powers which, under our present system, Parliament prefers to entrust to ministers in whom it has confidence, ministers whom it virtually appoints, and whom it can virtually dismiss without any formal ceremony of deposition. And, in our present state of things, little or no harm, and some direct good, comes from Parliament preferring an indirect course of action |Direct action necessary in early times.| on these subjects. But in an earlier state of things, a more direct agency of the Parliament or other national assembly is absolutely necessary. The assembly has to deal, not with a ministry whom it can create and destroy without any formal action, but with a personal King, whom it has indeed elected and whom it can depose, but whose election and deposition are solemn national acts, his deposition indeed being the rarest and most extreme of all national acts. In such a state of things the power of the King may be strictly limited by law; but, within the limits which the law prescribes to him, he acts according to his own will and pleasure, or according to the advice of counsellors who are purely of his own choosing. In such a state of things the King and the nation are brought face to face, and it is needful that the national assembly should have a much more direct control over affairs than is at all needful when the ingenious device of a responsible ministry is interposed between King and Parliament. Long after the days of our ancient Witenagemóts, in the days of Edward the Third for instance, Parliament was consulted about wars and negotiations in a much more direct way than it is now. The control of Parliament over the Executive is certainly not less effective now than it was then; but the nature of our present system makes it desirable that the control of Parliament should be exercised in a less 112direct way than it was then. Our present system avoids, above all things, all possibility of direct personal collision between Parliament and the sovereign. But such direct personal collisions form the staple of English history from the thirteenth century onwards. In earlier times we seldom come across any record of the debates of our national councils, though we often know their determinations. How far such collisions commonly took place in early times^[153] we have but small means of knowing. They were perhaps less to be looked for in the tenth or eleventh century than in the thirteenth or fourteenth. In the later times the King had to deal with his Parliament as with something external to himself, something which laid petitions before him which he could accept or reject at pleasure. A struggle in those days was a struggle between the King and an united Parliament. Nowadays, as we all know, the struggle takes place within the walls of Parliament itself. But we can well believe that, in this respect as in so many others, the earliest times were really more like our own |Joint action of the King and the Witan.| than the intermediate centuries were. An ancient Witenagemót did not petition; it decreed; it confirmed the acts of the King which, without the assent of the Witan, had no validity; it was not a body external to the King, but a body of which the King was the head in a much more direct sense than he could be said to be the head of a later mediæval Parliament. The King and his Witan acted together; the King could do nothing without the Witan, and the Witan could do nothing without the King; they were no external, half-hostile, body; they 113were his own council, surrounding and advising him. Direct collisions between the King on the one hand and an united Gemót on the other were not likely to be common. And as to the great powers of the Witenagemót, as to its direct participation in all important acts of government, there can be no doubt. They are legibly |Diminution of parliamentary action after the Conquest.| written in every page of our early history. The vast increase of the power of the crown after the Norman Conquest, the gradual growth of a systematic feudal jurisprudence, did much to lessen the authority and dignity of the national councils. The idea of a nation and its chief, of a King and his counsellors, almost died away; the King became half despot, half mere feudal lord. England was never without national assemblies of some kind or other; but from the Conquest in the eleventh century till the second birth of freedom in the thirteenth, our national assemblies do not stand out in the same distinct and living shape in which they stand out both in earlier |The old freedom won back in the thirteenth century.| and in later times. Here again we owe our thanks to those illustrious worthies, from the authors of the Great Charter onwards, who, in so many ways, won back for us our ancient constitution in another shape. I have said that no political party can draw any support for its own peculiar theories from that obscurest of subjects, the constitution of the Witenagemót. But no lover of our old historic freedom can see without delight how venerable a thing that freedom is, how vast and how ancient are the rights and powers of an English Parliament. Our ancient Gemóts enjoyed every power of a modern Parliament, together with some powers which modern Parliaments shrink from claiming. Even such a matter of detail as the special security granted to the persons of members of the two Houses has been traced, and not without a show of probability, to an enactment which stands at the very front of English secular jurisprudence, 114the second among the laws ordained by our first Christian King and the Witan of his kingdom of Kent.^[154]

As the powers of the Witan were thus extensive, as the King could do no important act of government without their consent, some may hastily leap to the conclusion that an ancient English King was a mere puppet in the hands of the national council. No inference could be more mistaken. Nothing is clearer in our early history than the personal agency of the King in everything that is done, and the unspeakable difference between a good and |Vast importance of the personal character of the King.| a bad King. The truth is that in an early state of society almost everything depends on the personal character of the King. An able King is practically absolute; under a weak King the government falls into utter anarchy. Change the scene, as we shall presently do in our narrative, from the days of Eadgar to those of Æthelred—change it again from the long, dreary, hopeless, reign of Æthelred to the few months of ceaseless energy which form the reign of the hero Eadmund—compare the nine months of Harold with the two months which followed his fall—and we shall see how the whole fate of the nation turned upon the personal character of its sovereign. With such witnesses before us, we can the better understand how our forefathers would have scouted the thought—if the thought had ever occurred to them—of risking the destiny of the nation on the accidents of strict hereditary succession, and how wisely they determined that the King must be, if not the worthiest of the nation, at any rate the worthiest of the kingly house. The unhappy reign of Æthelred showed the bad side of even that limited application of the hereditary principle which was all that they admitted. Under her great Kings England had risen from her 115momentary overthrow to an Imperial dominion. At home she had a strong and united government, and her position in the face of other nations was one which made her alliance to be courted by the foremost princes of Europe. The accession of the minor son of Eadgar, a child who, except in his crimes and vices, never got beyond childhood, dragged down the glorious fabric into the dust. So greatly did national welfare and national misfortune depend on the personal character of the King. The King, it is true, could do nothing without his Witan; but as his Witan could do nothing without him, he was not a shadow or a puppet, but a most important personal agent. He was no more a puppet than the Leader of the House of Commons is a puppet. We may be sure that the King and his immediate advisers always had a practical initiative, and that the body of the Witan did little but accept |Overwhelming personal influence of an able King.| or reject their proposals. We may be sure that a King fit for his place, an Ælfred or an Æthelstan, met with nothing that could be called opposition, but wielded the assembly at his will. Princes clothed with far smaller constitutional powers than those of an ancient English King have become the ruling spirits of commonwealths which denied them any kind of independent action. Agêsilaos guided the policy of Sparta, and Francesco Foscari guided the policy of Venice,^[155] with a personal influence almost as commanding as that which Periklês exercised in the pure democracy of Athens or Aratos in the mixed constitution of the Achaian League. So when a great King sat on the West-Saxon throne, we may be sure that, while every constitutional form was strictly observed,^[156] the votes of the Witan were guided in everything by the will of the King. But when the King had 116no will, or a will which the Witan could not consent to, then the machine gave way, and nothing was to be seen |Importance of the King as the Executive.| but confusion and every evil work.^[157] Again, the King was not only the first mover, he was also the main doer of everything. The Witan decreed, but it was the King who carried out their decrees. Weighty as was the influence of his personal character on the nature of the resolutions to be passed, its influence was weightier still on the way in which those resolutions were to be carried out. Under a good King counsel and execution went hand in hand; under a weak or wicked King there was no place found for either. Sometimes disgraceful resolutions were passed; sometimes wise and good resolutions were never carried into effect. The Witan under Æthelred sometimes voted money to buy off the Danes, sometimes they voted armies to fight against them; but, with Æthelred to carry out their votes, it mattered little what their |Influence of the King as Hlaford of all the chief men.| votes were. Add to all this the boundless influence which attached to the King from his having all the chief men of the land bound to him by the personal tie of thegnship. He was the Cyne-hlaford, at once the King of the nation and the personal lord of each individual. Though his grants of folkland and his nominations to the highest offices needed the assent of the Witan, yet in these matters above all his initiative would be undoubted; the Witan had only to confirm, and they would seldom be tempted to reject, the proposals which the King laid before them. He was not less the fountain of honour and the fountain of wealth, because in the disposal of both he had certain decent ceremonies to go through. |General importance and influence of the King.| Add to all this that in unsettled times there is a special chance, both of acts of actual oppression which the law 117is not strong enough to redress, and of acts of energy beyond the law which the nation easily forgives in the case of a victorious and beloved prince. Altogether, narrowly limited as were the legal powers of an ancient English King, his will, or lack of will, had the main influence on the destinies of the nation, and his personal character was of as much moment to the welfare of the state as the personal character of an absolute ruler.

The King and his Witan then, in their joint action, formed the supreme legislature and the supreme tribunal |England strictly one kingdom, but much local independence retained by the incorporated kingdoms.| of the English kingdom. That kingdom, from the days of Æthelstan onwards, took in the whole Teutonic portion of Britain, together with those Celtic lands to the south-west which had been incorporated and to a great extent Teutonized. This whole region, at least from the overthrow of the last Northumbrian King under Eadred, formed in the strictest sense one kingdom; the revolt of the Mercians against Eadwig was only a momentary interruption of its unity. The ancient divisions were indeed by no means forgotten; above all, the great Danish land beyond the Humber still retained a lively memory of its former independence. Both Northumberland and the other incorporated kingdoms kept much of the form of distinct states; each state had its local Witenagemót, presided over by its local Ealdorman or Earl, who exercised, by commission from the King and his Witan, full royal authority within his own province. But I have already explained that, vast as were the powers of an ancient Ealdorman, he was still only a great magistrate, not a prince, even a dependent prince. The whole land formed one kingdom under one King, and the King and his Witan held direct authority 118in every corner of it. But this kingdom of the English was not the only title and dignity to which the house of |Superiority or Empire of the West-Saxon Kings over all Britain.| Cerdic had attained. The King of the English was also Emperor of the whole isle of Britain. I must now explain somewhat more at length the nature of this British Empire, as distinguished from the English kingdom which was |Statement of the question. First, the fact of the superiority. Secondly, the force of the assumption of strictly Imperial titles.| only part of it. In this inquiry two special points call for notice. There is, first, the fact that the English Kings did exercise a superiority of some kind over the whole of Britain, a fact which has sometimes been called in question by local prejudice. There is, secondly, the question as to the exact nature of that superiority, and as to the motives which led the Kings of the tenth and eleventh centuries to assume distinctively Imperial titles. It must not be forgotten that in those days such titles were not assumed at random; the idea of the Roman Empire was still thoroughly understood, and indeed the Roman Empire itself, both in the East and in the West, was in one of its most flourishing periods.

The fact that the West-Saxon or English Kings, from Eadward the Elder onwards, did exercise an external supremacy over the Celtic princes of the island is a fact too clear to be misunderstood by any one who looks the evidence on |Superiority over Scotland dates from Eadward the Elder. 924.| the matter fairly in the face. I date their supremacy over Scotland from the reign of Eadward the Elder, because there is no certain earlier instance of submission on the part of the Scots to any West-Saxon King. I pass by the |No earlier supremacy in Wessex.| instances of Scottish submission to the earlier Northumbrian Kings, as well as the seeming submission of both Scots and Northumbrians to the Roman Empire itself in the person of Charles the Great.^[158] These instances do not prove the existence of any permanent superiority; they are rather analogous to the temporary and fluctuating superiority of 119this or that Bretwalda over the other English kingdoms. But from the time of Eadward the Elder onwards the case is |Submission of Wales to Ecgberht, 830; to Eadward, 922.| perfectly clear. The submission of Wales dates from the time of Ecgberht; but it evidently received a more distinct and formal acknowledgement in the reign of Eadward. Two years after followed the Commendation of Scotland and |The Welsh and Scottish people concur with their princes in the Commendation.| Strathclyde.^[159] Now it seems to be implied in the case of Wales, and it is still more plainly stated in the case of Scotland and Strathclyde, that the people of both those countries had a share in those acts of their princes by which Eadward was chosen to Father and to Lord. I conceive this to mean that the Scottish and Welsh princes acted in this matter by the consent and authority of whatever body in their own states answered to the Witan in England. In both cases the commendation was a |Nature of Commendation;| solemn national act. I use the feudal word commendation, because that word seems to me better than any other to express the real state of the case. The transaction between Eadward and the Celtic princes was simply an application, on an international scale, of the general principle of the |the relation unaffected by greatness or smallness of scale.| Comitatus. That relation, like all the feudal relations which it helped to form, may be entered into either on the greatest or on the smallest scale. The land which is originally granted out on a feudal tenure, or which its allodial owner finds it expedient to convert into a fief held on feudal tenure, may be a kingdom or it may be a rood of land maintaining its man. So the lord whom a man chooses, and the man who chooses the lord, may be of any possible rank, from the Emperor and the Pope with their vassal Kings down to the smallest Thegn and his neighbouring ceorl. It would even seem that the ceorl himself might be the lord of a poorer ceorl.^[160] The relation is 120exactly the same, whatever may be the rank and power of the parties between whom it is contracted. In every case alike, great or small, faithful service is owing on the one side and faithful protection on the other. In every case alike, great or small, the relation may imply a strictly feudal tenure of land or it may not. Now the Chroniclers, in recording these cases of Welsh and Scottish submission, make use, as if of set purpose, of the familiar legal phrases which express the relation of commendation on the smaller |Process of Commendation on a small scale.| scale. A man “chose his lord;” he sought some one more powerful than himself, with whom he entered into the relation of Comitatus; as feudal ideas strengthened, he commonly surrendered his allodial land to the lord so chosen, and received it back again from him on a feudal tenure. This was the process of commendation, a process of every day occurrence in the case of private men choosing their lords, whether those lords were simple gentlemen or |Instances of Commendation among sovereign princes.| Kings. And the process was equally familiar among sovereign princes themselves.^[161] Almost all the northern and eastern vassals of the Western Empire, some of them of kingly rank,^[162] became vassals by commendation. The commendation was doubtless in many cases far from voluntary, but the legal form was always the same. The lands of these princes were not original grants from the Emperors; but their holders found it expedient to come to terms with their Imperial neighbour, and to place themselves and their lands in the same position as if their lands had really 121been Imperial grants. We might go on to say that the |Commendation of the Normans to Leo the Ninth. 1053.| Norman conquerors of southern Italy commended themselves to the Pope whom they took prisoner, and that the Sicilian kingdoms, on the strength of that commendation, remained for seven hundred years in the position of fiefs |Commendation of England to the Pope by John [1213]; to the Emperor by Richard. 1193.| of the Holy See. The kingdom of England itself was twice commended to a foreign potentate. John, as all the world knows, commended his kingdom to the Pope; and his brother Richard had before that commended it to the Emperor. There was nothing unusual or degrading in the relation; if Scotland, Wales, Strathclyde, commended themselves to the West-Saxon King, they only put themselves in the same relation to their powerful neighbour in which every continental prince stood in theory, and most of them in actual fact, to the Emperor, Lord of the World. |Homage of Odo the West-Frank to Arnulf. 888.| Not to speak of a crowd of smaller instances, Odo, King of the West-Franks, commended himself to Arnulf of Germany, just as Howel and Constantine commended themselves to Eadward of Wessex. And this commendation was made before Arnulf became Emperor and Lord of the World, while he was still the simple King of the Eastern Franks.^[163] The commendation of Scotland and Strathclyde was, in form at least, a perfectly voluntary act, done with the full consent of the nations interested. The kingdom of Strathclyde soon came to an end, and with the Welsh of Wales proper no lasting relations of any kind |Relations between England and Scotland as friendly as was usual in such cases.| could be kept up. But between the English over-lord and his Scottish vassal the mutual compact was not worse kept than it commonly was in such cases. It was often broken and often renewed; but this was no more than happened always and everywhere in those turbulent times. The relations between the English Basileus and the King of 122Scots were at least as friendly as the relations which existed in the tenth century between the King of the West-Franks |The claims of Edward the First in 1291 rest on the Commendation to Eadward the Elder in 924.| and his dangerous vassals at Paris and Rouen. The original commendation to the Eadward of the tenth century, confirmed by a series of acts of submission spread over the whole of the intermediate time, is the true justification for the acts of his glorious namesake in the thirteenth century.^[164] The only difference was that, during that time, feudal notions had greatly developed on both sides; the original commendation of the Scottish King and people to a lord, had changed, in the ideas of both sides, into a |Change of ideas in the meanwhile.| feudal tenure of the land of the Scottish kingdom. But this change was simply the universal change which had come over all such relations everywhere. That this point, the only point which could with any justice have been brought forward against Edward on the Scottish side, never was brought forward shows how completely the ancient notion of commendation had gone out of mind.^[165] But the principal point at issue, the right of the over-lord to decide between two claimants of the vassal kingdom, rested on excellent precedents in the reigns of Eadward the Confessor and of William Rufus. Altogether the vassalage—to use the most convenient word—of Scotland from the |924–1328.| commendation to Eadward to the treaty of Northampton |Threefold relation of the King of Scots to the English Crown.| is one of the best authenticated facts in history. But it is here needful to point out two other distinct events which have often been confounded with the commendation of Scotland, a confusion through which the real state of the 123case has often been misunderstood. In the eleventh century at least, if not in the tenth, the King of Scots stood to his English over-lord in a threefold relation, grounded on three distinct acts which are popularly confounded. In this matter, as in so many others, prevalent ignorance is strengthened by inattention to historical geography. As it is hard to make people understand that there has not always been a kingdom of France including Marseilles and Strassburg, perhaps even including Nizza and Chambery, so it is hard to make people understand that there were not always kingdoms of England and Scotland, with the Tweed and the Cheviot Hills as the boundaries between them. It must be borne in mind that in the tenth century no such boundaries were known, and that the very names of England and Scotland were only just beginning to be |Geography of Scotland, Strathclyde, and Lothian in the tenth century.| heard. At the time of the commendation the country which is now called Scotland was divided among three quite distinct sovereignties. North of the Forth and Clyde reigned the King of Scots, an independent Celtic prince reigning over a Celtic people, the Picts and Scots, the exact relation between which two tribes is a matter of perfect indifference to my present purpose. South of the two great firths the Scottish name and the Scottish dominion were unknown. The south-western part of modern Scotland formed part of the kingdom of the Strathclyde Welsh, which up to 924 was, like the kingdom of the |Relations of the three to one another and to the English Crown.| Scots, an independent Celtic principality. The south-eastern part of modern Scotland, Lothian in the wide sense of the word, was purely English, as in language it remains to this day. It was part of the kingdom of Northumberland, and it had its share in all the revolutions of that kingdom. In the year 924 Lothian, like the rest of Northumberland, was subject only to that precarious superiority on the part of Wessex which had been handed on from Ecgberht and Ælfred, In the year 924, when the 124three kingdoms, Scotland, Strathclyde, and Northumberland, all commended themselves to Eadward, the relation was something new on the part of Scotland and Strathclyde; but on the part of Lothian, as an integral part of Northumberland, it was only a renewal of the relation which had been formerly entered into with Ecgberht and Ælfred. It is not uncommon to hear the vassalage of Scotland proper, that is, the land north of the Forth and Clyde, mixed up with questions about Cumberland and Lothian. But, at the time of the Commendation of 924, Lothian stood in no relation at all towards Scotland, except that of simple, most likely not very friendly, neighbourhood. Strathclyde |Since 908.| was already ruled by princes of the Scottish royal house,^[166] but it was still a kingdom quite independent of Scotland. The transactions which brought Scotland, Strathclyde, and Lothian into their relations to one another and to the English crown were quite distinct from each other. They were as follows:—

First, The Commendation of the King and people of the Scots to Eadward in 924.

Secondly, The Grant of Cumberland by Eadmund to Malcolm in 945.

Thirdly, The grant of Lothian to the Scottish Kings, either under Eadgar or under Cnut.

These three events are perfectly distinct, and the relations created by them are perfectly distinct; but, as always happens when several relations and tenures co-exist, the three gradually got confounded together, both in idea and in fact. Both in popular conception and in the hands of partizan Scottish writers, the second of these three events is made to obscure the other two. The grant by an English King to a Scottish King of a country described as Cumberland is something too clear to be denied; that the Scottish princes held their Cumbrian dominions as a fief of the 125English crown, that they did homage for them to the English King, no Scottish writer has ever ventured to call in doubt.^[167] In truth there seems never to have been any wish to call this fact in doubt, because the Cumbrian homage, put forth sometimes even in an exaggerated shape, has formed a convenient means of escape from the fact of the homage for Scotland proper and from the fact of the purely English character of Lothian. And the confusion of geographical terms comes conveniently in. In modern language Cumberland means a single shire which for ages has been undoubtedly English. In modern language Lothian means three shires which for ages have been undoubtedly Scottish. People are thus led to believe that Lothian was from all time an integral part of Scotland, and also that the homage done by the Scottish to the English King was done only for the county of Cumberland as an integral part of England. But in the language of the year 945 Lothian was still an integral portion of England; Cumberland meant a country, part of which is now English and part Scottish, but which up to that time was neither English nor Scottish, but the seat of a distinct Welsh principality. By Cumberland in short is meant, not merely the modern English county so called, but all northern Strathclyde; that is, modern Cumberland together |Circumstances of the grant of Cumberland or Strathclyde.| with a considerable portion of modern Scotland. In 945 the reigning King Donald revolted against his over-lord Eadmund; he was overthrown and his kingdom ravaged;^[168] it was then granted on tenure of military service to Donald’s kinsman Malcolm King of Scots. Malcolm could hardly have earned this favour except by sharing in the war against Donald, which indeed his actual relation to the English crown bound him to do. For a long time the fief then granted was granted out again by the Scottish Kings as an apanage for their own 126heirs-apparent. The southern part of this territory was afterwards, as we shall see at a later stage of our history, |The part kept by Scotland becomes merged in the Scottish kingdom.| annexed to England; the northern part was kept by the Scottish Kings, and was gradually, though very gradually, incorporated with their own kingdom. The distinction between the two states seems to have been quite forgotten in the thirteenth century; neither side in the controversies of that time drew any distinction between the tenure of Fife and the tenure of Galloway; the claims of the English crown were asserted, admitted, or denied, |Original distinction between the position of Strathclyde or Cumberland, and the position of Scotland proper.| equally with regard to both. Yet the relations between England and Scotland proper and the relations between England and Strathclyde or Cumberland, though much the same in their nature, were wholly different in their origin. The relation in which Scotland stood to England was one of commendation; the relation in which Cumberland stood to England was one of original grant. This last fact marks a distinct advance in feudal ideas. Cumberland was from the beginning a real territorial fief. Eadward did not grant Scotland to Constantine, because Scotland had never been his; but Constantine and his people, by their own act, put themselves in the same position as if it had been so granted. But Eadmund really did grant Cumberland to Malcolm; he granted him a territory which he had himself conquered, and which he might have kept in his own hands. Cumberland in short—including, as must not be forgotten, the south-western shires of modern Scotland—was held by the Scottish King or his son as a feudal benefice in the strictest sense.

Cumberland then was truly a fief of the crown of England, but it was not a fief held within the kingdom of England. This last position, popularly thought to be the position of Cumberland, was really the position of Lothian. The date of the grant of Lothian is not perfectly 127clear.^[169] But whatever was the date of the grant, there can |Lothian an integral part of England.| be no doubt at all as to its nature. Lothian, an integral part of England, could be granted only as any other part of England could be granted, namely to be held as part of England, its ruler being in the position of an English Earl. If the grant was really made by Eadgar, this is still more likely to be the case, on account of the unusual friendliness of the relations between Eadgar and Kenneth. Eadgar might well grant, and Kenneth might well accept, a purely English government, held by a tenure which would bind him still more closely to his English over-lord than either his commendatory relation for Scotland |Lothian gradually separated from England and merged in Scotland.| or his feudal relation for Strathclyde. But in such a grant the seeds of separation were sown. A part of the kingdom which was governed by a foreign sovereign, on whatever terms of dependence, could not long remain in the position of a province governed by an ordinary Earl. The King of Scots, though holding all his dominions by various kinds of dependent tenure, could not be dealt with in any portion of them like a simple Earl of the Northumbrians. That the possession of Lothian would under all ordinary circumstances remain hereditary, must have been looked for from the beginning. This alone would distinguish Lothian from all other earldoms. Though it was very common to appoint the son of a deceased Ealdorman to his father’s dignity, still he had not so much as a preferential claim; the office was held altogether at the pleasure of the King and his Witan. But when a province was once granted to a foreign prince, even though that prince remained a feudatory of the English crown, this kind of control was parted with for ever, or could be won back only at the cost of war. |Distinction between Scotland, Strathclyde, and Lothian gradually forgotten.| Lothian could not fail to become an hereditary dominion of the Scottish Kings; it could not fail gradually to lose its distinct 128character and the remembrance of its distinct tenure, and to be gradually merged in the mass of the other dominions of its rulers. By the time of the great controversy of the thirteenth century the distinction seems to have been forgotten on both sides, exactly as it was in the case of Strathclyde. The claims of the English King were the same over the whole country, over Scotland, Strathclyde, and Lothian; they were put forward as a whole, and they were accepted or rejected as a whole. Yet, when we weigh the claims of Edward the First by the letter of the compacts of the tenth century, if we pronounce them to go a little beyond the mark in the case of Scotland proper, we must equally pronounce them to fall a little under the mark in the case of Lothian. The fact is that the progress of feudal ideas had wiped out the distinction, and had brought all tenures to the same level. The alternative by that time had come to be whether Scotland, as a whole, that is, Scotland proper, Scottish Strathclyde, and Lothian, should be a fief of England or an independent kingdom. That Scotland, Strathclyde, and Lothian were originally all dependencies of England, but held in three different degrees of dependence, had passed out of mind on both sides.

It was then to be expected that Lothian, when once granted to the King of Scots, should gradually be merged in the kingdom of Scotland. But the peculiar and singular destiny of this country could hardly have been looked for. |Lothian becomes the historical Scotland.| Neither Eadgar nor Kenneth could dream that this purely English province would become the historical Scotland. The different tenures of Scotland and Lothian got confounded; the Kings of Scots, from the end of the eleventh century, became English in manners and language; they were not without some claims to the crown of England, and not without some hopes of winning it. They thus learned to attach more and more value to the English 129part of their dominions, and they laboured to spread its language and manners over their original Celtic territory. They kept their ancient title of Kings of Scots, but they became in truth Kings of English Lothian and of Anglicized Fife. A state was thus formed, politically distinct from England and which political circumstances gradually made bitterly hostile to England—a state which indeed kept on a dark and mysterious Celtic background, but which, as it appears in history, is English in laws, language, and manners, more truly English indeed, in many respects, than England itself remained after the Norman Conquest. As in so many other cases, the people took the name of their sovereign; the English subjects of the King of Scots learned to call themselves Scots and their country Scotland. Meanwhile the true Scots to the north of them, the original subjects of the Scottish dynasty, forsaken as it were by their natural princes, became the standing difficulty of their government. The true Scots are known in history only as a mass of turbulent tribes, alien in customs, language, and feeling from those who had taken their name—tribes which the Kings of Dunfermline and Edinburgh had much ado to keep in even nominal subjection—tribes which, by a strange turning about of relations, were ready to fight for their English over-lord against the Kings of Dunfermline and Edinburgh. |Analogy between the history of Scotland and of Switzerland.| The history of Scotland is in many respects strikingly analogous to the history of Switzerland. I pass by the singular likeness in the national character of the two peoples, a likeness to be traced alike in the virtues and in the defects of each. I speak only of the outward facts of their history. In the case of Switzerland, parts of the German, Burgundian, and Italian nations were, through a variety of political causes, detached from the main body of their respective countrymen, and became united by a close political tie to one another. They thus 130formed an artificial nation,^[170] a political and historical |Their position as artificial nations.| nation, but not a nation of common blood and speech. In the case of Scotland, portions of the English, Welsh, and Irish^[171] nations were in like manner detached from the main body of their own people; they became in like manner politically connected with one another, and grew in like manner into an artificial nation. In both cases it is often amusing to hear men claim as their forefathers those who were the bitterest enemies of their real forefathers. But in both cases it is more important to mark, what the history both of Switzerland and of Scotland abundantly proves, that an artificial nation of this kind is capable of as true and honourable national feeling as any nation of the most unmixed blood and language. The history both of Switzerland and of Scotland presents so many materials for honest pride that it is a pity that exaggerations and perversions of history should have ever been allowed to step in in either case. And, to cite one point more of likeness, each people has drawn its national name from a very small portion of its territory and population. Switzerland, German, Burgundian, and Italian, has taken its common name from the single small canton of Schwyz. Scotland, English, Welsh, and Gaelic, has taken its common name from the original small colony of Irish Scots who settled on the coast of Argyllshire.

I have dwelt on the Scottish question at length, both because of its intrinsic importance, and because the relations between the crowns of England and Scotland will call for constant notice in the course of our history. The case with regard to Wales is the case of Scotland over 131again. The homage of the Welsh Kings was always due, and was constantly exacted, from the days of Ecgberht and Eadward onwards. The only difference was in the |1283.| final result. Wales was incorporated with the English |1328.| kingdom at the close of the thirteenth century; Scotland obtained perfect independence in the fourteenth. The life of one man made all the difference. The great Edward lived thoroughly to secure his Welsh conquest; before he had thoroughly secured his Scottish conquest, his mission had passed to a son who could not keep his crown on his head at home.

Before we leave this subject, it may be well to remember what the relations between a dependent kingdom and its superior lord really were. The King of the English did not, by virtue of the commendation, claim any jurisdiction within the dominions of his vassals. The individual inhabitant of Scotland stood in no relation to |The relation between Scotland and England international only.| the English King.^[172] The relation was a purely international one. The King and people of the Scots chose the King of the English as their Father and Lord; it became his duty to protect them against their enemies, and it became their duty to serve him against his enemies. But with the internal management of the Scottish kingdom he had no concern, nor did this or that individual |The relation often broken on both sides.| Scot become his man or his subject. Such was the The relation often broken on both sides. relation; as we go on, we shall see its engagements broken on both sides. We shall find the Scottish vassal more than once breaking through his duty of fidelity, and |1000.| we shall once at least find the English over-lord of Strathclyde breaking through his duty of protection, setting up an unjust claim to a tribute which was not imposed by the original grant, and cruelly harrying the land in revenge for a perfectly justifiable refusal 132of his demands.^[173] But such breaches of duty on both sides are in no way peculiar to England and Scotland; they form a very large portion of the history of any two |Delicate nature of the relation.| countries between which such relations existed. The truth is that the feudal or commendatory relation is a very delicate relation, one which offers constant temptations to a breach of its duties on both sides, temptations which, |Analogy with colonial relations.| in a rude age, must often have been irresistible. The relation is not identical with the modern relation between the mother country and its colonies and dependencies, but there are many points of analogy between the two. And we all know well how very delicate the relation always is between the metropolis and its colony. But the point to be borne in mind is that the English over-lord of Scotland, Strathclyde, and Wales claimed no sovereignty within those countries, but only a superiority over them. He claimed such a superiority as the King of the French exercised, or claimed to exercise, over the Duke of the Normans. The relation was less close than the relation between the Emperor and the German princes, as no common Diet looked after the common interests of |Attendance of the Welsh and Scottish princes in the Witenagemót.| all. That the Scottish and Welsh princes had the right, which they most likely deemed a burthen, of attending the meetings of the English Witan is certain; it is equally certain that the attendance of the Scottish and Cumbrian princes was exceedingly rare.^[174] And at any rate they must have come only in their personal capacity, to transact any business which they might have with their over-lord and his counsellors. We cannot suppose that the English Gemót was ever attended by any Scottish or Welsh Witan beyond the immediate suite of the Scottish and Welsh Kings. The Kings came, because they were the men 133of the English over-lord; but the private Scot or Briton was not the man of the English over-lord, and had no need to attend the assembly which he summoned. As little can we deem that the English Gemót took on itself to make laws for Wales or Scotland. Neither can we deem that the Welsh and Scottish princes, though they sign the acts of the Gemóts at which they were present, took any active share or interest in purely English affairs.

The King of the English was thus over-lord or external superior of all the princes of the isle of Britain. |Statement of the case as to the Imperial titles.| In that character, our Kings, from the days of Æthelstan onwards, bore titles beyond those of ordinary royalty, titles which in strictness belonged only to the successors of Charles and of Constantine. They appear in their public acts as Basileus, Cæsar, Imperator, Imperator Augustus.^[175] |1st. Are they to be taken as seriously implying Imperial claims?| Several questions at once arise. Are these titles mere outpourings of vanity, mere pieces of inflated rhetoric, mere specimens of the turgid style of the tenth century? Or do they imply a serious claim on the part of the English Kings to be looked on as something more than mere Kings, to be deemed the peers of the lords of Imperial |2nd. If so, are they to be traced uninterruptedly to the old provincial Emperors?| Rome, Old and New? And if they do imply such a claim, from what was that claim understood to be derived? Did the Emperors of Britain in the tenth century inherit, or claim to inherit, their Imperial rank from the provincial Emperors who reigned in Britain in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries? Are we to trace an uninterrupted succession of Imperial sovereignty from Carausius onwards, through Maximus, Constantine,^[176] Aurelius Ambrosius, and the eight Bretwaldas, down to the Imperatores and Basileis of the days succeeding the commendations of Scotland, 134Wales, and Strathclyde? Or are we to see in these titles |3rd. Or are they borrowed from the style of the contemporary Emperors, through a feeling that the position of the English King was an Imperial one?| merely an imitation of the style of the contemporary Roman Emperors, Eastern and Western—an imitation not grounded solely on a love of sounding titles, but on a feeling that the English sovereignty was in some sort greater than that of ordinary Kings, that it had something in common with that of the Emperors, that in truth the King of the English held in his own island a position answering to that which the Emperor of the Romans held in the rest of the world? These questions have given rise |The third alternative the true one.| to a large amount of controversy. My own belief, briefly to sum it up, is that vanity and the love of sounding titles may well have had some secondary share in the matter, but yet that these titles were seriously meant as a distinct assertion of the Imperial position of the English crown. But I do not believe that there was the least thought of any succession from the ancient provincial Emperors, or from any phantom of Imperial sovereignty which may have lingered on among the Welsh at the time of the English Conquest or afterwards. I believe that these titles were taken in order to claim for the English crown an absolute independence of the Roman Empire, and at the same time to assert its right to a superiority over all the princes of Britain of the same kind as that which the Emperor exercised, or claimed to exercise, over all the princes of the mainland. I believe in short that, as the Metropolitan of England was sometimes spoken of as Pope of another world,^[177] so the King of the English claimed to be Emperor of the same island world, a world over which the Lord of the greater world at Rome or at Constantinople had no authority. I will now go on to give the reasons for the conclusions to which I have come.

It is undoubtedly true that the Latin charters of our Kings during the latter half of the tenth century are 135|Charters of the tenth century.| the most turgid and absurd of all human compositions. Nothing is said straightforwardly; no idea is expressed by the word which would most naturally occur to express it. The Latin language is ransacked for strange and out of the way terms; and when Latin fails, the writers draw on whatever store of Greek they enjoyed. They turn the whole into a piebald or mongrel language, something like the jargon of English lawyers in the seventeenth century.^[178] When such a taste prevailed, it was no wonder that the names of King, Ealdorman, and Bishop were thought not |Prevalent use of Greek and other strange titles.| grand enough, and that the dignitaries of Church and State were described by strange, foreign, and often quite unintelligible titles, Roman, Greek, Persian, anything that came uppermost. Again, it is no less true that |This affectation hardly known in the English Charters.| this sort of affectation is almost wholly confined to the Latin charters. Those which are drawn up in English are for the most part simple and business-like, and in them the use of Imperial titles is much rarer.^[179] Still I |The Imperial titles then conveyed a distinct meaning, and were not likely to be taken up at random.| cannot look on such titles as Basileus, Imperator, Imperator Augustus, as mere outbursts of swelling rhetoric. We must remember that they were all formal titles, titles to which a very distinct meaning was attached, titles which expressed a special position and which carried with them a special reverence, titles which were not then, as they are now, taken up at random by every upstart who, half in shame, half in self-conceit, shrinks from calling himself by the straightforward title of King. Any one who knows what the mediæval theory of the Empire was will understand that for a man to call himself Imperator Augustus was in those days no light matter. It was a thing which the vainest potentate would hardly do without some kind of reason for it. For an ordinary King to call himself Emperor was very nearly as strong a 136measure as it would have been for an ordinary Archbishop |Force of the word Basileus.| to call himself Pope. Basileus again, the favourite title of all, was one specially Imperial; by a caprice of language it had become the Greek equivalent of Imperator; it was the special title of the Eastern Emperors, the assumption of which by any other prince was held by them to be an infringement of their sole claim to represent the old Roman sovereignty. It is hard to believe that our Kings would have assumed a title surrounded by such associations, one which had been made the subject of many disputes, merely to make a sentence in a charter sound more swelling. It is hard to believe that they would have assumed it without a direct intention to claim thereby a distinctly Imperial sovereignty. Still, considering the fondness for Greek titles and Greek words of all kinds which the charters so constantly display, if the title of Basileus stood alone, it might not be safe to lay |Still more distinct import of the other titles.| too much stress upon it. But when we also meet with Cæsar, Imperator, and Augustus, it is impossible to believe that any title of the class was assumed without a meaning. Whatever we say of the Greek title of Basileus, these Latin titles at least were not vague descriptions borrowed from a strange and half unintelligible language. They were titles in familiar use, titles which every one understood, titles which the diplomacy of the age studiously applied to one potentate and to one potentate only. They were titles whose force and use must have been perfectly well known to every man who understood the Latin language. It is utterly inconceivable that such titles should have been |The titles meant to assert an Imperial position.| taken up at random. They could have had no object but to claim for the prince who assumed them a sovereignty of the same kind as that which belonged to the prince for whom they were commonly reserved.

