EARLY B RI T AI N.

NO O - L S AXO N B RIT A N.

RA A G NT LLEN, B A .

PUB LI S HED UNDER T HE DIRECT I ON O F T HE CO MM I TT EE O F G ENERA L L I T ERAT U RE A N D EDUCAT IO N A PPOIN TED B Y T HE S OC I ETY F OR PROM OT ING I K W’LE C HR S T I A N NO DG E .

L O N D O N :

43 , QU VI CT I ST T EEN OR A REE ,

26 S T . G G , S PL C HY P K C s EOR E A E , DE AR ORNER, . R : 3 T H ST T B IGHTON 35, NOR REE . N E W K : . 8: . B Y O R E J . Y O U N G 88 1 4 .

PR E F A C E .

THIS little book is an attempt to give a brief sketch o f Britain under the early English conquerors , rather c from the social than from the politi al point of View . For that purpose not much has been said about the doings of kings and statesmen ; but attention h as been m ainly directed towards the less obvious evi dence afforded us by existing monuments as t o the f of li e and mode of thought the people themselves . The principal obj ect throughout has been to estimate the importance of those elements in modern British life which are chiefl y due to purely English or Low

Dutch influences . The original authorities m ost largely consulted “ all l Chro have been , first and above , the Eng ish ’ n and Re icle , to an almost equal extent, eda s “ ” Ecclesiastical History . These have been supple m ente d , where necessary , by Florence of Worcester and the other Latin writers of later date . I have not u of thought it needf l, however, to repeat any the l o f gossiping stories from Wi liam Malmesbury, Henry o f H and untingdon , their compeers , which make up the bulk o f our early history as told in most m l odern books . Sti l less have I paid any attention

to o f . the romances of Geoffrey Monmouth Gildas, i PR E A v F CE .

Nennius , and the other Welsh tracts have been l sparing y employed, and always with a reference by n A hi s ame . sser has been used with caution , where information seems t o be really contemporary . I have also derived some occasional hints from the old

B eow u British bards , from Z/fl from the laws , and from “ ” icu e the charters in the Codex Diplom at s. Thes written documents have been helped out by some

. personal study of the actual early English relics u preserved in various muse ms, and by the indirect l evidence of loca nomenclature . A acknowled mong modern books , I owe my g

A . h . ments in the first and hig est degree to Dr. E h ow Freeman , from whose great and j ust authority, I n l f e ever, have occasio al y ventured to dif er in som

minor matters . Next, my acknowledgments are due u to Canon St bbs , to Mr . Kemble, and to Mr. J . R . ’ l Green . Dr . Guest s v a uable papers in the Trans actions of the Arch aeological Institute have supplied

u La n r ir many usef l suggestions . To pp e b e g and S Francis Palgrave I am also indebted for various ’ details . Professor Rolleston s contributions to ” Archaeol o ia A n g , as well as his ppendix to Cano ’ “ ” Greenwell s British Barrows , have been consulted for anthropological and antiquarian points 5 on which l A also Professor Hux ey and Mr . kerman have pub ’ lish ed useful papers . Professor Boyd Dawkins s “ w ll the work on Early Man in Britain , as e as writings of Worsaae and S teenstrup have helped i n elucidating the condition of the E nglish at the dat e u of the Conq est . Nor must I forget the aid derived PR EFAC E . v fi

’ “ from Mr. Isaac Taylor s Words and Places , from ’ “ h Professor Henry Morley s Englis Literature , and ’ “ ” l T o from Messrs . Haddan and Stubbs Counci s . —

Mr . Gomme , Mr . E . B . Tylor, Mr. Sweet , Mr . l James Co lier, Dr. H . Leo , and perhaps others , I am under various obligations ; and if any acknowle dg u m ents have been overlooked , I trust the inj red per son will forgive me when I have had already t o quote

so many authorities for so small a book . The p opu l ar character of the work renders it undesirable to load the pages with footnotes o f reference ; and scholars will generally see for themselves the source

o f the information given in the text .

l Mr Personal y, my thanks are due to my friend , . u York Powell , for much val able aid and assistance , ’ Mc lur and R e v . . C e s to the E , one of the Society s ecretaries , for his kind revision of the volume in

proof, and for several suggestions of which I have

gladly availed myself. As various early English names and phrases occur

throughout the book, it will be best, perhaps , to say few d r a a wor s about thei pronunci tion here , rather than t o leave over that subj ect to the chapter on the

A - nglo Saxon language , near the close of the work . A few notes on this matter are therefore appended

below .

The simple vowels , as a rule, have their continental

: a? ( i pronunciation , approximately thus as in father, ' a s a sk e t/zer e E men 2 ma r i ne in as in , as in as in ,

” ‘ 2 t 5 noi e 5 net 2? ér w e as in fi ; as in , as in ; as in , ' as ail ? i n r zm " lzziése/z in f ; j as g (German) , j as in v hi E E PR FAC .

f (German) . The quantity o the vowels is not m E . b u arked in this work is not a diphthong, t a

a simple vowel sound , the same as our own short in

‘ ma n Z/za z E &C . d a . C , , is pronounced like y is w k i n al ays hard , like ; and g is also always hard, as be i n ne r . ve s g they must be pronounced like or j . The other consonants have the same values as i n or modern English . No vowel consonant is ever f l mute . Hence we get the o lowing approximate

: f Elfred Z Eth elre d pronunciations and , as if written

Al A l f Ethelstan fred and the red and Dunstan , as Ath el stahn Do onstahn O swine and Eadwine and , nearly as Y ahd-weena and O se -weena ; Wulfsige and

Si eb erht - - a -a-b a rt C e olred g , as Wolf seeg and Seeg y

l l - K - Ke o e iine f. e and Cynewu f, as red and wol Thes approximations look a little absurd when written down in the only modern phonetic equivalents ; but our own of that is the fault of existing spelling, not the early English names themselves .

A G . . - ANGLO SAXON BRIT AIN.

A T CH P ER I .

T HE O R IGIN OF T HE ENGLISH .

AT a period earlier than the dawn of written history there lived somewhere among the great table -lands and plains of Central Asia a race known t o us only f A by the uncertain name o Aryans . These ryans were

- - a fair skinned and well built people , long past the n con stage of aborigi al savagery , and possessed of a sid erabl e degree of primitive culture . Though mainly a pastoral in h bit , they were acquainted with tillage , and they grew for themselves at least one kind of

cereal grain . They spoke a language whose existence ' and nature we infer from the remnants o f it which

o f d survive in the tongues their escendants , and from to these remnants we are able judge, in some measure , o f their civilisation and their modes of thought . The indications thus preser ved for us show the Aryans t o have been a simple and fierce community of early a warriors , farmers , and shepherds , still in a parti lly nomad condition , living under a patriarchal rule, origin a of t n ally ignor nt all me als save gold , but possessi g B - R 2 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

w 1 eapons and implements of stone, and worshipping as t heir Chief god the open heaven . We must not regard them as an idyllic and peaceable people on the con t rar e y, they were the fiercest and most conquering trib o f e ver known . In mental power and in plasticity m t o anners , however, they probably rose far superior a n n y race then living, except o ly the Semitic nations o f the Mediterranean coast . A ‘ From the common Central sian home, colonies f A l o warlike ryans gradually dispersed themse ves , still

- u of in the pre historic period, nder pressure population

r l of o hosti e invasion , over many districts Europe and f A . o sia Some them moved southward, across the o f A passes fghanistan , and occupied the fertile plains o f the the Indus and the Ganges, where they became ancestors of the Brahmans and other modern high

caste Hindoos . The language which they took with them to their new settlements beyond the Himalayas

was the Sanskrit, which still remains to this day the nearest of all dialects that we now possess to the A p rimitive ryan speech . From it are derived the chief Vindh as modern tongues of northern India, from the y t o A d the Hindu Kush . Other ryan tribes settle in the mountain districts west of Hindustan ; and yet o thers found themselves a home in the hills of I ran or d t Persia, where they still preserve an allied ialec o f the ancient mother tongue .

1 Professor B oy d D awkins h as shown that th e Continental C elts were still i n their stone ag e when they i nva ded Europ e ; w hence w e must conclude that the original Aryans were unac ua nt t th u of nz e q i ed wi h e se bro . T R F T HE HE O IGIN O ENGLISH . 3

But the mass of the emigrants from the Central A sian fatherland moved further westward in successive w one aves, and occupied , after another, the midland of s plains and mountainous peninsulas Europe . Fir t o f s all , apparently, came the Celts, who pread o f slowly across the South Russia and Germany, and wh o are found at the dawn of authentic history ex t ending over the entire western coasts and islands of the M c to . ontinent, from Spain Scotland ingled in many p laces with the still earlier non-Aryan aborigines

erh a s gp p Iberians and Euskarians , a short and swarthy

“ race, armed only with weapons of polished stone, and r epresented at the present day by the Basques of the

Pyrenees and the Asturias — the Celts held rule in S of pain, Gaul , and Britain , up to the date the several A Roman conquests . A second great wave of ryan i mmigration , that of the Hellenic and Italian races , Z E ean A broke over the shores of the g and the driatic, w here their cognate languages have become familiar t o us in the two extreme and typical forms of the C A of lassical Greek and Latin . third wave was that wh o the Teutonic or German people, followed and drove out the Celts over a large part of central and western Europe 5 while a fourth and final swarm was the that of the Slavonic tribes , which still inhabit only extreme eastern portion o f the continent . With the Slavonians we shall have nothing to do in t his enquiry ; and with the Greek and Italian races w e v . s need only deal ery incidentally But the Celt , w hom the English invaders found in possession of all B ritain when they began their settleme nts i n the B 2 AN L - R 4 G o SAXON B ITAIN .

s island , form the subject of another volume in thi l l o series , and will necessari y call for some sma l porti n of o ur attention here also 3 while it is to the Germanic l ll l so race that the Eng ish stock itself actua y be ongs, that we must examine somewhat more closely the of m course Germanic im igration through Europe, and n of l the ature th e primitive Teutonic civi isation . The Germanic family of peoples consisted of a race l l two which ear y sp it up into great hordes or stocks , speaking dialects which differed slightly from one another through the action of the various circum stances to which they were each exposed These two stocks are the High German and the Low German (with which last may be included the Gothic and the t Scandinavian) . Moving across Europe from east o west, they slowly drove out the Celts from Germany and the central plains , and took possession of the A Whole district between the lps, the Rhine , and the l Baltic, which formed their imits at the period when they first came into contact with the Roman power. l The Goths , living in c osest proximity to the empire, l l e fe l upon it during the dec ine and decay of Rom , settled in Italy, Gaul, and Spain, and becoming absorbed in the mass of the native population , dis appear altogether from history as a distinguishable n ationality . But the High and Low Germans retain to the present day their distinctive language and the l features and latter branch, to which the Eng ish l people belong, still ives for the most part in the same lands which it has held ever since the date of the e arly Germanic immigration . R T H T HE O I G I N O F E ENGLISH . 5

Lo f r The w Germans, in the third century a te

C hrist, occupied in the main the belt of flat country

- f b etween the Balt ic and the mouths o the Rhine . Between them and the old High German Swabians lay a race intermediate in tongue and blood , the Franks . Low The Germans were divided , like most other bar b arIC - races, into several fluctuating and ill marked and tribes, whose names are loosely perhaps inter changeably used by the few authorities which remain n t t o to us . We must o expect find among them the d efi niteness of modern civilised nations, but rather s uch a vagueness as that which characterised the loose confederacies of North American Indians or h A the various s ifting peoples of South frica . But there are three of their tribes which stand fairly well one marked off from another in early history, and which bore , at least the chief share in the colonisa f o . e tion Britain Th se three tribes are the Jutes , the English , and the Saxons . Closely connected with them, but less strictly bound in the same family tie, were the Frisians . of s The Jutes , the northernmost the three division , lived in the marshy forests and along the winding fi ord s of of jutland, the extreme peninsula Denmark, which still preserves their name in our own day .

l w - The Eng ish d elt j ust to the south, in the heath clad o f now neck the peninsula, which we call Sleswick . And the Saxons, a much larger tribe, occupied the of t flat continental shore, from the mouth the Oder o t hat of the Rhine . At the period when history lifts the curtain upon the future Germanic colonists of 6 - N R ANGLO SAXO B ITAIN .

we di f Britain , thus scover them as the inhabitants o the l ow-lying lands around the Baltic and the North n n Sea, and closely co nected with other tribes o either d u wh o si e, s ch as the Frisians and the Danes , still speak very cognate Low German and Scandinavian n la guages . But we have not yet fully grasped the extent of the relationship between the first Teutonic settlers in

Britain and their continental brethren . Not only are the true Englishmen of modern England distantly to connected with the Franks , who never our know ledge took part in the colonisation of the island at all 3 and more closely connected with the Frisians , some of whom probably accompanied the earliest piratical hordes 3 as well as with the Danes, who settled at a later date in all the northern counties but they are also most closely connected of all with those members o f the colonising tribes wh o did not themselves bear a share in the settlement, and whose descendants are still living in Denmark and in various parts o f to Germany. The English proper, it is true , seem have deserted their old home in Sleswick in a body 3 so a n that , according to B eda , the Christian historia of Northumberland , in his time this oldest England by the shores of the Baltic lay waste and unpeopled , through the completeness of the exodus . But the s t o l Jute ap pear have migrated in sma l numbers , while the larger part of th e tribe remained at home in their native marshland 3 and of the more numerous . Saxons, though a great swarm went out to conquer s l d outhern Britain, a vast body was sti l left behin

8 - R ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

and comparatively little as Saxon . But since it would be inconvenient to use the name of one dominant l l of tribe a one , the English , as equiva ent to those the three , and since it is desirable to have a common title for all the Germanic colonists of Britain , when to ever it is necessary speak of them together, we shall employ the late and , strictly speaking, incorrect “ f - f r o A o . form nglo Saxons this purpose Similarly, in order to distinguish the earliest pure form of the

English language from its later modern form , now largely enriched and altered by the addition of Romance or Latin words and the disuse of native ones , we shall always speak of it , where distinction is

A - n . ow necessary , as nglo Saxon The term is too deeply rooted in our language to be again uprooted 3 o f l and it has , besides , the merit supp ying a want . At the same time , it should be remembered that the

A - expression nglo Saxon is purely artificial , and was ne ver used by the people themselves in describing ‘ or heir fellows their tongue . When they did not of l speak themselves as Jutes , Eng ish, and Saxons of respectively, they spoke themselves as English alone . - R ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN . 9

HA T C P ER II .

T HE E L B Y T HE R T HE NG ISH SHO ES OF BALTI C.

F R t a a i n b OM the no ices left us by B ed Britain, and y Nithard on of and others the continent, the habits and manners which distinguished those Saxons who m remained in the old fatherland , we are able to for some idea of the primitive condition of those other a S xons, English, and Jutes, who afterwards colonised W Britain, during the period hile they still all lived together in the heather- clad wastes and marshy low of lands Denmark and Northern Germany . The early heathen poem of B eow ulf also gives us a glimpse of f their ideas and their mode o thought . The known of o f physical characteristics the race , the nature the o c untry which they inhabited , the analogy of other o f Germanic tribes, and the recent discoveries pre a to o ut historic arch eology, all help us piece a fairly o f of consistent picture their appearance, their manner life , and their rude political institutions . We must begin by dismissing from our minds all those modern notions which are almost inevitably implied by the use of language directly derived from of our in that heathen ancestors , but now mixed up o ur conceptions with the most advanced forms of s European Civilisation . We must not allow such word I O - R ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

“ “ as king and English to mislead us into a species of filial blindness to the real nature of our Teutonic f of orefathers . The little community wild farmers

' and warriors who lived among the dim woodlands of

Sleswick, beside the swampy margin of the North Sea, has u of grown into the nucle s a vast empire, only very l all partia ly Germanic in blood, and enriched by the l A alien cu ture of Egypt, ssyria, Greece, and Rome .

But as it still preserves the identical tongue of its . are l to early barbarous days , we natura ly tempted read our modern acquired feelings into the simple but familiar terms employed by our continental prede i s i ce ssors . What the early Engl h called a k ng we should now-a-days call a Chief 3 what they called a meeting of wise men we should now- a-days call a t palaver. In fact, we must recollec that we are deal

— ing with a purely barbaric race not savage, indeed, nor of own the without a certain rude culture its , result of long centuries of previous development 3 yet in its essentially military and predatory habits , and akin in its material civilisation t o many races which we now ur we regard as immeasurably o inferiors . If wish for a modern equivalent of the primitive Anglo of in Saxon level culture , we may perhaps best find it u of the or in the K rds Turkish and Persian frontier, the Mahrattas of the wild mountain region of the western Deccan . The early English in Sleswick and Friesland had’ l l partial y reached the agricultural stage of civ i isation . They tilled little plots o f ground in the forest ; but they depended more largely for subsistence upon their T HE I T HE ENGLISH B Y T HE SHO R ES OF BALTI C. I

s the cattle, and they were also hunter and trappers in great belts of woodland or marsh which everywhere surrounded their isolated villages . They were acquainted with the use of bronze from the first period of their settlement in Europe , and some of the battle axes or shields which they manufactured from this m etal were beautifully chased with exquisite decora s tive patterns , equalling in taste the ornamental design still employed by the Polynesian islanders . Such th e weapons, however, were doubtless intended for

of C use the hieftains only, and were probably employed f as insignia o rank alone . They are still discovered i n the barrows which cover the remains of the early Chieftains ; though it is possible that they may really n belo g to the monuments of a yet earlier race . But i h ron was certainly employed by the Englis , at least, t of from about the firs century the Christian era, and its use was perhaps introduced into the marshlands of Sleswick by the Germanic conquerors of the north . at a s of Even this e rly date , abundant proof exist merca ntile intercourse with the Roman world (p ro n a o f bably through Pan oni ) , whereby the alien culture the south was already engrafted in part upon the low of A civilisation the native English . mber was then las exported from the Baltic, while gold , silver, and g s b a r di s e ds we e given in retur n . Roman coins are cover ed in Low German tombs o f the first five u in n and cent ries Sleswick , Holstein , Friesla d, the Isl es ; and Roman patterns are imitated in the iron weapons and utensils of the same period Gold z a f by nts o the fifth cent ury prove an intercourse with . - I 2 ANGLO SAXON B R ITAIN .

C onstantinople at the exact date of the colonisation l of Britain . From the very ear iest moment when we c l of - l atch a g impse its nature, the home grown Eng ish c ulture had already begun to be modified by the f l superior arts o Rome . Even the a phabet was known a nd o f used in its Runic form , though the absence writing materials caused its employment to be re on l stricted to inscriptions wooden tab ets, on rude

n - A s o . tone monuments, or utensils of metal work

l - g o den drinking horn found in Sleswick, and engraved ’ l with the maker s name, referred to the midd e of the

fourth century , contains the earliest known specimen f l o the English anguage . The early English society was founded entirely on l l the tie of b ood . Every c an or family lived by itself a nd h formed a guild for mutual protection, eac kins ’ m an being his brother s keeper, and bound to avenge his death by feud with the tribe or Clan which had

- killed him . This duty of blood revenge was the s upreme religion of the race . Moreover, the clan was a nswerable as a whole for the ill- deeds of all its m embers 3 and the fine payable for murder or injury was handed over by the family of the wrong-doer t o

the family of the inj ured man . Each little village of the old English community of own possessed a general independence its ,

and lay apart from all the others , often surrounded by

a broad belt or mark of virgin forest . It consisted of C o f A a learing like those the merican backwoods, or where a single family kindred had made its home, h a nd preserved its separate independence intact. Eac T H 1 T HE ENGLISH BY T HE SHO RES OF E BALTI C . 3

of these families was known by the name of its real or

supposed ancestor, the patronymic being formed by n the addition of the syllable i g . Thus the descend of fElla fEllin s fi a m or ants would be called g , and their jEllin aham o r n stockade would be known as g , in moder l fun or of the form A lingham . So the enclosure Culmin s Culmin atun g would be g , similarly modernised h into Culmington . Names of this type abound in t e newer England at the present day 3 as in the case of m n Birmingham , Buckingha , Wellington , Kensingto , A a Basingstoke , and Paddington . But while in meric and the clearing is merely a temporary phase, the border of forest is soon cut down so as to connect th e

A - n village with its neighbours , in the old nglo Saxo

fatherland the border of woodland, heath , or fen was jealously guarded as a frontier and n atural defence

for the little predatory and agricultural community. Whoever crossed it was bound t o give notice of hi s coming by blowing a horn 3 else he was cut down at

once as a stealthy enemy . The marksmen wished t o to remain separate from all others, and only mix with of kin f those their own . In this primitive love o separation we have the germ of that local i ndepend ence and that isolated private home life which is one o f the most marked ch aracterIstIcs of modern

Englishmen .

In the middle of the clearing, surrounded by a of wooden stockade , stood the village, a group rude de t ach ed huts . The marksmen each possessed a separate f little homestead , consisting usually o a small wooden

- . S o house or shanty, a courtyard, and a cattle fold - r I A N G Lo R . , SAXON B ITAIN

far , private property in land had already begun . But the forest and the pasture land were not appropriated each man had a right from year to year to let loose his kine or horses on a certain equal or proportionate o l space of land assigned t him by the vil age in council . The wealth of the people consisted mainly i n cattle w and hich fed on the pasture , pigs turned out to fatten on the acorns of the forest but a small portion of the soil was ploughed and sown 3 and this portion also w as distributed to th e villagers for tillage by annual l arrangement . The ha l of the chief rose in the midst

of the lesser houses , open to all comers . The village or of moot, assembly freemen , met in the open air, old under some sacred tree, or beside some monu m ental stone , often a relic of the older aboriginal race , m C arking the tomb of a dead hieftain, but worshipped l A a s a god by the Eng ish immigrants . t these l informa meetings, every head of a family had a right l to appear and de iberate . The primitive English constitution was a pure republican aristocracy or

oligarchy of householders , like that which still survives

in the Swiss forest cantons . But there were yet distinctions of rank in the villages and in th e loose tribes formed by their union

for purposes of war or otherwise . The people were ' ‘ l eezfiel zfl s C divided into three c asses of g or hieftains , '

r eel zn s n Meow: . T he j g or freeme , and or slaves ' eeffie/zfl gs were the nobles and rulers of each t ribe . There was no king but when the tribes j oined

’ ‘ eezfiel zn s together in a war, their g cast lots together, a nd whoever drew the winning lot was m ade co m

1 6 - S R ANGLO AXON B ITAIN .

have drawn of themselves in B eow ulf is one of savage

c - o f pirates , lad in shirts of ring armour, and greedy al two gold and e . Fighting and drinking are their l l l delights . The nob est eader is he who bui ds a great ll his l and ha , throws it open for peop e to carouse in, ll l out e libera y dea s be r, and bracelets , and money at

l . the feast . The joy of batt e is keen in their breasts

The sea and the storm are welcome to them . They

are fearless and greedy pirates, not ashamed of living n by the stro g hand alone . l a reli i on In creed, the Eng ish were pagans , having g of beliefs rather than ofrites . Their chief deity, perhaps ,

A - was a form of the old ryan Sky god , who took with them the guise of Thunor or Thunder (in S candina the vian , Thor) , an angry warrior hurling his hammer,

- thunder bolt, from the stormy clouds . These thunder bolts were often found buried in the earth and being really the polished stone -axes of the earlier inhabit

l l a . ants , they do actua ly resemb e hammer in shape

c But Woden , the special god of the Teutonic ra e , had practically usurped the highest place in their m ytho logy : he is represented as the leader of the German s

A - in their exodus from sia to north western Europe , a nd since all the pedigrees of their Chieftains were to h e traced back Woden , it is not improbable that may have been really a deified ancestor o f the prin ci al l p Germanic fami ies . The popular creed, however, one of v was mainly lesser gods, such as el es , ogres , and and giants , monsters , inhabitants of the mark fen , stories of whom still survive in English villages as . f - A fe of olk lore or fairy tales . w legends the pagan E 1 T HE ENGLISH BY T HE SHO RES OF T H BALTIC . 7

B eow ul t ime are preserved for us in Christian books . f i s rich in allusions to these ancient superstitions . If we may build upon the slender materials which alone a r C e available, it would seem that the dead hieftains w and - were buried in barro s, ghost worship was practised at their tombs . The temples were mere of or s tockades wood , with rude blocks monoliths t o represent deities and altars . Probably their few ites consisted merely o f human or other sacrifices

r o f t o the gods o the ghosts departed chiefs . w as o f There a regular priesthood the great gods , n As but each man was priest for his ow household . in most other heathen communities , the real worship o f the people was mainly directed to the special family deities o f every hearth . The great gods were appealed to by the C hieftains and by the race in battle : but the household gods or deified ancestors received th o n fi r si s e chief homage of the churls by their w e de .

A - Thus the nglo Saxons, before the great exodus f and rom Denmark North Germany , appear as a race o f fierce, cruel, and barbaric pagans , delighting in the

s ea and . w , in slaughter, in drink They d elt in little isolated communities , bound together internally by t of s ies blood , and uniting occasionally with other o for nly purposes of rapine . They lived a life which m n - ainly alternated between grazi g, piratical sea faring, a nd cattle -lifting ; always on the war-trail against the of not possessions others , when they were specially e f ngaged in taking care o their own. Every record a nd every indication shows them to us as fi ercer heathen prototypes of the Scotch clans in the most C 1 8 AN GLo-sAXON R B ITAIN .

of lawless days the Highlands . Incapable of union for r any peaceful purpose at home , they learned thei earliest lesson of subordination in their piratical attacks upon the civilised Christian community of Roman

Britain . We first meet with them in history in the

- character of destroyers and sea robbers . Yet they possessed already in their wild marshy home the germs of those free institutions which have made the history of England unique amongst the nations of

Europe . N L - A G O SAXON BR ITAIN . 9

T CHAP ER III .

E L L R T H ENG ISH SETT E IN B ITAIN .

P R OXIMITY t o the sea turns robbers into corsairs . When predatory tribes reach the seaboard they always t o take piracy, provided they have attained the ship of E ean in building level culture . In the ancient g , M A s th e the alay rchipelago , in the China sea , we see

m: same process always taking place . Probably fro the first period of their severance from the main A A Low e ryan stock in Central sia, the G erman rac and their ancestors had been a predatory and con for sm oul quering people, ever engaged in raids and dering warfare with their neighbours . When they reached the Baltic and the islands of the Frisia n w n o f coast, they gre naturally into a ation pirates .

Even during the bronze age, we find sculptured stone s w o f row- m b ith representations long boats, anned y one or two several oarsmen, and in cases actually b r m earing a ude sail . Their prows and ste s stand out of high the water, and are adorned with intricate i of th carv ngs . They seem like the predecessors e

— - — long ships snakes and sea dragons which afterwards. ’ o b re the northern corsairs into every river of Europe .

- S w Such boats , adapted for long sea voyages, ho a Con or siderable intercourse , piratical commercial , C 2 20 - R ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN . between the Anglo - Saxon or Scandinavian North and o l l ther distant countries . Certain y, from the ear iest d ays of Roman rul e on the German Ocean to the n Low thirteenth ce tury, the Dutch and Scandinavian tribes carried on an almost unbroken course of exp e d itions by sea, beginning in every case with mere d escents upon the coast for the purposes of plunder l l or but ending, as a ru e, with regular co onisation l l f po itical supremacy . In this manner the peop e o the Baltic and the North Sea ravaged or settled in

- every country on the sea shore , from Orkney, Shetland , A and the Faroes , to Normandy, pulia , and Greece 3 from Boulogne and Kent, to Iceland, Greenland, and,

A - perhaps , merica . The colonisation of South Eastern Britain was but the first chapter in this long history o f predatory excursions on the part of the Low l German peop es . The piratical ships of the early English were row l boats of very simp e construction . We actually p ossess one undoubted specimen at the present d a y, whose very date is fixed for us by the circum

s . tances of its discovery It was dug up , some years s - l old l ince , from a peat bog in S eswick , the Eng and o f im le our forefathers, along with iron arms and p w ments , and in association ith Roman coins ranging

D 6 D . 2 1 A . A . in date from . 7 to 7 It may therefore be pretty confidently assigned to the first half o f l the third century. In this interesting re ic, then, we have one of the identical boats in which the descents upon the British coast were first made . The craft is r n udely built of oaken boards, and is seventy feet lo g I N R T HE ENGLISH SETTLE B ITAIN . 2 ]

and by nine broad . The stem stern are alike in

S hape , and the boat is fitted for being beached upon A a in s . the fore hore sculptured stone at H ggeby,

lande Up , roughly represents for us such a ship under

o f . way, probably about the same date It is rowed of no it with twelve pairs oars, and has sails ; and contains no other persons but the rowers and a cox

o f . swain, who acted doubtless as leader the expedition

1 2 0 Such a boat might convey about fighting men .

There are some grounds for believing that , even before the establishment of the Roman power in

Britain , Teutonic pirates from the northern marsh lands were already in the habit of plundering the Celtic inhabitants of the country between the Wash and the mouth o f the Thames 3 and it is possible that an English colony may, even then, have estab li sh d h l e e t e . b itself in modern Linco nshire But, m a th e this as it y, we know at least that during of ad period the Roman occupation, Low German venturers were constantly engaged in descending upon the exposed coasts o f the English Channel and the L t o the North Sea . The ow German tribe nearest of Roman provinces was that the Saxons, and accord in l of h e g y these Teutonic pirates , w atever race, wer and known as Saxons by the provincials , all English m en so are still called by the modern Celts, in Wales,

Scotland , and Ireland .

C The outlying Roman provinces were lose at hand ,

- easy to reach , rich , ill defended , and a tempting prey of out for the barbaric tribesmen the north . Setting in their light open skiffs from the islands at the - R 2 2 ANG LO SAXON B ITAIN . m of or off outh the Elbe, the shore afterwards sub i n now Z u der Z ee m erged what is the y , the English o r Saxon pirates crossed the sea with the prevalent n - orth east wind, and landed all along the provincial f n As c oasts o Gaul a d Britain . the empire decayed u of nder the assaults the Goths, their ravages turned a d into regul r settlements . One great body pillage , of age after age, the neighbourhood Bayeux, where, b of efore the middle the fifth century, it established n w l a flourishing colo y, and here the towns and vi lages a ll of A still bear names Saxon origin . nother horde first plundered and then took up its abode near of n Boulogne, where local names the E glish patro n m ic y type also abound t o the present day. In of Britain itself, at a date not later than the end the we fourth century , find (in the Notitia Imperii an o fficer wh o bears the title of Count of the Saxon n Shore, and whose j urisdiction extended from Li coln s t o l hire Southampton Water. The title probab y indicates that piratical incursions had already set in o n likelv Britain, and the duty of the count was most of l that repel ing the English invaders . As soon as the Romans found themselves com elled h p to withdraw t eir garrison from Britain, leaving the provinces to defend themselves as best they l might, the temptation to the Eng ish pirates became a thousand times stronger than before . Though the so -C l u a led history of the conq est, handed down to us ” a l l 1 now con by B eda and the Eng ish Chronic e , is

F or an a ccount o f these tw o m a in authorities see further B o n ae a I n C a ter x1. a nd th e C ron cl e i n C a ter x v1 . , d h p , h i h p ii

2 - R 4 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN . o f Rochester and coast land as far as London . Though the details of this story are full of mythical absurdities, the analogy of the later Danish colonies of l s gives it an air great probabi ity, as the Dane la or always settled first in is nds peninsulas , and l thence proceeded to overrun , and fina ly to annex, A the adjacent district . second Jutish horde estab li sh ed itself in the Isle o f Wight and on the opposit e of shore Hampshire . But the whole share borne by the Jut es in the settlement of Britain seems t o have been but small . e The Saxons came second in time, if we may believ fElle i s the legends . In 4 7 7 , , with his three sons , to said have landed on the south coast , where he n f r o o . founded the colo y the South Saxons , Sussex C m de In 4 9 5, erdic and Cy ric led another kindred hor to - l the south western shore , and made the first sett e h of . t e ment the West Saxons, or Wessex Of begin nin s of o f g the East Saxon community in Essex, and n l the Middle Saxo s in Midd esex , we know little, even by tradition . The Saxons undoubtedly came over in large numbers ; but a considerable body o f their

- en l fellow tribesm sti l remained upon the Continent, where they were still independent and unconverted up to the time of Karl the Great . l on The Eng ish , the other hand, apparently mi grated ih a body . There is no trace of any English men in Denmark or Germany after the exodus to of Britain . Their language, which a dialect still l o ut . survives in Friesland , has utterly died in S eswick The English t ook for their share of Britain the R 2 T HE ENGLISH SETTLE I N B ITAIN . 5

of r nearest east coast . We have little record thei arrival, even in the legendary story 3 we merely learn ” “ of that in 54 7 , Ida succeeded to the kingdom con the Northumbrians, whence we may possibly T h e clude that the colony was already established . English settlement extended from the Forth t o u Essex, and was s bdivided into Bernicia , Deira, and A East nglia.

e A - G Wh rever the nglo Saxons ame , their first work was t o stamp out with fire and sword every trace of the n Roman Civilisation . Moder investigations amongst pagan Anglo -Saxon barrows in Britain Show the Low n German race as pure barbarians, great at destructio , f but incapable o constructive work . Professor Rolle has o f ston , who opened several these early heathen our tombs of Teutonic ancestors, finds in them every “ where abundant evidence of their great aptness at and destroying, their great slowness in elaborating, ” A - material civilisation . Until the nglo Saxon received from the Continent the Christian religion and th e A Roman culture , he was a mere average ryan bar n baria , with a strong taste for war and plunder, but o f r with small love for any the arts of peace . Whereve or s else , in Gaul , Spain , Italy, the Teutonic barbarian came in contact with the Roman civilisation , they o f of received the religion Christ, and the arts the o or of c nquered people , during before their conquest the country. But in Britain the Teutonic invaders remained pagans long after their settlement in the

- island 3 and they utterly destroyed, in the south eastern f tract, almost every relic o the Roman rule and of - R s2 6 A N G Lo SAXON B ITAIN .

f s the Christian aith . Hence we have here the curiou of fact that , during the fifth and sixth centuries , a belt intrusive and aggressive heathendom intervenes b e tween the Christians of the Continent and the f he Christian Welsh and Irish o western Britain . T Church of the Celtic Welsh was cut off for more than a hundred years from the Churches of the Roman world by a hostile and impassable barrier of heathen ro English, Jutes , and Saxons . Their separation p

« d uced m any momentous effects on the after history both o f the Welsh themselves and of their English c onquerors . - R 2 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN . 7

C HAPTER IV.

E T HE COLONISATION OF T H COAST.

