***** * *^ '•%$ *> v o .CV \///L o ^^ C- 1 fef- tc «'^r REVOLUTIONS OF RACE IN ENGLISH HISTORY BY EOBEKT YAUGHJS", D. D. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 443 & 445 BROADWAY. 1860. \N SFP 7 3 lot . : PREFACE. |~N tins work the reader will not find everything he -*^ would expect to find in a publication bearing the title of a History of England. But it is intended that these pages shall include so much of the past as will suf- fice to give Ml presentation and prominence to .the great changes in. the history of this country, showing whence they have come, what they have been, and whither they have tended. My narrative, accordingly, while not de- scribed as a History of England, is designed to serve the ^ purpose for which all such histories have been profess- •* edly written. English history embraces much in com- - mon with the history of Europe, together with much that has been characteristic of itself; and it is reasonable that Englishmen should be more interested in what has been special to their country, than in details which might have had their place in the history of any one among a large family of states. The question to which this work is designed to present an answer is — What is it that has IV PKEFACE. made England to be England ? My object is to conduct the reader to satisfactory conclusions in relation to this question, by a road much more direct and simple than is compatible with the laws to which the historian usually conforms himself when writing the general history of a nation. Our busy age needs some assistance of this nature. But while the spirit of our times is sufficiently dis- posed to appreciate directness and compression in author- ship, it is, I am aware, by no means disposed to accept superficiality in the place of thoroughness. I do not affect to be unacquainted with what modern writers have published on English history ; but it is only due to my- self to state, that on no point of importance in relation to my object, have I allowed myself to be dependent on such authorities. In many instances, when I have con- tented myself with citing a modern author, it has not been until after an examination of the sources adduced in support of his statements. It has been my earnest wish that this work should be the result throughout of a fair measure of independent research and of independent thought. The sense in which I use the term ' Revolution ' scarcely needs explanation. The word is meant to com- prehend the great phases of change in our history, clue place being assigned to the great cause in regard to each of them. Down to the close of the fourteenth century, change among us comes mainly from the conflicts of race. Under the Tudors, the great principle of revolu- PREFACE. tion is religion ; under the Stuarts, that principle gives place considerably to the principles of government. The first question to be settled was the question of race ; the next concerned the national faith ; and the next the fu- ture of the English Constitution. Many causes contrib- uted to the strength of these leading causes of action, but through their respective periods these are felt to be leading causes, and the effects which flow from them are all more or less impressed by them. In the progress of Great Britain since 1688, no single cause has acquired the prominence of the causes above mentioned. In taking up such a theme as the Revolutions in English History, it is probable that no two writers would be agreed as to the best method of dealing with it — or as to the principle that should determine the selection of material, and where to stop. On these points, and on many beside, I have to throw myself on the candour of the reader. The course I have taken has been chosen after the best thought I could bestow on the subject. In the further prosecution of my object, I hope to avail myself freely of the rich material in the State Paper Office, still in manuscript, and which, thanks to the pres- ent Master of the Rolls, is becoming more accessible every day for the purposes of history. Heath Lodge, Uxbeidge, 1859. CONTENTS. BOOK I. CELTS AND ROMANS CHAPTER I. THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN. PAGE Prehistoric period, ... 1 Phoenicia, 2 Phoenician history, 3 Greek testimony, 3 Voyage of Hiinilco, 4 Polybius, 5 Diodorus — Strabo, 6 Britain as described by the 7 Ancient British states, . Paces of ancient Britain, . Caledonians — Picts and Scots, Question of a Pre-Celtic race, Physical features of the an cient Britons, . 9 10 11 11 CHAPTER II. REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. Rome in the time of Ctesar, 14 Caractacus in Rome, . . 31 Cajsar's policy in invading 1 The Britons not subdued, 32 Britain, .... 15 Suetonius, .... 32 News-vending in ancienl Slaughter of tbe Druids, . 33 Rome, .... 15 Roman oppression, . 35 Caesar's preparations, 16 Revolt under Boadicea, . 35 The landing, 17 Massacre of the Romans, 36 Submission and revolt, 18 Slaughter of tbe Britons, 39 Second submission, . 19 Julius Agricola, . 40 Second invasion, 20 The Caledonians, 41 Military operations, . 20 Battle of Ardoch, 42 Cassivelaunus, . 21 Conquest completed, 43 Departure of Caesar, . 22 Adrian and Antoninus, . 44 British resistance, 23 Commodus — disorder, 44 Subsequent progress, 24 Campaign — wall of Severus, 45 Caligula's expedition, 25 The Scots — Carausius, . 46 Plautius and Claudius, 26 Tbeodosius — Maximus, . 48 Plautius and Ostorius, 28 Departure of tbe Romans, 49 Defeat of the Icenians, 28 "Work of the sword in Brit- Caractacus and the Silur 29 49 Vlll CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. EFFECT OF THE ASCENDENCY OF THE ROMANS IN BRITAIN ON GOVERNMENT. Celtic popular assemblies, Kings — Eevenue — The Druids, Roman government, . Roman colonization, . Provinces in Britain, PAGE 51 52 53 53 54 Colonies — Municipia — Latian towns, 55 The prefect and procurator, .' 56 Revolution in government, . 57 Roman force in Britain, . . 59 CHAPTER IV. REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. British Druidism, ... 60 Doctrine of the Druids, . . 61 Sacred groves, .... 62 Religious rites, .... 63 The Romans intolerant of Druidism, .... 63 Christianity, .... 64 Fictions and misconceptions, 65 Legend of King Lucius, . The probable truth, . Persecution under Diocletian, Council of Aries, Pelagius and Celestius, . Lupus and Germanicus, 67 69 70 71 72 73 Summary, 73 CHAPTER V. EFFECT OF THE ROMAN ASCENDENCY ON SOCIAL LIFE. Agriculture, Clothing — Art, . Impediments to British civi lization, . British earthworks, . Roman civilization, . Mines — Coals — Metals, Roman roads, Educated life, 75 76 78 78 80 81 si 82 End of Druidism — Fine arts — General culture, Roman cities in Britain, . Influence of Roman cities, Revolution in manners, . Cassar on British morals, Summary, .... Distribution of race, . 83 84 85 86 87 89 93 BOOK II. SAXONS AND DANES. CHAPTER I. SOURCES OF ANGLO-SAXON HISTORY. British authorities, ... 95 Gildas — Nennius, ... 97 Scandinavian poetry and tra- dition, 98 Anglo-Saxon writers — Bode, 99 Saxon Chronicle, . . . 99 Ancient laws, . . . .100 Anglo-Norman writers, . . 101 Authority of the Anglo- Norman writers, . . . 102 CONTENTS. IX CHAPTER II. THE MIGRATION. PAGE Britain as Je^t by the Romans, 104 Picts and Scots, .... 104 Repulsed by the Britons, . 105 Final departure of the Ro- mans, 10G Picture of Britain by Gildas, 106 The Saxons, .... Hengist and Horsa, . Saxon and British accounts, Rise'of the Octarchy, British resistance, Summary, .... PAGH 107 109 110 111 112 112 CHAPTER III. RISE OF TIIE ENGLISH MONARCHY — EGBERT. Anglo-Saxon wars, . Design of the Saxon invaders, Office of Bretwalda, . The Heptarchy, . Northumbria, Mercia, .... Offa and Charlemagne, 114 115 115 117 118 119 120 Murder of Ethelbert, Progress of Wessex, . Cedwalla — Ina, . Egbert, .... Elective monarchy, . "Why .continued, . Tendencies towards unity, 121 122 122 124 125 125 126 CHAPTER IV. RISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY — ATnELSTAN. "Wessex, Mercia, and Nor- thumbria, 128 Danger from the Danes, . .129 Descent of the Danes, . . 129 Causes of the movement, . 130 Intentions of the Danes, . . 131 Ragnar Lodbrog, . . .133 Inguar and Ubbo, . . . 134 Check at Nottingham, . .135 Battle of Kesteven, . . .135 Danish ravages, .... 136 King Edmund, .... 137 Danes in "Wessex, . . .137 Alfred at Reading, . . .138 Ashdune, 138 Progress of the Danes, . . 140 Alfred's retreat, .... 142 Battle of Ethadune, . . .143 Treaty with Guthorm, . . 143 Invasion under Hastings, . 145 Edward and Athelstan, . . 146 Battle of Brunanburgh, . . 146 Athelstan king of England. . 147 CHAPTER V. RISE OF THE DANISH MONARCHY. Edmund succeeds Athelstan, 148 Insurrection, . . . .149 Edwy— Edgar, .... 149 Edward the Martyr — Ethel- red the Unready, . . . 150 Massacre of the Danes, . . 151 Edmund Ironside, . . . 154 Canute becomes king, . . 156 Retrospect, 156 Ancient and modern England, 157 CONTENTS. CHAPTER VI. EFFECT OF THE SAXON AND DANISH CONQUESTS ON THE DISTRIBUTIONS OF RACE. PAGE Diversities of race, . . . 159 Location of the Britons, . . 161 The Angles in Northunibria, 1G3 PAGE Location of the Danes, . .164 Norwegians in Cumberland, . 165 CHAPTER VII. REVOLUTION IN RELIGION IN ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN. Religion — its potency, . Saxon heathendom, . Odin "worship — Other dei- ties, Story of Balder, .... Evil deities — Fates, . Worship, Summary on Saxon heathen- dom, Christianity, .... Augustine, The British bishops, . Iona and its missionaries, Aidan, 169 Work of Scottish mission- 170 aries in England, . 188 Progress of Christianity, 189 171 The new faith not pure, . 192 173 The old faith and the new, . 193 174 Results from this revolution 175 in religion, .... 194 Priestly power, .... 195 177 Policv of the clergv, 196 179 Life of Wilfrid, .... 199 181 Odo and St. Dunstan, 206 183 Edwy and Elgiva, . 209 186 Better effects of Christianity, . 211 187 Bede, Biscop, and Aidan, 213 CHAPTER VIII. REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENT IN ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN. Feudal relations, Landholding, .... Confederations of settlers, . Local government, . Free and the Not-free, . Noble by birth and by service, The family, The tithing and hundred, . The wergild, The Witanagemote, . 216 Shires and people, . 232 219 Different holdings of land, 232 220 Rise of towns, . 233 221 Government in towns, . 235 221 The king, .... 236 224 The king's household, 237 226 Jurors and compurgators, 237 227 Trial by ordeal, . 238 229 Summary of the revolution L 229 in government, 239 CHAPTER IX. REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LIFE IN ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN. Agriculture, . . . . 241 Draining and embankments, 242 Handicraft and foreign trade, 243 Intellectual life, .... 244 Music and poetry, . . . 245 Prose literature, .... 247 Culture of the Danes, . . 248 Science in Anglo-Saxon Brit- ain, 250 CHAPTER X. CONCLUSION. CONTENTS. XI BOOK III. NORMANS AND ENGLISH. CHAPTER I. THE NORMANS IN NORMANDY. PAGE The Normans, . . . 256 Northmen in France, . . 257 Rollo, first duke of Normandy, 258 William I., Richard I. and II. 259 Richard III., Rohertthe Devil, 260 "William the Conqueror, . . 260 Society in Normandy, . . 261 Christianity, . . . .262 Defective civilization of the Normans, 263 Norman legislation and gov- ernment, 265 Origin of chivalry, . Character of the Normans, Story of Harold's pledgo to William, .... Death of the Confessor, . Landing of William, . Tostig and Hardrada, Battle of Stamford Bridge Harold's limited resources, William's proposal, . Harold's reply, . Battle of Hastings, . CHAPTER II. THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO PROPERTY. Submission of the English, . 279 William's coronation, . . 279 His pretensions, .... 280 Displacement of the Saxons 281 Distribution of manors, . . 281 PAGE 265 265 266 267 268 269 270 273 273 274 275 Opinion of Selden and Hale, 283 Feudal tenures, .... 284 Knight service and soccage, . 284 Military power — State of towns, 285 CHAPTER III. TTIE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO THE PEOPLE. Why the battle of Has- tings was so decisive, . Subsequent resistance, . Siege of Exeter, State of the north, . William's devastation, Removal of the Saxon clergy, .... Anglo-Norman clergy, . Agricultural population, . Serfs and free tenants, . Confederation at Ely, 286 287 287 288 289 291 292 293 294 295 Fate of the Alfgars, . Here ward, . Death of Waltheof, . Anglo-Saxon women, Last form of resistance, Change in English feeling, Cumberland outlaws, Robin Hood, Retrospect, . Rise of towns, . Lord Macaulay and Normans, . the 296 297 298 299 300 300 302 303 304 306 307 CHAPTER IV. THE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO GOVERNMENT. Common law and statute law, 309 Feudalism in England, . . 310 Feudal incidents, . . 310 Meeting at Salisbury, . . 311 Rule of the Conqueror, . . 312, XII CONTENTS. PAGE Laws of tlie Confessor, . . 312 Trial by jury — its origin, . 314 Jurors and taxation, . . . 316 Jurors and parliament, . . 317 King's court — and council, . 318 Judicial power of the council, 319 King's relation to the law, . 320 Itinerant judges, . . . 323 Growth of popular power, . 323 Two great principles, . . 325 Source of authority among the Germans, .... 325 fif- Judicial corruption, . "Wealth of the Crown, Subsidies — tenths and teenths, Imports and exports, Good from the Conquest, Distinctions of race much effaced, Popular liberty, .... King John and the barons, . Magna Charta, .... CHAPTER V. TnE CONQUEST IX ITS RELATION TO THE CIIURCn. Spiritual courts, Transubstantiation, . Celibacy of the clergy, Lanfranc, The married clergy, . Anselm, His dispute with Rufus, Henry I. — Investitures, Exemption of monasteries, 338 339 339 340 343 344 345 346 350 Thomas :\ Becket, Constitutions of Clarendon, . Policy of the crown, Progress of the dispute, . Becket's violence and death, Popular feeling, .... Result of the controversy, . Religion, Religious persecution, CHAPTER VI. TnE CONQUEST IN ITS RELATION TO SOCIAL LIFE. The Conquest injurious to industry, 366 Improvement — imports, . . 367 The Cinque ports — the Jews, 368 Regulations concerning trade, 370 History of Longbeard, . . 371 Patronage of learning, . . 376 Lay schools, .... 377 Universities, .... 377 Arab literature, . Aristotle, .... Anglo-Norman historians, Civil and canon law, Romance literature, . Geoffrey of Monmouth, . Norman architecture, Retrospect, .... PAGB 326 328 329 329 330 331 331 332 335 351 355 356 357 360 360 361 361 365 381 381 382 383 385 387 390 391 BOOK IV. ENGLISH AND NORMANS. CHAPTER I. INFLUENCE OF THE WARS OF ENGLAND ON TnE ENGLISH NATIONALITY. Edward III.— -Effect of his Henry III. — nis wars, . . 394 Edward I. — A naval victory, 395 Invasion of France, . . . 397 Wars of Edward I., . . . 398 wars, 400 Henry V. — Issue of wars with France, .... 403 CONTENTS. Xlll CHAPTER II. INDUSTRIAL LIFE IN ENGLAND FROM THE DEATH OF KING JOHN TO THE ACCESSION OF IIEXRY IV. Progress of industrial power, Impeded by piracy, . Middle Age navy, Naval triumphs, .... Trade impeded by legisla- tion, Prejudice against foreign merchants, .... Introduction of weavers, Merchants of the Staple, PAGE PAGE 407 Companies, 413 408 The English engage in for- 408 eign trade, .... 413 409 Agriculture, . . 414 416 410 Free labour, .... 416 Parliament regulates wages, . 417 410 Value of labour in the four- 411 teenth century, 419 412 420 CHAPTER III. INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN ENGLAND FROM TIIE DEATH OF KING JOHN TO TnE ACCESSION OF HENRY IV. The English language, . . 422 French metrical romance, . 424 British traditions, . . . 425 Vision of Piers Plowman, . 427 Chaucer, 428 English prose — Maundeville — Wycliffe, .... 431 Occleve and Lydgate, . . 433 Progress of art, . . . 434 Comparative rudeness of Mid- dle-age life, . . . .436 The universities, . . . 437 City life, 437 CHAPTER IV. POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND FROM THE DEATn OF KING JOHN TO THE ACCESSION OF HENRY IV. Trade and freedom, . . .439 The king's council, . . . 439 Representative principle, . 440 The Great Charter, . . .441 Its immediate effects, . . 441 First House of Commons, . 444 Rising influence of towns, . 445 Parliaments under Ed- ward I., 446 Hereford and Norfolk, . . 449 The statute Be Tallagio non Concedendo, . . «. . 451 Political life under Ed- ward!, 455 Edward as a legislator, . . 