Granting then that the assumption of the Imperial titles had a meaning, and that it was not a mere piece 137of rhetorical vanity, the second question follows;—Was there any real continuous Imperial tradition handed on from the days of the provincial Emperors, or were the Imperial titles simply assumed in imitation or rivalry or whatever it is to be called, of the contemporary German, Italian, and Byzantine Emperors? My own conviction is |No continuous tradition from the provincial Emperors.| very decidedly on the latter side.^[180] I do not see how any continuous Imperial tradition could have been handed on from a Roman ruler in Britain to a West-Saxon King. Every circumstance of the English Conquest shuts out such a belief. It is likely enough that in Wales and Cornwall memories might still linger on from the days when Cæsars and Augusti reigned in Britain. It is likely enough that Aurelius or Arthur or any other Welsh leader may have put forward some kind of Imperial pretensions. But that these princes should have handed on such rights or claims to their English conquerors and destroyers seems to me utterly inconceivable. We have seen in the last Chapter how completely the English Conquest of Britain differed from all other Teutonic conquests. Elsewhere the conquerors became more or less Romanized; they rejoiced to receive from the reigning Emperor the investiture of some Roman dignity, some empty title of Consul or Patrician. From the assumption of the Imperial dignity itself our whole race shrank with a kind of superstitious awe till the spell was broken by the coronation of the great Charles. This last motive indeed was one which could have no effect upon the mind of Ælle or Ceawlin; but its place would be fully supplied by utter ignorance, carelessness, and contempt for the titles and institutions of the vanquished. Consul, Patrician, Augustus, all would be |Real position of the “Tyrants” or provincial Emperors.| alike unintelligible and despicable in their eyes. And, before we rule that an English Bretwalda or an Emperor of Britain was in any sense a successor of the so-called 138Tyrants^[181] or provincial Emperors, let us remember what the position of these Tyrants or Emperors really was. Carausius, Maximus, Constantine, and the rest, never called themselves Emperors of Britain. According to the strict Imperial theory, an Emperor of Britain is an absurd impossibility; the titles assumed by Eadgar are in themselves as ridiculous as the titles assumed by those who in later times have called themselves “Emperor of Austria,” “Emperor of Hayti,” “Emperor of Mexico,” “Emperor of the French.” The Emperor is essentially Lord of Rome and of the World; and it was only by setting itself up as being in some sort another world that Britain could lay any claim to either a Pope or an Emperor of its own. |Not Emperors of Britain, but pretenders to the whole Roman Empire while possessing only a part.| But the very last thought of the old Tyrants or provincial Emperors would have been to claim any independent existence for Britain, Gaul, or any other part of the Empire of which they might have gained possession. Nothing could be further from their wishes than to set up anything like a separate national kingdom. They were pretenders to the whole Empire, if they could get it, and they not uncommonly did get it in the end. A man who began as tyrant often became a lawful Emperor, either by deposing the reigning Emperor or by |Carausius. 286–294.| being accepted by him as his colleague. Carausius, the first British Emperor according to this theory, held not only Britain but part of Gaul. It must not be thought 139that part of Gaul had been annexed to the dominions of a national sovereign of Britain, as Calais was by Edward the Third and Boulogne by Henry the Eighth. Britain and part of Gaul were simply those parts of the Roman Empire of which Carausius, a candidate for the whole Empire, had been able actually to possess himself. At last Carausius was accepted as a colleague by Diocletian and Maximian, and so became a lawful Cæsar and Augustus. |Allectus. 294–297.| Allectus was less fortunate; he never got beyond Britain, and instead of being acknowledged as a colleague, he was defeated and slain by Constantius. Constantius himself reigned in Britain; but no one would call Constantius a British Emperor, and Carausius was a British Emperor |Magnentius. 350.| just as little. Magnentius, Maximus, Constantine, were simply Emperors whose career began in Britain and not in |Maximus. 383–388.| Syria or Africa; they were not content to reign as British |Constantine. 407.| Emperors or Emperors of Britain; they speedily asserted their claim to as large a share of the Roman world as they had strength to win and to keep. Now it is perfectly possible, especially if any of the Welsh princes were descendants of Maximus, that a remembrance of these Emperors may have survived in Britain, and it is not unlikely that the conquest of Gaul by an Emperor who set forth from Britain may be the kernel of truth round which much of the mythical history of Arthur has |No analogy between these Emperors and the English Bretwaldas.| gathered. But it is certainly hard to understand the analogy between a Roman general, trying to obtain the whole Roman Empire, but who is unable to obtain more than Britain or Britain and Gaul, and a Teutonic chief, winning by his own sword some sort of superiority over the other princes, Celtic and Teutonic, within the isle of Britain. The essence of the position of Carausius and his successors is that they aspired to an universal dominion, and with such dominion any independent or national existence on the part of Britain would have been utterly inconsistent. 140The essence of the position of an English Bretwalda or Basileus is that he is the very embodiment of an independent national existence, that he aspires to a dominion purely insular, that he claims supremacy over everything within the island, but aspires to no conquests beyond it. He is a “Wielder of Britain,” Emperor so far as he is independent of either continental Empire, Emperor so far as he exercises Imperial power over vassal princes within his own island. I can see no likeness between him and a Roman general, who aspires to reign on the seven hills, but who is unluckily shut up against his will within the four seas of Britain.^[182]

I infer then that the Imperial style which was affected by our Kings from Æthelstan onwards was not derived by any continuous tradition from any earlier British or Roman |Explanation to be found in the circumstances of the time.| Empire. It is in the circumstances of their own kingdom, and in the general circumstances of Europe during the ninth and tenth centuries, that we must look for the causes which led them to challenge Imperial rank. Ecgberht, |Charles and Ecgberht.| it should not be forgotten, was the friend, the guest, and no doubt the pupil, of Charles the Great.^[183] Ecgberht |802.| was chosen to the West-Saxon throne two years after the Old Rome re-asserted, in the person of Charles, her right to choose her own Emperor. We cannot doubt that, through his whole career, he had Charles before him as his model, and that his object was to win for himself the same kind of dominion in his own island which Charles had won on the continent. But Ecgberht never assumed any higher style than that of King of the English, and 141even that, as far as we know, but once only.^[184] In his days the unity of the Western Empire still remained unbroken under his benefactor and his benefactor’s son. It was enough for the West-Saxon King to feel himself well nigh the only independent prince in Western Christendom, |The plans of Ecgberht, checked yet in the end helped by the Danish invasions, were fully carried out by Eadward and Æthelstan.| without setting himself up as a rival Emperor. The schemes of Ecgberht, checked under his immediate successors by the Danish invasions, were in the end really promoted by those invasions, through the weakening and destruction of the other English kingdoms. At last his whole plan was carried out in the latest days of Eadward, and it was established in a more thoroughly organized form by Æthelstan. The whole isle of Britain was now, in different degrees of subjection and dependency, under the supreme dominion of the West-Saxon Kings. Now, and not before, begins the use of the Imperial titles. |Greatness of the position of Æthelstan.| Æthelstan, in whose reign the connexion between England and the continent was unusually busy, Æthelstan, Lord of all Britain, connected by marriage and friendship with all the greatest princes of Europe, could hardly fail to take in the greatness of his own position. He might well feel |His assumption of the Imperial style.| himself to be the peer of Emperors. He was the one prince whose dominions had never, since his own nation entered them, acknowledged any superiority in the lord of either Rome. Of our island at least might be said, whether in honour or in reproach,

|Points of analogy between his position and that of the Emperors.| Whatever vague and transitory homage Cæsar may have received from Scots or Northumbrians, it is certain that no King of the West-Saxons ever knew a superior beyond the limits of his own island. But, from the days of Ecgberht onwards, every King of the West-Saxons had 142claimed or aspired to a superiority of his own through the whole extent of his own island; and now Æthelstan had converted those lofty dreams into a living reality. Gaul, Spain, Italy, Denmark, the Slavonic and other less known lands beyond the Elbe, all had bowed to the dominion of the first Teutonic Cæsar. To England alone he had been a model and a counsellor, but not a master. As the one perfectly independent prince in Western Christendom, Æthelstan was the equal of Emperors, and within his own island he held the same position which the Emperors held in the rest of the world. Like an Emperor, he not only had his own kingdom, governed under him by his own Dukes or Ealdormen, but his kingdom was surrounded by a circle of vassal princes who paid to him the homage which he himself paid to no superior upon earth. As no other prince in Western Christendom could claim for his own kingdom the same perfect independence of all Imperial superiority, so no other prince in Western Christendom could show, in a crowd of dependent princes, so perfect a reproduction of the Imperial majesty. And |No universally acknowledged Emperor at this time.| it must not be forgotten that during the first half of the tenth century there was not, as there was before and after, any one Emperor universally acknowledged by all the Christian states of the West. The days of the Carolingian Cæsars were past; the days of the Saxon Cæsars were not yet come. Guy, Lambert, Berengar, |888–896.| were Augusti not less fleeting, and far more feeble, than any of the tyrants of whom Britain had once been so fertile. The King of the English and Lord of all Britain might well feel himself to be a truer representative of Imperial greatness than Emperors whose rule was at most confined to a corner of Italy. He was, beyond all doubt, the second among Western Kings. The Kings of the Eastern Franks, not yet Emperors in formal rank, but marked out in the eyes of all men as the predestined heirs 143of Charles, were the only rulers who could be held to surpass him in power and glory. Without waiting for any formal coronation, the soldiers of Henry and Otto had saluted their victorious Kings as Imperatores and Patres Patriæ, and, with the same feeling, Æthelstan assumed, or received from his counsellors, the titles which placed |Revival of the Empire under Otto [962], not likely to make the English Kings withdraw their Imperial claims.| him on a level with them. The new birth of the Empire during the reign of Eadgar, the coronation of Otto the Great, which at once restored to the Imperial crown no small share of its ancient power and dignity, would by no means tend to make our princes lay aside any Imperial claims which they had already asserted. Eadgar was on the best terms with his Imperial uncle; still it might be thought needful to assert that England owed him no kind of homage, and that the other princes of Britain owed homage to Eadgar and not to Otto.

Here then, as it seems to me, and not in any traditions of Ambrosius or Carausius, is to be found the true explanation of the otherwise startling title of Emperor of |Full import of the Imperial titles.| Britain. That title was meant at once to assert the independence of the English crown upon any foreign superior, and to assert the dependence of all the other powers of Britain upon the English crown. It was meant to assert that the King of the English was, not the homager but the peer, alike of the Imperator of the West and of the Basileus of the East, and it was meant to assert that Scots, Welsh, and Cumbrians owed no duty to Rome or to Byzantium, but only to their Father and Lord at |They go out of use after the Norman Conquest, because insular dominion is no longer the chief object.| Winchester. The Imperial titles last in common use down to the Norman Conquest; after that their employment is rare, and they gradually die out altogether. And why? Because the Norman and Angevin Kings, though they were by no means disposed willingly to abate a tittle of the rights of their predecessors within the four seas of Britain, were far from looking on insular dominion as the main 144object of their policy. They were Kings of England, and they knew the strength and value of England; some of them had wisdom enough to value England for her own sake; still in the eyes of all of them, one main value of England was to serve as a nursery of men and a storehouse of money to serve their plans of continental ambition. They were Kings of England, but they were also Counts of Anjou, Dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine, striving after an equality with their liege lord at Paris, sometimes perhaps after a superiority over him. The British Empire in which Æthelstan gloried, and in which Cnut in the midst of his Northern triumphs gloried no less, was assuredly not despised by the wisdom of Henry of Anjou. But if it was one object of his policy, it was not the only one. In the eyes of the Poitevin knight-errant who came after him, it seemed hardly worth keeping; and it was something which could not be kept in the grasp of John and Henry the |The old claims take a more strictly feudal shape under Edward the First.| Third. At last in the great Edward there again arose a true Bretwalda, one who saw that the dominion of Æthelstan and Eadgar was a worthier prize than shadowy dreams of aggrandizement beyond the sea. But by this time the notion of a British Empire had given way to more purely feudal ideas, and his claims to supremacy took their shape |Later traces of the ideas.| accordingly. But traces of the old ideas still lingered on. Through the fourteenth, the fifteenth, the sixteenth centuries, a chain of instances may be put together which show that the idea of an Empire of Britain was not wholly forgotten.^[186] Even when no Imperial claims were put forward on behalf of England, it was thought needful carefully to shut out all claims on the part of any other power to Imperial supremacy over England. And in the sixteenth century, along with the revived study of our early history, the Imperial titles themselves revive in a more definite form. The Imperial character of the English sovereignty was 145strongly asserted both by Henry the Eighth and by Elizabeth. In the days of Charles the Fifth a denial of all dependence on the Roman Cæsar may have been no less needful than a denial of all dependence on the Roman Pontiff. Henry may well have deemed it prudent to take the same precautions against his Imperial nephew which Eadgar had taken against his Imperial uncle. Protests of the like sort were again made in the reign of Elizabeth. We find her more than once formally described as Empress, an Empress whose Empire reached from “the Orcade isles to the mountains Pyrenee.” In this last description we find the key to the style. An Empire implied subordinate kingdoms. Elizabeth claimed to be Empress as being independent of the continental Emperor; she also claimed to be Empress as having a royal vassal within her own island. The same phrases which assert the independence of England upon the Austrian Emperor also assert the dependence of Scotland upon the English Empress.^[187]

This then I believe to be the true account of the Imperial titles and Imperial pretensions of the English Kings in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Our Kings meant to assert at once their own perfect independence and the dependence of the other princes of Britain upon them. |Growth of the English system of dependencies. 827–1869.| It is perhaps worth notice that in all this we may see the beginnings of a system which has gone on to our own day. From the days of Ecgberht onwards the House of Cerdic has never been without its dependencies. Their sphere has gradually been enlarged; as nearer dependencies have been incorporated with the central state, another more distant circle of dependencies has arisen beyond 146them. Wessex held the supremacy over England; England held it over Great Britain; Great Britain held it over Ireland and a crowd of smaller islands and colonies; the United Kingdom holds it over colonies and dependencies of every kind, from Man to New Zealand. Since the days of the Roman Commonwealth, no other land has had so large an experience of the relations between a central power and half-incorporated states of various kinds. |Imperial character still retained by England.| In this sense, England is now a more truly Imperial power than any other in the world. Putting aside the local associations of Rome and Constantinople, no modern state comes so near to the notion of an Empire as understood either by Æthelstan or by Otto. There is therefore an historical meaning in the familiar phrases of “the British Empire” and “the Imperial Parliament,” whether any remembrance of ancient Bretwaldas and Basileis was or was not present to the minds of those who devised them.

I thus bring to an end my survey of the political condition of England and its dependent states in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The dominion won by Eadward and Æthelstan was handed over unimpaired to William the Bastard. We have seen what that dominion was. There was a home monarchy in which the power of the King was strictly limited by law, but in which his personal influence was almost unbounded. There was also an external lordship over a body of vassal princes who had the right and the duty, though perhaps but seldom the will, to appear in the Great Council of their Over-lord along with the Bishops and Ealdormen of his own realm. |The old Kingdom and Empire transferred to William.| This dominion was, by the forced election of the English Witan, transferred to the hands of the Norman Conqueror. Under his successors the character of the monarchy |Gradual changes| gradually altered, but it altered far more through a change in the spirit of the administration than through actual 147|after the Conquest.| changes in the laws. The power of the crown was vastly increased in the hands of William and his sons, and in other respects the kingdom gradually changed from the old Teutonic to the later mediæval form. But it was always the constitutional doctrine that William, a legal claimant of the crown, received the crown as it had been held by his predecessors. It follows that a thorough knowledge of the position of those predecessors, of the nature of their authority and of the limits on their power, is absolutely necessary, if only to understand the position of the Norman Kings, what changes they made and what changes they did not make. What was the real nature and amount of those changes, political and social, will be shown in my last volume. And, along with them, I shall deal more specially with some points, like language and art, the earlier forms of which are most fittingly treated of by way of comparison with their later forms. For the present we turn for a while from the history and state of England as they stood under Ælfred and his immediate successors, to trace out the early history of the land which became closely connected with England in the course of the tenth century, and which sent forth the conquerors of England in the eleventh.

CHAPTER IV. SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF NORMANDY DURING THE TENTH CENTURY. [188] — § 1. General Effects of the Scandinavian Settlements in Gaul. — § 2. Settlement and Reign of Rolf. 911–927. — § 3. Reign of William Longsword. 927–943. — § 4. Reign of Richard the Fearless. 943–996. — § 5. Comparison between France, England, and Normandy. — § 6. Early years of Richard the Good. 996–997.

The two foreign conquests of England which form the main subject of English history during the eleventh century were the work of nations which came originally 149of the same stock. First came the Danes themselves; |Normans and English originally kinsmen.| then came the Normans, the descendants of Danish or other Scandinavian settlers in Gaul. In mere blood therefore the Normans were allied in different degrees to all the Teutonic inhabitants of Britain, and they were very closely allied to the descendants of the Danish settlers in the North and East of England. And there can be little doubt that this original community of blood really had an important practical effect, and that the speedy fusion of Normans and English was greatly promoted by the fact that conquerors and conquered were in truth kinsmen. |Practical, but unrecognized, effects of this kindred.| But this influence was a purely silent one, and it was in no way acknowledged by those on whom it acted. Neither side thought at all of any kindred as existing between them. And to all appearance, no two nations of Western Europe could have been found which, in speech, feelings, |The Danes in England become Englishmen.| and manners, differed more widely from one another. The Danes who settled in England had been easily turned into Englishmen. Though the likeness of speech and institutions between the two nations has often been exaggerated, it was something not only real but palpable. It needed no historical research to find it out; it was something which men of both nations could feel for themselves. Among the earlier Teutonic settlers in Britain, we can well believe that there were some whose original kindred with the Teutons of Scandinavia was quite as close as their original kindred with some of their fellow Teutons in 150Britain. Anyhow, the languages of the two nations were closely allied; their institutions were very similar, those of England being doubtless the more advanced and regularly organized of the two. Religion formed the main difference between them; but the Danes in England soon adopted the Christian faith, and they were followed, after no very great interval, by their brethren in Denmark. Thus the Danish settler in England, when once baptized, readily became an Englishman, differing from the Angle or the Saxon only as the Angle and the Saxon differed from one another. This absorption into a kindred nation is less remarkable than the fact that the same people in another land adopted, with not much greater difficulty, a language and culture which was wholly alien to them. |The Danes in Gaul become Frenchmen.| For, as the Danes who settled in England became Englishmen, so the Danes who settled in Gaul equally became Frenchmen. The Normans of the eleventh century were men of Scandinavian descent who had cast away every outward trace of the language, manners, and feelings which made them kindred to Englishmen, and had adopted instead the language, manners, and feelings of Latin France. Before they landed in England, they had become Frenchmen; though still proud of the Norman name, they were content, as speakers of the French tongue, to call themselves Frenchmen in distinction from the Teutonic English.^[189] No doubt the old Scandinavian element was still at work within them; it made them Frenchmen on a far nobler and grander scale than other Frenchmen, and it enabled them, when they had once settled in England, unconsciously but surely to become Englishmen. Still, when they followed their Duke to the conquest of England, they were in every outward respect no longer Scandinavians but Frenchmen. In a word, they were no longer Northmen but Normans; the change in the form 151of the name aptly sets forth the change in those who bore it.^[190]

The settlement of the Northmen in Gaul, and their consequent change into Normans, is the great continental event of the first half of the tenth century; it challenges a place alongside of the restoration of the Empire by Otto |Comparison of the settlements of Rolf and Guthrum.| in the second half. Its beginnings indeed might seem small. A band of Scandinavian pirates settled in Northern Gaul, exactly as another band of Scandinavian pirates had, thirty years before, settled in Eastern Britain. In both cases the sovereign of the invaded land found it expedient to secure the safety of the rest of his dominions, by surrendering a portion of them to the invader and by requiring baptism and nominal homage as guaranties for peace and good neighbourhood. The settlement of Rolf in Neustria exactly answers to the settlement of Guthrum in East-Anglia. Charles the Simple and his counsellors may well have justified their act by quoting the example of Ælfred himself. But the results of the two events were widely different. The East-Anglian and Northumbrian Danes were fused into the general mass of Englishmen, and they were soon distinguished from other Englishmen by |Results of the Norman settlement on general history.| nothing more than mere provincial differences. But the settlement of Rolf in Neustria had far wider results. It affected the later history of all Europe. The Scandinavians in Gaul embraced the creed, the language, and the manners of their French neighbours, without losing a whit of their old Scandinavian vigour and love of adventure. The people thus formed became the foremost apostles alike of French chivalry and of Latin Christianity. They were the Saracens of Christendom, spreading themselves over 152every corner of the world and appearing in almost every |Their prominence in devotion,| character. They were the foremost in devotion, the most fervent votaries of their adopted creed, the most lavish in gifts to holy places at home, the most unwearied in pilgrimages to holy places abroad. And yet none knew better how to hold their own against Pope and prelate; the special children of the Church were as little disposed to unconditional obedience as the most stiffnecked |and in war.| of Ghibelines. And they were no less the foremost in war; they were mercenaries, crusaders, plunderers, conquerors; |Change of their tactics.| but they had changed their element and they had changed their mode of warfare. No Norman fleets now went forth on the errand of the old wikings; the mounted knight and the unerring bowman had taken the place of the elder tactics which made the fortress of shields invincible. North, south, east, the Norman lances were lifted; and they were lifted in the most opposite of causes. |Their exploits in the Eastern Empire,| Norman warriors pressed into the remotest East to guard Eastern Christendom against the first Turkish invader;^[191] other Norman warriors were soon found to be the most dangerous enemies of Eastern Christendom in its own |1071.| home. If the Norman fought by the side of Rômanos at |1081.| Manzikert, he threatened the Empire of Alexios with overthrow at Dyrrhachion. His conquests brought with |in England,| them the most opposite results in different lands. To free |in Sicily.| England he gave a line of oppressors; to enslaved Sicily he gave a line of beneficent rulers. But to England he gave also a conquering nobility, which in a few generations became as truly English in England as it had become French in Normandy. If he overthrew our Harolds and our Waltheofs, he gave us a Fitzwalter and a Bigod to win back the rights for which Harold and Waltheof had fallen. In the arts of peace, like his Mahometan prototypes, 153he invented nothing; but he learned, adapted, improved, |Influence of the Normans on art; their welcome of foreigners.| and disseminated everything. He ransacked Europe for scholars, poets, theologians, and artists. At Rouen, at Palermo, and at Winchester, he welcomed merit in men of every race and every language. He guided Lanfranc and Anselm from Lombardy to Bec and from Bec to Canterbury. Art, under his auspices, produced alike the stern grandeur of Caen and Ely and the brilliant gorgeousness of Palermo and Monreale. In a word, the indomitable vigour of the Scandinavian, joined to the buoyant vivacity of the Gaul, produced the conquering |Disappearance of the Norman race,| and ruling race of Europe. And yet that race, as a race, has vanished. It has everywhere been absorbed by the |in Sicily,| races which it has conquered. From both Sicilies the Norman has vanished as though he had never been. And there too have vanished along with him the races which he used as his instruments, and which he alone taught to work in harmony. Greek, Saracen, and Norman have alike disappeared from the realm of good King William. |in Britain.| In our own land the fate of the Norman has been different. He abides in his lineage and in his works, but he is Norman no longer. He has settled in every corner of the British islands; into every corner of those islands he has carried with him the inborn qualities of his own race, but in every corner of those islands he has assumed the outward characteristics of the races among which he settled. The Scottish Bruce or the Irish Geraldine passed from Scandinavia to Gaul, from Gaul to England, from England to his own portion of our islands; but at each migration he ceased to be Scandinavian, French, or English; his patriotism was in each case transferred to his new country, and his historic being belongs wholly to the home which he had last won. In England itself the Norman has vanished from sight no less than from Apulia and insular Sicily. He has sunk beneath the silent and passive influence of a race 154less brilliant but more enduring than his own. The Norman has vanished from the world, but he has indeed left a name |Famous men of Norman descent.| behind him. Of him came Richard the Fearless and William the Bastard; of him came that Robert whose foot was first placed upon the ransomed battlements of the |1099.| Holy City, and that mightier Robert who in one year |1086.| beheld the Cæsars of East and West flee before him.^[192] |Frederick the Second.| And of his stock, far more truly than of the stock of Imperial Swabia, came the Wonder of his own and of all succeeding ages,^[193]—poet, scholar, warrior, legislator—the terror and the marvel of Christendom and of Islam—the foe alike of Roman Pontiffs and of Moslem Sultans—who won alike the golden crown of Rome and the thorny crown of Salem—dreaded in one world as the foremost champion of Christ, cursed in another as the apostate votary of Mahomet—the gay, the brave, the wise, the relentless, and the godless Frederick.

But on no country was the effect of the Scandinavian settlement in Gaul so deep as it was on Gaul itself. It may sound like a strange paradox, but there can be little doubt that it was the settlement of the Northern pirates which finally made Gaul French in the modern sense. Their settlement was made during the transitional period of West-Frankish history. The modern French nation and language were just beginning to appear. Paris, not yet the capital, had been found to be the most 155important military post in the kingdom, and the lords of Paris had shown themselves to be its most vigorous defenders. |Period of struggle in West-France. 887–987.| The tenth century was a period of struggle between the Teutonic and the Romance tongues, between Laon and Paris, between the descendants of Charles the Great and the descendants of Robert the Strong.^[194] The Norman stepped into the scene of confusion, and he finally decided the quarrel in favour of the French dynasty of |Origin of modern France.| Paris against the Frankish dynasty of Laon. Modern France, we must ever remember, has no part or lot in either of the two dynasties whose associations she so persistently usurps, the Karlings and their predecessors the Merwings. Till the ninth century there was no geographical division which at all answered to modern France.^[195] Charles the Great more than once contemplated a division of his Empire; but not one of his proposed divisions coincided even in the roughest way with the limits of the |First glimpse of modern France.| kingdom of the Valois and the Bourbons. Modern France makes its first indistinct appearance in the division which was made on the death of Lewis the Pious. Then, for the |839.| first time, Northern and Southern Gaul, Neustria and Aquitaine, were united to make the kingdom of Charles the Bald. The kingdom thus formed was the first germ of modern France. It roughly answers to its geographical 156extent, and, what is still more to the purpose, we see that a new nation, with a new language, was springing up |843.| within it. The final settlement of Verdun confirmed the existence of the new kingdom. The Empire was then divided into three kingdoms, the Western, the Eastern, and the narrow debateable ground between them, known as Lotharingia. This last kingdom fell to pieces, while the kingdoms on each side of it grew, flourished, and contended for its fragments. These are the two kingdoms of the East and the West-Franks, which we are already sorely tempted to call by the familiar names of Germany and France.

157Neustria and Aquitaine were never again formally separated |1360.| till the Peace of Bretigny in the fourteenth century.^[196] |Union under Charles the Third. 885–887.| Neustria and Austrasia, the kingdoms of the Western and the Eastern Franks, were never again united except during the ephemeral reign of Charles the Third or the Fat. That Emperor, the last who reigned over both the Eastern and the Western Franks,^[197] was deposed by common consent |Division of the Empire. 888.| of his various Kingdoms. Four kingdoms now appeared, answering to those of Germany, Italy, France, and Burgundy. And now a more important step still was taken |Kingdoms of East and West-Franks.| in the direction of modern France. The Western Franks took to themselves a new dynasty and a new capital. Since the death of the great Charles, the city on the |Growing importance of Paris.| Seine, the old home of Julian, had been gradually rising in consequence. It plays an important part during the reign of his son Lewis the Pious. Characteristically |830.| enough, Paris first appears in Carolingian history as the scene of a conspiracy against her Teutonic master. There it was that the rebels assembled who seized and imprisoned, |Paris the chief bulwark against the Northmen.| and at last deposed, the pious Emperor.^[198] Later in the ninth century Paris won for herself a more honourable renown; she became the bulwark of Gaul against the inroads of the Northmen. The pirates soon found out the importance of the position of the city in any attack or defence of Gaul on her northern side. The Seine, and Paris upon the Seine, now became the great objects of Scandinavian attack. Thrice in the reign of Charles the Bald did the |Formation of the March of Paris. 861.| invaders enter the city. At last a new power was formed, chiefly with the object of defending Gaul from their attack. A large district was granted in fief by Charles the Bald to Robert the Strong, as a march or border territory, to be defended against the invading Northman and the rebellious Breton. And of this march, under Robert’s son Odo, Paris became the head. The power thus formed was destined to a career which seems not unusual for such frontier districts. Rome herself, then still the home of Empire, had begun her own career as a march of the Latin against the Etruscan. So, in later times, the Mark of Brandenburg, the outlying defence of Germany against the Slave, and the Eastern Mark, her outlying defence against the Magyar, have, under the names of Prussia and Austria, eclipsed the older names of Saxony, Swabia, Bavaria, and Eastern Francia. So it was with this outlying march granted to Count Robert by Charles the Bald. Paris now became a centre, a capital; if not a royal, at least a ducal, city. The fief of Robert grew 158into the duchy of France, and the duchy of France grew into the kingdom. Robert himself became the forefather of the first Capets, of the Valois, and of the Bourbons. |Paris defended by Odo. 885–886.| The great siege of Paris by the Northmen, and its gallant defence by Count Odo, or Eudes, the son of Robert, greatly raised the position alike of the city and of its lord. On the deposition of Charles the Third ineffectual attempts were indeed made on behalf of other candidates, but, in the |Odo elected King. 888.| end, Count Odo was elected and consecrated to what now begins to be called the Kingdom of France, a kingdom over |1848.| which his descendants were still reigning thirty years ago.^[199]

Odo of Paris then became “Rex Francorum,” in a sense which, as applied to his family, we cannot better represent than by the title of “King of the French.” His own family was of German descent;^[200] but, throughout the following century, his dynasty represents, perhaps quite unconsciously, the growing French nationality, just as the dynasty of Laon represents the decaying Teutonic element. The Dukes and Kings of Paris spoke French long before the end of the tenth century, while the Karlings of Laon still spoke their ancestral Frankish.^[201] The hundred years’ struggle between the Carolingian house at Laon and the Capetian^[202] house at Paris now begins. This period falls naturally into two stages. In the first stage, the lords of Paris directly disputed the crown with the heirs of Charles; in the second, they preferred the position of kingmakers to that of Kings. Odo was elected as the hero of 159the siege of Paris, the true champion of Gaul and of |Charles the Simple and Robert.| Christendom. But he soon found a rival in Charles the Simple, whose only claim was the doubtful belief that the blood of his great namesake flowed in his veins. It was in the course of his troubled reign that the Scandinavian invaders made that settlement in Gaul which grew into the Norman duchy. It was at his hands that the first Norman Duke received the investiture of his dominions. But the settlement was made at the immediate cost, not of the Carolingian King at Laon, but of the Capetian Duke at Paris. It was from France, in the strictest sense, that Normandy was cut off. The lord of Rouen now stepped in as a kind of umpire between the two rival powers, and throughout the whole struggle of the century no question was of greater importance than whether the power of Normandy should be arrayed on the side of Paris or on the side of Laon. We have now to record the history of the Norman settlement itself, and the history of the Normans in Gaul during the period of struggle, and to show how important an element they were in determining the controversy in favour of the competitor most foreign to their own ancient blood and speech.

The history of the ravages of the Northmen within the Empire, and of their final settlement in Northern Gaul, reads like the tale of their ravages and settlements in our own island told again. Their incursions into the two countries were often closely connected. The same armies and the same leaders are often heard of in Britain and in Gaul, and each country drew a certain advantage from the sufferings of the other. Each often enjoyed a season of comparative rest while the other was undergoing some unusually fearful devastation. The two stories are nearly 160the same, except that the Gaulish part of the tale especially reads, so to speak, like one long reign of Æthelred from the very beginning. There is nothing at all answering to our long succession of great and victorious Kings from Ælfred onwards. That such was the case was not wholly the fault of the princes who reigned in any part of the Empire. The power of the great Charles had kept the heathen in awe, but it is not granted to every man to |The progress of the Danes favoured by the divisions in the Empire,| be a Charles or even an Æthelstan. When the great Emperor was gone, when the terror of his name was forgotten, ceaseless internal divisions made his Empire an easy prey. Those divisions were themselves inevitable, but they brought with them their inevitable consequences; the land lay open, almost defenceless, before the enemy. Indeed the divisions were actually more fatal because they |and by the partial unity which it retained.| were not complete; the very amount of unity which the Empire still kept proved a further source of weakness. The Empire did not at once split up into national kingdoms, divided by ascertained boundaries, each of them actuated by a national feeling and capable of national resistance to an invader. The state of things was not unlike the elder state of things in the days of the tyrants or provincial Emperors. In those days each ambitious general gave himself out as Cæsar and Augustus; he aspired to the whole Empire, and he held such portions of it as he could win and keep. So now every King was a King of the Franks, ready to hold so much of the common Frankish realm as he could win and keep. Between potentates of this kind there could hardly be either the same formal alliances, or the same sort of international good understanding, which may exist between really distinct nations, each of which is assured of its own position. None of the rival Kings could feel sure that any other King would help him against the common enemy. None of them could feel sure that some 161other King might not seize the opportunity of a Danish inroad to deprive him of his kingdom, or even that he might not league himself with the heathen invaders against him. It followed therefore that the invaders never encountered the whole strength of the Empire, that they seldom encountered the whole strength even of any one of its component kingdoms. The Carolingian princes, as far as mere vigour and ability goes, have been grossly and unfairly depreciated.^[203] The truth is that most of them were men of by no means contemptible natural gifts, but that they were, partly by their own fault, partly by force of circumstances, placed in a position in which they could not use their real vigour and ability to any good purpose. Thus the whole second half of the ninth century is taken up with almost uninterrupted incursions of the Scandinavian pirates on the whole coast of both the Eastern |Position of Germany,| and the Western kingdoms. Germany indeed, owing to the inland position of the greater part of her territory, remained comparatively unscathed. She suffered far more from the Magyars than she suffered from the Northmen. Still the whole Saxon and Frisian coast was as cruelly ravaged as any other part of Europe, and the great rivers afforded the heathens the means of making their way far |Gaul,| into the interior of the country. The Western Kingdom, with its far greater extent of sea-board, suffered far more |and Italy.| severely than the Eastern. Even the Mediterranean coasts of Burgundy and Italy were not wholly spared,^[204] though in those seas the Northman was less to be dreaded than the Saracen. In all these countries we find the same kind of devastations which we find in England. In the course 162of the history, we come across many noble examples of |Instances of resistance to the invaders.| local resistance to the invaders, and several examples of considerable victories gained over them. But we nowhere find any such steady check put to their progress as marks the first half of the tenth century in England. That is to say, no Carolingian prince had the means, even if he had the ability, to carry out the vigorous policy of Eadward the Elder. Yet it would be unjust to withhold their due share of honour from several kings and princes who at |Victory of Arnulf, 891;| least did what they could. The Emperor Arnulf in the |of Lewis, 881.| East,^[205] the young King Lewis in the West,^[206] gained glorious and, for the moment, important victories over the invaders, and the triumph of Lewis is commemorated in one of the earliest surviving efforts of High-German poetry.^[207] The great siege of Paris and its defence by Odo have already been spoken of as among the determining causes which led in the end to the change of dynasty. But such victories were, after all, mere momentary checks; they delivered one part of the country at the expense of another, and the evil went on till it was gradually cured by various indirect |The ravages cease as the Northmen settle and become French.| means. As in England, the Northmen gradually changed from mere plunderers into conquerors and settlers. Instead of ravaging the whole country, they occupied portions of it. Thus they gradually changed, not only into members of the general commonwealth of Christendom but into Frenchmen, distinguished from other Frenchmen only by the large share of their inborn Scandinavian vigour which |No attempt at political conquest, as in England.| they still kept. As the North became more settled and Christianized, as it began to form a political system of its own, the mere piratical incursions gradually ceased, but the attempt at a complete conquest of the whole country, which was successfully tried in England, was never 163attempted in Gaul. No King of all Denmark or of all Norway ever tried to displace a King of the West-Franks and to reign in his stead over his kingdom. The insular position of Britain, the original kindred between Danes and Englishmen, the actual occupation of so large a portion of the country by earlier Danish settlers, all helped to make such a design possible in England, while even the powers of Swegen or Cnut could hardly have succeeded in carrying out such a scheme in Gaul.

The Northmen settled largely in Gaul, but they nowhere occupied any such large unbroken sweep of territory as that which became the Denalagu in England. No such large extent of coast lay so invitingly open to them, and it does not appear that there was any one Danish invasion of Gaul on so great a scale as the great Danish invasion of England under Ingwar and Hubba. The Danish settlements in Gaul were therefore scattered, while in England they were continuous. The Danes in England therefore, though they gradually became Englishmen, still kept on a distinct local existence and local feelings, and they continued to form a distinct and important element in the country. But the Danish settlers in Gaul, holding a district here and a district there, sank much more completely into the general mass of the inhabitants. Some of these settlements were a good way inland, like Hasting’s settlement at Chartres.^[208] Ragnald too occupied, at least for a while, the country at the mouth of the Loire.^[209] But these settlements led to no permanent results. One alone among the Scandinavian settlements in Gaul was destined 164to play a real part in history. This was the settlement of Rolf or Rollo at Rouen.

This settlement, the kernel of the great Norman Duchy, had, I need hardly say, results of its own and an importance of its own which distinguish it from every other Danish colony in Gaul. But it is well to bear in mind that it was only one colony among several, and that, when the grant was made, it was probably not expected to be more lasting or more important than the others. But, while the others soon lost any distinctive character, the Rouen settlement lasted; it grew, it became a power in Europe, and in Gaul it became even a determining power. It is perhaps the unexpected developement of the Rouen settlement, together with the peculiar turn which Norman policy soon took, which accounts for the bitterness of hatred with which the Northmen of Rouen are spoken of by the French writers down to at least the end of the tenth century. By that time they had long been Christian in faith and French in speech, and yet the most truly French writer of the age can never bring himself to speak of them by any other name than that of the Pirates.^[210] To this feeling we see nothing at all analogous in English history. We see traces of strong local diversities, sometimes rising into local jealousies, between the Danes in England and their Anglian and Saxon neighbours; but there is nothing to compare with the full bitterness of hatred which breathes alike in the hostile rhetoric of Richer and in the ominous silence of the discreet Flodoard.