THOUGH the myths which surround the arrival of the

English in Britain have little historical value, they are y et interesting for the light which they throw incident ally upon the habits and modes o f thought of th e one C n colonists . They have haracter in commo with w and all other legends, that they gro fuller more cir cum stantial th e further they proceed from the original

a A . D . o o time . B eda, who wrote about 7 , gives them

: in a very meagre form the English Chronicle, com

f lfr A o E ed . D o o piled at the court , about . 9 , adds several important traditional particulars : while with f f M A D o . 1 1 2 t the romantic Geof rey onmouth , . 5 , hey f C a ssume the Character o full and ircumstantial t ales . m en w t The less kne abou the conquest , the more o t hey had t tell about it . A f h mong the most sacred animals o t e. Aryan race h . n n was the orse Eve in the India epics , the sacrifice

o f a horse was the highest rite of the primitive religion . Tacitus tells us that the Germans kept sacred white

horses at the public expense, in the groves and woods

« o f the gods and that from their neighings and A h . t e snortings, auguries were taken mongst people

«of t s s the nor hern marshlands, the white hor e seem 2 8 - R ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN . t o have been held in especial honour, and to this day a white horse rampant forms the cognisance of Han over and Brunswick . The English settlers brough t

l w to and this , their national emb em , ith them Britain, cut its figure on the Chalk downs as they advanced westward, to mark the progress of their conquest . The white horses on the Berkshire and Wiltshire hills l A sti l bear witness to their settlement . white hors e o f is even now the symbol Kent . Hence it is not surprising to learn that in the legendary story of th e l ed the first colonisation , the Jutish leaders who earliest Teutonic host into Thanet should bear the of names Hengest and Horsa , the stallion and the

— a mare . They came in three keels ridiculously th e inadequate number, considering their size and necessities of a conquering army : and they settled in 4 4 9 (for the legends are always mos t precise where “ i n f A they are least historical) the Isle o Thanet . ” of m multitude whelps, says the Welsh onk Gildas , “ came forth from the lair of the barbaric lioness, in l f c u s . o three y , as they call them Vortigern, King the Welsh, had invited them to come to his aid against o f the Picts North Britain and the Scots of Ireland, wh o were making piratical incursions into the deserted province , left unprotected through the heavy levies made by the departing Romans . The Jutes attacked and conquered the Gaels , but then turned against l their Welsh al ies .

In 4 55, the Jutes advanced from Thanet to conquer the whole of Kent, and Hengest and Horsa fought ” l with Vortigern the king, says the Eng ish Chronicle , 2 T HE COLONISATION O F T HE COAST . 9

at the place that is Cleped Z Egl esthrep 3 and there m n r e slew Horsa his brother, and afte that Hengest ”

AESC . c ame to rule, and his son One year later, Hengest and fEsc fought once more with the Welsh at “ f offslew C ray ord , and men 3 and the Britons

- fl e d t hen forsook Kent land , and with mickle awe to

- London bury . In this account we may see a dim r ecollection o f the settlement o f the two petty jutish h kingdoms in Kent, wit their respective capitals at

C anterbury and Rochester, whose separate dioceses s till point back to the two original principalities . It m a Z ESC y be worth while to note , too , that the name means the ash -tree 3 and that this tree was as sacred among plants as the horse was among animals .

Nevertheless , a kernel of truth doubtless lingers in w one of the traditional story. Thanet was after ards th e first landing-places of the Danes and its isolated position — for a broad belt of sea then separated the island from the Kentish main — would make i t a natural post to be assigned by the Welsh to their d oubtful piratical allies . The inlet was guarded by t he great Roman fortress of Rhutupiae : and after the f of the all that important stronghold , English may probably have occupied the principality of East w of Kent, ith its capital Canterbury . The walls o f Rochester may have held out longer : and the West Kentish kingdom may well have been founded by t wo successful battles at the passage of the Medway a nd the Cray .

“ The legend as t o the settlement of Sussex is of m s . j Elle n a uch the same ort In 4 7 7 , the Saxo c me 0 - R 3 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN . t o Britain also with the suspiciously symmetrical num

of . e ber three ships With him came his thre sons, K m en Wlencin . r y , g, and Cissa These names a e obviously invented t o account for those of three im

- C portant places in the South Saxon hieftainship . The K m enes ora Ke nor host landed at y , probably y , in the of e Bill Selsey, then, as its title imports, a separat u island girt ro nd by the tidal sea their capital and, in days after the Norman conquest, their cathe Ci ssanceaster m now dral was at , the Roman Regnu , Chichester : while the third name survives in the l f T h o . e modern vi lage Lancing, near Shoreham Saxons at once fought the natives and offsl ew many

Welsh , and drove some in flight into the wood that is ” n Andredes-lea now of amed g, the Weald Kent and A Sussex . little colony thus occupied the western half of the modern county : but the eastern portion r still remained in the hands of the Welsh . F o awhile the great Roman fortress of Anderida (now Pevensey) “ held out against the invaders 3 until in 4 9 1 E lle Anderida offslew e and Cissa beset , and all that wer therein 3 nor was there after even one Briton left ” ll . A alive Sussex became a single Saxon kingdom, ringed round by the great forest of the Weald . Here again the obviously unhistorical Character of the main facts throws the utmost doubt upon the nature of the i a . too s det ils Yet , in this case , the central idea itself

no — likely e ugh , that the South Saxons first occupied the solitary coast islet of Selsey 3 then conquered th e fortress of Regnum and the western shore as far as Eastb ourne ; and finally captured Anderida and the

2 AN L - S R 3 G o AXON B ITAIN.

to C nric the first attributing the conquest Cerdic and y , h and the second to Stuf and Wi tgar. The only other existing legend refers to the great English kingdom of Northumbria : and about it the l l l Eng ish Chronic e , which is main y West Saxon in o l l rigin , mere y tel s us in dry terms under the year r l l 54 7 , He e Ida came to ru e . There are no detai s , e of ven the meagre kind , vouchsafed in the south 3 no account of the conquest o f the great Roman town o f r Yo k, or of the resistance offered by the powerful n i B riga t an tribes . But a fragment of some old Nor thumb rian tradition , embedded in the later and s purious Welsh compilation which bears the name o f

Nennius l — , tells us a not improbab e tale that the first settlement on the coast of the Lothians was made as e l of u of ar y as the conquest Kent , by J tes the same A s tock as those who colonised Thanet . hundred l “ years later, the We sh poems seem to say, Ida the

fl am e- bearer, fought his way down from a petty prin c i alit on p y the Forth , and occupied the whole Nor t h umb rian coast , in spite of the stubborn guerilla l l d o warfare o f the despairing provincia s . Still ess u o f we learn abo t the beginnings Mercia, the powerful English kingdom which occupied the midlands ; or

a A . bout the first colonisation of East nglia In short, e the legends of the settlement, unhistorical and meagr as l they are , refer on y to the Jutish and Saxon con l h all t quests in the south , and te l us not ing at abou n h n the origi o f the main Englis kingdoms in the orth . i It is mportant to bear in mind this fact, because the c urrent conceptions as to the spread of the Anglo F T HE T HE COLONISATION O COAST . 3 3

Saxon race and the extermination of the native Welsh are largely based upon the very limited accounts of s the conque t of Kent and Sussex, and the mournful dirges of the Welsh monks or bards .

It seems improbable , however, that the north o f eastern coast Britain , naturally exposed above every of other part to the ravages northern pirates , and in later days the head- quarters of the Danish intruders so m in our island , should long have remained free fro n English i cursions . If the Teutonic settlers really first established themselves here a century later than o f for their conquest Kent, we can only account it by the supposition that York and the Brigantes , the old of out metropolis the provinces , held far more stubbornly and successfully than Rochester and And erida o ula , with their very servile Romanised p p of do not tion . But even the words the Chronicle necessarily imply that Ida was the first king of the orthumb rians or of N , that the settlement the country 1 . And d took place in his days if they did , we nee not to feel bound accept their testimony , considering that the earliest date we can assign for the composi tion of the Chronicle is the reign of E lfred : while a N B eda, the earlier native orthumbrian historian , no throws light at all upon the question . Hence it

1 A remarkabl e p assage i n the Thi rd Continuator o f lorence ent on H ri n as the r t n of B ern c a fol F m i s y g fi s ki g i i , l o e o en and fi v e ot e r t cal er ona e e o re w d by W d h my hi p s g s , b f le rl t ere un r r Id a . C a to cal ue o on th e a rt y, his is m his i g ssw k p of th e monk o f B ury 3 b ut i t m ay encl os e a genuine traditi on f r H rin o ncerne so a as y g is c d . D AN L - 3 4 G o SAXON BR ITAIN . s eems probable that Nennius preserves a truthful h n tradition , and t at the English settled in the regio b w s et een the Forth and the Tyne, at least as early a t he Jutes settled in Kent or the Saxons along the a n South Co st, from Pevensey Bay to Southampto

Water. out et m o If, then , we leave of consideration the y logical myths and num erl cal absurdities of the English e l l or W lsh egends , and look on y at the facts disclosed to d l us by the subsequent con ition of the country, we shal find that the early Anglo - Saxon settlements took place somewhat after this wise . In the extreme north , the English apparently did not care to settle in the rugged A mountain country between berdeen and Edinburgh , inhabited by the free and warlike Picts . But from the Firth of Forth to the borders of Essex, a succession of colonies, belonging to the restricted English tribe , occupied the whole provincial coast, burning, plunder m assacrIn l ing , and g In many p aces as they went . First and northernmost of all came the people whom B ernici ans we know by their Latinised title of , and wh o descended upon the rocky braes between Forth ’ of and Tyne . These are the English Ida s kingdom , the modern Lothians and Northumberland . Their B eb b anb urh now B amb orou h chief town was at , g , ”

b et ned . which Ida timbered , and y it with a hedge of D e Next in geographical order stood the p eople ira, wh o or Yorkshire , occupied the rich agricultural v l alley of the Ouse, the fertile alluvia tract of Holder

- ' n a t o Humb er . ess , and the ble k coast line from Tyne _ W of hether they conquered the Roman capital York, F T HE T HE CO LONISATION O COAST. 3 5

e W the we d o p r whether it made t rms ith invaders , n ot know ; but it is not mentioned as the Chief town o f E n f - o f wi the nglish ki gs be ore the days Ead ne, u nder whom the two N orthum b rian C hieftainships:

w . ere united into a single kingdom However, as Eadwine assumed s ome o f the imperial Roman t t a at rappings , it seems not unlikely hat portion least of the Roman i sed population survived the con c d q uest . The two prin ipalities probably sprea back p olitically In m ost places as far as the watershed w hich separates the basins of t h e German Ocean and t h e Irish Sea ; but the English population seems t o ' h ave lived mainly along th e coast or in the fertile v alley of the Ouse and its tributaries 3 for — Elmet and Loidis two a n out , Welsh princip lities , lo g held in the the Leeds district, and the people of the dales and i n to nland parts, as we shall see reaso hereafter con

o e w . lude, ven now sho evident marks of Celtic descent T ogether the two Chieftainships were generally kno wn b orthumb erland now r y the name of N , confined to thei c entral portion 3 but it must never be forgotten that the o f n Lothians , which at present form part moder S o f cotland, were originally a portion this early E nglish kingdom , and are still, perhaps, more purely English in blood and speech than any other - district ur in o island . From Humber to the Wash was occupied by a s n m en econd E glish colony, the of Lincolnshire,

e m ‘ o ne o f thé divided into thre inor tribes , which ,

IG aina m s n t o . , has left its a e Gainsborough Here;

‘ a n o f h gain, we hear othing the conquest, nor of t e D 2 6 - R 3 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN . means by which the powerful Roman colony of o f l h Lincoln fell into the hands the Eng ish . But t e w to n still retains its Roman name, and in part Its Roman walls ; so that we may conclude the native not population was entirely exterminated . A e East nglia, as its name imports , was likewis l colonised by an English horde, divided , ike the men of Kent, into two minor bodies, the North Folk and l the South Fo k, whose names survive in the modern l A l counties of Norfolk and Suffo k . But in East ng ia, ll t o as in Yorkshire, we sha see reason hereafter con clud e that the lower orders of Welsh were largely l t spared , and that their descendants sti l form in par

C the labouring lasses of the two counties . Here , too, the English settlers probably Clustered thickest along l t the coast, ike the Danes in later days ; and the grea of m swampy expanse the Fens , then a ere waste of m l arshland tenanted by beavers and wi d fowl , formed the inland boundary or mark of their almost insular kingdom . The southern half of the coast was peopled by h Englishmen of the Saxon and jutis tribes . First C t he ame country of the East Saxons , or Essex, the flat land stretching from the borders of East Anglia one to the estuary of the Thames . This had been of

- l the most thickly popu ated Roman regions , containing n Cam alod unum the importa t stations of , London , k n l . and Veru am But we now nothi g, even by report, f o . its conquest Beyond it, and separated by the fenland of the Lea, lay the outlying little principality o f Middlesex . The upper reaches of the Thames T HE COLONISATION O F T HE COAST. 3 7

o f for w ere still in the hands the Welsh natives , the g reat merchant city of London blocked the way for

- t he pirate s to the head waters of the river. O n the south side of the estuary lay the Jutish o f p rincipalities East and West Kent, including the s of Rhutu iae trong Roman posts p , Dover, Rochester, a n d Canterbury . The great forest of the Weald and t h e Romney Marshes separated them from Sussex ; a nd the insular positions of Thanet and Sheppey had a lways special attractions for the northern pirates .

a Beyond the marshes , gain , the strip of southern s hore , between the downs and the sea, as far as nd of Hayling Isla , fell into the hands the South S axons, whose boundary to the east was formed by r Romney Marsh , and to the west by the flats nea

C hichester, where the forest runs down to the tidal

s . wamp by the sea The district north of the Weald , n ow known as Surrey, was also peopled by Saxon f reebooters at a later date , though doubtless far more s parsely .

Finally, along the wooded coast from Portsmouth t o G ewi ssas Poole Harbour, the , afterwards known as

the West Saxons , established their power . The Isle o f W ight and the region about Southampton Water, M eonwaras however, were occupied by the , a small l intrusive co ony of Jutes . Up the rich valley over looked by the great Roman City of Winchester (Venta B el aru m x not g ) , the West Sa ons made their way, and without severe opposition , as their own legends traditions tell us 3 and in Winchest er they fixed their c f r C apital o awhile . The long hain of Chalk downs 8 AN G Lo-z- " R T I 3 SAXON B I A N .

' behind the city formed their Weak northern mark or o to s b undary, while the west they eem always to have carried on a desultory warfare With the yet unsubdued b i A Welsh , commanded y the r great leader mbrosius ,

wh o m to A - b ri r A o s r . has left his na e mbres y g, me bu y not of We must , however, suppose that each thes e

colonies had from th e . fi rst a e united existence as a

- political community . We know that even the eight or ten kingdoms into whic h England was divided at th e dawn o f the historical period were each themselve s produced by the consolidation o f several still smaller C hieftainships . Even in the two petty Kentish king

“ - e n doms there were under kings , who had once b e ” t kin independent . Wigh was a distinct n m till the

reign of Ceadwalla in Wessex . The later province o f

Mercia was composed of minor divisions , known as . Hwi ccas d l Hecan the , the Mid le Eng ish , the West , f and so forth . Henry of Huntingdon , a historian o

h w v to ) t e t elfth century, who had access , howe er,

several valuable and original sources of information . n w a C m o lost , tells us that m ny hieftains came fro MerCi a ' E A and Germany, occupied and ast nglia ,

often fought with one another for the supremacy. o f In fact , the petty kingdoms the eighth century ' were themselves the result of a consolidation of many forgotten principalities founded by the first

conquerors . Thus the earliest England with which we are histori c ally acquainted consisted ofa mere long strip or border l C and of Teutonic coast , divided into tiny hieftainships, and girding round half of th e - eastern and southern

0 - 4 ANGLO SAXON B R ITAIN .

A R CH PTE V .

T HE IN R N EW ENGLISH THEI HOMES .

l n any trust at all can be p aced in the lege ds, a lull i n l for the conquest followed the first sett ement, and some fifty years the English — or at least the West

S axons — were engaged in consolidating their own u dominions, without making any f rther attack upon l of . t o those the We sh It may be well, therefore, e nquire what changes of manners had come over them i n consequence of their change of place from the S hores of the Baltic and the North Sea to those of l the Channe and the German Ocean .

As l l a who e, Eng ish society remained much the same in Britain as it had been in Sleswick and North

Holland . The English came over in a body, with their women and children , their flocks and herds , s l of their goods and chattel . The pecu iar breed c attle which they brought with them may still be dis t inguish ed i n their remains from the earlier Celtic short-horn associated with Roman ruins and pre

historic barrows . They came as settlers , not as mere m arauders ; and they remained banded together in their original tribes and families after they had

o ccupied the soil of Britain . From the moment of their landing in Britain the N R N EW T HE ENGLISH I THEI HOMES . 4 1 s avage corsairs of the Sleswick flats seem wholly to l n h ave laid aside their seafaring habits . They bui t o more ships , apparently ; for many years after Bishop Wilfrith had to teach the South Saxons how to catch s ea -fi sh 3 while during the early Danish incursions we “ h ear distinctly that the English had no vessels 3 nor is there much incidental mention o f shipping between m lfr th e age of the settle ent and that of E ed . The n ew- comers took up their abode , at once o n the r of n ichest parts Roman Britai , and came into full e nj oyment of orchards which they had not planted f a nd fields which they had not sown . The state o c ultivation in which they found the vale of York and the Kentish glens mus t have been widely different from that to which they were acc ustomed in their

- A o ld . heath clad home ccordingly, they settled down a t once into farmers and landowners on a far larger scale than o f yore 3 and they were no t anxious to move away from the rich lands which th ev had so easily acquired . From being sailors and graziers

I II th they took to be agriculturists and landmen . e of towns , indeed , they did not settle 3 and most these continued to bear their old Roman or Celtic A f i . ew n titles may have been destroyed , especially l Ande rida and the first onset, ike , , at a later date , Chester ; but the greater number seem to have been s l r l till scanti y inhabited , unde Eng ish protection , by a mixed urban population , mainly Celtic in blood , and

L ri ns known by the name of oeg a . It was in the l country, however, that the Eng ish conquerers took h . t e no up their abode They were tillers of soil , t 2 - R 4 ANG LO SAXON B ITAIN .

m a or erch nts skippers , and it was long before they f r a acquired a taste o urban life . The whole e stern half of England is filled with villages bearing the; C a n har cteristic English clan ames, and marking each

. As the home of a distinct family of early settlers . ' soon as the new- comers had burnt the villa of the old

l out or . Roman proprietor, and kil ed , driven , enslaved n s his aba doned serfs, they took the land to themselve on and divided it out their national system . Hence the whole government and social organisation of l u i o n England is pure y Te ton c, and the c untry eve l a n of lost its o d name of Brit in for its new o e England .

of old in w ~ In England, as Sles ick , the village com n h munity formed the u it of English society . Eac n of such tow ship was still bounded by its mark forest, or fen it from n mere, , which divided its nearest eigh

. s to b e bours In each lived a single clan , suppo ed of T he kindred blood and bearing a common name . d marksmen and their serfs , the latter being conquere e W lshmen, cultivated the soil under cereals for bread, and l S of also for an unnecessari y large upply beer, as we

“ learn a t a : later date from numerous charters . Cattle of and horses grazed in the pastures , while large herds s pig were kept in the forest which formed the mark . Thus the early English settled down at once from a of and nation pirates into one o f agriculturists . Here

there, among the woods and fens which still covered a t of s large par the country , their little eparate com m unities rose in small fenced clearings or on low

- s s now d — to n i let , j oined by rainage the mai land 3

. th e w s th e while in ider valley , tilled in Roman times, R N EW TIIE ENGLISH IN THEI HOMES . 43

wealthier Chieftains formed their settlements and

allotted lands to their Welsh tributaries . Many m f a of for fa ily names appear in dif erent p rts England,

a reason which will hereafter be explained . Thus we B a si n _ s as find the g at Bassingbourn , in Cambridge B assin field at shire ; at g , in Notts ; Bassingham and o B assingthorpe, in Lincolnshire 3 and at Bassingt n , in n B illm s Northumberla d . The g have left their stamp

at Billing, in Northampton ; Billingford , in Norfolk 3

Billingham , in Durham 3 Billingley, in Yorkshire 3

fiv e Billinghurst , in Sussex 3 and other places in n m various other counties . Birmi gham , Nottingha , n f Wellington , Fari gdon , Warrington , and Walling ord

- are well known names formed on the same analogy . How thickly these Clan settlements lie scattered over Teutonic England may be judged from the number which occur in the London district alone — Kensing

n N - ton , Paddi gton , otting hill, Billingsgate , Islington ,

N n . ewingto , Kennington , Wapping, and Teddington

r o o o f There are altogether , 4 names this type in

England . Their value as a test of Teutonic colonisa t IOn 15 shown by the fact that while 4 8 occur in Nor

thumb erland 1 2 6 , 7 in Yorkshire, 7 in Lincolnshire , 1 f 8 6 0 53 in Norfolk and Suf olk , 4 in Essex, in Kent ,

nd 86 n 2 are u a in Sussex and Surrey, o ly fo nd in Corn

6 2 1 wall , in Cumberland , 4 in Devon , 3 in Worcester , 2 d m in Westmorelan , and none in Mon outh . Speak in r C the g gene ally, these lan names are thickest along l r original Eng ish coast, f om Forth to Portland ; they decrease rapidly as we move inland 3 and they die away altogether as we approach the purely Celtic west - R 4 4 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

l l l ll The Eng ish fami ies, however, probab y ti ed the soil l l A l - by the aid of We sh s aves 3 indeed , in ng o Saxon , t h e word serf and Welshman are u sed almost inter c l u l u hangeab y as eq iva ent synonyms . But tho gh many l f Welshmen were doubt ess spared rom the very first , n othing is more c ertain than the fact that they became l A l A IV lsh t horough y ng icized . few new words from e o r l Latin were introduced into the Eng ish tongue, but l l t hey were far too few sensib y to affe ct its vocabu ary . The langu age was and still is essentially Low German 3 a nd though it no w contains numerous words of Latin o r French origin , it does not and never did contain a n ll l l l y but the very sma est Ce tic e ement . The s ight number o f additions made from the Welsh consisted c hiefly of words connected with the higher Roman c v l — l — o r i i isation such as wal , street, and chester the n ew methods of agriculture which the Teuton learnt f l l w rom his more civi ised serfs . The Celt has a ays shown a great tendency to cast aside his native l anguage in Gaul , in Spain , and in Ireland and the isolation of the English townships must have had the f f e f ect o greatly accelerating the process . Within a few generations the Celtic slave had forgotten his t u l l ong e , his origin, and his re igion, and had deve oped o l l T en int a pagan Eng ish serf. Whatever e se the t d id it onic conquest , turned every man within the

English pale into a thorough Englishman . But the removal to Britain effected o ne immense “ ” c l hange . War begat the king . In S eswick the English had lived within their little marks as free and i all o f ndependent communities . In Britain the clans W IN R N E . T H E ENGLISH THEI HOMES 4 5, each colony gradually came under the military com l mand of a king. The ea dormen who led the various marauding bands assumed royal power in the new

C . country . Such a hange was indeed inevitable For l t o new not only had the Eng ish win the England , but l they had a so to keep it and extend it . During four hundred years a constant smouldering warfare was carried on between the foreigners and the native

Welsh on their western frontier . Thus the townships of each colony entered into a Closer union with one another for military purposes, and so arose the separate

C n m hieftainships or petty ki gdo s of early England . ’ H But the king s power was originally very small . e was merely the semi - hereditary general and represent of the ative the people, of royal stock, but elected by f free su frages of the freemen . Only as the kingdom s d w of m coalesce , and as the po er eeting became con sequently less , did the king acquire his greater pre i ro at v es. g From the first, however, he seems to have the possessed the right of granting public lands , with of n l consent the freeme , to particular individua s 3 and

- l such book land, as the early English ca led it, after of the the introduction Roman writing, became our origin of system of private property in land . Every township had its moot or assembly of free m en oak or e , which met around the sacred , on som or of holy hill , beside the great stone monument C some forgotten Celtic hieftain . Every hundred also o f had its moot , and many these still survive in their

original form to the present day, being held in the n t or ope air, near some sacred si e conspicuous land - R 4 6 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN. m A l . nd ark the co ony as a whole had also its moot, all n at which freemen might atte d, and which settled ff A the general a airs of the kingdom . t se last named moots the kings were elected 3 and the l 0 selection was practica ly confined to men kin, the king nevertheless represented t e o f

" f the tribe . Be ore the conversion t the

' ' “ l all tO Wo d n royal fami ies traced their origin e . Thus

” of the pedigree of Ida, King Northumbria, runs as f l Eo i n Eo a was o lows Ida was pp g, pp Esing, Esa I n uin I n ui An enwi tin A n enwit Alocin was g g, g g g, g g, A e B enocin e B aldae in lo g, Beno Branding, Brand g g, ” l W nin Bae daeg o d e g . But in later Christian times t he chroniclers felt the necessity o f reconciling these h eathen genealogies with the Scriptural account in Genesis ; so they affiliated Woden himself upon the

Hebrew patriarchs . Thus the pedigree of the West l Saxon kings, inserted in the Chronic e under the year 8 o of E thelwulf 55, after c nveying back the genealogy

“ ‘ F realafin to Woden , continues to say, Woden was g, ” realaf n S ceafi n F Finning, and so o till it reaches g,

' ’ ’ ’ st l z zz N e Ark zo e fi s o 3 he was born in Noe s . Lamech, M ath usalem Malaleh el , Enoc, Jared , , Camon , Enos,

’ ‘ ‘ ” A mz s l e a fe noszer m z zomo z r . Seth, dam , p p

A - l n The nglo Saxons, when they sett ed in Easter and Southern Britain , were a horde of barbarous heathen pirates . They massacred or enslaved the civilised or half- civilised Celtic inhabitants with u savage ruthlessness . They b rnt or destroyed the monuments of Roman occupation . They let the roads a nd C ities fall into utter disrepair . They stamped out

8 ANG Lo- R 4 SAXON B ITAIN .

A R CH PTE VI .

T HE O F T HE R R CONQUEST INTE IO .

F R OM the little strip of eastern and southern coast on which they first settled, the English advanced slowly into the interior by the valleys o f the great l the rivers, and fina ly swarmed across central dividing ridge into the basins of the Severn and the Irish Sea . Up the open river mouths they could make their way h - s in t eir shallow bottomed boat , as the Scandinavian pirates did three centuries later 3 and when they reached the head of navigation in each stream for the l small draught of their ight vessels , they probably took t o l l n r the and and sett ed down at once, leavi g furthe

t F r inland expeditions o their sons and successors . o this second step in the Teutonic colonisation o f

Britain we have some few traditional accounts , which seem somewhat more trustworthy than those of the l first settlement . Unfortunate y, however, they apply l for the most part on y to the kingdom of Wessex , and not and to the North the Midlands , where such l d etails would be of far greater va ue . The valley of the Humber gives access to the great

o f . n central basin the Trent Up this fruitful basi , l at a somewhat later date, apparent y, than the settle ment of Deira and Lincolnshire , scattered bodies of F T HE R R T HE CONQUEST O INTE IO . 4 9

n E nglish colonists, under petty leaders whose ames m have been forgotten , see to have pushed their way f d orward through the broad lowlands towar s Derby,

Nottingham , and Leicester . They bore the name of

l " n M . idd e E glish Westward, again , other settlers

i chfi r aised their capital at L eld . These formed the of advanced guard the English against the Welsh, and hence their country was generally known as the Mark , or March , a name which was afterwards latinized into o f o f the familiar form Mercia . The absence all t n t o of raditio as the colonisation this important tract, of r one of the heart England, and afterwa ds the three d A - o ne t o ominant nglo Saxon states, leads suppose that the process was probably very gradual , and the C hange came about so slowly as to have left but little t on At race the popular memory . any rate, it is c ertain that the central ridge long formed the division between the two races ; and that the Welsh at this period still occupied the whole western watershed , e xcept in the lower portion of the Severn valley . fl ow The Welland , the Nene , and the Great Ouse , o f ing through the centre the Fen Country , then a u l ow m vast morass, st dded with and arshy islands , to g ave access the districts about Peterborough , S f . o tamford, and Cambridge Here , too, a body u G rwa s nknown settlers , the y , seem about the same t to l A ime have planted their co onies . t a later date they coalesced with the Mercians . However, the c omparative scarcity of villages bearing the English c lan names throughout all these regions suggests the n h probability that Mercia, Middle England, a d t e E ' 50 ANGLO -SAXON f BR IT AI N :

‘ " ’ Fen Count ry were not by any me ans . so : d ensely ' colonised as t h e coast districts 3 and independent

’ Welsh communi ti es long held out among the . isolated dry tracts of the fens as robbers a nd outlawsl I n Of th e we S axonSZ ha the south , the advance st d

b een 2 0 to b .t he checked in 5 , according the legend , y ' of A o f e prowess rthur, king the D vonshire Welsh . u As . s Mr Guest acutely notes, some special ca se mu t ' ' ‘ have been at work to make th e B ri tonS resist here so desperately as to maintain for half a century a weak ' ' frontier within little more than twenty m iles Of Win ' ' ' - h r W ax n C ec este est S o . He a , the apital . suggests th t the ' ' agreat ch oir of Ambrosius at Am e sbury Was p rob ably f the C of t he hief Christian monastery Britain, and that Wézl shman may here have been fighting for all that was v . m ost ; M - ~ sacred to him on earth oreover, j ust behind

' ' ’ ' I SIOOCI the myste ri ous national monument of Stone

n r o f : l or . l henge , the ho ou ed tomb. some Ce tic sti l

: 2 . h . t e earlier aboriginal chief - But in 55 , English

’

. m se Chronicle tells us, Cy ric, the West Saxon king, cros d the 'd owns n n behi d Winchester, and descended upo the a t T he t h e dale Salisbury . Roman own occupied ; t

r l - Of t h nric squa e hi l fort Old S a urn, and t ere Cy put n k S n the Welsh to flight a d too the tro ghold by storm . ' ' ' The road was thus op ened in the rear t o the upper ' waters of the Thames (impassable b efore 'b ecause of l s the Roman population of London) , as we l as toward ' la nric l h . C the va ley of t e Bath Avon . Four years ter y and hi s son C eawlin once more advanced as far as

- in rar B arb ur l m lund er d . y hi l fort, probably on a ere p g '

. f. wlin ; in . C tithwulf o C ea But 5 , brother , again E R R 1 T HE CONQUEST OF T H INTE IO . 5

‘ “ n and t l s ni arChed orthward, fought agains the We h

a Lenb ur t Bedford , and took four towns, y (or n A B ensin to m n Leighto Buzzard) , ylesbury, g ( ear m ’ r n . T Dorcheste in Oxfordshire) , and E sha hus the West Saxons overran the whol e upper v all ey o f - the Thames from Berkshire to above Oxford; and formed a j unction with the Middl e Saxons to the north of London ; while eastward they Spread a s far n f aS the northern bou daries o Essex . In 57 7 the

same intruders made a Still more important m ove .

- « CroSsing the central w atershed of near

' Chipp enham f th ey descended upon the broken valle y ’ of B att on and f v , the ' ound themselves the first E nglish men who a reached any o f the basins which At po int westward towards the Atlantic se aboard . a doubtful place named Deorham (probably Dyrham - n CII thwine Ceawlin n th e ear B ath) , and fought agai st ' e e w onmail Condidan W lsh , and sl three kings , C , and , La F arinm ail o nd , and took three towns fr m them , G i n t loucester, and C re ces er, and Bath Thus the thre e great Roman cities Of the lower Severn valley

‘ fe o th e h of ll int ands the West Saxons, and the Eng lis h for the first time stood face t o face with the

western sea. Though the story o f these c onquests is (Of cohrse recorded frOm «mere tra dition at a much ’ ' ’ a date it l a of or l ter , stil has ring truth , at least of b b o a t o pro a ility, ab ut it , which Is wholly w nting the r e s not t o f earlie l gend If we are certain as the acts ,

" w e can at l east acc ept the m as symbolical Of the mahner in Which the West S axon power wormed its way ov er the upper basin of the Thames and E 2 - R 5 2 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN . c rept gradually along the southern valley of the

S evern . The Vi ctory of Deorham has a deeper importance o f own its , however, than the mere capture of the t Ci t Ies - o f hree great Roman In the south west Britain . o f By the conquest Bath and Gloucester, the West l l Saxons cut off the We sh of Devon , Cornwal , and S omerset from their brethren in the Midlands and in l o f Wales . This iso ation the West Welsh , as the E l l ng ish thenceforth ca led them , largely broke the f p ower o the native resistance . Step by step in the s ucceeding age the West Saxons advanced by hard

fi w no l Axe ghting, but ith serious difficu ty, to the , to to the Parret, to the Tone , the Exe , to the Tamar, t ill at last the West Welsh , confined to the peninsula o f l w Cornwa l, became kno n merely as the Cornish m en of E , and in the reign thelstan were finally sub l l j ugated by the Eng ish , though sti l retaining their n u o w lang age and national existence . But in all the w estern regions the Celtic population was certainly s pared to a far greater extent than in the east 3 and t h e position of the English might rather be described as an occupation than as a settlement in the strict s f ense o the word . The westward progress of the Northumbrians is l l son o f ater and much more historica . Theodoric , old Ida, as we may perhaps infer from the Welsh ll and ba ads , fought long not always successfully with

of 2 a who Urien Strathclyde . But in 59 , says B eda, l ived himself but three - quarters o f a century later “ t th e d t e han event he describes, there reigne over h T HE T HE R R CONQUEST OF INTE IO . 53 kingdom o f the Northumbrians a most brave and E thelfrith wh o r ambitious king, , , more than all othe o f h of nobles the Englis , wasted the race the Britons for no one of no one of our C has our kings , hieftains , rendered more of their lands either tributary to or an of l integral part the Eng ish territories, whether by ” r n 6 0 6 subjugating o expatriating the atives . In

E thelfri th now a s rounded the Peakland , known n Derbyshire , and marched from the upper Trent upo “ h ad a the Roman city of Chester . There e m e f rfidious tw terrible slaughter o the p e race . Over o thousand Welsh m onks from the monastery o f Bangor I scoed were slain by the heathen invader 3 but B aeda explains that E thelfrith put them to death becaus e they prayed against him 3 a sentence which strongly suggests the idea that the English did not usually kill

- non combatant Welshmen . The victory of Chester divided the Welsh power in the north as that of Deorham had divided it in th e e south . Henceforward, the Northumbrians bore rul t o th e from sea sea , from the mouth of the Humber to f E th elfri th mouths o the Mersey and th e Dee . u even kept p a rude navy in the Irish Sea . Thus the Welsh nationality was broken up into three separate

— s and weak divisions Strathclyde in the north , Wale

Dam nonia or th e in the centre , and , Cornwall, in A m south . gainst these three frag ents the English

presented an unbroken and aggressive front , North n a n a umbria standi g over ag i st Strathclyde , Merci steadily pushing its way along the upper valley of th e n Severn against North Wales , and Wessex adva cing 54 ANGLo-S AXON

' i n the s outh against South Wales and athe We st:Welsh '

f m D . Thu th lccm o e~ So erset, evon , and Cornwall s

of l e he : quest the interior was practically comp et . T re

‘ f t e t o . h still remained , it is true , the subjugation wes ; but the west was brought under the English ‘ overlmd

. r d ff r m r ship by slow degrees, and in a ve y i e ent anne f or v t he r rom the east and the south coast, e en : cent al

’ Sunder E belt. ; Cornwall finally yielded , . thelstan ;

’ r b the En lish i n Strathclyde was g adually absorbed y . g ' ' h h n n ” t e sout o . s and the Scottish kingdom the orth 3 ' and ’ the last remnant of Wales only:succumb edrt o the ' - w intruders under the rule of the Angevin Ed ard I .