457 Parliaments under Ed- ward II., 458 Civil war, 462 Galveston, 463 of form The Spencers — Battle Boroughbridge, Deposition of the king, Edward III.— settled of parliament, Power of the Commons, . Tonnage and poundage, . Law of treason, .... Liberties gained, Historical significance of par- liamentary history, Condition of the people, Free and skilled labour, . The English aristocracy not a privileged noolcsse, . Growth of independence, Condition of the suffrage, Purveyance grievances, . Popular discontent, 464 465 466 468 470 471 472 475 475 476 476 477 477 478 479 Wat Tyler, 480 X]V CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. RELIGIOUS LIFE IN ENGLAND FROM THE DEATH OF KING JOHN TO THE ACCESSION OF IIENEY IV. PAGE Papal power — Its culminat- ing point, 483 The papacy versus the na- tional churches, . . . 484 Peter's pence, .... 485 King John's tribute, . . . 485 The custom of provisors, . 486 Commendams, .... 488 General Corruptness, . . 488 Ecclesiastical diplomacy, . 488 Grostete, . . . " . .490 The pope's collectors, . . 490 Resistance, under Edward III., 491 The popes at Avignon, . . 493 Papal schism, .... 494 Retrospect, 495 Laws in revolutions, . . . 495 Social life in the counties, Population of towns, The Franciscans, Become city missionaries, Their benevolence and sue cess, Become learned, Rapid deterioration, . Chaucer's pictures of society Wycliffe, . . . . Proceedings against him, Opposes the doctrine of transubstantiation, His opinions, Remonstrance of the Wye Unites, .... Impolicy of the clergy, . Retrospect, .... PAGE 497 497 498 499 500 501 503 504 506 509 511 511 514 515 516 BOOK V. LANCASTER AND YORK. CHAPTER I. TUE REACTION. Accession of Henry IV., . 518 His policy, 519 Persecution, . . . .519 Sawtree and Badby, . . 520 Reforming spirit of the Com- mons, 521 Arundel's constitutions, . . 523 Lord Cobham, .... 525 Persecutions under Chiche- ley, Excesses of the reformers, Clergy at fault, . Reaction in Oxford, . Decline of learning, . The aristocracy during the Civil war, . . . . 525 527 527 528 531 532 CHAPTER II. THE DAWN. English constitution, . . 536 Friars and the Clergy, . . 537 The new opinions embraced by clergymen, . . . 540 The people, 541 Some encouragement of learning, 542 The duke cf Gloucester, . . 543 CONTENTS. XV PAGE Earl of Worcester, . . . 543 Earl Eivers, .... 544 Lord Littleton, . . . . 545 Sir John Fortescue, . . . 545 State of science, .... 547 Printing, 549 Probabilities of the future, . 550 Historical function of the papal power, .... 550 Decline of the papal supre- macy, 551 Policy of the pontiffs, . . 552 PAGE Corruption general, . . . 554 Revival of literature and art, 555 Leo X. — Scepticism in Italy, 557 Prospects of society on the opening of the fifteenth century, 558 Richard III., . . . .560 Accession of the house of Tudor, 560 Rule of Henry VII., . . . 561 His ecclesiastical policy, . .562 BOOK I. CELTS AND ROMANS. CHAPTER I. THE EAELY INHABITANTS OF BEITAIN. fTVHE man who treads the greensward of Dover Cliff for book i & -*- the first time, will feel that before him is the passage which must have been made by some of the earliest settlers in Britain. The white coast of Gaul stretches along in the distance, and the track of voyagers in the unknown past seems to be still upon those waters. On those waters, too ? the dark sides and the floating sails of the multitude of ships under the command of Caesar seem to be still visible. But in the age of Caesar many centuries must have passed since the first rude wicker-boat grazed its oxhide covering on our shore and landed the first man. Some hundreds of winters must then have come and gone since the first at- tempt was made to penetrate our primeval forests, or to compass our stagnant marshes. Far back, even then, must the day have been when the eye of man — that probably half-naked and wondering new-comer — fell for the first time on the waters of the Thames and the Humber, the Severn and the Mersey. But man comes in his season : and now the day will come when the borders of the Thames shall be Ho longer a wilderness, and when from the banks of the Vol. I.— 1 Chap. 2 CELTS AND KOMANS. book i. Mersey other sounds shall be heard than those of untamed CHAr. 1. . , . i r> animals in search ot prey. But how soon change by the hand of man began to make its appearance in Britain is a point on which we can- not speak with exactness. Rude nations do not write his- tories, and it is not until they begin to cast off their rude- ness that civilized nations begin to write history for them. "We know, however, that the merchants of Phoenicia were the people to open the first communication between this isl- and and distant countries. It is the commercial spirit that gives to Britain her place for the first time in history. So we were called from our obscurity by the kind of enterprise which was to be the source of our ultimate greatness. Phoenicia. The s trip of the coast of Syria known to the ancients as Phoenicia, did not measure much more than a hundred miles in length, and scarcely twenty in breadth. Along the inland border of Phoenicia rose the snow-covered mountains of Lebanon, with their slopes and ravines darkened here and there by their ancient cedars. From those highlands roots were sent off as rocky promontories into the sea. The coast was thus broken up into a succession of bays, which became harbours, and fitting places for fortresses and wall- ed cities. The Phoenicians knew well how to use such ad- vantages. As the mariner spread his sail in front of the city of Aradus, and with a favouring breeze from the land, turned the high prow of his vessel towards Egypt, every few miles placed him abreast with a new city. Tripolis, Berytus, Sidon, Tyre — all rose thus in succession from the sea. The land between those cities was studded with cities of less importance, and with villages. Everywhere the signs of industry were visible, in the culture of the field, of the vine, and of the olive. The relation of this chain of cit- ies to the countries eastward of them, and westward, was for many centuries the same with that of the great cit- ies of Italy in the Middle Ages. Phoenicia and Italy had their place at about the middle of the civilized world ; and both were the means, in their time, of enabling the one half of the human family to interchange commodities with the other half. THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN. 3 The greatness of the Phoenician power dates from a book i. thousand years before the age of Augustus. Its prosperity -^4- continued unabated during the first half of that interval, history. Its ships visited every shore of the known world, and often penetrated into the unknown. In those remote times, Phoe- nician navigators made their way to Cape Finistere, and learnt to strike across the open sea to Britain. In such ad- ventures the Cynosure, the last light in the Little Bear, was their chosen polestar. The Cynosure beams upon us as brightly as ever, but the Phoenician mariner is gone. Great military monarchies are bad neighbours to small commer- cial states. It is in the nature, also, of such states, that they should rely too much on the aid of mercenaries — a danger- ous weapon. The tendency of their wealth, too, is ever to- wards concentration and oligarchy. In time, the few who govern become divided by feuds between their rival houses, and the many who are governed become lost to patriotism. So weakness within is all that remains to be opposed to strength from without. From these causes the soldier pow- er prevailed at length in the history of Phoenicia over the merchant power. The glory of the past became wholly of the past. In modern Tyre the fisherman dries his nets on the ruins of ancient palaces.* But if Phoenicia was the first to discover the island of Greek testi Britain, it is to Greece we owe the first literary notices con- cerning it. When Paul preached to the men of Athens on Mars Hill, four centuries and a half had passed since Herodotus had read his History to the ancestors of the same people. That number of years in our own history * Xenophon's description of a Phoenician vessel shows that the Phoenicians greatly excelled the Greeks as seamen. ' The best and most accurate arrange- ment of things I ever saw, was when I went to look at the great Phoenician ship. For I saw the greatest quantity of tackling separately disposed in the smallest stowage. You know that a ship comes to anchor or gets under way by means of many wooden instruments and many ropes, and sails by means of many sails, and is armed with many machines against hostile vessels, and carries about with it many cooks for the crew, and all the apparatus which men use in a dwelling-house for each mess. Beside all this the vessel is filled with cargo, which the owner carries for his own profit. And all that I have mentioned lay in not much great- er space than will be found in a chamber large enough conveniently to hold ten beds. All this too lay in such a way that they did not obstruct one another, so that they needed no one to seek them, and there were no knots to untie and cause delay, if they were suddenly wanted for use.' — (Economicus. Kenrick's Phoenicia, c. vii. mony. CELTS AND ROMANS. BOOK I. Chap. 1. would take us back to the days of Hemy Y. and the battle of Agincourt. Time does not become less by distance ; but, like all other objects, it seems to do so. In the age of Herodotus the kings of Rome had all passed away, and the patricians and plebs were committed to their great struggle. But the historian, while he makes no mention of Rome, deems it proper to state that, if he has not spoken concern- ing ' the islands called Cassiterides, whence tin is imported,' it is because he had ' no certain knowledge of them,' — a manner of expression which implies that the things rumored at that time concerning the islands so named must have led his auditory to expect information on that subject. That tin and amber are brought, says the historian, from the extreme parts of Europe is unquestionable.* The word Cassiterides would have conveyed no meaning to a Briton or a Gaul. The word cassiteros for tin, is first found in Homer, but it does not appear to have been of Greek origin. There is no room to doubt, that in the Scilly Islands, we have the remains of the Cassiterides of Herodotus. Aristotle flourished a century later than Herodotus. In a passage which has been attributed to that philosopher, it is said that beyond the Celtae (Gaul) there are ' two very large Islands called Britannic, Albion, and Ierne ; ' and that near to Britain there are not a few small islands. Aris- totle might readily have learnt thus much from the Phoeni- cian seamen of his time ; but both the date and the author- ship of the work in which this passage is found are doubtful.f It was while Aristotle was teaching at Athens, that is, in 360 b.c, that the Carthaginians sent their great captain Himilco into these regions on a voyage of discovery. This navigator explored the seas and coasts of Britain, and some fragments from the report made by him have reached us. These fragments are found in the ancient poem of Festus Avienus. Himilco is there made to speak of this island, and especially of the point where the sea separates the Land's End in Cornwall from the island beyond, in the fol- lowing terms : ' Here rises the head of the promontory, in olden times named CEstrymnon, and below, the like-named * Hist. lib. iii. § 115. f De Mundo, § 3. THE EAELY INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN. 5 bay and isles ; wide they stretch and are rich in metals, tin book i. and lead. Here a numerous race of men dwell, endowed — — ' with spirit, and with no slight industry, busied all in the cares of trade alone. They navigate the sea in their barks, built, not of pines or oak, but, strange to say, made of skins and leather. Two days long is the voyage thence to the Holy Island' (once so called), which lies expanded in the sea, the dwelling of the Hibernian race ; at hand lies the isle of Albion.'* In this passage, notwithstanding some obscure expres- sions, there is a clear reference to the Scilly Islands, to Mount's Bay, and Mount St. Michael. In our maps, the Scilly Islands consist of small dots sprinkled at various dis- tances on the sea. Albion, which is still near to those isl- ands, was then no doubt much nearer, and the distance to Hibernia is not more than eighty miles. The mines of that district continue to yield large supplies of tin. It is not found anywhere in Britain except in that neighbourhood, and in a few places in the adjoining county of Devon. Spain, also, is said to have yielded some supplies of this metal ; but in the Scilly Islands we see the Cassiterides (the tin isl- ands) of Herodotus. With the testimony of the Carthaginian admiral we Poiybius. must connect that of a Greek general. Between Himilco and Polybius there is the lapse of two centuries. Himilco, however, is our better guide. But we learn from Polybius that many had ' discoursed very largely' in his time about the gold and silver mines of Spain, and about ' the Bri- tannic Isles and the working of tin ; ' and he accounts it necessary to offer a sort of apology for not doing something of the same sort himself. His language shows very clearly that a century before the Roman invasion, and among those who spoke the Greek language, enough was known concern- ing Britain to make intelligent men desirous of knowing more.f We owe something, accordingly, to Polybius, a man who added much of the virtue and wisdom of a sage, to the skill and courage of a soldier ; but we owe more to that ancient mariner who was the first to survey our coast, * Heeren's Ancient Nations. f Hist. lib. iii. c. 57. CELTS AND ROMANS. BOOK I. Chap. 1. Diodorus and Strabo. to sound our shores, and to become familiar with those Brit- ish seas in which so many brave men were to do brave deeds in the time to come. But among our Greek authorities in relation to ancient Britain, we have to mention the historian Diodorus Siculus and Strabo the geographer. Both these authors were con- temporary with Csesar and Augustus, both were men whose lives were given to the production of the works which bore their names, and their fragments concerning Britain are much more certain and satisfactory than will be found in preceding writers. The Britain they describe is not so much the Britain of Kent, which Csesar had recently made known to them, as the Britain of Cornwall, as previously known to Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Greeks. Diodorus regards Britain as an island, and has attempted a description of its extent and form. The Britons, he writes, ' who dwell near that promontory of Britain which is called Belerium (the Land's End), are singularly fond of strangers ; and, from their intercourse with foreign merchants, are civilized in their manners. These people obtain tin by skilfully work- ing the soil which produces it. The soil being rocky, has hard crevices from which they work out the ore, which they fuse and reduce to a metal. When they have formed it into cubical shapes, they convey it to a certain island lying off Britain, named Ictis ; for at the low tides, the intervening space being dry land, they carry it thither in great abun- dance in waggons.' At low tides, says the historian, the places which seemed to be islands become peninsulas. ' Here the merchants purchase the tin from the natives, and carry it across into Gaul ; whence it is conveyed on horses, through the intervening Celtic land, to the people of Massalia, and to the city called Narbonne.'* It will be seen that this ac- count of the Cornwall Britons agrees substantially with that given by Himilco three centuries earlier. Strabo writes : ' The Cassiterides are ten in number, and lie near each other in the ocean towards the north from the haven of Artabri. One of them is a desert, but the others are inhabited by men in black cloaks, clad in tunics, * Lib. v. c. 21, 22, 38. THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN. 7 reaching to the feet, and girt about the breast. Walking book l with staves, and bearded like goats, they subsist by their cattle, leading for the most part a wandering life. And having metals of tin and lead, these and skins they barter with the merchants for earthenware, and salt, and brazen vessels. Formerly the Phoenicians alone carried on this traffic, by Gadeira (Gibraltar), concealing the passage from every one : and when the Romans followed a certain ship- master, that they might also find the mart, the shipmaster, out of jealousy, purposely ran his vessel upon a shoal, and leading on those who followed him into the same destruc- tion, he himself escaped by means of a fragment of the ship, and recovered from the state the value of the cargo he had lost.'