The lasting character of his work at once proves that the founder of the Rouen colony was a great man; but he is a great man who must be content to be judged in the main by the results of his actions. The authentic history 165of Rolf, Rollo, or Rou,^[211] may be summed up in a very short space. We have no really contemporary narrative of his actions, unless a few meagre and uncertain entries in some of the Frankish annals may be thought to deserve that name. I cannot look on the narrative of our one Norman writer, put together, from tradition and under courtly influence, a hundred years after the settlement, as at all entitled to implicit belief. Even less faith is due to Northern Sagas put together at a still later time. The French authors again are themselves not contemporary,^[212] and their notices are exceedingly brief. I therefore do not feel myself at all called upon to narrate in detail the exploits which are attributed to Rolf in the time before his final settlement. He is described as having been |Earlier exploits of Rolf. 876–911?| engaged in the calling of a wiking both in Gaul and in Britain for nearly forty years before his final occupation of Rouen,^[213] and he is said to have entered into friendly relations with a King Æthelstan in England. This Æthelstan has been confounded, in the teeth of all chronology, with our great Æthelstan, but it is clear that the person intended is Guthrum-Æthelstan of East-Anglia.^[214] 166In all this there is nothing improbable, but we can hardly look upon it as certain. And the exploits attributed to Rolf are spread over so many years,^[215] that we cannot help suspecting that the deeds of other chieftains have been attributed to him, perhaps that two leaders of the same name have been confounded. Among countless expeditions in Gaul, Britain, and Germany, we find Rolf charged with an earlier visit to Rouen,^[216] with a share in the great siege of Paris,^[217] and with an occupation or destruction of Bayeux.^[218] But it is not till we have got some way into the reign of Charles the Simple, not till we have gone through several years of the tenth century, that Rolf begins clearly to stand out as a personal historic |Rolf in possession of Rouen. 911.| reality. He now appears in possession of Rouen, or of whatever remains of that city had outlived his former harryings. From that starting-point he attacked Chartres. |Defeat of Rolf at Chartres. 911.| Beneath the walls of that city he underwent a defeat at the hands of the Dukes Rudolf of Burgundy and Robert of Paris, which was attributed to the wonder-working powers of the great local relic, the under-garment of the Virgin.^[219] But this victory, like most victories over the Northmen, had no lasting effect. Rolf was not dislodged from Rouen, nor was his career of havoc and conquest at all seriously checked. But, just as in the case of Guthrum in England, his evident disposition to settle in the country suggested an attempt to change him from a wasting enemy into a |Peace of Clair-on-Epte. 912.| peaceable neighbour. The Peace of Clair-on-Epte was the fellow of the Peace of Wedmore, and King Charles and Duke Robert of Paris most likely had the Peace of Wedmore before their eyes. |Comparison with the Peace of Wedmore.| A definite district was granted 167to Rolf, for which he became the King’s vassal; he was admitted to baptism, and received the King’s natural daughter in marriage. And, just as in the English case, the territory granted was not part of the King’s immediate dominions. No part of Wessex was granted to Guthrum; he was merely confirmed in the possession of the lands which he had already conquered at the expense of the |Advantage of the cession to the Crown.| other English kingdoms. Ælfred, as I have already shown,^[220] though he lost as an over-lord, gained as an immediate sovereign by the closer incorporation of a large part of Mercia with his own kingdom. Charles also gained by the settlement of Rolf, though certainly not in the same direct way. His immediate territories were not increased, but they were at least not diminished; the grant to Rolf was made at the cost, not of the Frankish |The cession made at the expense of the Duchy of Paris.| King at Laon but of the French Duke at Paris. The district ceded to Rolf was part of the great Neustrian march or duchy which had been granted to Odo of Paris, and which was now held by his brother Duke Robert. Rouen was thus, from the very beginning, something taken away from Paris, and which cut off Paris from the sea. Still the Parisian duchy was not so utterly broken up as the kingdoms of Northumberland, East-Anglia, and Mercia had been; the King had therefore no opportunity of annexing any part of the dominions of Robert, as Ælfred had of annexing a large part of the dominions of Burhred. Still Charles was strengthened indirectly. Duke Robert had to yield to manifest destiny. He had lost Rouen, and his only way to keep Paris was to enter into friendly relations with the new lord of Rouen. |Prominent agency of Duke Robert.| Robert was therefore the chief mover in the whole business; he was Rolf’s godfather at his baptism and gave him his own Christian name. The Duke thus made the most of his loss; but to the King the transaction was a 168distinct gain. He got two vassals instead of one, two vassals whose relations to one another were likely to be dangerous, and between whom it might often be easy to play off one against the other. Events soon proved that the King had gained a far more faithful vassal in the new proselyte to Christianity and French culture than he already possessed in the turbulent and dangerous lord of Paris. At a later time we shall find the relations between Laon, Rouen, and Paris altogether changed; but for a while the Northmen of the Seine were the firmest support |The Normans the chief support of Charles the Simple.| of the Carolingian throne. During all the later warfare of the reign of Charles the Simple, Rolf clave steadily to the cause of the lord whose man he had become. The Duke of Rouen had no object in opposing the King of Laon, while, by supporting him, he might easily gain an increase of territory at the expense of his nearer neighbours.

The legendary details of Rolf’s homage to Charles are familiar to every one. It is a well-known tale how Rolf was called on to kiss the feet of his benefactor, how he refused with an oath, how he bade one of his followers to perform the degrading ceremony in his stead, how the rude Northman did indeed kiss the King’s foot, but only by lifting it to his own mouth to the imminent danger of the monarch’s seat on his throne.^[221] The tale may rest on a true tradition, or it may be a mere invention of Norman vanity; in either case alike it sets forth the original spirit of the men who were to become the noblest representatives of the system within whose pale they were now entering. |Rolf the vassal of Charles.| But whatever was the exact form of the homage, there can be no reasonable doubt that Rolf became, in the full |Exaggerated claims of independence made| sense of the word, the vassal of King Charles.^[222] The interested and extravagant Norman writers constantly assert an entire independence on the part of the colonists 169|by the Norman writers.| and their chief. The land was granted, but it was granted as a pure allodial possession; the Duke of the Normans, though he did not bear the kingly title, nevertheless held, as a King, the monarchy of the Norman land.^[223] If anything, it was King Charles who swore fealty to Rolf rather than Rolf who swore fealty to King Charles. All this we may safely put aside, partly as the deliberate creation of Norman vanity, partly as the inflated rhetoric of an author who was writing as the mere laureate of the Norman court. The historian’s own tale of the homage, with its real or mythical incidents, is of itself enough to upset his constitutional theories. That Rolf did homage is plain enough, and, on Rolf’s death, his successor in the duchy |Little practical submission implied in the homage.| renewed the homage. But I must again repeat the caution how little of real subjection is implied in such vassalage at any time, and how purely nominal it became whenever the lord was weak and the vassal strong. Rolf became King Charles’s man and King Charles became Rolf’s lord; but the obligation, after all, amounted to little more than an obligation of mutual defence; all internal sovereignty over the ceded land passed to Rolf without reserve. In the hands of Charles the Great or of Æthelstan such an over-lordship as this was a reality; in the hands of Æthelred or of Charles the Simple it was a mere name. Yet Rolf undoubtedly proved a really faithful vassal to King Charles. No doubt his interest happily coincided with his duty. Still we can well believe that in a new Christian and a new vassal, and a man evidently disposed honestly to do his duty in his new state of life, the sense of right and wrong, in this as in other respects, may well have been far stronger than it was in Dukes of Paris or Burgundy who had long been used to form and to break such engagements with equal ease.

It must not be thought that the district now granted to 170|Extent of the territory granted to Rolf.| Rolf took in the whole of the later duchy of Normandy. Rouen was the heart of the new state, which took in lands on both sides of the Seine. From the Epte to the sea was its undoubted extent from the south-east to the north. But the western frontier is much less clearly defined. On the one hand, the Normans always claimed a certain not very well defined superiority over Britanny as part of the original grant. On the other hand, it is quite certain that Rolf did not obtain immediate possession of what was afterwards the noblest portion of the heritage of his |The Bessin and the Côtentin later acquisitions.| descendants. The Bessin, the district of Bayeux, was not won till several years later, and the Côtentin, the peninsula of Coutances, was not won till after the death of Rolf. The district granted to Rolf was doubtless, as in the case of Guthrum, mainly determined by the extent of his actual possessions. If, as is most likely, the Dive was the western boundary, the ceded territory answered to nothing in earlier geography, civil or ecclesiastical. It was larger than the diocese of Rouen; it was very much smaller |No geographical name for the “Terra Northmannorum.”| than the province. As a new division, it had—sharing therein the fate of Germany and France—no recognized geographical name. Its inhabitants were the Northmen, the Northmen of the Seine, the Northmen of Rouen. The land itself was, till near the end of the century, simply the Land of the Northmen,^[224] a land capable of indefinite extension. So in Britain the vague description of the Denalagu supplanted the ancient names and boundaries of more than one Old-English kingdom. The title of the chief was as little fixed as the name of his dominions; he is Prince, Duke, Count, Marquess, Patrician,^[225] according to the taste of each writer. In the mouths of vigorous and 171plain-spoken enemies his people are only the Pirates, and himself the leader of the Pirates, down to the end of the century.^[226]

Of Rolf’s internal government, of the laws and institutions of the new state, of the details of the settlement of the country, we know absolutely nothing. Norman tradition sets Rolf before us as the mirror of princes, as the type of that class of ruler which that age most valued, the stern, speedy, impartial, minister of justice.^[227] But we may judge of the reign of Rolf from its results. What Normandy became shows plainly enough that its first prince must have been a worthy forerunner of our own Cnut. Once settled in the land, he seems to have become as eager for its welfare as he had before been for its devastation. He must have promoted the general adoption, not only of the religion, but of the speech and manners of his neighbours. Otherwise Normandy could never have played the part which it did play even in the next reign, nor could his capital have become so thoroughly French as it was within a short time after his |No records of early Norman history.| death. But of the early institutions and early internal history of Normandy all records have perished, or, more probably, no records ever existed. We have no chronicles, no charters, nothing whatever to guide us but the results. |The settlement probably analogous to the Danish settlement in England.| From such indications as we have we may perhaps infer that the settlement was, on the whole, of much the same kind as the Danish settlement in England.^[228] We cannot conceive any systematic extirpation or expulsion of the older inhabitants, such as accompanied the English Conquest of Britain. At the same time we can well believe that, after so many years of systematic havoc at the 172hands of the wikings, large districts may have stood almost as empty and untilled as if such systematic |Evidence from the peasant revolt. 997.| extirpation or expulsion had taken place. But it is certain that, a hundred years after the conquest, there was a peasantry at once oppressed enough and powerful enough to rise in a well-organized revolt.^[229] Though in Normandy, as in England, the condition of the private settlers is likely to have gradually sunk, still we cannot believe that any descendants of the original conquerors could, in so short a time, have been brought down to such utter bondage. These peasants must have been mainly the descendants of the original Gauls, with whatever intermixture of Roman and Teutonic elements the successive conquests of the country had brought with them. |Probable position of the races in the country.| Probably the landowners, great and small, were almost universally of Scandinavian descent, while the remnant of the original population had been brought down to a state of serfdom. It is certain that there is nothing in English history at all answering to this insurrection till we come to the great revolt of the villains of the fourteenth century. This difference seems to point to a wholly different condition of the lower orders in the two countries. |Vestiges of the Danish language.| As regards the language of Normandy, the Danish tongue has utterly vanished out of the land; it had vanished out of the greater part of the land even before we reach any contemporary records; still considerable vestiges, strangely disguised as they are, may to this day be made out in the local nomenclature. In Northern Gaul, just as in Eastern England, many a place lost its name, and took a new name from its new Scandinavian lord. Here and there also we find descriptive names, meaningless in French, but which are, with a slight effort, intelligible in English.^[230] These may, according to their 173geographical position, be either remnants of the Danish speech of Rolf and his followers or remnants of the speech of an earlier Teutonic settlement in part of the country of which I shall presently have to speak. Of the early political condition of the duchy we have absolutely no |Normandy not an absolute monarchy.| account. On the absence of such information one illustrious inquirer^[231] has grounded a theory that Normandy had no assembly, no Parliament, no Estates of any kind, but that the Duke, Marquess, Patrician, or whatever he is to be called, ruled without any restraint on his personal will. I confess that I find it impossible to accept a theory so utterly repugnant to the analogy of every other Teutonic people. If there be any truth in Norman tradition, the followers of Rolf, as long as they stayed on ship-board, acknowledged no lord, and professed principles of the most extreme democratic equality.^[232] However this may be, it is not likely that, as soon as they were settled on land, they should at once cast away those free institutions which were common to them with all the |Instances of the action of the States.| other branches of the common stock. And there is evidence enough to show that an assembly of some kind was often consulted from the very beginnings of the Norman state, and especially that the transfer of the ducal crown from one prince to another was effected with much the same forms as the same change would have called for in England.^[233] At the same time I fully admit that to 174fix the exact constitution of the Norman assembly at this early time would be still harder than to fix the exact constitution of an English Witenagemót. The little light which we have may perhaps enable us to infer that it put on an aristocratic character almost from the beginning. It has also been supposed that, unlike perhaps every other assembly of the kind, it contained no ecclesiastical members;^[234] but if this was the case in the earlier days of the duchy, the rule had clearly been relaxed before the reign of the great William.

We must remember that we are now in the very thick of the struggle between the two dynasties of Laon and Paris. The Norman stepped in as if sent to be the fated arbiter between the two. When Rolf made his settlement, Charles the Simple was the acknowledged King of the West-Franks; from him he received his grant; with him he entered into the mutual engagements of lord and vassal. With him and his dynasty Rolf sided, and he probably saved the Carolingian crown from utter overthrow, just as a change of policy in his successors finally decided the |End of the Karlings in Germany. 912.| same controversy the other way. It must be remembered that, in the year of Rolf’s settlement, the Carolingian line came to an end in the Eastern Kingdom. The East-Frankish Duke Conrad was now raised to the Teutonic throne, and was presently followed by Henry of Saxony. But Lotharingia refused to acknowledge either of the Kings so chosen. The border land appears throughout our history as ever fluctuating between the Eastern and Western kingdoms. But Lotharingian policy was dictated by one intelligible rule, that of unswerving loyalty to the Carolingian house, wherever its representative might be 175|Lotharingia attaches itself to Charles the Simple.| found. So now Lotharingia transferred its allegiance to the single Karling who still kept the royal title, and acknowledged the King of Laon as its lord. The power of Charles was thus directly strengthened to the East, while it was indirectly strengthened by the grant to the Northmen in the West. This increase of power on the part of Charles probably led to the conspiracy which soon broke out against |Robert of Paris chosen King. 922.| him, and which issued in the election of Robert of Paris as an opposition King. In the wars which followed, Charles |Rolf sides with Charles.| rested to a great extent on the arms of the Northmen, both Rolf’s settled Northmen of the Seine and the Northmen of the Loire, the followers of Ragnald, who had not |Robert killed at Soissons. 923.| yet won so distinct a local habitation.^[235] When Robert was killed at Soissons, his son Hugh the Great refused the crown for himself. He was known as Duke of the French, |Rudolf of Burgundy chosen.| and, satisfied with that title, he bestowed the kingly name on his brother-in-law Rudolf, Duke of French Burgundy.^[236] |Imprisonment of Charles at Peronne. 923.| Charles was afterwards treacherously seized and imprisoned by Rudolf’s fellow-conspirator Herbert Count of Vermandois, in the same fortress in which in after days a King |1468.| of France was imprisoned by a Duke of Burgundy.^[237] Rolf’s 176combined policy and loyalty led him to refuse all allegiance |War between Normandy and France. 923–927.| to the usurpers. A war of several years followed between him and the French of Paris under Duke Hugh. The horrors of warfare were not felt on one side only. The Norman land was twice invaded, and Rolf’s fortress of Eu, its chief defence on its north-eastern border, was taken by storm.^[238] But these incursions were more than repaid in kind; a large Danegeld was more than once paid to Rolf, and was levied throughout France and Burgundy,^[239] and the |Acquisition of Maine and Bayeux. 924.| general results of the war left Rolf in possession of a most important increase of territory. He obtained the district of Bayeux; he obtained also a more fully recognized superiority over Britanny, and it is also distinctly asserted that |Abdication [927?] and death [932?] of Rolf.| he obtained a grant of the land of Maine.^[240] Rolf did not long survive these successes; the year of his death is uncertain; but it seems most likely that, by the consent—perhaps at the demand—of the estates of his principality, he resigned |William Longsword succeeds, and does homage to Charles. 927.| the government in favour of his son William, surnamed Longsword.^[241] A change in the policy of Herbert of Vermandois had restored Charles to freedom and to some nominal measure of authority. The new prince of the Northmen therefore paid to the true Carolingian King 177the homage which his father had paid before him, but which he had steadily refused to the Parisian and Burgundian pretenders.

The acquisition of the territory which this last war added to the dominions of Rolf was inferior in importance only to the original acquisition of Rouen. And it is only on the ground of its being the original acquisition, the beginning and starting-point of the whole settlement, that the possession of Rouen itself can be looked on as more important than the possession of the noble region which |Maine.| was now added to the Land of the Northmen. Maine indeed was the most precarious of all possessions. The struggles for its retention and recovery, the adventures of its gallant Counts and of its no less gallant citizens, form no small part of the later history of the Norman |The Bessin.| duchy. But the acquisition of Bayeux and its territory gave Normandy all that created and preserved the genuine and Norman character; it gave her the cities which are adorned with the noblest works of the days of her independence; it gave her the spot which was to be the earliest home of her mightiest son. Caen, around whose castle and whose abbeys so much of Norman and French history was to centre—Bayeux itself, the see of the mighty Odo, where the tale of the Conquest of England still lives in the pictured history which forms its most authentic record—Cerisy, with its stern and solemn minster, the characteristic work of the Conqueror’s father—Falaise, immortal as the birthplace of the Conqueror himself—all these historic spots lie within the region which the last warfare of the reclaimed wiking had added to the Norman land. |The Saxon colony at Bayeux;| Bayeux itself is a city whose history has an especial claim on the attention of Englishmen. Nowhere, out of the Old-Saxon and Frisian lands, can we find another district of continental Europe which is so truly a brother-land of our own. The district of Bayeux, occupied by a Saxon 178colony in the latest days of the old Roman Empire,^[242] occupied again by a Scandinavian colony as the result of its conquest by Rolf, has retained to this day a character which distinguishes it from every other Romance-speaking |its lasting influence on the district.| portion of the continent. The Saxons of Bayeux kept their name and their distinct being under the Frankish dominion;^[243] we can hardly doubt that the Scandinavian settlers found some parts at least of the district still Teutonic, and that nearness of blood and speech exercised over them the same influence which the same causes exercised over the Scandinavian settlers in England. Danes and Saxons were welded together into one Teutonic people, and they kept their Teutonic language and character long after Rouen had become, in speech at least, no less French than Paris. With their old Teutonic speech, the second body of settlers seem to have largely kept their old Teutonic faith. We shall presently find Bayeux the centre of a heathen and Danish party in the duchy, in opposition to Rouen, the centre of the new speech and the new creed. The blood of the inhabitants of the Bessin must be composed of nearly the same elements, mingled in nearly the same proportions, as the blood of the inhabitants of the Danish districts of England.^[244] To this day there is no Romance-speaking region of the continent in which an Englishman feels himself so thoroughly at home as in this 179old Saxon and Danish land. In every part of Normandy, as compared with France or Aquitaine,^[245] the Englishman feels himself at home; but in the district of Bayeux he seems hardly to have left his own island. The kindred speech indeed is gone; but everything else remains. The land is decidedly not French; men, beasts, everything, are distinctively of a grander and better type than their fellows in the mere French districts; the general aspect of the land, its fields, its hedges, all have an English look. And no contrast can be greater than that which may be often seen between the tall, vigorous, English-looking, Norman yeoman, out of whose mouth we instinctively feel that the common mother-tongue ought to come, and the French soldier, whose stature, whose colour, whose every feature, proclaims him to be a man of another race, and whose presence proclaims no less unmistakeably that the glory of Normandy has passed away.

Rolf, the converted pirate, died, according to his Norman |Religion of Rolf.| admirers, in the odour of sanctity.^[246] According to the wild reports of his enemies, he mingled the two religions, and, while making gifts to the Christian churches, offered Christian captives in sacrifice to his Scandinavian idols. Such a strange confusion is possible at some earlier stage of his career; but we need much better evidence than we have to convince us that he was guilty of any such doings just before his death.^[247] But, whatever traces of heathendom 180may have cloven to Rolf himself, it is certain that his son |Birth and education of William Longsword.| William Longsword, half a Frenchman by birth, was almost wholly a Frenchman in feeling. His mother was French; but he did not spring from the union of the converted Northman with the royal blood of the West-Franks. Gisla bore no children to her already aged husband, and William was the son of a consort who both preceded and followed her in his affections. She was known as Popa, whether that designation was really a baptismal name or, as some hint, a mere name of endearment. She was the daughter of a certain Count Berengar, and was carried off as a captive by Rolf when he took Bayeux in his pirate days.^[248] Her brother, Bernard Count of Senlis, plays an important part in the reigns of his nephew and great-nephew. Popa and her son seem to have stood in a doubtful position which they share with more than one |Norman and Frankish laxity as to marriage.| other Norman Duke and his mother. Rolf and Popa were most likely married, as the phrase was, “Danish fashion,”^[249] which, in the eyes of the Church, was the same as not being married at all. A woman in such a position might, almost at pleasure, be called either wife or concubine, and might be treated as either the one or the other. Her children might, as happened to be convenient, be either branded as bastards or held entitled to every right of legitimate birth. Rolf put away Popa when he married King Charles’s 181daughter, and when King Charles’s daughter died, he took Popa back again.^[250] So William, Popa’s son, put away Sprota, the mother of his son Richard, when he married Liudgardis of Vermandois.^[251] This strange laxity with regard to marriage, though spoken of as something specially Danish, was in truth hardly more Danish than Frankish. The private history of the Frankish Kings, Merwings and Karlings alike, is one long record of the strangest conjugal relations. Ordinary concubinage is not amazing anywhere; what stands out specially conspicuous in the history of these Kings—nowhere more conspicuous than in the history of the great Charles—is the liberty which they assumed of divorcing their Queens at pleasure, and sometimes of having several acknowledged Queens at once. |William Longsword French rather than Danish.| William, born of a doubtful union of this kind, was far more French than Danish in feeling. His tutor was Botho, a Danish companion of Rolf, but one who threw himself thoroughly into the French and Christian interest. Such an education made William familiar with the language and feelings of both classes of his subjects; but his own sympathies lay with the speech, as well as with the creed, of his mother; he was more at home in Romanized Rouen than in Teutonic Bayeux. In the existing state of things, divided as the duchy was between the Danish or heathen and the French or Christian party, the personal sympathies of the prince were of the highest importance, and there can be no doubt that the French feelings and Christian convictions of William had a most decisive effect on the history of the Norman state.^[252]

182The first great event in the internal history of the duchy |Breton revolt. 931.| during the reign of William is a general revolt of its Breton dependencies. This event was probably not unconnected with the general course of affairs in Gaul. At William’s accession, two Kings, Charles the Simple and Rudolf of Burgundy, disputed the crown of the West-Franks. William, as we have seen, became the vassal of |William’s attachment to the cause of Charles. His peace with Hugh and Herbert. 928.| Charles, and refused all submission to Rudolf. Even in finally making peace with his great French neighbours, Hugh of Paris and Herbert of Vermandois, William made it a condition that Herbert should do homage to Charles as he himself had done. Herbert, it should be remembered, was himself of Carolingian descent, and might have further designs of his own. It was only on these terms that William restored Herbert’s son, who had been given to his father Rolf as a hostage.^[253] Charles remained for some while a puppet in the hands of Herbert, brought forth as a sovereign or confined as a prisoner, as suited the ever-shifting |Death of Charles the Simple. 929.| relations of Herbert, Hugh, and Rudolf. At last the unhappy descendant and namesake of the great Emperor died in bonds at Peronne, whether actually murdered by Herbert, or simply worn out by sorrow and captivity, it matters little.^[254] Rudolf was now the only acknowledged King, and he soon showed himself to be, in one respect at least, fully worthy of his crown. The independent and unsettled Northmen of the Loire had committed |King Rudolf defeats the Northmen of the Loire at Limoges. 930.| great devastations in Aquitaine. King Rudolf overcame them in a great battle at Limoges, where he utterly broke their power, and procured the acknowledgement of his own supremacy over Aquitaine.^[255] It was probably this 183great defeat of one Norman army by a King to whom no |The Bretons rise.| Norman had hitherto done homage which encouraged the Bretons to make an attempt to throw off the Norman yoke altogether. That yoke was of a twofold kind; there was the more regular and endurable supremacy of the Norman Duke at Rouen, and there was also the constant annoyance of small bands or colonies of independent adventurers within their frontiers or upon their borders. Under their princes, |Massacre of the Normans, Michaelmas 931.| Juhel Berengar and Alan, the Bretons rose; they made a massacre of the Normans in their own country, which may have given a precedent for the later massacre of the Danes in England.^[256] The feast of Saint Michael in the one case was what the feast of Saint Brice was in the other. |The Bretons attack Bayeux.| Flushed with success, they entered the Norman duchy, and attacked Rolf’s latest and most precious acquisition, Teutonic Bayeux.^[257] Alike under Saxon and under Norman occupation, the Teutonic colony was a thorn in the side of the Celts, which they were always eager to get rid of. |The revolt crushed.| But William completely crushed the revolt, and its only result was to bring all Britanny more completely under Norman control, and to extend the immediate boundaries |Normandy gains the Côtentin peninsula.| of his duchy. The districts of Avranches and Coutances, with the noble peninsula to which the latter city gives its name, were now added to the immediate Norman dominion.^[258]

At this point comes the first of many signs which we shall meet with in the course of our story, all of which show the high position which England held at this time, 184and the important influence exercised on foreign politics by the renowned prince who now filled the West-Saxon throne. In this, as in every other respect, all depended on the personal character of the King. It was now exactly as it was ages later. England under Æthelstan differed from England under Æthelred, just as England under Elizabeth or Cromwell differed from England under the first or the second pair of Stewarts. Through the whole of this period, the King of the English, the common friend and kinsman of most of the contending princes, appears as a dignified mediator among them. Through the marriages of his sisters, some contracted before, some after his election to the crown, Æthelstan was the brother-in-law of most of the chief princes of Western Europe. |His connexion with most of the Western Princes.| He stood in this relation to King Otto, to King Charles, to King Lewis of Arles, to Duke Hugh of Paris, and to a nameless prince near the Alps.^[259] On the imprisonment |Eadgifu and Lewis take refuge in England.| of Charles, his Queen Eadgifu,^[260] with her young son Lewis, had taken refuge in England,^[261] and the future King of the West-Franks was now learning lessons of war and statesmanship at the hands of his glorious uncle. So |Alan of Britanny does the like.| now, on the extinction of the Breton insurrection, while Berenger submitted to the Normans, Alan took shelter 185with Æthelstan,^[262] as his father before him is said to have taken shelter with Eadward. England might in either case seem a strange place of refuge for a banished Armorican prince and his following. The descendants of those who had originally fled before the English conquerors now sought for safety in the very land from which their forefathers had been driven. And at this particular moment such a refuge might seem stranger than ever. The Breton exiles sought shelter in England at the hands of the very King by whom the last footsteps of Celtic independence in Southern Britain were trampled out. Æthelstan and William of Rouen might well seem to be carrying out |Relations of England with Normandy less friendly than with the other states.| the same work on opposite sides of the sea. But a nearer tie of common hostility might well at that moment unite the Breton and the Englishman. Each was engaged in a struggle with Scandinavian intruders in his own land. Between the Danes in England and the Danes in Normandy communications never wholly ceased, and, long after this time, we shall find the connexion between Denmark and Normandy directly affecting the course of English events. The Normans and their Duke seem always to have been on less intimate terms with England than most of the neighbouring states; William stands almost alone among princes of equal rank in not being honoured with the hand of a sister of glorious Æthelstan. The Norman historian even puts forth a claim on the part of his Duke to a dominion over England,^[263] which is 186among the most ridiculous outpourings of his lying vanity. Still such a boast speaks something as to the feelings which existed between the Danes in Gaul and the great destroyer of the Danish power in Britain. With Æthelstan then, the common champion of Christian and civilized Europe, at the court which was the common shelter of the oppressed, the common school of every princely virtue, did the Breton prince, fleeing from his conqueror, |Restoration of Alan. 936.| seek the safest and the most honourable refuge. At a later date, when the influence of Æthelstan on the affairs of Gaul was specially great, Alan and his companions were allowed to return.^[264] He received a large part of Britanny as a vassal of the Norman Duke; he appears to have remained steady in his allegiance, and he is henceforth constantly mentioned among the chief peers of the Norman |His struggles with the Northmen of the Loire.| state.^[265] But he could win back the actual possession of his dominions only by hard fighting against the independent Normans of the Loire. These pirates, even after Rudolf’s victory at Limoges, held many points of the country, and they were hardly more inclined to submit to the Norman Duke at Rouen than to the Breton Count at Vannes.^[266] Alan restored the ruined city of Nantes, and 187did much for his recovered dominions in various ways. The relations between Normandy and Britanny were now definitely settled, as far as anything could ever be said to be settled in that age. The boundary between the dominions of the vassal and his lord was fixed by the Norman acquisition |The Côtentin becomes thoroughly Norman.| of the Côtentin and Avranchin. These lands, the last won part of Normandy, form one of the districts which became most thoroughly Norman. They stood open for Norman colonization; and we shall presently see that colonization was allowed, perhaps invited, not only from the settled parts of Normandy, but even directly from the heathen North itself.

Along with the peninsula of Coutances the Norman Dukes obtained a possession which was afterwards to form a bond of connexion of a singular kind between Normandy and England.^[267] In comparing the extent of the West-Frankish kingdom at this age with that of modern France in our own day,^[268] while mentioning many |Normandy acquires the Channel Islands.| points in which the French frontier has advanced, I had to mention three points where it has fallen back. The extent of the land whose princes acknowledged a nominal superior in the West-Frankish King took in Flanders, Barcelona, and the Channel Islands. Those islands, a natural appendage to the Constantine peninsula, now became Norman. When continental Normandy was lost by John, the insular part of the duchy was still retained, and it has ever since remained a possession of the English crown. As long as the English Kings kept the title either 188of Duke of Normandy or of King of France, here was a portion of the duchy or of the kingdom whose actual possession might be said to make good their claim to the rest. This insular Normandy remains to this day French in speech, but deeply attached, and with good reason, to the |Peculiar relation of the islands to England.| English connexion. The islands form distinct commonwealths, dependent on the British crown, but not incorporated with the United Kingdom. This condition of a dependency is perhaps that which best suits a community which has a distinct existence of its own, but which could not possibly maintain its independence as a distinct and sovereign state. Keeping their ancient constitutions, and enjoying the protection of the power of England, the Norman islands unite the safety of a great kingdom with the local independence of a small commonwealth. How much they would lose by becoming a French department I need not stop to point out. But they would also lose, not nearly so much, but still not a little, by becoming an English county. The right of sending one or two members to the British Parliament, where, among so many greater interests, their voice could hardly be heard, would be a poor exchange for their present legislative independence. Parliament can indeed, on any emergency which may call for its interference, legislate for the Norman islands. But it must legislate specially for them, after special consideration of the circumstances of the case. The islands cannot find themselves unexpectedly bound by some piece of general legislation, passed without their knowledge and possibly contrary to their interests. Thus the dependent condition of the islands secures a greater consideration of their interests than they could receive if they formed an integral portion of the kingdom. We occasionally hear of internal abuses in the Channel Islands which are held to need the intervention of Parliament, but we never hear of external grievances laid to the charge 189of Parliament itself. The Norman islands seem to be far |Comparison with Orkney.| more contented as dependencies than those Norwegian islands which, having been formed into a Scottish county, have become an integral part of the United Kingdom. The ancient earldom of Orkney, represented in Parliament by a single member, has its wrongs, or at least its grievances; of the wrongs or grievances of Jersey or Guernsey no one ever heard. And this singular and beneficial relation in which these interesting little communities stand at this day to the English crown is connected by a direct chain of cause and effect with the revolt of the Bretons against Norman supremacy nine hundred and forty years ago.

William, thus become the conqueror of the Bretons, ruled for the present as a French prince. As such, his French speech, French connexions, and French religion, caused him to be hated and dreaded by a large portion of his subjects. A strong Danish and heathen party still survived within the older limits of the duchy, and the newly won lands probably contained some of those independent Danish settlements by which Britanny in general was so |Revolt of the Danish party in Normandy, 932.| infested. Out of these two elements a Danish and heathen revolt was organized. Its leader was Riulf, seemingly an independent Danish chief settled in the Constantine |Legendary details of the revolt and its suppression.| peninsula. The story, as we have it,^[269] reads like a romance. The rebels rise in arms; they demand one concession after another; the panic-stricken Duke is ready to yield everything; he even proposes to resign his duchy and to flee to his French uncle at Senlis. But he is recalled to a better mind by his veteran counsellor, the Danish-born Bernard. He then wins an almost miraculous victory over the rebels, and, for the time at least, crushes all signs of revolt. These details cannot be accepted as historical; but one or two points in the story are instructive. The rebels are made to demand the cession of all the country 190west of the river Risle. The land which would have been left to the Duke after such a cession nearly answers to the original grant to Rolf, excluding the later acquisitions of |Geographical character of the two parties.| Bayeux and Coutances. This demand, like everything else in the history, shows how thoroughly the Norman parties were geographical parties. The Christian and French-speaking Duke might keep Christian and French-speaking Rouen and Evreux; but the heathen and Danish land to the west must be independent of a prince who had cast |Christianity and French manners supported by a party among the native Danes.| away the creed and speech of his forefathers. On the other hand, we see that there were men of Danish birth, old companions of Rolf, men who retained a strong national feeling, who still distinctly threw in their lot with the French party. They wished Normandy to remain an united and independent state; they had not the slightest wish to merge Normandy in France in any political sense; but they wished the Norman duchy to be a member of the general French commonwealth, French in religion, language, and civilization. Such a man was Botho, the old tutor of William and afterwards tutor to William’s son; such were Oslac, bearing a name famous in our own Northumbrian history, and Bernard the Dane, who plays an important part in Norman affairs for many years to |William’s French and Christian government.| come. Through the overthrow of the rebellion this party was now dominant, and William reigned as a Christian prince, as a French prince, aiming at an influence in French affairs proportioned to the extent of his dominion on Gaulish soil. Through his whole life he was subject to strong religious impulses, and, according to a legend which may well contain some groundwork of truth, he was with difficulty hindered from becoming a monk in his own foundation of Jumièges.^[270] Yet he was by no means lavish 191in grants to the Church, and the ecclesiastical foundations, which had suffered so cruelly during the Scandinavian incursions, still remained weak and impoverished, and, in many cases, altogether desolate. His general government is described as just and vigorous, and he seems to have |He does not wholly break with the Danish element.| deservedly won the general love of his subjects. And it is certain that, though he laboured to bring his dominions within the pale of Christian and French civilization, he did not wholly cast away the national speech and national feelings of his fathers. It is not unlikely that his policy towards the Danish element in the duchy varied at different periods of his reign. He may have found that the transformation of a nation must needs be a work of time, that too much haste might hinder the object which he had at heart, that a certain measure of toleration, in language, in manners, and even in religion, might be needful in order to bring about a final change in |Towards the end of his reign he makes further advances to the Danes.| any of those points. In his later days he may even have gone further than this. After all his efforts to identify himself with the French, and to act as a French prince among other French princes, he still found himself scorned and hated, still looked on as Duke only of the Pirates. Under the influence of such feelings, he may to some extent have thrown himself into the hands of the Danish party. According to a story which cannot be received as it stands, but which probably contains some germs of truth, he admitted a fresh Danish colony, direct from Denmark, into the newly-acquired peninsula of Coutances.^[271] 192It is certain that he entrusted his son Richard to the care, not of any French clerk or Bishop, but to his own old |Danish education of his son Richard.| tutor, the Danish-born Botho. The boy was purposely taken to Bayeux, the Teutonic city which Botho himself, in his pirate days, had helped to harry. He was sent thither expressly to become familiar with the ancestral tongue, which was already forgotten at Rouen,^[272] but which was still spoken by the mixed Saxon and Danish population of the Bessin. The boy was to be brought up in a Danish city, but by a native Dane who had accepted Christianity and French manners. We may be sure that no religious apostasy was dreamed of; but William now saw that the sovereign of Normandy must be neither pure Dane nor pure Frenchman, but, as far as might be, Dane and Frenchman at once.

For the purposes of the present sketch, the internal developement of the Norman duchy, the distinction between its Danish and its French elements, its relations to its Celtic neighbours and vassals, are points of more importance than the part played by its second Duke in the general politics of Gaul. Yet the history of Normandy would be hardly intelligible without some understanding of the general position of the duchy as one of the great |Utter confusion of this period.| fiefs of the West-Frankish crown. The reign of William Longsword forms the most confused part even of the confused Gaulish history of the tenth century. It is a period utterly without principles, almost without definite parties; even the strife between Laon and Paris, between the Karling and the house of Robert, between the Frank and the Frenchman, is in a manner lulled as long as Rudolf of Burgundy fills the Western throne. Every vassal of the Western crown sought little beyond his own gain and aggrandizement, and all of them freely 193changed sides as often as it suited their interest so to do. And William himself added as much to the confusion as any man, by changing sides perhaps oftener |Comparison between William and the French Princes.| than anybody else. And hardly any practical difference was made by the fact that William seems to have been several degrees less selfish and unprincipled than his neighbours. He was evidently a creature of impulse, and his impulses, if they often led him astray, often led him to righteous and generous actions. Though we cannot set him down, with his panegyrist, as a saint and a martyr, we can at least see in him far nobler qualities than any that can be seen in the contemporary princes of Vermandois, of Flanders, or even of ducal France. Still the practical difference was slight. William was doubtless morally a better man than his neighbours; but politically he was as untrustworthy as the worst of them. His plighted faith went for as little as the plighted faith of a deliberate perjurer. Impulse led him to one course one day, and impulse led him to an opposite course the next day. He probably never was intentionally treacherous, but he did as many of what were in effect treacherous actions as the basest traitor among them all.