’

There were, in fact , three epochs of English exten h as o ne of sion in Britai n . The first e p oc w colonisa '

tion on the coasts and along the . valleys of t he

n : h eastward rivers . The seco d ep o c was one of con quest and partial settlement in th e jcentral plateau and

T h n - o f the westward basins . e third epoch w as o e m erelyfipolitical subjugation in the west ern “ zm ountai n ' region s : The proofs of i th ese xasserti ons -we .mus t

examine . at length i n the s ucceedin g Chapter:

- R 5 6 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN . the country as far as the central dividing ridge can b e accounted as to any overwhelming extent English i n of th e blood . It is admitted that the population

l of l o f l . Scottish High ands , Wa es , and Cornwa l is

l l s certainly Ce tic . It is a so admitted that there exist a large mixed population o f Celts and Teutons in e n Strathclyde and Cumbria , in Lancashire , in the S ver

ll . Va ey, in Devon, Somerset , and Dorset The northern and western half of Britain is acknowledged to be l l f m ain y Celtic . Thus the question real y narrows itsel l o f down to the ethnical pecu iarities the south and east . f e o . H re, the surest evidence is that anthropology We know that the pure Anglo -Saxons were a round

- - - skulled , fair haired, light eyed , blonde complexioned race 3 and we know that wherever (if anywhere) we

find unmixed Germanic races at the present day ,

l s High Dutch , Low Dutch , or Scandinavian , we a way meet with some of these same personal peculiaritie s l u of in a most every individ al the community. But l w l ll a we a so kno that the Ce ts , origina y themselves l A m l n similar b onde ryan race , ixed argely in Britai

one or l - ll - with more ong sku ed dark haired, black

- identi eyed, and brown complexioned races , generally fi ed or the with the Basques Euskarians , and with

Ligurians . The nation which resulted from this mix

s ture showed traces of both types , being sometime

b l - blonde , sometimes runette 3 sometimes b ack haired ,

- - sometimes red haired , and sometimes yellow haired . Individuals of all these types are still found in the l l o f undoubted y Ce tic portions Britain , though the dark type there unquestionably preponderates so far T HE NATUR E OF T HE ENGLISH SETTLEM E NT . 57

of as numbers are concerned . It is this mixed race

A non-A fair and dark people , of ryan Celts with ryan L l as Euskarians or igurians , which we usua ly describe to Celtic in modern Britain , by contradistinction the f‘ o . later .wav e Teutonic English t o o f Now, according the evidence the early

d . historians , as interprete by Mr Freeman and other authors (whose arguments we shall presently m e exa ine) , the English s ttlers in the greater part of South Britain almost entirely exterminated the Celtic population . But if this be so , how comes it that at da our n the present y a large proportion of people , eve

- ? in the east , belong to the dark and long skulled type

: The fact is th at t up on this subj ect the historians are largely at variance with the anthropologists and as a e the historical evidence is we k and inferential , whil the anthropological evidence is strong and direct; there can be v ery little doubt which we ought t o accept . Professor Huxley [Essay On some Fixed Points in British has shown that th e melanochroic or dark type of Englishmen is identical o f l in the shape the skul , the anatomical peculiarities , l of h and the co our of skin , hair, and eyes with that t e

n l i co tinent , which is undeniably Ce t c In the wider

— t l sense that is o say, be onging to the primitive non

Teutonic race , which s poke a Celtic language , and

of I Li urIan was composed mixed Celtic, berian , and g

elements . Professor Phillips points out that in York and ies eci all o f shire, p y in the plain York , an essen

tiall - y dark , short , non Teutonic type is common while persons o f the same Characteristics abound - R N ANGLo SAXON B ITAI .

- u A of t incOlnshire among the supposed p re . nglians L ' T he re n n m Ea t A n lia i : y a fou d in great u bers , in s g , ar d n they are not rare ev en in Kent . I Sussex and Essex r are com they occu less frequently, and they also

arativ el . . B . p y scarce in the Lothians Dr eddoe , Dr hurnam and o r T . the anthropologists have collected m f m to t. . uch evidence the sa e ef ec Hence we may

’ ’ - c onclude with great probability that large numbers of.

‘ the d esc endants of t he dark Britons still zsurv iv e eve n.

As to of . o n the T eutonic coast . the descendants the

‘ ' t of C r m light: Bri ons , we cannot, ou se , separate the ' ‘ - from . those of the like complexioned English invaders ' i n truth O But , even in the east itself, save nly perhaps e a ‘ in Suss x and Essex , the dark and f ir types have ' l n since l e b ‘ m arri e o g . so largely coa esc d y ag that there ’ are probably few o r no real l Teutons . or real Celts d i a a ll A i in iv dually distinguishable t . bsolutely fa r

’ eo le 'of p p , the Scandinavian or true German sort , with l e m t very ight hair and very pal blue eyes , are al os

unknown among us 3 and when they do occur, they

occur Side by side with relations . of every other Shade . As our l com lexIon a rule , peop e vary infinitely in p ' - . and anatomical r type , f om the quite squat, long headed, swarthy peasants whom we som etim es meet with in

fl axen-haire d red- rural Yorkshire , to the tall, , cheeked ' m en a not .whom we occ sionally find only in Danish

D . erbyshire , but even in mainly Celtic Wales and As C . ornwall to the west, Professor Huxley declares , l ha i b on purely anthropologica grounds , t t t is pro ably, n l o c f. the whole, more deep y Celti than Ireland itsel These anthropological opinions are fully borne 'out ' Z i : T HE N AT UR E O F T HE E NGLISH SET TLEMENT. 59

by th oSe scientific archaeologists whohave done most i n th e way of ep Oring the tombs and other remains ' r e o of the early Anglo Saxon invaders . P of ssor R lle

’ : n whohas b e . of sto , pro ably xamined more skulls this

d an z o ther v t s . Con perio than y in es igator, sum up his '

‘ s ideration of those o btained from Romano - British and Anglo - Saxon i nterments by saying; should be ' '

‘ -1 7 i nclined to think that wholesal e massacres of. the con

' i

- uered R om ano Britonsw ere a a e . q r re, and that wholes l importations of Anglo -S axon women were not much

” ‘ m fr out ore equent . He points that we have

. . a natomica l evidence for saying that two -Or more: distinct varieties o f men existed in England both : previously to and durmg the period o f the Teutonic n T h u invasio n a d domination . e interments Show s ' “ ‘ that the races which inhabited Britain b efore the

' “ English conquest continued in part toinhabit it after "

i

’ t C dolichoce hali or lon -S tha onquest. The p , g kulled

" of a E l type men , who, in p rt, preceded the ng ish , I have been found abundantly In the Suffolk region of the Littus S axoni cum , where the Celt and Saxon [Englishman]are not kno wn to have met as enemies — ” ’ A w " w hen East nglia became a kingdom . Thus e see ' ' that just where people of the dark type occur ab und a ntl of t he y at the present day, skulls corresponding sor t are met with abundantly in interments o f the A S A mn nglo axon period . Similarly, Mr . ker a , after “ T he n: explorations In tombs , observes, total expulsio ' o r extInctIon of the Romano British population by t he invaders will scarcely h e insiste d upo n i n this age ” c f e . o t nquiry Nay, even in Teut nic Kent, Ju e and - 6 0 ANGLO SAXON B R ITAIN .

l h n s Briton sti l e side by side i the ame sepulchres . Most modern Englishmen have somewhat long rather l o f a than round sku ls . The evidence arch eology

’ supports the evidence o f anthropology in favour o f l of s the be ief that some , at least, the native Briton were spared by the invading host . O n the h other and , against these unequivocal testi m onies of modern research we have to set the testi of l a on mony the ear y historical uthorities , which the m l r l in Teu tonic theory ain y e ies . The authorities l ae l h question are three , Gi das , B da , and the Eng is ' to Chronicle . Gildas was , or professes be , a British wh o h monk , wrote in the very midst of the Englis n e l for conquest, whe the invaders w re sti l confined,

- . O s the most part, to the south eastern region bjection a k a have been raised to . the uthenticity of his wor , l d T he sma l rhetorical Latin pamphlet , entitle , of B History the ritons 3 but these objections have,

' for m an m ind s . t perhaps, been set at rest y b y Dr Gues

. . s and Mr Green Nevertheless, what little Gilda has t o l l te l us is of s ight historical importance . His book a d d o n is isappointing Jeremia , c uched i the florid and inflated Latin rhetoric so common during zth e i m a decadence of the Roman empire , nter ingled with strong fl avour of hyperbolical Celtic i magination 3 and it teaches us practically nothing as to the state of the I - ll conquered districts . t is who y occupied with fierce l t o diatribes against the Saxons , and comp aints as the

‘ o f B ritish chie f weakness , wickedness, and apathy the a s l l l t ins . It ays itt e that can throw any ight on the t o l l d question as whether the .Welsh were arge y spare , N T HE NATU R E O F T HE ENGLISH SETTLEME T. 6 1

t hough it abounds with wild and vague . declamation

f . a bout the extermination o the natives Even Gildas , ow n o f o h ever, mentio s that some his c untrymen ,

: constrained by famine , came and yielded themselves u « e p to their enemies as slaves for ever 3 while oth rs , “ committing the safeguard o f their lives to moun t and ains , crags , thick forests , rocky isles , though f h ir w t s in t e . ith rembling heart , remained fatherland These passages certainly suggest that t a Welsh rem

’ n ant survive d in two ways within the English pale ,

fi t as i t . rs as slaves, and secondly sola ed outlaws Hi s B aeda stands on a very different footing . authenticity is undoubted ; his language is : simple r H e . o and straightforward . was born in about the

6 2 two ea . n of y ear - 7 , . only hundred y rs after the landi g

l S carcel f t he first English C o onists in Thanet. y more

’ than a century separated him from the days of Ida . The constant lingering warfare with ‘ the Welsh on the ' w estern frOntier waS still for him a living . fact. The ' l At d f C elt still held ha f o f Britam . the ate o his birth the northern Welsh still retained their inde p e nd ence in Strathclyde 3 the Welsh proper still spread t o the banks o f the Severn 3 and the Wes t Welsh o f

l owne a ll . of Cornwall sti l d -the peninsula south the B ristol Channel as far e astward as the Somersetshire

m a . rshes Beyond Forth and Clyde , the Picts yet r of uled over the greater part the Highlands , while

wh o o f the Scots , have now given the name Scotland

t o the i whole of Britain beyond the Chev ots , were a m ere IntrusIv e Irish colony in Argyllshire and the W in estern Isles . He lived, short, at the very period - 16 2 - R ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

‘ ' ' ‘ when . B ri taingwas still i n the a ct of b ecoming England nd o h d s Of a n s O th e a . n istorical oubt y ort hang ver “ o f fhi s s authenticity great work, The Ecclesia tical ’ ” Histor Of t he ae u nfor u e y English people . But B da t h a e e S t m " t ly knows little mor about the first et le ent -he r he u s than could lea n from Gildas, whom q ote ' ’ v l er oo z m a m ost o z . o f He tells us , however, nothing ex f “ ” “ . o termination the Welsh Some, he says, were

- ' slaughtered 3 ; some g av e th em sel ves up t o undergo ' : r n . : a nd . som e slavery some ret eated beyo d the sea ,

i th ei rfown i n. remain ng in land, lived a miserable life ' ” i m r l h - é e . t e - . s mountains and forests In all this , he y ztranscribi ng Gildas; b ut he saw no f i tnp rob abili ty i n '

. h . At e d e E th elfrith of ort um the words a lat r at , , N ' ' tells e m ore of i r bria, he us, render d their lands e the or an t r i tributary to integral part of the English e r tory, fi 1 ” Whe th er by subjugati g. or expatriating the natives,

n r i us k in - hi con a ev o . E s than y p g adwine, before

‘ ' ‘ h ve e t o th e em ire . of the s t e rsion , subdu d p Engli h ” Mev anian islands, Manand Anglesey. 3 but we know ' i ' that the population of both i sl ands is still m ainly ' ’ f i n l n . m su Celtic b ood ;a d speech . These exa ples fi cientl S us t a of y how , h t even before the introduction

Christianity, the English did . not always utterly destroy ' - l r And the We sh inhabitants of conquered dist icts .

“

His dm e athat e . e universally a itt d , aft r their conv rsion , t Wel sh in a n hey fought With the a milder m n er,

' i 1 T he or in the or nal ex ter m m a tzlr b ut of Course w d igi is ,

‘ ex ter mm a r e then b ore i ts e tym ol ogi cal sens e of expatriation o r e ul o n not rel of Co n sca t on le it certa nl xp si , if me y fi i , whi i y did

ot l th idea of lau t er Connoted the m o ern. or . Sn p e g , by d w d im y s s h

6 O - R 4 ANGL SAXON B ITAIN .

u s . . . n , at least , the manner in which the later E glish l f a uIr c ed . be ieved their orefathers had q the . land u l l Moreover, these frightf l detai s accord we l enough l f w . o ith the vague genera ities Gildas, from which, w ho ever, they may very possibly have been manu fac r t u ed . Yet even the Chronicle nowhere speaks o f absolute extermination that idea has been wholly

r l . ead into its words , not direct y inferred from them

A great . deal has been made of the massacre at Pe v ensey but we hear nothing of similar massacres a t t he — at n , great Roman cities Londo , at York, at w u Verulam , at Bath , at Cirencester , hich wo ld surely have attracted more attention than a small outlying

An ri a fortress like d e d . Even the Teutonic champions l themse ves admit that some, at least , of the Celts l were incorporated into the Eng ish community . “ ” m l l n . The wome , says Mr Free an , wou d, doubt ess , b e l l t o he large y spared whi e as the men, observes , m a u or we y be s re that death , emigration , personal slavery were the only alternatives which the v an ” r quish ed found at the hands of o u fathers . But of there is a vast gulf, from the ethnological point l 1 ens av In It . View, between exterminating a nation and g l CIt Ie s . In the , Indeed , it wou d seem that the

. Britons , remained in great numbers The Welsh bards complain that the urban race of Rom am sed “ n Loe rians . atives known as g , became as Saxons

1 In t an a few o t er ca e m o ern aut or t e are uo te his d ' h s s , d h i i s q d m erely to sh ow tha t th e essenti al fa cts of a l arge Welsh survival are really admitte d even by tho s e w h o m ost strongly a rgu e i n n favour of th e general Teutonic origin of Englishme . T HE . 6 L HE NATUR E OF ENGLISH SETTLEMENT 5

not Mr. Kemble has shown that the English did by any m eans always massacre the inhabitants of the “ t cities . Mr. Freeman observes , It is probable tha within the [English] frontier there still were Roman towns tributary to the conquerors rather than occupied ” by them 5 and Canon Stubbs himself remarks , that in some of the cities there were probably element s

: o f of continuous life London , the mart the merchants, e York , the capital of the north , and some others, hav ” “ h a continuous political existence . Wherever t e “ cities were spared , he adds , a portion , at least, of I n the city population must have continued also . l the the country, too, especial y towards the west and of debateable border, great numbers Britons may

- d have survived in a servile or half servile con ition . A But we must remember that in only two cases , nde rida and Chester, do we actually hear of massacres ; a a in all the other towns , B ed and the Chronicl e tell us nothing about them . It is a significant fact

that Sussex, the one kingdom in which we hear of a

com plete annihilation , is the very one where the of n Teutonic type physique still remai s the purest . But there are nowhere any traces of English clan

nomenclature in any of the cities . They all retain At their Celtic or Roman names . Cambridge itself, of in the heart the true English country, the charter ’ o f the thegn s guild , a late document , mentions a

special distinction of penalties for killing a Welshman , “ z if the slain be a ceorl, ores , if he be a Welshman , ” “ ” ~ one ore . The large Romanised towns , says Pro “ fessor o o no t a R llest n , doub m de terms with the F 6 N - R I 6 A GLO SAXON B ITA N .

wh o a C Saxons , bhorred ity life , and would p robably be content t o leave the unwarlike burghers in a con ” - dition of heavily taxed submissiveness . it Thus , even in the east is admitted that a Celtic element probably entered into the population in

— b three ways, y sparing the women , by making rural s of laves the men, and by preserving some, at least, n C l o f the inhabita ts of ities . The sku ls of these Angl icised Welshmen are found In ancient inter ments t heir descendants are still t o be recognised by their “ n physical type in modern E gland . It is quite “ possible, says Mr. Freeman , that even at the end of the sixth century there may have been within the English frontier inaccessible points where detached bodies of Welshmen still retained a precarious inde l en ence . p d . Sir F Palgrave has co lected passages t ending to show that parties of independent Welsh m en held out in the Fens till a very late period and t o this conclusion is admitted by Mr . Freeman be probably correct . But more important is the general survival of scattered Britons within the English com in m uniti es themselves . Traces of this we find even

- Anglo Saxon documents . The signatures to very 1 s early charter , collected by Thorpe and Kemble , supply us with names some of which are assuredly w not Teutonic, hile others are demonstrably Celtic ; and these names are borne by people Occupying high positions at the court of English kings . Names of this class occur even in Kent itself 5 while others are borne by members of the royal family of Wessex .

” “ - K m l n l axon Nam roc Arc n t . 1 8 . e b e On A g o S es . P . h . I s , 45 6 T HE NATUR E OF T HE ENGLISH SETTLEMENT . 7

“ The local dialect of t h e West Riding of Yorkshire s till contains many Celtic words 5 and the shepherds o f Northumberland and the Lothians still reckon their “ ” n sheep by what is known as the rhymi g score , which is really a corrupt form of the Welsh numerals

( n of a from o e to twenty . The laws Northumbri men

W who t o . tion the elshmen pay rent the king Indeed , i t is clear that even in the east itself the English were from the first a body o f rural colonists and land

« w of o ners , holding in subj ection a class native serfs , w t ith whom hey did not intermingle , but who gradually A ir became nglicised, and finally coalesced with the former masters , under the stress of the Danish and

Norman supremacies . the k In the west, however, English occupation too even less the form of a regular colonisation . The of Inc w laws , a West Saxon king, sho us that in his territories , bordering on yet unconquered British lands , the Welshman often occupied the position of

- o f . T a rent paying inferior, as well as that a slave he so - Nennius - called tells us that Elmet in Yorkshire, elsh long an intrusive principality, was not subdued by the English till the reign of Eadwine of Nor t humbria ort hum rian when , we learn , the N b prince “ ” kin z seized Elmet, and expelled Cerdic its g but n of othing is said as to any extermination its people . “ A s ae of B da incidentally mentions this Cerdic , king

” ” the Britons, Nennius may probably be trusted upon As the point . late as the beginning of the tenth E lfred century, King in his will describes the people “ o f o and h Dev n , Dorset, Somerset, Wilts, as Wels

F 2 - R 6 8 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

of in kin . The physical appearance the peasantry l the Severn va ley, and especially in Shropshire , Wor

c st rshire e e , Gloucestershire , and Herefordshire, indi cates that the western parts of Mercia were equally s Celtic in blood . The dialect of Lancashire contain

a large Celtic infusion . Similarly, the English clan villages decrease gradually in numbers as we move l westward, ti l they almost disappear beyond the

central dividing ridge . We learn from Domesday Book that at the date of the Norman conquest th e

number of serfs was greater from east to west , and

n r largest o the Welsh border. Mr . Isaac Taylo points out that a similar argument may be derived

from the area of the hundreds in various counties . The hundred was originally a body of one hundred n l E g ish families (more or less) , bound together by ’ u l l s mut al p edge , and answerab e for one another o f e conduct . In Sussex, the average number squar

l - miles in each hundred is on y twenty three 3 in Kent,

- fift - twenty four in Surrey, y eight ; and in Herts , seventy- nine : but in Gloucester it is ninety- seven ;

one - in Derby , hundred and sixty two in Warwick ,

- one hundred and seventy nine 5 and in Lancashire, h three hundred and two . These facts imply that t e English population Clustered thickest in the old w s settled east, but gre thinner and thinner toward A the Welsh and Cumbrian border. ltogether, the historical evidence regarding the western slopes o f ’ England bears out Professor Huxley s dictum as to h f t e thoroughly Celtic character o their population . On the ot to t her hand, it is impossible deny tha E 6 T HE NATU R E O F T H ENGLISH SETTLEMENT . 9

r M . Freeman and Canon Stubbs have proved their p oint as to the thorough Teutonisation of Southern

Britain by the English invaders . Though it may be

true that much Welsh blood survived in England ,

especially amongst the servile class , yet it is none the less true that the nation which rose upon the ruins of n Roman Britain was , in form and organisatio , almost

purely English . The language spoken by the whole c ountry was the same which had been spoke n in

Sleswick . Only a few words of Welsh origin relating to h agriculture , house old service , and smithcraft, were introduced by the serfs into the tongue of their of masters . The dialects of the Yorkshire moors , the of or Lake District, and Dorset Devon, spoken o l n y by wild herdsmen in the least cultivated tracts, retained a fe w more evident traces of the Welsh

: vocabulary but in York, in London, in Winchester, a nd A - of in all the large towns , the pure nglo Saxon the old England by the Shores of the Baltic was alone s t poken . The Cel ic serfs and their descendants to q uickly assumed English names , talked English o ne few another, and soon forgot, in a generations , t hat they had not always been Englishmen in blood a nd tongue . The whole organisation of the state , t h e a whole soci l life of the people, was entirely T “ ” eutonic . The historical civilisation, as Canon S “ ” not . tubbs admirably puts it, is English and Celtic T hough there may have been much Welsh blood left, i t of f - wh ran in the veins ser s and rent paying churls , o w of no ere political or social importance . These t wo aspects of the case Should be kept carefully - R 6 8 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

of in kin . The physical appearance the peasantry l the Severn va ley, and especially in Shropshire , Wor

c st rshire e e , Gloucestershire , and Herefordshire, indi cates that the western p arts of Mercia were equally s Celtic in blood . The dialect of Lancashire contain

a large Celtic infusion . Similarly, the English clan villages decrease gradually in numbers as we move t l wes ward, ti l they almost disappear beyond the

central dividing ridge . We learn from Domesday Book that at the date of the Norman conquest th e

number of serfs was greater from east to west , and

n l r largest o the Welsh border. Mr . Isaac Tay o points out that a similar argument may be derived

from the area of the hundreds in various counties . The hundred was originally a body o f one hundred n l E g ish families (more or less) , bound together by ’ l s mutual p edge , and answerable for one another

. e conduct In Sussex, the average number of squar

- miles in each hundred is only twenty three 3 in Kent,

- fift - twenty four 3 in Surrey, y eight ; and in Herts, seventy- nine : but in Gloucester it is ninety- seven 3

one - in Derby , hundred and sixty two 3 in Warwick

- one hundred and seventy nine 3 and in Lancashire, t h three hundred and wo . These facts imply that t e English population clustered thickest in the old

w s settled east, but gre thinner and thinner toward l A the We sh and Cumbrian border. ltogether, the historical evidence regarding the western Slopes of ’ England bears out Professor Huxley s dictum as to the thoroughly Celtic character of their population . On the o to t ther hand, it is impossible deny tha

- 7 0 ANGLO SAXON BR ITAIN .

m ” . w e of distinct Had they al ays b en separated, uch the discussion which has arisen on th e subject would doubtless have been avoided 3 for the strongest ad v o

cates of the Teutonic theory are generally ready to , i m a allow that Celtic women , ch ldren, and slaves y have been largely spared while the Celtic enthusiasts have thought incumbent upon them t o derive Eng lish t o f words from Welsh roots, and trace the origin o n to T h E glish social institutions Celtic models . e facts seem t o indicate that while the modern English c nation is largely Welsh in blood, it is wholly Teutoni f s in form and language . Each o us probably trace back his descent to mixed Celtic and Germanic ancestry : but while the Celts have contributed the

h : material alone , the Teutons have contributed bot

the material and the form . - N R N ANGLO SAXO B ITAI .

CHAPTER VIII .

D H E A T H E N E N G L A N .

picture t o ourselves the ge neral aspect o f the country aft er the English colo ni es had estab lished th em selves as far west as the Some rsetshir e T h h an hes the v and th e Dee . e e mars , Se ern , w ol l d was; d l u of occupie by litt e gro ps Teutonic settlers, each isolated by th e mark within the ir own t ownship each tilling the ground with their ow n hands and those of their Welsh serfs . The townships were rudely gat hered together into. p et ty Chieftainshi ps ; and these Chieft ainships tend ed grad ually t o aggregate r r h n l e o. a d s a int l ge king om , whic fi l y merg d in the

t r e . t a i i on s of t a h e great his oric l d vis Nor humbri , M e a and ess i si th at su i t o our rci , W ex ; d vi ons rv ve h own i e as the th the M la s and t e t . t m Nor , id nd , Sou h M e whi of th e an to ns er an le , most Rom w w e slowly “ ul at d f l nt sr so t a w depop e and el i o di epair, tha aste ” An l - Ch este r become s a comm on obj ect in. g o Sax on

i . n el t o a h i is i n h story Tow s b ong igher c v il at o , and i n l . ra n a had little place agricu tu l Engla d. The ro ds f were neglected or want of. commerce ; and . trade o d and a of t nly survive in London along the co st Ken , where the discovery of Frankish coins proves the existence of intercourse with the Teutonic kingdom z - X R A 7 ANGLO SA ON B IT IN . o f on of Neustria, which had grown up the ruins u northern Ga l . Everywhere in Britain the Roman civilisation fell into abeyance : in improved agriculture b l of a lone did any nota le re ic its existence remain . The century and a half between the conquest and t h e arrival of August ine is a dreary period o f unmixed barbarism and perpetual anarchy . From time t o time the older settled colonies kept s ending out fresh swarms of young emigrants towards A the yet unconquered west , much as the mericans and our n A C anadians have done in ow days . rmed with

- t heir long swords and battle axes , the new colonists C went forth in family bands , under petty hieftains , t o war against th e Welsh ; and when they had d on c onquered themselves a istrict , they settled it as l lords of the soi , enslaved the survivors of their e nemies , and made their leader into a king . Mean S while, the older colonies kept up their fighting pirit

by constant wars amongst themselves . Thus we read o f contests between the men of Kent and the West

S axons , or between conflicting nobles in Wessex o f itself. Fighting, in fact , was the one business the l English freeman , and it was but s owly that he settled

d own into a quiet agriculturist . The influence of t Christianity alone seems to have wrough the change .

Before the conversion of England , all the glimpses which we get of the English freeman represent him

only as a rude and turbulent warrior, with the very of spirit of his kinsmen, the later wickings the

north . An enormous amount of the country still remained HEATHEN ENGLAND . 7 3

o vergrown with wild forest . The whole weald of of Kent and Sussex, the great tract Selwood in e Wessex, the larger part of Warwickshire , the entir n two Peakland, the central dividing ridge betwee the s m eas fro Yorkshire to the Forth , and other wide a regions elsewhere , were covered with prim eval wood A w o lands . rden , Charn ood, Wychwood , Sherwo d , w and the rest, are but the relics of vast forests hich o h nce stretc ed over half England . The bear still lurked in the remotest thickets packs of wolves still ’ issued forth at night to ravage the herdsman s folds 3 wild boars wallowed in the fens or munched acorns under the oakwoods deer ranged over all the heathy tracts throughout the whole island ; and the wild now t o white cattle, confined Chillingham Park , roamed in many spots from north to south . Hence hunting was the chief pastime of the princes and e aldormen when they were not engaged in war with one -fl esh another or with the Welsh . Game, boar , and venison formed an important portion o f diet h to the t roughout the whole early English period, up n Norman conquest , and lo g after . The king was the recognised head of each comm u nit e t y, though his position was hardly mor than tha o f of i v leader the nobles in war . He rece ed an l ot a original in the conquered land , and remained o f S private possessor estates, tilled by his Welsh laves . was k of not of He ing the people, the country, and

is always so described in the early mon uments . Each king seems to have had a chief priest in his

kingdom . A NG Lo - SAx 0N R 7 4 B ITAIN .

There was no distinct capital for the petty king d om s; though a principal royal residence appears to n have been usual . But the ki gs possesse d many at 12mm or t s n of separ e es ate in their domai , in each which food and other material for their use were

C ollected by their serfs . They mov ed about with e one of a their suit from these to nother, consuming all ha d n a e for that bee prep r d them in each , and then n t x a passing o o the ne t. The king himself m de the in r j ourney the waggon d awn by oxen , which formed r his rude pre ogative . Such prim itive royal progresses

“ were absolutely necessary in so disj ointed a state of h n t e was to . society, if king govern at all O ly by moving about and seeing with his own eyes could he gain any information in a country whe re organisation was feeble and writing practically unknown only by consuming what was grown for him on the spot where it was grown coul d he and his suite obtain provisions

~ in th e rude sta te of Anglo Saxon communications . But such government as existed was mainly that o f the n local ealdormen a d the village gentry . l r Marriages were practica ly conducted by pu chase , ’ the wife being bought by the husband from her father s A l ves family. re ic of this custom perhaps still survi s the in the modern ceremony, when the father give was bride in marriage to the bridegroom . Polygamy not unkno wn ; and it was usual for men to m arry ’ f i w . r o their father s w do s The wives , being pa t the ’ ’ r r of o fathe s property, natu ally became part the s n s of heritage . Fathers probably possessed the right selling their children into Slavery and we know that HEATHEN ENGLAND . 7 5,

a at on . English sl ves were sold Rome , being c veyed r n thither by Frisian m e cha ts .

artiz an C a it was n : The l ss, such as , must have bee f C in rob abl i n a attached to the houses o the hiefta s , p y of servile position . Pottery was manufactured ex f ll n ut S . o s e ce e t b imple patterns Metal work was , cour ,

h A - w thoroug ly understood, and the nglo Saxon s ords and knives discovered in barrows are of good co n hi s who struction . Every chief had also minstrel , sang the short and j erky Anglo - Sa xon songs t o the f r T he d n an accompaniment o a ha p . dea were bur t d their ashes placed in tumuli in the north : the southe rn ar f r a nd tribes buried their w riors in ull military d ess, from their tombs much o f th e little kno wledge whic h is n we posse s s as t o their habits derived . The ce n wi rna have bee taken their swords, a yard long , th o

and - d n c mental hilt double cutting e ge, ofte overed by runic inscriptions ; their small girdle knives ; their

n — o n lo g spears ; and their round, leather faced, wo de

h f l . . T e o w h shields j ewellery is go d, enric hed it l or t . coloured ename , pearl , sliced garne Buckles , ai n and rings, bracelets , h rpins , ecklaces , scissors ,

o u . toilet requisites were als b ried with the dead . s - b Glas drinking cups , which occur amongst the tom s, were probably imported from the continent to Kent or London ; and some sm all trade certainly existed

. m n l wi o o ae . th the R a w rld, as we earn from B da In fa ith the English remained true t o their old u Te tonic myths . Their intercourse with the Christian Welsh was no t of a kind t o make them embrace the religion which must have seemed to them that of 6 - R 7 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

a S laves and enemies . B eda tells us that the English

to . worshipped idols , and sacrificed oxen their gods

Many traces o f their mythology are still left in our midst . First in importance among their deities came O of our Woden, the din Scandinavian kinsmen , whose name we still preserve in Wednesday (dies r ii l f l Me cur ) . To him every royal fami y o the Eng ish

. ut t raced its descent Mr. Kemble has pointed o m any high places in England which ke ep his name h t o . t e the present day Wanborough, in Surrey, at ’ - - l heaven water parting of the Hog s Back, was original y W n rh r h od esb eo o of . , the ill Woden Wanborough , of the in Wiltshire , which divides the valleys Kennet and the Isis , has the same origin as has also Wood h n e sb orou . ro g in Kent Wonston , in Hants , was p ’ Wam ool bably Woden s stone Wambrook , p , and ”W All ansford, his brook , his pool , and his ford . these n ames are redolent of that nature-worship which was s o of An - marked a portion the glo Saxon religion . G l now a odshill, in the Is e of Wight, crowned by S Christian church, was also probably the ite of early of Woden worship. The boundaries estates, as men tioned v in charters , gi e instances of trees, stones, and posts , used as landmarks , and dedicated to Woden, thus conferring upon them a religious sanction , like

A - that of Hermes amongst the Greeks . nglo Saxon worship generally gathered around natural features ; and sacred oaks , ashes , wells, hills , and rivers are a mong the commonest memorials of our heathen a ncestors . Many of them were reconsecrated after the i of t of ntroduction Christianity o saints the church ,

8 - R 7 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN . f u of armer, the world around was f ll spiritual beings, l h . alf divine , ha f devilish Fiends and monsters of h peopled the fens, and tales t eir doings terrified hi s childhood . Spirits of flood and fell swamped his

ni rs boat or misled him at night . Water co haunted the streams 3 fairies danced on the green rings of the pasture ; dwarfs lived in the barrows of Celtic or n C eolithic hieftains, and wrought strange weapons u l nderground . The mark, the forest , the hil s, were all full for the early Englishman of mysterious and o At ften hostile beings . length the Weirds or Fates swept him away . Beneath the earth itself, Hel, m and of S istress of the cold j oyless world hades , at ’ last received him 3 unless , indeed , by dying a warrior s d t o of eath, he was admitted . the happy realms

- Waelheal . As A m a whole , the nglo Saxon heathendo a f w s a religion o terrorism . Evil spirits surrounded m en S on every ide , dwelt in all solitary places , and stalked over the land by night . Ghosts dwelt in the forest 3 elves haunted the rude stone circles of elder

d . ll ays The woodland , still rea y tenanted by deer, l l wo ves, and wild boars , was also fil ed by popular

m . l i agination with demons and imps Charms , spe ls , and incantations formed the most real and living part of the national faith 3 and many o f these survived o f into Christian times as witchcraft . Some them , and re of the early myths , even continue to be

ated - p e in the folk lore of the present day . Such are the legends of the Wild Huntsman and o f

. had Wayland Smith Indeed , heathendom a strong h old over the common English mind long after the HEATHE N ENGLAND . 7 9 p ublic adoption of Christianity ; and heathen sacrifices c ontinued t o be offered in secret as late as the ur r our thirteenth century. O poet y and ordinary language is tinged with heathen ideas even i n modern times . w of Still more interesting, ho ever, are those relics et S n y earlier ocial states, which we find amo gst the

- n of Anglo Saxo s themselves . The production fire by rubbing together two sticks is a common practice a mongst all savages ; and it has acquired a sacred significance which causes it t o live on into more civil n fir i . eed e so sed stages Once a year the was lighted , a nd all the hearths of the village were rekindled from h “ t e blaze thus obtained . Cattle were passed through the fire t o pres erve them from the attacks of fiends 3 and perhaps even children were sometimes treated in m n the same a ner. The ceremony, originally adopted, h per aps , by the English from their Celtic serfs, still of as of lingers in remote parts the country, the lighting ’

on . e fires St John s Eve . Tattooing the face was pra ti sed by the noble classes . It seems probable that the e arly English sacrificed human victims , as the Germans certainly did to Wuotan (the High Dutch Woden) 3 w e of d and know that the practice suttee existe , and that widows slew themselves o n the death of their in t o husbands , order to accomp any them the other w orld . Even more curi ous are the vestiges of T ot e m i sm or m m t o , primitive ani al worship, com on all of A branches the ryan race, as well as to the North A A w merican Indians , the ustralian black fello s , and m n a y other savages . Totemism consists in the belief - 8 0 ANGLO SAXO N B R ITAIN . that each family is literally descended from a par

l r or and t icu a plant animal , whose name it bears 3 m embers of the family generally refuse to pluck the l f plant or kil the animal after which they are named . O these beliefs we find apparently several traces in Anglo l Saxon ife . The genealogies of the kings include such m of m and na es as those the horse, the are , the ash ,

l A l - f the whale . In the very ear y ng o Saxon poem o two of of Beowulf, the characters bear the names

Wulf and Eofer (boar) . The wolf and the raven were sacred animals, and have left their memory in many E th elwulf places, as well as in such personal titles as , the noble wolf. The boar was also greatly reverenced 3 for its head was used as an amulet, or as a crest h u the elmets, and oaths were taken pon it till late in ’ middle ages . Our own boar s head at Christmas is a f l f relic o the o d belief. The sanctity o the horse and

the ash has been already mentioned . Now many of the Anglo - Saxon clans bore names implying their

descent from such plants or animals . Thus a charter n E scin s or ash mentio s the g , sons of the , in Surrey 3 of l e another refers to the Earnings , or sons the eag Heartin s (earn) 3 a third to the g , or sons of the hart 3 W lfin s a a fourth to the y g , or sons of the wolf 3 and h rnin r k T o s o . oa fifth to the g , sons of the thorn The of has left traces his descendants at Oakington , in th e Cambridge the birch , at Birchington , in Kent 3

Eofer Evrin h am boar ( ) at g , in Yorkshire 3 the hawk, i n at Hawkinge , in Kent 3 the horse, at Horsington,

Lincolnshire 3 the raven, at Raveningham, in Norfolk 3 n W rm the sun, at Su ning, in Berks 3 and the serpent ( y ) , HEATHEN ENGLAND . 8 1 a t f n in Worming ord , Worminghall , and Wormingto ,

and . Essex, Bucks, Gloucester, respectively Every o ne of these objects is a common and well-known t otem amongst savage tribes 3 and the inference that a t some earlier period the Anglo-Saxons had been

Totemists is almost irresistible . M m oreover, it is an ascertained fact that the custo o f exogamy (marriage by capture outside the tribe) , on f and of counting kindred the emale side alone, accompanies the low stage of culture with which

Totemism is usually associated . We know also that this method of reckoning relationship obtained n A h t e . amo gst certain ryan tribes, such as Picts Traces of the ceremonial form of marriage by capture survived in England to a late date in the middle ages 3 h and therefore the custom of exogamy, upon whic the ceremony is based, must probably have existed amongst the English themselves at some earlier period . Even in the first historical age , a conquered king generally gave his daughter in marriage to his n conqueror, as a mark of submissio , which is a relic f o . N ow of the same custom , if members the various

— — on tribes Jutes, English , and Saxons, used at e time to one habitually intermarry with another, and to

C - of f i give their hildren the clan name the ather, t would follow that persons bearing the same clan n in ame would appear all the tribes . Such we find t o be actually the case . The Hemings , for instance, are — met with in six counties York, Lincoln , Hunt i n don ff n h g , Su olk, Northampto , and Somerset 3 t e Mannings occur in English Norfolk and in Saxon G 8 2 - R ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN . D orset 3 the Billings, and many other clans, have left n l t their ames over the whole and , from north o south a l and from e st to west a ike . It has often been assumed that these facts prove the intimate intermix ture of the invading tribes 3 but the supposition of of the former existence exogamy, and consequent

of C -n appearance similar lan ames in all the tribes, seems far more probable than such an extrem e mingling of different tribesmen over th e whole con l f quered territory . Part o the early English ceremony o f marriage consisted in the bridegr oom touching the o f l of head the bride with a shoe, a re ic, doubtless, the original mode of capture, when the captor placed A his foot on the neck o f his prisoner or Slave . fter ’ m h S arriage , the wife s air was cut hort, which is a S universal mark of lavery .