* Strabo adds, that subsequently the Romans discov- ered this passage to Britain, and availed themselves of it, though much more circuitous than the journey by land. Two writers among the Greeks of Alexandria are cited by Diodorus and Strabo as authorities for what they relate con- cerning Britain, viz. Eratosthenes and Artemidorus — and these authors, no doubt, derived their information from their neighbours, the Phoenicians. But it is to Roman authorship, beginning with Csesar, Britain as describ6 EOMANS. book i. dominant in Britain, and not less so in Celtic Gaul. Caesar, Chap. 1. indeed, says that the inhabitants of the interior of Britain were born in the island, while those on the sea-coast were recent settlers. But he does not say to what extent this was the case. Nor does he say that the difference was a difference of race. Had he taken up such a rumour, or re- corded such a conjecture, it could have weighed little against the evidence in our possession, nets and The Picts — the supposed ancestors of the Lowland Scotch — do not make their appearance in history under that name before the close of the third century of the present era. The controversy in regard to the origin of this name and people has been great and very bitter. They have become Germans, Scandinavians, Gaels, Britons, or nondescripts, ac- cording to the bias of our historians and antiquaries. From the remains of their language, as well as from other circum- stances, the most reasonable, and now the most general opinion is that the Picts were from the common Celtic stock, and for the most part Britons. The natives who were not disposed to submit to the Boman sway, would naturally be drawn together along some comparatively safe border of the Koman territory, and would prove troublesome to those within it. Ptolemy makes these northern tribes to have been seventeen in number.* The Gaelic clans of the Highlands were also Celtse. But their language, and their geographical position, seem to shut us up to one of two conclusions — either that they must have come into that part of Britain from Ireland, or that they were the remains of an aboriginal race which had been forced into those mountain fastnesses, into the Isle of Man, and into Ireland itself, by the pressure of subsequent invad- ers. There are some difficulties in the way of the latter supposition, but evidence, upon the whole, seems to pre- ponderate in its favour. The Gaelic tongue is not British. Its only affinity is with the Irish. The word Aber, in "Welsh, as in old British, denotes the estuary of a river, or any outlet of waters. The word Invcr, in Gaelic and Irish, * Worsaae's Primeval Antiquities of Denmark. Wilson's Prehistoric An- nals of Scotland, 470-473. Latham's Ethnology of the British Isla7ids, c. iv. THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN. 11 lias the same meaning* The word Aber is so used, as a book i. Chap. 1. prefix to names of places, along a line extending from South ' Wales to the North of Scotland, marking off a territory to the right of that line as pervaded by the British tongue and race. The word Inver is commonly used for the same pur- pose through the Highlands to the left of that line, be- speaking the prevalence there of a tongue and race which are rather Irish than British. Thus, while the British tongue sounds along from Aberystwith to Aberdeen, the Gaelic makes itself heard from Inverary to Inverness.* That Britain was in some degree peopled by a pre- Question of Celtic race is an opinion familiar to the learned. But the ™ce. evidence on which it rests is too fragmentary and uncertain to be available for history. There may have been, as our Northern antiquaries teach, an age of stone implements, and an age of bronze, preceding that age of iron which had come in the time of Csesar.f But the line between those ages cannot be well defined, and the two former must be reckoned pre-historic. The race of the stone period, who had so far degenerated from the civilization of those eastern lands whence their progenitors had long since migrated, must have passed away long before the age of Caesar, like the vegetation of their own forests, leaving scarcely a trace behind. Concerning the physical features of the inhabitants of ^afurefof Britain at the commencement of the present era, ancient BrUons! ent writers have said but little. The description of the trading and peaceful Britons of Cornwall, with their long beards, long tunics, and long walking-staves, is manifestly a description that must not be deemed applicable to the Britons beyond that district. The Britons seen by Csesar, though living in a colder latitude than the people of Corn- wall, were comparatively naked. They were clad in skins. They stained their bodies with woad, covering them with purple figures ; a custom not necessarily barbarous, inas- * Kemble's Saxons in England, ii. p. 5. la Scotland there are eleven names of places commencing with the one prefix, and twelve commencing with the other. In Wales there are seven names commencing with aber — not one with invcr. — Latham's Ethnology of the British Islands, c. v. f Worsaae's Primeval Antiquities of Denmark. 12 CELTS AND ROMANS. book i, much as it has been common among British seamen within our own memory. Its design could hardly have been to give fierceness to their aspect ; it was the effect rather of a rude love of ornament. They wore a moustache, but no beard. Their hair fell long upon their shoulders; and they were brave and skilful in war. Strabo speaks of some Britons seen by him at Rome as being taller than the Gauls, but more slightly built ; their hair, also, was less yellow; and there was a want of symmetry in their lower limbs. There were no men in Rome so tall by half a foot.* It is possible, however, that these men were seen in procession ; and if so, they would be picked men, and not a fair sample of their race. Tacitus says the Britons varied in their physical appear- ance. The Caledonians had ruddy hair and large limbs. The Silures were more of an olive complexion, and their hair mostly dark and curling — suggesting an Iberian origin, and something in common perhaps between the proud Cas- tilian and the countrymen of Caractacus. The tribes in- habiting the present Lowlands of Scotland he describes as a fierce people ; the Silures as powerful and brave ; and the Britons generally as not incapable of submission if mildly treated, but as passionate and uncontrollable under oppression. Herodian, describing the expedition of the Emperor Severus against the Caledonians, writes : ' They know not the use of clothing, but encircle their loins and necks with iron, deeming this an ornament and an evidence of opulence, in like manner as other barbarians esteem gold. They puncture their bodies with pictured forms of every sort of animals ; on which account they wear no clothing, lest they should hide the figures on their bodies. They are a most warlike and sanguinary race, carrying only a small shield and a spear, and a sword girded to their naked bodies.'f If we accept this account as trustworthy, it will be clear from the pages of Tacitus and Dion Cassius, that the Britons of the south, even in the first century, were * Lib. iv. c. 5, § 2. f Lib. iii. c. 24. THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN. 13 greatly in advance of the rudeness of the north three cen- cha? i' turies later. Boadicea is described as a woman of queenly presence. When addressing her men of war, she wore a rich golden collar, and a parti-colored floating vest, drawn close about her bosom, and over that a thick mantle fasten- ed with a clasp. Her hair was of a yellow color, and fell in profusion to her waist. Such, in brief, were the early inhabitants of Britain. More will be said of the state in which the Romans found them as we proceed to mark the change introduced by the coming in of that new power. Some rough experiences then came on the rude communities of this island. For civilized men do not often estimate the suffering of the not civilized according to a law of humanity. It is deemed enough to estimate it according to a law of caste. The blood of the rude flows — their hearts are broken — but what of that ? Is such blood human — do such hearts really feel ? CHAPTER II. REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. book i. TT7HEN" Caesar meditated the invasion of Britain, the great „ — — ' * Roman Republic was not dead, but every new breath Rome in the - 1 « c™K»r f seemed to betoken the action of a malady that must soon prove fatal. Marius, Sulla, and Catiline had done their work, and their history had revealed the general corrup- tion of their times. Faction had come into the place of pa- triotism. Selfishness had consumed public spirit. All that men like Cato and Cicero could do, in the face of the ene- mies of the commonwealth, was to break the force of a fall which had become inevitable. Laws which had been just and wise so long as the citizens to be governed by them were virtuous and few, were made to subserve all evil pur- poses now that the citizens had become to the last degree unprincipled, and had grown to be almost innumerable. The province of government had been restricted to the nar- rowest limits, that good men might be secured against oppression. But the time had come in which bad men abused the liberty which good men had known how to use. Nowhere was it more needed than in Rome that the govern- ment should be strong ; but nowhere was a government of that nature more impracticable on the basis of existing law. Rome had become a den of desperate gamesters, and the winnings which the chances of the game were to distribute consisted of the plunder to be obtained from the world-wide provinces which the armies of the republic had subdued. Time was, when men in Rome cared about guarding the public honour, and augmenting the public virtue ; but the great care had now come to be how to appropriate public functions, as means of access to the public wealth. REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. 15 ]STo man knew better than Caesar that when a republic book i. lias passed into such a state its days are numbered. It ^^-' deserves to perish, and it will assuredly perish. It has lost iic7in S tnT the power of self-government, it needs a master, and it is Britain. the law of Providence in such cases that the master shall come. But who was to be this presiding spirit? Cgesar judged, and judged rightly, that he was himself more compe- tent than any other man to seize that position, and to hold it. But it became him to move with caution. If he had no equal, he had competitors : these must be dealt with, and affairs must otherwise be ripened for the catastrophe. Cresar must add to his power by adding to his celebrity ; and he must weaken the government still more, by giving more strength to the factions which preyed upon it. It was this policy that had disposed him to extend the war in Gaul into Germany, and that suggested the importance of annexing Britain to the territories of the republic. Every such achievement was estimated according to its value as capital in the hands of skilful instruments in Rome. Csesar, accordingly, was not only careful to do great things, but careful also to secure that due reports should be made of them in all useful connections by men at his service. His successes in his late campaign had been emblazoned among all parties in the capital by such means. His inva- sion of Britain — a land known in Home more from fable than from history — was an event which admitted still more of a colouring from the marvellous. For whether Britain was really an island, or part of another continent, was a question left to be determined by Agricola a century and a half later.* "We scarcely know how to conceive of the news-vending Newsvend- * • • • • t ing in ot a great city in which there were no printing-presses and Rome. no newspapers. But where there is little reading we may be sure there will be much talking. In the absence of jour- nalism men had their expedients for doing what is now done by that means. The baths of Rome were the clubs of * Tacit. Vita Agric. § 10. ' First under Agricola, and now under Severus it has been clearly proved to be an island.' — Dion Cassius, lib. xxxix. § 51. Xiphi- lin. lib. Ixvi. § 20. 16 CELTS AND ROMANS. BOOK I. Chap. 2. Caesar's pre- parations. those days and the centres of every sort of association. Many of their departments were open to all comers, and were filled with idlers. Not only in such places, but with the crowds which followed some patrician to his home, or gathered at the corner- of almost every street, in every saloon, in every supper-party, in every gathering of per- sons, from the highest to the lowest, the man with the latest news never failed of an eager welcome. As the plot thick- ened, the agents of Caesar became more numerous : they spread themselves into all public and private relations ; and the final blow to the expiring liberties of the commonwealth was struck by their hand. Such was the policy of Caesar when he resolved on the enterprise which has associated his name with the early history of Britain. Caesar had brought his campaign in Gaul to a close. He had taught the Germans to respect the authority of Rome ; and, though the season was far advanced, he flattered himself that he might do something in Britain which would be favourable to the object of his ambition. From the country of the Morini, between Calais and Boulogne, he saw the white coast of the unexplored land — the great cape- land, as many supposed, of some new world. Merchants in constant intercourse with Britain were interrogated concern- ing the country and its inhabitants. But the traders were more disposed to befriend their customers than to further the projects of the military aspirant who pressed them witli such questions. An officer was sent to explore the coast. But appearances were such that he did not venture to land. Meanwhile vessels were collected in great numbers from all parts. The intention of the Roman general was no secret among the Gauls. Every sail, and every boat, that crossed the Channel gave new warning to the Britons. Conferences took place in regard to the course best to be taken. Caesar relates that, as the result of these deliberations, a messenger was sent to him stating that the Britons were not indisposed to place themselves under Roman protection. But the rep- resentative authority of this messenger must have been very limited. The reception given to Caesar, when attempt- ing to land on the British shore, was not the reception to REVOLUTION BY THE SWOED. 17 have been expected from a people prepared to submit book i. without a struggle to the yoke of an invader. — -" The haven of "Wissen, a little to the south of Calais, is The em- the point from which Caesar is supposed to have embarked, and P as- The ships containing the infantry, besides galleys for the officers, were eighty in number. The cavalry had been left to embark at Boulogne, in vessels which had been detained at that place by unfavourable winds. The shipping at Wissen, with their two legions of infantry, put to sea about ten at night, and made their appearance on the British coast about the same hour the next morning. The islanders had been vigilant. They were not taken by surprise. The high lands about Dover and the green slopes descending to the sea, were covered with armed multitudes, mostly on foot, but many in war-chariots. Everywhere there was move- ment, and shouts from a great sea of voices, which promised no friendly greeting to the strangers. To land on a steep shore in the face of such assailants The laud- is felt to be impossible. The ships, accordingly, are seen ing ' moving along the coast northward, in search of a more convenient inlet. After sailing some seven or eight miles, they come to a level and open space, near where the town of Deal now stands ; and there the prows of the vessels are turned towards the beach, and landing is to be attempted. But the natives have moved upon the land side by side with the enemy upon the sea, and are prepared to meet him as before. Horsemen and footmen are there in great numbers. They rush down to the edge of the waters. Many advance into the sea, challenging the veterans to descend from their ships. But the surf runs high, and the soldiers hesitate to commit themselves to such uncertain footing in the face of so bold an enemy. For some time fortune seems to be on ' the side of the Britons. The military resources at the com- mand of the Romans appear to be exhausted. Something needed to be done to check the audacity of the barbarians, and to compel a portion of them at least to retire to a greater distance. For this purpose several of the lighter vessels are made to run upon the shore, and from their lofty prows, which serve the purpose of towers, archers and Vol. I.