Northern Gaul was at this time divided in very unequal proportions between the King and several vassal princes more powerful than himself. Of Southern Gaul |Practical independence of Aquitaine.| it is hardly needful to speak; of Aquitaine we hear just enough to show that the lands north and south of the Loire were aware of each other’s existence, and that a nominal connexion was held to exist between them. The Aquitanian princes now and then stooped to pay a nominal homage to the King of the West-Franks; otherwise the South moved in a world of its own, a world which was very slightly touched by the revolutions of Laon, Rouen, or Paris. It must always be remembered that the royal city was Laon, a city close upon the Lotharingian frontier, 194in a district where the Teutonic speech still lingered.^[273] |The King’s domain.| The royal domain took in only Laon, Compiègne, and a small territory about those towns. Through the election of Rudolf, ducal Burgundy was brought into a temporary connexion with the crown, but that connexion lasted no longer than the reign of Rudolf himself. To |Lotharingia; explanation of its continual revolutions.| the east and north-east of the royal dominions lay Lotharingia, the border land, ever fluctuating in its allegiance between the Eastern and Western kingdoms. But all its fluctuations follow one unvarying principle, namely that its inhabitants preferred the rule of a Karling to that of any one else, but that, when no Karling was to be had, they preferred the rule of a |Germany.| German to that of a Frenchman. Beyond Lotharingia lay the Eastern Francia, the Teutonic Kingdom, now rapidly rising into greatness under the vigorous Kings |The Saxon Kings.| of the Saxon house. Deeming themselves the true successors of Charles, speaking his tongue and crowned in his royal city, the Saxon Kings already aspired to reunite the scattered fragments of his Empire. Within the Western |Arnulf of Flanders.| Kingdom we find three chief princes, Arnulf of Flanders, Herbert of Vermandois, and Hugh of Paris. The Flanders of those days, it should be remembered, reached far to the south of any border which Flanders has had for some centuries past. Calais, Boulogne, and Arras were all Flemish, and in those days Flemish still meant Low-Dutch. Ponthieu was a frontier district, with a Count of its own, whose homage was disputed between Flanders and Normandy. Of the present sovereign of Flanders it is enough to say that his actions show him to have been |Herbert of Vermandois.| capable of any crime. To the south of Flanders lay Vermandois, governed by the faithless, unprincipled Herbert, himself of Carolingian descent, but the greatest of all 195sinners against Carolingian royalty; the gaoler, most likely the murderer, of Charles the Simple. His one object was to extend by any means his comparatively narrow territories. More powerful than any other Western prince, far more powerful than his nominal King, was the lord of the Western Francia, the Duke of the French, |The Duchy of France.| Hugh the Great of Paris. His dominions took in the greater part of central Gaul north of the Loire, but, since the establishment of the Norman duchy, they nowhere |Ducal Burgundy.| reached to the sea. Ducal Burgundy need hardly be mentioned; on the death of Rudolf, Duke and King, the duchy was split into several parts, a large share |Archbishopric of Rheims.| falling to the lot of Hugh himself. Along with these temporal principalities we might almost reckon the metropolitan see of Rheims, whose Primate, alone among Western bishops, made some faint approach to the position of the princely prelates of Germany. This great and wealthy church constantly formed an apple of discord among the temporal powers which surrounded it. The rival princes were always striving, sometimes to thrust their nominees into the archbishopric, sometimes to appropriate to themselves the estates of the see. A large share of the history of the times is taken up with disputes about the succession to the archbishopric, which sometimes take the form of ecclesiastical synods, sometimes that of temporal campaigns and sieges. In the end the temporal importance of the see was greatly lessened through the loss of several of its most valuable possessions, |Hugh the Great.| among them the famous lordship of Coucy. Among all these princes Hugh of France stands out the foremost, alike from the extent of his dominions and from the peculiarity of his personal position. The nephew of King Odo, the son of King Robert, the father of King Hugh, the brother-in-law of King Rudolf, King Æthelstan, and King Otto himself, the Duke of the French never would 196be himself a King. He had no scruple against making |His Policy.| war on the King, none against robbing him of his dominions, none against assuming a complete control over his actions and even keeping him in personal bondage. He had no scruple even against transferring his allegiance from one King to another, against becoming a vassal of the Eastern instead of the Western crown. But if he went thus far, he would go no further; he would always have a King over him, if only to show how much greater he was than any King; but a King he himself never would be. Three times at least he might easily have mounted the throne; but he always declined the glittering bauble that lay within his grasp. In all this there seems something like a guiding principle; and even in other respects, faithless and ambitious as Hugh was, he was distinctly better than some of his fellows. It is some slight comfort to find that a man who was honoured with the hand of a sister of Æthelstan was at least not stained with any such frightful crimes as those which have handed down the names of Arnulf and Herbert to everlasting shame.^[274]

When William succeeded his father, Normandy was at war with France; that is, it was at war with Herbert of Vermandois and Hugh of Paris, and with Rudolf of Burgundy, their King of the West-Franks. But Rolf, and after him William, acknowledged no King but the imprisoned Charles. From him Rolf had received his lands; to him Rolf had done homage; to him William repeated that homage on the earliest opportunity, and he never did homage to Rudolf till the death of Charles left the Burgundian Duke without a competitor for the |926–928.| kingly title. Peace was made and peace was again confirmed, without any acknowledgement of the usurper’s 197claim. It was not till three years later, when Charles |After Charles’s death William does homage to Rudolf. 933.| was dead, and when Rudolf, by his victory at Limoges, had shown himself worthy to reign, that William, seemingly of his own act and deed and without any special circumstances calling for such a course, did homage to Rudolf,^[275] and received from him a grant of the maritime Britanny. |Rudolf’s grant of Britanny.| This grant most likely carried with it both a general confirmation of the superiority of Normandy over Britanny and a special confirmation of the transfer of Avranches and Coutances to the immediate dominion of the Norman Duke. Meanwhile Hugh and Herbert were running their usual course; it is hardly the duty of an English, or even of a Norman, historian to reckon up the number of times that they transferred their allegiance from Charles to |Herbert does homage to Henry. 931.| Rudolf and from Rudolf to Charles. It is of more importance to mark that Herbert, at a moment when Rudolf and Hugh were both at war with him, did not scruple to transfer his allegiance to the Eastern King |Rudolf dies. 936.| Henry.^[276] At last Rudolf died, and now a most important change took place. It might not be very clear what was the use of a King, if his vassals, several of them more powerful than himself, might rebel against him and make war on him at pleasure. Still, though all the princes were agreed in allowing to the King the smallest possible amount of territory and power, none of the princes was |Diet of election for the new King.| prepared to do without a King altogether. A Diet of election was held, of which some most remarkable details are preserved.^[277] The prime mover in the whole matter was Hugh the Great. He might himself have become a 198candidate; all central and southern Gaul, his own duchy |Central and Southern Gaul favours Hugh; the Eastern part favours Lewis.| and the lands beyond the Loire, sought to confer the crown upon him. But the Eastern part of the kingdom, where there still lingered some traces of Teutonic blood and speech, some feelings of reverence for the blood of the great Emperor, favoured the election of Lewis the son of Charles, who was now living under the protection of his |Hugh declines the crown and procures the election of Lewis.| English uncle. Hugh, according to his invariable policy, declined the crown for himself. He already enjoyed the reality of kingship, and he shrank with a superstitious dread from a title which had brought little gain to his uncle and his brother-in-law and still less to his own father. It was on the motion of the Duke of the French that the assembly agreed to elect Lewis as King of the |Embassy to Æthelstan. 936.| West-Franks, and to send an embassy to Æthelstan to ask for the restoration of his nephew to the throne of his fathers. The embassy passed over into England, and found the King at York.^[278] It was the year before Brunanburh, when the presence of Æthelstan was doubtless specially called for in his northern dominions. The ambassadors spoke in the name of Duke Hugh and of all the chief men of the Gauls, and prayed for Lewis to be their |Negotiations between Æthelstan and Hugh.| King. Æthelstan, somewhat doubtful of their good faith,^[279] demanded oaths and proposed a further conference. The King of the English hastened to the coast of Kent, and the Duke of the French to the coast of Flanders, not far from Boulogne. Fire signals were exchanged on each side, the materials being found in the wooden houses which 199lined the shores.^[280] Let us hope that, whatever Hugh or Arnulf may have done, Æthelstan at least made good the loss to his subjects. Several English Bishops and Thegns passed over, having at their head Oda, Bishop of the Wilsætas or of Ramsbury, afterwards the famous Primate.^[281] Before Æthelstan would trust his nephew across the sea, he demanded satisfactory oaths from the assembled princes; otherwise he would give Lewis one of his own kingdoms, where he might reign safely and prosperously.^[282] This was no empty boast; the Emperor of Britain had kingdoms to bestow, lower indeed in rank, but safer and more powerful, than the nominal royalty of Laon. The princes of Gaul swore as they were bidden; but it was agreed that the Duke of the French should be the chief adviser, or rather the protector and guardian, of the new King.^[283] Lewis crossed the sea; he landed in the realm which was now his, he sprang on his horse,^[284] and rode on amid the cheers of |Lewis crowned King. 936.| his new subjects. He went to his royal city of Laon, where he was consecrated King by Artald Archbishop of Rheims; he then went with his guardian on an expedition into Burgundy, more to his guardian’s profit than to his own.^[285] He then visited his powerful vassal at Paris; but 200in the next year, safe on the rock of Laon, he threw off |He declares his independence of Hugh. 937.| the yoke; he declared his independence of Duke Hugh, and sent for his mother Eadgifu, seemingly to take Hugh’s place as his chief counsellor.^[286]

The reign of Lewis—Lewis from beyond Sea—is of itself enough to confute the common mistake of believing that the line of Charles the Great ended in a race of imbecile fainéants, like those whom Pippin had set aside.^[287] Lewis may be called ambitious, turbulent, and perfidious, but no man was ever less of a fainéant. His life was in truth one of preternatural activity. Early adversity, combined with an education at the hands of glorious Æthelstan, had brought out some very vigorous qualities in his young nephew. If Lewis was ambitious, turbulent, and perfidious, he was but paying off Hugh of Paris and William of Rouen in their own coin. In truth no two positions can well be more unlike one another than the position of |Contrast between the late Karlings and the late Merwings.| the later Karlings and that of the later Merwings. The Duke of the French might now and then put on something of the guise of a Mayor of the Palace, but Pippin and Hugh had very different masters to deal with. The nominal ruler of a vast realm, led about as an occasional pageant and leaving the government of his dominions to an all-powerful minister, is the exact opposite to a King whose domains have shrunk up to the territory of a single city, and who has to spend his life in hard blows to keep that last remnant of his heritage from the ambition of vassals whose territories are far wider than his own. Lewis had to strive in turn against France, 201Normandy, and Vermandois, and now and then he was able to give each of them nearly as good as they brought. And, small as was the extent of the King’s actual domains, there was still an abiding reverence for the royal name, which breathes in every page of the chroniclers, and which was not without influence even on the minds of the men who fought against him. Still Lewis had constantly to fight for the small remnant of dominion which was left to him. The restless Herbert had to be |938.| driven from a fortress built on the very slope of the King’s |939.| own rock of Laon.^[288] The next year we find both William and Hugh in arms against the King in a quarrel arising out of the border disputes of Normandy and Flanders.^[289] William was at war with Arnulf, the quarrel between these two great potentates being, if not caused in the first |Affairs of Montreuil. 939.| instance, at any rate aggravated by their differences as to the affairs of a smaller neighbour. This was Herlwin, Count of Montreuil or Ponthieu, whose dominions lay between Normandy and Flanders. Properly he seems to have been a vassal of the Duke of the French,^[290] but when his dominions were seized by Arnulf, he got no help from Hugh, while he got very effective help from William. |Montreuil taken by Arnulf and recovered by Herlwin.| By the aid of a Norman force, headed, according to one account, by the Norman Duke himself, Montreuil was recovered, and Herlwin reinstated.^[291] But greater powers than any of these were soon to come on the stage. One of them indeed figures in a rather unlooked-for way in the story of Herlwin. When Montreuil was taken by Arnulf, 202|Herlwin’s wife and children sent to Æthelstan.| the wife and children of the dispossessed Count were sent, of all the people in the world, to King Æthelstan in England. That they should have taken refuge at his court would have been only the natural course of things; but it sounds strange at first that the prisoners should be sent to the King of the English, if not actually as captives in bonds, yet at least as persons over whom some degree of watch was to be kept.^[292] The explanation is most likely to be found in the close alliance between Æthelstan and Lewis, possibly also in the kindred between Æthelstan and Arnulf, who was, like Æthelstan, a grandson of Ælfred. Just now Arnulf was the friend, and William |William excommunicated. 939.| the enemy, of Lewis, and William was actually excommunicated by the Bishops in the King’s interest for his harryings of the Flemish territory. That a similar fate fell on Herbert for his aggressions on the lands of the archbishopric of Rheims is less wonderful.^[293] Æthelstan soon afterwards again appears as the ally of his nephew, even when ties equally strong might have drawn him towards |Otto the Great, King of the East-Franks. 936.| his nephew’s enemies. King Henry of Germany was now dead, and his son, the great Otto, the brother-in-law of Æthelstan, had succeeded to the throne of the Eastern Franks in the same year in which their common nephew had succeeded to the royalty of the West. After some opposition at the hands of his own brothers, the future restorer of the Empire had received the Frankish diadem in the great Emperor’s minster at Aachen. But the men of border Lotharingia refused to acknowledge another Saxon; there was now again a Karling who was a crowned King; none but that Karling could be their lawful sovereign; 203the Saxon Duke had been chosen King of Saxony only, because a chief was needed to defend the land against the Slaves, and because the true Carolingian King was at that |The Lotharingians transfer their allegiance from Otto to Lewis. 939.| moment disqualified.^[294] The Lotharingians therefore transferred their allegiance from Otto to Lewis. Their first application was rejected; a second, made by the temporal princes of the country—the Bishops clave to Otto—was accepted.^[295] A war naturally followed between Lewis and Otto, in which Lotharingia was ravaged by the German King. Lewis was however not without allies. The West-Saxon King stepped in as the champion of his Frankish |The English fleet in the Channel.| nephew against his Old-Saxon brother-in-law; an English fleet appeared in the channel; but in an inland war this naval help could be of little avail, and nothing came of the English intervention beyond the ravage of some parts of the opposite coast.^[296] A series of intrigues and 204backslidings now follow which fairly baffle the chronicler. While Lewis was gaining new subjects to the East, his vassals within his own kingdom almost unanimously forsook |The Western princes do homage to Otto.| him. Not only his old enemies Hugh and Herbert, but the fickle Duke of the Normans, and Arnulf, in whose cause he had himself been so lately warring, all met Otto and transferred their homage from Lewis to him.^[297] The motive for this course is not very clear. Otto was indeed a more distant, but he was a far more powerful, over-lord, one far more likely to exercise effective authority over his |Activity of Lewis.| vassals. But the indefatigable Lewis found new friends in Lotharingia; he went into Elsass to a conference with |Lotharingia won and lost.| Hugh of Provence;^[298] he drove the partisans of Otto out of Lotharingia, and returned to Laon to chastise a Bishop suspected of treason. These successes were only momentary; Lotharingia was soon recovered by Otto.^[299] But the conspiracy of the Western princes against their King was no |William does homage and makes special promises to Lewis. 940.| less transitory. In the year following the general defection William of Normandy changed sides; he met Lewis in the neighbourhood of Amiens; he did homage, and received from the King a fresh grant of his dominions.^[300] And he seems to have made something more than the usual promises of allegiance. He is said to have pledged himself either to die in the King’s cause or to restore him to the full exercise of his royal authority.^[301] Yet before the 205year was out William was again in arms, helping Hugh |The princes, William among them, besiege Rheims, and depose Archbishop Artald. 940.| and Herbert in a siege of Rheims.^[302] The metropolitan see was disputed between Hugh, a son of Herbert, and Artald, a vigorous champion of the King, who had performed the ceremony of his coronation. Artald was now in possession of the bishopric, and had been endowed by the King with great temporal privileges and with the title of Count.^[303] War against the Primate was in every sense war against the King. The city surrendered; Herbert’s Archbishop was admitted; and the conspirators then went a step further in rebellion by besieging the King’s |Hugh and Herbert again do homage to Otto at Attigny. 940.| own city of Laon. Hugh and Herbert presently took a still more daring step by inviting Otto to Attigny, within the acknowledged West-Frankish border, and there renewing their homage to him.^[304] With this last transaction William |William renews his homage to Lewis.| had nothing to do; before long we find him again the faithful homager of King Lewis, receiving him with all kingly-state at Rouen, and seemingly bringing with him to their due allegiance, not only his own Breton vassals, but his brother-in-law William of Aquitaine.^[305]

We are now drawing near to the end of the troubled career of William Longsword. We here find ourselves involved in such a mass of contradictory statements that I reserve their special examination for another place.^[306] |William Longsword murdered by Arnulf. 943.| That William was lured by Arnulf of Flanders to a conference on the island of Picquigny in the Somme, and that he was there murdered by the contrivance of the Flemish 206prince, there seems no reason to doubt. But as to the motives and circumstances which led to the act, whether Arnulf acted alone or in concert with any of the other Western princes, whether King Otto himself was in any way the unwitting cause of a crime at which his noble heart would have revolted, are questions which I shall |Council of Attigny, held by the two Kings of the Franks as colleagues.| discuss elsewhere. But I cannot, even here, wholly pass by the Council of Attigny, a council at which events took place which one version closely connects with the death of William. Otto was reconciled to Lewis, who had now become his brother-in-law by a marriage with his widowed sister Gerberga, and by Otto’s means the Duke of the French was reconciled to the King. The two Kings then, as colleagues in the administration of one Frankish realm, held a solemn council, at which the great vassals of the Western Kingdom attended. The kings sat side by side; but though the Western King was on his own ground, his Eastern colleague, the truer successor of Charles, the King crowned at Aachen and already no doubt looking to be the Emperor crowned at Rome, took the seat of honour, which, if one tale be true, the Norman alone was found bold enough to challenge for his own immediate lord.

William Longsword left one son, Richard, surnamed the Fearless, born of a Breton mother Sprota, who stood, as we have seen, to Duke William in that doubtful position in which she might, in different mouths, be called an honourable matron, a concubine, or a harlot.^[307] Her son had been taught both the languages of his country, and he was equally at home in Romance Rouen and in Scandinavian 207Bayeux.^[308] Whether his birth were strictly legitimate or not was a matter of very little moment either in |His doubtful legitimacy little thought of.| Norman or in Frankish eyes. If a man was of princely birth and showed a spirit worthy of his forefathers, few cared to pry over minutely into the legal or canonical condition of his mother. The young Richard had been already, without any difficulty, acknowledged by the Norman and Breton chiefs as his father’s future successor in the duchy,^[309] |He is invested with the Duchy by Lewis.| and he now found as little difficulty in obtaining a formal investiture of the fief from his lord King Lewis.^[310] In England his minority, for he was only about ten years old, would have been a far greater hindrance to his succession than his doubtful birth. But even in England, within the same century, minors reigned when no better qualified member of the kingly house was forthcoming, and young |Reign of Richard. 943–996.| Richard was the only male descendant of Rolf. The long reign of Richard, reaching over more than fifty years, is one of the most important in the history of Normandy and of France, and it is in his time that we hear of the first direct collision between Normandy and England. And the early part of Richard’s reign is perhaps more crowded with picturesque incidents than any other portion of time |Romantic interest of his early life.| of equal length. The early life of the orphan child, his dangers, his captivity, his escape, his bitter enemies and his faithful friends, the mighty powers which strove for the possession of his person or for influence over his counsels—the tale has all the interest of a complicated romance. Many of the details are doubtless due to the invention of Norman legend-makers; but there is enough in the soberer French and German writers to show that the main outline of the story is trustworthy. But for the 208purpose of the present sketch, I must set forth the romantic tale of Richard’s childhood only in a greatly abridged shape, and content myself with pointing out those parts of the story which are of political importance.^[311]

The year in which William Longsword was murdered was an important year in many ways for the whole of Gaul. It marks in some sort the beginning of a new |Events of the year 943;| epoch. Besides the death of William and the important events which followed upon it, this year was marked by a birth and a death which had no small influence on the |death of Herbert of Vermandois; birth of Hugh Capet.| course of affairs. Herbert of Vermandois, the regicide, the tyrant as he is called, died this year, and died, according to some accounts, in a mysterious and horrible fashion.^[312] His dominions were divided among his sons, except some portions which passed into the hands of Hugh of Paris. The royal power thus lost one of its most formidable enemies, while another enemy yet more formidable was still further strengthened. And this year, for the first time, Hugh had a son to be the heir of his greatness. His English wife Eadhild had died childless; but her successor, Hugh’s third wife, Hadwisa, daughter of King Henry and sister of King Otto and Queen Gerberga, now bore him a son, Hugh surnamed Capet, the future King. |Effect of Hugh’s birth on Hugh the Great’s policy.| One can hardly doubt that the birth of his son had an effect on Hugh the Great’s policy. He would not be a King himself, but he would put no hindrance in the way of his son being a King. From this time onwards the contrast between the two dynasties, between the old and the new, between the Frank and the Frenchman, between 209Laon and Paris, becomes even more sharply marked than before.

From this time onwards also we must remark another tendency which was doubtless closely connected with the one just mentioned, and of which we have already seen the beginning. I mean the continued and constantly strengthening influence of Germany, the Eastern Kingdom, in the affairs of the West. The Council of Attigny, with the two Kings of the Franks sitting and acting as colleagues, was but the first of a long series of assemblies of the like kind. It is to Otto that all parties in the Western Kingdom appeal as their natural mediator; the King appeals to him as his natural protector. If the Eastern King receives no formal homage as over-lord, still he is clearly looked on both by Lewis and by Hugh as something more than a mere neighbour and brother. Towards Lewis Otto appears as the senior colleague in a common office; in the language of the elder days of the Empire, the Saxon acts as the Augustus, while the Frank is only the Cæsar.^[313] While Otto is absent on distant expeditions, his vice-gerent in Lotharingia, Duke Conrad^[314] or Archbishop Bruno, is competent to |From 942 [Attigny] to 973 [death of Otto].| act in his name as moderator of the Western realm. This kind of relation between the two kingdoms lasted during the whole remainder of the reign of Otto the Great, that is, during the rest of the reign of Lewis and during the minority and early reign of his son Lothar. The changed state of things in the days of the two cousins, Otto the Second and Lothar, was undoubtedly one determining cause of the fall of the dynasty of Laon. But there was another determining cause of its fall with which we have more immediately to do. Under Rolf Normandy had stuck faithfully to the 210King; under William it had fluctuated backwards and |Normandy under Richard attached to France.| forwards between King and Duke. Under Richard, Normandy, becoming every day more French and more feudal, became, both in its policy and through actual feudal ties, permanently attached to the Duke and therefore commonly hostile to the King.

Great disturbances in Normandy followed on the unlooked-for death of William Longsword. A new invasion |New Danish settlement under Sihtric.| or settlement direct from the North seems to have happened nearly at the same time as the Duke’s murder; it may even possibly have happened with the Duke’s consent.^[315] At any rate the heathen King Sihtric now |The Danes joined by the heathen party in Normandy.| sailed up the Seine with a fleet, and he was at once welcomed by the Danish and heathen party in the country. Large numbers of the Normans, under a chief named Thurmod, fell away from Christianity, and it appears that |Apostasy of young Richard.| the young Duke himself was persuaded or constrained to join in their heathen worship.^[316] In such a state of things |The Christian party in Normandy seek French help.| we can neither wonder at nor blame the Christian party in Normandy if they drew as close as they could to their Christian neighbours, even at some risk to the independence of the duchy. To become subjects either of the King of Laon or of the Duke of Paris was better than to be eaten up by heathen wikings. Nor are we entitled to be unduly hard on either King or Duke for trying to make the most of such an opportunity for recovering |Position of Lewis and Hugh| the ground which they had lost. The Land of the Normans had been given up to Rolf by the joint act of 211|towards Normandy.| its immediate ruler, the father of the present Duke, and of its over-lord, the father of the present King. The grant had been made on the express condition that the Normans should become members of a Christian and Frankish commonwealth. If heathen invasions were to begin again, and to be powerfully helped by men settled on Gaulish soil, the Norman duchy was serving an object exactly opposite to that for which it was founded. In such a case both Duke and King might well feel themselves justified in getting rid of the nuisance altogether. Feudal ideas also were fast developing, and King Lewis may have already begun to entertain some dim notion that wardship over the fief of a minor vassal was a right |The Christians commend themselves, some to Hugh, some to Lewis.| which of necessity belonged to the lord. In any case, neither Hugh nor Lewis was unwilling to extend his dominions, and at first a large party in the duchy seemed ready to welcome either of them. The Christian Normans were divided between the rival attractions of the King and the Duke. The Duke, nearer and more powerful, could give the most effectual aid at the moment; the King, more distant, would be less dangerous as a permanent protector, and the kingly title still commanded a feeling of deep, if vague and unreasoning, veneration. Some of the Norman chiefs therefore commended themselves to King Lewis and others to Duke Hugh. This choice of different protectors seems to mark a difference of feeling among the Normans themselves;^[317] but the relations of King and Duke were just now unusually friendly, and no immediate dissension seems to have arisen between them on this account. It was in this same year, though later than these Norman transactions, that Hugh not only acted as godfather to a 212daughter of the King, but was confirmed by his new spiritual brother in the possession of the duchies of France |Lewis and Hugh both enter Normandy.| and Burgundy.^[318] Hugh entered Normandy; he fought several battles with the heathens and apostates, and was willingly received at Evreux, where the citizens were of |Lewis defeats the heathens and occupies Rouen.| the Christian party.^[319] Meanwhile the King marched to Rouen, he gathered what forces he could, seemingly both from among his own subjects and from among the Christian Normans; he fought a battle, he utterly defeated the heathens, he killed Thurmod with his own hand, he recovered the young Duke, and left Herlwin of Montreuil as his representative at Rouen.^[320] On a later visit to Rouen, he received the cession of Evreux from Hugh.^[321] Herlwin now waged war against Arnulf with some success, for he slew Balzo, the actual murderer of William, and sent his hands as a trophy to the Norman capital.^[322] But in the course of the year Hugh contrived to reconcile Arnulf to the King,^[323] and the King reconciled Arnulf and Herlwin.

Such is the account given by the French writers; the Normans fill up the story with many further details.^[324] 213|Norman version.| They leave out—thereby throwing the greatest doubt upon the trustworthiness of their own story—all about the homage of Richard and the other Normans, all about Sihtric and Thurmod and the deliverance of Normandy by Lewis himself. Lewis, according to them, came of his own accord to Rouen after the death of William, and was received with joy, as he was supposed to have come in order to plan an expedition against the common enemy Arnulf.^[325] Still from this point it is just possible to patch the two narratives together, though I confess that I receive every detail which comes clothed in the rhetoric of Dudo with very great suspicion. Lewis then, according to this account, remains at Rouen, and a suspicion gets afloat that he is keeping the young Duke a prisoner, and that he means to seize on Normandy for himself. A popular insurrection follows, which is only quelled by the King producing Richard in public and solemnly investing him |Richard’s detention at Laon.| with the duchy.^[326] After this, strange to say, the Norman regents, Bernard the Dane, Oslac, and Rudolf surnamed Torta, are won over by the craft of Lewis to allow him to take Richard to Laon and bring him up with his own children. The King is then persuaded by the bribes of Arnulf to treat Richard as a prisoner, and even to threaten |Richard’s escape.| him with a cruel mutilation.^[327] By a clever stratagem of his faithful guardian Osmund, the same by which Lewis himself had been rescued in his childhood from Herbert of 214Vermandois,^[328] Richard is saved from captivity, and carried to the safe-keeping of his great-uncle, Bernard of Senlis. A mass of perfidious and unintelligible diplomacy now follows in the Norman accounts, of which, if it ever happened at all, we get only the results in the French version. The French writers know nothing of the captivity of |Norman invasion of Britanny. 944.| young Richard, and they connect the invasion of Normandy which undoubtedly took place in the next year with certain transactions in Britanny. The Breton princes, Berengar and Alan, were at variance between themselves, a state of things which gave opportunity for a desolating invasion of the Normans, seemingly the heathen or apostate |Lewis invades Normandy in concert with Hugh. 944.| Normans.^[329] Lewis now invaded Normandy in concert with Hugh. The Duke had already made peace with the Normans,^[330] but he was seduced by the offer of all Normandy beyond the Seine,^[331] or at any rate of the district of Bayeux.^[332] Lewis accordingly, with Arnulf and Herlwin, and several Bishops of France and Burgundy, entered Normandy and occupied Rouen. We again find a division of parties in the country, some receiving the King and others withstanding him.^[333] Hugh meanwhile occupied Bayeux, but Lewis required his confederate to surrender the city to him. The 215Duke obeyed, but he at once began again to plot against |Dissension between Lewis and Hugh.| his sovereign.^[334] He now stirred up several smaller enemies against Lewis, such as Bernard of Senlis, Theobald, Count of Tours, Blois, and Chartres—of whom we shall hear again—the Vermandois princes, and Hugh, his own Archbishop |War at Rheims and elsewhere. 945.| of Rheims. Lewis meanwhile felt himself so safe in Normandy that he employed Norman troops against these various enemies;^[335] and when he had made a truce with Hugh and had raised the siege of Rheims, he returned to Rouen, almost as if he intended to make that city his capital and his permanent residence.^[336]

Lewis had first appeared in Normandy as a deliverer. But according to the Norman writers, he now changed into a conqueror, and began to dream of exercising the extremest rights of conquest. The lands and the |His growing unpopularity and probable designs on Normandy.| women of Normandy were to be distributed among his followers; above all, the estates of the aged Bernard and his beautiful young wife were to be given to an impudent knight who asked for them.^[337] It is worth noticing that, both in this case and in the former one, the evil deeds attributed to Lewis are all in intention; in the earlier tale he was going to make Richard a prisoner, he was going to mutilate him; so he is now going to give Bernard’s wife to his follower; but it does not appear that he actually did any one of these things. Still we can well believe that the Normans were tired of Lewis’s prolonged sojourn at Rouen. Foreign dominion in any shape would soon 216become hateful to the Norman nation, and all creeds and parties would gladly unite in an effort to get rid of it. That Lewis fully intended to keep Normandy can hardly be doubted. That great duchy, with its seven bishoprics, its flourishing capital, its fields and towns and harbours all springing into new life after their recovery from Scandinavian havoc, must indeed have been a tempting prize to the King of Laon and Compiègne. If he could not hold both Rouen and Laon, he might be well pleased to make the exchange, and to transfer the seat of his kingship to the banks of the Seine. How far any part of the Norman people was really prepared for such a transfer, how far Lewis was deceived by the false representations of men who only pretended to wish for it, it is impossible to determine. But we can well believe that all Normandy was soon united in hostility to the foreign King. And either by invitation or by accident, a most powerful and faithful ally was ready at hand to help the Normans in |Harold King of the Danes, [935–985.]| their struggle for independence. Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, had, in this age, out of an union of small principalities, become a single powerful kingdom. Gorm |son of Gorm, [840–935?]| the Old, the founder of the Danish monarchy, had died after a reign said to have been of extraordinary length,^[338] and had passed on his dominion to his son Harold, surnamed Blaatand, Blue-tooth or Black-tooth. Harold was |974.| still a heathen; in later times he became a compulsory convert to Christianity; but when he had once embraced |985.| the faith, he clave stedfastly to it, and lost his crown and life in defence of his new creed.^[339] And if we can at all trust the account of Harold’s conduct in Norman affairs, 217as given by the Norman writers, it is easy to see that, in his case at least, the seed of the Gospel was sown in the |Harold’s disinterested conduct in Normandy. 945.| fruitful field of an honest and good heart.^[340] The heathen wiking, utterly unlike most of his tribe, set an example of straightforward, honest, and unselfish dealing, which shines all the brighter from its contrast with the endless aggressions and backslidings of the selfish and faithless princes of Gaul. Whatever brought Harold into Normandy, he acted there as a disinterested friend of the |He occupies the Côtentin,| Norman Duke and his subjects. He first appeared in the Côtentin, which was most probably already occupied by recent settlers from the North,^[341] and he made his head-quarters |and Bayeux.| at Cherbourg—the borough of Cæsar.^[342] He was next received at Bayeux,^[343] and now all Normandy rose in the cause of the deliverer. That Harold defeated Lewis in |Battle by the Dive.| a battle on the banks of the Dive is allowed on both sides; that the battle was preceded by a conference is allowed on both sides. But the French writers represent the battle as a treacherous attack made by the Danes on a prince who had come in all confidence to a peaceful meeting.^[344] 218The Normans, on the other hand, say that the fight was brought about by the imprudence or insolence of Herlwin of Montreuil.^[345] He who had caused, however innocently, the death of William, he who had ruled in Rouen as the deputy of Lewis, now appeared prominently among the royal troops, and stirred up the wrath of Danes and Normans by his presence. This certainly seems a very lame story, and we may well believe that Harold, however faithful to his allies, might see no crime in practising a little of the usual Danish treachery towards an enemy. But the result of the battle is certain; the armies met, on or near ground to be afterwards made immortal by one of the chiefest exploits of the great William;^[346] and, as a |Lewis defeated and taken prisoner.| fitting forerunner of the day of Varaville, the King’s army was defeated and Lewis taken prisoner.^[347] The Normans add that Harold and Lewis met, man to man and King to King, and that the Dane led away the Frank as the prize of his own personal prowess. Lewis however escaped; he was accompanied, perhaps betrayed, by a Norman in whom he trusted, and, on reaching Rouen, he was imprisoned by |Harold settles the affairs of the Duchy and returns to Denmark.| other Normans in whom he trusted also. The Danish King, if we can trust a tale of such unparalleled generosity, had now done his work. He passed through the land, confirming the authority of the young Duke, and |The renewal of “Rolf’s law.”| restoring the laws of Rolf.^[348] This last phrase is one which meets us constantly in our own history. After the Norman 219Conquest, the demand for the laws of King Eadward is familiar to every one, and in earlier times we read of demands for the laws of Eadgar or of Cnut, or whoever was the last King who was looked back to with any love.^[349] What is really meant in all such cases is not so much any actual enactments as good administration instead of bad, often native administration instead of foreign. The renewal of Rolf’s law meant the wiping out of all traces of the dominion of the King of Laon. Harold then sailed away to his own islands; twenty years afterwards, unless the one story is a repetition of the other, he was equally able and willing to come again on the same errand.^[350]

King Lewis was thus a prisoner, as his father had been before him. After a certain amount of the usual treacherous diplomacy,^[351] he was transferred from the hands of the Normans to those of their ally the Duke of the French. His wrongs called forth the wrath of his 220kinsmen in other lands. Queen Gerberga sought help alike from her own Old-Saxon brother and from her husband’s West-Saxon uncle. Æthelstan the Glorious was no more, but he had handed on his sceptre to a |Intervention of Eadmund. 946.| worthy successor in Eadmund the Magnificent. An English embassy haughtily demanded the release of the King, and received from Hugh as haughty a refusal. The Duke of the French would do nothing for fear of the threats of the English.^[352] How Eadmund would have followed up this beginning it is hard to say; but the next year saw him cut off by the assassin’s dagger, and his successor Eadred had enough to do in the renewed and final struggle |Intervention of Otto. 945.| with the Northumbrian Danes. The application to Otto was more effectual. The King of the East-Franks at once determined to invade the Western Kingdom the next year.^[353] He refused a personal conference with Hugh, and the conference which he allowed him to have with Conrad of Lotharingia was fruitless.^[354] At last, when the German army was actually assembling, Hugh found it necessary to |Lewis obtains his liberty in exchange for the| come to terms with his royal prisoner.^[355] Hugh’s terms were simple—freedom in exchange for Laon. After a while, Lewis brought himself to surrender his single 221|cession of Laon. 946| stronghold, his own royal city, which was still held for him by his faithful and stout-hearted Queen. The Duke of the French took possession of the city of the rock, and the King of the West-Franks was reduced to be little more than King of Compiègne. Most likely he hoped, through German and English help, soon to be again King, not only of Laon, but of Paris and Rouen as well. And as far as forms and words and outward homage went, his authority was presently restored over the whole kingdom. |Lewis’s kingship renewed.| Duke Hugh did not scruple to deprive his sovereign of liberty and dominion; but he would never be a King |Hugh and the other Princes do homage. 946.| himself, and he would always have a King over him. The royal dignity—held, it would seem, to have fallen into abeyance through the King’s imprisonment—was solemnly renewed, and Hugh the Great once more became the faithful liegeman and homager of the King whom he had just before held in bonds.^[356] The other princes of the kingdom followed his example; but, if the Norman writers are to |The absolute independence of Normandy asserted by the Norman writers.| be believed, there was one marked exception. On the banks of the Epte, where the founder of the Norman state had first done homage, the Duke of the Normans was formally set free from all superiority on the part of the Frankish King.^[357] Richard still bore no higher title than that of Duke; but he was a King, as far as complete authority within his own land, and absolute independence of all authority beyond its borders, could make him a King. The prince who was thus acknowledged as perfectly independent was presently persuaded, like other |Richard’s Commendation to Hugh.| allodial owners, to seek a lord, and Richard Duke of the Normans forthwith commended himself and his dominions to his neighbour and benefactor Hugh Duke of 222the French.^[358] Now the absolute independence of Normandy, the renunciation of all homage and all superiority on the part of the crown, is an assertion for which we need some better authority than the declamation of Dudo. In his pages indeed Richard appears as a King, holding the Norman monarchy in fee of no earthly power. But in those pages he also appears as one who far more than forestalled the work of his descendant, as one who held all Gaul and all Britain, with seemingly Germany and Denmark to boot, as dependencies of his Norman monarchy.^[359] By the accuracy of the one description we may perhaps judge of the accuracy of the other.

But the commendation of Normandy to the Duchy of France rests on much better authority. Norman vanity was less inclined to dwell on it than on the alleged independence of Normandy on the kingdom, but it is incomparably the better ascertained fact of the two. In the days of Richard we get our first glimpses of documentary evidence for Norman history in the form of charters, and in an extant charter Richard distinctly speaks of the Duke of the French as his lord.^[360] And it is clear that homage to the Duke carried with it a much more practical relation than homage to the King. Throughout this whole period we find Normandy constantly acting as a subsidiary ally of France. Hugh is followed in his campaigns by Norman troops, seemingly as a matter of course.^[361]

223A double alliance was thus formed, between Normandy and France on the one hand, between the Eastern and Western Kings on the other. And the alliance of Normandy and France sealed the fate of the Carolingian kingship. That kingship lasted forty years longer, but its doom was sealed when Richard commended himself to Hugh. It did not fall when its fortunes seemed lowest. At that moment it had still a powerful protector in the Eastern King. Nor did its utter extinction suit the peculiar policy of the powerful vassal, who, as far as internal politics were concerned, held its destiny in his hands. But even the German protectorate could hardly have much longer sustained the German throne of Laon against the growing power of the new French nationality. When that protectorate was forfeited, as we shall soon see it, there was no longer any hope for the last traces of |The alliance between Normandy and France determines the fall of the Carolingian dynasty. 945–987.| Teutonic sway in the West. Again, had Normandy remained isolated and Teutonic, things might have taken a different course. Had Rouen been hostile or even doubtful, Paris might not have triumphed over Laon. Charles the Simple had been able to raise up a powerful Norman division against the rival King, which staved off his fate for a while. So, had Richard been other than Hugh Capet’s faithful vassal and loving brother, a similar Norman diversion might, for a while at least, have preserved the crown to the house of Charles. But Normandy was now the firm ally of France, and that alliance of Rouen and Paris fixed the extinction, slow, it might be, but sure, of the royalty of Laon. It was a question of time. All depended on the policy of the successive Dukes of the French. And we shall presently have to study the policy of Hugh Capet, widely different from that of his father, but quite as remarkable in its own way.