Thus we may divide the early English religion. u n of into fo r elements . First, the rem ants a very

primitive savage faith , represented by the sanctity o f al s otem i sm anim s and plant , by T , by the need l o f . fire, and by the use amulets , charms , and spe ls of A Second, the relics the old common ryan nature hunor or worship , found in the reverence paid to T , d o f Z s and Thun er, who is a form eu , in the sacred

n . ness of hills, rivers , wells, fords , and the ope air

of or - Third , a system Teutonic hero ancestor worship ,

r An rew I ow e this ingeni ous expl anation t o a not e i n M . d ’ ’ ’ r e t o Mr B oll an t ran l at on of Ar to tl e s Lang s ess ays p efix d . d s s i is

oli ti cs He h as t ere al o u e te th e anal of th e cl an P . h s s gg s d ysis

nam e for tra ces of ote o e re ult a e en a o e s T mism , wh s s s I h v giv b v i n art p . HEATHEN EN GLAND . 833:

t B aeldae o t . ypified by Woden, g, and the ther grea of ori In th e names the genealogies, and having its g In

ifica i n f . . de t o o n belief in ghosts Fourth, a certai abstract ideas, such as War, Fate, Victory , and Death . But the average heathen Anglo - Saxon religion was of merely a vast mass superstition, a dark and gloomy of m f terrorism , begotten the vague dread of is ortune

- which barbarians naturally feel in a half peopled land, where war and massacre are the highest business o f ’ o i every man s lifetime , and a violent death the rd nary wa in h y which e meets his end . 8 - R 4 ANG Lo SAXON B ITAIN .

A CH PTER IX.

T HE C R O F T HE L ONVE SION ENG ISH .

IT was impossible that a country lying within Sight f t he n l o orthodox Frankish ki gdom , and enc osed t wo S between Christian Churches on either side , hould long remain in such a state of isolated heathendom . For to be cut o ff from Christendom was to be cut off f l l l rom the whole socia , po itical , inte lectual , and com i l l m erc a . life of the civi ised world In Britain, as l d istinctly as in the Pacific Is ands in our own day, the m issionary was the pioneer of civilisation . The c hange which Christianity wrought in England in a few generations was almost as enormous as the c hange which it has wrought in Hawaii at the present i o f t me . Before the arrival the missionary, there w as no no written literature , industrial arts, no a p e ce , no social intercourse between district and

d . istrict The church came as a teacher and civiliser, a nd in a few years the barbarous heathen English warrior had settled do wn into a toilsome agricul

- or turist , an eager scholar, a peaceful law giver, an

e arnest priest . The change was not merely a change f l of o religion , it was a revolution from a ife barbarism u t o a life of incipient cult re , and slow but progressive c ivilisation .

- .8 6 AN L R G o SAXON B ITAIN .

for a s ae he fe red , say B da, to meet them within four w l S t a ls , lest they hould practice incan ations upon T h m s h im . e foreign onks advanced in proces ion to ’ n C l the ki g s presence , hanting their itanies , and dis E thelb rht l playing a silver cross . e yie ded almost at s once . He and all his court became Chri tians 3 and t the people, as is usual amongst barbarous ribes , f t o q uickly con ormed the faith of their rulers . E thelb erht gave the m issionaries leave t o build new

C or t o old hurches , repair the ones erected by the A Welsh Christians . ugustine returned to Gaul , where h e was consecrated as Archbishop of the English

n A . ation , at rles Kent became thenceforth a part of

t h e great Continental system . Canterbury has ever since remained the metropolis of the English Church 3 a nd the modern archbishops trace back their suc o A u c ession directly t St . ug stine . F or awhile, the young Church seemed to make A vigorous progress . ugustine built a monastery at eE thelb erht new C Canterbury, wher founded a hurch r of t o SS . Pete and Paul , to be a sort Westminster Abbey for the tombs o f all future Kentish kings and l archbishops . He also restored an o d Roman church

in the city . The pope sent him sacramental vessels ,

altar cloths , ornaments, relics , and , above all, many A n books . Ten years later, ugusti e enlarged his mis

sionar — y field by ordaining two new bishops Mellitus , “ ” to preach to the East Saxons , whose metropolis , “ says B aeda , is the city of London , which is the m mart o f any nations , resorting to it by sea and ” land ; and Justus t o the episcopal see of West T HE T HE CONVER SION O F ENGLISH . 8 7

- . Kent, with his bishop stool at Rochester The East S axons nominally accepted the faith at the bidding of

- E thelb erht o f Len t heir over lord , 3 but the people A ’ don long remained pagans at heart . On ugus tine s t o o t death, however, all life seemed again die out wh o d h . t e struggling mission Laurentius, succeede

t oo . him , found the labour great for his weaker hands

6 1 E thelb erht Eadb ald e In 3 died , and his son at onc t o o f apostatised, returning the worship Woden and o ut the ancestral gods . The East Saxons drove h and Mellitus , who, wit Justus, retired to Gaul 3 Archbishop Laurentius himself was minded to follow

t . hem Then the Kentish king, admonished by a d ’ ream of the archbishop s , made submission , recalled

t he . truant bishops , and restored Justus to Rochester

v e The Londoners, however, would not recei back “ to Mellitus, choosing rather be under their idol ” - . us and atrous high priests Soon Laurenti died too,

Mellitus was called to take his place, and consecrated at last a church in London in the monastery of St .

6 2 . was off Peter In 4 , the third archbishop carried

.b to y gout , and Justus of Rochester succeeded the C o primacy of the struggling hurch . Up t this point

Il ittle f had been gained, except the conversion o Kent i w of — tself, ith its dependent kingdom Essex the two n parts of E gland in closest union with the Continent , “ through the mercantile intercourse by way of London

and Richborough . new Under the primate, however, an unexpected o f pening occurred for the conversion o the North .

‘ The Northumbrian kings had now risen to the first - R 8 8 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

E th elfrith place in Britain . had done much to establish their suprem acy 3 under Eadwine it rose t o f a heigh t o acknowledged overlordship . As an earnest of this king’s future conversion and translation ” t o of a the kingdom heaven, says B eda, with pardon “ a ble Northumbrian patriotic pride, even his tem t poral power was allowed to increase greatly, so tha he did what no Englishman had done before— that i s u own to say, he nited under his overlordship all the

' of l or provinces Britain , whether inhabited by Eng ish ” by Welsh . Eadwine now took in marriage E thel E th elb erht of burh , daughter of , and sister the reign ing Kentish king. Justus seized the Opportunity to

rthum ria r introduce the Church into N o b . He o the dained one Paulinus as bishop, to accompany to Christian lady, watch over her faith , and if possible t o convert her husband and his people . Gregory had planned his scheme with systematic completeness 3 he had decided that there Should be two and n metropolitan provinces , of York Londo w old of (which he kne as the Roman capitals Britain) , and that each should consist of twelve episcopal sees . Paulinus now went t o York in furtherance of this A comprehensive but abortive scheme. miraculou s or one escape from assassination , what was reputed , ’ gave the Roman monk a hold over Eadwine s mind 3 but the king decided to put off his conversion till he had tried the efficacy o f the new faith by a practical appeal . He went on an expedition against the t en reacherous king of the West Saxons , who had oured to deav to assassinate him , and determined

- R 9 0 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

l all u . , the gods did not avenge the ins t Thereupon “ i E duin all m K ng , with the nobles and ost of the of common folk his nation, received the faith and th e t f of fon o holy regeneration , in the eleventh year ’ hi s our r reign, which is the year of Lord s inca nation th e - six hundred and twenty seventh , and about the hundred and eightieth after the arrival of the English

- . o on in Britain He was baptized at Y rk Easter day, th e first before the Ides of April (April in the A l . h church of St Peter the post e, whic he himself l had hasti y built of wood , while he was being cate chi sed and prepared for Baptism 3 and in the same City he gave the bishopric to his prelate and sponsor l Pau inus . But after his Baptism he took care , by ’ Paulinus s direction , to build a larger and finer church

of s tone , in the midst whereof his original chapel ”

sh . ould be enclosed To this day, York Minster, the ’ l n d w re i eal escendant of Ead ine s wooden church ,

m ains dedicated to St . Peter 3 and the archbishops

ti it - l of s ll S in the bishop stool of Pau inus . Part Eadwine ’s later stone cathedral was discovered under t he existing Choir during the repairs rendered neces A s s ary by the incendiary Martin . to the heathen ’ B ae s t da . emple , its traces still remained even in day “ That place, formerly the abode of idols , is now w pointed out not far from York to the west ard , Dornuentio d l beyond the river , and is to ay ca led

G odm undin ah am g , where the priest himself, through f G od l the inspiration o the true , po luted and destroyed ” S o the altars which he himself had consecrated . C lose did B aeda live t o these early heathen English F T HE T HE CONVE R SION O ENGLISH . 9 1

A ’ t imes . From the date of St . ugustine s arrival , d a of indee , B eda stands upon the surer ground almost c ontemporary narrative . Still the greater part of English Britain remained

. K heathen ent , Essex , and Northumbria were con or n verted, at least their kings and nobles had bee A r baptised but East nglia, Me cia, Sussex, Wessex, and the minor interior principalities were as yet wholly heathen . Indeed , the various Teutonic colo nies seemed t o have received Christianity in the ex act order of their settlement the older and more

t . civilised firs , the newer and ruder last Paulinus, however, made another conquest for the church in “ b e Lindsey (Lincolnshire) , where the first who l ” “ ieved, says the Chronicle , was a certain great ” m n wh B l cc a a o e a . hight , with all his cl n In the s u very same year with these successes , Ju t s died, and Honoriu s received the See of Canterbury from Pau l h l f inus at t e o d Roman city o Lincoln . S o far the Rom an missionaries rem ained the only Christian teachers in England : no English convert see ms as yet t o have taken holy orders . A C a gain, however, the hurch received severe

« check . Mercia, the youngest and roughest princi l f a it ou or . p y, stood t heathendom The western c olony was beginning to raise itself into a great its power, under fierce and strong old king Penda, who seems to have consolidated all the petty chief t ainships of the Midlands into a Single fairly coherent kingdom . Penda hated Northumbria , which , under E w ad ine , had made itself the chief English state 2 - R 9 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

w and he also hated Christianity, which he kne only

not f r l as a religion fit for Welsh slaves, o Eng ish

- . two warriors For twenty years , therefore , the old heathen king waged an untiring war against Christian 6 Northumbria . In 3 3 , he allied himself with Cad

l of or wa la, the Christian Welsh king Gwynedd , l war North Wa es, in a against Eadwine 3 an alliance which supplies one more proof that the gulf between Welsh and English was not so wide as it is sometimes represented to be . The Welsh and Mercian host met the Northumbrians at Heathfi eld (perhaps Hat m field Chase) and utterly destroyed the . Eadwine n frith himself a d his son O s were Slain . Penda and adwalla f C ared thence, and undid all Northumbria . The country was once more divided into Deira and

Bernicia, and two heathen rulers succeeded to the

E th l urh . e b northern kingdom Paulinus, taking , the of t o widow Eadwine , went by sea Kent, where re Honorius , whom he had himself consecrated,

ceiv ed him cordially, and gave him the vacant see

of . Rochester There he remained till his death , and

so for a time ended the Christian mission to York . Penda made the best o f his victory by annexing the s Southumbrians , the Middle English , and the Lindi waras , as well as by conquering the Severn Valley from the West Saxons . Henceforth , Mercia stands forth as one of the three leading Teutonic states in

Britain .

- R 94 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

“ - ae ' and the West Saxons , says B da , he convened to a colloquy the bishops and doctors of the nearest of to province the Britons , in the place which , the ll l A present day, is ca ed in the English anguage, ugus ’ ” - tine s Oak . Such open air meetings by sacred trees or stones were universal in England both before and after its conversion . He began t o admonish them with a brotherly admonition t o embrace with him the t o u d f Catholic faith, and n ertake the common task o n F or n evangelising the paga s . they did ot observe

: m Easter at the proper period oreover, they did many other thi ngs contrary t o the unity of the ” f Chur ch . But the Welsh were j ealous o the intru t o old ders , and refused abandon their customs . A Thereupon , ugustine declared that if they would not help him against the heathen, they would perish A ’ . A s by the heathen few years later, after ugustine E th elfrith of death, this prediction was verified by of r Northumbria, whose massacre the monks of Bango has already been noticed . It was in return for the destruction of Chester and th e slaughter of the monks th at Cadwalla j oined the f heat hen Penda against his ellow Christian Eadwine . But th e death o f Eadwine left the throne open for o f E thelfrith the house , whose place Eadwine had n A o f how take . fter a year renewed heathendom , n o f Cadwalla ever, duri g part which the Welsh reigned O son of E thelfrith over Northumbria, swald , , again united Deira and Bernicia under his own rule . Oswald a was a Christian , but he had learnt his Christi nity t from the Scots , amongst whom he had spen his exile , N D R OME A IONA . 9 5 and he favoured the introduction o f Pictish and

Scottish missionaries into Northumbria . The Italian monks who had accompa nied Augustine were men of n of an foreign speech and ma ners , representatives ert alien civilisation , and they attempted to conv whole kingdoms m 5105 by the previous conv ersion and of their rulers . Their method was political r re systematic . But the Pictish and Irish preache s we m en of o n t o m re Brita nic feelings, and they went work with true missionary earnestness to convert the of in half Celtic people Northumbria, man by man, f t own . A a n o heir homes id , the apostle the north, carried the Picti sh faith into the Lothians and Nor

hu rl n - n far t mb e a d . He placed his bishop stool ot f of B amb orou h f ne rom the royal town g , at Lindis ar , n f r the Holy Isla d o the Northumbrian coast . Othe m n en Celtic issionaries pe etrated further south , ev into the heathen rea lm of Penda and his tributa ry da r s . Cead o ai of ch prince Chad, the patron s nt Li fi eld M Diuma , carried Christianity to the ercians . preached to the Middle English of Leicester with Peada a son of nda much success , , their ealdorm n, Pe , n a having himself already embraced the new faith. Pe d had slain Os wald in a great battle at M aserfeld in 6 - R 9 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

n Mea while , in the south the Latin missionaries , u to rged activity, perhaps, by the Pictish successes , h ad been making fresh progress . In the very year when Oswald was chosen king by the Northumbrians , Biri nus l , a priest from northern Ita y, went by com mand o f the pope to the West Saxons : and after t welve months he was able to baptise their king, C ne ils y g , at his capital of Dorchester, on the Thames , f his sponsor being Oswald o Northumbria . A year later, Felix, a Burgundian , preached the faith of C A wh o hrist to the East nglians , had indeed been A converted by the ugustinian missionaries , but l d a fterwards re apse . Only Sussex and Mercia still 6 remained heathen . But, in 55, Penda made a last a ttempt against Northumbria, which he had harried was n Wi nwidfi eld year after year, and met by Oswi at , n ear Leeds ; the Christians were successful , and

Penda was slain , together with thirty royal persons petty princes of the tributary Mercian states , no P ada d . e oubt His son , , the Christian ealdorman of the Middle English , succeeded him , and the Mer

ian c s became Christians of the Pictish or Irish type . “ ” “ a Di um a Their first bishop , says B eda, was , who d ied and was buried among the Middle English . The C ellach wh o second was , abandoned his bishopric, and returned during his lifetime to Scotland (perhaps

Ireland, but more probably the Scottish king f d o m in Argyllshire) . Both o these were by birth T rumhere Irishmen . The third was , by race an ” Englishman , but educated and ordained by the Irish . Thus Roman Christianity spread over the whole of

6 - R 9 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

n Mea while , in the south the Latin missionaries , to urged activity, perhaps, by the Pictish successes , h ad been making fresh progress . In the very year when Oswald was chosen king by the Northumbrians , Biri nus l , a priest from northern Ita y, went by com mand of the pope to the West Saxons : and after t welve months he was able to baptise their king, C ne ils y g , at his capital of Dorchester, on the Thames , o f his sponsor being Oswald Northumbria . A year later, Felix, a Burgundian , preached the faith of C A hrist to the East nglians , who had indeed been c A onverted by the ugustinian missionaries , but w l a fter ards re apsed . Only Sussex and Mercia still 6 remained heathen . But, in 55, Penda made a last a ttempt against Northumbria, which he had harried was n Wi nwidfi eld year after year, and met by Oswi at ,

near Leeds ; the Christians were successful , and

Penda was slain , together with thirty royal persons

petty princes of the tributary Mercian states , no Peada d oubt . His son , , the Christian ealdorman of

the Middle English , succeeded him , and the Mer i n or c a s became Christians of the Pictish Irish type . “ ” “ a Dium a wh o Their first bishop , says B eda, was ,

d ied and was buried among the Middle English . The Cellach second was , who abandoned his bishopric, and returned during his lifetime to Scotland (perhaps

Ireland, but more probably the Scottish king f dom in Argyllshire) . Both o these were by birth T rumhere Irishmen . The third was , by race an ” Englishman , but educated and ordained by the Irish . Thus Roman Christianity spread over the whole of R OME AN D IONA . 97

England south of the Wash (save only heathen Sus sex) : while the Irish Church had made its way over

"

h to . all the north , from the Was the Frith of Forth T h e Roman influence may be partly traced by th e

Roman alphabet superseding the old English runes .

Runic inscriptions are rare in the south , where they were regarded as heathenish relics , and so destroyed but they are comparatively common in the north . R unics appear 011 the coins of the first Christian Peada fEth elred die kings of Mercia, and , but soon

‘ out under their successors . sur Heathendom was now fairly vanquished . It v iv ed n of o ly in Sussex, cut off from the rest England ‘ of by the forest belt of the Weald . The next trial li e strength must clearly between Rome and Iona . The northern bishops and abbots traced their suc to A cession , not ugustine , but to Columba . Cuth b erht , the English apostle of the north, who really eo le converted the p p of Northumbria, as earlier mis si onaries ki n s d s had converted its g , erived his order

. now l from Iona Rome or Ireland , was the practica As b e question of the English Church . might

. T o expected , Rome conquered allay the discord, King Oswin summoned a synod at S treoneshalch (now known by its later Danish name of Whitby) in 6 6 he 4 , to settle the vexed question as to t date o f

Easter . The Irish priests claimed the authority of

St . John for their crescent tonsure the Romans, Wilffith m headed by , a ost vigorous priest, appealed

t o . the authority of St Peter for the canonical circle . “ I will never offend the saint who holds the keys of H P - R 9 8 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

” h n - m eaven , said Oswi , with the frank, half heathendo

« o f a recent convert ; and the meeting shortly de

cided as the king would have it. The Irish party acquiesced or else returned t o Scotland and thence forth the new English Church remained in close com r munion with Rome and the Continent . Whateve m a our of y be ecclesiastical j udgment this decision , there can be little doubt that its material effects were l most excellent . By bringing Eng and into connection “ th with Rome , it brought her into connection with e c all - n entre of then existing civilisatio , and endowed her with arts and manufactures which she could never

otherwise have attained . The connection with Ireland

and the north would have been as fatal, from a purely

secular point of View, to early English culture as was

- the later connection with half barbaric Scandinavia .

Rome gave England the Roman letters , arts , and organisation : Ireland could only hav e given her a

more insular form of Celtic civilisation .

- R I O O ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN . written document upon which to base our history ; from ’ the moment of Augustine s landing we have the i nv alu a w ae ble orks of B da, and a host of lesser writings

of nu o f (chiefly lives saints) , besides an immense mber charters or royal grants of land to monasteries and pri vate persons . These grants , written at first in Latin, but

f in An lo - x a terwards g Sa on , were preserved in the mon ast eri es o f u down to the date their dissol tion , and then th e l became property of various co lectors . They have

l an been transcribed and published by Mr . Kemb e d

Mr . Thorpe , and they form some of our most useful l n l materia s for the early history of Christian E g and . It was mainly by means o f the monasteries that Christianity became a great civilising and teaching agency in England . Those who j udge monastic

l r l institutions on y by thei ater and worst days, when they had, perhaps , ceased to perform any useful function, are apt to forget the benefits which they conferred upon the people in the earlier stages of l u their existence . The state of Eng and d ring this first Christian period was one of chronic and bloody l b ut warfare . There was no regu ar army, every free a n l man was soldier, and raids of one E g ish tribe upon another were everyday occurrences ; while ll of l l pi aging frays on the part the We sh , fol owed by l ll s avage reprisals on the part of the Eng ish , were sti n d u . th e more freq ent Duri g the heathen perio , even Picts seem often to have made piracti cal expeditions l far into the south of Eng and . In 59 7 , for example, C e olwulf of we read in the Chronicle that , king the l t “ it West Saxons, constant y fough e her against the CH R ISTIAN ENGLAND . I O I

E or nglish , against the Welsh , or against the Picts . B ut 6 0 A in 3 , the rgyllshire Scots made a raid against N orthumb ria l , and were so complete y crushed by “ fEth elfrith of t , that since then no king Scots durs ” l ead a host against this folk 5 while the southern Picts of Galloway became tributaries of the Northum

b . rian kings But war between Saxons and English , o r u between Te tons and Welsh, still remained chronic ; and Christianity did little to prevent these 6 adwalla p erpetual border wars and raids . In 33 , C t 6 and Penda was ed Northumbria 5 in 44 , Penda d out Kenwealh of rove King , the West Saxons , from 6 I Wulfhere his possessions along the Severn 5 in 7 , , the Mercian , ravaged Wessex and the south as far as A to shdown , and conquered Wight, which he gave the S outh Saxons 5 and so , from time to time , we catch glimpses of the unceasing strife between each folk and its neighbours , besides many hints of intestine struggles or w between prince and prince, of rivalries bet een o ne of too petty shire and others the same kingdom , far numerous and unimportant to be detailed here in full . f a With such a state of af airs as this, it became matter of dee p importance that there should be som e o ne institution where the arts of peace might be car ried on in safety 5 where agriculture might be sure of its reward 5 where literature and science might be s tudied ; and where civilising influences might be s afe from interruption or rapine . The monasteries gave an opportunity for such an ameliorating in fl uence to spring up . They were spared even in war by the reverence of the people for the Church 5 and 1 O 2 ANGLO - SAXON B R ITAIN they became places where peaceful minds might retire for honest work, and learning, and thinking , away from the fierce turmoil of a still essentially barbaric A . t and predatory community the same time, they encouraged the development of this very type of mind by turning the reproach of cowardice , which it would have carried with it in heathen times, into an honour and a mark of holiness . Every monastery became a centre of light and of struggling culture

u . at t o for the s rrounding district They were once , the early English recluse , universities and refuges , of of i n places education , retirement, and of peace , w the midst of a jarring and discordant orld .

- Hence, almost the first act of every newly con verted prince was to found a monastery in his

~ dominions . That of Canterbury dates from the ar l f u 6 K n lh f x o A . e wea o riva ug stine In 43 , Wesse “ ” bade timber the old minster at Winchester . In 6 A l 54, shortly after the conversion of East ng ia , ” B otulf I canh o began to build a monastery at , ’ lf s B otu . since called after his name tun , or Boston

6 Pead a n a In 57 , of Mercia and Oswi of Northumbri “ said that they would rear a monastery to the glory o f did f Christ and the honour o St . Peter 5 and they ” so of M ed esh am stede , and gave it the name 5 but 1 it is now known as Peterborough . l Winwidfield n Before the batt e of , Oswi had vowed re to build twelve minsters in his kingdom , and he

1 T he a rter a la te o r er b ut t ere no r ea on t o ch is f g y, h is s r r t o n d oubt that i t rep res ents the cor ect t adi i .

I 0 - R 4 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

s . An outh , some Irish abbeys existed Irish monk had s et Wilfri up one at Bosham , in Sussex, even before th c onverted that kingdom 5 and one of his country m en M aidulf Maeld ubh P , (or ) was the original head

o f l u . Ma mesb ry In process of time , however, as the h union with Rome grew stronger, all t ese houses c onformed to the more regular usage , and became m a on steries of the ordinary Benedictine type . The civilising value of the monasteries can hardly

- b e o v er rated . Secure in the peace conferred upon t n hem by a religious sanctio , the monks became the b u l of s a i ders chools, the drainers of m rshland , the

c l . earers of forest , the tillers of heath Many of the e arliest religious houses rose in the midst of what had l l previous y been trackless wi ds . Peterborough and l n E y grew up o islands of the Fen country . Crow land gathered round the cell of G uthl ac in the midst f l l o a deso ate mere . Evesham occupied a g ade in the wild forests of the western march . Glastonbury , an o ld l l Welsh foundation , stood on a so itary is et , where the abrupt knoll of the Tor looks down upon the f l o . broad waste the Somersetshire marshes Bever ey, a s of its name imports , had been a haunt beavers before the monks began to till its fruitful dingles . In every case agriculture soon turned the wild lands into cornfields u orchards and , or drove drains thro gh the fens which converted their marshes into meadows and

- l pastures for the long horned Eng ish cattle . Roman a t oo rchitecture, , came with the Roman church . We hear nothing before of stone buildings 5 but Eadwine e n rected a church of stone at York, under the directio C H R ISTIAN ENGLAND . I O 5

f Wilfrith o Paulinus 5 and Bishop , a generation later, r estored and decorated it, covering the roof with lead f a nd filling the windows with panes o glass . Masons h ad already been settled in Kent , though Benedict, t h e o f Wearm outh it founder and Jarrow, found n n d esirable to bri g over others from the Fra ks . Metal a working had always been special gift of the English , and their gold jewellery was well m ade even before th e r conversion, but it became still mo e noticeable a fter the monks took the craft into their own hands . a l B eda mentions mines of copper, iron, ead , silver, and A n t l j et . bbot Benedict o on y brought manuscripts a nd pictures from Rome, which were copied and at Wearm o uth w imitated in his monasteries and Jarro ,

l - but he also brought over g ass blowers, who introduced

- h rh of . ut b e t the art glass making into England C , ’ B aeda s s to cholar, writes Lull , asking for workmen o who can m ake glass vessels . Bells appear t have f been equally early introductions . Roman music o course accompanied the Roman liturgy . The con nection established with the clergy of the continent favoured the dispersion of European goods throughout

England . We constantly hear of presents , consisting o f h skilled handicraft, passing from the civilised sout

d h Wilfrith to the ru e and barbaric nort . and Bene dict j ourneyed several times to and from Rome, e nlarging their own minds by intercourse with Roman s h k f or ociety, and returning laden wit wor s o art h manuscripts of value . B aeda was acquainted with t e w n riti gs ofall the chief classical poets and philosophers, w l h hom he often quotes . We can on y liken t e results I o 6 - R ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN . of such intercourse to those which in our own time have proceeded from the opening of Japan to western or to l ideas , of the Hawaiian Islands European civi i sation and European missionaries . The English oo sch l which soon sprang up at Rome, and the Latin schools which soon sprang up at York and Canterbury, are precise equivalents of the educational movements n in both those countries which we see in our ow day . The monks were to learn Latin and Greek as well ” so to as they learned their own tongue, and were be given the key o f all the literature and all the science : that the world then possessed .

The monasteries thus became real manufacturing , o n agricultural , and literary centres a small scale The monks boiled down the salt of the brine -pits 5 they copied and illuminated manuscripts in the library 5 they painted pictures not without rude merit of their own 5 they ran rhines through the marshy moorland 5 they tilled the soil with vigour and suc

A — th e cess . new culture began to occupy the land culture whose fully- developed form we now see around B u n us . t it must never be forgotten that in its origi

- A . Our it is wholly Roman , and not at all nglo Saxon people showed themselves singularly apt at embracing i t l d n : , ike the mo ern Polynesia s , and unlike the American Indians 5 but they did not invent it for them ~ s ur l - elves . O existing cu ture is not home bred at all 5 it is simply the inherited and widened culture of

Greece and Italy.

The most perfect picture of the monastic life and . of early English Christianity which we possess is that

1 08 N L - A G o SAXON B R ITAIN . a t An l u York 5 East g ia , at D nwich ; and Mercia , at Lichfi eld . The Scottish bishopric of Lindisfarne

c oincided with Bernicia . Theodore divided these g reat dioceses into smaller ones ; East Anglia had t wo u l , for its north and so th fo k, at Elmham and Dun twich 5 Bernicia was divided between Lindisfarne and Hexham 5 Lincolnshire had its see placed at Sidna c ester 5and the sub -kingdoms ofMercia were also made

i Hui ccii - nto dioceses, the having their bishop stool at Hecans Worcester 5 the , at Hereford ; and the l ’ Middle Eng ish , at Leicester. But Theodore s great w l ork was the estab ishment of the national synod, in which all the clergy of the various English kingdoms ' l l met together as a sing e peop e . This was the first s tep ever taken to wards the unification of England 5 and the ecclesiastical unity thu s preceded and paved

the way for the political unity which was to follow it . Theodore ’s organisation brought the whole Church

i nto connection with Rome . The bishops owing their o rders to the Scots conformed or withdrew, and hence

f orward Rome held undisputed sway . Before Theo

.d ore, all the archbishops of Canterbury and all the

.bishops of the southern kingdoms had been Roman m issionaries 5 those of the north had been Scots or A all i n Scottish orders . fter Theodore they were u Englishmen in Roman orders . The native ch rch

l - b ecame thenceforward wholly se f supporting . Theodore was much aided in his proj ects by Wil f o f rith York , a man of fiery energy and a devoted

a wh o dherent of the Roman see , had carried the Roman

s u a premacy at the Synod of Whitby , and who spent C H R ISTIAN ENGLAND . I 09 large part o f his time in j ourneys between England l fEddi m o f t and Ita y . His life, by , for s one the mos

In. important documents for early English history. 6 8 1 he completed the conversion of England by his

to . preaching the South Saxons , whom he endeavoured t o civilise aS well as Christianise . His monastery of Selsey was built on land granted by the under now o f act king ( a tributary Wessex) , and his first was to emancipate the Slaves whom he found upon. n the soil . Equally devoted to Rome was the you g o f Northumbrian noble , who took the religious name

i c m Benedict B s op . Benedict beca e at first an inmate

L rins o f A é . s the bbey of , near Cannes He afterward founded two regular Benedictine abbeys on the sam e Wearm outh model at and Jarrow, and made at least four to n visits the papal court, whence he returned lade with manuscripts to introduce Roman learning among his wild North umbrian countrymen . He likewise carried over silk robes for sale to the kings in exchange for grants of land 5 and he brought glaz iers from Gaul l 00 for his churches . Jarrow a one contained 5 monks , I and possessed endowments of acres . It was under the walls of Jarrow that Baeda himself 6 2 was born , in the year 7 . Only fifty years had passed sm ce his native Northumbria was still a heathen land . Not more than forty years had gon e S ince the conversion of Wessex, and Sussex was still given over to the worship of Thunor and Woden . ’ But Baeda s own life was one which brought him wholly into connection with Christian teachers and

Roman culture . Left an orphan at the age of seven - I I 0 ANGLO SAXON B R ITAIN .

he was A y ears , handed over to the care of bbot A Ceo lfrid Benedict, after whose death bbot took ” c . harge of the young aspirant Thenceforth , says f the aged monk, fifty years later, I passed all my li e in time the building of that monastery [Jarrow], and g ave all my days to meditating on Scripture . In the u intervals of my reg lar monastic discipline , and of my d w aily task of chanting in chapel , I have al ays amused l i or . myself either by earning, teaching, writ ng In the nineteenth year of my life I received ordination as deacon 5 in my thirtieth year I attained to the priesthood ; both functions being administered by the most reverend bishop John [afterwards known as f A l . o Ceo St John of Beverley], at the request bbot

frid . From the time of my ordination as priest to the

fi ft - of u y ninth year my life, I have occ pied myself in for briefly commenting upon Holy Scripture, the of o f use myself and my brethren , from the works t he h venerable fathers, and in some cases I ave added interpretations of my own to aid in their ” c omprehension . ’ B aed a s The variety of works , the large knowledge o f science and o f classical literature which he dis plays (when judged by the continental standard of th e

eighth century) , and his familiar acquaintance with u the Latin lang age , which he writes easily and cor

rectl S y, how that the library of Jarrow must have been l com e xtensive and valuab e . Besides his Scriptural

m e ntaries D e N atural R ef/ um , he wrote a treatise ,

- n of . Letters o the Reason of Leap Year, a Life St A Own A nastasius , and a History of his bbey, all in

- R I I 2 ANGLO S AXON B ITAIN .