— 2 18 CELTS AND EOMANS. book i. dingers do much execution upon the natives, thinning their — '-' numbers, and diminishing their ardour. Still the soldiers seem to distrust their ability to reach the land — and it is be- coming doubtful whether the legions may not be compelled to leave the coast of Britain baffled, and virtually defeated. At this juncture a standard-bearer rushes into the water, and raising aloft the Roman eagle, calls on all who do not mean to see that symbol of the power of Eome pass into the hands of the enemy to follow him and protect it. Many soldiers now leap without orders from the ships, and forming themselves into ranks as they best can, they press quickly and steadily, with shield and sword, upon the Britons. The beach is soon cleared, soldiers hasten from all the ships to the land, and the discipline of the Romans pre- vails over the untaught daring opposed to them. submission The want of concert and unity, evils especially incident and revolt. . J . . r J to small and uncivilized communities, prevented any rally- ing of the forces of the Britons after this discomfiture. In a few days the nearest tribes consented to send hostages. But while negotiations were in progress, the second division of ships, with the cavalry, after appearing in sight, was sud- denly dispersed by a storm. The shipping, too, in which the infantry had crossed, was so injured by the foul weather, and by the influx of a high tide, for which the invaders, in their ignorance of the coast, were not prepared, as to leave the soldiers who had landed without the means of re- turn, should disaster render such a course expedient. In these altered circumstances the Britons withdrew secretly from the camp ; the people everywhere removed their cattle and substance ; and a vigorous attempt was made to ensure the departure of the enemy by leaving them without the means of subsistence. British Cossar found his foragers everywhere beset and inter- ' war-enar- ° ^ M - cepted. They were safe only as protected by a considerable force. In these excursions the Romans felt the want of their cavalry, and the war-chariots of the natives greatly disconcerted them. These chariots had scythes fastened to the axle. The warriors who manned them threw themselves upon the ranks of the enemy, and added destruction with REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. 19 the spear and the sword to that inflicted by the scythe, book i. Nothing could exceed their skill and courage in the manage- — '-' ment of these machines. They guided their horses with much dexterity, and leaped from the car to the ground, and from the ground to the car, with surprising rapidity. The commander of the chariot held the reins, and the one or more who rode with him did his bidding — much as we now see represented in the reliefs on the walls of Thebes and Nineveh. But a few destructive onsets sufficed to put the Romans on their guard ; and as they never came to close fighting without being victors, the Britons soon became sensible that the invaders had resources at command which they could not hope to overcome. Overtures for peace were renewed and hostages prom- The second ised. Caesar, though he had proved equal to the exigencies which had surrounded him, was not insensible to his dan- ger. He listened gladly to the proposals made to him, and embarked at once for the coast of Gaul, leaving the Britons to send the promised hostages after him. The best that could be made of the doubtful fortune Rejoicings which attended this enterprise was made of it in the reports n sent to Rome. Fictions of all sorts were there clustered about it by those who expected to profit by such inventions. The Senate was convened to deliberate on the tidings, and a festival of twenty days was decreed in honour of an event which had so signally enlarged the territories of the state, and which promised to raise even the rude people of Britain to a place among civilized nations. Of this event, says Dion Cassius, Caesar himself spoke in lofty terms, and the Romans at home entertained a wonderfully high o23inion. But Caesar well knew that the work said to have been accomplished in Britain was still to be done. It was well that the most should be made of this first attempt. But if not followed by something more decisive, neither the for- tunes of the general, nor the military reputation of the le- gions, would be found to have gained much by the experi- ment to Avhich they had committed themselves. Before leaving Gaul for the winter, Caesar had assigned to his army its occupation during that interval, and had 20 CELTS AND ROMANS. BOOK I. Chap. 2. Second in- vasion — Embarka- tion and oassaee. Cfesar's mi- litary ope- rations. given special instruction that a larger number of transports and galleys than had been recently brought together should be placed at his service without delay. On his return from Italy in the spring, he found that the different harbours between Ostend and Boulogne were prepared to supply him with more than six hundred vessels, besides twenty-eight galleys. These transports had been all built for the occa- sion. They were now launched, and concentrated on the point where the five legions destined for this second inva- sion of Britain had been assembled. But during the first five-and-twenty days the wind continued to blow from the north. Towards sunset on the first day of favourable weather this multitude of vessels put to sea, darkening its surface for some miles in breadth and distance, as they floated off towards Britain. On the break of day they found them- selves drifted by the tide, and by a westerly wind, consider- ably beyond their intended point of landing. By the return of the tide, however, and the help of their oars, they appear to have retraced their way to the entrance of Sandwich haven, beyond the mouth of the Stour, the spot now known as Pegwell Bay. The Britons were not ignorant of the preparations which were being made during the winter in the harbours along the coast of Gaul, and knew the force with which the enemy was about to descend upon their shores. Of the hostages for which Cresar had stipulated, a few only had been sent ; and this failure was alleged as a sufficient reason for a sec- ond expedition. To hazard a general engagement with such an army was felt by the Britons to be dangerous. In this instance, accordingly, no attempt was made to resist the lrnding. But the natives had assembled in great numbers, and were prepared to watch the movements of the enemy, and to avail themselves of every possible advantage against him. Ca3sar learnt that the Britons had taken their position on the shore of a small river — probably the Stour, about twelve miles distant. Having made provision for the safety of his ships, and left a guard of ten cohorts and three hun- dred horse in charge of them, he put his army in motion. REVOLUTION BY THE SWORD. 21 tinder cover of the night, and by daybreak came upon the book i. Britons on the ground they had chosen. The natives with- — -' drew to a retreat near at hand, which, in the times of their wars with each other, had been fortified by a dyke and mound, and further strengthened by a stockade. Csesar conducted his assault on this place with much caution ; but the Britons had guarded against being surrounded, and after keeping the enemy in check for some time they retired, without material injury, towards the interior. Csesar pre- pared to move in the same direction. But a messenger now came w T ith tidings that a storm had separated the ships from their anchors, and dashed them against each other, many of them being stranded, and wrecked, so as to have become useless. Csesar commanded the soldiers to fortify their camp, and returned himself under a strong escort to the shore. The loss, however, did not prove to be so serious as reported. Forty transports were abandoned as worthless, but the remainder were put under repair. Every man who had followed the trade of a carpenter was taken from the ranks to be employed in this service. "Workmen were also brought over from Gaul. During the next ten days and nights the sounds along the shore near Pegwell Bay were those of a busy dockyard. The damages being by that time repaired, Csesar, to prevent a recurrence of such mis- chief, gave orders that the vessels should be drawn up on shore, and that the force left to protect them should strength- en its position by raising an entrenchment on the land side of their encampment. The news of this disaster had given new courage to the cassive- , . 1-1-I launus. Britons. Hostilities with each other, in which they were engaged even at the moment of Csesar's appearance among them, were now suspended, and the belligerents agreed to act together against the common enemy. The command of this combined force was given to a chief known to us by the name of Cassivelaunus, who ruled a people occupying a dis- trict of Middlesex bordering upon the Thames. His fight- ing men consisted of a large body of footmen, besides horse- men and charioteers. Cassivelaunus possessed a consider- able advantage in his knowledge of the woods and marshes, 22 CELTS AND KOMANS. book l and of the concealed pathways of the country. He hovered Chap 2 — - ' on the march of the Romans, galled them from ambuscades and thickets, and assailed them vigorously with his horsemen and chariots, often on ground where attacks by such means were not to have been expected. But one enterprise of this nature brought him into collision with a large body of cav- alry on forage, and with a complete legion of infantry fol- lowing to sustain it. In this encounter the slaughter of the Britons was so great that no second assault on that scale was attempted. This advantage gained, Csesar ventured further into the country. He appears to have crossed the Medway near Maidstone, and the Thames at a place called Coway Stakes, near Chertsey — a spot were the old river still curves its way beautifully, while on the level land the rude forest has given place to the rich meadow and the cottage homestead. At this point, where alone the river was fordable, the natives had driven stakes in the water, and had lined the bank on the opposite side with a stockade. The cavalry entered the river first, the infantry followed close upon them, and could with difficulty keep their chins above the water in their passage. But both divisions succeeded in making their way to the opposite bank, and the natives were soon forced from their defences. The war from this time was one of devastation, each party striving to cut off all means of subsistence from the other. Cassar restored a king whom the Trinobantes, a peo- ple inhabiting part of Essex and Suffolk, had deposed. Five other communities, with their chiefs, made their sub- mission. As a last expedient Cassivelaunus urged the peo- ple of Kent to attack the cohorts which Caesar had left on the coast, and to endeavour to destroy his ships. But the assault, though made with promptitude and vigour, was not The final successful. The next event was the submission of Cassive- submission .. .. . . i/-n -departure launus himselt ; and Ca3sar, who had consumed much more of Ctesar. , , , , time m this enterprise than comported with his plans, readily accepted the promise of tribute from the different peoples belonging to the strip of territory he had visited, and taking with him hostages for the payment, he returned to Gaul. REVOLUTION BY THE SWOED. 23 His chief spoil from this expedition was a large number of book r. , • _ ' ' # Theodosius. au d wisest generals of the age, came to Britain to punish these marauders. He found that they had penetrated to the heart of the country, from the Tyne to the Thames. The new general came upon them near London, laden with booty, and bearing away men, women, and children as cap- tives. In a short time he forced the depredators, not only beyond the wall of Severus, but from the north of the Tyne to the north of the Clyde and Forth, and once more made the wall of Antoninus the boundary of the province, repair- ing its injuries, and adding to its places of strength. Cabals and treachery had weakened the Roman army ; corruption had taken root in the civil service ; but in Theodosius the province found the wise ruler and the able general. Both in the civil and military departments such improvements were realized, that the whole country seemed another home to those who dwelt in it. The new governor was soon re- called ; but the effects of his administration remained, and a grateful people nocked in multitudes towards the point of his embarkation, and lamented his departure as that of a father. It was the son of this Theodosius who became em- peror under that name.f Maximus, The interruption to the years of prosperity which follow- ed Brit- ' ed came from the ambition of Maximus, an officer in the tany. Roman army in Britain who aspired to the purple, and who induced the army and people of Britain to support his pre- tensions. Maximus had married the daughter of a British prince, had served under Theodosius the elder, and had done much to impart security and prosperity to the province. The British youth whom he had trained to arms, followed his fortunes on the Continent. They contributed to his early successes, and most of them survived his fate, but they never returned. They found their future home in the terri- tory known as Armorica, to which they gave the name of Brittany. Some years later they were joined by a large * Ammian. Marcel, xx. c. 1 ; xxvii. c. 9. \ Ammian. Marcel, xxvii. c. *7 ; xxviii. 3, 7. Claudian. Pancgyr. Tlieod. EEVOLTTTION BY THE SWORD. 49 body of their countrymen, who had been led into Gaul under book i. . f, * Chap. 2. similar circumstances.* Throuo-h the twenty years subsequent to the fall of Max- withdraw- imus, the distractions and weakness ot the empire led to a Romans. gradual reduction of the army in Britain, until in a.d. 412, the last remnant was withdrawn. The story which remains is the melancholy one of which we shall have to speak else- where — the inroads of the Picts and Scots, the alleged pusillanimity of the Britons, and the invitation to the Saxons. Such as we have described was the revolution brought The work of , ° the Roman about by the sword in Roman Britain. The island, from sword in J ' Britain. Cornwall to the Grampians, passes into new hands. But this change is not the work of a day, or of a generation. It is achieved at great cost, and it is sustained at great cost. The Britons disputed every inch of ground once and again before surrendering it. The courage, the skill, and the spirit of endurance with which they defended their rude home and independence entitle them to our admiration. In such chiefs as Cassivelaunus and Caractacus we see what some of the greatest men in our later history would have been in the same circumstances. But after a while leaders of that order cease to appear. The warlike passions of the people cease to be what they had been. They dwell on the soil on which their fathers dwelt, but they have become men without a country. British authority, from being every- where, ceases to be anywhere. The race which was once the sole possessor of the soil, retains its humblest homestead only upon sufferance. Ingenuity and industry are encour- aged, but it is that they may be taxed. The able-bodied may become soldiers, but it is, for the most part, that they may be expatriated and, add to the strength of the power by which they have been themselves vanquished. This, however, is no uncommon course of events in the history of nations. It is generally the precursor of some- thing better, and, from the first, brings its good along with its evil. In this instance, an island which before the age * Sozomen. Hist. vii. 721. Prosper in Chron. An. 387. Gildas, c. 11 ; Nennius, xxiii. Rowland's Mona, 166, 167. Vol. I— .4 50 CELTS AND ROMANS. ch^? 