This double alliance was not slow in bearing fruit. The 224|War of the two Kings against the two Dukes. 946.| threats of Otto, unlike the threats of Eadmund, were carried into action. Lewis had indeed been set free; but he was set free on terms which his royal colleague and brother must have felt to be dishonouring to himself as well as to his ally. A war shortly followed, in which the two Kings appear as the common enemies of the two Dukes. But it is a war about which it is very difficult |Comparison of the French, German, and Norman accounts.| to get at the exact truth. In the part which relates to Normandy the French writers are, evidently of set purpose, meagre beyond expression. Our chief German authority, though he enlarges on one or two trifling points,^[362] is, on the point which most immediately concerns us, hardly fuller than his Western fellows. The Norman legend, on the other hand, overwhelms us with details, half of which we instinctively suspect to be mythical. There is no doubt that the issue of the campaign in a military point of view was inglorious, to say the least, for the two Kings of the Franks. This was quite reason enough for the French and German writers to slur over the subject, and for the Normans to pick it out as a |Objects of Lewis and Otto; supposed intrigues of Arnulf.| subject for special rhetoric and exaggeration. In their story Arnulf, as usual, appears as the villain of the piece. He stirs up the whole strife; his scheme is for Lewis to yield to Otto all claims on Lotharingia, and to receive Normandy instead, as soon as the duchy should be conquered for him by the arms of the German King.^[363] But the French and German writers know nothing of these machinations of Arnulf, and in their eyes, or at least in their writings, Normandy never assumes any such primary importance. The interference of Otto, in connexion with what went before and what followed, is intelligible enough, 225and it hardly needs the introduction of Arnulf to explain it. Yet it is likely enough that the scheme said to have been suggested by the wily Fleming really did form an element in the reckonings of the two Kings. It was most important to settle the endless Lotharingian question, which had formed a subject of discord between |944.| them even in the very year of Lewis’s occupation of |Probable designs of Lewis on Normandy.| Rouen.^[364] And after Lewis’s defeat and imprisonment, we may be sure that the conquest or humiliation of Normandy |March of Otto; meeting of the three Kings, Otto, Lewis, and Conrad.| was an object very dear to his heart. At all events, with whatever objects, the King of the East-Franks^[365] entered the Western Kingdom, and was joyfully welcomed by its King, who joined him with all his forces. A third King joined the muster, Conrad of Burgundy,^[366] who followed in the wake of Otto. Of the four Carolingian kingdoms three were thus united against the upstart powers of Paris and Rouen. And among them the German King, not yet Emperor in formal rank, takes a distinct and recognized Imperial precedence. Burgundy and the Western Kingdom do not indeed seem to owe him any formal homage; but their sovereigns were far more truly his vassals, in any practical sense of the word, than the Dukes against whom they were marching were vassals of the King of |The three Kings fail before Laon, but| Compiègne. The three Kings began by an attempt to extend the despoiled monarch’s possessions by the recovery of his lost fortress of Laon.^[367] This attempt failed; but they 226|take Rheims. 946.| took Rheims, whence they drove out Hugh, the Duke’s Archbishop, and brought back Artald, the faithful servant |They ravage France and Normandy, but fail to take either Paris or Rouen.| of King Lewis.^[368] They then entered France; they ravaged the whole land, but they shrank from or failed in an attack on Paris.^[369] They then harried Normandy, but they failed in an attempt on Rouen.^[370] Thus much is certain; the confederate Kings were driven back from the Norman capital. The picturesque, but probably to a great extent legendary, details form a brilliant picture, for which I must refer to the Norman writers and their English interpreter.^[371]

The discomfiture of three Kings, the repulse of the great Otto himself, could not fail to become a favourite 227subject of Norman boasting. But it is by no means clear that the German intervention was altogether fruitless. We have seen the fortunes of Lewis at their |Lewis’s fortunes begin to improve. 947.| lowest ebb. We now see them very distinctly begin to rise, while those of Hugh the Great suffer a temporary depression. The Duke failed in several expeditions, while the King went on gaining both in territorial dominion |Friendship of Lewis and Otto.| and in the opinion of men.^[372] The close connexion between the two Frankish Kings continued, and both Lewis and his Queen shared the hospitality of their |947, 949.| brother, and took a part in the paschal splendours of |Series of Synods.| Aachen.^[373] Not the least striking feature of this period is the series of synods, synods of bishops from both the Frankish kingdoms, but to which the Eastern realm |Meeting by the Cher. 947.| naturally contributed by far the greater share. The first of the series, held on the banks of the Cher, was held along with a secular conference, and with armies at no |Synods of Verdun, (947); Mouzon, and Engelheim, (948).| great distance.^[374] The later meetings, at Verdun,^[375] at Mouzon,^[376] and the last and most solemn, held at Engelheim^[377] under the presidency of a papal legate, seem to have been essentially ecclesiastical assemblies. But the Kings were 228|Action of the Kings.| present, acting as royal colleagues, the Eastern King keeping his distinct superiority.^[378] Otto may well have dreamed of himself as a new Constantine presiding in a new |Controversy about the see of Rheims; its political importance.| Nicene Council. The strictly ecclesiastical object of these assemblies was to decide the controversy between the rival Archbishops who disputed, and alternately occupied, the metropolitan see of Rheims. But such a point could not be dealt with as a mere matter of canon law. The real question was not whether Hugh or Artald was the more regularly elected Primate, but whether the great city of Rheims should be held by a prince devoted to the Duke or by a prince devoted to the King. The affairs of the Western Kingdom were fully discussed in an assembly of prelates, most of whom were subjects of the Eastern King. Lewis set forth the whole story of his wrongs before his brother King and the bishops, and prayed both of them to use their several arms, temporal and spiritual, against |Final Synod of Trier; Hugh the Great excommunicated. 948.| his enemy. The result was, not only that Rheims was restored to the royalist Archbishop, but that, after due notice, the Duke of the French was solemnly excommunicated in a final synod at Trier,^[379] which, oddly enough, consisted mainly of Western bishops. Hugh however cared little for the excommunication; the war continued, and various places were attacked with varying success on both sides. The Normans appeared as the allies of Hugh;^[380] 229Otto, engaged in distant affairs, entrusted the support of |Laon recovered by Lewis. 949.| Lewis to Conrad of Lotharingia.^[381] By a stratagem of Rudolf, the father of the historian, Laon was recovered to the King, except the tower, which still held out for |Hugh excommunicated by Pope Agapetus. 949.| Hugh.^[382] At last an excommunication pronounced by Pope Agapetus in person^[383] seems to have made some impression on the stubborn mind of the Duke. Through the mediation |Hugh does homage again. 950.| of Otto, peace was made once more; Hugh again did homage in the fullest terms,^[384] and restored to the King the tower of Laon, which he still held. After this, though smaller wars and bickerings still went on in Lotharingia, |His last revolt and submission. 953.| Vermandois, and elsewhere, there was for four years only one revolt of Hugh, and that one after which the great Duke found it expedient to beg for peace through the intercession of Queen Gerberga.^[385] During all this time |Lewis’s progress in Aquitaine and in Burgundy. 951.| the power of Lewis was steadily growing. Whether by force or persuasion, he gained over to his side the princes of Aquitaine, who no doubt welcomed the King as a convenient rival to their nearer neighbour the Duke.^[386] Lewis even passed the boundaries of his own kingdom; he visited Besançon, and received the homage of at least one prince of the royal Burgundy, Charles-Constantine of Vienne.^[387] 230All things seemed prospering for the Carolingian King, |His death. 954.| when his strange and unexpected death cut short the hopes of his house.^[388] After all his long and chequered career, he was only thirty-three years of age.

The long reign of Lothar, the son and successor of Lewis, answers to only a part of the much longer reign of |The old generation of princes dies off.| Richard the Fearless. In the course of a few years most of the principalities of Gaul changed masters. Long before the reign of Lothar was over, almost before he had personally entered on his government, Richard, so lately a child, the youngest of princes, became the eldest ruler within his own world. King Lewis was dead already; |Hugh the Great. 956.| |Arnulf born 873, died 965.| Hugh the Great died two years later; Arnulf of Flanders, at an almost incredible old age, died nine years later still.^[389] |Otto the Great. 973.| Otto, King and Emperor, outlived all these princes, but |Otto the Second. 983.| Richard outlived both him and his son. Richard succeeded to his duchy in the time of Eadmund of England; he outlived Eadmund, Eadred, Eadwig, and Eadgar, and lived far on into the reign of Æthelred. In France he beheld and furthered the extinction of the Carolingian dynasty, and he died in the same year as the first King of |996.| the permanent Parisian line. But this long period is, if we contrast it with that which went before it, comparatively barren of events bearing on the history of the Norman duchy. Richard wrought great changes within his own dominions, and he had many enemies to contend against without; still the greater part of his reign was no longer one incessant struggle, like the reign of his |954–962.| father and his own early days. For some years wars and disputes went on almost as vigorously as before; but for 231|Comparative quiet of the later years of Richard. 962–996.| many years before his death Richard seems to have enjoyed a time of comparative peace, which he devoted to the consolidation of his power within his own states, and in a great degree to the erection and enrichment of ecclesiastical foundations.

Young Lothar was chosen King without opposition by the princes of France, Aquitaine, and ducal Burgundy. Duke Hugh espoused his cause; so did Archbishop Bruno, who now ruled Lotharingia in the name of his brother King Otto.^[390] But Hugh soon contrived to employ the boy whom he recognized as his sovereign as the tool of |Hugh embroils Lothar with the Aquitanian princes, but is defeated before Poitiers. 955.| his own crafty policy. As has been already said, the princes of Southern Gaul were the natural allies of the King against the Duke who was so dangerous a neighbour to both. The most powerful, at least the most prominent, among these princes, William of Poitiers, the brother-in-law of William of Normandy,^[391] seems to have been on the whole a faithful vassal of Lewis,^[392] and he had certainly given no recent cause of offence. But Hugh procured from Lothar a grant of the duchy of Aquitaine, in addition to those of France and Burgundy,^[393] and it was doubtless in order to enforce this claim that he involved the King in a war with the Aquitanian princes. But Hugh was utterly baffled before Poitiers,^[394] and, soon after this 232defeat, his busy and faithless life, hitherto in general so |Death of Hugh the Great.| successful, came to an end.^[395] The duchy of France, like the kingdom and the duchy of Normandy, now passed to |Hugh Capet succeeds under the guardianship of Richard. 956.| a minor. Hugh, surnamed Capet, the future King, succeeded his father at the age of thirteen years. On account of his youth, he was left by his father’s will under the guardianship of the Duke of the Normans.^[396] Besides the close political connexion between the two princes, Richard |Richard marries Hugh’s sister Emma. 960.| was betrothed to Emma, daughter of the elder and sister of the younger Hugh, whom some years later he married.^[397] Whether Richard ever did homage to Lothar is not clear;^[398] but Hugh, on his accession to manhood, did homage to |The sons of Hugh do homage to Lothar, and Richard does homage to Hugh. 960.| the King, and was invested with the duchy of France and county of Poitiers, Burgundy being assigned to his younger brother Otto.^[399] The death of Otto however, before many years had passed, caused Burgundy also to revert to Hugh.^[400] Richard also renewed the commendation which he had made to the elder Hugh, and became the loyal vassal of his brother-in-law.^[401] Arnulf, the old enemy, was now in his last days;^[402] so the functions of devil or villain are 233now transferred in the Norman tale to Theobald, Count |Enmity of Theobald of Chartres towards Richard.| of Tours, Chartres, and Blois. This prince, who, like Arnulf, reached an unusual age, was the son of an elder Theobald, who is said to have bought the county of Chartres of the famous wiking Hasting.^[403] The second Theobald had married Liudgardis, the widow of William Longsword and step-mother of Richard; he was a vassal of the Duke of the French,^[404] and, in that character, he had acted for Hugh the Great as the gaoler of King Lewis.^[405] But he seems to have by no means adopted his lord’s policy towards the Normans; on the contrary he appears as the instigator of Gerberga and Lothar to every sort of hostility against Richard.^[406] The French accounts, which commonly speak of Theobald with a certain tone of contempt,^[407] tell us just enough to show that there is some |Theobald gains Evreux. 962.| ground of truth in all this. Theobald’s chief object seems to have been the acquisition of Evreux, which at one time he actually gained by the help of Lothar.^[408] Before this, if |Supposed plot of Lothar, Bruno, and Theobald against Richard. 960.| we may trust the Norman tale, Theobald and the King had formed with Bruno, Archbishop and Duke, a treacherous plot to beguile Richard to a conference at Amiens, and there to put him to death or imprison him.^[409] I confess that this sounds to me very like a Norman perversion of a fact which is much better authenticated. King Lothar had summoned to Soissons a general assembly of the chief men of his realm, an event so common in England and Germany 234and so rare in the Western Kingdom. Whether the Duke |Richard attempts to disperse the Assembly at Soissons. 961.| of the Normans was summoned or not does not appear; but he came with an armed force and attempted to disperse the assembly, but was beaten off by the King’s troops.^[410] In the next year we find Theobald at war with Richard |Theobald defeated by Richard. 962.| and defeated by him. Being also on ill terms with his own lord Duke Hugh, he took shelter with Gerberga and |Norman version; defeat of Lothar; second intervention of Harold.| Lothar, and was kindly received by them.^[411] In the Norman version this grows into a long and striking story.^[412] Just as in the tale of Lewis and Harold Blaatand, a conference between Lothar and Richard developes into a battle in which Lothar, like his father, is of course utterly defeated. Yet even while thus victorious, Richard is neither satisfied nor confident. He sends again to King Harold in Denmark; Harold at once comes at his call, but he has no opportunity of renewing his old exploits. For his enemies are thoroughly afraid of him. Count Theobald at once makes peace, and restores Evreux. King Lothar begs for peace also, and craves that the terrible Danes may be sent away. But it is not so easy to send them away as to bring them in. However Duke Richard does his best; he goes in person and preaches an eloquent sermon to the pagans, exhorting them to embrace Christianity and to settle quietly in the country. This a portion of them are induced to do, while the stiffnecked heathens are persuaded to sail southwards and to ravage infidel Spain instead of Catholic Gaul. After this a peace 235|Peace between Lothar and Richard.| is made between Lothar and Richard,^[413] which seems not to have been again broken.

It is impossible to say exactly how much of truth lurks |Comparison of the French and Norman accounts.| in all this. The French writers help us to little more than the fact that there was some measure of hostility between Lothar and Richard. Richard tries to disperse Lothar’s solemn parliament; Lothar kindly entertains Richard’s vanquished enemy. Where there was as much mutual ill-will as this, it is likely that there was much more. And while we must always allow for the inventions and exaggerations of the Norman writers, we must also allow for the evident unwillingness of the French writers to say one word more about the Normans than they could help. But the whole Norman story is strange and unlikely, and many of the events sound most temptingly like repetitions of earlier events. We seem to be reading the tale of Lewis and Harold over again with but slight changes. Yet the dates come within the life, perhaps within the memory, of our one original informant on the Norman side.^[414] I leave the more minute examination and final decision of the matter to those with whom Norman history is a primary object. It is enough for my purpose that the few certain facts fall in with the more elaborate picture in the legend, so far as to bring out the same general view of Richard’s position as the firm ally of France and as the enemy of the Carolingian crown.

During the latter part of the reign of Lothar things took a different turn. Hugh Capet now began personally to take the lead in affairs, and his peculiar policy impressed 236itself on the period. We have already seen what the |Policy of Hugh Capet different from that of his father.| policy of the elder Hugh was; he would reduce the King to the least possible amount of power and of territory, but he would himself never be more than Duke. Hugh Capet followed a different policy. He was ready to be a King as soon as he could become one quietly and with a decent pretext; but he would not hazard the prize by |General peace between the Kingdom and the Duchy of France.| clutching at it too soon. The relations between King and Duke during the last twenty years of Lothar were very unlike the relations which had existed between the father of Lothar and the father of Hugh. There was very little of open enmity, and when there was any, the wily Duke contrived that it should be the King who was outwardly in the wrong. For a long time Duke Hugh acted as the vassal and friend of King Lothar, and the friendship of Duke Hugh of course carried with it the friendship of Duke Richard. On the whole this was a time of peace, a thing hitherto so unusual, between Duke and King, so much so that the duchy actually underwent a German invasion in the royal cause. For it was now that the relations between the two kingdoms of the Franks again became of paramount importance. It was now that the folly of Lothar forfeited the German protectorate for himself and his kingdom.

On the death of Otto the Great the relations between the Eastern and the Western Kingdoms were wholly changed.^[415] Otto the uncle had been a protector; Otto the cousin was a rival. This breach of the old friendly relations with the Eastern Kingdom was undoubtedly one main cause of the fall of the Carolingian house in the Western Kingdom. The royalty of Laon was an outpost of the Teutonic interest in the West, which could hardly maintain itself without the support of the Teutonic powers to the east of it. Lothar, with a high spirit, had none of 237his father’s prudence. The old disputes about Lotharingia |War between Otto and Lothar.| began again;^[416] war broke out, a war which, on Lothar’s side, had the approval of Duke Hugh and the other princes, an approval so cordially expressed as to suggest the suspicion |Lothar’s raid on Aachen and Otto’s invasion of France. 978.| that it was given only as a snare.^[417] At any rate Lothar went on a wild and sudden raid against Aachen, which could win for him no lasting gain, but which gave him the opportunity of occupying the city of his great forefather, and of turning the eagle on his palace the wrong way.^[418] But the insulted Emperor retaliated by a far more terrible invasion of the Western Kingdom, in which not only the royal domains, but those of the Duke were occupied and ravaged, and Paris itself was threatened.^[419] This campaign of Otto the Second, like that of his greater father, |Peace between Otto and Lothar. 980.| was not exactly rich in military glory, but it was politically successful. Lothar, without consulting Hugh, sought for peace,^[420] and gave up his claims on Lotharingia.^[421] Hugh, 238who had hitherto stuck so faithfully by the King, was alarmed at his sudden and secret reconciliation with the |Alliance between Otto and Hugh; reconciliation of Lothar and Hugh.| Emperor. He held a council of his own vassals, and, by their advice, he determined to win over Otto to himself, which he succeeded in doing, though greatly against the will of the King.^[422] Hugh and Lothar were however at last |Lewis son of Lothar elected King; his marriage and divorce. 981.| reconciled again.^[423] Lewis the son of Lothar was, with the consent of Hugh and the other princes, associated in the kingdom with his father.^[424] A ludicrous and unsuccessful attempt was then made to establish him at once as King in Aquitaine by marrying him to a princess of that country.^[425] The notion was in itself a return to a rational policy with regard to Southern Gaul, if it had only been set about in a wiser |Death of Otto the Second. 983.| way. On the death of Otto the Second, Lothar, notwithstanding his former cession of his rights over Lotharingia, |Lothar’s further attempts on Lotharingia. 986.| took advantage of the minority of Otto the Third and the consequent anarchy in Germany again to assert his claims. He was pressing them with some success by force of arms, when his career was cut short by an early death.^[426]

During all this time the narrative of our French authority tells us absolutely nothing about Normandy. Yet we may well believe that Richard took the first place in the assembly of Hugh’s vassals, and that Norman troops duly accompanied those of France in every expedition. The policy of Hugh, we may be sure, was always the policy of Richard. |Richard’s mediation in Flanders. 965.| The only thing about him which even his garrulous panegyrist has to tell us is that, after the death of the old 239Arnulf, when his grandson and successor the younger Arnulf refused his homage to the King, Richard stepped in as mediator. Lothar invaded Flanders, but Richard pacified King and Marquess; Arnulf rendered the homage, and his dominions were restored to him.^[427]

And now we have at last reached that great revolution which extinguished the last remnants of Carolingian royalty, which decided the long strife between the German Frank and the half Celtic, half Roman, Frenchman, which raised Paris to that rank among the cities of Gaul which it has since never lost, which raised the lords of Paris to that rank which they lost within our |Reign of Lewis the Fifth. 986–987.| own day. Lothar was succeeded by his son Lewis, already his colleague in the kingdom, but his reign was short and troubled. His counsellors were divided whether he should assert his independence or should put himself under the protection of Duke Hugh.^[428] He chose the safer course, and in the one act of his reign he had |He besieges Rheims and dies. 987.| Hugh to his helper. He attacked and besieged Rheims in a quarrel with the Archbishop Adalbero, whom he charged with having nine years before aided the Emperor Otto in his invasion.^[429] But an accommodation was hardly brought about between the King and the Primate, when |Diet of election at Senlis. 987.| Lewis died.^[430] The princes met at Senlis to elect a successor. Our French writers take care not to mention the name, but we can hardly doubt that Richard of Normandy, the most faithful and the most powerful vassal of Duke Hugh, was there ready to support the cause of his lord and brother. The choice lay between the Duke of the French and the last remaining Karling, Charles, uncle of the late King and brother of Lothar. This prince was unlucky and unpopular, and he had given special offence by accepting 240Lotharingia, or a part of it, as a fief of the Empire.^[431] |The doctrine of elective monarchy set forth by Archbishop Adalbero.| A speech from the Primate, setting forth the merits of Hugh and the lawfulness and necessity of elective monarchy,^[432] settled the minds of the waverers, if any waverers there were. Hugh was chosen King and was crowned at Noyon. |Hugh elected and crowned. 987.| Thus did an assertion of the right of election which would not have been out of place in an English Witenagemót or even in a Polish Diet become the foundation of a dynasty which was to become, more than any other in Europe, the |Permanence of his dynasty.| representative of strict hereditary succession. Adalbero raised to the throne a race in which, by a fate unparalleled in any other kingly house, the crown passed on for three hundred and fifty years from father to son, a race which, down to our own day, has never been without a |987–1328.| male heir, and in which the right of the male heir has |1338–1420.| never been disputed, save once through the ambition of a |1589.| foreign prince and once through the frenzy of religious partizanship. The crown of England and the crown of Spain have been repeatedly, by revolution or by female succession, carried away from the direct male heir to distant |Position of Rheims as the crowning-place.| kinsmen or to utter strangers. But every King of the French crowned at Rheims has been at once a Frenchman by birth and the undisputed heir of the founder of the dynasty. Hugh and his son Robert, neither of them born to royalty, were crowned, the one at Noyon the other at |1594.| Orleans. Henry the Fourth, the one King whose right was disputed, was crowned at Chartres. Rheims alone kept her proud prerogative as the crowning-place of Kings whose right was never so much as called in question. Paris, the seat of temporal dominion, has never become the ecclesiastical home of the nation, the crowning-place of 241lawful Kings. None but strangers and usurpers have ever taken the diadem of France in the capital of France. While Rheims has beheld the crowning of so many generations |1431.| of native Frenchmen, Paris has beheld only the |1804.| crowning of a single English King and a single Corsican tyrant.

Hugh of Paris was thus chosen King, as his great-uncle Odo of Paris had been chosen King before him. But the hundred years’ rivalry between the two dynasties was not yet over. As Odo had to struggle with Charles the Simple, so Hugh had to struggle with his grandson Charles of Lotharingia. Hugh’s election and coronation did not at once invest him with any territories beyond the limits of his own duchy. Laon, the royal city, would not at once consent either to forsake the line of its ancient princes or calmly to sink into a dependency of Paris. |Robert crowned. 987.| Hugh, after some difficulty, procured the election and coronation of his son Robert as his colleague in the kingdom,^[433] and the two Kings, as they are always called, carried on a war of several years against Charles and his party.^[434] The last Karling has now sunk to the position of a tyrant—a name which once was the description of Hugh’s father when he was a rebel against the father of Charles.^[435] The struggle was at last ended by Charles being betrayed to the Kings by the treachery of Adalbero Bishop of Laon. The revolution was now complete, but its immediate results were |The Parisian dynasty now becomes permanent.| not very marked. The Duke of the French became the King of the French, and the same prince reigned at Paris and at Laon. King Hugh was undoubtedly considerably more powerful than King Lewis or King Lothar; but in 242the greater part of Gaul the change from the Carolingian |Import of the change.| to the Capetian line was hardly felt. To Hugh’s own subjects it made little practical difference whether their prince were called Duke or King. Beyond the Loire, men cared little who might reign either at Paris or at Laon. But though the immediate change was slight, the election of Hugh was a real revolution; it was the completion of the change which had been preparing for a century and a half; it was the true beginning of a new period. The Duchy of France had successfully played in Gaul the part which in Britain had been played by Wessex, which in Spain has been played by Castile, which in Scandinavia has been less thoroughly played by Sweden, which Prussia before our own eyes has played in Germany. The Carolingian, the Frankish, kingdom now comes to an end; the French duchy of Paris has taken the great step towards |Modern France now definitively begins.| the gradual absorption of all Gaul. The modern kingdom of France dates its definite existence from the election of Hugh; the successive partitions showed in what way the stream of events was running, but the election of Hugh was the full establishment of the thing itself. There now was, what till quite lately there has been ever since, a French King reigning at Paris. The Gallo-Roman land now finally shook off the last relics of that Teutonic domination under which it had been more or less completely held ever |Connexion between France and Germany ceases.| since the days of Hlodwig. The Western Kingdom now broke off all traces of its old connexion with the Eastern. Up to this time the tradition of the former unity of the whole Frankish dominion had still lingered on.^[436] No such feeling remains after the final establishment of the Parisian dynasty; the German Cæsar now becomes as alien to Capetian France as his brother at Byzantium. And another |Lotharingia, hitherto| result took place. Lotharingia, the border land, the seat of loyalty to the Carolingian house, still, after the Capetian 243|fluctuating between Gaul and Germany, now becomes German.| revolution, kept its love for the old Imperial line. But its position was now necessarily changed. Lotharingia kept its Carolingian princes, but it kept them only by definitively becoming a fief of the Teutonic Kingdom. |Charles taken and imprisoned. 991.| Charles died in prison, but his children continued to reign in Lotharingia as vassals of the Empire. Lotharingia was thus wholly lost to France; that part of it which was kept by the descendants of Charles in the female line still preserves its freedom as part of the independent kingdom of Belgium. But the revolution was now fully accomplished; the struggle of a hundred years was over; the race and the tongue of the great Charles were finally wiped |Modern France definitively begins.| out from the Kingdom of the Western Franks. Modern, Celtic, Romance, Parisian, France was now definitively called into being. A kingdom and nation was founded, in the face of which it was for many ages the main work of every other European state to maintain its freedom, its language, and its national being, against the never-ceasing assaults, sometimes of open and high-handed violence, sometimes of plausible falsehood and gilded treachery.

The influence which the Norman Duke exercised on this great change is carefully kept out of sight by the French historians; yet we cannot doubt that the Norman writers are, this time at least, fully justified in attributing to their sovereign a most important share in the work.^[437] 244Everything leads us to believe that Richard took a leading |Personal share of Richard.| personal share in the revolution, and it is quite certain that, but for the policy which Richard followed, that revolution never could have taken place. It was the alliance between Normandy and France which determined the fate of the Carolingian dynasty.^[438] And thus we are led back to the proposition with which I started at an earlier stage |The Norman settlement made Gaul French.| of this Chapter,^[439] that it was the settlement of the Scandinavians in Gaul which definitively made Gaul French. They settled just at the point of transition, when the old German state of things was beginning to give way to the new French state of things. The influence of the new comers, notwithstanding their own Teutonic blood and speech, was thrown altogether into the French scale. The Normans became French, because a variety of circumstances brought them more within the range of French influences than of any other. The connexion between Rolf and the Carolingian dynasty was something purely political, or rather personal; Rolf had done homage and sworn oaths to King Charles, and to King Charles he stuck against all pretenders. But the main object of his successors was to bring Normandy within the pale of Christianity and civilization, in such shapes as Christianity and civilization bore immediately before their eyes. This object they naturally sought by establishing a connexion with their nearest neighbours; their standard of language and manners was set by the French court of Paris, not by the German court of Laon or by the more 245distant, the more purely Latin, courts of Poitiers and Toulouse. The Normans thus became Frenchmen, and, with the zeal of new proselytes, they became first and foremost in everything that is characteristically French. The earliest and best productions of the new-born French |French ideas take root in Normandy.| language were the work of Norman poets. All the ideas which were then growing up in France, ideas which it is hard to express otherwise than by the vague and misleading names of feudalism and chivalry, took firm root in Normandy, and there brought forth their most abundant fruit. Had Normandy remained Danish, the Scandinavian settlement would have been a most important diversion on behalf of the Teutonic element; Romance Paris would have been in a manner hemmed in between two Teutonic lands. And if the Scandinavian settlement had never taken place at all, the French developement would at least have lost the decisive support which it gained from the enlistment of such fresh and vigorous disciples. It was the Normans, I repeat, who made Gaul French; it was the Normans who made French Paris the capital of Gaul, and who gave |The position of Normandy established by the Capetian revolution.| Gaul the French lord of Paris for her King. On the other hand, it was the Capetian revolution which gave Normandy her definite position in Gaul and in Europe. Hitherto, in the minds and mouths of good Frenchmen, and most likely of good Germans also, the Normans were still simply the Pirates, and their sovereign the Duke of the Pirates. Their presence was endured, because they were too strong to be got rid of; but the half-heathen Danish intruders were still hateful to the princes and people of Latin and Christian Gaul. With the election of Hugh Capet all was changed. The firmest ally and supporter of the new dynasty could no longer be looked on as an outcast or as an enemy. The old question as to the relation between Normandy and the Kings of Laon was buried for ever. Whatever relations had hitherto 246existed between the Duke of the Normans and the King of the West-Franks, there was no doubt that the Duke of the Normans was the vassal, the most powerful and the most loyal vassal, of the Duke of the French, and the Duke of the French and the King of the West-Franks were now one and the same person. Normandy was now thoroughly naturalized; the doubtful position which it had held in Carolingian times passed altogether away; it became the mightiest and noblest among the fiefs of |Comparatively friendly relations between the duchy and the crown.| the Capetian crown. And for a long while the relations between the duchy and the crown remained, on the whole, friendly. It was not till later days, till Normandy was under the sway of her greatest Duke, that the old hostility broke out afresh, and that King Henry of Paris showed himself as eager as King Lewis of Laon to dispossess the prince and people who cut off himself and his city from the mouth of the Seine. Up to the days of Henry and William the good understanding between France and Normandy was seldom broken. And, even counting the wars of Henry and William, we shall find that, considering the power of the vassal and his close neighbourhood to his lord, hostilities between Rouen and Paris were not specially frequent. The rebellions of Hugh the Great alone against the Kings whom he had set up and put down would probably be found to be more in number than the wars between France and Normandy, from the commendation of Richard to Hugh to the day when England and Normandy alike were merged in the vast dominions of the princes of Anjou.

The close connexion between Norman and French history, the way in which we may say that Normandy created France and that France created Normandy, must be my excuse for dwelling at an apparently disproportionate length on some subjects which are only indirectly connected with English history. In order thoroughly to 247understand the Norman Conquest of England, it is almost as needful to have a clear view of the condition and earlier history of Normandy as it is to have a clear view of the condition and earlier history of England. And such a clear view of Norman affairs cannot be had without constant references to French, and occasional references to German, history. And the notices of French history which are needed for this end may serve to illustrate English history |Contrast between the political condition of England and of Gaul.| in another way. The contrast between the political condition of England and that of the Western Kingdom is most striking, even at this early time. Looked at superficially, there is a certain likeness between the two. In both cases, a King of narrow limited power stands at the head of a body of princes, some of whom, in extent of dominion, might almost—on the mainland not only almost but altogether—rank as his peers. But when we come to look more narrowly into the matter, we shall see that the likeness is only superficial. In truth there is very little real likeness at all; and if we admitted a stronger likeness than there is, if we admitted that the two countries had accidentally met at the same point, still their meeting would have been wholly accidental, because the two countries were |England tending to unity, Gaul to division.| moving in exactly opposite directions. England was directly tending to unity; Gaul was directly tending to division. In the long run indeed the division to which Gaul was tending paved the way for a closer unity than England has ever reached; but, at the moment, it was |In England Princes had sunk into Governors;| to division that Gaul was directly tending. The English kingdom was formed by the gradual union of many distinct states; to independent Kings had succeeded dependent Kings, and to dependent Kings had succeeded Ealdormen appointed by the King and his Witan. Great and powerful as was an English Ealdorman, he still was not a sovereign, not even a dependent or vassal sovereign; he ruled only with a delegated authority; the King was 248supreme, and the Ealdorman was only a governor sent by |in Gaul governors had grown into princes.| him. In Gaul the process was directly opposite. Local governors who, under the first Carolingian Kings and Emperors, had been simple lieutenants of the sovereign, had gradually grown into hereditary princes, who at most went through the decent ceremony of receiving their dominions as a grant from a King who could not withhold them. The Dukes, Counts, and Marquesses of France, of Flanders, of Aquitaine, of Septimania, of Barcelona, had in this way grown into sovereigns. Starting from the position of an English Ealdorman, they had won the formal position, and more than the practical independence, of a vassal King of Wales or Scotland. Normandy was a real fief from the beginning; the grant to Rolf was the exact parallel of the grant to Guthrum; but during the second half of the tenth century the dominions of Rolf were ruled by a native sovereign of his own blood, while the dominions of Guthrum were administered by |Difference of the limitations on the power of the King in England and in Gaul.| Ealdormen appointed by the English King. Again, the power of the King was narrowly limited in both kingdoms, but it was limited in altogether different ways. The power of the King of the English was limited, because he could do no important act without the consent of his Witan. The power of the King of the West-Franks was limited, because he was shorn of all direct authority beyond the narrow limits of Laon and Compiègne. The King of the English, in the exercise of such authority as the law gave him, was obeyed in every corner of his kingdom. The King of the West-Franks did as he chose in his own city of Laon; at Paris and Rouen, at Poitiers and Toulouse, he received only such measures of obedience as the sovereigns of those capitals chose to yield to him. |No regular National Assembly in Gaul.| No regular assembly constantly meeting, like our Witenagemót, had authority over the whole land, and kept the whole land bound together. We read of conferences of 249princes; but they are rarely held, except for some great and extraordinary occasion like the election of a King. An assembly, meeting yearly or oftener, to sanction the ordinary acts of the King and to pass laws binding on the whole kingdom, was something utterly unknown.

And yet, when we see how narrow was the immediate dominion, how small were the available resources, of the later Karlings, it strikes us with wonder throughout the whole history to see how much influence, how much real power, they still kept. The King, however many enemies may be in arms against him, is always an important person, and he commonly finds an army to bring against the rebel army. We wonder where he got his army, and where he got the resources to set his army in motion. In days when war maintained itself an army was doubtless less costly than it is now, and a victorious army might even enrich its leader. But whence did the armies come? Surely not wholly from the narrow limits of the King’s immediate territory. Nor were they likely to be formed by the spontaneous loyalty of volunteers. The influence of the royal name, the reverence attaching to the blood of the great Emperor, might do a good deal to paralyse the efforts of enemies, but they would hardly of themselves bring distant followers to the royal standard. But the King, if he had few subjects, was not wholly without |The Kings drew support from various quarters.| friends. We find hints that the lesser vassals often found it their interest to support the King against the encroachments of the great Dukes. We find that in a war with one rebellious potentate he was often supported by the rivals of that potentate, and that his more distant vassals helped him against those who were more formidable to them than he was. We find also that he could especially rely on the help of those Bishops who, holding directly of the crown, were clothed with the character of 250ecclesiastical princes.^[440] And in the later and more peaceful |Increase of the royal power under Lothar.| times of Lothar and Hugh Capet, the King appears far more clearly than before in the character of an effective head of the kingdom. We read more commonly of consultations with the other princes, and we see the King, by common consent, wielding the forces of all his vassals, including those of the Duke of the French himself. The wily Hugh no doubt saw that it was his interest to strengthen in every way the power and reputation of the crown which he meant one day to place on his own brow. Altogether we may doubt whether the practical power of the later Carolingian Kings was not really quite as great |Power of the crown not immediately increased by the change of dynasty.| as that of the early Capetians. The power of the crown rested mainly on influence and prescription, and influence and prescription were not on the side of the Parisian dynasty. The immediate territorial dominion of the Parisian Kings was no doubt much larger than that of the later Karlings; Paris and Laon together were far greater than Laon by itself. But the connexion between the crown and the great vassals seems to have been distinctly weakened by the change of dynasty. The descendants of Robert and Hugh did not command the hereditary respect which attached to princes sprung from the blood of Charles and Pippin. Some disputed and outlying fiefs were altogether lost to the kingdom, and the King’s sphere of action was far more strictly confined than before to the lands north of the Loire. Lotharingia and the Spanish March fell away; the connexion with Flanders gradually weakened; Aquitaine scarcely acknowledged even a nominal dependence. Assemblies and conferences of the whole kingdom, rare before, seem now to go wholly out of use. Even the vassals north of the Loire, even the former 251vassals of the Parisian duchy, seem to have less connexion with the crown than heretofore. In fact the French Duke lost by becoming King, just as the German King lost by becoming Emperor. As Duke he had been a less dignified, but he had been a more effectual, over-lord. The Parisian Dukes themselves had done more than all the rest of the world to set forth and strengthen the doctrine that the immediate vassals of a King were entitled to practical sovereignty. Thus, while England was getting more and more united, Gaul was getting more and more divided. Under other circumstances, the Western realm might very easily have changed, step by step, from a kingdom into |Isolation in France led to closer union.| a confederation, just as Germany did.^[441] But as it was, the very isolation into which the several parts of the kingdom now fell proved in the end the path to an unity such as England never has seen, such as we trust England never may see. Utter isolation paved the way for utter centralization. In England, as the different parts of the realm became more closely united, all shared in a common national freedom, without any complete sacrifice of local and municipal independence. In Gaul the crown annexed, one by one, all the dominions of its own vassals^[442] and such of the dominions of its neighbours as came within its reach. Thus the whole kingdom knew no will but that of the King. Widely as a modern English Parliament differs from an ancient Witenagemót, the one has grown out of the other by gradual developement, without any sudden change. In France and throughout Gaul the ancient Teutonic assemblies died out altogether, |1302.| and the comparatively modern States General came into being as an original device of Philip the Fair.