’ H sentence , beloved master, is yet unwritten . e ’ ‘ u l A answered, Write it q ick y . fter a while the boy ’ l said, Now the sentence is written . Then he rep ied, ’ ‘ ll i s It is we , quoth he , thou hast said the truth it ’ And th e finished . so he passed away to kingdom of heaven . It is impossible t o overrate the importance of th e change which made such a life of earnest study and ’ intellectual labour as B aed a s possible amongst the n l l rough and barbaric E g ish . Nor was it on y in pro d ucing thinkers and readers from a people wh o could l u the not spell a word ha f a cent ry before , that l monastic system did good to Eng and . The monas teries owned large tracts of land which they could

co - l was cultivate on a operative p an , as cultivation l l [a bom r e est W a r e th e impossib e e sewhere . was true monastic motto : and the documents of the l l S u s re igious houses , relating to ands and leases , how or m l u w not the other ateria side of the pict re , hich was less important in its way than th e Spiritual and intel d th lectual side . Everywhere the monks settle in e woodland by the rivers , cut down the forests , drove u l l o t the wo ves and the beavers , cultivated the soi e with the aid of their tenants and serfs, and becam colonisers and civilisers at the same time that they were f teachers and preachers . The reclamation o waste land throughout the m arshes o f England was d ue almost entirely to the monastic bodies . The value of the civilising influence thus exerted l ff is seen especia ly in the written laws , and it a ected l T h e ven the actions of the fierce Eng ish princes . e I CH R ISTIAN ENGLAND . r 3

’ d ooms of z Eth elb erht o f Kent are the earliest English d to d ocuments which we possess , and they were re uced w riting shortly after the conversion of the first English C hristian king : while B aeda expressly mentions that

_ T he they were compiled after Roman models . Church was not able to hold the warlike princes en really in check 5 but it imposed penances, and c oura ed of to g many them to make pilgrimages Rome , a nd t C e o end their days in a loister . The importanc f l o such pi grimages was doubtless immense . They induced the rude insular nobility t o pay a visit to

' w all the hat was still , after , most civilised country of t he so of world , and to gain some knowledge a foreign c ulture, which they afterwards endeavoured to intro d n 6 88 adwalla ow . e uce into their homes In , C , the ferocious king of the West Saxons , whose brother of Mul had been burnt alive by the men Kent , and who harried the Jutish kingdom in return , and who a two o f lso murdered princes Wight, with all their on people , in cold blood , went a pilgrimage to Rome , 1 where he was baptised, and died immediately after.

who re- old Ine, succeeded him , endowed the British m o f onastery Glastonbury , in territory just conquered f of rom the West Welsh , and reduced the laws the

t o . t oo to West Saxons writing He, , retired Rome ,

’ He w as ur t e r n ll e t i n e at S . te a d to t b i d P s, his mb s i xis s h re o elle u l n B ae a uot h n cr t on i n ull t e . e t e m d d b i di g d q s i s ip i f , a nd quotes i t correctly 5 a fact which m ay b e t ak en as an ex cellent t e t o f tor cal accurac and th e care t ch s his his i y, wi h whi h collecte ater al e d his m i s . I - R I 4 ANG Lo SAXON B ITAIN .

fE th lr d w . 0 e e a . here he died In 7 4 , , son of Pend , ” k of u ing the Mercians , ass med monkhood . In 0 Cenred O f of 7 9 , , his successor, and f a Essex, went And m t o . Rome so on for any years , king after k king resigned his ingship , and submitted, in his

. no latter days , to the Church Within two centuries , less than thirty kings and queens are recorded to , have embraced a conventual life and far more pro l l b S . ba y did so , but were passed over in i ence B aeda tells us that m any Englishmen went into monasteries in Gaul .

On the other hand, it cannot be denied that while m Christianity ade great progress , many marks of l heathendom were sti l left among the people . Well

- - worship and stone worship , devil craft and sacrifices

A - o f to idols , are mentioned in every nglo Saxon code l as aws , and had to be provided against even as late f B the time o adgar . The belief in elves and other sem i ~ h eath en beings , and the reverence for heathen l memorials , was rife , and shows itse f in such names

‘ fElfred - E l f fElf ifu as , elf counsel ; lfstan, e f stone 5 g , elfl iv en fEth elstan - f n g ; , noble stone 5 and Wul sta ,

l - wo f stone . Heathendom was banished from high l a p aces , but it lingered on mong the lower classes , and affected the nomenclature even o f the later West

Saxon kings themselves . Indeed , it was closely interwoven with all the life and thought of the people, conce and entered , in altered forms , even into the p T he tions of Christianity current amongst them . Christian poem of C aedmon is tinctured on every page with ideas derived from the legends of the old

I I 6 A N L - R G o SAXON B ITAIN .

A CH PTER XII .

T E O F T HE K H CONSOLIDATION INGDOMS .

WITH the final triumph of Christianity, all the forma

l of A - l tive e ements nglo Saxon Britain are comp ete .

l l - a re We see it, a rough cong omeration of loose y gg of n gated principalities , composed a fighti g aristocracy a nd a body o f unvalued serfs ; while interspersed through its parts are the bishops , monks , and clergy , centres of nascent civilisation for the seething mass f o noble barbarism . The country is divided into a l l a ricul gricu tural colonies , and its on y industry is g t one m ure, its only wealth , land . We want but ore c onspicuous change to make it into the England of t h e Augustan Anglo - Saxon age — the reign of B adgar

— and that one change is the consolidation o f the d iscordant kingdoms under a single loose overlord s l hip . To understand this fina step , we must glance l briefly at the du l record of the political history. d Z Eth elfrith O n Un er , Eadwine, and swi , North m u bria had been the chief power in England . But the eighth century is taken up with the greatness of Ec frith of orthumb ria Mercia . g , the last great king N , whose over-lordship extended over the Picts of l th e o f en G a loway and Cumbrians Strathclyde, d a ur o e v o ed t carry his conquests beyond the Forth , T HE K 1 1 T HE CONSOLIDATION O F ING DOMS . 7 and annex the free land lying to the north of the Old S a h Roman line . He was defeated and l in , and wit

of . him fell the supremacy Northumbria Mercia, Wulfh ere n which already, under Penda and , had rise o now n to the sec nd place , assumed the first positio among the Teutonic kingdoms . Unfortunately we know little of the period of Mercian supremacy . T he West Saxon chronicle contains few notices of th e rival state , and we are thrown for information chiefly on the second-hand Latin historians o f the twelfth [Ethelbald century . , the first powerful Mercian king “ 1 6 — ( 7 7 5 ravaged the land of the Northumbrians, and made Wessex acknowledge his supremacy. By this time all the minor kingdoms had practically t o l become subject the three great powers, though stil

n : retai ing their native princes and Wessex , Mercia, and Northumbria shared between them , as suzerains, of the whole Teutonic Britain . The meagre annals of s the Chronicle, upon which alone (with the Charter and Latin writers of later date) we rest afte r the death of ae s B da, show us a chaotic list of wars and battle or between these three great powers themselves , or h between them and their vassals , with the Wels E h l l and . t e b a d e a Devonians was succe ded , after s t ff of hort in erval, by O a, whose reign nearly forty years (7 58 is the first settled period in English fa history . Of ruled over the subject princes with w rigour, and seems to have made his po er really felt . of w and He drove the Prince Po ys from Shrewsbury,

H - carried his ravages into the heart of Wales . e con

quered the land between the Severn and the Wye . I 8 - R I ANG LO SAXON B ITAIN .

to and his dyke from the Dee the Severn , and the Wye , marked the new limits of the Welsh and English borders 5 while his laws codified the customs of E th elberht Mercia, as those of and Ine had done with the customs of Kent and Wessex . He set up fOr Li chfield awhile an archbishopric at , which seems to mark his determination to erect Mercia into a sovereign

. f power He also founded the great monastery o St . A ’ lban s, and is said to have established the English college at Rome, though another account attributes it to A . an Ine, the West Saxon East nglia, Kent , Essex, d

Sussex all acknowledged his supremacy . Karl the Great was then reviving the Roman Empire in its f Germanic form , and Of a ventured to correspond with F the rank emperor as an equal . The possession of d now ff Lon on, a Mercian city, gave O a an interest in continental affairs 5 and the growth of trade is marked w by the fact that hen a quarrel arose between them, they formally closed the ports of their respective ’ n ki gdoms against each other s subj ects .

Nevertheless , English kingship still remained a l mere military office, and conso idation , in our modern sense, was clearly impossible . Local j ealousies divided all the little kingdoms and their component princi p alities 5 and any real subordination was impracticable p l amongst a purely agricultural and warlike eop e, w ith no regular army, and governed only by their own A anarchic desires . Like the fghans of the present time, the early English were incapable of union , except in a temporary way under the strong hand of a n A s si gle warlike leader against a common foe .

- R I 20 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

l no the eighth century is fu l . But modern reader need know more o f them than the fact that they existed, and that they prove the wholly ungoverned l of l l and ungovernab e nature the ear y Eng ish t emper . of Until the Danish invasions the ninth century, h e St l t tribal kingdoms ill remained practica ly separate , and su ch cohesion as existed was only secured for the

of or x purpose temporary defence aggression . Esse kept Its own kings under E th elb erht of Kent 5 Huiccia ’ eEth lr retained its royal house under . e ed of Mercia 5

on M l l m r and later , ercia itse f had its ea dor en , afte Ec b erht of l the conquest by g Wessex . Each roya line reigned u nder the supreme power until it died out u own nat rally, like our great feudatories in India n at the present day . When Wessex a d Mercia have ” wa t o worked their y the rival hegemonies , says Canon “ to b e Stubbs , Sussex and Essex do not cease numbered among the kingdoms , until their royal houses are extinct . When Wessex has conquered

on e Mercia and brought Northumbria its knees , ther ll h are sti kings in both Northumbria and Mercia . T e out o f royal house of Kent dies , but the title King f on a of the o Kent is bestowed an etheling, first f o . he Mercian , then the West Saxon house Until t t o Danish conquest, the dependant royalties seem have been spared 5 and even afterwards organic unio n ” can scarcely be said to exist . The final supremacy o f the West Saxons was th B ut mainly brought about by e Danish invasion . the man who laid the foundation of the West Saxon

Ec b erht so - of all power wa s g , the called first king HE K 1 2 T HE CONSOLIDATION OF T INGDOMS . 1

h . England Banished from Wessex during his . yout f the by one o the constant dynastic quarrels , through Off a e nmity of a, the young etheling had taken refuge A and e with Karl the Great, at the court of achen , ther had learnt to understand the rising statesmanship o f the Frankish race and of the restored Roman empire . B eorhtric i n 8 0 2 th e The death of his enemy , , left kingdom open to him but the very day of his acces sion showed him the character of the people whom h e o f d had come to rule . The men Worcester celebrate “ his arrival by a raid on the men o f Wilts . On that ” fEth elhund ilk day, says the Chronicle , rode , of Huiccias wh o r ealdorman the [ were Mercians], ove at Cynem aeres ford 5 and there We oh stan the eald or m an met him with the Wilts men [who were West fi Saxons J and there was a muckle ght , and both h ealdormen were slain , and the Wilts men won t e ” d a . Ec b erht n i y For twenty years , g was e gaged n consolidating his ancestral dominions but at the end o f t that time, he found himself able o attack the wh o ff six Mercians , had lost O a years before ’ Ec b erht s 8 2 g return . In 5, the West Saxons met the “ Ellandun Ec b erht Mercian host at , and g gained the l ” day, and there was muck e slaughter Therefore all the Saxon name , held tributary by the Mercians , gathered about the Saxon champion . The Kentish

of and folk , and they Surrey, and the South Saxons, n him . a the East Saxo s turned to In the s me year, A to the East nglians , anxious avoid the power o f “ ” Ec b erht an f r Mercia, sought g for peace d o aid . B eornwulf h , the Mercian king, marched against is - R I 20 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

ul no the eighth century is f l . But modern reader need know more o f them than the fact that they existed, and that they prove the wholly ungoverned l of l l and ungovernab e nature the ear y Eng ish temper . of Until the Danish invasions the ninth century, h e St l l t tribal kingdoms i l remained practica ly separate , and such cohesion as ex isted was only secured for the of or purpose temporary defence aggression . Essex kept its own kings under fEth elb erht of Kent 5 Huiccia retained its royal house under fEth elre d of Mercia 5

on l l r and later , Mercia itse f had its ea dormen, afte Ec b erht of the conquest by g Wessex . Each royal line reigned under the supreme power until it died

out o ur own naturally, like great feudatories in India “ at the present day . When Wessex and Mercia have ” wa n worked their y to the rival hegemonies , says Cano “ d o to b e Stubbs , Sussex and Essex not cease l numbered among the kingdoms, until their roya

houses are extinct . When Wessex has conquered

t e Mercia and brough Northumbria on its knees, ther l T h are sti l kings in both Northumbria and Mercia . e of out b ut royal house Kent dies , the title Of King f on ae of the o Kent is bestowed an theling, first f h o . U t e Mercian , then the West Saxon house ntil t o Danish conquest, the dependant royalties seem have been spared 5 and even afterwards organic unio n ” can scarcely be said to exist . The final supremacy o f the West Saxons was th B ut mainly brought about by e Danish invasion . the man wh o laid the foundation Of the West Saxo n

Ec b erht so- l of all power was g , the cal ed first king

- R I 2 2 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

revolted tributaries but the East Anglians fought him l l . stout y, and slew him and his successor in two batt es Ecgb erht followed up this step by annexing Mercia in 8 2 9 after which he marched northward against the f Northumbrians , who at once Of ered him obedience ”

. ne and peace 5 and they thereupon parted . O year Ec b erht l e d later, g an army against the northern l “ ” We sh , and reduced them to humble Obedience . Thus the West Saxon kingdom absorbed all the

l - others , at least so far as a oose over lordship was con

cerned . Ecgb erht had rivalled his master Karl by

founding, after a fashion , the empire of the English . But all the local jealousies smouldered on as fiercely

- as ever, the under kings retained their several do ’ m Ec b erht s l inions, and g supremacy was mere y one o f superior force , unconnected with any real organic

c rh unity of the kingdom as a whole . E gb e t himself l general y bore the title of King of the West Saxons , like his ancestors : and though in dealing with his A l A n lorum ng ian subjects he styled himself Rex g , that title perhaps means little more than the humbler o ne R ex G ewissorum of , which he used in addressing

his people of the lesser principality . The real king dom of the English never existed before the days of ' Ead ward l of the E der, and scarcely before the days “ I ’ i li Vl am the Norman and Henry the Angevin . A s t o t he k l i ingdom of Eng and , that was a far later nvention o f the feudal lawyers - A NGLO SAXON B R ITAIN .

C H A P T E R X I I I .

T T HE T HE R ESISTANCE O DANES .

the long period of three and a-half centuries which had elapsed between the Jutish conquest of Kent and

- the establishment of the West Saxon over lordship , the n p olitics of Britain had bee wholly insular. The island had been brought back by Augustine and his t successors in o ecclesiastical, commercial , and literary union with the continent but no foreign war or inva s ion had ever broken the monotony of murdering the

"

Welsh and harrying the surrounding English . The

f - isolation o England was complete . Ship building was a lmost an obsolete art : and the small trade which still centred in London seems to have been mainly carried on in Frisian bottoms 5 for the Low Dutch of t h e continent still retained the seafaring habits which n those of England had forgotten . But a ew enemy was now beginning to appear in northern Europe

the Scandinavians . The history of the great wicking movement forms the subj ect of a separate volume in t his series but the manner in which the English met

it will demand a brief treatment here . Some outline o f the bare facts , however, must first be premised . As 8 ff early as 7 9 , during the reign of O a in Mercia, ” three ships of Northmen from Haeretha land came I 2 - R 4 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

o n shore in Wessex . Then the reeve rode again st ’ l to them , and wou d have driven them the king s town , for he wist not what they were and there men sle w t him . Those were the first ships of Danish men tha l k ’ “ ever sought Eng ish in s land . In 7 95, the harry ’ ing o f : heathen men wretchedly destroyed God s a church at Lindisf rne isle, through rapine and man “ slaughter. In the succeeding year, the heathen d harried among the Northumbrians , and plundere ’ ” rht s Wearm outh 8 2 Ec b e . g monastery at In 3 ,

heathen men ravaged Sheppey 5 and a year later , King Ecgb erht fought against the crews Of thirty-fi v e

ships at Charmouth , and there was muckle slaughter ” 1 - fi eld 8 made, and the Danes held the battle . In 3 5, another host came to the West Welsh (now almost reduced to the peninsula of Cornwall) and the Welsh readily j oined them against their West Saxon over Ec b erht H n estes un lord . g met the united hosts at e g d

and put them both to flight . It was his last success . m In the succeeding year he died, and the kingdo Z E h el ul t w f. descended to his weak son , His second Z Ethelstan son , , was placed over Kent, Essex, Surrey,

- and . Sussex, as under king o f to Next spring, the flood wickings began pour in

- earnest over England . Thirty three piratical ships

sailed up Southampton Water to pillage Southampton , perhaps with an ultimate eye to the treasures o f royal

- of t Winchester, the capital and minster town the Wes

entr i n th e C ron cl e o e er ro a l e rro This y h i , h w v , is p b b y me ou as an e actl lar one occur un er fEth elwulf e en s , x y simi s d , s v r years l a te .

I 2 6 - R ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

later, the wickings returned, growing bolder as they out of found the helplessness the people . They sailed and up the Thames , and ravaged Rochester London , with great slaughter 5 after which they crossed the l Cwantawic or E com channel and fel upon , taples, a m rci al e port in the Saxon land of the Boulonnais . In 8 2 Z Eth elwulf 4 , a Danish host defeated himself at Charmouth in Dorset 5 and in the succeeding su mmer Eanulf l the ealdorman , with the Somerset evy, and Ealhstan Bishop and the ealdorman Osric , with the Parre tm uth Dorset levy, fought at o with the host, and

won da . made a muckle slaughter, and the y The utter weakness of the first English resistance i s A well shown in these facts . terrible flood of heathen savagery was let loose upon the country, and the l e people were whol y unable to cope with it . Ther l was absolutely no centra organisation , no army, no commissariat , no ships . The heathen host landed suddenl e v wherev r it found the people unprepared , l and fell upon the larger towns for plunder . The loca o or - h auth rity, the ealdorman the under king , astily h gat ered together the local levy in arms , and fell upon the pirates tumultuously with the men of the shire as for best he might . But he had no provisions a long campaign : and when the levy had fought once , it melted away immediately, every man going back again l o f n . necessity to his ow home If it won the batt e, it went home t o drink over its success if it lost , it dis solved , demoralized, and left the burghers to fight for own or to O ff t their walls, buy the heathen with heir o n S n do w m oney . But every hire and every ki g m T T HE T HE R ESISTAN CE O DANES . 1 2 7

r fought fo itself alone . If the Dorset men could only drive away the host from Charmouth and Portland , they cared little whether it sailed away to harry Sussex

orthum ri n e and Hants . If the N b a s could only driv it it away from the Humber, they cared little whether f r h set sail o the Thames and the Solent . The Nort Folk of East Anglia were equally happy to send it off so e toward the South Folk . While there was littl of cohesion between the parts the same kingdoms , there was no cohesion at all between the different kingdoms over which Z Ethelwulf exercised a nominal

- for over lordship . The West Saxon kings fought no of r D orset and for Kent, but there is trace thei h ever fig ting for East Anglia or for Northumbria . They left their northern vassals to take care o f them n selves . It was ever a war between the Danes and ” n the national army, says Prof. Pearson , but betwee n the Danes and a local militia . It would have bee d t o ff impossible , in eed , resist the wickings e ectually w n e ithout a stro g central system , which could mov large arm ies rapidly from point t o point and such a system was quite undreamt of in the half- consolidated of England the ninth century . Only war with a foreign invader could bring it about even i n a faint degree and that was exactly what the Danish invasion did for Wessex . The year 85 1 marks an important epoch i n the

English resistance . The annual horde of wickings had now become as regular in its recurrence as summer itself 5 and even the inert West Saxon kings began to feel that permanent measures must b e taken r 2 8 A - R NGLO SAXON B ITAIN . a u gainst them . They had b ilt ships, and tried t o tackle the invaders in the only way in which so par t ially civilised a race could tackle such tactics as those o f — u A the Danes pon the sea . host of wickings c to - ame round Sandwich in Kent . The under king fEthel stan ll fe upon them with his new navy, and t of ook nine their ships , putting the rest to flight with l u great s a ghter . But in the same year another great o f 2 0 l host 5 sai , by far the largest fleet of which we d to have yet hear , came the mouth of the Thames , w and there landed, a step hich marks a fresh depar n ture in the wicki g tactics . They took Canterbury l by assau t, and then marched on to London . There to they stormed the busy merchant town , and put

B eorh twulf - flight , the under king of the Mercians, with his local levy . Thence they proceeded south

u l . ward into Surrey, do bt ess on their way to Winchester E thelwulf O King met them at ckley, with the West S “ axon levy, and there made the greatest slaughter d a mong the heathen host that we have yet hear , and ” a gained the d y. In spite of these two great suc cesses , however, both of which show an increasing statesmanship on the part of the West Saxons, this “ year was memorable in another way, for the heathen ” men for the first time sat over winter in Thanet . The loose predatory excursions were beginning to take the c omplexion of regular conquest and permanent settlement . Yet so little did the English still realise the terrible

- of Z danger the heathen Invasion , that next year Ethel wulf was fighting the Welsh of Wales 5 and two years

- R T 30 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

defeated them with great slaughter . North umbria passed at once into the power of the heathen . Their new chiefs, Ingvar and Ubba, erected Deira into a

Danish kingdom , leaving Bernicia to an English puppet 5 and Northumbria ceases to exist for the

f A l — present as a actor in ng o Saxon history. We must hand it over for S ixty years to the Scandinavian f division o this series . 8 6 8 a In , Ingvar and Ubb advanced again into

- Mercia and beset Nottingham . Then the under king

B urhre d of - Z Ethel re called in the aid his over lord , d of who Wessex , came to his assistance with a levy .

But there was no hard fight there , and the Mercians 8 0 made peace with the host In 7 , the heathen A l overran East ng ia, and destroyed the great monas t er y of Peterborough , probably the richest religious

- house in all England . Eadmund , the under king, v came against them with the le y , but they slew him 5

and the people held him for a martyr, whose shrine

at Bury St . Edmunds grew in after days into the A holiest spot in East nglia . The Danes harried the

whole country, burnt the monasteries , and annexed

Norfolk and Suffolk as a second Danish kingdom . A our East nglia , too, disappears for a while from E nglish annals .

Lastly, the Danes turned against Mercia and

W 8 1 B a sec essex . In 7 , a host under g g and Half

- dene came to Reading, which belonged to the latter l territory, when the local ea dorman engaged them and w t w on a slight victory. Shortly after ard the Wes n n E E lfred S axo ki g thelred, with his brother , came T T HE 1 1 T HE R ESISTAN CE o DANES . 3

" up , and engaged them a second time with worse suc

"c h ess . T ree other bloody battles followed, in all of which the Danes were beaten with heavy loss 5 but f e t h e West Saxons also suf ered severely . For thre years the h ost moved up and down through Mercia n n and Wessex ; and the Mercia s stood by, aidi g ” ~ “ S neither ide, but making peace with the host from At 8 time to time . last , however, in 7 4 , the heathens M finally annexed the greater part of ercia itself. and The host fared from Lindsey to Repton , there B urhre d sat for the winter, and drove King over sea, two and twenty years after he came to the kingdom 5 n And B urhre d a d they subdued all the land . went t o in Rome, and there settled 5 and his body lies ’ f S t . o . Mary s Church , in the school the English kin A nd in the same year they gave the kingdom of eolwulf he Mercia in ward to C , an unwise thegn 5 and s e i t wore oaths to them , and gav hostages that should be ready for them on whatso day they willed 5 a nd that he would be ready with his own body, and wh o of with all would follow him , for the behoof the ”

. out host Thus Mercia, too , fades for a short while o f n our history, and Wessex alo e of all the English

kingdoms remains . This brief but inevitable record of wars and battles

‘ n is ecessarily tedious, yet it cannot be omitted without slurring over some highly important and interesting

facts . It IS impossible not to be struck with the extraordinarily rapid way in which a body of fierce heathen invaders overran two great Christian and

« comparatively civilised states . We cannot b ut con K 2 2 — I 3 A NG Lo SAXON B R ITAIN . trast the inertness o f Northumbria and the lukewarm ness of Mercia with the stubborn resistance finally r made by fElf ed in Wessex . The contrast may b e l t o of part y due, it is true , the absence native North umbrian and Mercian accounts . We might , perhaps , l of find, had we ful er details , that the men Bernicia and Deira made a harder fight for their lands and their churches than the West Saxon annals would lead

t o . f us suppose Still , after making all allowance or of n the meagreness our authorities , there remai s the indubitable fact that a heathen kingdom was estab lish ed in the pure English land of B aeda and Cuth b erht , while the Christian faith and the Saxon nationality held their own for ever in peninsular and

l - ha f Celtic Wessex . The difference is doubtless due in part t o merely h r surface causes . East Anglia had long lost e was autonomy, and, while sometimes ruled by Mercia, sometimes broken up under several ealdormen . For her and for Northumbria the conquest was but a T he change from a West Saxon to a Danish master . house of Ecgb erht had broken down the national and tribal organisation , and was incapable of substituting no s a central organisation in its place . With road and no communications such a centralising scheme is really impracticable The disintegrated English kingdoms made little Show of fighting for their Saxon

- r over lord . They could accept a Dane for maste almost as readily as they could accept a Saxon .

But besides these surface causes, there was a deeper and more fundamental cause underlying the difference .

I AN G Lo - 3 4 SAXON B R ITAIN .

E lfred u A s given over by to G thrum , was the nglian half, while the part retained by Wessex was mostly

— m the Saxon half the land conquered by Penda fro . the West Saxons two hundred years before . Nor must we suppose that this first wave of Scandi navian conquest in any way swamped or destroyed l o u of the underlying Eng ish p p lation the North .

o r of The conquerors came merely as a host , army l occupation , not as a body of rural co onists . They left the conquered English in possession of their homes, though they seized upon the manors for them o f d selves , and kept the higher dignities the vanquishe l provinces in their own hands . Being rapid y con t o l h verted Christianity, they ama gamated readily wit the native people . Few women came over with them , and intermarriage with the English soon broke down l f k the wa l of separation . The archbishopric o Yor continued its succession uninterruptedly throughout n l d the Danish occupatio . The Bishops of E mham live through the stormy period ; those of Leicester trans ferred their see to Dorchester - on- the - Thames 5 thos e l of Lichfield apparent y kept up an unbroken series . We may gather that beneath the surface th e North remained just as steadily English under the Danish princes as the whole country afterwards remained steadily English under the Norman kings . h There was , however, one section of the true Englis race which kept itself largely free from the Scandi navian host . North of the Tyne the Danes appa rently spread but sparsely 5 English ealdormen con tinned to rule at B amb orough over the land between T HE R C T O T HE 1 ESISTAN E DANES . 3 5

rth m rl n F orth and Tyne . Hence N o u b e a d and the Lothians remained more purely English than any f f other part o Britain . The people o the South are Saxons - the people of the West are h alf Celts 5 the people of the North and the Midlands are largely intermixed with Danes but the people of the Scottish m to lowlands, fro Forth Tweed, are almost purely English 5 and the dialect which we always describe as and Scotch is the strongest, the tersest , the most native modern form of the original Anglo - Saxon we re re tongue . If wish to find the truest existing p sentativ e of ne - the genui pure blooded English race, we for not a or must look him , in Merci in Wessex, but amongst the sturdy and hard -headed farmers of w n T eedside a d Lammermoor. 1 6 A - R 3 NGLO SAXON B ITAIN.

A CH PTER XIV.

T HE AT BAY IN SAXONS WESSEX.

O NLY one English kingdom now held out against the l wickings , and that was Wessex . Its comparative y

successful resistance may be set down, in some slight d of l fElfred egree, to the energy a sing e man , , though it was doubtless far more largely due t o the rela t iv el of y strong organisation the West Saxon state . n fElfred In j udgi g of , we must lay aside the false notions derived from the application of words ex pressing late ideas to an early and undeveloped stage

f l r o civilised society . To call him a great genera o a g reat statesman is to use utterly misleading terms .

Generalship and statesmanship , as we understand

them, did not yet exist, and to speak of them in the n inth century in England is to be guilty of a common ,

Z Elfr . ed but none the more excusable, anachronism of was a sturdy and hearty fighter, and a good king a

- . As semi barbaric people a lad, he had visited Rome 5 and he retained throughout life a strong sense of his ’ n o w and his people s barbarism, and a genuine desire m l u t o civilise hi se f and his s bjects , so far as his limited n lights could carry him . He succeeded to a ki gdom overrun from end to end by piratical hordes and he

did his best to restore peace and to promote order.

I 8 - R 3 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

' h- - of the roug and ready fashion the fighting king, near A n thelney. The treaty entered i to with Guthrum

E lfre d all - restored to Wessex, with the south western of t o part Mercia, from London Bedford, and thence l along the ine of Watling Street to Chester. Thus

a nd for a time the Saxons recovered their autonomy, A l the great Scandinavian horde retired to East ng ia . ’ E l z Elfred s - in- u the red, son law, was appointed nder

of . king recovered Mercia Henceforward , Teutonic Britain remains for awhile divided into Wessex and

Denala u— t o the g that is say, the district governed by

Danish law. h new Though peace was thus made wit Guthrum , bodies of wickings came p ouring southward from n f Scandinavia . O e o these sailed up the Thames to S Fulham , but after pending some time there, they to went over the Frankish coast, where their depreda ’ fElfr tions were long and severe . Throughout all ed s two reign , with only intervals of peace, the wickings on kept up a constant series of attacks the coast , and to frequently penetrated inland . From time time, the great horde under H eesten poured across the country, cutting the corn and driving away the cattle, A and retreating into East nglia, or Northumbria , or of Wirrall the peninsula the , whenever they were “ seriously worsted . Thanks be to God, says the Chronicle pathetically “ the host had not wholly ” broken up all the English kin 5 but the misery of E lfre d v England must have been intense. , howe er, introduced two military changes o f great importance . a He set on foot something like a regular army, with T HE AT B AY I N SAXONS WESSEX . 1 3 9 s t t o e tled commissariat, dividing his forces into w so - bodies , that one half was constantly at home tilling the soil while the other half was in the field 5 and he w h built large ships on a new plan , which he manned it l w l Frisians, as well as with Eng ish , and hich large y aided in keeping the coast fairly free from Danish of invasion during the two intervals peace . o f n Throughout the whole the inth century, how ever, and the early part of the tenth , the whole history of England is the history of a perpetual pillage . NO man who sowed could tell whether he might reap or of not . The Englishman lived in constant fear life and goods 5 he was liable at any moment to be called out against the enemy . Whatever little civilisation had ever existed in the country died out almost alto gether. The Latin language was forgotten even by War the priests . had turned everybody into fighters 5 commerce was impossible when the towns were sacked year after year by the pirates . But in the rare intervals o f fElfred peace, did his best to civilise his people . The amount of work with which he is credited is truly astonishing . He translated into English with his ” own of hand The History the World, by Orosius 5 ’ ” ’ B aeda s Ecclesiastical History 5 B oethius s De ” ’ ” l i ne Past rali C onso at o o s. , and Gregory s Regula At too th e his court , , if not under his own direction , of English Chronicle was first begun, and many the sentences quoted from that great document in Z Elfr Hi s this work are probably due to ed himself. devotion to the church was shown by the regular c b ommunication which he kept up with Rome , and y 1 0 N L - Ax N R 4 A G o S O B ITAIN . the g ifts which he sent from his impoverished king d om n l to ot . to , on y the shrine of St Peter but even in f . that o St . Thomas India No doubt his vigorous personality counted for much in the struggle with the Danes ; but his death in 9 0 1 left the West Saxons as ready as ever to contend against the northern enemy . One result of the Danish invasion of Wessex must n ot be passed over . The common danger seems to have firmly welded together Welshman and Saxon l of into a sing e nationality . The most faithful part ’ fElfred s dominions were the West Welsh Shires of S l l omerset and Devon , with the ha f Celtic fo k of

Dorset and Wilts . The result is seen in the change which comes over the relations between the two ’ n races . In I e s laws the distinction between Welsh men and Englishmen is strongly marked 5 the price o f blood for the servile population is far less than ’ that of their lords : in [Elfred s laws the distinction

out . has died Compared to the heathen Dane, West

Saxons and West Welsh were equally Englishmen . e of From that day to this , the C ltic peasantry the West Country have utterly forgotten their Welsh kin s l hip , save in wholly Cymric Cornwa l alone . The Devon and Somerset men have for centuries been as English in tongue and feeling as the people of Kent r o Sussex .

1 2 — R 4 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN . t t o u ime breathe and to recr it their strength . Hence f l orth , for near y a century, the direct wicking incur sions cease, and the war is confined to a long struggle w orthm en l l ith the N a ready sett ed in England . Four A l y ears later, the east ng ian Danes broke the peace and harried Mercia and Wessex 5 b ut Eadward over l and ran their ands in return , the Kentish men , in a s l l eparate batt e, attacked and s ew Eric their king with

of l 2 l s . 1 [E everal his ear s In 9 , the red the Mercian Eadward at died , and once incorporated London and

Oxford with his own dominions , leaving his sister ’ fEth elfl aed only the northern half o f her husband s “ Z Eth elfl . aed f p rincipality Thenceforth , the Lady o ” t h e l Mercians , turned deliberate y to the conquest of t h e . North She adopted a fresh kind of tactics , which mark again a new departure in the English f l p olicy . Instead o keeping to the o d plan o f al h arr in s ternate y g on either side , and precarious

of t o E thelfl ae tenure lands from time time, d began building regular fortresses or éw /zs all along

- r her north eastern frontiers , using these afterwa ds as bases for fresh operations against the enemy . The spade went hand in hand with the sword : th e l English were becoming engineers as wel as fighters . ’ In the year of her husband s death , the Lady built “ ba rks at Sarrat and Bridgnorth . The next year she l went with all the Mercians to Tamworth, and bui t

burl; l m the there in ear y sum er 5 and ere Lammas , ” f two She that at Staf ord . In the succeeding years Eddesb ur w set up other strongholds at y, War ick,

Wardb ur . 1 C herbury, y, and Runcorn By 9 7 , she T E R 1 T HE R ECOVER Y OF H NO TH . 43

one o f found herself strong enough to attack Derby, the chief cities in the Danish confederacy of the Five

Burgs , which she captured after a hard siege . Thence

she turned on Leicester, which capitulated on her

a approach , the D nish host going over quietly to her She of s ide. was in communication with the Danes of York for the surrender that city, too , when she a in died suddenly in her roy l town of Tamworth , the

1 8 year 9 . Meanwhile Eadward had been pushing forward his o wn emf /l s boundary in the east, building at Hertford

a nd to Witham, and endeavouring subjugate the

Danish league in Bedford, Huntingdon , and North 1 hurke tel ampton . In 9 5, T , the jarl of Bedford, ” Eadward sought him for lord , and afterwards built a ’

éur iz . there also On his sister s death , he annexed all e her territories, and then , in a fierc and long doubtful

struggle, reconquered not only Huntingdon and i Northampton but East Anglia as well . The Chr stian

English hailed him as a deliverer . Next, he turned o n of n Stamford, the Danish capital the Fe s, and on of the n Nottingham , the stronghold Southumbria

host . In both towns he erected bu r/ts . These suc cesses once more placed the West Saxon king in the

foremost position amongst the many rulers of Britain .