2" °f Csesar had been a comparatively unknown land — an ob- ject rather of imagination than knowledge to civilized men — comes to be an opulent province in the most powerful empire the world had ever seen ; and, through several cen- turies, a field for the display of the highest virtues and talents which that empire could furnish. The distance be- tween the barbarous and the civilized can only be narrowed by degrees. The evil is, that civilized man is often more disposed to use than to elevate those who are beneath him. CHAPTER III. EFFECT OF THE ASCENDENCY OF THE ROMANS IN BRITAIN ON GOVERNMENT. THE usages which served the purpose of law among rook i. the Britons are but imperfectly known to us. It is cer- -^- * tain that the government of the different nations was mo- assemblies narchical, or by chieftainship. Of course the chief, as in all Celts, such communities, was much influenced by the feeling of his tribe or nation. Strabo describes the Belgse, and the Gauls generally, as easily brought together in great numbers on public matters. On such occasions every man was for- ward to express his indignation against any kind of wrong inflicted on himself or his neighbour. One person was in- vested with authority to secure order. If any man at- tempted to interrupt a speaker he was admonished by this functionary to be silent ; and should he disregard a third admonition, the sword of the officer was used to disgrace the offender, by depriving him of so much of his mantle as made the remainder useless.* Such conferences, no doubt, took place among the Britons. But the order of succession to the supreme authority ap- British pears to have been more fixed and hereditary among the ings ' Britons than among the Gauls. Exceptions to this rule did, no doubt, arise, but the rule remained. Thus the Trinoban- tes besought Csesar that Mandubratius, the son of their late chief, might be invested with the authority of his father, and be protected in the same against the ambition of Cas- sivelaunus.f In later times, more than one British prince * Strabo, lib. iv. c. 4, § 2. Caesar, de Bel. Gal. iv. v. Tacit. Vita Agric. f Caesar, iii. 1. 52 CELTS AND EOMANS. book i. sought the intervention of the authority of Rome on this — -' plea.* It is clear, also, that the law of succession was re- spected even when a woman happened to be the next by birth. Thus Cartismandua was the reigning queen of the Brigantes, Boadicea of the Iceni. Revenue. The revenue of the British kings must have been raised by rude and irregular means. It came from three sources — from their own lands and possessions ; from contributions made by their people ; and from their allotted share in all booty, whether taken from an enemy, or, after the black- mail process, from neighbouring tribes, civil autho- The authority of these chiefs was restricted almost exclu- Druids. sively to questions of peace and war ; and even in these cases, it was at their peril to slight the auguries of the Druids.f "What the notions of right were which determined the conduct of one community towards another, or of one man towards another, we can only conjecture, as it was a part of the policy of the Druids that law should never be committed to writing. Ca?sar, who mentions this fact, informs us that the Druids made use of writing on other occasions. AVhat was known among the Britons under the name of law, had been thrown into verse, and passed from the memory of one generation of priests to another. Many years were occupied in the effort to acquire the knowledge so conveyed. Nor was this all — the Druids were not only the depositaries of law, they were its administrators. Every- thing legislative and judicial came thus under a priestly influence, and took a theocratic shape — after the manner of those eastern countries from which the Celtic tribes had migrated. The people were to believe, accordingly, that the voice of their laws was the voice of their gods. Fines, torture, and death were the punishments of crime, whether against person or property, varying according to the magni- tude of the offence. The rule by terror was rigorously adjusted, as in the case of all such communities. Evidence was admitted on oath, and might be obtained by torture ; and acquittal might follow by compurgators or by ordeal. * Suetonius in Calig. 44. f Caesar, de Bel. Gal. i. 50. Diod. Sic. v. 354. Strabo, lib. iv. c. 4. REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENTS. 53 Such is the sum of our knowledge, resting on evidence book i. more or less satisfactory, in regard to government among the — '-' Britons.* The change from a government bv unwritten laws, to a Roman government by means 01 laws committed to writing, and ment. reduced to a scientific system, is great. Such was one fea- ture of the change in relation to government in Britain intro- duced by the Romans. But this change was not accom- plished at once. It was the wise policy of the Romans to regulate the exercises of their power according to circumstances. Where nothing beyond an annual tribute could be safely demanded, they were wont to profess themselves content with that con- cession, leaving the state in other respects in its original independence. This was all that Csesar presumed to exact from the Britons as the fruit of his two costly invasions. As the sum in this instance is not mentioned, it is probable that the amount promised was not large. We know that it was a comparatively small number of the Britons only who were parties to that transaction, and that the payment, whatever it may have been, soon ceased to be made. In the language of Tacitus the effect of the invasion by Caesar was to ' show' the island to the Roman legions, not to give them possession of it.f But where conquest and colonization were practicable, Roman co- *■ a ' Ionization. and could be made to yield honour and advantage, the aim of the Romans was to conquer and to colonize. Before the close of the first century of the Christian era, it was mani- fest that such objects might be realized in Britain, and we have seen the heavy price which Rome was prepared to pay that Britain might be thus allied to it. The veterans in the Roman army were allowed to be gainers by any successful experiment of this nature, considerable portions of the con- quered lands being always assigned to them. People not connected with the army or with the Government, from Rome or other places were encouraged to seek a home for * Diod. Sicul. v. 354. Strabo, lib. iv. c. 4, 5. Caesar, de Bel. Gal. vi. 12-16. \ Vita Arjric. xiii. 54 CELTS AND KOMANS. BOOK I. Ciiap. 8. Provinces of Roman Britain. industrial purposes in the settlements so formed, and might be vested with the privileges of Roman citizens. Hence the population in such places often grew with amazing rapidity. In regions which had been comparatively desert and barbarous, populous and opulent cities made their appearance in which the arts and refinements of Eome itself became suddenly naturalized. Such in this country was the early history of Caerleon and Lincoln, of Chester and York.* In the progress of things towards this issue, it sometimes happened that the Romans allowed the princes whom they had vanquished to retain the appearance of ruling as in time past. But this was only that both princes and people might be subdued more effectually by degrees. It was easy to reign through a former king by using him merely as a tax-gatherer. Used as a tool for such a purpose, the func- tionary soon became unpopular, and the people were not long unwilling to dispense with his presence altogether. Cogidumnus was a British prince who became a victim of this policy.f When, by means of this nature, as well as by the sword, the Romans had become sole masters of Britain, they di- vided its territory into six departments. But the sixth of these provinces, lying to the north of the friths of the Clyde and the Forth, was a province in name more than reality. The Romans never obtained any permanent footing in those parts. Nearly the same may be said of the fifth province, lying between the walls of Antoninus and Severus. That territory was subdued more than once, and more than once relinquished. But in the four remaining provinces the authority of Rome was ascendant and settled through more than three centuries. The first of these provinces, under the name of Britannia Prima, embraced the whole of that part of England which measured the distance from the Kent shore of the Thames to the Gloucestershire side of the Severn, and reached southward to the Land's End. The * Tacitus, Agric. c. 15, 16. Ann. lib. xiv. c. 31. Palgrave's Common- wealth, x. 350-358. f Tacit. Vita Agric. xiii. Hors. Brit. Rom. No. ?6, pp. 192, 332. REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENT. 55 second division embraced the whole of "Wales, with some £ 00K „ L 7 CnAP. 8. strips of country which have since formed border lands to England. The great centre territory of England, bounded by the German Ocean on the east, and by the lands of Wor- cestershire, Shropshire, and Cheshire on the west, and ex- tending northward from the Thames to the Humber, was the third province, and bore the name of Flavia Caesariensis. Maxima Caesariensis, the fourth province, was limited on the east and west by the two seas ; and, measured north- ward, included the whole distance from the Humber to the Tyne.* The settlements within these provinces were various, in MunTd^T accordance with the general law of the empire. The first Towns? 11 in rank were the colonies. In these, which were only nine in number, the law and usage which obtained were, as nearly as possible, identical with those of Rome. Seven of these settlements are described as military colonies, two as civil. In the military colonies, the sons of soldiery, to whom shares in the neighbouring lands had been allot- ted, held them by a stern military tenure. Next in impor- tance to the colonies came the municipal cities. The in- habitants of these places were to a large extent Roman citizens, possessed their own magistrates, and within cer- tain limits enacted their own laws. But York and Verulam were the only municipia in Britain. There were ten places which bore the name of Latian towns, where the imperial laws were administered, but in which the people were governed by their own magistrates, and every new magis- trate, after his year of service, became a Roman citizen. Magistracy in all these cities was hereditary in leading families, and vacancies were filled up on a principle of self- election, or by nomination. As corporations, they very much resembled the close corporations of this country which were swept away by the late Municipal Reform Act. In corrupt times, these offices, as they imposed the duty of levying taxes, proved anything but desirable. "Very severe penalties, accordingly, were provided against such as re- * Notitia Imperii, 49. Hors. Brit. Rom. 356 et seq. Henry's Hist. ii. app. 56 CELTS AND K0MANS. book i. fused to act when called upon to do so. After the fourth Chap. 8. r century, and as a protection against abuses, the citizens were empowered to choose a Defensor, who acted as a popular representative in relation to the aristocratic body of magistrates. In the cities of Gaul the bishops generally filled this office. In cities not of the privileged class above named, the natives, and the residents generally, were not only subject to imperial laws, but were precluded from all share in the administration of them. In course of time these restrictions were in some degree infringed, but to this effect was the polity set up by the Romans in Britain. To the last a strong line of demarcation was preserved between the conquerors and the conquered.* The prefect. The authority to which all things within these settle- ments, and through the four provinces, were subject, was that of the prastor or prefect. Both the civil and the mili- tary power was vested in this officer. He commanded the army, appointed magistrates, and regulated every part of the administration. He was invested with these powers by the emperor, and to him he was responsible ; but in all other relations his authority was supreme. During a long interval, large discretionary power was entrusted to the prefect, that he might be perpared to meet emergencies in distant provinces by more summary methods than the law could provide. This liberty, as will be supposed, was often grossly abused. In the reign of the Emperor Hadrian it came to an end. The ' perpetual edict ' issued by that prince made the laws which were imperative in Rome to be imperative in the provinces.f Procurator. The only officer in the province who did not hold his appointment at the pleasure of the prefect was the procura- tor or quaestor. It belonged to this functionary, with his complement of officials, to collect the taxes, and to superintend everything relating to revenue. It often happened that the * Lipsius, de Magn. Rom. i. 6. The following are the names of the nine colonies : Richborough, London, Colchester, Bath, Caerleon, Gloucester, Lin- coln, Chester. In the age of the Antonines the distinction between the colo- nies, the municipia, and the Latian cities was much effaced, and as the empire further declined they may be said to have disappeared. — Palgrave's Common- wealth, c. x. f Tillemont, Histoire des Emperatrs, ii. 264. REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENT. 57 procurator acted, and was expected to act, as a spy on the B ^fl proceedings of the prefect, making his report to the emperor concerning any excesses, or any suspicious proceedings in that quarter. In other instances the two officials were manifestly on terms understood between them, each leaving the other to make the best for himself of his position. But it was supposed that the imperial interests would be more secure by being placed thus in two hands, than by being left altogether in one. From experience, the tendency was to widen the distinction between these two authorities, rather than to diminish it. Thus in Soman Britain the powers of government passed ™® ™™ lu " wholly out of the hands of the natives, and remained to the fg™™~ end in the hands of the conquerors. The British princes gradually sunk into obscurity, and bowed at length, in common with their subjects, to the power which it had been found vain to resist. The two elements — the con- querors and the conquered — never blended. British youths were trained to arms, but it was, for the most part, that they might be drafted off to foreign service. Others were trained to arts, but it was that they might be tamed by such pursuits, and made passive, not that they might be- come qualified for public life, or rise to any political in- fluence. The resistance of the natives had been so pro- longed and determined, that the hope of any healthy amalgamation between them and the invaders was not en- tertained until the season for acting upon it with effect had passed. Supposing the imperial laws to have been purely ad- ministered, the change introduced must have secured to the Britons great advantage in all suits between subject and subject. Their old Druid usages could hardly hqve given them the same degree of protection in such cases. And beyond a doubt the protection of property, and the en- couragement of industry, conferred by the Romans, was an immense advance on anything of that nature which had existed previously, or could have existed under any other influence. But the laws in relation even to such matters were not always purely administered. Before the time of 58 CELTS AND KOMANS. book i. Hadrian, their authority seemed everywhere to diminish with the distance of the province to which they were to be applied ; and after that time, the Britons had often too much reason to complain of the arbitrary and corrupt pro- ceedings of their superiors. The account given by Tacitus of the reforms introduced by Agricola, shows pretty clearly what the ordinary state of things had been. He began with the reform of his own household, removing all slaves and freedmen from public offices. In regard to taxation, he took care, it is said, that the assessments should be just and equal. He put a check also on the tax-gatherer, whose extortions, real or suspected, were often more the ground of disaffection than the tax itself. Collectors, it seems, had been used to require that all the produce of a district should be brought to some fixed place, where the producer should, appear, and have the privilege of purchasing his own property at the reduced value fixed upon it by the government. By this custom, the expenses of carriage were added to the tax, and the feeling of