252I must now return to the more immediate affairs of Normandy. There can be no doubt that the various processes of which I have been speaking, the Christianizing, the Gallicizing, and the feudalizing process, all went on vigorously in Normandy during the reign of Richard the |Growth of the doctrine of nobility.| Fearless. The doctrine of nobility was fast growing; it was taking a form quite different from the ancient relations of eorl and ceorl, quite different from the later relations of thegn and ceorl, as they have been at any time understood in England. Hitherto mere lack of illustrious birth |Humble origin of many princely and noble houses.| did not keep a man back from the highest offices. The legend that Hugh Capet himself was the son of a butcher of Paris,^[443] utterly fabulous as it is, marks the popular belief as to the origin of many of the princely houses of the time. The legends of Lyderic the Forester^[444] and of Torquatius and Tertullus^[445] point to no very lofty origin on the part |Origin of the Norman baronage.| of the princely houses of Flanders and Anjou. So it is in the reign of Richard that we find the beginning of the Norman baronage, and the origin of many of its members was certainly not specially illustrious. Some noble families indeed trace their descent up to old companions of Rolf, such as the house of Harcourt, which claims Bernard the Dane as its patriarch. But the larger part of the Norman nobility derived their origin from the amours or doubtful marriages of the Norman Dukes. Not only their own children, but all the kinsfolk of their wives or mistresses, were carefully promoted by ducal grants or |Children and kinsfolk of Richard.| by advantageous marriages. Thus Sprota, the mother of Richard the Fearless, during the troubles of her son’s early reign married one Asperleng, a rich miller. From this marriage sprang Rudolf Count of Ivry, a mighty 253man in the reign of his nephew, and also several daughters, who were of course well disposed of in marriage.^[446] Richard himself, whose marriage with Emma of Paris was childless,^[447] was the father of a large illegitimate or doubtful offspring. Besides undoubted bastards,^[448] there was a considerable brood, including Richard, the next Duke, and Emma, the future Lady of the English, who were legitimated by Richard’s marriage with their mother. These were the children of Gunnor, a woman of Danish birth, to whom different stories attribute a noble and a plebeian origin.^[449] From these children and from the kinsfolk of Gunnor, all of whom were promoted in one way or another, |Progress of feudal doctrines.| sprang a large part of the Norman nobility. Meanwhile the principles of feudalism were making fast progress both in Normandy and in France. Hugh the Great’s doctrine of commendation, practised on so magnificent a scale between the duchies of Normandy and France, was being everywhere carried out with regard to smaller possessions. Such at least is the natural inference from 254the general course of events; for it must be remembered that Normandy has in this age absolutely nothing to show in the way of written legislation. The wealth of the clergy |Richard’s grants to the Church.| was also largely increasing. Richard, unlike his father, was munificent in his gifts to the Church, especially to |His foundation of Fécamp. 990.| his new, or rather restored, foundation of Fécamp and to the still more famous house of Saint Michael in Peril of the Sea.^[450] The original foundation of Fécamp was for secular canons.^[451] It was only in the days of the second Richard that the Benedictine rule was introduced.^[452] Fécamp, alone among the great monasteries of the Norman mainland, stands in the land north-east of the Seine; all the rest lie either in the valley of the river or in the true Norman districts to the west of it. Fécamp, like Westminster, Holyrood, and the Escurial, contained minster and palace in close neighbourhood; the spot became a favourite dwelling-place of Richard in his later |Dispute with Æthelred. 991.| days, and it was at last the place of his burial. The last years of his reign present only one important event, a dispute, possibly a war, with the English King Æthelred, a discussion of which I reserve for a place in the next Chapter in my more detailed narrative of English affairs. |Death of Richard. 996.| At last, Richard the Fearless, Duke of the Pirates as he is called to the last by the French historians, died of “the lesser apoplexy,” after a reign of fifty-three years.^[453] As with several other princes who play a part in the world for an unusual number of years,^[454] one is surprised 255to find that he was not much older in years than he was. Unlike his enemies, Arnulf and Theobald, whose lives were really prolonged beyond the common span of human existence, Richard the Fearless, or Richard the Old, as he was called to distinguish him from his successor, after all that he had done and undergone, after all the changes that he had wrought and beheld, had lived no longer than sixty-three years.

Richard the Fearless was succeeded by his son Richard, surnamed the Good, whose reign carries us beyond the limits of the present sketch into the essential and central portion of our history. Richard was a direct actor in the events which were the immediate causes of the Conquest. He was the uncle of Eadward the Confessor, the grandfather of William the Bastard; and he personally played a certain part in English affairs. I will therefore reserve his actions for their proper place in my general narrative, and I will here speak of one event only, which marks the complete developement of the influences which had been at work throughout the reign of his father. Richard succeeded to the government of a state in which the Danish tongue, Danish manners, perhaps even the old Danish religion, still lingered in particular spots, but which was now, in the face of other nations, a French state, a member, and the principal member, of the Capetian |Aristocratic feelings of Richard.| commonwealth. He had imbibed to the full all the new-born aristocratic feelings of feudal and chivalrous France. He would have none but gentlemen about him.^[455] This is perhaps the earliest use of a word so familiar both in French and in English, but which bears such different 256meanings in the two languages. But, whoever was a gentleman in the language of Richard’s court, it is plain that the word took in all who could pretend to any kind of kindred or affinity, legitimate or illegitimate, with the sovereign. The way in which the exclusively aristocratic household of Richard is spoken of seems to show that his conduct in this respect was felt to be something different from that of his father. Taken in connexion with what follows, it may well have been the last pound which broke |Revolt of the peasants. 997.| the camel’s back. Popular discontent broke out in the great peasant revolt to which I had occasion to allude earlier in this chapter.^[456] We may suppose that the peasantry were mainly of Celtic, Roman, or Frankish origin; that is, that they sprang from that mixture of those three elements which produced the modern French nation. But we may well believe that many a man of Scandinavian descent, many a small allodial holder who was unwilling to commend himself to a lord, threw in his lot with the insurgents. |Their regular political organization.| What is most remarkable in the story of this revolt is the regular political organization of the revolters. The systematic way in which they set to work is common enough in cities, but is exceedingly rare in rural communities. It is almost enough to place this revolt of the Norman peasantry side by side with the more famous and more fortunate revolt of the Forest Cantons against |They establish a “commune” with a representative assembly.| the encroachments of Austria. We can hardly believe what we read when we find that these rebellious villains established a regular representative parliament.^[457] The peasants of each district deputed two of their number 257to a general assembly, the decisions of which were to be binding on the whole body.^[458] The men who could devise such a system in such an age had certainly made further steps in political progress than the masters against whom they rebelled. The constitution which they established is expressly called by a name dear to the inhabitants of the cities of those ages, a name glorious in the eyes of modern political inquirers, but a name which was, beyond all other names, a word of fear to feudal barons and prelates, and to those Kings who were not clear-sighted enough to see that their own interests and the interests of their people were the same. The peasantry of Normandy, like the citizens of Le Mans in after times, “made a commune.”^[459] Such a constitution could hardly have been devised offhand by mere peasants. We can hardly doubt that it had a groundwork in local institutions which the newly-grown aristocracy were trampling under foot, and that the so-called rebels were simply defending the inheritance of their fathers. We have the tale only from the mouths of enemies; but the long list of popular grievances,^[460] and 258the testimony of enemies to the regular order with which the rebellion was carried on, are enough to show that some very promising germs of freedom were here crushed in the bud. The freedom which these men sought to establish would have been in truth more valuable, because more fairly spread over the whole country, than the liberties |The revolt crushed by Rudolf of Ivry.| won by isolated cities. But the revolt was crushed with horrible cruelty^[461] by Rudolf, Count of Ivry, the Duke’s uncle, himself a churl by birth, the son of the miller who married the cast off wife or mistress of Duke William.^[462] After this, we hear no more of peasant insurrections in Normandy, but it may well be that the struggle was not |Probable results of the struggle.| wholly fruitless. Villainage in Normandy was lighter, and died out earlier, than in most parts of France; and the most genuine pieces of Norman jurisprudence which abide to this day, the ancient constitutions of the Channel Islands, strange and antiquated as they seem in our eyes, breathe a spirit of freedom worthy of the air of England, of Switzerland, or of Norway.^[463]

Such was the country and the people, whose history, from the beginning of the eleventh century, becomes 259inseparably interwoven with that of England. We will now go back to our own island, and, taking up the thread of our narrative, we will go on with a more detailed account of English affairs from the beginning of those renewed Danish invasions which paved the way for the still more eventful invasion of the Norman.

CHAPTER V. THE DANISH CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. [464] 975–1016. — § 1. Reign of Eadward the Martyr. 975–979. — § 2. From the election of Æthelred to the first dispute with Normandy. 979–1000. — § 3. From the first dispute with Normandy to the Massacre of Saint Brice. 991–1002. — § 4. From the Massacre of Saint Brice to Swegen’s Conquest of England. 1002–1013. — § 5. From the Conquest of England by Swegen to the Death of Æthelred. 1013–1016. — § 6. The War of Cnut and Eadmund. 1016.

Æthelred the Second, the prince in whose reign England and Normandy first began to have a direct bearing on each other’s affairs, is the only ruler of the male line of Ecgberht whom we can unhesitatingly set down as a bad man and a bad King. With singularly few exceptions, |Character of Æthelred the Second; his degeneracy.| the princes of that house form, as we have seen, one of the greatest lines to be found in the annals of any kingly house. With regard to one or two members of the family the evidence is so contradictory, they were cut off so young or reigned so short a time, that we have no certain knowledge what they really were. But Æthelred stands alone in giving us the wretched sight of a long reign of utter misgovernment, unredeemed, as far as we can see, by any of those personal virtues which have sometimes caused public errors and crimes to be forgotten. Personal beauty and a certain elegance of manners, qualities consistent with any amount of vice and folly, are the highest merits attributed to a prince, who, instead of the Unconquered, the Glorious, the Magnificent, or the Peaceful, has received no nobler historical surname than that of the Unready.^[465] His actions display a certain amount of energy, perhaps rather of mere restlessness. It was at any rate an energy utterly unregulated and misapplied, an energy which began enterprises and never ended them, 262which wasted itself on needless and distant expeditions while no effective resistance was made to the enemy at the gates. Æthelred’s reign of thirty-eight years displays little but the neglect of every kingly duty, little but weakness, impolicy, cowardice, blind trust in unworthy favourites and even in detected traitors. It is full of acts of injustice and cruelty, some of which are laid to the charge of the King himself, while others, if he did not himself order them, he at least did nothing to hinder or to punish. In that age almost everything in the history of a nation depended on the personal |Importance of the personal character of rulers.| character of its ruler. One great King could raise a kingdom to the highest point of prosperity; one weak or wicked King could plunge it into the lowest depths of degradation. So it was with England in the tenth century. The fabric of glory and dominion which was built up by the labours of Ælfred, Eadward, Æthelstan, Eadmund, and Eadred, the fabric which was firmly welded together by the strong and peaceful rule of Eadgar, now seems to fall to pieces at the first touch of a vigorous and determined enemy. And yet it was not wholly so. The work of so many conquerors and lawgivers from Ecgberht |The English needed only leaders worthy of the people.| onwards was not wholly fruitless. England passed into the hands of a foreign master; but England passed into his hands as a single kingdom, retaining too her old dominion over her vassal principalities. And it should not be forgotten how completely the whole evil was due to incompetent, cowardly, or traitorous leaders. The heart of the English people was still sound. Wherever a brave and honest man was in local command, local resistance was as vigorous as it could have been under Ælfred himself. And in the last agony, when valour and wisdom seemed all too late, Eadmund, the glorious son of the wretched Æthelred, stood forth like one of the old heroes of his house, to win back half the land from the invader, and to lose the rest far more through guile and treason than 263through open warfare. The thing which is utterly inexplicable throughout the reigns both of Æthelred and of Eadmund is the strange and incomprehensible treason of two or three Englishmen in high command. It is equally strange how their treachery could repeatedly paralyse the efforts of a whole nation, and how, after their repeated treasons, the traitors were again taken into favour and confidence by the princes whom they had betrayed. Our facts are minute and explicit; but we often need some explanation of their causes which is not forthcoming. A few of those private letters of which we have such abundance two or three centuries later would give us the key to many difficulties which chronicles, laws, and charters leave wholly insoluble.

Eadgar was succeeded by his eldest son Eadward, whose treacherous murder, though he did not die in any cause of religion or patriotism, gained him the surname of the Martyr. But he did not succeed without an interregnum, without a disputed election, or even without something approaching to a civil war. It shows how thoroughly we are now standing on the firm ground of contemporary history that we can recover a distinct portraiture of many |Movement against the monks, headed by Ælfhere of Mercia;| of the actors in these scenes. The moment Eadgar was dead, a reaction took place against the monastic party, which was met by as powerful a movement on their behalf. Ælfhere, the Ealdorman of the Mercians and a kinsman of Eadgar,^[466] headed the movement against the monks, and drove them out of several churches into which Eadgar’s favour had introduced them. But the monks found powerful supporters in the eastern part of the kingdom, where their cause was strongly supported, it would seem even in 264arms,^[467] by two remarkable men who then held the governments |and resisted by Æthelwine of East-Anglia and Brihtnoth of Essex.| of East-Anglia and Essex. Æthelwine of East-Anglia, one of the founders of Ramsey abbey, is chiefly known for his bounty to monastic foundations, to whose gratitude he doubtless owed his singular surname of the Friend of God.^[468] Alongside of him stood his maternal uncle Brihtnoth, Ealdorman of the East-Saxons,^[469] whose lavish gifts to Ely, Ramsey, and other monasteries, won him well nigh the reputation of a saint, and whom we shall soon find dying a hero’s death in the defence of his |Disputed election to the crown.| country against heathen invaders. More interesting however in a constitutional point of view than these ecclesiastical disputes is the controversy as to the succession to the crown. The election of a minor is in any case a thing to be noticed, and a dispute between two minors is more remarkable still. Eadgar had left two sons, Eadward, aged about thirteen, the child of his first wife Æthelflæd, and Æthelred, aged seven years, the child of his second wife Ælfthryth, the daughter of Ordgar and widow of Æthelwold, who, under the Latinized name of Elfrida, has been |State of the succession; a minority unavoidable.| made the subject of so much strange romance.^[470] Had Eadgar left a brother behind him, there can be no doubt that he would, like Ælfred and Eadred, have been placed on the throne by universal consent. But there was no son of Eadmund living; indeed it is not clear that there was any male descendant of Ælfred living. There were indeed men, like Æthelweard the historian,^[471] who were 265sprung in the male line from Æthelwulf and Ecgberht; but in such distant kinsmen some unusual personal merit would probably have been needed to bring their claims on the crown into any notice. At this moment there was no grown man among the immediate members of the royal family, and there was no one, either among strangers or among more distant kinsmen, who possessed that predominant merit and predominant influence which marked out Harold for the crown ninety years later. The evils of a minority had therefore to be risked. Yet it seems strange that, if a minor King was to be accepted, there could be any doubt as to which minor was to be chosen. Eadward is said to have been distinctly recommended by his father, and with good reason. He was the elder son, and though primogeniture gave no positive right, yet it would surely be enough to turn the scale, even in a doubtful case, and this case, one would have thought, was not doubtful. The election of Eadward would have the unspeakable gain of bringing the minority to an end six years sooner than the election of his brother. Yet we read on good authority^[472] that there was a distinct division of sentiment among the electors, and that a strong party supported the child Æthelred against the boy Eadward. In this we can hardly fail to see the influence of the widowed Lady^[473] Ælfthryth, |Party of Ælfthryth and the monks.| in alliance with one of the two parties in the state. And there is every reason to believe that the party of Ælfthryth was the party of the monks. She was, by her first marriage, the sister-in-law of Æthelwine, and we find several signs that neither Dunstan nor the monks were so powerful under Eadward as they had been under his |Patriotic conduct of Dunstan,| father. It was therefore a distinct sacrifice of their party to their country, when Dunstan and his fellow Archbishop 266|and election of Eadward.| Oswald settled the controversy by a vigorous appeal on behalf of Eadward, urging the will of the late King, and no doubt enlarging also on the manifest expediency of the choice. Eadward was accordingly elected, crowned, and anointed. But that his short reign was not wholly favourable to the monastic party may be inferred by the continuance of the controversy, and the holding of several |Banishment of Earl Oslac.| synods to discuss the points at issue.^[474] We may see a similar influence at work in the banishment of Earl Oslac, a special favourite of Eadgar, whose punishment and its injustice are bitterly lamented by our best authorities.^[475] It will be remembered that, when the last Northumbrian |954.| King was overthrown by Eadred, the government of the country was entrusted to an Earl of the King’s choice. |966.| Oswulf, thus appointed by Eadred, ruled over all Northumberland, till Eadgar again divided the old kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira, giving the northern province to Oswulf and the southern to Oslac.^[476] On Oslac’s banishment, the whole seems to have been again united under Waltheof, who was probably of the family of Oswulf, and of whose own descendents we shall often hear again.

Eadward, after a four years’ reign, was cruelly murdered. There is little doubt that this foul deed was done by the instigation, if not by the personal order, of his step-mother Ælfthryth,^[477] whose son Æthelred was now elected at the age 267of ten years.^[478] For thirty-seven years England was governed |Death of Dunstan. 988.| by him or in his name, and after Dunstan was gone, the reign of Æthelred meant only the reign of his unworthy favourites. The world soon learned how great was the change when the Imperial sceptre of Britain was no longer grasped by the hand of Eadgar the Peaceful. Æthelred had not been two years on the throne when the Danish invasions began again. The whole interest of the history so completely gathers round this fearful scourge that we may pass swiftly by the few, and mostly unlucky, events of |London burned. 982. (Chron. and Flor. Wig.)| internal history which are handed down to us. In one year London was burned, seemingly by one of those accidental fires which, then and long after, were so common and so destructive in cities where the buildings were mainly |Siege of Rochester. 986.| of wood. In another year, owing to some internal sedition the cause of which is not explained, Æthelred, then a youth of seventeen, besieged the town of Rochester, and being unable to take it, ravaged and alienated some of the |987.| lands of the bishopric.^[479] In another year we hear of an epidemic fever, and of a murrain among beasts, seemingly the forerunner of the modern cattle-plague, which raged through the whole of England in a way unknown to former times.^[480] Besides these misfortunes of different kinds, 268|Death of Ælfhere. 983.| Ælfhere of Mercia died, and was succeeded in his ealdormanship by his son Ælfric, who was banished some years afterwards, we are not told for what cause. The first marriage |Banishment of Ælfric. 986.| of Æthelred to the daughter of one of his nobles, whose name and parentage are uncertain, and the birth of his sons Æthelstan and Eadmund, afterwards the renowned Ironside, must also be placed within this period.^[481]

From these obscure domestic events we turn to the terrible drama of the Danish wars. This new series of invasions, which led in the end to the submission of all England to a Danish King, form the third and last period of Danish warfare. But the third period, after so long an interval, is as it were ushered in by a kind of repetition of the two earlier periods. Before the great attack on the |first, with mere plundering incursions, [980–982];| kingdom of England by a King of all Denmark, we find a short period of mere plunder and a short period of attempted settlement. During the first years of Æthelred the Danish invasions once more become mere piratical incursions. Then for a few years they cease altogether. |then attempts at settlement, [988–993].| Then they begin a second time, in a shape which seems to imply intended settlement, and which presently grows into |Characters of Swegen of Denmark and Olaf of Norway.| regular political conquests. The leading spirit of all these invasions was Swegen,^[482] the son of Harold Blaatand, the Danish King who played so important a part in the affairs of Normandy. And for a while there appears by his side another rover of the North, whose career was, if possible, stranger than his own, the famous Olaf Tryggvesson of Norway. But it is hard indeed to force the entries in the English Chronicles, which hardly ever touch upon the 269internal affairs of Scandinavia,^[483] into agreement with the half fabulous narratives in the Danish historians and in the Norwegian sagas. Swegen, baptized in his infancy, and held at the font by an Imperial godfather, had received the name of Otto, as Guthrum received the name of Æthelstan.^[484] But he cast away his new name and his new faith, and waged war against his Christian father on behalf of Thor and Odin.^[485] The life of Olaf, as told in the sagas of his country,^[486] is one of the most amazing either in history or in romance. The posthumous child of a murdered King and a fugitive Queen, he is sold as a slave in Esthonia, he flourishes through court favour in Russia, he wins principalities by marriage in Wendland and in England, and is converted to Christianity by an abbot in the Scilly Islands. The early life of Swegen is likewise connected by tradition with England; he is said to have been driven from Denmark, to have sought for shelter in England, and, when repelled by Æthelred, to have taken refuge for a time at the more hospitable court of Kenneth of Scotland.^[487] It is highly probable that Swegen took a part as a private wiking in the first three years of piracy, which chiefly laid waste the shores of Wessex and Kent. The presence of Olaf in England may also be inferred from the statement that Cheshire was ravaged by enemies who are distinctly pointed out as Norwegians.^[488] That Swegen indeed had a hand 270in the earlier incursions is almost proved by an interval |Cessation of inroads. 982–988.| of peace succeeding them. This interval doubtless answers to the time of Swegen’s parricidal war with his father, which is quite enough to account for the cessation of |They begin again.| his attacks upon England. After six years’ intermission, |Battle at Watchet. 988.| the invasions began again with an attack on Watchet on the western coast of Somerset, in which several English thegns were killed, but the Danes were at last beaten off.^[489] Three years later, a much more serious attack was made on the east of England, seemingly with the intention |Norwegian invasion. 991.| of making a settlement. This seems to have been a Norwegian expedition; the leaders were Justin and Guthmund, sons of Steitan, and there seems every reason to believe that Olaf Tryggvesson himself was present also.^[490] |Plunder of Ipswich.| They plundered Ipswich and thence advanced into Essex, where the brave Ealdorman Brihtnoth met them in battle |Battle of Maldon and death of Brihtnoth.| at Maldon. The hero of the monks was also the hero of the soldiers, and the exploits and death of the valiant Ealdorman were sung in strains which rank among the noblest efforts of Teutonic poetry.^[491] It is a relief to turn 271from the wretched picture of misgovernment and treachery which the reign of Æthelred presents, and to hear the deeds of one of the few righteous who were left told in our own ancient tongue in verses which echo the true ring of the battle-pieces of Homer. The fight of Maldon is the only battle of the days of Æthelred of which any minute details are preserved, and every detail throws light on something in the manners or the military tactics of the age. The battle took place near the town of Maldon, on the banks of the tidal river Panta, now called the Blackwater. The town lies on a hill; immediately at its base flows one branch of the river, while another, still crossed by a mediæval bridge, flows at a little distance to the north. The Danish ships seem to have lain in the branch nearest to the town, and their crews must have held the space between the two streams, while Brihtnoth came to the rescue from the north. He seems to have halted on the spot now marked by the church of Heybridge,^[492] having both streams between him and the town. He rode to the spot, but when he had drawn up his army in order, he alighted from his horse and took his place among his own household troops.^[493] These were men bound to him by the traditional tie of personal fidelity handed on from the earliest recorded days of the Teutonic race. Like Harold at Senlac, Brihtnoth fought on foot; an English 272King or Ealdorman used his horse only to carry him to and from the field of battle; in the actual combat the first in rank was bound to share every danger of his lowlier comrades.^[494] The wikings now sent a herald, offering to withdraw and go back to their ships, on payment of money to be assessed at their own discretion. Brihtnoth of course indignantly refused any such demand; steel and not gold was the only metal that could judge between him and them. The two hosts now stood on the two sides of the water, a deep and narrow channel, which, as the tide was coming in, could not be at once crossed. The bridge, a still older predecessor doubtless of that which still remains, was held, at Brihtnoth’s order, by three champions whose exploit reminds us, like some other incidents of the battle, of one of the most famous tales in the poetical history of Rome. The dauntless three who kept the bridge at Maldon were Wulfstan the son of Ceola, Ælfhere, and Maccus, the name of which last champion may suggest some curious inquiries as to his origin.^[495] Till the tide turned, the two armies stood facing each other, eager 273for battle, but unable to do more than exchange a few flights of arrows. At last the turn of the tide made the ford passable; the Northmen began to cross, and Brihtnoth, perhaps with a kind of chivalrous feeling which was doubtless utterly thrown away upon such enemies, allowed large numbers of them to pass unhindered.^[496] And now the fight began in earnest. The English stood, as at Senlac, in the array common to them and their enemies, a strong line, or rather wedge, of infantry, forming a wall with their shields. As in the old Roman battles, the fight began with the hurling of the javelins, and was carried on in close combat with the broadsword.^[497] Brihtnoth was wounded early in the battle, and his sister’s son Wulfmær was disabled. But the brave old chief went on fighting, and, after slaying several wikings with his own hand, he was cut down, and two gallant followers who fought at his side were slain with him. One of these was another Wulfmær, the young son of Wulfstan, who fought by his lord while his father was guarding the bridge. After the death of the valiant Ealdorman, the thoroughly Homeric character of the story comes out more strongly than ever. The fight 274over the body of Brihtnoth sounds like the fight over the body of Patroklos,^[498] or like that later day when

Two caitiffs, the only faithless ones among the body-guard of the fallen hero, two brothers whose names are handed down to infamy as Godric and Godwig, the sons of Odda, forgot their duty to their lord who had shown them such favours, and fled from the field, leaving his body in the hands of his enemies. Godric even added the further treason of mounting the horse on which Brihtnoth had ridden to the field, so that many thought that it was the Ealdorman himself who had fled.^[499] The English were thus thrown into confusion; the fortress of shields was broken.^[500] The enemy had thus time to mangle the body of Brihtnoth, |Faithfulness of the comitatus of Brihtnoth.| and to carry off his head as a trophy.^[501] But the fight was renewed by Brihtnoth’s special comrades, whose names and exploits are handed down to us in verses which breathe the true fire of the warlike minstrelsy common to Greek and Teuton. There fought Ælfwine the son of Ælfric, of a lordly house among the Mercians;^[502] there fought Æseferth the son of Ecglaf, a Northumbrian hostage who had 275escaped from the enemy;^[503] there fought Brihtwold, old in years but valiant among the foremost; there fought Eadward the Long, and Leofsunu, and others whose names live only in the nameless poet’s verse, but among whom one must not be forgotten, one whose tale shows that, deep as were the corruptions of English life under this wretched reign, there was at least room left for lowly merit to raise itself to honour. This was Dunnere, a churl by birth, but whose rank is spoken of without the least shadow of contempt, and whose words and deeds placed him on a level with the noblest of his comrades. In short, the whole personal following of the East-Saxon Ealdorman seems to have fought and fallen around his body.^[504] The heathen had the victory;^[505] but the defeat of the English seems to have been by no means decisive. We do not read that the Danes were able to spoil or burn the town, according to their usual custom, and the body of Brihtnoth was carried off in |His burial at Ely.| safety and found a worthy resting-place. On an island in the great fen land between Mercia and East-Anglia, on a height which in that part of Britain passes for a considerable hill, the virgin Queen Æthelthryth (the Etheldreda of hagiology) had, three centuries before, forsaken every duty of royal and married life, to rule over a sisterhood which proved fruitful in saints of royal birth.^[506] Thus arose the great monastery of Ely; but, like many other religious houses, it was utterly destroyed in the Danish invasion of the ninth century. When the monks 276were in the height of their power under Eadgar, Bishop Æthelwold, their great patron, chose the forsaken site for a new foundation; a church was built, and a body of monks took possession of the former home of sainted princesses. Among the benefactors of the new house the Ealdorman of the East-Saxons was one of the foremost. The first Abbot, whether from kindred or from accident, bore the same name as his benefactor the Ealdorman. He, according to the legend, died a martyr’s death, through the practice of the Lady Ælfthryth, the unworthy niece of the pious chieftain.^[507] The second Abbot Ælfsige was bound to Brihtnoth by the tie of mutual benefits. He now hastened to the place of slaughter, and carried off the body of so great a benefactor of his house. The remains of Brihtnoth were buried in the newly hallowed minster, the humble forerunner of the most stately and varied of England’s cathedral churches. Under its mighty lantern the brave and pious Ealdorman slept in peace, till, under pretence of restoration, his bones were disturbed by the savages of the |Gifts of his widow Æthelflæd; the Ely Tapestry.| eighteenth century. His widow Æthelflæd shared his devotion to the house of Saint Æthelthryth. She added to his gifts of lands; she offered a bracelet of gold, perhaps part of the badges of his office; and she adorned the minster with one gift, which, if it survived, would rank among the most precious monuments of the history and art of the age. Ely once could rival Bayeux; among the choicest treasures of Ely under her first Bishop, a hundred and twenty years later, was the tapestry on which the devotion of Æthelflæd had wrought the glorious deeds of the hero of Maldon.^[508]

277At Maldon the invaders had gained a victory, but it was a victory which showed what Englishmen could still do when they had men of the old stamp to lead them. But the dastardly flight of the sons of Odda showed that England also contained men of another temper. And unhappily the policy of Æthelred was now guided by men of the stamp of Godric, not by men of the stamp of Brihtnoth. The shameful payment of money, which the brave old Ealdorman had so indignantly refused, was the only means of safety which suggested itself to a King in the first vigour of youth and to his chief counsellors in Church and State. |The Danes first bought off. 991.| The year which beheld the fight of Maldon beheld also, for the first time, the Lord of all Britain stoop to buy peace from a few ship-crews of heathen pirates.^[509] This was the beginning of that senseless and fatal system of looking to gold to do the work of steel, of trusting to barbarians who never kept their promises, and who of course, as soon as they had spent one instalment of tribute, came back again to seek for more. But this plain lesson was one which Æthelred and his advisers seemed never able to learn. The spirit of the nation, which under men like Brihtnoth was ready for vigorous resistance, was thus |Advisers of the measure;| quenched, and its energy frittered away. The evil counsellors who stand charged with the infamy of first suggesting this unhappy measure were men of the highest rank in the nation. The great Dunstan was dead; he was taken away from the evil to come in the very year in which the 278invasions began again. After a momentary occupation of |Sigeric, Archbishop of Canterbury, [990–994];| the metropolitan throne by Æthelgar, Bishop of the South-Saxons, who died the next year, the primacy fell to the lot of Sigeric, Bishop of Wiltshire or Ramsbury. The first act of this prelate was to drive out the secular priests from the metropolitan church, where Dunstan himself had let them abide.^[510] If Sigeric was at all versed in the fitting lore of his office, the history of the Old Testament might have supplied him with many precedents to show the fatal nature of his policy. No Jewish King had ever gained anything by buying off the Assyrian, and an English King was not likely to fare any better by buying off the Dane. But Sigeric joined with the Ealdormen Æthelweard and Ælfric in gaining the King’s leave to purchase peace for their own districts at the hands of the invaders by the |Ealdorman Æthelweard,| payment of ten thousand pounds.^[511] Æthelweard, “Patricius Consul Fabius Quæstor Æthelwerdus,”^[512] was a man of royal descent, who is memorable as our only lay historian of this age, but who would have been more worthy of honour in his literary character, had he, like his kinsman Ælfred, stooped to write in his native tongue, instead of |and Ealdorman Ælfric.| clothing a most meagre record in most inflated Latin. As for Ælfric, his identity and his actions form one of the standing difficulties of this time. His doings, as favourite |Peace purchased of the Northmen. 991.| and as traitor, are spread over several years of the reign of Æthelred. Having bought a respite for their own districts,^[513] the Primate and the two Ealdormen next persuaded the 279King and his Witan to buy a general peace for the whole land.^[514] The terms of the treaty show that, if the invaders were not actually to settle in the land, they were at least not expected to make a speedy departure. They engage to help King Æthelred against any fleet which may come to invade England; neither party is to receive the enemies of the other; and various provisions are made, which would be quite out of place if the Northmen had been expected to sail away at once. And the events of the next |Fleet assembled at London. 992.| year clearly show that they did not sail away, and they seem also to imply that the peace was broken. For in that year Æthelred and his Witan^[515] gathered together a fleet at London, which was placed under the command of two Bishops, Æscwig of Dorchester and Ælfric^[516] of Wiltshire, and of two lay chiefs, Thored the Earl, of whom we have already heard, and who, according to one account, was the King’s father-in-law,^[517] and, unluckily for the enterprise, Ælfric the Ealdorman. We have now reached the first of that long series of utterly inexplicable treasons, which were, in a way no less utterly inexplicable, always forgiven by those against whom they were wrought. One can understand the wretched policy which buys off an enemy or the sheer cowardice which flees from an enemy. Contemptible as both of them are, neither of them implies any deliberate treachery or any positive perversion of heart. But what human motive could induce an English Ealdorman deliberately to betray his country to the heathen invaders? Yet so to do now becomes the regular course on the part of the 280royal favourites, a class who form a strange contrast to the brave men, chiefs and people alike, whose patriotic efforts |Treason of Ælfric.| were so often thwarted by them. Ælfric now first sent word to the Northmen to beware lest they should be surrounded by the English fleet, and then actually joined them |Naval victory of the English. 992.| with his own contingent. The English, among whom the East-Angles and the citizens of London were the foremost, pursued and gave battle; the Danes were defeated with great slaughter; the traitor’s ship was taken with all |Ælfgar blinded. 993.| that was in it, but he himself narrowly escaped. Æthelred took a base and cowardly revenge by blinding Ælfric’s son Ælfgar, against whom there is nothing whatever to show that he had any share in his father’s crime. Yet, strange to say, within a few years Ælfric himself was again in favour, and again in a position to command and to betray English armies.

The storm was thus turned away from London. The importance of that great city was daily growing throughout these times. We cannot as yet call it the capital of the kingdom; but its geographical position made it one of the chief bulwarks of the land, and there was no part of the realm whose people could outdo the patriotism and |Comparison with Paris.| courage of its valiant citizens. London at this time fills much the same place in England which Paris filled in Northern Gaul a century earlier. The two cities, in their several lands, were the two great fortresses, placed on the two great rivers of the country, the special objects of attack on the part of the invaders and the special defence of the country against them. Each was, as it were, marked out by great public services to become the capital of the whole kingdom. But Paris became a national capital only because its local Count grew into a national King; London, amidst all changes within and without, has always kept more or less of her ancient character as a free city. Paris was merely a military bulwark, the 281dwelling-place of a ducal or a royal sovereign; London, no less important as a military post, had also a greatness which rested on a surer foundation. London, like a few other of our great cities, is one of the ties which connect our Teutonic England with the Celtic and Roman Britain of earlier times. Her British name still lives on, unchanged by the Teutonic conquerors. Before we first hear of London as an English city, she had cast away her Roman and Imperial title; she was no longer Augusta;^[518] she had again taken her ancient name, and through all changes she clave to her ancient character. The commercial fame of London dates from the early days of Roman dominion.^[519] The English Conquest may have caused an interruption for a while, but it was only for a while. As early as the days of Æthelberht the commerce of London was again renowned.^[520] Ælfred had rescued the city from the Dane; he had built a citadel for her defence,^[521] the germ of that Tower which was to be first the dwelling-place of Kings, and then the scene of the martyrdom of their victims. Among the Laws of Æthelstan none are more remarkable than those which deal with the internal affairs of London and with the regulation |Commerce of London.| of her earliest commercial corporations.^[522] During the reign of Æthelred the merchant city again became the 282object of special and favourable legislation.^[523] Her Institutes speak of a commerce spread over all the lands that bordered on the Western Ocean. Flemings and Frenchmen, men of Ponthieu, of Brabant, and of Lüttich, filled her markets with their wares and enriched the civic coffers with their tolls. Thither too came the men of Rouen, whose descendants were, at no distant day, to form no |Privileges enjoyed by the “Men of the Emperor.”| small element among her own citizens. And, worthy and favoured above all, came the sea-faring men of the Old-Saxon brother-land, the pioneers of the mighty Hansa of the North, which was in days to come to knit together London and Novgorod in one bond of commerce, and to dictate laws and distribute crowns among the nations by whom London was now threatened. The demand for toll and tribute fell lightly on those whom English legislation distinguished as the men of the Emperor.^[524] The manifest advantages of their trade, perhaps some feeling or memory of their common blood and speech, gained privileges for them to which the Gaul and the Norman had no claim, privileges which did not extend to the kindred Fleming, vassal as he was of the Parisian King, or to the Lorrainer, still a vassal of Cæsar, but already exposed to the contagion of foreign influence and language. The chief seat of their enterprise was indeed as yet not open to them, and the chief seat of their dominion was as yet not in being. Queenly Lübeck had not yet begun to cover her peninsula with her stately spires, her soaring gateways, the rich and varied dwellings of her merchant-princes, and the proud pile of that council-house which was to become the centre of the commerce and policy of Northern 283Europe. The Baltic, one day to be an Hanseatic lake, was still surrounded throughout its coasts by savage or piratical tribes to whom all Christendom alike was hostile. But, if the Trave was not yet reached, the Elbe and the Weser were already occupied. The fame of Hamburg and of Bremen was as yet ecclesiastical rather than commercial; still we may well believe that, among the continental brethren whom London welcomed, there were some who had ventured forth from their infant havens. And the Rhine at least was still open; the ancient Colony of Agrippina was already a chief mart of Teutonic commerce; as early as the days of Charles and Offa, commerce between England and the Empire was a matter of special interest on both sides;^[525] and now, in the days of Æthelred, the men of the Emperor, alone among the natives of foreign lands, were emphatically spoken of as “worthy of good laws, even as we ourselves.”^[526]

The great merchant city was thus saved, mainly, as we shall often find it in these wars, by the valour of her own citizens. The Northmen, baffled in their attack on London, turned their course northward; they stormed King Ida’s fortress of Bamburgh, the earliest seat of Northumbrian kingship; they then turned back to the mouth of the Humber, and ravaged the country on both sides of that river. The men of Lindesey and Deira were no less ready to defend their country than the men of London and East-Anglia; but they had less worthy leaders. |Treason of Fræna, Frithegist, and Godwine.| Just as the battle was beginning, the English commanders set the example of flight. Their names were Fræna, Frithegist, and Godwine, two of them at least old servants of Eadgar, and it is distinctly implied that the cause of their cowardice and treachery was that they were themselves 284of Danish descent, and that they therefore sympathized with the invaders rather than with those whom it was their duty to defend.^[527]

Our narrative is thus far, on the whole, straightforward and intelligible; but two difficult questions now present themselves. Were these Scandinavian invasions accompanied by any efforts on the part of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain to shake off the English supremacy? Was Æthelred, while thus attacked by foreign invaders, himself engaged in foreign disputes and wars, perhaps in |Border warfare with the Welsh.| actual invasion of a foreign land? As far as the Welsh are concerned, it would be alike impossible and unprofitable to try to trace out every detail of the border warfare which was always going on along the Mercian frontier. The English Chronicles scarcely ever condescend to speak of the ups and downs of these endless skirmishes, while |Scandinavian incursions in Wales.| the Welsh Chronicles are full of them. They tell us of a good many incursions of the “Saxons,” but they are far fuller of the ravages of the “Black Pagans,” who were probably much oftener Northmen from Ireland and the Western Islands than actual Danes from Denmark. And it is small honour to the Emperor of all Britain that his plan of buying off the heathen ravagers had perhaps been |988.| forestalled by a vassal prince of Wales.^[528] This prince, Meredydd, son of Owen, seems to have spread his dominion over the greater part of the modern principality,^[529] and in the year of the battle of Maldon we distinctly find 285him, not only at war with the English, but in league with the Northmen. A prince of Gwent and Morganwg,^[530] |War with Meredydd. 991.| in company with an English commander whose name appears to have been Æthelsige, ravaged the kingdom of Meredydd as far as Saint David’s. In return for this, Meredydd, with an army of heathen mercenaries,^[531] ravaged Morganwg, the dominion of the Welsh ally of England. One would be more anxious to know what was the position of Scotland at this time. The reception of Swegen by Kenneth, if it be historical, might seem to point to an unfriendly feeling towards England; but we have no notices of Scottish affairs till some years later.