The smaller principalities , unable to hold their own

against the Scandinavians , began spontaneously to Eadwar rally round d as their leader and suzerain . “ o f th In the same year with the conquest Stamford , e Cledauc kings of the North Welsh, Howel, and , and eothwel and s o t J , all the North Wel h kin, s ugh him - 1 44 ANGLO SAXON B R ITAI N .

f r 2 Eadward o . lord In 9 3 , pushed further north “ w t o ard, and sent a Mercian host conquer Man ” m an chester in Northumbria, and fortify and it . A line of twenty fortresses now girdled the English

frontier, from Colchester, through Bedford and Not tin h am t o c g , Man hester and Chester. Next year, adward now all E himself, immediate king of England of south Humber, attacked the last remaining Danish n kingdom, Northumbria , throwi g a bridge across the

Trent at Nottingham, and marching against Bakewell i n ba r b Peakland , where again he built a . The new tactics were too fi ne fo r the rough and ready Danish e Eadward . e leaders B fore reached York , the entir

North submitted without a blow. The king of Scots , R a nald and all the Scottish kin , and g [Danish king of of Eadulf of York], and the sons [English kings B amb orou h as g ], and all who dwell in Northumbria, well English as Danes and Northmen and others, and also the king of the Strathclyde Welsh and all the

for Strathclyde Welsh , sought him for father and

2 Ead r . wa d lord . This was in 9 4 Next year, rex i nv ictus - of to died , over lord all Britain from sea sea , w wh of hile the ole country south the Humber, save now l only Wales and Cornwall , was practica ly united n f into a single ki gdom o England . But the seeming submission of the North was falla n a cio s . The Danes had reintroduced into Britain of fresh mass incoherent barbarism , which could not i n thus readily coalesce . The Scandinavian leaven the population had put back the Shadow on the dial j - o f e . England some thre centuries Ethelstan, Ead

- 1 46 ANGLO SAXON B R ITAIN .

1 inserted in full in the English Chronicle . Three E l d years later the stan died , as his father had die

u -l all before him , undisp ted over ord of Britain , and immediate king of the whole Teutonic portion . Yet once more the feebl e unity of the country broke hopelessly asunder. Eadmund, who succeeded u his brother, fo nd the Danes of the North and the l Mid ands again insubordinate . The year after his “ orthumb rians t accession the N belied their oa h , and ” Anlaf o f l chose Ire and for king . The Five Burgs l went too, and the old boundary of Wat ing Street was once more made the frontier o f the Danish posses sions . In 9 44 , however, Eadmund subdued all

Northumbria , and expelled its Danish kings . His of recovery of the Five Burgs, and the j oy the Chris l l tian Eng ish inhabitants , are vivid y set forth in a frag mentary ballad embedded in the Chronicle . The next l year he harried Strathc yde or Cumberland, the Welsh kingdom between Clyde and Morecambe , and handed l it over to Ma colm, king of Scots , as a pledge of his ’ At 6 — fidelity . Eadmund s death in 94 when he was stabbed in his royal hall by an outlaw— his kingdom

l Ea r fel to his brother d e d . Two years later North umbria again revolted , and chose Eric for its king.

Eadred harried and burnt the province, which he o f one then handed over to an earl his own creation ,

f m or u h l d o the B a b o g family. The king himse f die in 9 55, and was succeeded by his nephew Eadwig .

But Northumbria and Mercia revolted once more ,

e S e chapter xx . T HE R ECOVERY OF T HE NORTH . 1 4 7

’ and w B of r chose Ead ig s brother, adgar, instead . thei n 8 ow Danish princes . Eadwig died in 9 5 , and B adgar then became king of all three provinces 5 thus finally uniting the whole o f Teutonic England

into one kingdom . ’ Eadgar s reign forms the climax of the West Saxon

power. It was , in fact, the only period when England ' can be said to have enj oyed any national unity under

A - t the nglo Saxon dynasties . The s rong hand of a priest gave peace for some years to the ill - organ i sed

mass . Dunstan was probably the first Englishman f who seriously deserves the name o statesman . He

- o f was born in the half Celtic region Somerset, beside

the great abbey of Glastonbury, which held the bones of A o f i rthur, and a good deal the imaginat ve Celtic 1 temper ran p robably with the blood in his veins . But he was above all the representative of the Roman

- civilisation in the barbarised, half Danish England of wa . s the tenth century He a musician , a painter, a

reader, and a scholar, in a world of fierce warriors

1 I t is impossibl e to avoid noticing th e increa se d imp ortance ’ of e -Cel t c B r ta n un er Dunstan s a n trat on s mi i i i d dmi is i . He w as himself at first an abb ot of th e old W est Welsh m onastery o f Glastonbury : h e prom ot e d West countrym en t o the principal p osts i n th e kingdom and h e h ad B a dgar hallo we d king at th e anc ent e t Wel r o al c t of B at ar r e to a D i W s sh y i y h , m i d evon re l a and ur e at G la ton ur n e e a . t t ona shi dy, b i d s b y I d d, h m stery w as under Dunstan what Westminster w a s under the later n F lorence u e ki gs . s s the strange e xpressi on that B adgar w as “ chosen by the Anglo -B ritons a nd th e m e eting with the l - W e sh and S cotch p rinces i n th e s emi Welsh town of Chester con e a l e l cat on v ys ik imp i i . 1 8 - R 4 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

l n m and ignorant nob es . Eadmu d ade him abbot of B Glastonbury . adgar appointed him first bishop of ’ A London , and then , on Eadwig s death , rchbishop of u Canterbury. It was D nstan who really ruled

h Es England t roughout the remainder of his life . sentiall n y an orga iser and administrator, he was able t o l weld the unwie dy empire into a rough unity, l n which lasted as long as its author ived , and o f longer . He appeased the discontent o Northum bria and the Five Burgs by permitting them a certain o f amount of local independence, with the enjoyment own their laws and their own lawmen . He kept a fleet o f boats cruising in the Irish Sea to check the

Danish hosts at Dublin and Waterford . He put w B for ard a code, known as the laws of adgar, for the o f b etter government Wessex and the South . He m ade the over- lordship of the West Saxons over t heir British vassals more real than it had ever been l before ; and a tale, preserved by Florence , tel s us that eight tributary kings rowed B adgar in his royal h sub ec barge on the Dee, in token of t eir complete j ll l tion . Interna y, Dunstan revived the dec ining

S of pirit monasticism , which had died down during to the long struggle with the Danes , and attempted reintroduce some tinge o f southern civilisation into the barbarised and half-paganised country in which “ h e lived . Wherever it was possible , he drove out the ” priests, and set monks , and he endeavoured to make the monasteries , which had degenerated during the n long war into mere landowning communities, regai once more their old position as centres of culture

- R I 50 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

- v . no Saxon o er lords There is reason to believe , of n however, that this introduction the English to gue and English manners was connected with any consi d erable immigration o f Teutonic settlers into the

An . A glicised tracts The population of yrshire , of of A Fife , Perthshire, and of berdeen , still shows of every sign Celtic descent , alike in physique, in f o u . temperament, and in habit tho ght The change was , in all probability, exactly analogous to that which n we ourselves have seen taki g place in Wales , in

Ireland, and in the Celtic north of Scotland at the present day. - I 1 ANGLO SAXON B R ITAIN . 5

CHAPTER XVI

“T HE AUGUSTAN AGE A N D T HE LATER ANGLO -SAXON

CIVILISATION .

T HE S light pause in th e long course of Danish warfare which occurred during the vigorous a dm ini s t rati on f for of Dunstan, af ords the best Opportunity c onsidering the degree o f civilisation reached by the

English in the last age before the Norman Conquest. Our materials for such an estimate are partly to be f or ound in existing buildings, manuscripts , pictures, nam ents ae , and other arch ological remains , and partly in the documentary evidence of the chronicles and c harters, and more especially of the great survey ’ undertaken by the Conqueror s commissioners , and k nown as Domesday Book . From these sources we a re enabled to gain a fairly complete View of the Anglo - Saxon culture in the period immediately pre c eding the immense infl ux of Romance civilisation after the Conquest 5 and though some such Romance

{influence was already exerted by the Normanising t of Eadward endencies the Confessor, we may y et conveniently consider the whole subj ect here u of B f Eth lr iffi nder the age adgar and e ed . It is d c ult, indeed, to trace any very great improvement in t he arts of life between the days of Dunstan and the d ays of Harold . I 2 - R 5 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

I II spite o f constant wars and ravages from the d northern pirates, there can be little oubt that Eng land had been slowly a d v ancmg In material civilisa tion ever since the introduction of Christianity. The heathen intermixture in the North and the Midlands had retarded the advance but had not completely checked it 5 while in Wessex and the South the inter course with the continent and the consequent growth l n fEth l l in cu ture had been steadily increasi g. e wu f of Wesse x married a daughter of Karl the Bald; f Elfred gave his daughter to a count of Flanders 5 and ’ Eadward s princesses were married respectively to the n emperor, to the ki g of France , and to the king of l Provence . Such al iances show a considerable d egree of intercourse between Wessex and th e Roman world 5 and the relics of material civilisation u l f h f l y bear out the inference . The Institutes o t e of Lié e city London mention traders from Brabant, g , s Rouen , Ponthieu , France (in the re tricted sense) , “ and the Empire ; but these came in their own ” l s vessels . Eng and , which now has in her hand the carrying trade of the world, was still dependent w for her own supply on foreign bottoms . We kno also that offi cers were appointed to collect tolls from m A n foreign erchants at Canterbury, Dover, ru del , and many other towns ; and London and Bristol certainly traded on their own account with the

Continent . As a a whole , however, England still remained purely agricultural country to the very end of th e

- l Anglo Saxon period . It had but ittle foreign trade,

1 - R 54 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

- f churls holding on service tenure . The mass o Eng of l l land consisted such manors , still arge y inter s l persed with wood and, each with the wooden hall of i ts of lord occupying the centre the homestead, and with the huts of the churls and serfs among the hays and valleys of the outskirts . The butter and cheese, bread and bacon , were made at home 5 the corn was g round in the quern 5 the beer was brewed and the l n honey collected by the fami y . The spin er and all weaver, the shoemaker, smith , and carpenter, were parts of the household . Thus every manor was

l - sufficin - wholly se f g and self sustaining, and towns l u were rendered a most nnecessary . Forests and heaths still also covered about half the

- u surface . These were now the hunting gro nds of the l l b ursts kings and nob es , whi e in the leys , , and dens , small groups of huts gave shelter to the swineherds and woodwards who had charge of their lord’s pro l - perty in the wood ands . The great tree covered region of Selwood still divided Wessex into two halves ; the forest of the Chilterns still spread close t o the walls of London 5 the Peakland was st ill over grown by an inaccessible thicket ; and the long central ridge between Yorkshire and Scotland was

ae still shadowed by prim val oaks , pinewoods , and b A u to eeches . gricult re continued to be confined the alluvial bottoms , and had nowhere as yet invaded t he l uplands, or even the stiffer and drier low and r as egions , such the Weald of Kent or the forests of A rden and Elmet . Only two elements broke the monotony of these T HE AUGUSTAN AG E . 1 55

- s elf suffi cing agricultural communities . Those ele ments were the monasteries and the towns . A large part of the soil of England was owned by

“ t he monks . They now possessed considerable build i t ngs , wi h stone churches of some pretensions , in which si n service was conducted with pomp and irnp res v e ess.

- on-A The tiny chapel of St . Lawrence, at Bradford von, forms the best example of this primitive Romanesque n A architecture now survivi g in England . round the

- monasteries stretched their well tilled lands , mostly reclaimed from fen or forest, and probably more scientifically cultivated than those of the neighbouring manors . Most of the monks were skilled in civilised handicrafts, introduced from the more cultivated con in n T t e t . hey were excellent ecclesiastical metal of wh o i n workers 5 many them were architects , built rude imitation of Romanesque models ; and others were designers or illuminators of manuscripts . The books and charters of this age are delicately and minutely wrought out, though not with all the artistic ae of elaboration of later medi val work . The art p ainting (almost always in miniature) was consider adv ar ce d ably , the figures being well drawn , in rather f not sti f but unlifelike attitudes, though perspective at is very imperfectly understood, and hardly ever

A - tempted . Later nglo Saxon architecture , such as ’ that of Eadward s magnificent abbey church at West t o minster (afterwards destroyed by Henry I II . make con way for his own building) , was not inferior to t inental All h workmanship . t e arts practised in the a of of bbeys were direct Roman origin, and most the - R I I 56 ANe LO SAXON B ITA N . words relating to them are immediately derived from the Latin . This is the case even with terms relating ’ eana le en w i ne oi l . t o such common objects as , p , , and of Names weights , measures , coins , and other exact quantitative ideas are also derived from Roman sources . Carpenters , smiths, bakers , tanners , and h m t e . illers , were usually attached to abbeys Thus , in many cases, as at Glastonbury, Peterborough ,

Ripon , Beverley, and Bury St . Edmunds, the mon aster y grew into the nucleus of a considerable town , though the development of such towns is more marked As after than before the Norman Conquest . a whole , of l it was by means the monasteries , and especia ly of their constant interchange of inmates with the con tinent , that England mainly kept up the touch with

r h . t e the southern civilisation The e alone was Latin , l of universa medium continental intercommunication , n taught and spoken . There alo e were books written , was preserved , and read . Through the Church alone an organisation kept up in direct communication with the central civilising agencies of Italy and th e And s south . while the Church and the monasterie

thus preserved the connection with the continent , they also formed schools of culture and of industrial At l arts for the country itself. the abbeys bel s were

cast, glass manufactured, buildings designed, gold

and silver ornaments wrought, j ewels enamelled , and unskilled labour organised by the most trained inte lli u gence of the land . They th s remained as they had n begu , homes and retreats for those exceptional minds which were capable of carrying on the arts

1 8 - R 5 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

Kandahar 5 and madder seems to have been bought

for l . there dyeing c oth In Kent, Sussex, and East A l l ng ia, herring fisheries already produced considerab e

results . With these few exceptions , all the towns were apparently mere local centres of exchange for

produce , and small manufactured wares , like the l or of our arger villages bazaars India in own time .

Nevertheless , there was a distinct advance towards u A - rban life in the later nglo Saxon period . B aeda

of mentions very few towns , and most those were of waste . By the date the Conquest there were b efitte many, and their functions were such as d a

more diversified national life . Communications had become far greater 5 and arts or trade had now to

some extent specialised themselves in special places . A list of the chief early English towns may possibly seem to give too much importance to these very l n one minor e ements of E glish life 5 yet may, perhaps, be appended with due precaution against misappre

h ensi on.

The capital , if any place deserved to be so called u was nder the perambulating early English dynasty, Wintanc easter old new Winchester ( ) , with its and

of - minsters , containing the tombs the West Saxon of kings . It possessed a large number craftsmen , doubtless dependant ultimately upon the court 5 and it was relatively a place of far greater importance

than at any later date . Lundenb ri The chiefports were London ( y g) , situated at the head of tidal navigation on the Thames 5 and t Bric estow Gleawan-ceaster Bris ol ( g ) and Gloucester ( ) , 1 T HE AUGUSTAN AG E . 59

similarly placed on the Avon and Severn . These towns were convenient for early shipping because of their tidal position , at an age when artificial harbours of t were unknown . They were the seat the expor traffic in slaves and the import traffic in continental ’ fElfred s goods . Before reign the carrying trade by sea seems to have been in the h ands of the Frisian

- n skippers and slave dealers, who stood to the E glish in the same relation as the Arabs no w stand to the East African and Central African negroes 5 but after the increased attention paid to shipbuilding during

, the struggle with the Danes , English vessels began to n on own t e gage in trade their account . London mus already have been the largest and richest town in the ’ “ B aeda s kingdom . Even in time it was the mart of ” m d . any nations , resorting to it by sea and lan It seems, indeed , to have been a sort of merchant com m onwealth own , governed by its port reeve, and it m to ade its own dooms , which have been preserved

. n the present day From the Roma time onward , the position of London as a great free commercial town was probably uninterrupted . Eoforwic of its York ( ) , the capital the North , had wn o archbishop and its Danish internal organisation . It seems to have been always an important and con siderabl e town , and it doubtless possessed the same of large body handicraftsmen as Winchester. During th e of t doubtful period Danish and English s ruggles, the archbishop apparently exercised quasi-royal au h orit t y over the English burghers themselves . Among the cathedral towns the most important 1 6 0 - R ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN . w - -b ri Old ere Canterbury (Cant wara y g) , the capital of and l all n l Kent metropo is of E g and , which seems to have contained a relatively large trading population 5 O Dorchester, in xfordshire, first the royal city of the

West Saxons , and afterwards the seat of the exiled

Hro fes- ceaster bishopric of Lincoln 5 Rochester ( ) , the old K entin s capital of the West g , and seat of their

: Wi orna-ceaster bishop and Worcester ( g ) , the chief f town of the Hui ccii . O the monastic towns the chief El were Peterborough (Burh) , y (Elig) , and Glaston in a ri A Glaest b . bury ( g y g) Bath , mesbury, Colchester, l Linco n , Chester, and other towns of Roman origin

. of were also important Exeter, the old capital the

West Welsh , situated at the tidal head of the Exe, had was f fi considerable trade . Oxford a place o traf c and n a fortified town . Hasti gs, Dover, and the other south -coast ports had some commu nications with l France . The only other p aces of any note were B ensin ton A Chippenham , g , and ylesbury 5 North ampton and Southampton 5 Bamb orough ; the for tified posts built by Eadward and fEth elfl aed 5 and o f the Danish boroughs Bedford, Derby, Leicester, f Stam ord, Nottingham, and Huntingdon . The

Witena- gemots and the synods took place in any town , irrespective of size, according to royal convenience .

But as early as the days of Cnut, London was begin ning to be felt as the real centre of national life Eadward and the Confessor, by founding Westminster

A ll of n . bbey, made it practica y the home the ki gs The Conqueror wore his crown on Eastertide at Winchester 5 on Pentecost at Westminster ; and on

1 6 2 - R ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

’ o f at the end the Conqueror s reign, England con in A ta ed souls . llowing for the large num of ber persons introduced at the Conquest, and for the natural increase during the unusual peace in the of of Eadward reigns Cnut, the Confessor, and , above all of , William himself, we may guess that it could not have contained more than a m illion and a quarter of Ea ar in the days dg . London may have had a population o f some 5 Winchester and York o f each 5 certainly that of York at the date of

Domesday could not have exceeded persons, a nd we know that it contained houses in the t ime of Eadward the Confessor . The organisation of the country continued on the f l lines of the o d constitution . But the importance of now the simple freeman had quite died out, and the of gemot was rather a meeting the earls, bishops , l l abbots, and wea thy landho ders , than a real assembly

f - of o the people. The sub divisions the kingdom were now pretty generally conterminous with the

modern counties . In Wessex and the east the

counties are either older kingdoms, like Kent, Sussex, or l and Essex 5 e se tribal divisions of the kingdom, l f ike Dorset, Somerset , Norfolk , Suf olk, and Surrey .

In Mercia, the recovered country is artificially mapped o ut of round the chief Danish burgs, as in the case ottin ham shire Derbyshire, N g , Bedfordshire, North am tonshire p , and Leicestershire, where the county town usually Occupies the centre of the arbitrary

shire . In Northumbria it is divided into equally n n artificial counties by the rivers . Be eath the cou ties HE A A E T AUGUST N G . 1 63

n of the stood the older organisatio hundred, and b of eneath that again the primitive unit the township , on i ts a th a he known ecclesi stical side as e p rish . In t of Ead ar n e to h cont n reign g , Engla d se ms ave ai ed a t h bou parish churc es . - R N 1 64 AN G Lo SAXON B ITAI .

CHAPTER XVII .

T HE DECADENCE.

T HE death of Dunstan was the signal for the break ing down of the artificial kingdom which he had held together by the mere power of his solitary organising

. E Ead ar who capacity thelred , the son of g ( suc ceed ed Eadward after the brief reign of his brother ) , lost hopelessly all hold over the Scandinavian north . At the same time , the wicking incursions , intermitted for nearly a century, once more recommenced with ’ Dunstan s the same vigour as of old . Even before 80 death , in 9 , the pirates ravaged Southampton , killing most of the townsfolk 5 and they also pillaged h o . Thanet , while another st overran Cheshire In the succeeding year, great harm was done in Devonshire ” and in Wales 5 and a year later again , London was

. 8 Z Eth elred burnt and Portland ravaged In 9 5, , the ll of Unready, as after ages ca ed him , from his lack ’ r eae z E lfri c of or counsel, quarrelled with , ealdormen

the Mercians , whom he drove over sea . The breach

between Mercia and Wessex was thus widened, and as the Danish attacks continued without interruption the redeless king soon found himself comparatively n l n isolated in his ow paterna dominio s . Northum n Uhtred bria, u der its earl (one of the house of

1 6 6 - R ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

flight by a gallant resistance of the townsmen , who did more harm and evil than ever they weened that ” any burghers could d o them . Thence the host sailed

away to Essex , Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire, burning n and slaying all alo g the coast as they went . E thelred and his witan bought them off again , with of the immense tribute sixteen thousand pounds . The

b ut for host accepted the terms, settled down the winter at Southampton — a sufficient indication of their intentions — within easy reach of Winchester itself ’ and there they fed from all the West Saxons land . jEth elred who con was alarmed, and sent to Olaf,

sented to meet him at Andover . There the king “ him received him with great worship, and gifted

with kinglike gifts , and sent him away with a promise

t o . never again attack England Olaf kept his word, B ut Swe en and returned no more . still g remained , on and went pillaging Devonshire and Cornwall ,

wending into Tamar mouth as far as Lidford, where “ ” his men burnt and slew all that they found . so Thence they betook themselves to the Frome , and

up into Dorset, and again to Wight . In 9 99, on the

eve of doomsday as men then thought, they sailed up

w and . T Thames and Med ay, attacked Rochester he f men o Kent stoutly fought them , but, as usual , without assistance from other Shires 5 and the Danes

took horses , and rode over the land, almost ruining n his all the West Kenti gs. The king and witan resolved to send against them a land fyrd and a ship of fyrd or raw levy . But the spirit the West Saxons was

broken , and though the craft were gathered together, E 1 T H DECADENCE . 6 7

yet in the end , as the Chronicle plaintively puts it, neither ship fyrd nor land fyrd wrought anything save ”

emb OIdenin . toil for the folk, and the g of their foes S o n 0 , year after year, the e dless invasion dragged e of its course , and everywher each shire Wessex fought for itself against such enemies as happened to

. At 1 00 2 E e attack it last, in the year , thelred onc off more bought the fleet, this time with pounds ; and some of the Danes obtained leave t o i ’ h n . on . t e settle down Wessex But St Brice s day, king treacherously gave orders that all Danes in the

immediate English territory should be massacred . T on he West Saxons rose the appointed night , and w one of n sle every them , including Gu hild, the sister of e en Sw . King g , and a Christian convert It was a

t . Swe en foolhardy at empt g fell at once upon Wessex, t for two and marched up and down the whole coun ry, years . He burnt Wilton and Sarum , and then sailed t o Ulfk t el of A round Norwich , where y , East nglia, “ gave him the hardest hand-play that he had ever A n known in England . year of famine interve ed ; 1 006 Swe en n and but in g returned agai , harrying

burning Sandwich . All autumn the West Saxon fyrd “ a t o waited for the enemy, but in the end it c me na oft T he t ught more than it had erst done . hos in took up quarters . Wight , marched across Hants and e Berks to Reading, and burned Wallingford . Thenc t o the they returned with their booty the fleet , by “ T the very walls of the royal city . here might Winchester folk behold an insolent host and fearless ” had wend past their gate to sea . The king himself 1 68 ANG Lo- R SAXON B ITAIN .

fled into Shropshire . The tone of utter despair with which the Chronicle narrates all these events is the of d best measure the national egradation . There so t was muckle awe of the host, says the annalis , that no man could think how man could drive them from this earth or hold this earth against them 5 for that they had cruelly marked each shire o f Wessex ” with burning and with harrying. The English had n sunk into hopeless misery, and were o ly waiting for a strong rule to rescue them from their misery .

T h rk ll . o e The strong rule came at last , a Danish s jarl , marched all through Wessex, and for three year more his host pillaged everywhere in the South . In 1 0 1 1 fElfh eah , they killed , the archbishop of Canter

at . bury, Greenwich When the country was wholly Swe en weakened, g turned southward once more, this

time with all N orthum b ria and Mercia at his back .

1 0 1 to In 3 he sailed round Humber mouth , and l to . thence up the Trent, Gainsborough Then Ear Uhtred orthumb rians to and all N soon bowed him , and all the folk in Lindsey ; and sithence the folk of t the Five Burgs, and shortly after, all the hos by north of Watling- street 5 and men gave him hostages ” we n of each shire . S ge at once led the united army son Denala u into England, leaving his Cnut in g with

the . ships and hostages He marched to Oxford , which received him 5 then to the royal city of Win

no . At chester, which made resistance London Z Ethelred was waiting 5 and for a time the town held

ut S o Swe en . o . g marched westward, and took Bath

- — There, the thegns of the Welsh kin counties Somer

1 0 - R 7 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

Eadward . f who was practically a foreigner , son o Z Ethelred Y mm a of hi by Normandy, had lived in s ’ mother s country during the greater part of his life .

Recalled by Earl Godwine and the witan , he cam e back to England a Norman , rather than an English in man . The administration remained really the of or hands Godwine himself, and of the Danish

r Dani cised aristocracy. But Mercia and N o thumbria t he still stood apart from Wessex, and once procured exile of Godwine himself. The great earl returned , h owever, and at his death passed on his power to his son Danicise d of Harold , a Englishman great rough ability, such as suited the hard times on which he was f E dward wh . o a o cast Harold employed the lifetime , l o wn was child ess , in preparing for his succession .

1 0 66 The king died in , and Harold was quietly chosen at once by the witan . He was the last Englishman who ever sat upon the throne of England . The remaining story belongs chiefly to the annals of Norman Britain . Harold was assailed at once i . T ost from either side On the north, his brother g, m orthumbria t who he had expelled from N , led agains

n H r ra a d da . him his amesake, Harold , king of Norway ’ l Eadward s On the south , Wi liam of Normandy, the cousin , claimed the right to present himself to ’ dwar . Ea d s English electors death , in fact, had left En land broken up the temporary status , and . g once more a prey to barbaric Scandinavians from

or . Denmark, civilised Scandinavians from Normandy The English themselves had no organisation which h no could withstand eit er, and national unity to pro 1 T HE DECADENCE . 7 1

of mote such organisation in future . Harold Norway old o f came first, landing in the Danish stronghold Northumbria 5 and the English Harold hurried north of -e l ward to meet him , with his little body house ar s , aided by a large fyrd which he had hastily col

At - l ected t o use against William . Stamford bridge t he overthrew the invaders with great slaugh er, Harold Hardrada and T ostig being amongst the M slain . eanwhile , William had crossed to Pevensey, and was ravaging the coast . Harold hurried south n A ward, and met him at Senlac , ear Hastings . fter ’ a hard day s fight, the Normans were successful , and n Harold fell . But even yet the E glish could not f n n agree among themselves . In this crisis o the atio al

f . ate , the local j ealousies burnt up as fiercely as ever

While William was marching upon London , the witan were quarrelling and intriguing in the city over A Ealdre d the succession . rchbishop and the towns ” of Ead ar — a men London would have g Child, grand son of Eadmund Ironside for king, as was his ” k r re re . M or e e right by kin But Eadwine and , the p sentativ es of had the great Mercian family of Leofric , ’ hopes that they might turn William s invasi on to their own good, and secure their independence in the north by allowing Wessex t o fall unassisted into his A n a . f B h nds fter much shu fli g, adgar was at last “ b e n chosen for king . But as it ever should have ( was f to the forwarder , so it ever, rom day day, slower ” the and worse . No resistance was organised . In of Chroni midst all this turmoil , the Peterborough cler is engaged in narrating the petty affairs of his I 2 - R 7 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

own abbey, and the question which arose through the application made t o B adgar for his consent t o the

appointment of an abbot . In such a spirit did the English meet an invasion from the stoutest and best o rganised soldiery in Europe. William marched on or on without let hindrance, and his way, the Lady ’ the Confessor s widow surrendered the royal city of

Winchester into his hands . The duke reached the

Thames, burnt Southwark, and then made a détour

to cross the river at Wallingford, whence he proceeded off into Hertfordshire, thus cutting Eadwine and Mork r e e in London from their earldoms . The Mer e ian and Northumbrian leaders being determined to

hold their own at all hazards , retreated northward ;

and the English resistance crumbled into pieces . B Ealdred adgar, the rival king, with , the archbishop , of and all the chief men London, came out to meet “ to . William, and bowed him for need The Chronicler can only say that it was very foolish they

. A so so had not done so before people helpless , a so of o utterly narchic, incapable united acti n, de served to undergo a se vere training from the har d task m masters ofRomance civilisation . The nation re ained, to b e but it remained as a conquered race , drilled h F of t e . o r in the stern school conquerors awhile, an it is true, William governed England like English king ; but the constant rebellion and faithle ssness of

‘ his new subjects drove him soon t o severer m easurt s 5 n of 1 068 l a d the great insurrection , with its resu ts , put the whole country at his feet in a very d ifferent F or r sense from the battle of Senlac. a hund ed and

1 - 7 4 ANGLO SAXON B R ITAIN .

A CH PTER XVIII .

T HE - ANGLO SAXON LANGUAGE .

A CR P of A - DES I TION nglo Saxon Britain , however

brief, would not be complete without some account of

the English language in its earliest and purest form . But it would be impossible within reasonable limits to give anything more than a Short general statement of the relation which the old English tongue bears to t h e kindred Teutonic dialects, and of the main differences which mark it off from our modern sim lifi All at p e d and modified speech . that can be tempted here is such a broad outline as may enable t h e general reader to grasp the true connexion

so- A l - between modern English and called ng o Saxon,

A - on the one hand, as well as between nglo Saxon

itself and the parent Teutonic language on the other. Any full investigation of grammatical or etymological d etails would be beyond the scope of this little

volume . The tongue spoken by the English and Saxons at the period of their invasion of Britain was an almost f L w . o unmixed o Dutch dialect Originally derived, c A ourse , from the primitive ryan language, it had already undergone those changes which are summed ’ a up in what is known as Grimm s Law. The princip l - 1 T HE ANGLO SAXON LANGUAGE . 7 5

c onsonants in the old Aryan tongue had been regu l arly and slightly altered in certain directions 5 and these alterations have been carried still further in the T allied High German language . hus the original

a iner at word for f , which closely resembled the L in

‘ ’ ezzer or A -Saxon naen p , becomes in early English nglo f , m i en S o and in modern High German , again, among

‘ our tw o z ze/ ez the numerals, , in early English , answers t o Latin d ue and modern High German z w ei ; while

our thr ee i n old i nneo fees , English , answers to Latin , dre and modern High German i . So far as these per

mutations are concerned, Sanscrit , Greek, and Latin may be regarded as most nearly resembling the t A and t primi ive ryan speech , with hem the Celtic

d t . ialec s mainly agree From these , the English

o ne two . varies degree, the High German The fol lowing table represents the nature of such changes approximately for thes e three groups of languages

G re e S an cr t k, s i , d th . . Lat n Celt c i , i

G ot c En l hi , g ish Low Dutch

High

t s In prac ice , several modification arise 5 for example, for old the law is only true High German , and that a o its only ppr ximately, but general truth may be a t ccepted as governing mos individual cases . s n a Judged by this tandard, E glish forms a di lect D t an of A n a of the Low u ch br ch the ryan la gu ge, 1 6 -S R 7 ANGLO AXON B ITAIN .

o t gether with Frisian, modern Dutch , and the Scan dinav ian tongues . Within the group thus restricted i t s f old a finities are closest with Frisian and Dutch , less close with Icelandic and Danish . While the l on English sti l lived the shores of the Baltic , it is probable that their language was perfectly intelligibl e to the ancestors of the people who now inhabit d f Hollan , and who then spoke very slightly dif erent

l . Low ocal dialects In other words, a single Dutch , speech then apparently prevailed from the mouth of of the Elbe to that the Scheldt, with small local variations ; and from this speech the Anglo - Saxon and the modern English have developed in one in direction , while the Dutch has developed another, the Frisian dialect long remaining intermediate between them . Scandinavian ceased, perhaps , to be l inte ligible to Englishmen at an earlier date, the old Icelandic being already marked off from Anglo

Saxon by strong peculiarities, while modern Danish differs even more widely from the spoken English o f the present day . The relation of Anglo - Saxon to modern English is that of direct parentage, it might almost be said of n of B eow ul f absolute identity . The la guage f and o fElfre d is not, as many people still imagine, a different language from our own 5 it is simply English in its earliest and most unmixed form . What we

A - commonly call nglo Saxon , indeed, is more English than what we commonly call English at the present l . not day The first is truly Eng ish , only in its of structure and grammar, but also in the whole its

I 8 ANGLo - R 7 SAXON B ITAIN .

England would have to learn a number of unfamiliar w ords , but he would not have to learn a new lan guage . If, on the other hand , a body of Frenchmen to were settle in a neighbouring Chinese province , and to adopt exactly the same Chinese words , their l n a guage would still remain essentially French . The dialects o f the two settlements would contain many r words in common, but neithe of them would be a on Chinese dialect that account . Just so , English since the Norman Conquest has grafted many foreign words upon the native stock 5 but it still remains at B bottom the same language as in the days of adgar.

An - f Nevertheless , glo Saxon dif ers so far in ex t ernal s l n from modern Eng ish , that it is now ecessary to learn it systematically with grammar and die tionar one o y, in somewhat the same manner as w uld l earn a foreign tongue, Most of the words , indeed , m so are ore or less familiar, at least far as their roots are concerned ; but the i nfl ex ions of the nouns and verbs are far more complicated than those ne w in use : and many obsolete forms occur even in th e vocabulary. On the other hand the idioms closely resemble those still in u se 5 and even where a root now has dropped out of use, its meaning is often immediately suggested by the cognate High German or word, by some archaic form preserved for us in or oc Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, as well as by casi onal survival in the Lowland Scotch and other local dialects . English in its early form was an i nfl exional lan a at s of s gu ge 5 th is to say, the mutual relation noun - L 4 T HE ANGLO SAXON ANGUAGE . 1 7 9 a d not nd of verbs were chiefly expresse , by means of

o l o b so s particles,such as yfl , y , and forth, but by mean of modifications either in the termination or in th e body of the root itself. The nouns were declined much as in Greek and Latin 5 the verbs were conj ugated in somewhat the same way as in modern French .

Every noun had gender expressed in its form . The following examples will give a sufficient idea of the commoner forms of declension in the classical

fElfr West Saxon of the time of ed. The pronuncia tion has already been briefly explained in the preface .

N G L R . S I . P U

I N one tan a s one N one. stanas. ( . ) . s ( l ) .

Gen tane . Gen . tana . . s s s

D a l tane . D o l . t anum . . s s

A ce tan . A ce. stanas. . s

This is the commonest declension for masculine nouns, and it has fixed the normal plural for the n modern E glish .

N G L R . S I . P U

fot a. oo . N om . ( f l)

n fotes. Gen . ota . Ge . f

fe t D a l fotum . D a l . . . f A ce. et .

ur eel l eel/z and Hence o modified plurals , such as f , ,

N G LUR . S I . P

N one u u a w ood . N one. u a . . w d ( ) w d

Gen u a . Gen u a . . w d . w d

D a l u a . D al u um . . w d . w d

A ce. u u. A ce wu a . w d . d

All for a n n these are m sculine ou s . N 2 1 80 A NGLO - SAXON B R ITAIN :

The commonest feminine declension is as fol lows I N L R S G . P U .

N ow . u a i l gif ( g f ) . Gen if e . . g if D a l . e g . ce if e . A . g

Less frequent is the modified form

N G L R S I . P U . N one b a b /z N one b ee . oc oo . ( ) . .

Gen b e c Gen . oca . . . b

D a l b e al b ocum . c. D . . b A ce. b oc. A ce. ec.

Of neuters there are two principal declensions . The first has the plural in n 5 the S econd leaves it unchanged .

S NG . L R I P U .

N i a z z om . e sl . N one sci u . s p ( p) . p i Gen . sc es. Gen c a . p . s ip D a l c e i m . D a l sc u . . s ip . p

A 6 15 i . i u . S C A ec sc . p . p

I N . R S G PL U .