dependence was wan- tonly embittered. Functionaries who could deem them- selves at liberty to pursue such a course must have been an evil race to live under. In case of hardship in this form, or in any other, the Briton might appeal to the prefect ; and if justice did not come from that source, the next appeal lay to the emperor. But it is obvious that only the wealthy could carry their suit to that ultimate tribunal, and the wealthy among the Britons were few. Had it been possible to guard against such abuses, even the advantage to be derived from just laws justly ad- ministered may be too dearly purchased. In Britain, that political education of the people which comes naturally from the usages of self-government, was wholly wanting. The Britons were viewed too much as mere material to be used up in armies, or to be made as productive as possible in the hands of a revenue collector. But ruin is the natural issue of all governments based on such maxims. In general, if the governed are not found to possess sufficient energy to cast off the yoke, they perish from exhaustion — the governed in the meanwhile being destroyed by their vices. REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENT. 59 Much land passed into the hands of the emperors by a book i. succession of confiscations, and more by their harsh custom of seizing on the property of all who died childless. It often happened that no man would take these government lands on the hard terms proposed, and in that case the little cul- ture bestowed on them was by forced, that is, by slave labour. The far greater part of the land, however, remained in the hands of the natives, but on conditions that were very onerous. The land-tax alone absorbed one-third of the net produce. Other taxes were levied in seaports, in all places of traffic, and in every man's home. For, besides the great tax on land, there were taxes on the sale of merchandize and of slaves, on mines, and on the person in the form of a poll-tax. Payments were also made to the government from all property left by will, and from all funerals. Only by imposing such burdens was it possible to sus- Koman tain so great an army as was generally stationed in this Britain, island. In the early times of the Roman ascendency in Britain, the army of occupation consisted of four legions, some 25,000 men, which, with the usual complement of auxiliaries, must have raised the settled force of the country to more than 50,000. The army in the field on some occa- sions could not have been less than 50,000, irrespective of the numbers distributed in the various stations. From the Notitia Imperii, the official record of the functionaries and forces of the empire about the close of the fourth century, we learn that the army in Britain consisted at that time of two legions in place of four, but the total force then may be reckoned as 32,700 foot, and 4800 horse, in all 37,500 men.* The revenue adequate to sustain such a military establishment, and a civil establishment of corre- sponding magnitude, must have been great — much too great to have been furnished by the Britons, had not their con- dition been a great remove from barbarism. * Horsley's Britannia Romana, book i. chap. vi. ; book ii. chap, i., where the reader may find ample information on thia subject. CHAPTER IV. REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. BOOK I. Chap. 4. Druidism — Britain its chosen asylum. Its theocra- tic theory. CAESAR describes the religion of Gaul and Britain as the same. He further relates that the priests of Gaul who were desirous of becoming profoundly learned in the Druid lore, generally passed some time in Britain for that pur- pose.* The religion which the Celtic tribes brought with them from the East did not seek contact with other races, and coveted secrecy for the exercise of its more sacred rites. As this command of seclusion failed them in Gaul, they appear to have sought it in Britain ; and even here to have retreated from the more populous and exposed regions on its southern coast, to the interior of the country, and to some of its remotest solitudes, as in the island of Mona. But where there is secrecy there will be suspicion ; and the imagination of the classical writers has not failed to people the forest temples of the Druids with such forms of super- stition and cruelty as were supposed to be natural to those who covet darkness rather than light. Enough of super- stition and cruelty there was, but poetical inventions are of value only as poetry.f The name Druid is supposed to have been derived from the oak, which was an object of special veneration with the priests of Gaul and Britain.;}: We have seen that the laws of the Britons were deposited in the mind of the Druids, and administered by them. So that they were not only priests, but in effect both legislators and magistrates. In this fact their Oriental origin is clearly indicated. They were the ministers of a theocracy. So much were they * Bel. Gal. vi. 13. f Lucan. Phars. iii. 39 1. % Pliny, Nat. Hist. xvi. 44 ; Diod. Sicul. lib. v. REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 61 venerated, that even peace and war, which seemed to be book i. * x Ciiap. 4. almost the only questions left purely to the authority of their kings, was a matter virtually under their control. The intervention of a Druid, we are told, was enough to stay the arm of combatants even when their rage was at the highest.* There were some distinctions of rank among them, and females were allowed to participate in the honours of the office. Besides the ordinary Druids, who attended to the usual priestly services, there appears to have been a limited class who were accounted the inspired persons — the minstrel poets and prophets of their order. The services of the Druids as priests and magistrates, and the fact that they alone possessed any knowledge of medicine, or of use- ful science generally, gave them command of a revenue which must have been large as coming from such a people. Above all, the spiritual power supposed to be vested in them was terrible. The body and soul, the present and the future, of the people for whom they ministered, were sup- posed to be in their hands. f There is no room to doubt that the Druids had, in The popular common with all the sacred castes of the East, their secret Dmidism. and their open doctrine. What the tenets or speculations were which might be divulged to none but the initiated, can be to us only a matter of conjecture. It is probable that they embraced traditionary conceptions, of a philosoph- ical and religious nature, much more elevated than the doc- trine taught to the people. In the popular doctrine, the future existence of the soul had a prominent place ; but it was a future existence in which the retribution came from the conditions through which the soul passed in a series of transmigrations. Not less prominent were the lessons of the Druid on the duty of worshipping the heavenly bodies, and a multitude of divinities to whom the attributes, if not the names, of the gods of Greece and Kome were ascribed. It is highly probable that the moral teaching of the Druids was comparatively pure, dscountenancing perfidy and violence, * Diod. Sicul. lib. v. c. 31. Strabo, lib. iv. c. 4. \ Caesar, de Bel. Gal. vi. 13. Strabo, lib. iv. c. 4. Pomponius Mela, de Situ Orbis, lib. iii. c. 2. Ammian. Marcel, xv. Diod. Sic. v. 62 CELTS AND ROMANS. Sacred groves. book i, an( j inculcating good neighbourhood in the time of peace, no less earnestly than bravery and self-sacrifice in the time of war. Without high moral worth in some form, the Druids could hardly have been the object of so much vener- ation.* The oaks of Mamre served as a temple to the Hebrew patriarch. The shadow of the oak was the temple of the Druid. Among a people with whom large covered build- ings had no existence, there would be no such buildings for religious worship. To this fact, probably, more than to any lofty conception of the Supreme Being, we should at- tribute the Druid usage of worship in the open air, or beneath no other roofing than the overshadowing of ancient trees. But the secret places in these groves were as sacred as the recesses of any temple. These natural sanctuaries, with their dim religious light, had been planted, cleared, and cultivated so as to serve most of the purposes for which spacious buildings are raised ; and by the glimpses of them permitted on special occasions, not less than by their con- cealments, they were made to diffuse a religious fear over the mind of the multitude. Rude stones, dispersed in the form of avenues and circles, some of them adjusted in the cromlech shape, others so placed as to be altar-stones, were the only approaches towards architecture to be seen in these sacred inclosures. The stones so disposed were sometimes all but unhewn, as in the once famous temple at Abury in "Wiltshire. At other times they are reduced into shape by the tool of the workman, and raised into artificial structures by mechanical skill, as at Stonehenge. In the figures described by them there was no doubt a mystic significance, but on this subject our moderns have speculated to little purpose. "We should add, that the cause which made the Druid worship to be a worship without temples, made it to be a worship without images. In the history of bar- barous nations, the rudest conceivable sculpture has suf- fered to connect polytheism with idolatry. But the Druids were intelligent enough to see that their object would not * Caesar, de Bel. Gal. vi. 13. Mela, iii. 2. Pliny, xxx. 1. Diod. Sic. lib. v. c. 31. Amm, Mar. xv. 427. Cicero, de Div. i. 41. REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 63 be served by the aids of this nature within their reach. Their book i. instinct appears to have taught them that, in regard to such objects, remoteness and invisibility are better sources of impression.* It must be confessed that in these aspects of Druidism Druidic . ./> t ritual. there is something elevated and impressive, if compared with the systems which have obtained among many nations in the same stage of their history. The ceremonies, too, of the Druid worship, were not without their picturesque fea- tures. Their festivals were frequent, and celebrated with music and dancing, and choral hymns in honour of their divinities. In the month of August the grand ceremonial of cutting the misletoe from the oak took place. The chief Druid ascended the tree clothed in white, and severed the branch with a golden knife. Priests stood below with a large white linen cloth open to receive the branch as it fell. Two white bulls, fastened by their horns to the sacred tree, were then offered in sacrifice, and great rejoicings and feast- ings followed.f But the ritual of the Druids was not on all occasions of this comparatively harmless description. Their sacrifices rose in value with their sense of danger. Hence, in times of great public exigency, even human victims were offered, and these in great numbers. We have all seen in imagina- tion that colossal image of wickerwork, resembling the figure of a man, which was sometimes set up by them, the interior filled with human beings, that the whole might be consumed to ashes amidst the noise of instruments and shoutings, much in the manner of the suttee ceremonial only of late abolished in India4 It is easy to see that the points of antagonism would be Specialr e. strong between such a system and the kind of rule con- of D?uidlsm templated by the Romans. It was inevitable that the sue- ject h of°the cess of the Roman power should prove fatal to that of the Komans. * Gen. xxxi. Tacit, de Mor. German, ix. Mona Antiqua, vii.-ix. Pliny, Nat. Hist. xvi. 44. Maxim. Tyr. Diss, xxxviii.. Lucan, iii. 412. f Plin. Nat. Hist. xvi. 44. Poland's Hist. Druids, 69-74. \ Caesar, dc Bel. Gal. vi. 16. Diodorus (lib. v. c. 31) and Strabo (lib. iv. c. 4) both speak of the Druids as sometimes striking the man devoted to sacrifice •with their weapons, and as affecting to see future events in the throes of their victim. 64 CELTS AND KOMANS. BOOK I. Chap. 4. Druids. So long as the two existed together, the people Introduc- tion of Christi- anity. were in the condition of being required to serve two mas- ters. The priests of most other countries, with more limited pretensions, might be tolerated, but here there could be no compromise. As we have seen, the Druid was not only a priest. He may be said to have made the law, and he ad- ministered it ; and the foe with whom he now had to deal could know nothing of such authorities in other hands than its own. No doubt the occasional cruelties of the Druid worship contributed, along with these causes, to the destruc- tion of the order. The fact that the Romans suppressed the religion of the natives — suppressed it with violence and bloodshed — would not dispose the Briton to look with favour on the religion of that people. "We do not find, accordingly, that the gods of Home ever became naturalized in this country. This might have happened if scepticism in regard to the claims of those gods had been less prevalent among their professed worshippers, and if the Roman ascendency in Britain had been more genial. The event shows, that the power which annihilated Druidism was to give Britain Christianity, and not another paganism. Not that anything of that nature was intended. But it was inevitable that the Roman roads should become lines of communication, facilitating the travel of all sorts of people, and of all sorts of news, from the most distant parts of the empire. So the way was opened for the entrance of the Christian faith. The pride of ancestry, rarely wanting in individuals, ex- ists invariably in communities. Nations which have not been able to discover a satisfactory origin for themselves, have spared no pains to invent one. Their beginnings as a people, and the beginnings of everything characteristic and honourable in their history, have been to them themes of interest on which they have bestowed no little embellish- ment. It would be pleasant to be able to assign the introduc- tion of Christianity into Britain to some very definite and very creditable source. But this Providence has not per- mitted. On this subject we possess abundance of fable. REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 65 beneath which it is often difficult to find the true residuum cha^ I' of history. The blow struck at the Druid power in Mona by Sueto- nius was decisive. The prophecies of that proud order had then come to nothing. The Britons had not prevailed. The gods in whom they trusted had not shielded them. The Druids had perished on their own altars. Their ene- mies had desecrated and destroyed their most sacred re- treats. In these facts were the seeds of change. The ground was thus prepared, but by what hand was Fictions the next seed sown ? The first preaching of the Gospel in ceptioTs 00 "' Britain has been ascribed to St. James, to Simon Zelotes, to the C int?o- g Joseph of Arimathea, and to the Aristobulus mentioned by Christ£° St. Paul. But all these narratives may be taken simply as am y ' so much illustration of that credulity, and love of fable, which distinguished the writers of the Middle Age, espe- cially the monks.* It has been maintained by some that Pomponia Grse- story of cina, the wife of Aulus Plautius, who was governor of Brit- Sn™ 1 ain from a.d. 43 to a.d. 47, was a Christian. The facts which are supposed to warrant this opinion are the following. In Rome, in a.d. 56, Pomponia was charged with having em- braced some ' foreign superstition ; ' on that charge she was tried in the presence of her husband and was acquitted ; and subsequently, when a lady whom she tenderly loved had been treacherously put to death, she had a continual sorrow, and would never cease to wear mourning, f It will be seen that these facts furnish no evidence that Pomponia, the wife of Aulus Plautius in Rome in a.d. 56, had been his wife, and been with him in Britain in a.d. 45 ; nor any evi- dence that the foreign superstition which she was said to have embraced was Christianity. Her acquittal, and her continual sorrow, are evidence rather of a contrary nature. Had she been a Christian, she would hardly have failed to confess herself such ; and it was not the manner of Chris- tians in those days to sorrow as those who have no hope. * Stillingfleet, Origines Britannicce. Hasher, Britomnicarum Ecclcsiarum Antiquitatcs.. Henry, Hist. Eng. book i. c. 2. f Tacit. Annal. xiii. Vol. I— .5 66 CELTS AND ROMANS. BOOK I. Chap. 4. Of Claudia. Conjectures in relation to St. Paul. An attempt has been made to identify Pudens, a friend of Martial the poet, and Claudia, a British lady whom he married, with the Pudens and Claudia mentioned by St. Paul in his second letter to Timothy. But the mention of Pudens and Claudia by Paul is in a.d. 67 ; and the marriage of the Pudens and Claudia known to Martial, and who are described as then in the flower of their age, did not take place until twelve, it may be twenty, years later. In addi- tion to which, the Pudens and Claudia whose marriage the poet celebrates, were persons expected to be pleased with his invoking all the heathen divinities to be present with their usual benedictions on the occasion ; and the bride- groom at least is well known to have been a person not likely to be found cultivating the friendship either of an aged Christian apostle, or of a young Christian evangelist.