A more important question still now presents itself. As far as we can gather from most imperfect and contradictory accounts, it seems that it was during these years that the first direct intercourse between England and Normandy took place, and that that intercourse was |Disputes arising from the shelter given in Normandy to Danish vessels.| of an unfriendly, if not a directly hostile, kind.^[532] The quarrel seems to have arisen out of the hospitable reception which was given in the Norman ports to the piratical fleets which were engaged in the plunder of England. The old connexion with Denmark, the good services which had been rendered by King Harold, were not forgotten in Normandy. The kind reception thus due to the Danes in general may have extended itself even to those who were in fact Harold’s rebellious subjects, warring against the champion of the faith common to Normandy and England. The Norman havens lay most conveniently 286open for the sale of the plunder of Wessex; it is even possible that some of the inhabitants of those parts of Normandy where the old Danish spirit still lingered may have joined their heathen kinsmen in incursions on the opposite coast.^[533] Considering the chronology, it seems most |988.| likely that the invasion of Somerset which took place in the year of Dunstan’s death was aided and abetted by Richard’s subjects in one or other of these ways. A dispute thus arose between Æthelred and the Duke; whether it led to open war is uncertain. At any rate it assumed importance enough to call for the intervention of the |Reconciliation brought about by Pope John the Fifteenth. 991.| common father of Christendom. The reigning Pope, John the Fifteenth, stepped in to reconcile two Christian princes who were weakening one another in the presence of threatening, if not triumphant, heathendom. A prelate named Leo, described as Bishop of Trier, was sent by the Pontiff to the court of Æthelred on a message of peace. He thence went to Duke Richard at Rouen, accompanied by an English embassy, consisting of Æthelsige, Bishop of Sherborne, and two thegns named Leofstan and Æthelnoth, who are not otherwise distinguished, but whose names are attached to many of the charters of the time. Peace was concluded on the terms that neither party should receive the enemies of the other, nor even each other’s subjects, unless they were provided with passports from their own sovereign.^[534]

There can be no doubt that in these transactions we may see the germs of much that came to pass in later years. The first recorded intercourse between the courts of Rouen and Winchester paved the way for that chain 287|from this time.| of events which was at last to establish a descendant of Richard in the royal city of Æthelred. Each country now began to feel the importance of the other, whether as a friend or as an enemy. As we go on in the reign of Æthelred, we shall find intercourse of all kinds with Normandy growing more frequent at every step. And for the first and the last time in the common history of the two countries, the Roman Bishop appears in his fitting character of a common peacemaker and father. The next Pontiff who mingles in a strife between a King of the English and a Duke of the Normans shows himself in quite another light.

We must now again come back to the consecutive narrative of the Danish wars. In the year after the sack of Bamburgh and the ignominious flight of the thegns of Lindesey, the invasions began again on a more terrible scale. They were no longer the plundering expeditions of private wikings, or of the sons of Kings spending their hot youth in this wild warfare against their neighbours. They were no longer the expeditions of adventurous chieftains seeking to better their fortunes by winning themselves new homes at the point of the sword. The two mightiest powers of the North were now joined together in a momentary league to compass the utter subjugation of England. Instead of the sea-rovers of a few years back, the invaders are now two powerful Kings with royal fleets and armies at their disposal. Olaf, King of the Norwegians, and Swegen, King of the Danes, joined their forces in a greater expedition than any that Brihtnoth had ever met with steel or Æthelred with gold. The pretext for war on the part of Olaf is not clear; Swegen gave out 288that he came to revenge the inhospitable treatment which he had received from the King of the English in the days of his adversity.^[535] At the head of a fleet of ninety-four |Attack on London defeated by the citizens. 994.| ships, the two Kings of the North sailed up the Thames and laid siege to London—the first, but not the last, siege which the great city was to undergo in this fearful warfare. For the first, but not for the last time, the valiant burghers, who had already learned to grapple with the Dane on his own element, beat back the invaders from their walls. The fire of twelve years back had doubtless been a mere passing blow; it could have done little to lessen the strength of the Roman rampart and of the tower of Ælfred. But it was not only to such worldly bulwarks that the defenders of London trusted; on that day the Mother of God, of her mild-heartedness, rescued the Christian city from its foes.^[536] An assault on the wall, coupled with an attempt to burn the town, was defeated with great slaughter of the besiegers, and the two Kings sailed away the same day in wrath and sorrow.^[537] Here was another triumph of English valour; but in this reign valour and counsel were always local; cowardice and utter incapacity reigned at head-quarters. Under Ælfred or Æthelstan, such a check as the invaders had met with before London would have been followed up by some crushing defeat, and the slain of Maldon would have been avenged in the glories of another Brunanburh. Under the wretched Æthelred the very valour of the Londoners only led to the more fearful desolation of other parts of |Ravages in the South-East of England.| the kingdom. The enemy were allowed to ravage the coast at pleasure; at last, meeting with no resistance, 289they seized on horses, and rode through the eastern and southern shires, pillaging, burning, murdering, without regard to age or sex.^[538] These horrors were carried on without interruption throughout the whole range of Essex, Kent, and Sussex; at last the invaders crossed the West-Saxon frontier, and by their presence in Hampshire threatened the royal city and the royal person. London and Essex might have been forgotten, but it was now clearly time to do something. But what was to be done? Æthelred and his Witan could think of nothing but their |Æthelred again buys peace.| old wretched expedient. The invaders were again bought off; they were allowed to winter at Southampton; a special tax was levied on Wessex to supply the crews with food and pay, and a general tax was levied on all England to raise the sum of sixteen thousand pounds as a payment to the two Kings.^[539] For once this policy, favoured |Embassy of Ælfheah and Æthelward to Olaf.| by special circumstances, was partly successful. The union of Denmark and Norway was broken, and one of the invading Kings was won over to lasting peace and neutrality. Both the leaders of the heathen fleet were baptized men. Swegen indeed, the godson of Cæsar, had denied his faith, and had waged war against his own father on behalf of heathendom. But the baptism of Olaf was more recent and more voluntary. His later history sets him before us as a zealous Christian, who evangelized his kingdom at the point of the sword, and who, in the name of the religion of mercy, paid back upon the heathen all that 290Christian confessors and martyrs had suffered at their hands. A faith which shows itself in such works as these may indeed be far removed from the true spirit of the Gospel; but such fiery zeal at least implies the firmest belief in the dogmas which it is ready to force upon all men at all hazards. We can then well understand that Olaf, already a Christian, might easily be led to repent of the wrongs which he was dealing out on a Christian land, whose sovereign and people had never wronged him. He willingly listened to an English embassy which came to win him over more completely to the side of his brethren in the faith. One of the ambassadors sent was Ælfheah—the Alphege of hagiology—then the Bishop of the diocese in which Olaf was wintering, but who was some years later to ascend the metropolitan throne and to win the crown of martyrdom at the hands of the still heathen Danes. His colleague was the literary Ealdorman, Patricius Consul Fabius Quæstor Ethelwerdus, again more vigorous in negotiation than in warfare. The Norwegian King exchanged hostages with Æthelred; he was led “with mickle worship” to the court at Andover; he was received with every honour and enriched with royal gifts. |Olaf’s confirmation and adoption.| Already baptized, he received the rite of confirmation^[540] from Bishop Ælfheah, and was adopted by Æthelred as |He departs for Norway. 995.| his son. The royal neophyte promised never again to invade England; and, as soon as summer appeared, he sailed away to his own country and faithfully kept his |His later days and death. 1000.| promise. The later days of this prince, who fills so large a space both in the history and in the romance of his 291country, were spent in the forcible introduction of Christianity into his own kingdom, and in a war with his momentary ally of Denmark, in a sea-fight against whom he at last perished.

One enemy was thus changed, if not into a friend, at least into a neutral; and the other, perhaps weakened by the conversion of his ally, seems to have remained comparatively inactive for several years. Of Swegen himself we hear nothing in English history for nine years, and when he did come again, he had a terrible reason for coming. The Danish fleet however stayed on the English coast, but for a while we hear of no further ravages. It would seem that the interval was partly employed in attacks both on the vassals and on the continental kinsmen of England. In the year of Olaf’s departure, Swegen is said to have ravaged the Isle of Man,^[541] and there is no doubt that these years were a time in which both Danes and Swedes were busily employed in attacks on the land of the continental Saxons.^[542] In England this short respite was largely devoted to the work of legislation, and to the carrying on of the ordinary business of |Meetings of the Witenagemót. 995.| government. Meetings of the Witan were frequent. More than one such took place during the year of Olaf’s departure,^[543] a year of some importance in ecclesiastical history. |Ælfric elected Archbishop by the Witan.| Archbishop Sigeric died, and the vacant office was given, by the election of the Witan assembled at Amesbury in Wiltshire,^[544] to the Bishop of the diocese in which they were 292met, Ælfric of Ramsbury, a prelate whose name is still remembered as the author of various contributions to our early theological literature. In the same year also one of |Bishopric of Lindisfarn. 635–883.| the greatest and most famous of English bishoprics found its permanent resting-place. The bishopric of Bernicia or Northern Northumberland, one originally planted by Scottish missionaries, had its first seat in the Holy Island of Lindisfarn, where, for a short time during the later part of the seventh century, the lonely see was made illustrious by the monastic virtues of its sixth Bishop |Saint Cuthberht. 685–687.| Saint Cuthberht.^[545] He became the patron of the see, and his body was looked on as its choicest possession. In the great Danish invasion of the ninth century, the Bishop and his clerks fled from their island, and carried the body of the saint hither and thither, till it found a resting-place |The See removed to Chester-le-Street; 883;| at Cunegaceaster or Chester-le-Street.^[546] Here the bishopric remained for more than a century, till, in the year which we have now reached, Ealdhun, the reigning prelate, removed |thence to Durham, 995.| it once more to the site which his successors have kept ever since. This translation was not exactly a forestalling of that general removal of bishoprics from smaller to more considerable towns, which we shall find carried out systematically soon after the Norman Conquest. Ealdhun removed his see to a spot which he was the first to make into a dwelling-place of men. As in after days the Wiltshire bishopric was translated from the hill of the elder Salisbury to the plain which has been covered by the younger, so, by an opposite process, Ealdhun now moved his chair from Cunegaceaster to a site nobler than that 293occupied by any other minster in England. The body of Saint Cuthberht and the episcopal throne of his successors were placed by the happy choice of Ealdhun on that height whence the abbey and castle of Durham still look down upon the river winding at their feet. He found the spot a wilderness;^[547] but a town soon grew up around the church; Cunegaceaster was before long outstripped by Durham, and we shall in a few years see the new city acting as an important military post. And as the city grew, its prelates grew |Greatness and temporal authority of the See of Durham.| also. In process of time the successors of Ealdhun came to surpass all their episcopal brethren in wealth and in temporal authority. The prelate of Durham became one, and the more important, of the only two English prelates whose worldly franchises invested them with some faint shadow of the sovereign powers enjoyed by the princely churchmen of the Empire. The Bishop of Ely in his island, the Bishop of Durham in his hill-fortress, held powers which no other English ecclesiastic was allowed to share. Aidan and Cuthberht had lived almost a hermit’s life among their monks on their lonely island; their successors grew into the lords of a palatinate, in which it was not the peace of the King but the peace of the Bishop which the wrong-doer was, in legal language, held to have broken. The outward look of the city at once suggests its peculiar character. Durham alone among English cities, 294with its highest point crowned, not only by the minster, but by the vast castle of the Prince-Bishop, recalls to mind those cities of the Empire, Lausanne or Chur or Sitten, where the priest who bore alike the sword and the pastoral staff looked down from his fortified height on a flock which he had to guard no less against worldly than against ghostly foes.^[548] Such a change could never have taken place if the see of Saint Cuthberht had still lingered in its hermit-island; it could hardly have taken place if his body had ended its wanderings on a spot less clearly marked out by nature for dominion. The translation of the see to Durham by Ealdhun is the turning-point in the history of that great bishopric. And it is something more; it is worthy of notice in the general history of England as laying the foundation of a state of things which in England remained exceptional, but which, had it gained a wider field, would have made a lasting change in the condition of the country. The spiritual Palatine of Durham and the temporal Palatine of Chester stood alone in the possession of their extraordinary franchises. The unity of the kingdom was therefore not seriously endangered by the existence of these isolated principalities, especially as the temporal palatinate so early became an apanage of the heir to the Crown. But had all bishoprics possessed the same rights as Durham, had all earldoms possessed the same rights as Chester, England could never have remained an united monarchy. It must have fallen in pieces in exactly the same way in which the Empire did, and from essentially the same cause.

Another meeting of the Witan was held the next year at Cealchyth,^[549] and a more important one the year after at 295Calne, which after a few days transferred its sittings to Wantage.^[550] Here, besides the usual business of confirming the King’s grants of lands or privileges to churches or to |[997].| private men, a code of laws was drawn up. At an earlier Gemót, held at Woodstock in an uncertain year, a code had been published,^[551] designed mainly for the purely English parts of the kingdom; the labours of the Witan at Wantage, remarkable as it seems in a spot so purely Saxon, seem to have had a special reference to the country which had been occupied by the Danes.^[552] These laws, like so many other of our ancient codes, are chiefly devoted to the administration of justice and to the preservation of the peace. Neither in them nor in the earlier laws of Woodstock can we discern any distinct allusion to the special circumstances |Renewed ravages of the Danes, 997–998.| of the times. But in the very year of the Gemót of Wantage the Danish ravages began again. For two years they were confined to the coasts of Wessex and its immediate dependencies. In the first year the invaders set out, seemingly from their old quarters near Southampton, they doubled the Land’s End and ravaged Cornwall, Devonshire, Somerset, and South Wales,^[553] plundering, burning, and slaying everywhere, and, what is specially 296noticed, burning the monastery at Tavistock. The next year they cruelly ravaged Dorset and Wight, and at last took up their quarters in that island, whence they wrung |Witenagemót of London. 998.| contributions from Hampshire and Sussex. During this last year a Gemót was held at London.^[554] Whether any measures were taken to resist the Danes does not appear; but it seems that Wulfsige, Bishop of the Dorsætas, took measures to substitute monks for canons in his cathedral church at Sherborne,^[555] and the King restored to the church |Ravages of the Danes in Kent. 999.| of Rochester the lands of which he had robbed it in his youth.^[556] The gift, however valuable to the bishopric, did little towards protecting the citizens of Rochester. The next year the Danes sailed up the Thames and the Medway, and besieged the town. The men of Kent went forth to battle, but they were defeated after a hard struggle, and the Danes horsed themselves and ravaged the whole western |The Witenagemót collects a fleet and army.| part of the shire. The Wise Men then met again, this time to devise means for carrying on the war. They voted, and actually got together, a fleet and army; but nothing came of it. Both in this year and in the former year everything went wrong. Armies were often gathered together; but time was wasted in all manner of delays, and meanwhile the soldiers who were assembled did nearly as much damage as the enemy. If things ever got on so far that they met the enemy in battle, either ill luck or treachery always |Their inefficiency, and general misery of the country.| gave the victory to the heathen. And when the ships were gathered together, there was only delay from day to day; the crews were harassed grievously; when things should have been forward, they were only the more backward; they let the enemy’s army ever increase; and ever they went away from the sea, and the enemy followed 297them; and in the end there was nothing for either the land-force or the sea-force, but grieving of the folk and spending of money and emboldening of their foes.^[557]

Such is the picture of the times which is given us by our best authorities. And it is clear that, to bring about such a state of things, there must have been causes which lay deeper than the mere incapacity or carelessness of Æthelred or than the treachery of a few chiefs of Danish descent.^[558] On the other hand, it is perfectly clear that there was no lack of zeal or courage on the part of the people in any part of the country where the invaders landed. This is shown by the valiant resistance which the invaders always met with whenever local power was in worthy hands. It is not unlikely that the forms of the English constitution of that day were partly in fault. The power of resistance was perhaps weakened by the very amount of freedom, general and local, which the English already enjoyed; it was certainly weakened by the still very imperfect nature of the union which existed between the different parts of |General question of the action of constitutional states.| the kingdom. We have in our own times often heard the complaint that a free government is less able than a despotism to carry on a war with vigour. This charge is refuted, if by nothing else, by the result of the great civil |1861–5.| war in America. But the experiences of that civil war, and many experiences of our own, combine to show that a free country has greater difficulty than a despotism in the mere setting about of a war. No free state could expect to rival the readiness, vigour, and daring with |1866.| which Prussia opened the wonderful campaign which made her the head of Germany. The very institutions which secure national, local, and personal freedom, sometimes form 298a temporary, though most certainly only a temporary, hindrance, especially in the case of civil war or of sudden invasion. The old free institutions of England threw difficulties in the way of national resistance, difficulties which the genius of Ælfred, his son, or his grandson, would have overcome, but which were utterly overwhelming to Æthelred |Imperfect union of the parts of the kingdom.| and his advisers. Most likely too, while the kingdom was still so imperfectly united, one part of the country did not greatly care for the misfortunes of another. The devastation of Kent and Wessex would not cause any very deep sorrow or alarm to the Danish people of Northumberland. Local resistance was always possible. A valiant Ealdorman might, with comparative ease, get together his own personal following and the able-bodied men of his shire. But even this process took time. While the English were arming, the Danes were plundering; and when a battle took place, the Danish force, which a general national movement would have crushed at once, commonly proved |Difficulties caused by English constitutional forms.| too strong for the array of any one district. A general national resistance was of course still more necessarily a work of time. The King had no standing army; he could at all times demand the services of his personal following, but even they could not be assembled in a moment; and no real national step could be taken, no national army or fleet could be brought together, no money could be gathered or expended, without the consent of the Witan. And when the Witan met, we can well understand that personal jealousies and still more local jealousies, to say nothing of the causes which always affect all assemblies, would often hinder, or at least delay, the adoption of any vigorous resolution. And when the Witan had passed their vote, they had to go back to their shires and hundreds to announce the determinations of the national council,^[559] and to gather together the forces of their several districts. One 299shire would be ready perhaps months before another, while all the while there was the most pressing need for immediate action. Such an army would become dispirited and demoralized before it had really come together. The difficulty of subsistence too, when it was not likely that regular pay could be given, would often drive the defenders of the country to become almost as destructive as its invaders. |Effect of the personal character of the King.| Even when there was no actual treason or cowardice, all these things would be difficulties in the way of the greatest of princes; under such a prince as Æthelred they were found to be simply unsurmountable. Ælfred had carried England through dangers as great as those which threatened her now; but it needed an Ælfred to do such a work. Under Æthelred nothing was done; or, more truly, throughout his whole reign he left undone those things which he ought to have done, and he did those things which he ought not to have done.

For the fault of Æthelred, after all, was not mere weakness.^[560] The Unready King showed occasional glimpses of vigour which might for a moment remind men that he came of the same stock as Eadward the Unconquered and as Æthelstan the Glorious. But it was a vigour which came only by fits and starts, and which acted only at unfitting times and for unfitting objects. As far as we can judge by his actions, the character of Æthelred was not one of mere abject incapacity like Edward of Caernarvon. He was rather like Richard of Bourdeaux, idle, careless, 300governed by worthless favourites, but showing ever and anon, though always in the wrong place, signs of a strong will and a capacity for vigorous action. So now it was at this memorable crisis of his kingdom. He had at last got together a fleet and an army, and, having got them |The Danes sail to Normandy. 1000.| together, he would do something with them. But the Danes were gone; they had got together their plunder, and had sailed away, as before, to sell it in the Norman havens.^[561] Æthelred took advantage of their absence to plunge into a needless war with one of his own vassals. |Æthelred ravages Cumberland in person, and his fleet ravages Man. 1000.| It does not seem that, up to this time, he had ever once thought of going forth in person to battle against the Danes; but the Emperor of Britain could trust no one but himself to lead an army against the Under-king of Cumberland. He ravaged nearly the whole of the principality by land, and he would have ravaged it by sea also, only the fleet which set out from Chester was hindered by contrary winds from meeting him at the appointed spot.^[562] It did however reach Man, and harried the island. The cause of all this untimely activity is not stated by our best English authorities. Man especially, which had been harried by Swegen only a few years before,^[563] must have been singularly unlucky if it contrived thus to provoke the wrath of both the contending Kings. Nor is it at all clear why Malcolm was attacked in his under-kingdom of |Malcolm’s refusal to pay Danegeld.| Cumberland. A Scottish writer tells us that Æthelred had called on Malcolm to contribute to some of the payments made to the Danes, probably to the great sum paid 301to Olaf and Swegen six years before. In short he wished to make the dependent kingdom of Cumberland liable, like an English shire, to the impost of Danegeld. Malcolm, we are told, answered with proper spirit. If King Æthelred went forth to battle, he was ready, as in duty bound, to follow his over-lord with his own forces; but he had never covenanted to pay money, and no money would he pay. The authority for this story is not of the first order; but it falls in so exactly with the relations between the two princes that it has strong internal likelihood in its favour. Malcolm was not an English Ealdorman, ruling an integral part of the English realm; he was a vassal prince reigning over a dependent kingdom, a kingdom which formed a part of the English Empire, but which had never been under the direct rule of the English crown. That kingdom Malcolm held on the terms on which it had been originally granted to his predecessor, those of military service by land and sea.^[564] A money tribute had indeed been levied on some of the Welsh princes; but military service was clearly the only contribution which a King of Cumberland owed to the Emperor of Britain. But Æthelred was enraged at his refusal, which, he alleged, could proceed from nothing but good will to the enemy. He accordingly ravaged the country, but afterwards concluded peace with Malcolm. If this story be true, Malcolm was fully justified in his refusal, and the conduct of Æthelred was a gross breach of the mutual duty of lord and vassal.

It is also likely that this untimely activity on the part of Æthelred led him also to match himself against an enemy of a very different kind from the vassal King of Cumberland. As far as probable conjecture can guide us through mazes where difficulties and contradictions meet us at every step, it was during this burst of misapplied 302energy that Æthelred became again involved in a dispute, most likely in an open war, with the Duke of the Normans.^[565] |[996.]| Richard the Fearless, his former antagonist, was now dead, and the reigning prince was his son Richard the Second, surnamed the Good. Of the dealings between the two countries we have no account from any English authority, and the version which we find in the Norman writers, though doubtless containing some germs |Æthelred’s invasion of Normandy, as described by Norman writers.| of truth, is evidently exaggerated in detail. According to them Æthelred sent a fleet into Normandy, with orders to burn and destroy throughout the land, and to spare nothing except the Mount of Saint Michael with its revered sanctuary. As for the reigning Duke, he was to be taken prisoner, and to be brought into the presence of his conqueror with his hands tied behind his back. The English fleet crossed the Channel, and its crews landed in the peninsula of Coutances and began to carry out the |Defeat of the English.| royal orders. But Neal, the valiant Viscount of the district, gathered the men of the country, and smote the invaders with such a slaughter that of those who actually landed one man only escaped to the ships. The fleet sailed home with the news of its discomfiture. Æthelred is pictured as waiting for the triumphant return of his fleet with the news of the conquest of Normandy. His first inquiry is for the captive Duke. But instead of seeing Richard with his hands tied behind him, he only hears that his men have not so much as seen the Duke, that the men of one county had been enough to destroy all their host, that the very women had joined in the strife, striking down the choicest warriors of England with the staves on which they bore their waterpots. These details are of course pure romance; but the existence of such a story seems to show that some hostilities really did take place. Æthelred’s fleet may have pursued the Danish fleet 303when it sailed to Normandy, and in so doing it may in |Probable explanation of the story.| some way have violated the neutrality of the Norman coast. Or Æthelred, in his present fit of energy, may have been so indignant at the reception of the Danes in the Norman havens as to send out an expedition by way of reprisal. But the grotesque pride and folly implied in the Norman story is incredible even in Æthelred. The details are valuable only as showing the kind of tales which, as we shall see more fully as we go on, the Norman writers thought good to pass off as the English history of the time.

Whatever was the exact nature of the mutual wrongs now done to each other by Normans and Englishmen, the quarrel did not last long. Æthelred seems now to have been a widower;^[566] the peace between the two countries was therefore confirmed by a marriage between him and the Duke’s sister Emma, one of the legitimated children of Richard the Fearless and Gunnor.^[567] Her beauty and accomplishments are highly extolled, but her long connexion |1002–1051.| with England, as the wife of two Kings and the mother of two others, brought with it nothing but present evil, and led to the future overthrow of the English kingdom |The marriage of Emma opened the way for the Norman Conquest.| and nation. The marriage of Æthelred and Emma led directly to the Norman Conquest of England.^[568] With that marriage began the settlement of Normans in England, their admission to English offices and estates, their general influence in English affairs, everything, in short, that paved the way for the actual Conquest. Through 304Emma came that fatal kindred and friendship between her English son and her Norman great-nephew, which suggested and rendered possible the enterprise which seated her great-nephew on the throne of England. From the moment of this marriage, English and Norman history are inextricably connected, and Norman ingenuity was ever ready to take any advantage that offered itself for strengthening the foreign influence in England. The former dispute between Æthelred and the elder Richard was a mere prologue; we have now reached the first act of the drama. If an English fleet really did sail to Normandy and ravage the Constantine peninsula, those ships were like the ships which Athens sent across the Ægæan at the bidding of Aristagoras—they were indeed the beginning of evils.^[569]

The marriage however did not take place for two years. According to one story Æthelred went over to Normandy to bring home his bride in person.^[570] The evidence is distinctly the other way; but to go on such an errand, when the miseries of war were at their height, was perhaps in character with a prince so apt to be enterprising at the wrong moment. A like piece of vigorous courtship is the one act of energy recorded of one of Æthelred’s descendants, |1589| James, Sixth of Scotland and First of England. If Æthelred really did go over to Normandy, he was the first English King, since Ælfred in his childhood, who set foot on the continent, as his son Eadmund was the last 305English King for several centuries who did not.^[571] And |A foreign Lady most unusual in England.| for an English King to espouse a foreign wife was something yet more strange to Englishmen than for an English King to visit foreign lands. The marriage of the daughters of English Kings with foreign princes had been common from the days of Ælfred onwards; but a foreign Lady by the side of an English King had not been seen |855.| since Æthelwulf brought home the young daughter of Charles the Bald.^[572] And the marriage of Æthelwulf and Judith was most likely the first instance since the Frankish |561–597.| princess whom Augustine found as the queen of the Kentish Bretwalda.^[573] And the stranger wives alike of Æthelberht and of Æthelred came as the forerunners of mighty changes. The foreign marriage of Æthelberht paved the way for the admission of the Teutonic and heathen island into the common fold of the Christian commonwealth. The foreign marriage of Æthelred paved the way for the more thorough fusion of England into the general European system, by giving her a foreign King, a foreign nobility, and, for many purposes, a foreign |Emma changes her name to Ælfgifu.| tongue. It shows the strong insular feeling of the nation, and it curiously illustrates the history of English personal nomenclature, that the foreign Lady had to take an English name. The English stock of personal names, though made out of the same elements as the names used by other Teutonic nations, contained but few which were common to England and to the continent.^[574] This Old-English nomenclature, with the exception of a few specially royal and saintly names, has gone so utterly out of use that it sounds strange to us to read that the Lady, to make 306herself acceptable to the English people, had to lay aside the foreign name of Emma, and to make herself into an Englishwoman as Ælfgifu.^[575] So, by the opposite process, |1100.| a hundred years later, when an English Eadgyth married a Norman King, she had to change herself into a Norman Matilda. And it is well to mark that the royal bride, like other Teutonic brides, had her morning-gift, a gift which took the form of cities and governments, and a gift which brought no good to England.^[576] And according to some accounts, the marriage brought with it as little of domestic happiness as of public advantage. Emma bore to |Her children. Ælfred. 1036.| Æthelred two sons, Ælfred, who perished miserably in an attempt on the English crown, and Eadward, who lived to be at once King and saint, and to be, perhaps through his own grovelling superstition, the last male descendant of Cerdic and Ecgberht by whom that crown was actually worn.^[577] But we are told that the royal parents did not agree. We can well believe that Emma showed the imperious spirit of her race, and scandal adds that Æthelred forsook her for rivals, no doubt of his own nation.^[578] Of the 307truth of these reports nothing can be said, and the public crimes and misfortunes of Æthelred are so great as to leave little time or inclination to search into his possible private vices.

I have spoken of the marriage of Emma slightly out of place, in order to bring it into its natural connexion with other Norman affairs. We must now go back two |1000.| years. The dealings of Æthelred with Normandy and Cumberland fell in the last year of the first millennium of the Christian æra. It was no uncommon belief at the |Expected end of the world.| time that the end of that period of a thousand years was the fated moment for the destruction of the world. And certainly at no time were the promised signs of wars and rumours of wars, of distress of nations and perplexity, more rife throughout the world than when the second millennium |Condition of Europe and Asia.| opened. In the East of Europe, Basil the Second, the mightiest name in the long roll of the Byzantine Cæsars, was engaged in his fearful struggle for life and death with the Bulgarian invader. In the further East, the Turkish dynasty of Ghazni was laying the foundations of that power which, in the hands of other dynasties of the same race, was to overwhelm alike Constantinople and Bulgaria and all other realms from the Indus to the Hadriatic. In Southern Europe, Otto the Wonder of the World was running that short and marvellous career which, for a moment, seemed to promise that Rome should again become, in deed as well as in name, the seat of universal Empire. The prospects of England seemed darker than those of any other corner of Europe. In the East and in the South, if old systems were falling, new ones 308were rising, but our island seemed given up to simple desolation and havoc. It would appear that, though the mass of the Danish fleet had sailed to Normandy, some of the ships must have stayed in their old quarters in the |Danes in the English Service; Pallig.| Solent. Some at least among the Danes had taken service under the English King. Such was the case with Pallig, a Danish Earl, evidently of the highest distinction, as he was married to Gunhild, a sister of King Swegen himself.^[579] His wife, and probably himself, had embraced Christianity, and he had received large gifts from the King, both in |Invasion of Sussex and Hampshire. 1001.| money and in land. The Danes who had stayed in England now burst into Sussex, and ravaged as far as a place called Æthelingadene.^[580] They then pressed on into Hampshire, and, as so often happened, they were met by the men of the shire, and by the men of that shire only. The details of the battle are unusually minute; eighty-one of the English were killed and a much greater number of the Danes; but the Danes kept possession of the place of slaughter. Among the English dead were several men of rank,^[581] among them two “high-reeves” of the King—probably the Sheriffs of Hampshire and Sussex—Æthelweard and Leofwine.^[582] The Danes then went westward, 309seemingly in concert with the fleet which was coming back |Treason of Pallig.| from Normandy. But they were first met by Pallig, who had already forsaken the service of Æthelred, and who now joined them with such ships as he could bring with him. They sailed up the Teign, and burned King’s Teignton^[583] and other places. After this, peace—no doubt the usual kind of peace—was made with them. But by this |Return of the Danes from Normandy.| time they had fallen in with their comrades. The Danes who had sailed to Normandy now came back, no doubt still further embittered at Æthelred’s doings in that country, whatever may have been their exact nature. Their fleet seems to have sailed straight from Normandy to the mouth of the Exe; they were there met by the other Danes, Pallig and the rest, and their united forces sailed |Importance of Exeter; early history of the city.| up the river.^[584] About ten miles from its mouth lay a city^[585] which held nearly the same position in the West of England which York held in the North and London in the South-east. The Roman city of Isca had not fallen into the power of the Teutonic invaders till after their conversion to Christianity; it therefore had not shared the fate which befell Anderida at the hands of Ælle and Uriconium at the hands of Ceawlin. Under the slightly changed name of Exanceaster or Exeter, the capital and bulwark of the Western shires had long formed one of the 310choicest possessions of the West-Saxon Kings. The city |877.| had been warmly striven for between Ælfred and his Danish enemies, and, among the ups and downs of his earlier struggle with the invaders, it had been more than |Exeter, hitherto half Welsh, becomes purely English under Æthelstan, and is strongly fortified. 926.| once taken and lost again. Up to the time of Æthelstan Exeter had remained, as many towns in Wales and Ireland remained for ages afterwards, a joint possession of Teutonic and Celtic inhabitants.^[586] No doubt there was an English and a Welsh town, an Englishry and a Welshry,^[587] and we may be equally sure that the English inhabitants formed a dominant class or patriciate among their fellow-burghers. But Æthelstan, in the course of his Western wars, thought it good that so important a post should be left in no hands but such as he could wholly rely on. The Welsh inhabitants were accordingly removed; the city became altogether English; a |Witenagemót and Laws of Exeter.| solemn assembly of the Witan was held to commemorate and to confirm the new acquisition, and one series of the laws of Æthelstan were put forth in the now purely English city of Exeter.^[588] The town was now strongly fortified; it was surrounded with a wall of squared stones,^[589] 311a fact worthy of the attention of those who seem to think that our forefathers before the Norman Conquest were incapable of using the commonest tools, or of putting stone and mortar together in any way. The chief architectural ornament of the city had indeed no existence. |Exeter not yet a Bishop’s See.| The cathedral church, so strange in its outline, so commanding in its position, did not yet crown the height which, alone among the episcopal seats of Southern England, makes some pretensions to rival the temples built on high at Lincoln and at Durham, at Geneva and at Lausanne. Indeed, like Lincoln and Durham, it had not even a predecessor. Exeter was not yet a Bishop’s see; the episcopal care of West-Wales was still divided between the Bishop of Devonshire at Crediton and the |Municipal condition of the city.| Bishop of Cornwall at Bodmin. The history of the city at a somewhat later time seems to show that it enjoyed a large share of municipal freedom; still, as an integral part of the West-Saxon realm, it was a royal possession, and the royal authority was represented |Its commercial and military importance.| by a reeve of the King’s choice. Both the commercial and the military importance of the city were of the first rank. In our days the trade of Exeter has long been of small moment; commerce has long been carried on in vessels which need a deeper stream; as early as the thirteenth century the trade of the city itself began to be interfered with by the foundation of the port of Topsham nearer the mouth of the river. But the small craft of the tenth century could sail straight up to the city for |The Danes attack the city, but are driven off by the citizens.| purposes either of commerce or of war. The Danes now attacked Exeter, just as they had attacked London; but the citizens of the Western capital fought with as good a will, and with as thorough success, as their brethren 312of the East.^[590] King Æthelstan’s wall stood them in good stead,^[591] and the attack of the barbarians was altogether fruitless. But the result of the resistance of Exeter was much the same as the result of the resistance of London. The city was saved, but, for that very reason,^[592] the ravages of the invaders fell with redoubled violence upon the surrounding country. Æthelred was as unready as ever; the host which had been prompt to ravage Cumberland and perhaps |Devonshire ravaged and the Defnsætas and Sumorsætas defeated at Pinhoe.| Normandy, was not at hand to aid any local efforts. The Danes spread themselves over the country, harrying, burning, killing, in their accustomed manner. The men of Somerset and Devonshire gathered their forces, and met the enemy at Pinhoe,^[593] not far from the rescued city. But the force of two shires was not enough for the purpose. The Danes had the advantage of numbers,^[594] and put the irregular English levies to flight. They then, as usual, took to themselves horses, and ravaged the country still more thoroughly and unsparingly than before. At last they went back to their ships with a vast booty, and sailed to their old quarters in the Isle of Wight. Thence they carried on their usual harryings, both in the island and on the coasts of Hampshire and Dorset, no man now daring to withstand them.