N one h us a lzouse N ne h u . . ( ) . o . s

e b G n . u G n u a . e . s es . h s

D l u u . D a l . huse a . . h s m

h u . A cc. hus. A ce s .

ur s/z Hence o collective plurals , such as fi

skee l r onl . p , and l m e There is a so a weak declension , much the sa for all three genders, of which the masculine runs as follows

' 2 - R 1 8 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

h I 2 . b indat . , , 3

I an . . b d

2 un e . . b d an 3 . b d .

l a n. I 2 . un on . p , , 3 b d Both the grammatical forms and still more the

orthography vary much from time to time, from place

t o . place, and even from writer to writer The forms used in this work are for the most part those em f ployed by West Saxons in the age of fEl red . A few examples of the language as written at three p eriods will enable the reader to form some idea of

its relation to the existing type . The first passage ’ Cited is from King Z Elfred s translation of Orosius ; but it consists of the opening lines of a paragraph in sert ed by the king himself from his own materials , and so affords an excellent illustration of his style in l original Eng ish prose . The reader is recommended to compare it word for word with the parallel slightly infl exional modernised version , bearing in mind the t termina ions .

Ohthere saede hlaford e Othhere a to l ord his , s id I his , fElfrede c ni n e t a t h e Z Elfred n t at h e of all y g , h ki g, h e al ra N orthm onna northm est Nort en nort o t a od e hm hm s b . u He cw th th t h t at h b de . ae ae e He quo h th e ab od e bude on th aem l ande north o n th e l and nor thward against w eardu m t f n e - ee H a d a t s . t h e e t S ea . e wi h W s W s s i , He saede t ea tnaet t eet l an t ou t at t a t l an w as h h h d h gh , h h d si e swithe l ang north thonan 5 [or extended] much north a c hit eall e te uton on t ence ek e it all a t e is w s , b h 5 is w s , feawum stow um styccem ael um b ut [ex cept th at] o n few stows ' wici ath Finnas on huntoth e [in a few pl aces] pi ecemeal L - 1 8 T HE AN G o SAXON LANGUAGE . 3

on wi ntra and on u era on ellet F nn o n unt n o n , s m dw h i s, h i g h r ae H nter and on u er o n th e b e t ae e s . e fisca wi , s mm u ea He a saed e theet h e set sum m cirre fishing by the s . s id wold e fandian hu l onge theet that h e a t som e time [on one l an northr hte l ae e oththe occa on oul e e h ow l on d y g , si ]w d s k g hw aeth er aenig monn b e northan that l and lay northright [due m an th aem w estenne u e . T ha nort o r et er a n b d h], wh h y by h a for e northryh te b e th aem north o f th e wa ste b o de . lande : l et him e alne w eg Then fo re [fare d] h e north th aet e t e l an on t eet steor r t the l an l e t all th e w s d h igh , by d f h e rd and th a -sae on thaet w a t at a te l an on th e , wid y h w s d

b aecb ord thri e a a . Tha tar oar of and the e d g s s b d him, wid ae h e swa feor nort swa tha sea on the ac oar ort w s h b kb d [p , ’ h l -hunt firrest farath wae an ren ba oom t e a . . F ch ] hre d ys Then w as h e so far north as th e wh al e hunters furthest fa r h e t .

In this passage it is easy t o see that the variations which m ake it into modern English are for the most

o f o f part a very simple kind . Some the words are ’ ’ ni s on Ice a na la na or nor la absolutely identical, as , , , , , . ff Others , though di erences of spelling mask the like ’ see scea e cava l le ness , are practically the same , as , , , ’ l /zazl lo n sea sa i a noln , g , for which we now write , , g , laal l n o . A fe , g w have undergone contraction or ’ ’ nla ora lona e ni n ne w ki n alteration , as f , now , y g , g , ’ ’ sl eorbor a now sl a no oa ra . S l ow and , , a place, is now

sl eeenza l nnz Obsolete, except in local names ; y , stick

orm anised iecemea l meal , has been N into p . In other cases new terminations have been substituted f or old ones ; nnnl al/c and fi sca l/z are now replaced nnnl i by ng andfi sni ng 5 while lz nnl a has been super seded nnnl er l by . On y six words in the passage have - I 84 ANGLO SAXON B R ITAIN .

’ o ut bua n to oua e sw il /ze r died wholly , abide ( ) 5 , ve y; ’ w ici a n to ei r r a na i a n en , dwell ; , an occasion 5 f , to ’ ’ u e na ba coom t h q ir (connected with fi ) 5 and , por , whic f D a s . still urvives in French rom Norman sources g , n ui how has day, and g, any, show existing English m f softened the final g into a y . But the ain di ference which separate s the modern passage from its ancient prototype is the consistent dropping of the gram ’ ’ m atical infl exi ons lzlo or ae E l r eae ea l r a ea w um in f , f , , f ,

a ndi a n now l o lzi s lor d o a ll and f , where we say, , f ,

i n ew l o en ui re. f , and q old The next passage , from the English epic of

B eow u lf, shows the language in another aspect . in Here , as all poetry, archaic forms abound , and the the syntax is intentionally involved . It is written in n Old alliterative rhythm , described in the ext chapter

B eowulf m athel ode bearn Ecgth eo w e s 5 Hw aet w e th e th as sae-la c s unu Healfdenes Leo S c ldin a l ustum b rohton d y g , re to tacue the thu her to -locast Ti s , . I c theet un-softe caldre g edigde W i e un er w aetere w e orc enethde gg d , g Earfothli ce 5 act r ihte waes G ut etwaefed n m the m ec ld h g y god scy e.

B eo ul a e the son of Ec theow w f sp k , g S ee w e t o t ee t sea- t so n o f Healfdene h his gif , , r nce of the S c ldi n s o ull a e rou t P i y g , j yf y h v b gh , F or a t en f l o o or t at t ou ere lo o e t on. k g y, h h h k s at un o tl lor ou l accom l ed Th I s f y, g i s y p ish , In w ar un er ater th e or are d w w k I d d , With much labour rightly w as T he attle e b ut t at a od el e m e . b divid d , h g shi d d

1 86 - R AN GLO SAXON B ITAIN .

t h e corn ae and for h e t at h e oul b e u t as his w s, h sh d j s b a e et tre or a c h e uncl e w as and ecau e h e dd g his s ; , b s tli ce h a d o r a ure b u h t odeld i t and scatered so . g t his t e s : t e Mi cel b a dde Henr i king t o -dealt [distributed] and adered ol and l er and cattere i t sot -l e ool g g d sy v , s d ik [f n e m en for hi s i l uc l e ha d n na g od e did sh y]. M k Ki g f T ha th e K n enr s aul e tharo . i g H y gathere d o f gol d and S te an t o En l aland com l er and m an no ph g , si v 5 did good tha m aco d h e aderin for oul t ereo en his g g his s h f. Wh aet Oxeneford and t ar h e t at K n S te an w as co e , h h i g ph m nam th e b i sco Ro er of to En l an t en m ak ed h e p g g d, h S ereb eri and Ale an er at er n at O or and , x d his g h i g xf d, b isco o f L ncoln and th e t ere he t oo the o p i , h k bish p C ancel er R o e r e ne e Ro er of S al ur a nd Al e g , his v s , g isb y, x and e aelle i n ri sun til a n e r o of L ncoln and did p , d , bish p i ,

i afen u re ca tl e . th e C ancell or Ro er hi p hi s s h g , his ne e and t e m all n ph w, did h i p rison [p ut them i n prison] t ll t e a e u t e r ca l i h y g v p h i st es .

’ The following passage from E lfri c s Life of King

swold O , in the best period of early English prose, may perhaps be intelligible t o modern readers by the ’

. lll i a aid of a few explanatory notes only . means w il/z while w i lb itself still bears only the meaning of ag a insl x Z Efter A En lalande b ecom tham the ugustinus to g ,

a aeth el e c nin Oswold e-b b i /zl or w es sum y g, g aten [g

ca lled on - h mb ra - e-l fe d on ], North y lande, g y swithe i u h God . Se ferde [went] on his got e [youth]fram his fre ondum and magum [relations]to S cotlande on see a wearth e -fullo d , and th r sona g [baptised], and his ge-feran [companions]samod the mid him sithe d on

B e wux arth Of- off- l [journeyed]. t tham we slagen [ s ain] T HE - ANGLO SAXON LANGUAGE . 1 8 7

-h m ora c nin on Eadwine his eam [uncle], North y y g,

t e-l fed B r tta c nin e Ceadwalla e-ci ed Cris g y , fram y y g , g g

aefter- [called, named], and twegen his gengan binnan twam gearum [years]5 and se Ceadwalla slob and to sceam e tucode tha North -hymbran l eode [people]

‘ aefter hlafordes f lle oth ee O swold heora y , th t [until] se eadiga his yfelnysse adwaescte [extinguished]. O swold him cenlice him com to, and [boldly]with feaht l tlum werode eleafa mid y [troop], ac his g [belief] e-tr m d e e -f lste hine g y [encouraged], and Crist him g y ” f fi nd s Sl e eonda e e . [helped]to his [ , enemies] g It will be noticed in every case th at the syntactical arrangem ent of the words in the sentences follows as a whole the rule that the governed word precedes t he i n not nice governing, as Latin or High German,

nersa in . , as modern English A brief list will Show the principal modifications of undergone by nouns in the process modernisation .

a n s ba n r a S l na w . C l , stone 5 , snow 5 , bone f , craft 5 ' ’ f ba e sl a . We aa na el f , sta f ; , back g , way ; g , day ; g , u l o . G ea r eon . F i n er nail 5 f g , fowl , year ; g g , young g , ’ w i nl er r AE o a . en finger 5 , winter 5 f , ford f , even 5 nzor en M onalb b eo on g , morn . , mo nth 5 f , heaven 5 ’ nea ou F l mm b c . o o f , head , foot 5 , tooth ; , book 5 ’ ’ ’ ’ r na M r aza er eo . oao a ob l o f , friend , mother 5 f , father 5 r , ’ S unu w ua u . ea r u daughter , son 5 , wood 5 , care 5 l ’ c enu . S ee cila ceor l , dene (valley) p, ship 5 , child 5 , ’ c nn l cea a . churl 5 y , kin 5 , cold Wherever a word has n not become wholly obsolete, or assumed a ew termi

u nzor en - nation , n , gift ; g , morn ing) , it usually w follo s one or other of these analogies . I 88 - R ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

a The changes which the English language , as l to whole, has undergone in passing from its ear ier two its later form , may best be considered under the

heads of form and matter . As Or regards form structure, the language has h . t e been simplified in three separate ways First, nouns and adj ectives have for the most part lost their

i nfl exi ons so . , at least far as the cases are concerned An . d Secondly, the nouns have also lost their gender S thirdly, the verbs have been implified in conjugation , weak preterites being often substituted for strong f ones , and dif erential terminations largely lost . On l the other hand , the plural of nouns is stil distin uished s g from the singular by its termination in , which is derived from the first declension of Anglo

Saxon nouns , not as is often asserted, from the

- Norman French usage . In other words , all plurals have been assimilated to this the commonest model 5 j ust as in French they have been assimilated to the s f A few final o the third declension in Latin . of men plurals the other types still survive, such as , ’ ’ eese mi ce s/zee neer ox en e/zzlo r en and dial ecti g , p , , , ( a f infl xions e sen. o e cally) p To make up for this loss , the language now employs a larger number of par f of r e t o o . i les, and some extent, auxiliaries Instead

w ines o a r i end of wi ne , we now say f f instead , we ’ now l o a r i ena of w i num now say f and instead , we ’ i end d l o r s. say f English, in short, has almost cease

infl xi o nal to be e and has become analytic . As or n regards matter vocabulary, the la guage has I l . t ost in certain directions, and gained in others

1 0 - R 9 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

our i n framework of language still remains , every

— An - or case, purely English that is to say, glo Saxon Low Dutch — however many foreign elements may happen t o enter into its vocabulary . We can frame m any sentences without using one word of Romance or classical origin we cannot fram e a single sentence A without using words of English origin . The uthor ’ ” ised Version of the Bible , The Pilgrim s Progress , ’ ” and such poems as Tennyson s Dora, consist almost entirely of Teutonic elements . Even when ’ the vocabulary is largely classical , as in Johnson s “ ” of Rasselas and some parts Paradise Lost, the grammatical structure , the prepositions , the pronouns , n the auxiliary verbs , and the co necting particles , are all necessarily and purely English . Two examples will suffice to make this principle perfectly clear . In the first, which is the most familiar quotation from

Shakespeare, all the words of foreign origin have been printed in italics

T o b e or no t t o b e — t at th e uesl i on , , h is g ’ Wh ether ti s n obler in the mind t o saf er T h e slings and arr ows of ou l r ag cous for l une r o ta e a r ms a a n t a sea of l r oubles O t k g i s ,

And o osi n end t e T o di e — t o l ee , by pp g , h m , s p, N o ore a nd a l ee t o sa w e end m 5 , by s p, y T he eart -ac e and th e t ou an na l ur a l oc h h , h s d sh ks ’ a fl e b ei r to — tis a consumma l i on Th t sh is ,

— D oul l t o h e e . O di e to lee ev y wish d T , s p 5 ’ T l r cb a nce to ream a t ere th e rub o s eep pe d y, h s h at rea m a come F or i n that sleep of d eath w d ms y , n e a h ufil d off t mor l a l co l Whe w h ve s e his i , ’ Must give us pa use th ere s th e r esp ecl - T HE AN GLo SAXON LANGUAGE . 1 9 1

h at m ak es ca la mily of so l ong l ife 5 F or w h o oul ear th e and corn of t e w d b whips s s im , ’ ’ T he o r essor s r on th e rou an eonl u mel pp w g, p d m s y , ’ ’ T h e a n s of cles isea l o e the l a dela p g p v , w s y , T h e i nsolence of o i ce and the s u r ns yj , p at a l i enl mer i o f the un ort tak e Th p l w hy s , Wh en h e himself mi ght his gui el us make With a bare b odkin

out of 1 6 2 8 of n Here , 7 words , we find only foreig origin 5 and even these are Englished in their termi r N o le - nations o adjuncts . b is Norman French 5 but the comparative nobler stamps it with the Teutonic s o osi n mark . Opp o e is Latin 5 but the participle pp g D ul is true English . eoo is naturalised by the native ’ ’ u O r essor s and a eoo ll . adverbial termination, y pp ’ nfl xi n form atIv e clesp zsea take English i e o s. The ’ or nol lua l l ire m a na b w e the elements , , , , , , , y , , and n e rest, are all English . The only complete sente c which we could frame of wholly Latin words would ” be an imperative standing alone, as , Observe , and

even this would be English in form . f On the other hand , we may take the ollowing of passage from Mr. Herbert Spencer as a specimen the largely Latinised vocabulary needed for expressing f r o the exact ideas o science o philosophy . Here als borrowed words are printed in italics “ The eonsl il ul i on which we assign to this elb er i a l ’ meoi um eonsl i l ul i on we assi n t o , however, like the g ’ ubsl a nce necessa r i a bsl r acl of the im solia s , is ly an 7 l n ible o osi p r essi ons r ecei aea from a g b odies . The pp l ion to p r essure which a l a ngible body o/fers to us i s 1 2 - R 9 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN . not one cli r ecl i on di r ecti n shown in only, but in all o s l enac l u and so likewise is its i y . S pp ose counl less li nes ’ r a a ial i n cenl r e on r esisl s g from its every side , and it along each of these li nes and cob er es along each of c eonsl i l ul i n of ull m these li nes. Hen e the o those i al e unil s through the i nsl r umenl al zly of which pb enomena ’ ’ n r r el ea a l m n r l are i l e p . Be they o s o f po a e ab e ma l l er molecules o f elb er ro er l i es concei ve or , the p p we them t o p ossess are nothing else than these p er cep l ible l cl pr op er l i es i cl ea i se . 1 2 2 In this case, out of words we find no less than

4 6 are of foreign origin . Though this large proportion sufficiently shows the amount of our indebtedness to the classical languages for our abstract or specialised s cientific terms , the absolutely indisputable nature of l the Eng ish substratum remains clearly evident . The tongue which we use tod ay is enriched by valuable loan words from many separate sources 5 but it is n l s . till as it has always been, E glish and nothing e se It is the self- same speech with the tongue of the

- Sleswick pirates and the West Saxon over lords .

- R A 1 94 ANGLO SAXON B IT IN . study of personal names is indeed so valuable that a few remarks upon the subj ect seem necessary in order

of A - to complete our hasty survey nglo Saxon Britain . During the very earliest period when we catch a glimpse of the English people on the Continent or in l of t eastern Britain , a doub e system naming seems o have prevailed, not wholly unlike our modern plan of

Christian and surname . The clan name was appended A t o the personal one . man was apparently described ul Holtin or reo da l E in C sc . as W f the g, as the g The clan names were in many cases common to the

English and the Continental Teutons . Thus we find Helsi ngs in the English Helsington and the Swedish Hel singland 5 Harlings in the English Harlingham and the Frisian Harlingen ; and Ble ccings in the t Bl ckin n English Ble chingley and the Scandinavian e ge . O ur T h ri n s to the y g at Thorrington answer, perhaps, Thuringians 5 our Myrgings at Merrington to the Frankish M erwings ‘ or Merovingians 5 our Waerings at V rin ar r V r n i n Warrington to the Norse ae gj o a a g a s. At m any rate, the clan organization was one co mon to both great branches of the Teutonic stock , and it has a our left its m rk deeply upon modern nomenclature,

~ both in England and in Germany. Mr. Kemble has e numerated nearly 2 00 clan names found in early 6 00 English charters and documents , besides over others inferred from local names in England at the of l p resent day . Taking one letter the a phabet alone, l Glaestin s G um enin s his list inc udes the g , Geddings , g , G ustin s G etin s G rundlin s G ildlin s l g , g , g , g , and Gi lings , G aersin s from documentary evidence ; and the g , - R ANGLO SAXON NOMENCLATU E . 1 9 5

estin s G eofonin s G arin s G g , g , Goldings , and g , with of st many others , from the inferential evidence exi ing

‘ illa towns and v ges. The personal names of the e arliest period are in

untranslat a l — many cases e b e that is to say, as with n s the first stratum of Greek ames , they bear no obviou m eaning in the language as we know it . Others are the nam es of animals or natural obj ects . Unlike later historical cognomens , they each consist, as a of two com rule , a single element, not of elements in n the position . Such are the ames which we get in narrative of the coloniz ation and in the mythical "Esc fElle C m en genealogies 5 Hengest, Horsa, , , y , M ae la Ce ol f Bl ecca Cissa , Bieda , g ; , Penda, Of a, ; A few of G eWIs . Esla, , Wig, Brand, and so forth these n f ames (such as Penda and Of a) , are undoubtedly of to et m o historical 5 but the rest, some seem be y Wiht ar to logical blunders, like Port and g 5 others be pure myths, like Wig and Brand 5 and others , again ,

t o . be doubtfully true , like Cerdic, Cissa, and Bieda, e of C erdices- issan-ceaster ponyms, perhaps , ford, C ,

Biedan-h eaf and od .

In the truly historical age, the clan system seems t o

out r a have died , and each person bore, as a ule, only

n n ~ single personal ame . These ames are almost inva

riabl of two . y compounded elements, and the elements thus employed were comparatively few in number . T eelb el i n hus , we get the root , noble , as the first half E fEthelwulf Z Ethelb erht E n an thelred, , , thelsta , d ’ Z Ethelb ald . A ro ea a or gain , the ot , rich, powerful , oc B ad Eadred Eadward and curs in gar, , , Eadwine, o 2 6 - R 1 9 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN.

l AB l i Eadwu f. n f , an elf, forms the prime element ‘ eElfwin fEl r f lfr E lfric . e fwa d I El t n Z E ed s a . , , , , and These were the favourite names of the West-Saxon royal house 5 the N orthumb rian kings seem rather to v f os d ha e af ected the syllable , divine , as in Oswal ,

n Osred Oslaf. Wi ne Oswi , Osric, , and , friend, is a fEscwine w favourite termination found in , Ead ine , th lwine O swine fElfwine Z E e , , and , whose meanings n Wu need no further explanatio . lf appears as the Wulfric Wulfred W first half in Wulfstan, , , and ulf n in fEth elwulf here 5 while it forms the seco d half ,

Eadwulf Ealdwulf f. B eor/zl berb l or , , and Cenwul , , br i/zl or a a Beorhtric Beorht , bright , glorious , ppe rs in , Brihtwald E thelberht Ealdbriht wulf, ; , , and Ead rh B urn n m l b t . y , a fortress , e ters into any fema e

Eadb urh z E thelb urh Sexb urh Wiht names , as , , , and As of l burh . a rule , a certain number syl ables seem to have been regarded as proper elements for forming personal names, and to have been combined some w hat fancifully, without much regard to the resulting

. S of meaning The following hort list such elements , f o in addition to the roots given above , will su fice t explain most of the names mentioned in this work .

el t Wi : war l m e . He h m . g

a r : ear S a n : tone. G sp . l s ’ E a la : old enera le , v b . ’ Wea r a w a r d ar rote t n Her e : ar . c o . my , w d , p i or B ed : coun el S ige : vi ct y . s .

G ne r o al . B e : ed e or . y y g g , sw d ’ T b a o l Leo : ear. eo e e nat on . f d p p , i

By combining these elements with those already given

I 8 O - R 9 ANGL SAXON B ITAIN . e ven in purely Teutonic districts ; and some names,

s C eadwalla t o v uch as Cerdic and , seem ha e been borrowed by one race from the other : while such forms as Wealtheow and Walth eof are at least sug

estiv e of : on g British descent but the whole, the conquered Britons appear everywhere to have quickly a dopted the names in vogue among their conquerors . S uch names would doubtless be considered fashion

able, as was the case at a later date with those intro uce d d by the Danes and the Normans . Even in C ornwall a good many English forms occur among

t he : serfs while in very Celtic Devonshire, English n ames were probably universal . The Danish Conquest introduced a number o f

Scandinavian names , especially in the North , the con sideration of which belongs rather to a companion

volume . They must be briefly noted here, however,

t o prevent confusion with the genuine English forms . A a co m mongst such Scandin vian introductions, the Swe en or Swend monest are perhaps Harold , g , Ulf,

‘ Y ric or Gorm or Guthrum, Orm, Eric, Cnut, and lfc l D U yte . uring and after the time of the Danish d l ynasty, these forms, rendered fashionable by roya

usage, became very general even among the native l ’ Eng ish . Thus Earl Godwine s sons bore Scandi navian names 5 and at an earlier period we even find

persons , apparently Scandinavian , fighting on the

English S ide against the Danes in East Anglia . But the sequel to the Norman Conquest shows us most clearly h ow the whole nomenclature of a nation m ay be entirely altered without any large change o f - L R ANGLO SAXON NOMEN C ATU E . 1 99

t r ace . Immediately after the Conques the native n t o in English ames begin disappear, and their place of we get a crop Williams, Walters, Rogers, Henries, t of Ralphs, Richards , Gilberts, and Roberts . Mos e n n these wer originally High Germa forms, taken i to the Gaul by the Franks , borrowed from them by n n l Norma s, and the copied by the Eng ish from their f A f A . ew oreign lords , however, such as rthur,

O n A . we , and lan , were Breton Welsh Side by side

with these French names, the Normans introduced t h e w Scriptural forms , John, Matthe , Thomas , Simon , S for a tephen , Piers or Peter, and James 5 though few cases of Scriptural names occur in th e earlier

h — for of D istory example , St . John Beverley and aniel ,

b ishop o f the West Saxons — these are always borne All of . by ecclesiastics, probably as names religion to t through the middle ages , and down very recen of n times , the vast maj ority English men and wome continued to bear these baptismal names o f Norman

introduction . Only two native English forms prae

tically survived — Edward and Edmund— owing t o e th mere accidents of royal favour . They wer e two Eadward the names of great English saints , Confessor and Eadmund of East Anglia 5 and

. m n two Henry III bestowed the upo his sons ,

. f Edward I and Edmund o Lancaster. In this m anner they became adopted into the royal and e our fashionabl circle , and so were perpetuated to o wn Al day. l the others died out i n medi aeval few old now as times, while the forms current, such A A a e lfred, Edgar, thelst ne , and Edwin, are mer 2 O O - R ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

f two artificial revivals o the last centuries . If we to n l l were judge by nome c ature a one , we might almost fancy that the Norman Conquest had wholly extinguished the English people . A few steps towards the adoption of surnames were taken even before the Conquest . Titles of office l were usua ly placed after the personal name, as lElfre d l Wulfnoth il l . d Z E fward King, Lil a Thegn , C , fEthelb erht l Bishop, Ealdorman , and Haro d Earl . n n Double ames occasionally occur, the second bei g a O s od nickname or true surname , as g Clapa , Benedict Bi sco T hurk tel M ranheafod p , y y , Godwine Bace , and Elfric Z . Cerm Trade names are also found, as

c ard wi E ce G od . smith , or g boor Everywhere, but e l specia ly in the Danish North , patronymics were in ’ for w common use 5 example , Harold God ine s son , ’ h r d unn r s or T o e G o son . In all these cases we get surnames in the germ ; but their general and official adoption dates from after the Norman Conquest . Local nomenclature also demands a short explana tion . Most of the Roman towns continued to be

: called by their Roman names Londinium , Lunden , Eb uracum Eoforwic Eurewi c London 5 , , , York ; Linc ln l ceasl er o e . Lindum Colonia, , Linco n Often ,

ea sl r um : B el arum from , was added Gwent, Venta g ,

Wi ntan-ceaster Wi nte ceaster Exan , , Winchester ; Isca, ceaster Execestre Corinium C ren-ceaster , , Exeter 5 , y , A Cirencester. lmost every place which is known to have had a name at the English Conquest retained that name afterwards . in a more or less clipped or altered form . Examples are Kent, Wight , Devon ,

- 2 02 ANGLO SAXON B R ITAIN .

CHAPTER XX.

- L R R ANGLO SAXON ITE ATU E .

N OTHING better illustrates the original peculiarities and subsequent development of the early English

A - A mind than the nglo Saxon literature . vast mass t f o manuscripts has been preserved for us , embracing works in prose and verse o f the most varied kind ; and all the most important of these have been made accessible to modern readers in printed Copies . They cast a flood of light upon the workings of the Eng old in lish mind in all ages , from the pagan period

Sleswick to the date of the Norman Conquest, and the subsequent gradual supplanting of our native literature by a new culture based upon the Romance m odels . All national literature everywhere begins with rude

songs . From the earliest period at which the Eng lish and Saxon people existed as separate tribes at

- all , we may be sure that they possessed battle songs ,

r like those common t o the whole A yan stock . But a mong the Teutonic races poetry was not distinguished

b y either of the peculiarities — rime or metre m which mark off odern verse from prose , so far as i ts ur external form is concerned . O existing English s ystem of v ersificati on is not derived from our old - R R ANGLO SAXON LITE ATU E. 2 03

n ative poetry at all 5 it is a development of the the of Romance system , adopted by school Gower a nd Chaucer from the French and Italian poets . Its m or etre, syllabic arrangement, is an adaptation from t he Greek quantitative prosody, handed down through Latin and the neo- Latin dialects 5 its rime is a Celti c w n peculiarity borro ed by the Roma ce nationalities, and handed on through them to modern English literature by the Romance school of the fourteenth

c r ifica i n . v e s t o on entury Our original English , the

other hand, was neither rimed nor rhythmic . What to answered metre was a certain irregular swing, produced by a roughly recurrent number of accents t in each couplet, withou restriction as to the number f f r t o o eet o syllables . What answered rime was a

regular and marked alliteration , each couplet having

- a certain key letter, with which three principal words i n n to the couplet bega . In addition these two

A - r poetical devices , nglo Saxon verse shows t aces of He parallelism , similar to that which distinguishes

’

brew poetry . But the alliteration and parallelism do n ot of run quite side by side, the second half each alliterative couplet being parallel with the first half of A new the next couplet. ccordingly, each sentence begins somewhat clumsily in th e middle of the All couplet . these peculiarities are not, however ,

always to be distinguished in every separate poem . The following rough translation of a very early T eutonic spell for the cure of a sprained ankle ,

belonging to the heathen period, will illustrate the e arliest form of this alliterative verse . The key - R 204 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

in the letter each couplet is printed in capitals, and not e verse is read from end to end, as two separat l columns .

B alder and Woden Went to th e Wo odland ’ l r oal l n n ts o ere B a e e l re c i o t . Th d s F F , w hi g F en S inth unt e u le and S unna h er S ter Th g b g i d him, is en rua e u l e and oll a h er ter Th F b g i d him , F sis , en o en e u le as ell he new how Th W d b g i d him , W k 5 renc of l oo renc of W h b d, W h one and ek e renc of l m b , W h i b B one unto B one Bl o o unto Bloo , d d , L n L as t ou L i ere imb u to imb h gh imed t w .

In this simple spell the alliteration serves rather as T h an aid to memory than as an ornamental device . e l E following lines , translated from the ba lad on thel ’ S w the stan s victory at Brunanburh , in 93 7 , will ho v ersificat r T h developed form of the same o y system . e parallelism and alliteration are here well marked fEthel stan n lor o f Earl ki g , d s , B e to er o f B ra cel et and B rot er ek e s w s , his h , l Ea un the . Eth eli n onour Eternal dm d g, h W on i n the S lau ter t e e o f the S o r gh , wi h dg w d T h B u l er B B runnanb ur . e c t e cl a e y y k s h y v , He e the Hel et t a ere teel w d m s , wi h H mm d s ,

T he original o f this heath en charm is i n the Old High G erm an dial ect 5 b ut i t is quo ted here a s a go od sp ecimen of the l r alli ra ti v e e r e A lar r ear y fo m of te v s . simi cha m undoubtedly e te in A n l o -S a on t ou no co of i t h as co e o n to xis d g x , h gh py m d w our d a as w e o e a o ern e a nd C r t an e En l ys , p ss ss m d is d h is i is d g ish er on i n c the na e o f o ur Lor u t tute for t at of v si , whi h m d is s bs i d h

Bal der .

- 2 06 ANGLO SAXON B R ITAIN .

- . T wo th the above quoted ode other early pieces , e ’ T ra veller s S on l amenl o D eor d g and the f , are inserte from pagan tradition in a book of later devotional f poems preserved at Exeter . But the great epic o B eow ulf a work composed when the English and the Danes were still living in close connexion with one l another by the shores of the Ba tic , has been handed

r f down to us entire, thanks to the kind inte vention o i some Northumbrian monk , who, by Christian sing the most flagrantly heathen portions, has saved the entire work from the fate which would otherwise have n overt aken it . As a striki g representation of early

English life and thought, this great epic deserves a 1 fuller description . B eowulf is written in the same short alliterative l i ts metre as that of the Brunanburh bal ad , and takes of name from its hero, a servant or companion the

H elac r t o . migh y yg , king of the Geatas (Jutes Goths) At a distance from his home lay the kingdom of the

S c ldin s . y g , a Danish tribe , ruled over by Hrothgar Heorot th e There stood , the high hall of heroes ,

- greatest mead house ever raised . But the land of the a b D nes was haunted by a terri le fiend, known as r Grendel , who dwelt in a da k fen in the forest belt , girt round with shadows and lit up at eve by flitting and flames . Every night Grendel came forth carried

off some of the Danes to devour in his home . The description of the monster himself and of the marsh land where he had his lair is full of that weird and

1 It r t to ate o e er t at an c ol ar re ar is igh st , h w v , h m y s h s g d n r nal B eow ulf as a l ate translati on from a D a ish o igi . - ANGLO SAXON LITER ATUR E . 2 0 7 gloomy superstition which everywhere darkens and overshadows the life of the savage and the heathen barbarian . The terror inspired in the rude English m of ind by the mark and the woodland, the home of of wild beasts and hostile ghosts , deadly spirits and

of e . fierce en mies, gleams luri dly through every line ’ The fen and the forest are dim and dark 5 will -o -the wisps flit above them, and gloom closes them in 5 e a wolves and wild boars lurk ther , the qu gmire opens its jaws and swallows the horse and his rider 5 the foeman comes through it t o bring fire and slaughter to - T o the clan village at the dead of night . these real terrors and dangers of the mark are added the fancied f f ones o superstition . There the terrible orms begot ’ ten of man s vague dread of the unknown — elves and nick rs fi en s— w - o and d have their murky d elling place . The atmosphere of the strange old heathen epic i s o ressIv e pp In Its gloominess . Nevertheless, its poetry of sometimes rises to a height great, though barbaric , f . o l sublimity Beowulf himself, hearing the evi for the wrought by Grendel , set sail from his home of land the Danes . Hrothgar received him kindly,

and entertained him and his Goths with ale and song , ’ H r W lth o eo ot . ea e H in w, rothgar s queen, gold decked , served them with mead . But when all had on of t in retired to rest the couches the grea hall, the murky night, Grendel came . He seized and slew ’ one of of Beowulf s companions . Then the warrior th t the Goths followed e mons er, and wounded him

to . sorely with his hands . Grendel fled to his lair die ’ t n t rendel s t no l s But af er the co tes , G mo her, a es 2 08 R ANGLO S AXON B ITAIN.

“ ’ hateful creature — the Devil s dam of our mediaeval legends — carries 011 the war against the slayer of her son . Beowulf descends to her home beneath the water, grapples with her in her cave , turns against her v the weapons he finds there , and is again ictorious . The Goths return t o their own country laden with A f H la . o e c gifts by Hrothgar fter the death yg ,

Beowulf succeeds to the kingship of the Geatas , l whom he rules well and prosperous y for many years . At length a mysterious being, named the Fire Drake , a of of sort dragon guarding a hidden treasure, some which has been stolen while its guardian sleeps , comes u out to slaughter his people . The old hero b ckles on

- his rune covered sword again , and goes forth to battle with the monster. He slays it , indeed , but is blasted by its fiery breath , and dies after the encounter. His c ompanions light his pyre upon a lofty spit of land jutting out into the winter sea . Weapons and jewels w ’ and drinking bo ls , taken from the Fire Drake s o f treasure , were thrown into the tomb for the use the ghost in the other world 5 and a mighty barrow was raised upon the spot to be a beacon far and wide to seafaring men . S O ends the great heathen epic . It gives us the most valuable picture which we possess o f the daily life led by our pagan forefathers .