* The only other names associated with the supposed intro- duction of Christianity into Britain entitled to notice, are those of St. Paul and King Lucius. In support of the claim of St. Paul, it is alleged that Tenanting Fortunatus, a Bishop of Gaul, and Sempronius, a Patriarch of Jerusalem, have both stated explicitly that this apostle preached the Gospel in Britain. But it is to be remembered that Fortunatus writes as a poet in the sixth century ; that the language of Sempronius is cited from a panegyric on the apostle delivered in the seventh century. Testimony coming so late, and from such sources, can be of no real value. But it is added that many other writers, some of them living two centuries earlier, assert that St. Paul preached the Gospel in the ' western parts ' — an ex- pression which was often used as comprehending Britain. Such expressions, however, were often used as not compre- hending Britain, or any territory near it. This testimony, accordingly, is too vague to be of any weight. It is further urged that there was an interval between the first imprison- ment of St. Paul in Rome, and his second imprisonment, in which he might have extended his labours to Britain, and in * Martial, lib. xi. ep. 13, 54. 2 Tim. iv. 21. Martial, it seems, was a man who could east ridicule on the sufferings of the Christians. — Paley's Evid. part i. REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 67 which it is probable he did, inasmuch as we do not find ^9^1 him conspicuously occupied during that period elsewhere. Here, again, it is to be remembered, that the release of the apostle from his first imprisonment in Rome, appears to have taken place in a.d. 63 or 64, and his second commit- ment was in a.d. 67. But in a.d. 67 he wrote his second letter to Timothy ; and he there speaks of his having re- cently been at Troas, at Corinth, and at Miletum ; and of his having been occupied about affairs in Thessalonica, in Dalmatia, in Galatia, in Ephesus, and in Asia generally. It is scarcely too much to say, therefore, that it was not pos- sible that the apostle should have made a journey to Brit- ain in the interval between his first and second imprison- ment — and, of course, to prove the possibility in this case, would be by no means to prove the fact. Nor does it accord with our conception of a man who had a right to speak of himself as Paul the aged, to suppose that he added to all the occupations above indicated, in the short space of three or four years, the great labour that must have been incurred even to have made a hasty visit to this remote island.* Concernino- the story of Kins: Lucius, the statement of ° i. . . Legend of Bede is, that he was ' Kino; of Britain ; ' that in the year King i i -rvi i • t-»- />t-» Lucius. a.d. 156 he sent a letter to Eleutherius, Bishop of Rome, praying that by his authority he might be allowed to pro- fess himself a Christian ; and that this pious wish being com- plied with, Christianity retained its footing in this island from that time.f Nennius, Abbot of Bangor, who is sup- posed to have written about the close of the seventh cen- tury, says that, in 'a.d. 167, King Lucius, Math all the Brit- ish chiefs, received baptism from the hands of. messengers sent by the Roman emperors, and by Pope Evaristus.'^: It would require large space to point out the strange confu- sions in history and chronology included in these brief state- ments. Whence Bede or Nennius obtained their informa- tion we know not. But here we have Lucius as ' King of * Stillingfleet, Antiquities. Cave's Lives of the Apost. ii. 290. 1 Tim. i. 3 ; 2 Tim. iv ; Tit. i. 5 ; iii. 12 ; Acts xiv. xv. xviii. xix. f Bede, Ecdes. Hist. lib. i. c. iv. \ Hist. Brit. c. 18. 68 CELTS AND ROMANS. chai? I" Britain,' leading ' all the British chiefs ' to baptism, at a time when the Romans had long since dispensed with the services of kings in this island, and when, if the very race had not ceased to exist, their being permitted to reign had come to an end. Here, too, we find the emperors of Rome taking upon them, in a.d. 167, to patronize Christianity, and, in conjunction with the Bishop, or rather the ' Pope' of Rome, sending forth legations of Christian priests to ac- complish the work of conversion among heathen men at the outposts of their empire ! That Pope Evaristus might be the favoured instrument in this memorable proceeding, it is contrived by Nennius that a man who had died in a.d. 109 should be alive in a.d. 167. Bede, on the other hand, that he might assign this honour to Pope Eleutherius, makes that ecclesiastic to have been Bishop of Rome when he had still many years to serve in offices more humble. Gildas, our oldest British authority on British history, was a monk of Bangor, and lived in the middle of the sixth century ; but it is manifest, that of this marvellous story about King Lucius, Gildas knew nothing, nor of any story resembling it. Euse- bius, the careful chronicler of all such events, is in like manner silent. The fact is, that between the age of Gildas and Nennius, it had come to be regarded as a matter of im- portance that the clergy of the British churches, who had sought refuge in Wales, should be able to make out as good a claim to a Roman and apostolic origin as the clergy who had been sent by Pope Gregory to convert the Anglo- Saxons ; and this tale concerning Lucius appears to have been the fabrication of some British ecclesiastic, intended to meet this exigency, and to put the clergy of Wales upon as honourable a footing as their neighbours. In an age so little critical on matters of history, this was not a difficult work to accomplish.* But the question may still be asked — are we, then, left * The credulity even of such men as Ussher and Stillingfleet, in regard to the fictions which have obtained currency touching the introduction of Christian- ity into this country, is not a little surprising. The evidence which Ussher would have adduced from an Ancient coin, said to bear the sign of a cross, and to have the name of Lucius indicated in the letters L. U. C, has been shown by Mr. Hal- lam to be altogether fallacious. See the paper on this whole story in the Arche- ologia, xxxiii. 208 et seq. REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 69 without any knowledge as to when or how Christianity first book i. became known in this island ? Our answer to this question Th 7^ a is, that we may imagine the probable, where we cannot K ut ^ ^ attain to the certain. The known may be sufficient to war- ^ c r ^ n of rant highly reasonable conjecture as to the unknown. We ^"'Jf,.,. know that communication between Britain and the Con- tain - tinent became regular and settled in the apostolic age. We know also that before that age had closed, Suetonius had destroyed the power of the Druids. Through more than two centuries from that time Britain was in a state of com- parative tranquillity. The legions and auxiliaries trans- ported to this country often consisted of men who had been long resident in Gaul, and in other parts of the empire, where, before the end of the first century, Christianity had been widely propagated. Trade intercourse with this coun- try increased rapidly, and brought with it the usual inter- changes of thought. Christians in those days, moreover, were zealous in an extraordinary degree — as Pliny's letters to Trajan abundantly show — in endeavours to diffuse their doctrine. The Christian soldier made it a matter of daily talk with his comrades. The Christian merchant found oc- casion for discourse upon it amidst his buying and selling. The rich Christian taught it to his slave, and the Christian slave dared to speak of it to his master. Every Christian had his mission. His sacramental pledge had been, not only to hold the truth unto the death, but to endeavour by all available means to make it known to others. It is prob- able that the public teaching of Christianity was little known until these more obscure but earnest efforts had sufficed to bring very many to profess themselves Christians. Having resolved to annihilate Druidism, the concern of the Roman would naturally be that his own religion should come into its place. Hence any conspicuous mode of at- tempting to make proselytes to a new and unrecognized faith would be viewed with suspicion and discouraged. The first converts would probably be made in the colonies and towns, but the more open exercise of worship would take place in districts less subject to the eye of authority. It is to the jealousy of this authority that Ave are indebted for 70 CELTS AND ROMANS. book i. our earliest authentic information concerning the Christian Chap. 4. _ o religion in Britain. o/Brithh 011 Towards the close of the reign of Diocletian the obscu- undwD^o- ri ty m wlrich the professors of the Gospel in Britain appear to cietian. have been content to remain was to continue no longer. The persecution which had dragged such men into fame in other provinces, for some years past, now began to do its work in this island. It is not. probable that Constantius, who had recently put an end to the usurpation of Carausius and Alectus in Britain, was a party to these proceedings. The blame rests, we have reason to think, on some subordi- nate who was disposed to gratify his love of rale by availing himself of the imperial edicts against the Christians — man- dates which had been disregarded under the late usurped authority. The account given by Bede is, that a man named Alban, residing at Yerulam, sheltered a Christian priest from the search of his persecutors, and that, being won by the holy demeanour of his guest, Alban became himself a Christian. So that, when soldiers came to demand that the priest should be delivered into their hands, Alban presented himself in the place of the man whom he had concealed, declaring himself a Christian. Of the miracles which gave their splendour to his martyrdom we need say nothing. But that there was a martyr at Yerulam of the name of Alban, who was afterwards canonized, and from whom the town of St. Albans derives its name, may be accepted as history. Bede relates, moreover, that many more, of both sexes, and in other places, suffered in like manner, and makes special mention of ' Aaron and Julius,' citizens of the ' Urbs Legionum' — that is, of Caerleon on the Usk — as having shown themselves faithful unto death.* Gildas, Orosius, and Bede all relate that this persecution having come to an end on the accession of Constantius, the father of Constantine the Great, the persecuted in Britain left their hiding-places in ' the woods and deserts, and secret caves ; rebuilt the churches which had been levelled to the ground, and raised many new edifices in honour of the martyrs.'f These descriptions seem to imply that before * Bede, Eccles. Hist. lib. i. c. 6, '7. \ Ibid. lib. i. c. 8. REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 71 the close of the reign of Diocletian the Christians in Britain c?ia? I'. must have been numerous, and have been possessed of con- siderable substance. Nine years after the close of the Diocletian persecution, British Constantino assembled the council of Aries, in which five ec- the council clesiastics are reported as present from Britain — three under the title of bishops, the fourth as a priest, the fifth as a dea- con. The first bishop was from York, the second from London, and the third probably from Lincoln. The whole number of bishops present from the western provinces, in- cluding Africa, was thirty -three. It is clear, therefore, that in the early part of the fourth century the worship and organization of the Christian communities in Britain had become so well known and settled, as to secure them a re- cognised place in the great Christian commonwealth of those times. "We may presume that the acts of the council of Aries were received as law by the Christians of Britain in the fourth century. The members of that council showed themselves careful to ensure that the men who ministered in holy things should be men of a blameless life, and that the privileges of the Christian fellowship should be restricted to persons whose lives were distinguished by Christian con- duct, and by fidelity to their profession. No bishop was to obtrude in the province of another bishop ; no bishop was to be ordained without the presence and concurrence of seven other bishops ; clergymen were not to be usurers, nor to be wanderers from place to place, but to be resident in the place in which they were ordained. Deacons were not to administer the eucharist. Among the persons to be suspended or excluded from communion were females who had married heathen husbands, charioteers in public games, actors in theatres, or clergymen who had betrayed their brethren, or delivered up the sacred books and sacred things of the church into profane hands in the times of persecution. No person who had once been baptised in the name of the Trinity was to be rebaptised. No person excommunicated by one church was to be received by another.* * Labbe, Concil. ed. Harduin. i. 72 CELTS AND ROMANS. cnA^i" ^ ie Arian controversy began about a.d. 317. Eight )rth^y J ears later it led to the assembling of the memorable council fsh h ch^ r rc'h °f ^ ce ' Some of the Britons are said to have taken the heterodox side in this dispute. But if the infection existed, it must have been very partial and temporary. Athanasius, Jerome, and Chrysostom, all proclaim the Britons as faith- ful to the Nicene doctrine. The loose expressions of Gildas and Bede on this point must be judged in connexion with such facts.* Monasticism obtained root in Britain in the fourth cen- tury. And if the speculations of Pelagius, a monk of Ban- gor, might be taken as a sample of the intelligence of his order, we should be disposed to think favourably of the mental training to be realized in the monasteries of Britain in those days. Pelagius was a man of pure life, of consid- erable learning, of some ethical acuteness, and well ac- quainted with the leading ecclesiastics of his time, and with the affairs of the Church generally. Nor is there any room to doubt his sincere piety. His great antagonist Augustine, champion of orthodoxy as he was, is magnanimous enough to say of him, ' I not only loved him once, I love him still.' His errors are all of the kind most common in the history of opinion — the errors of reaction. Scandalized by the evils he saw resulting from a false dependence on ritualism, and on priestly service in the sacraments, and not less by the covert excuse for sin which had become prevalent among the ortho- dox under the plea of the moral inability of man, Pelagius laboured to give prominence to the moral and spiritual side of the Christian life, as embracing, a department of truth and duty which the Church was in clanger of forgetting or neglecting. But his halting-place was not the right one. Pressed by opponents, he learnt to deny that there is any inherent bias towards evil in man. Every man, he taught, has power from himself to obey the law of God ; and his salvation depends on the purity of his life, not on anything speculative or outward. In Christianity, as presented in the Scriptures, there is a transcendent teaching, and through it a divine influence comes to aid man in all moral and * Stillingfleet, Antiquities, 175. REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 73 spiritual effort. This is the substance and mission of the book i. Chap. 4. Gospel. It does not, he maintained, bring redemption or salvation in the sense commonly understood. In Celestius, a brother monk, who was also a native of Britain, Pelagius found a coadjutor, his equal in zeal, his superior, it is said, in the subtlety of his reasoning. By their joint labours a controversy was raised which agitated both the East and West for some time. It does not appear that either Pelagius or Celestius ever Preaching visited this island after the publication of their opinions had and oerma. , nus in Bri- made them notorious. Bede, however, relates that in a.d. 429, tain. the Pelagian doctrine had been so far embraced in Britain, that the native clergy became alarmed, and solicited help from their more skilful brethren in Gaul, whence the new doctrine had come to them. As the result, a number of the Gallic clergy came to Britain, with the bishops Lupus and Germanus at their head ; and these holy men, it is said, having filled the land with the fame of their miracles, so confuted the heretics, in the presence of great multitudes of people, that they were brought to confess their errors.