The Witan met in the course of this year in an assembly which confirmed a grant of the King to the abbey of Shaftesbury, a grant which is remarkable on two grounds. It distinctly sets forth the wretchedness of the times in 313a way rather unusual in such documents, and it shows that the King’s brother Eadward was already looked on as |First Gemót of 1002.| a saint.^[595] Another meeting was held early the next year, |Charters granted at it.| in which the King granted to Archbishop Ælfric the estate of a lady which she had forfeited to the crown by her unchastity.^[596] Possibly at the same meeting, or at another in the same year, Æthelingadene, the scene of one of the late battles, along with some other property, was granted by Æthelred to the monastery of Wherwell, his mother’s foundation, for the good of her soul and of that of his father.^[597] It may be that in all this we hear the voice of his brother’s blood crying from the ground.^[598] But the state of the nation was not altogether neglected; still the Assembly of the Wise could think of nothing better than the old wretched remedy which had so often |Payment again made to the Danes.| failed them. The Danes were again to be bought off at their own terms, and Leofsige Ealdorman of the East-Saxons was sent to find out what those terms were.^[599] They 314now, fairly enough, raised their price; twenty-four thousand pounds was asked and was paid as the condition of their ceasing from their ravages. But, while the negotiation was going on, the negotiator, on what ground or in what quarrel we are not told, killed the King’s high-reeve Æfic in his own house.^[600] The Witan were still in session; |Leofsige outlawed.| they took cognizance of the murder, and Leofsige was outlawed and driven out of the land for his crime.^[601] All this |Emma comes over.| must have happened early in the year, as it was after these events, though still in Lent,^[602] that the Norman Lady came |Second or Third Gemót of 1002.| over. Before the year was out, another Witenagemót was held,^[603] at which Æthelred and his counsellors contrived to 315do what otherwise might have seemed impossible, to |Massacre of the Danes. November 13, 1002.| put the heathen invaders in the right. This winter, on the mass-day of Saint Brice, took place that famous massacre of the Danes which has given a wide field for the exaggerated and romantic details of later writers, but which stands out in bloody colours enough on the page |Plot of the Danes to kill the King and his Witan.| of authentic history.^[604] According to our best authorities, tidings were brought to the King that the Danes who were in England were plotting with one consent to kill him and his Witan and to seize upon the kingdom. Except that other means of destruction must have been intended, this sounds very like a forestalling of the Gunpowder Plot. The Danes were indeed thoroughly faithless, but an intended general massacre of the whole Witenagemót when in full session, which the words seem to imply, is hardly credible. Another attack on London or Exeter, or a harrying of some district which was as yet untouched, would be much more likely. One cannot help suspecting that we have here a good deal of exaggeration, exaggeration, I mean, not in the Chroniclers but in the reports spread abroad at the time by Æthelred and his advisers. However this may be, the King, no doubt with the consent of the second (or third) Gemót of the year, ordered a general massacre of all the Danes in England, an order which could never have been carried into execution if it had not been supported by the general hatred of the whole nation. It is said that letters were secretly sent to all parts of the kingdom, ordering the bloody work to be done |Probable extent of the massacre.| throughout the whole land on one day. The persons slain were most likely such among those Danes who had served in the late invasions as had stayed in England on the faith of the treaty concluded in the spring. A general massacre of all persons of Danish descent throughout England is not to be thought of; such a massacre would have amounted 316to the slaughter of a large part of the inhabitants of Northumberland and East-Anglia. There is nothing in the earliest account to imply that any but men were slaughtered, and, among the Danes, every man was a soldier, or rather a pirate. That such men were not slaughtered without resistance is not wonderful. One instance is incidentally recorded, how such Danes as were at Oxford, flying from their English destroyers, sought shelter in the minster of Saint Frithswyth, and how they defended themselves against all the people of the borough, until their assailants betook themselves to fire and burned the Danes along with the church and its records. This one piece of detail seems to be trustworthy;^[605] but the tale began very early to get improved by all kinds of romantic additions. The slaughter of actual enemies was not enough. We first hear of a massacre of Danish women; then, among an infinite variety of horrors of all sorts, we come to a massacre of English women who had become wives or mistresses of Danes, and of the children who were the fruit of such unions. It is not likely that there were many Danish women to massacre, and the notion of a general massacre of women most |Murder of Gunhild.| likely arose out of one particular case. That Gunhild, the wife of Pallig and sister of Swegen, was put to death is too probable, especially if it be true that she had given herself as a hostage for the good faith of her countrymen. The prince who blinded the son of Ælfric to avenge his father’s treason,^[606] and who afterwards took the father himself again into favour, was capable even of so cowardly and foolish a vengeance as this. The traitor Pallig, if he was caught, would doubtless be put to death, and that with perfect justice, unless he was personally included in the last treaty. And it may be that Gunhild had to behold the slaughter of her husband and her son, and that with her dying voice 317she foretold the woes which her death would bring upon England. Such a prediction needed no special prophetic inspiration.

The vespers of Saint Brice were not only a crime but a blunder. From this time forth the Danish invasions become far more constant, far more systematic, and they |Invasion by Swegen in person. 1003.| affect a far larger portion of the kingdom. The next year King Swegen came again in person.^[607] He now had a real injury; the blood of his sister and his countrymen might have called for vengeance at the hands of a gentler and more forgiving prince. He did not land in any of those parts of the island where we should have most naturally looked for the opening of a campaign; he began his attack in the region which had been the chief seat of warfare for years before. Most likely he knew well where the |Exeter betrayed to Swegen by Hugh the Frenchman.| weakness of England lay. The Danish King sailed to Exeter, the city whose burghers had so gallantly repelled the former attack. But the state of things within the walls of the western capital was now sadly changed for the worse. The royal rights over Exeter had been granted to the Norman Lady as part of her morning-gift. Hugh, a Frenchman, whether earl or churl^[608] matters not, was now 318the royal reeve in Exeter, the first of a long line of foreigners who, under Emma, her son, and her great-nephew, were to fatten on English estates and honours. Hugh was either a coward or a traitor, most likely both. Exeter was stormed and plundered; the noble walls of King Æthelstan were broken down from the east gate to the |Swegen ravages Wiltshire.| west, and the city was left defenceless.^[609] Swegen returned to his ships with a vast plunder, and then went on to the |A battle hindered by Ælfric, again in command of the English.| harrying of Wiltshire. The men of that shire and their neighbours of Hampshire were gathered together, ready and eager to meet the enemy in battle. The people were as sound at heart as they had been three years before, but they had no longer the same valiant leaders. The battle of Æthelingadene seems to have fallen with special severity on the chief men, and we now find the force of these two shires in the last hands in which we should have looked to find them. The old traitor Ælfric,^[610] who had done his best, eleven years before,^[611] to betray London to the enemy, who had himself been driven from the land, and whose innocent son had paid a cruel penalty for his offence, was now, through some unrecorded and inexplicable intrigue, again in royal favour, again in command of an English army, again trusted to oppose the very enemy with whom he had before traitorously leagued himself. But, as our Chronicles tell us with a vigorous simplicity, he was again at his old tricks; as soon as 319the armies were so near that they could look on one another, the English commander pretended to be taken suddenly ill;^[612] retchings and spittings followed as a proof of his sickness; in such a case a battle could not possibly be thought of. One wonders that some brave man, however unauthorized, did not seize the command by common consent;^[613] but the paltry trick was successful; the spirits of the English were broken, and they went away in |Fluctuation of spirits among non-professional soldiers.| sadness without a battle.^[614] In all this history, just as in old Greek history,^[615] we are often surprised at the mere accidents on which the fate of battles depends, how much one man’s valour or cowardice or treason can bring about, how much turns on the mood in which the soldiers find themselves at the moment of action. In this case the English are described as having come together with the utmost good will, and as being thoroughly eager to do their duty. Yet a transparent artifice at once paralyses them, and they become wholly incapable of action. We must remember that here, just as in Greece, we are dealing, not with professional soldiers, but with citizen soldiers; we are dealing with times when every man was sometimes a soldier, and when none but professed pirates were soldiers always. Such soldiers are not mere machines in the hand of a master of the game; they do not simply do their professional duty in blind obedience; they have a real part and interest in what is going on; they are therefore liable to be affected by the ordinary feelings of men in a way in which professional soldiers are much less 320strongly affected. Such men are specially liable to fluctuations of the spirits; they are easily encouraged and easily disheartened; men who fight like heroes one day may be overcome by a sudden panic the next. Hence the extraordinary importance which, with troops of this kind, attaches to the personal exhortation and personal example of the general; a chief who simply stands aloof and gives orders can never win a victory. The particular speech put into the mouth of a general before battle is no doubt commonly the invention of the historian; but that generals found it needful to make such speeches, and that such speeches had a most important effect on the spirit and conduct of their armies, is clear in every history of this kind of warfare. No doubt even professional soldiers still remain men, and are liable to be in some degree affected in the same way; still habit and discipline make a great change; an army in which each man is really fighting for his hearth and home is liable to these influences in a tenfold degree. Before long we shall see England possessed of an army combining the merits of both systems, an army uniting discipline and patriotism; but as yet the country had no standing force, and had to depend solely on the enthusiasm and the sense of duty of the general levies of each particular district. In this case, the spirit of the men of Wiltshire and Hampshire was all that a leader could wish for; if some brave man had stepped forward, had cut down the traitor Ælfric, and had called on the English to follow him against the enemy, a battle would have been certain and a victory probable. But no man had the energy to do this; therefore the base trick thoroughly succeeded, the spirit of the troops was damped, and the English host went away without striking a blow. But even in retreat it must have been formidable, as it seems to have been left quite unmolested by the enemy. Still the whole shire was left 321defenceless. The town of Wilton was sacked and burned. |Swegen sacks and burns Wilton and Salisbury.| Swegen then marched to Salisbury. The Salisbury of |Old Sarum.| those days was not the modern city in the plain, which circles, with but little of beauty or interest in itself, around the most graceful of West-Saxon minsters. The object of Swegen’s march was still the old hill-fortress,^[616] where the Briton and the Roman had entrenched |552.| themselves, and at whose foot Cynric had won one of those great battles which mark the western stages of the Teutonic invasion. After the days of Swegen a Norman castle and a Norman minster rose and fell on that historic spot, and the chosen stronghold of so many races lived to become one of the bye-words of modern political discussion. Like Exeter, Salisbury was not yet a Bishop’s see; the prelate of Wiltshire had his lowly cathedral church in the obscure Ramsbury; but the choice of Salisbury at the end of the century as the seat of the united sees of Wiltshire and Dorset shows that it must already have been a place of importance according to the standard of the time. Yet one would think that its importance must always have been mainly that of a military post; one can hardly conceive Old Sarum being at any time a place of trade or the home of any considerable population. Whatever the place consisted of at this time, Swegen sacked and burned it, and returned to his ships with great spoil.^[617]

322The events of the next year form the exact converse of the tale which I have just told. We have seen the spirit of a gallant army foully damped by the malice of a single traitor. We shall now see the efforts of a single hero, boldly struggling against every difficulty, feebly backed by those who should have supported him, and winning, in a succession of defeats, a glory as pure as that of the most triumphant of conquerors. This man was Ulfcytel, who is said to have been a son-in-law of the King, and who was at this time Earl, or at least military commander, of the East-Angles.^[618] His name proclaims his Danish origin, but it was in him that England now found her stoutest champion in her hour of need. This next summer Swegen took his course towards a part of England which was largely peopled by men of his own race, to the old kingdom of |Swegen surprises and burns Norwich.| Guthrum. His coming was sudden; he sailed to the mouth of the Yare; he pushed his way up the stream, and stormed and burned the town which had arisen near the point of its junction with the Wensum, and which, at least in later times, has spread itself on both sides of the smaller |History of the city.| river. Norwich was in East-Anglia what Exeter was in the Western shires. But the city itself could not boast of the same antiquity as the Damnonian Isca. The changes of the waters in that region had caused the British and Roman site to be forsaken; the Icenian Venta survived only in the vague description of Caistor, a description common to it with many other Roman towns whose distinctive names have been forgotten. At some distance from the Roman site, where the hills slope down to the right bank of the Wensum, the East-Anglian Kings had reared one of those vast mounds which form so marked a feature in the Old-English system of defence, and had crowned it doubtless with a fortified dwelling. This home 323of native kingship was to be the forerunner of one of the |Norwich Castle.| stateliest of Norman castles, one which immediately suggests a name than which few in our history are more illustrious. The castle of Norwich became the stronghold of the earls of the house of Bigod, one of whom lived to |1297.| wrest the final confirmation of the liberties of England from the hands of the great Edward himself. As at Exeter, as at Salisbury, the Norman castle had already a rude forerunner, |Norwich not yet a Bishop’s See.| but the Norman minster had none. The Bishop of the East-Angles still had his seat at Elmham. A twofold translation of the see towards the end of the century, first to Thetford and then to Norwich, points out those two towns as being at this time the most considerable in the district, and we accordingly find them the principal objects |Importance of the town.| of hostile attack. Norwich was now one of the greatest seats of commerce in England; the city had been greatly favoured by several successive Kings, and it |Norwich burned by Swegen.| enjoyed the privilege of a mint. A place thus rich and flourishing was naturally marked as a prey by the invaders, who harried and burned it, seemingly without resistance. The blow was so sudden that even a guardian |Ulfcytel and the Witan of East-Anglia make peace with the Danes.| like Ulfcytel was unprepared. He now gathered together the provincial council, the Witan of East-Anglia,^[619] whose mention shows how much of independence the ancient kingdom still retained. Peace was patched up with the invaders, who seemingly returned to their ships. But, |The Danes break the peace and march on Thetford.| three weeks afterwards, the Danes broke the peace, and marched secretly to Thetford, the town in the district next in importance to Norwich. This march seems to have led them to a greater distance from the coast than any Danish army had ventured since the old invasions in Ælfred’s time. Their movement did not escape the watchful eye 324|Plans of Ulfcytel.| of Ulfcytel,^[620] and the plan which he formed, though not wholly successful, seems to vouch for his generalship. He at once gathered his forces together as secretly as he could, and sent a detachment to the coast to destroy the ships of the invaders. In this latter part of his scheme he wholly failed; those whom he sent on that errand proved |Thetford plundered and burned.| either cowardly or unfaithful. And, even with the force under his own command, he was unable to save Thetford. The town was entered by the Danes, who plundered it, stayed there one night, and in the morning set fire to it |Drawn battle between Swegen and Ulfcytel.| and marched away towards their ships. But they were hardly clear of the burning town when Ulfcytel came upon them with his army. That army was comparatively small; had the whole force of East-Anglia been there, so our authors tell us, never would the heathen men have got back to their ships. As it was, the Danes themselves said that they never met in all England with worse handplay than Ulfcytel brought upon them.^[621] It seems to have been a drawn battle. The Danes so far succeeded that they were able to accomplish their object of reaching their ships; but the fighting was hard, and the slaughter great on both sides, and we do not hear of either side |Severe loss among the English leaders.| keeping the field. As at Maldon, as at Æthelingadene, the slaughter on the English side fell most heavily on those who were high in rank or command.^[622] No doubt, in all these battles, just as in the battles of Homer, the 325chief stress of the fight fell on the thegns of the King or Earl in command, especially on the high-born youths who were personally attached to him and his service. We have seen that it was so at Maldon, where we know the details; it is equally clear that it was so at Thetford, where we |Illustrations supplied by Ulfcytel’s campaign.| know only the general result. This East-Anglian campaign is also a good illustration of the general conditions of warfare at the time. It shows the difficulty with which the force either of the whole kingdom or of a single earldom could be got together, and how much was lost through mere slowness of operations. Even with a vigorous chief at the head, the two chief towns of the earldom were surprised and burned. But the story shows no less plainly how much a single faithful and valiant leader could do to struggle with these difficulties. A shire under the government of Ulfcytel was in a very different case from a shire under the government of Ælfric. Nay, could Ulfcytel, instead of holding a mere local command, have changed places with the boastful Emperor of all Britain, we can well believe that the whole story of the Danish wars would have had a very different ending.

The resistance of Ulfcytel, though not wholly successful, seems to have had at least a share in winning for England a momentary respite. We hear of no further ravages after the battle of Thetford, and in the next year King Swegen, instead of attacking any part of England, sailed home again to Denmark. A famine, the most fearful ever remembered in England, was most likely the result of his ravages, but it no doubt also helped to send him away for a while from the wasted land. The Witan met in the course of the year, but we have no record of any proceedings more important than the usual grants to monasteries |Events of the year 1006.| and to the King’s thegns.^[623] But the next year is crowded with events of all kinds. We now come to the rise of a 326man who was to be even more completely the evil genius of the later years of this unhappy reign than Ælfric had |Rise and character of Eadric.| been the evil genius of its earlier years. This was Eadric, the son of Æthelric,^[624] surnamed Streona, who is described as a man of low birth, of a shrewd intellect—which he used only to devise selfish and baleful schemes—of an eloquent tongue—which he used only to persuade men to mischief—as proud, cruel, envious, and faithless. From elaborate pictures of this sort we instinctively make some deductions; still the character of Eadric is written plainly enough in his recorded crimes. That such a man should rise to power was the greatest of evils for the nation; still his rise illustrates one good side of English society at the time. |Illustrations supplied by his advancement.| In England the poor and ignoble still could rise; on the continent they had nearly lost all chance. Eadric rose to rank and wealth by his personal talents, talents which no writer denies, though they all paint in strong colours the evil use which he made of them. And he really rose; he did not merely, like many low-born favourites of other princes, exercise a secret influence over a weak master. He was advanced to the highest dignities of the realm; he stood forth in the great council of the nation among the foremost of its chiefs; he commanded the armies of his sovereign; and, what would most of all shock modern prejudices, he was allowed to mingle his blood with that of kings. Now, if a bad man could thus rise by evil arts, it clearly was not impossible that a good man might also rise in a worthier way. Instances of either kind were doubtless unusual; the general feeling of the time was strongly aristocratic; still there was no legal or even social hindrance to keep a man from rising out of utter obscurity to the highest places short of kingship. Eadric, like most favourites, seems to have made his way to power through the ruin of an earlier favourite. A man named Wulfgeat 327had been for some years the chief adviser of Æthelred. It |Fall of Wulfgeat.| is not clear whether he had ever risen above thegn’s rank. But he clearly exercised some functions which clothed him with a good deal of power, for, among his other offences, unjust judgements are spoken of.^[625] Wulfgeat was now, doubtless through the influence of Eadric, deprived of all his offices, and his property was confiscated, a sentence which would seem to imply the authority of a Witenagemót. The sentence may have been a righteous one; but at all events the degradation of Wulfgeat opened the way for the elevation of a worse man than himself. Wulfgeat is at least not described as an open traitor and murderer. |Eadric the chief favourite.| Eadric, who had probably been rising in position for some years, now appears as the reigning favourite and as the |Earl Ælfhelm murdered at Shrewsbury.| director of all the crimes and treasons of the court. A monstrous crime was now committed. Ælfhelm, a nobleman who had been for some years Earl of a part of Northumberland, probably of Deira,^[626] was present, seemingly at the court or at some Gemót, at Shrewsbury. There Eadric received him as a familiar friend, entertained him for some days, and on the third or fourth day took him out to a hunting-party. While others were intent on the sport, the executioner of the town, one Godwine, surnamed Porthund,^[627] whom Eadric had won over by large gifts and promises, started forth from an ambush at a favourable moment and put the Earl to death.^[628] The sons of Ælfhelm, 328Wulfheah and Ufegeat, were soon after blinded by the King’s order at Cookham, a royal seat in Buckinghamshire. |Ælfheah Archbishop of Canterbury. 1006.| Amidst all these crimes, Archbishop Ælfric died, and Ælfheah of Winchester, who was before long to take his place beside Dunstan as a canonized saint, succeeded to the metropolitan throne.

These events seem to have taken up the earlier part of the year. In the summer a new Danish invasion began, and there seems reason to believe that it took place at the same time as a Scottish inroad, which was perhaps planned in concert.^[629] It is now a long time since we have heard |Death of Kenneth. 994.| of any disturbances on the part of Scotland proper. King Kenneth, the faithful vassal of Eadgar, had died in |Accession of Malcolm. 1004.| the year of the great invasion of Olaf and Swegen. But his son Malcolm did not obtain quiet possession of the Scottish crown till ten years later. He was now, it would 329seem, determined to revenge the wrong which he had |[1000.]| suffered at the hands of Æthelred in the devastation of |Malcolm besieges Durham.| Cumberland. He is said to have invaded Northumberland and to have laid siege to Durham. The new seat of the Bernician bishopric^[630] was growing into an important city, and it had already become an important military post. But the government of the country was in feeble hands. |Cowardice of Earl Waltheof.| Waltheof,^[631] the reigning Earl, was old and dispirited, and, instead of meeting the invaders, he shut himself up in |Victory of his son Uhtred.| King Ida’s castle at Bamburgh. But he had a son, Uhtred, whose name we shall often meet in the history of the time, and whose career is a strangely chequered one. When his father failed in his duty, he supplied his place, he gathered an army, rescued Durham, and gained a signal victory over the Scots.^[632] Towards the city which he thus saved Uhtred stood in a relation which we should have looked for rather in the eighteenth than in the tenth century. He was married to a daughter of Ealdhun, the Bishop who had just removed his see to Durham, and in the character of episcopal son-in-law he held large grants of episcopal |He unites both the Northumbrian Earldoms.| lands. Uhtred’s behaviour gained him the special favour of Æthelred, who—doubtless by the authority of one of the Gemóts of this year—deposed Waltheof from his earldom, bestowed it on his son, and also added the earldom of Deira, now vacant by the murder of Ælfhelm.^[633] |His marriages.| Uhtred, thus exalted, seems to have had no further need of episcopal leases; for he sent the Bishop’s daughter back to her father, honestly returning the estates which he had received with her. He then married the daughter of a rich 330citizen, whom he held by quite another tenure, that of killing her father’s bitter enemy Thurbrand. This he, unluckily for himself, failed to do, and this failure would seem to have set aside the second marriage also, as we presently find him receiving the hand of King Æthelred’s daughter Ælfgifu.^[634] If all this is true—and the genealogical and local detail with which it is given seems to stamp it as true—the ties of marriage must have sat quite as lightly on a Northumbrian Earl as ever they did on a Norman Duke. The tale indeed suggests that even the daughters of Bishops, a class whom we should hardly have expected to find so familiarly spoken of after Dunstan’s reforms, may have been sometimes married Danish fashion. But the fact that an Earl did not disdain the daughter of a rich citizen at once shows the importance which some even of the northern English cities—for either York or Durham must be meant—had already reached, and it also shows that no very broad line as yet separated the different classes of society in such matters. The story again marks the ferocious habits of the Danish parts of England. It seems the most natural thing in the world for a man on his marriage to undertake to kill his father-in-law’s enemy. We shall find that this engagement of Uhtred to kill Thurbrand was the beginning of a long series of crimes, of an hereditary deadly feud, which went on till after the Norman Conquest.

Such was the Scottish inroad and its results. It is wrongly placed, and some of the details may be suspected, but the outline of the story may, I think, be admitted. |Danish invasion of the year 1006.| But of the Danish invasion there is no doubt at all. In the month of July a vast fleet appeared off Sandwich, and Kent and Sussex were ravaged without mercy. Æthelred for once seems to have seriously thought of personal action 331against the enemy.^[635] He gathered together an army from |An English army raised, but in vain.| Mercia and Wessex, which was kept throughout the whole autumn in readiness for an engagement. But nothing came of this unusual piece of energy. The old causes were still at work, and the enemy, perhaps remembering the reception which they had met with at the hands of Ulfcytel, seem now to have avoided a battle.^[636] They plundered here and there, and went backwards and forwards to their ships, till, as winter approached, the English army dispersed, and the King returned to his old quarters at Shrewsbury. There is a vein of bitter sarcasm in the way in which the tale is told in the Chronicles. The writers keenly felt the incapacity of their rulers, and the degradation of their |The Danes go back to Wight. November, 1006.| country. The Danes went back to their “frith-stool”^[637]—their safe asylum, their inviolable sanctuary—in the Isle of Wight. Presently, at Christmas, when no resistance was likely, they went forth to their “ready farm,” to the quarters which stood awaiting them, as it were to gather in their crops and to enjoy the fat of their own land.^[638] |Great plundering expedition in the winter of 1006–7.| That is to say, they went on a plundering expedition which carried them further from their own element than they had ever yet ventured. They marched across Hampshire to Reading, and thence up the valley of the Thames, “doing according to their wont and kindling their beacons”—that is, no doubt, wasting and burning the whole country. They thus dealt with Reading, with Wallingford, with Cholsey. They were now in the midst 332of a land where almost every step is ennobled by memories of Ælfred. Out of mere bravado, it would seem, they climbed the neighbouring height, the long ridge of Æscesdún, which looks down on the spot where, |871.| in the great King’s first campaign, victory had for a moment shone on the West-Saxon banners. They marched along the ridge till they reached the vast barrow which, under the corrupted form of Cuckamsley,^[639] still preserves the name of Cwichelm, one of the two West-Saxon |636.| Kings who first submitted to baptism. This was a spot where, in times of peace, the people of that inland shire had held their local assemblies, and some unknown seer had risked the prediction that, if the Danes ever got so far from the sea, they would never see their ships again. The falsehood of the prophecy was now shown. The Danes crossed the range of hills; they marched down on the other side, and went on to the south. At Kennet, now Marlborough, an English force at last met them, but it was speedily put to flight. The Danes then turned homewards. They passed close by the gates of the royal city of Winchester, displaying in triumph to its inhabitants the spoils of the inland shires of Wessex, now become the defenceless prey of the sea-rovers.^[640]

This was the most fearful inroad which England had yet seen, one which showed that the parts furthest from the sea were now no more safe from Danish ravages than 333the exposed coasts of Kent and Sussex. The King kept |Witenagemót of Shrewsbury. 1006–7.| his Christmas at Shrewsbury, and there the Witan met. All heart and hope seemed to be gone; no one could devise any means of withstanding the force which had now harried every shire in Wessex. Nothing could be thought of but the old device; the broken reed was again to be leaned upon; ambassadors were sent, once more offering |Tribute again paid to the Danes. 1007.| money as the price of the cessation of the ravages. The offer was accepted; but the price was of course again raised; thirty-six thousand pounds was to be paid, and the Danish army was to receive provisions. They were fed during the whole winter at the general cost of England, and early in the next year the sum of money demanded was paid.

We can never speak or think of these wretched attempts to buy peace without a feeling of shame, and yet, in this case at least, the payment may not have been such utter madness as it appears at first sight. Of course nothing more than a respite was ever gained; when the Danes had spent the money, they came again for more. And it would seem, from the example of Ulfcytel, that a respite could be as easily won by a manful, even if not perfectly successful, resistance. Still this payment did gain for the country a breathing-space at a time when a breathing-space was absolutely needed. We hear nothing of any more invasions for two years, and there was at least an attempt made to spend the interval in useful legislation and in putting the country into a more efficient state of defence. Æthelred and his favourites, as usual, spoiled everything; but we need not attribute their cowardice and incapacity to all the Witan of England. As far as we can see, the schemes of the legislature were well considered; a respite was needed in order to devise any scheme at all, and humiliating as it was to buy that respite, such a course may have been absolutely necessary. 334But in this reign everything was thwarted by executive misconduct. Æthelred first laid on his Witan the necessity of consenting to all this degradation, and he then frustrated their endeavours to make such degradation needless for the future.

Meanwhile the reigning favourite attained the height of his greatness. He was made Ealdorman of the Mercians,^[641] dishonouring the post once held by the glorious daughter of Ælfred. It was most likely at this time that he received the King’s daughter Eadgyth in marriage. We have now to repeat the same comments which we made in the case of Ælfric. That old enemy, after his last treason |1003.| four years before, now vanishes from history, and his place |Inexplicable treasons of Eadric.| as chief traitor is taken by Eadric. The history of Eadric from this moment is simply a catalogue of treasons as unintelligible as those of his predecessor. Why a man who had just risen to the highest pitch of greatness, son-in-law of his sovereign and viceroy of an ancient kingdom, should immediately ally himself with the enemies of his King and country, is one of those facts which are utterly incomprehensible. But that it is a fact there is no good reason to doubt. Our best authorities for this period, the writers nearest to the time, those least given to exaggeration or romantic embellishment, distinctly assert that it was so, and we have nothing but ingenious guesses on the other side.

The next year is one memorable in the annals of our early legislation, and the year which followed it is still more so. The civil functions of the King and his Witan were in full activity during the two years of respite. The laws of Æthelred form several distinct statutes or collections of clauses, most of which are without date; but, of the few dated ordinances, one belongs to the former of 335these two years, while another may, on internal evidence, |Laws of 1008.| be safely set down as belonging to the same period. The former statute^[642] deals mainly with ecclesiastical matters, but it also contains provisions both of a moral and of a political kind. On these points however we get much more of general exhortations than of really specific enactments. The whole reads like an act of penitence on the part of a repentant nation awakened by misfortune to a sense of national sins. Heathenism is to be cast out, an ordinance which shows what had been the effect of the Danish invasions. Such a precept would have been needless in the days of Ine or Offa. But now, not only were many heathen strangers settled in the land, but we may even believe that some native Englishmen may have fallen off to the worship of the gods who seemed to be the stronger. Some of the clauses are vague enough. All laws are to be just; every man is to have his rights; all men are to live in peace and friendship—excellent advice, no doubt, but hard to carry out in any time and place, and hardest of all when Æthelred and Eadric were to be the chief administrators of the law. Punishments are to be mild; death especially is to be sparingly inflicted; Christian and innocent men are not to be sold out of the land, least |Laws against the slave-trade.| of all to heathen purchasers.^[643] This last prohibition is one which is constantly repeated in the legislation of this age, showing at once how deeply the evil was felt, and how little legislation could do to get rid of it. We must never forget that slavery was fully established throughout England, though the proportion of slaves varied greatly in 336different parts of the country. The slave class was recruited from two sources. Englishmen were reduced to slavery for various crimes by sentence of law, and the children of such slaves followed the condition of their fathers.^[644] Welsh captives taken in war formed another class, and the proportion of slaves to freemen was unusually large in the shires on the Welsh border. Slaves of both classes were freely sold to the Danes in Ireland, and the words of the statute seem to imply that the kidnapping of persons of free condition was not unknown.^[645] Both these practices our present statute endeavours to hinder. The same prohibition was re-enacted under Cnut,^[646] but the practice survived all the laws aimed against it, and we shall see, as we go on, it was in full force a few years after the Norman Conquest. The intention in this enactment is as good as it could be; but the enactment is vague, no definite penalty is attached to breaches of the law, and we are not surprised to hear that it had little practical effect. Some of the other precepts are even vaguer. We may sum up the whole by saying that all virtues are to be practised and all vices avoided; all church-dues are to be regularly paid, and all festivals are to be regularly kept, especially the festival of the newest English saint, the martyred King Eadward.^[647] The whole is wound up with a pious and patriotic resolve of real and impressive solemnity. The nation pledges itself to fidelity to God and the King. It will worship one God and be true to one royal lord; it will 337manfully and with one accord defend life and land, and will pray earnestly to God Almighty for his help.^[648]

In all this we see a spirit of real reform and real earnestness thoroughly suited to the time. And if some of the ordinances of the Witan are somewhat vague and dreamy, we find one at least of a more definite and practical kind. |The formation of a fleet decreed.| The happy days of Eadgar are to be restored, when yearly after Easter the royal fleet of England sailed forth, and when no enemy dared approach the land which it guarded.^[649] Under the wretched advisers of his son this regular order had doubtless been neglected. Ships had sometimes been assembled, but certainly not as a matter of regular yearly course. It is singular how seldom, in dealing with an enemy so essentially sea-faring, we hear of any attempt at |992.| action by sea. The gallant sea-fight of sixteen years earlier^[650] stands almost alone. But now the good old practice was to be renewed, and the royal fleet was to assemble yearly |Ordinances against desertion from the land-force.| after Easter.^[651] Nor was the efficiency of the land-force forgotten. It was secured by heavy penalties against deserters. A fine of one hundred and twenty shillings was incurred in ordinary cases; but when the King was present in person, desertion placed the life and estate of the culprit at the royal mercy.^[652] The contributions for the repair of forts and bridges were to be strictly discharged,^[653] and generally everything to do with the defence of the land was to be put on the best footing that might be.

The decrees of the undated Council of Enham^[654] are marked as belonging to the same period, by the repetition 338of nearly the same enactments, often in nearly the same words. They contain much the same moral and religious exhortations, and much the same ordinances for the mustering of the land and sea-force, for the repair of the forts and bridges, for the punishment of deserters and of those |drawn up in the name of the Witan only.| who damage a ship of war. But the most remarkable thing about this statute is that it is drawn up in the name of the Witan only, without any mention of the King.^[655] But there is no need to infer that there was in this case any departure from the usual legislative process. The Witan only are mentioned; but the action of the Witan implies the action of the King, just as in many places in the Chronicles, where the King only is mentioned, the action of the King implies the action of the Witan. We may indeed fairly suppose that both these statutes were more distinctly the work of the Witan, and less distinctly the work of the King, than in most other cases. The laws of Ælfred were the work of the King, which he submitted to the Witan for their approval.^[656] So, we may be sure, was the case with the laws of the other great Kings who came after him. But we may well believe that the laws of Æthelred were the work of Æthelred only in the sense in which the Great Charter was the work of John. Both statutes breathe the 339same spirit, a spirit widely different from anything likely to come forth from Æthelred or his immediate counsellors. They clearly sprang from the best elements of wisdom that the Great Council of the nation could still supply. They show a real desire to mend the ways of the nation, to make satisfaction to God and man for the past, and for the future to work manfully alike for national reformation and for the national defence. The whole tone is at once pious and patriotic; and the piety is of a kind which, while it strictly enforces every ecclesiastical observance, by no means forgets the weightier matters of the law, judgement, mercy, and truth. In all this we can hardly fail to trace the hand of good Archbishop Ælfheah.

A fleet then was to be raised, a fleet such as guarded the land in the days of Ælfred and Eadgar. But how was the fleet to be raised? This question leads us to a most remarkable statement in our authorities, the details of which are puzzling in the highest degree, but as to the general bearing of which there can be no doubt.^[657] The cost of the fleet was to be borne by the nation at large, individuals or districts being made to contribute according to their means and extent. In those days land was of course taken as the only standard of property on which the assessment could be made. It does not appear that either individuals or districts were called on to make any contributions in money to the royal treasury. They were to contribute in kind, according to a scale laid down by the Witan, in the shape of ships, or of things needful for the ships or their crews. There can be no doubt that, in the reign of Æthelred, this was a much wiser arrangement; money which had to pass through the hands either of the King or of his favourite would most |The system not a new one.| likely not have appeared again in the form of ships. The practice was not one which was invented for the nonce. 340There is evidence to show that a contribution of ships in |995–1005.| kind was the ancient custom. In the will of Archbishop Ælfric, which must of course have been drawn up a few years before this time, that prelate bequeaths a ship to his flock in Kent and another to his former flock in Wiltshire.^[658] This gift must have been intended to relieve the people of those shires from some part of their share in this doubtless heavy impost. It is hardly possible that the bequest can have any other object; one can think of no other motive which could lead an Archbishop or any one else to leave |The contribution made by shires.| a ship to a shire, especially to an inland shire. This evidence seems to show that the contribution was made by shires, that each shire had to furnish a certain number of ships according to its extent, the assessment on individuals or on smaller districts being doubtless settled in the Scirgemót. This was most likely the old and regular way of raising a fleet, the way in which the great fleets of Ælfred |This assessment the origin of ship-money.| and Eadgar had been raised. But this vote of King Æthelred’s Witenagemót does not only look backward; it looks forward. There can be no doubt that, in this ancient way of gathering together a fleet, we have the germ of the famous ship-money of the seventeenth century.^[659] The writs discovered by Noy calling on maritime, and sometimes on inland, counties and places to furnish ships, and |1634–5.| the writs issued by Charles the First in pursuance of the precedents thus discovered, undoubtedly take their root in the statute of the thirtieth year of King Æthelred. They are the degenerate successors of that great vote of the Witenagemót of 1008, just as that vote was the more lawful successor of earlier votes in the days of England’s greatest Kings. There is of course one all important difference between the two cases. The contributions levied 341by Charles were levied by an usurping stretch of the royal prerogative; the contributions levied by Ælfred, Eadgar, and Æthelred were granted, in due form of law, by the Great Council of the nation. But the impost was the same, though the authority by which it was raised was lawful in the one case and unlawful in the other. The earlier writs of ship-money under Charles demanded actual ships, just as in the case before us. And there was a call for special heed to the fleet in the days of Charles, just as much as there was in the days of Æthelred. To say nothing of the general complications of Europe, the Algerine corsairs, though not quite so formidable as Swegen’s Danes, did serious damage to English commerce, and they sometimes actually landed and plundered on the English and Irish coasts. The objection was to the illegal shape in which the demand came. And the later writs, which, under pretence of a composition for the actual ships, levied a tax by royal authority over the whole country, were a further abuse. Money came into the King’s clutches, not only without any lawful right, but without any kind of guaranty that it would be applied to the purposes for which it professed to be raised. This was the very evil against which the ancient mode of contributions in kind effectually guarded.

Besides these vigorous preparations at home, there seems some reason to believe that an attempt was made at this time to strengthen England by foreign help. It was plainly felt that the peace bought from the Danes had secured only a breathing-space, that their attacks would soon begin again, and that it was necessary to employ the blessed interval in obtaining support from every possible quarter. It was not unnatural to hope that the marriage of Emma had gained for England a continental ally, and we are told, on secondary but not contemptible authority, that Æthelred now sent to his brother-in-law Duke Richard, 342asking for both help and counsel.^[660] There is nothing unlikely in the statement; but, whatever may have been given by Richard in the way of counsel, it does not appear |No Norman help given.| that a single Norman ship or Norman soldier was sent to the help of England. Hugh, the betrayer of Exeter, is the only recorded contribution which either Norman chivalry or Norman churlhood made to the defence of our shores against the Dane. Nor indeed was there any strong reason why Richard should help his brother-in-law, unless he had taken up the cause as a kind of crusade, and had stepped in as a Christian champion against the heathen invaders. But Richard and his subjects were Normans before they were Christians, and all the traditions of Norman policy tended to fraternization with their Danish kinsmen. Such fraternization with the Danes had already caused, certainly a dispute, perhaps an open war, with England. Richard the Good in no way departed from this traditional policy. |Richard’s treaty with Swegen.| According to a Norman account, told with great confusion as to time, Richard was, either now or a few years later, actually bound by a treaty with Swegen, not only to receive sick and wounded Danes in his dominions, but to allow the spoils of England to be sold in the Norman ports.^[661] This was the old ground of quarrel, but Æthelred was just now not likely to retaliate by another invasion of the Côtentin. And, according to another story, told with equal confusion as to dates, Richard, like his father, did not scruple to accept the help of two heathen Kings of the North in his warfare with his Christian neighbours.^[662] At a later time indeed he could not well refuse shelter in 343his dominions to his sister with her husband and children; |Richard keeps aloof from English affairs.| but anything like even an attempt at active interference in English affairs on the part of Normandy was delayed till the reign of his son Robert.