But though these poems are the oldest in tone , they are not the oldest in form of all that we possess . It is probable that the most primitive Anglo -Saxon verse and of was identical with prose , consisted merely As allite sentences bound together by parallelism . r at m memor i a l ecb nica ation , first a ere , became an

2 I O - R ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

has come down to us in the original form . There i s a later complete epic, however, also attributed to

ae r C dmon, of the same scope and purport 5 and it e tains so much of the old heathen spirit that it may very possibly represent a modernised version of the ’ r ae i n eal C dmon s poem , by a reviser in the n nth ce tury . At any rate , the latter work may be treated here under ofCaedm on the name , by which it is universally known . of It consists a long Scriptural paraphrase , written in the a S not lliterative metre, hort, sharp , and decisive, but u u witho t a wild and passionate bea ty of its own . In tone it differs wonderfully little from B eow ul/j being most at home in the war of heaven and Satan , and in the titanic descriptions of the devils and their deeds . T h e conduct of the poem is singularly like that o f d s osl S Pa ra i e L . Its wild and rapid stanzas how how little Christianity had yet moulded the barbaric nature

- l i s ofthe newly converted Eng ish . The epic essentially a war-song ; the Hebrew element is far stronger than ’ the Christian 5 hell takes the place of G rend el s mere 5 ’ “ th e w . and , to borro Mr Green s admirable phrase,

- verses fall like sword strokes in the thick of battle . In all these works we get the genuine native English

note , the wild song of a pirate race, shaped in early minstrelsy for celebrating the deeds of gods and war

- riors, and scarcely half adapted afterward to the not

wholly alien tone of the Oldest Hebrew Scriptures . m But the Latin schools , set up by the Italian onks , introduced into England a totally new and highly

A - developed literature . The pagan nglo Saxons had m et advanced beyond the stage of ballads 5 they had no - R R 2 I I ANGLO SAXON LITE ATU E .

or own history, other prose literature of their , except, l perhaps, a few traditional genealogical lists , most y a mythical , and adapted to an rtificial grouping by

a eights and forties . The Rom n missionaries brought w w over the Roman orks , ith their developed historical and philosophical style 5 and the change induced i n England by copying these originals was as great as the change would now be from the rude Polynesian m yths and ballads to a history of Polynesia written i n e English, and after English prototypes , by a nativ as convert . In fact, the Latin language was almost

important to the new departure as the Latin models . old While the English literary form, restricted entirely unfitted or to poetry, was for any serious narrative old any reflective work, the English tongue , suited o nly to the practical needs of a rude warrior race , was unfitted for the expression of any but the sim l est . v ocab u p and most material ideas It is true , the l i n m l ary was copious, especially ter s for natura

objects , and it was far richer than might be expected e ven in words referring t o mental states and emotions 5

but in the expression of abstract ideas , and in idioms d suitable for philosophical discussion, it remaine still, of new course, very deficient . Hence the serious literature was necessarily written entirely in the Latin language , which alone possessed the words and modes of speech fitted for its development 5 but to e xclude it on that account from t he consideration o f

A - nglo Saxon literature, as many writers have done, f T would be an absurd af ectation . he Latin writings o f a t of t t Englishmen are an integral p r English hough ,

P 2 2 2 - R 1 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN . and an important factor in the evolution of English l l m . r t o culture Gradua ly, as Eng ish onks g ew read to Latin from generation generation, they invented corresponding compounds in their own language for the abstract words o f the southern tongue 5 and n therefore by the begin ing of the eleventh century , the West Saxon speech of [Elfred and his successors had grown into a comparatively wealthy dialect, suitable for the expression of many ideas unfamiliar to the rude pirates and farmers of Sleswick and East l A n . g ia Thus, in later days , a rich vernacular litera u t u re grew p with many distinct branches . But, in d of all t he earlier perio , the use a civilised idiom for purposes connected with the higher civilisation intro duced by the missionaries was absolutely necessary 5 of and so we find the codes laws , the penitentials of the Church , the charters , and the prose litera l ture genera ly, almost all written at first in Latin n alone . Gradually , as the E glish tongue grew fuller, we find it creeping into use for one after another of these purposes ; but to the last an educated Anglo Saxon could express himself far more accurately and p hilosophically in the cultivated tongue of Rome of than in the rough dialect his Teutonic countrymen . We have only to contrast the bald and meagre style f “ l ” o the Eng ish Chronicle , written in the mother ’ n n of Ree ~ to gue , with the ful ess and ease da s Eccle ” siastical in History, written two centuries earlier

Latin, in order to see how great an advantage the rough Northumbrians of the early Chri st i an period obtained in the gift of an old and polished instru

2 I - 4 ANGLO SAXON B R ITAIN . breathing the old Teutonic spirit more deeply than might be expected from his other works . During the interval between the Northumbrian and

West Saxon supremacies — the interval embraced by i and the e ghth century, covered by the greatness of

Mercia under fEth elb ald and Offa— we have few of l w f remains Eng ish literature . The la s o Ine the ax f West S on , and of Of a the Mercian , with the Peni t entials o f the Church , and the Charters , form the l chief documents . But England gained no litt e credit for learning from the works of two Englishmen who had taken up their abode in the old Germanic king d om l Boniface or Winfrith , the apost e of the heathen n A Ealh Teuto s subjugated by the Franks , and lcuin ( w o f ine) , the famous friend and secretary Karl the

A — Great . Many devotional nglo Saxon poems , of

for various dates, are kept us in the two books pre

at . served Exeter, and at Vercelli in North Italy A f mongst them are some by Cynewul , perhaps the most genuinely poetical of all t h e early minstrels after a ll b e C edmon The fo owing lines , taken from the “ ” ginning of his poem The Ph oenix (a transcript Lactantius l ffi l l from ) , wi l su cient y i lustrate his style

I have h ear d that hidden Afar fro m hence O n th e ea t o f eart a a re t le s h Is f i s is , Lo el and a u T h e l a f at lan v y f mo s . p o th d Ma not b e rea c e B an ortal y h d y m y m s , D well ers on e arth 5 B ut i t is divided r ou th e t o fth e a er ro all oer Th gh migh M k F m misd s . a r th e el ull a and l ad F i is fi d , F h ppy g , ll e t the ee t n fl o er Fi d wi h sw est S ce ted w s . Un ue t at lan Al t th e or er iq is h is d, migh y w k - 5 A NGLO SAXON LITERATUR E . 2 1 5

l Mickl e of might Wh o m oulded that and . ft l et o en T o th e e e of the l e t There o i h p y s b s ,

t a e t arm on T h e ate of ea en . Wi h h ppi s h y, g h v n o e i ts oo And i ts a r reen ol Wi s m w ds f i g w ds , it reac e N o r n ere nor no Roo . a t my w h h s i h s w , N or reat of ro t N or er l a t b h f s , fi y b s , ’ N or u m er eat N or cat ere l eet s m s h , s t d s , N or all of a l N or oar r e f h i , h y im , N or elte r n eat er N or ntr o er w i g w h , wi y sh w , Fall eth on any 5 B ut th e fi el d resteth E er i n eace A nd the r ncel l an v p , p i y d Bloom e th t l o oms B er t ere nor m ount wi h b ss . g h S tan et not te e Nor ton cra d h s p , s y g l tet th e ea A s ere t us High if h h d, h wi h , N or al e nor d al e N or ee -ca erne o n v , , d p v d d w , Hollows or hills 5 N or hange th al oft Au t o f un m oot B ut e er th e l a n gh s h 5 v p i ,

B a i n th e ea o ull l oo n . sks b m , J yf y b mi g Twelve fath oms taller T ow ereth that l and (As quoth i n their writs Many wise m en) Than ever a b erg That bright a mong m ortals ’ H l tet th e ea A on ea en tar igh if h h d m g h v s s s .

T wo noteworthy point s m ay be marked i n this . extract . Its feeling for natural scenery is quite different from the wild sublimity of the descriptions ’ o f nature in B eow ulf: Cynewulf s v erse is essentially the verse of an agriculturist 5 it looks with disfavour

on i s" up mountains and rugged scenes , while its ideal on of ou i i e peaceful tillage . The monk speaks t n t ff as cultivator and dreamer. Its tone is wholly di er ent from that of the Brunanburh ballad or the other

- . M or two fierce war songs oreover, it contains one

m a s a ri es , preserved in this transl tion, whose full ig nifi cance will be pointed out hereafter. 2 r 6 - R ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

c of The anar hy Northumbria, and still more the D to anish inroads , put an end the literary movement i n the North and the Midlands ; but the struggle in new f to l Wessex gave li e the West Saxon peop e . fElfre d n Under , Winchester became the centre o f E g lish thought . But the West Saxon literature is almost e ntirely written in English , not in Latin 5 a fact which marks the progressive developme nt o f vocabulary and fE idiom in the native tongue . lfred himself did t o much encourage literature , inviting over learned men from the continent , and founding schools for the West Saxon youth in his dwarfed dominions . Most of th e Winchester works are attributed t o his o wn pen, though doubtless he was largely aided by A his advisers, and amongst others by sser, his Welsh f secretary and Bishop o Sherborne . They comprise ’ translations into the Anglo -Saxon of Boethius ae Con ’ ’ sola tzone of Baeda s , the Universal History Orosius , ’ R e ula Ecclesiastical History, and Pope Gregory s g ' st ra l fElfr re Pa o zs. But the fact that ed still has of course to Roman originals , marks the stage civilisation as yet mainly imitative 5 while the inter e sting passages intercalated by the king himself show that the beginnings of a really native prose literature were already taking shape in English hands . The chief monument o f this truly Anglo - Saxon literature , begun and completed by English writers in h t e . English tongue alone, is the Chronicle That of T invaluable document , the oldest history any eu in own l tonic race its language, was probab y first t compiled at the court of fElfred . Its earlier par

z I - 8 ANGLO S AXON B R ITAIN .

- of full, but contains several fine war songs , the genu old l of ine English type , fu l savagery in sentiment , or and abrupt broken in manner, but marked by the same wild poetry and harsh inversions as th e older heathen ballads . Amongst them stand the lines on of the fight Brunanburh, whose exordium is quoted above . Its close forms one of the finest passages in old English verse

B e n t e t e Le t th e L c t o e our hi d h m h y f , y h d v , T he S all o t e and th e S art ra en w ki w v , orn of ea a nd the u -coate H y b k , Him , d sk d , T he te -afted Erne th e cor e t o En o whi , s j y, T he G ree w ar - a and t at G re ea t dy h wk , h y b s ,

T he Wolf of th e Wo od . N o such Woeful sl aught er A e on t lan E er at een y his Is d v h h b , B e d e o f th e S word a s oo S a eth y g , b k y , r ter o f Eld nce of Ea t ar t er W i s , si s w d hi h En l and S a on S a le o er S ea g ish x s i d v , ’ O er th e B roa B r ne l a n e i n B r ta n d i , d d i i , ’ rou or er o f W ar and o ercam e th e el P d W k s , W sh , Earl Ea er of a e O ta n n t E art s g f m , b i i g his h .

of During the decadence, in the disastrous reign fEth elre d , the Chronicle regains its fulness, and the following pass age may be taken as a good specimen of its later style . It shows the approach to comment and l reflection , as the compi ers grew more accustomed to historical writing in their own tongue

An ere on t ear ere the rea of 1 00 . c . 9 H his y w ships dy whi h w e e re a e and t ere ere so an o f t e a s ne e r e re so sp k , h w m y h m v ( ’ far as b ooks t ell us) were m ad e a mong English kin i n no king s d a And m an rou t t e all t o et er t o S an c and y . b gh h m g h dwi h , t ere oul t e li e and h ol t e art a a n t all outl and er h sh d h y , d his h g i s s ’ B ut w h d o t t [foreigners ]hosts . e a n ye the l uck nor the worship - R R 1 ANGLO SAXON LITE ATU E . z 1 9

al our t at th e - r oul b e o f an oo to t l an [v ] h ship fy d sh d y g d his d , f a a or n b f no m ore than i t o t w s f e . The e el i t at this ilk time o r ’ ’ a l ttle e re t at B riht ri c Eadri c s rot er the eald orm an s i , h , b h , forwraye d [accused]Wulfnoth child to th e king and h e w ent out a nd d reW ~ unt o him t ent a nd t ere arr e e er w y ships , h h i d v y ere the out ore and rou t all e l en uot wh by s h sh , w gh vi . Th q h m an t o th e - r t at m an t e a l t a e t e m an ship fy d h migh si y k h m , if a out i t en too Brihtri were b . Th k c to hims el f eighty ships and t hought that he should work himsel f great fam e if he should get

Wulfnoth u c or ea . But as t e ere t t er ar t er , q i k d d h y w hi h w d, h e cam e such a wind against the m such as no m an e re minde d r e e ere and i t all t o - eat and t o - ra e th e and [ m mb d], b b k ships , warp e d them on l and and soon cam e W ulfnoth and for -burned the en t w as cout no n to the ot er ships . Wh his h [k w ] h ships ere th e n w as how the ot er are t en w as i t a s t ou wh ki g , h s f d, h h gh i t ere all re el e and th e n fare him o e and the w d ss, ki g d h m , eal or en and th e tan and orl et the t u l tl d m , high wi , f ships h s igh y .

A nd th e folk that were on th e ships b rought the m r ound eft t o ~ ’ Lun en and l et all th e e o l e t o l t u l tl o for no u t d , p p s i h s igh y g gh a nd h t r t at all En l kin o e for w as no etter t e vic o y h g ish h p d b . Th ere t - r w a s t u en e t en ca e o on a ter his ship fy d h s d d ; h m , s f ’ L am a th e u e ore n o t t a t w e t T hurkill s o t m s, h g f ig h s , h high h s , t o S an c and oon en e t e r w a t o C anter ur and dwi h , s w d d h i y b y, would quickly h av e w on the burg if they h ad not r ath er yearne d fo f And all the Ea t Kentin s a e eace t r p eace o them . s g m d p wi h t he o t and a e i t t r ee t ou an oun . And the o t h s , g v h h s d p d h s t ere o on a ter t at en e t ll it ca e t o Wi htland and t ere h , s f h , w d d i m g , h e er ere i n S ut -S ex and on Hamtunshi re a nd ek e o n v ywh h , ,

B er re arr e and urnt as t e r ont . en a e th e kshi h i d b , h i w is Th b d n call out all th e eo l e t at m en oul ol a a n t t em ki g p p , h sh d h d g i s h on e er al e b ut none the l e l o o t e are ere v y h f [sid ] ss , k h y f d wh t h e ll en one t e h ad the n ore one e ore t e y wi ed . Th im ki g f g b f h m t all th e r as t e e re o n t o t e r a nd all th e wi h fy d h y w g i g h i ships, f l as r a t u i l r h Eadri o w e to t e . B t t w as et t ou c k dy figh h m , h g ’ al r an i t r et w as en a r ar n m a e o a s e e . te S t . t d m , v y Th , f M i s ss, t e are eft a a n nto Kent and t oo t e a nter seat on. h y f d g i i , k h m wi T a e a nd ctualle t e el e rom Ea t - ex and rom th e h m s , vi d h ms v s f s S f - S A N R 2 20 ANGLO XO B ITAIN .

re t at t e re ne t ere o n the t a n al e of a es shi s h h x w , w i h v s Th m . A nd oft t e ou t a a n t th e ur of Lun en b ut ra e b e h y f gh g i s b g d , p is n d r t o G od i t e t tan ou an t e e er t e e are e ll . , y s ds s d , h y v h f d vi y And t ere a ter - nter t e too t e r wa u out t rou h h f mid wi h y k h i y p , h g C lte rn and so t o O x e naford O for and for - urnt th e ur hi , [ x d], b b g, a nd t oo t e r w a o n to the twa al e of a to w a r k h i y h v s Th mes ship d . There m an warned th em tha t th ere w as fyrd gathe red a t L unden a n t t e t en end e t e o er at tan ta n And a g i s h m 5 h w d h y v S e [S i es]. t u are t e all the nte r and t at Lent ere i n K nt a nd h s f d h y wi , h w e b r re a r t e r ette ed [ p i ed] h i ships .

We possess several manuscript versions of the t o con Chronicle, belonging different abbeys , and t o f aining in places s mewhat dif erent accounts . Thus the Peterborough copy is fullest on matters affecting

that monastery, and even inserts several spurious of h ow grants, which , however, are value as showing o f incapable the writers were scientific forgery, and so as guarantees of the general accuracy of the docu

m . do ent. But in the main facts they all agree Nor

they stop short at the Norman Conquest . Most of t of hem continue half through the reign William , and then cease ; while one manuscript goes on uninter

ru tedl of off p y till the reign Stephen, and breaks

abruptly in the year I I 54 with an unfinished sentence . d With it, native prose literature dies own altogether

u ntil the reign of Edward III . A w s a whole, ho ever, the Conquest struck the

- - death blow of Anglo Saxon literature almost at once. ’ During the reigns o f fElfred s descendants Wessex had produced a rich crop of native works on all sub

ects . j , but especially religious In this literature the Z Elfric l greatest name was that of , whose Homi ies are

2 2 2 -S R ANGLO AXON B ITAIN .

N o on er i t t at oe e all us for ell W e W o t t a t W d is h W s b f , W h no w full ma ny a year m en littl e ca r e what thing they da r e i n ’ or or ee and S orel has t nat on S nne ate er m an w d d d 5 y his i i d , wh S a t an ol S n and t r t an ol e e t y, wi h M if d i s wi h igh M if d Misd ds , wi h

’ ‘ S l a n a nd t S l au ter t r eadi n and t sza ébzn yi gs wi h gh s , wi h g wi h g ,

t G ra n deed and un r G r eed t rou C r t an wi h spi g h g y , h gh h is i ' rea on a nd t rou eat en reac er t rou a zl e and T s h gh h h T h y, h gh g t rou w i le t rou l a w lessness and a zvelessness t rou h gh , h gh , h gh ur er o f r en a nd ur er o f oe t rou ro en rot M d F i ds M d F s , h gh b k T h and ro en rut t rou e e unc a t t and clo tere b k T h , h gh w dd d h s i y is d

‘ ur t L ttl e t e z r ow of arr a e v ow as e re t a imp i y . i h y m i g , his I s id littl e they reck th e brea ch of oa t/z or fr om swe aring and for ear n on e e r side far and w ide a t and ea t t e old sw i g, v y , , F s F s h y h

not eace a nd a ct t e ee not oft a nd a non . u i n t i , P P h y k p , Th s h s [a nd t e sta nd o e t o C r ten o r en t o eat en o h y , F s h is d m , F i ds h h d m, er ecutor o f r e t er ecutor of e o l e all too an P s s P i s s, P s s P p , m y 5 urner of o l l aw and C r t an on wh o Lo u l Lau at sp s g d y h is i b d , d y gh ' ’ ' ’ th e T ea e/z zng of G od s T ea efier s a nd the Pr ea eazi zg of G o d s ’

F r eeze/z en and at o r tl t o G o r te el on . , wh s igh y d s i s b gs

The nation was thus clearly prep aring itself from

within for the adoption of the Romance system . t o Immediately after the Conquest , rimes begin

appear distinctly, while alliteration begins to die out . An Anglo - Saxon poem on the character of William

the Conqueror, inserted in the Chronicle under the of i vear of his death, consists very rude imes which may be modernised as follows

G ol h e t oo t d k by migh , And of reat unr t g igh , F ro m his folk with evil de ed r r l t le ne e F o s o e i t d . He w as on ree ne e all en g di ss b f , t al And g etsom eness h e l ove d wi h . He set a c l e eer r t mi k d f i h , - R ANGLO SAXON LITERATU E . 2 23

And h e l a l a t ere t id ws h wi h , That whoso sl ew har t or hind oul m an t en l n en Him sh d h b i d . He or a e to la the ar f b d s y h ts, And s k th oar o e e e b s . S o Well h e l ove d th e high deer A s h e t e r a t er ere if h i f h w . Ek e he set by th e hares at t e t re l are Th h y migh f e y f . Hi s rich m en mourned i t And m n l i t the p oor e wai e d . B ut he w as so firmly wrought f all nou That h e recke d o ght . And they must all withal ’ T he i n ll oll o k g s wi f w, If they wishe d t o live O r t e r l an a e h i d h v , O r t e r oo ek e h i g ds , r ea c t o ee O his p e s k . W oe m e is ,

at an m an so rou ould. b e Th y p d sh , u el u t o ra e Th s hims f p is , And o er all m en t o oa t v b s . Ma G od Al t o oul l - eart -ne y migh y sh w his s mi d h ss, And d o him for his sins forgiveness

a e From th t tim English poetry bifurcates . On the o ne of old hand , we have the survival the Teutonic ’ a lliterative swing in Layam on s Brut and in Piers

Plowman — th e native verse of the people sung by native minstrels and on the other hand we have the new in Romance rimed metre Robert of Gloucester, “ ” Palerne William of , Gower, and Chaucer . But from Piers Plowman and Chaucer onward the Romance system conquers and the Teutonic system - R 224 ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN.

dies rapidly. Our modern poetry is wholly Romance

d . in escent, form , and spirit

Thus in literature as in civilisation generally, the of old culture Rome, either as handed down eccle siasticall u th e or y thro gh Latin , as handed down - e the popularly through the Norman French , overcam

A - e native nglo Saxon culture, such as it was , and drov t out now it ut erly of the England which we know . new n Though a literature , in Latin and E glish , sprang a up after the Conquest, that liter ture had its roots, c not in Sleswi k or in Wessex , but in Greece, in Rome, n in Provence, and in Norma dy . With the Normans , a new era began — an era when Romance civilisation was grafted by harsh but strong hands on to the

An - A - glo Saxon stock, the nglo Saxon institutions, and

A - the nglo Saxon tongue . With the first step in this our revolution, present volume has completed its a t assigned task . The story of the Norm ns will be old by another pen in the same series .

2 2 6 - R ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN . sion is borne out both by the physical traits of the peasantry and the nature of the early remains . In the of t western half Sou h Britain , from Clyde to Cornwall , the proportion of Anglo - Saxon blood has probably l always been far sma ler . The Norman conquerors o f themselves were mixed Scandinavian , Gaulish , and Breton descent . Throughout the middle ages, the more Teutonic half of Britain — the southern and eastern tract— was undoubtedly the most import

: ant and the English , mixed with Scandinavians from Denmark or Normandy, formed the ruling f . o caste Up to the days Elizabeth, Teutonic Britain v an led the in civilisation, population , and commerce . o f But since the age the Tudors , it seems probable, l as Dr. Ro leston and others have shown , that the l A Celtic element has argely reasserted itself. return wave of Celts has inundated the Teutonic region . Scottish Highlanders have poured into

l w : G asgo , Edinburgh , and London Welshmen have poured into Liverpool , Manchester, and all the great towns of England : Irishmen have poured into every part of the British dominions . During the middle of ages , the Teutonic portion Britain was by far the most densely populated 5 but at the present day, the almost complete restriction of coal to the Celtic or semi- Celtic area has aggregated the greatest masses of population in the west and north . If we take into consideration the probable large substratum of Celts or earlier races in the Teutonic counties , the wide area of the undoubted Celtic region which pours forth a constant stream of emigrants towards the - I R R 2 2 ANGLO SAXON INFLUENCES N MODE N B ITAIN . 7

T on t n of o t e n eut ic ract , the cha ge imp r ance betw e

s - t - t outh eas and north west, since the indus rial develop of the o f ment coal country, and the more rapid rate

—

increase among the Celts, it becomes highly probable that not one-half the population of the British Isles

of . t is really Teutonic descent Moreover, it mus be t a remembered that, wha ever may have been the c se

A - in the primitive nglo Saxon period, intermarriages between Celts and Teutons have been common for at least four centuries p ast 5 and that therefore almost all Englishmen at the present day possess at least a fraction of Celtic blo od . “ T ” f t he people , says Pro essor Huxley, are v as ly ” less Teutonic than their language . It is not likely that any absolutely pure -blooded Anglo - Saxons now t our exis in midst at all, except perhaps among the farmer class in the most Teutonic and agricultural shires : and even this exception is extremely doubt o s ful . Pers n bearing the most obviously Celtic

— n names Welsh , Cor ish, Irish , or Highland Scots - are to f o be ound in all our large t wns , and t scat ered up and down through the country districts . Hence we may conclude with great probability that the Anglo-Saxon blood has long since been everywhere diluted by a strong Celtic intermix an ture . Even in the earliest times d in the most of non- Teutonic counties, many serfs Teutonic race existed from the very beginning : their masters hav e e re now mixed with other non-Teutonic families else l e where , til ven the restricted English people at the present day can hardly claim to be much more than 2 2 8 - R ANGLO SAXON B ITAIN .

- r half Anglo Saxon . No do the Teutons now even

retain their position as a ruling caste . Mixed Celts in England itself have long since risen t o many high

places . Leading families of Welsh, Cornish, Scotch , and Irish blood have also been admitted into the

peerage of the United Kingdom, and form a large of of f proportion the House Commons , of the o ficial of l world , and the governing c ass in India , the l Colonies , and the empire generally . These fami ies have again intermarried with the nobility and gentry o f or English , Danish , Norman extraction , and thus have added their part to the intricate intermixture of A . t the two races the present day, we can only speak of the British people as Anglo - Saxons in a conv en tional : sense so far as blood goes , we need hardly hesitate to set them down as a pretty equal admixture o f Teutonic and Celtic elements .

eaa r aeter A - h In , the nglo Saxons ave bequeathed t o of us much the German solidity, industry, and patience , traits which have been largely amalgamated with the intellectual quickness and emotional nature of the Celt , and have thus produced the prevailing T English temperament as we actually know it . o the Anglo -Saxon blood we may doubtless attribute our general sobriety, steadiness , and persistence 5 our scientific patience and thoroughness ; our political moderation and endurance 5 our marked love o f individual freedom and impatience of arbitrary

An l o~ Saxon restraint . The g was slow to learn , but

of . a retentive what he learnt On the other h nd, he was unimaginative 5 and this want of imagination

ANG LO - R SAXON B ITAIN .

in any sense a Romance tongue . It is the lineal fElfred o f ae descendant of the English of and B da , enlarged in its vocabulary by many words which they l of did not use, impoverished by the oss a few which they employed, yet still essentially identical in grammar and idiom with the language of the first

infl xi n Teutonic settlers . Gradually losing its e o s from of Ead ar the days g onward , it assumed its existing type before the thirteenth century, and continuously incorporated an immense number of French and Latin instru words , which greatly increased its value as an n me t of thought . But it is important to recollect that the English tongue has nothing at all to do in its origin with either Welsh or French . The Teutonic speech of the Anglo - Saxon settlers drove out the old Celtic speech throughout almost all England and the Scotch Lowlands before the end of the eleventh century 5 it drove out the Cornish in the eighteenth century ; and out it is now driving the Welsh , the Erse , and

our . the Gaelic, under very eyes In language at least the British empire (save of course India) is now or i n almost entirely English, other words ,

- Anglo Saxon . owe In on the other hand , we compar i at v ely little to the direct Teutonic influence . The

A - native nglo Saxon culture was low, and even before its transplantation to Britain it had undergone some modification by mediate mercantile transactions with

M . Rome and the editerranean states The alphabet , “ ” coins , and even a few southern words , (such as alms ) o f had already filtered through to the shores the Baltic. - L I N R R 2 ANGLO SAXON INF UENCES MODE N B ITAIN . 3 ]

A n of A - n fter the colonisatio Britain , the nglo Saxo s learnt something of the higher agriculture from their

Romanised serfs, and adopted, as early as the heathen s period, ome small portion of the Roman system , so far as regarded roads , fortifications , and , perhaps T in buildings . he Roman towns still stood their and midst , a fragment, at least, of the Romanised population still carried on commerce with the half n T h e Roman Frankish kingdom across the Chan el . re-introduction of Christianity was at the same time e of m the r introduction Roman culture in its later for . The Latin language and the Mediterranean arts once n more took their place in Britai . The Romanising

— Wilfrith T — prelates, , heodore, Dunstan, were also of s the leaders civili ation in their own times . The Norman Conquest brought England into yet closer connection with the Continent 5 and Roman law and Roman arts still more deeply affected our native cul

fi r ture . Norman arti ce s supplanted the rude English handicraftsmen in many cases, and became a domi old nant class in towns . The English literature, and old out especially the English poetry, died utterly new with Piers Plowman ; while a literature , based m upon Romance odels , took its origin with Chaucer

- and the other Court poets . Celtic Latin rhyme ousted

a the genuine Teutonic alliteration . With the R enais of t sance , the triumph the southern cul ure was com et pl e . Greek philosophy and Greek science formed the n - our t T starti g point for modern developmen s . he ecclesiastical revolt from papal Rome was aecom p anied by a literary and artistic return to the models 2 2 - X R IN 3 ANGLO SA ON B ITA .

f o . i n pagan Rome The Renaissance was , fact , the

off o f ae throwing all that was Teutonic and medi val , the resumption of progressive thought and scientific knowledge, at the point where it had been interrupted of by the Germanic inroads the fifth century . The of unjaded vigour the German races , indeed, counted for much 5 and Europe took up the lost thread of the dying empire with a youthful freshness very different from the effete listlessness of the Mediterranean culture in its last stage. Yet it is none the less true that o ur whole civilisation is even now the carrying out and completion of the Greek and Roman culture l in new fie ds and with fresh intellects . We owe little here to the Anglo - Saxon 5 we owe everything to the great stream of western culture , which began in Egypt A A and ssyria , permeated Greece and the rchipelago , spread to Italy and the Roman empire, and , finally, now embraces the whole European and Am erican world . The Teutonic intellect and the Teutonic character have largely modified the spirit of the l instru Mediterranean civi isation 5 but the tools, the ments, the processes themselves , are all legacies from a different race . Englishmen did not invent letters , and money, metallurgy, glass , architecture , science 5

- they received them all ready made , from Italy and a the n e n , or more remotely still from the Euphrates an to d the Nile . Nor is it necessary add that in

t o An - our religion we have no debt the glo Saxon , existing creed being entirely derived through Rome from the Semitic race . the A - In once more, nglo Saxon has

2 - R N 3 4 ANGLO SAXON B ITAI . of a G raeco-Roman civilisation 5 and we possess a to Christian Church, handed down us directly through o Roman sources from a Hebrew original . T the so m a extent indicated, and to that extent only, we y

- still be justly styled an Anglo S axon people . I N D E X.

fELF HEAH of Canter ur 1 68 B ereta ueen of Kentm en 8 b y, , q , 5 fElfred th e e t S a on 1 6 B ern c a ettl e coale ce W s x , 3 5 i i s d , 34 5 s s li e 1 eat 1 0 t D e ra his f , 39 5 his d h , 4 5 wi h i , 35 r t n 2 1 6 B oulo ne S axon e tlem en at his w i i gs , g , s t t , fElle of S u e 2 0 22 ss x , 4, 3 A35 0 the ute 2 B runan ur a tle o f 1 J , 9 b h, b t , 45 Z Ethelb ald of erc a 1 1 all a on 20 2 1 8 M i , 7 b d , 4 , fEthelb e rht of Kent 8 B urhred of erc a 1 1 , 5 M i , 3 Z Eth elb erh t of e e 1 2 W ss x , 9 fEthelfiaed of erc a 1 2 CADWALLA 2 M i , 4 , 9 , 94

.lEthelfrith of Nort um r a Cae m on the oet 1 0 hrs h b i , 53, d p , 3 5 6 2 e c 20 pi , 9 fEthel red of e e 1 0 Cer c th e Br on 1 6 W ss x , 3 di it , 3 , 7 fEthel red th e Unrea 1 6 Cer c the e S a on 2 1 dy , 4 di W st x , 4, 3 fEthelstan of e e 1 C e er attle of 8 W ss x , 44 h st , b , 5 Z Ethelw ulf o f e e 1 2 C ron cle En l 6 i ts W ss x, 4 h i , g ish, 3 5 A an of L n farne or n and nature 21 6 5 id i dis , 95 igi ' , A er an Mr on ur al of uo e asszen k m , . , s viv q t d, p C elt Clan 8 m ean n of t e r s , 59 s, , 43 5 i gs h i Anderid a 0 1 na e 80 occurrence i n , 3 , 4 m s, ; An lo -S axon 8 t e r rel on fferent re 8 1 g s , 5 h i igi , di shi s, 1 6 l an ua e 1 Cnut 1 6 ; g g , 74 , 9 A rc tec ure 1 Coi fi the r e t 8 hi t , 55 p i s , 9 A r an 1 Count of the S a on S ore 22 y s , x h , Au u n f nte r ur Cuthb erh f t e S t . o C a t of L n arne g s i , , b y, i dis , 97 a rr e i n En land 8 col Gut ne of e ex 1 iv s g , 5 5 hwi W ss , 5 l o u w t el o Cuthwulf of e ex 0 q y i h W sh bish ps, 93 W ss , 5 C newul the oet 2 1 y f p , 4

B/ED , 6 1 ; l e 1 0 5 C ne ul of We ex 1 1 A his if , 9' his y w f ss , 9 r t n 2 1 and assem w i i gs , 3 , p Bamb orou h u lt r nce D N S H n a on 1 2 et s g b i , 34 5 p i s A I i v si s, 3 eq. O f I 1 Da n ro B o 2 , 34 , 44 wki s, P f. yd, Ba eu S a on ettl em ent at 22 D e ra et tl e y x , x s , i s d, 34 B ene ct B isco 1 0 D e or a a tle of 1 di p , 9 ' h m, b t , 5 B eo ul 1 8 206 and asszf n D un tan 1 w f, 5, , p s , 47 6 N - A RIT 23 A GLO S XON B AIN .

B D G R of e ex 1 ona A A W ss , 47 I , 93 Ea un of Ea t An l a 1 0 ute ettl e i n Kent 2 dm d s g i , 3 J s , 5 5 s , 3, Ead ward the El er 1 1 28 i n th e l e of t ( d ) , 4 5 Is Wigh , Eadw ard the C on e or 1 0 2 i n N orthumb ria 2 ( f ss ) , 7 4 , 37 5 , 3 Ea w ne o f Nort u r a 6 d i h mb i , 3 5 con e rte 88 , KE BLE on B r t i n to n v d M , i ish w s, Ea t An l a col on e 6 s g i is d , 3 5 65 5 on C eltic personal names con uere Dan 1 0 e , 3 i n En l an 66 q d by s g d , Ec b erht o f e e 1 20 g , Kent e ttle ute 2 28 W ss x , s d by J s, 3, 5 El et 5 con uere En con erted 8 m , 35 q d by g v , 5 l 6 ish , 7 En l or An l an t e r g ish ( g i s) , 5 ; h i L NC LNS H RE col on e lan ua e see An lo -S a on I O I is d, 35 g g , g x s con erte 1 En l C ron cle see Ch ro v d , 9 g ish h i , L n arne n cl e En l i disf , 95 i , g ish Loidis E e colon e 6 , 35 ss x is d, 3 Lon on 1 8 d , 37 , 5 EL X con ert Ea t An l a 6 Lot an o r nall En l F I v s s g i , 9 hi , igi y g ish , 355 uncon uere Dane 1 ree an D r . E . A . 6 5 F m , 57 , 4 , q d by s, 35 6 6 and ami ne rante t o n o f S co t 1 5, 9, f g d ki g s , 49 risi ans as la e erc ant Low G er an t e r la n F , 5 5 s v m h s , m s , 5 5 h i 1 2 e l o e ua e 1 6 7 5 5 ships , 3 5 mp y d by g g , 7 lfr d I fE e , 39 RR G E in eat en t e MA IA h h im s , G ER N C race MA I , 4 8 1 74 , G ew issas , 37 nw aras Meo , 37 0 G l a 28 ; oo , 6 i d s , , 47 his b k erc a col on e i ts r e M i is d , 49 5 is G re or th e G reat en mis g y s ds un e r en a 2 i ts u re d P d , 9 5 s p on to En l an 8 si g d , 5 ac 1 1 con uere ’ m y, 7 5 q d by G r Law 1 imm s , 75 ex 1 22 the Dane Wess , 5 by s, G ut ru m th e Dane 1 , 37 h 1 3 1 G rwas y , 49 ona er e 1 02 M st i s , /EST E N th e rate 1 8 1 1 H pi , 3 , 4

N ENNI U 2 6 Harol 1 0 S, , 7 d, 7 3 ard a t n a tle o f 1 1 Ni th , 9 H s i gs, b t , 7 N r u r a e tle 2 n Heat en o 1 6 1 o t b i t d, 3 5 co h d m, , 7 h m s 8 n en e 28 erte , 8 ; co uere H g st, v d q d by Dane 1 0 or a 28 , 3 H s , s t a m ri i 22 ux l e ro on En l Eth N ot I e , H y , P f. , g ish i i p no ra h g p y. 5 F F of erc a 1 1 e H rin n of B ern c a O M , 7 5 h , y g , ki g i i , 33 A i is dyk 1 1 8

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