* These events belong to the earlv part of the fifth centurv. Summary « T-.T • i • /> t» • • i -7 -i.i therevolu- By that time the natives ot Britain may be said, we think, tioninreii- to have abandoned their heathenism. Much of its influence ° no doubt survived, but the new faith had become ascendant. Great was the revolution in ideas, in dispositions, and in usages which this change involved. The Christianity pro- fessed may not have been of the most enlightened descrip- tion ; but it gave to the people of this country their first true conception of the Infinite, and it raised their thoughts to Him as to their Father through Christ. Humanity in Christ was before them as presenting the great manifestation of the Divine, the great pattern of the Human. Time was to develop the germ of intellectual and spiritual change in- cluded in this fact. "With this new object of worship came new views of human duty and of human destiny. The reign of horrors, so often shadowed forth in the rites of the Druid grove, was succeeded by the calm and benign influence of a Christian worship ; and this new apprehension of the Great * Eccles. Hist. i. c. vii. 74r CELTS AND KOMANS. book l Parent of humanity was inseparable from a new apprehen- sion of humanity itself. It is thus that religious enlighten- ment comes to be one of the surest guarantees for enlighten- ment in regard to all feeling and all action. This revolu- tion in religion, long advancing in secret, became visible and consolidated in the fifth century. The new faith bid fair to leaven the entire mind of the country. Its effect on that portion of the British race which was to survive the approaching troubles was deep and permanent. The Brit- ons are no more known in history as pagans. Those of them who are found in the fastnesses of Wales after the de- parture of the Romans, and after the invasion of the Saxons, are Christian Britons, with a Christian hierarchy, a Chris- tian literature and a Christian civilization sufficiently strong to eradicate whatever remains of their old faith or usage may still have been left with them. All these acquisitions they must have carried with them into their mountain homes. There was no channel of communication through which they could have received them afterwards. "We have seen, however, that it is much easier to show that these ab- origines of Britain did really become Chrstians in those early times, than to say exactly when, or by what means, this revolution was brought to pass. CHAPTER Y. EFFECT OF THE EOMAN ASCENDENCY ON SOCIAL LIFE. AMONG the industrial arts, that of procuring the means book i. ' l & Chap. 5. of subsistence is manifestly one of the most necessary — r~ t " m J Agneulturc and primitive. Barbarous tribes obtain their food, in a ™ n s the great degree, by hunting, fishing, and by expedients to en- snare animals. In the time of Caesar, the rudest inhabi- tants of Britain would seem to have passed considerably beyond that stage. Those who did not till the ground reared abundance of cattle. Many, especially in the country bordering on the southern coast, cultivated their lands with manure and with the plough, and were wont to supply themselves with corn and other products by such means.* It was the manner of the Romans to encourage agricul- ture in every country that became subject to their sway. The rich products of the East were soon naturalized to a large extent in the less favoured climate of the West. The vine, the olive, and many luscious fruits, such as the apricot, the peach, and the orange, passed from Italy into Spain and Gaul. Britain shared largely in these influences. The veterans who founded colonies became zealous cultivators of the lands which fell to their share, and taught the Brit ons, both directly, and indirectly, to excel in such labours.f In the fourth century the corn produced in this island was conveyed in large quantities to other provinces of the em- pire, especially to Gaul and Germany. Upon an emergency, in a.d. 359, more than eight hundred vessels were employed * Caesar, de Bel. Gal. v. 10-12. \ Scriptores Ret Rustlccc a Gcsncro, torn. i. 76 CELTS AND ROMANS. in carrying grain from Britain to the Rhine.* Nor was it in the field only that the skill and industry of the British hus- bandman became visible. His vines, his trees bearing pleasant fruits, and his gardens generally, bore witness to the facility with which he could learn what his conquerors were prepared to teach.f Indeed, there is good reason to suppose that our agriculture was in a more prosperous state under the Romans, than at any subsequent period in our history during the next thousand years. Next to the need of food man feels the need of clothing. In the time of Caesar, many of the inland tribes of Britain had probably little better clothing that the shins of animals, their bodies being in great part naked. But we are not ob- liged to conclude that those skins were not prepared with some skill for their use ; and we Lave seen, that some cen- turies earlier, there were Britons known to the Phoenicians who wore garments of cloth.* At the commencement of the Christian era the Gauls produced woollen cloths of various textures, and could dye them of various colours. The man- ufacture of linen is aii advance beyond the manufacture of woollen; and this knowledge was familiar at that time to the Gauls. Scarcely anything of this nature could have been known in Gaul, and have been unknown to the Belgic settler.- in Britain.§ The costume of Boadicca is described as rich and queenly, and that of the men and women of distinction about her would bear some resemblance to it.| Ancient writers often speak of the Gauls and Britons as one people in regard to all such exercises of skill. Pliny describes the simple process by which the people of both countries managed to bleach their linens.^ The accounts which ancient writer.- have given of the ' Ammianus Marcel, lib. xviii. c. 2. Zosimus, Hist, lib. iii. c. 5. | Script. Hist. August. 9-12. Tacitus, Vita Agric. \ii. \ Gsesar, de l'„l. Gal. v. if. Pomponius Mela, iii. c. Pliny, i^aA Hist. xiii. 11. Strabo, lib. iii. c. v. § 11. § 'The Gauls wear the sagum, let their hair grow, and wear short breeches. Instead of tunics, they wear a slashed garment with slcrvcs, descending a little below the hips. The wool of their sheep is coarse, but long : from it they weave the thick saga called laines.' — Strabo, lib. iv. c. iv. § 3. Pliny, Nat. Hist. lib. viii. c. 48, xxii. c. 2. Diodorus. I Xiphilin. in Nero. if Nat. Hist. xix. c. 1 ; xx. c. 19 ; xxviii. c. 12. REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LIFE. 77 ancient war-chariot, show that the useful arts must have chap. 5* been in an advanced state in Britain before the first Roman useful invasion. All these writers concur in praising the skill, and meat even the elegance, displayed in the construction and man- agement of these machines. It is clear, from what we know of the war-chariot, that there must have been Britons at that time who were good smiths, carpenters, and wheelwrights. Such men would be capable of building houses, and of producing furniture, after a manner unknown among nations in the lower state of barbarism. The scythes fas- tened to the axle of the chariot, and the weapons used by the warrior, bespeak considerable proficiency in the work- ing of metals.* Then there was the harness, which, rude as it may have been, must have been adapted to -its purpose by many arts that would have their value in many pro- cesses besides that of harness-making. We have abundance of evidence that the Britons of both sexes were disposed to a profuse use of ornament in dress. Gold was worn about the wrists and arms, and on the breast. The tore — a twisted collar for the neck — was often of that precious metal. Dur- ing more than two thousand years that ornament is known to have been in use among the Celts. The tore was a sym- bol of rank, and the numbers of them taken from the Gauls were often among the richest spoils of the Romans in their wars with that people. They are mentioned as among the trophies in the procession in which Caractacus made his ap- pearance.f Many of the trinkets found in the burial-places of the pagan Britons are of inferior substance. They are found in bronze, in amber, and in glass ; but those of more costly substance were in use. Many of these articles were no doubt imported, but many were native productions, and evinced the native skill. The comforts of home-life — 'the * The Gauls do not appear to have used the chariot in war. Some critics have come to doubt whether the British war-chariot was really scythed. But the evidence in favour of the common opinion on that point is not, I think, to be set aside. \ Titus Manlius, as we have all read, was named Torquatus, from the tore which he tore from the neck of a gigantic Gaul. Aneurin, the great Welsh bard, who wrote in the sixth century, laments the loss of several ' golden torcked sons ' in the memorable battle of Cattraeth. Some three hundred Britons who wore that mark of rank are said to have fallen on that day. 78 CELTS AND ROMANS. BOOK I. Chap. 5. Causes un- favourable to civiliza- tion in ancient Britain. British earth- works. homestead, the furniture, and the food, could hardly have been obtained from a distance. There were, however, many causes which precluded the Britons before the age of Caesar from making all the provi- sion for their wants in this respect which they might have made. Britain in those early times was parcelled out be- tween many separate communities, who were almost per- petually at war with each other ; and the buildings of to- day were too often reared with the feeling that destruction might come upon them to-morrow. Caesar and Strabo indeed tell us that the Britons gave the name of a city to a collection of rude huts enclosed by a mound or stockade.* In the Britain which Caesar saw, the places of security were no doubt much of that description. But the strongest earthworks of the Britons, even in those days, were not in forests, but on high lands, wherever such lands were avail- able. Many of the positions thus chosen by them were afterwards occupied as beacon and military stations by the Romans, though the Roman encampment was required to be square, while the British works were always circular. This latter form, in many of the earthworks which remain over a large portion of the island to this day, demonstrates their early British origin, occupied and disturbed as they have often been since, not only by the Romans, but by Sax- ons and Danes. Of such works Caesar saw nothing. The Malvern Hills, Little Doward, Bass-church, and Silchester are among the localities remarkable for British works of this description. In the last-mentioned place there have been the traces of a town regularly mapped out, and enclosed with stone walls, which should be attributed, we think, on various grounds, to British skill before the invasion under Claudius. It should be remembered that the life of the Britons even to the time of this second invasion, continued to be to a large extent a herdsman's life ; and that these fortified places were not so much places of residence, as places of safety for themselves and their flocks in time of danger. Caesar him- self speaks of the houses he saw in Britain as resembling * Strabo, lib. W. Rowland's Mo?ia, 38, 39. Caesar, de Bel. Gal. iv. 12, REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LIFE. 79 those in Gaul. Now Gaul was not a country of wigwams. B00K: T - Chap. 5. It contained cities of considerable strength and beauty. Before the close of the first century, when the Romans had still their conquest to achieve in this country, London, as we have seen, had become a place of great traffic, and of many thousand inhabitants. Early in the second century, Ptol- emy makes mention of nearly sixty cities then existing in Britain. Some of these cities the Romans had created, but much the greater number consisted of Roman settlements fixed on British roads, and grafted on British towns. Ex- eter, for example, had been the capital — the place of gen- eral gathering, for the people of that part of Britain from the earliest time. It was thus almost everywhere. The old sites became the home of the new masters. In the in- terior and remote districts, the dwelling-places of our ances- tors at the time of the first Roman invasion, were no doubt for the most part of a very humble description. They were generally circular in form, constructed of wood, the spaces between the framework being filled up with mortar or clay, the covering being of reeds or thatch. The roof was of a cone shape, with an opening at the summit to. admit light, and to give egress to the smoke, the interior presenting a rounded apartment with its fire on the earth in the centre. Wretched as such hovels may be deemed, large portions of the subjects of great monarchies in modern Europe have been hardly better housed. Such erections as Stonehenge, through reared by Druids, evince a knowledge of mechanics which cannot be supposed to exist apart from much useful knowledge beside. The Avhole track of the Celtic tribes, in their migration from the east to the west, is marked by such monuments. The works of this nature at Abury in Wilt- shire are of greater extent than those of Stonehenge, and those of the temple of Carnac in Gaul were greater still.* * The following passages descriptive of the character and manners of the Gauls in the age of Caesar are no doubt applicable substantially to the Britons at that time : ' The entire race which now goes by the name of Gallic, or Galatic (Gauls), is warlike, passionate, and always ready for fighting, but otherwise sim- ple, and not malicious. If irritated, they rush in crowds to the conflict, openly and without any circumspection, and thus are easily vanquished by those who employ stratagem. For any one may exasperate them when, where, and under whatever pretext he pleases : he will always find them ready for danger, with 80 CELTS AND ROMANS. BOOK T. Chap. 5. The aptness of the Britons to learn whatever Gaul, or Rome itself, could teach, is amply attested by Tacitus, whose in- formation must have come from the best authority — from the great Agricola.* But the settlement of the Romans, of course introduced both the useful arts and the embellishments of life, in the maturity which had then been given to them among the most civilized nations. The fraternities and corporations of weavers, and of other crafts, which were protected and pa- tronized by the Roman State, soon made their appearance in this country, as in the other provinces of the empire, and the artisans in Rome produced few articles of utility or lux- ury that were not also produced in Britain. Winchester was to the people of those times very much what Leeds and Manchester have since become to ourselves.f nothing to support them except their violence and daring. Nevertheless, they may be easily persuaded to devote themselves to anything useful, and have thus engaged both in science and letters. The most valiant of them dwell towards the north and next the ocean. Of these they say the Belgce are the bravest, and have sustained themselves single-handed against the Germans, the Cimbri, and the Teutons — their equipment is in keeping with the size of their bodies. They have a long sword hanging at their right side, a long shield, and lances in pro- portion ; together with a maclaris, somewhat resembling a javelin. Some of them ;:lso use bows and slings; they have also a piece of wood resembling a pilum, which they hurl, nut out of a thong, but from their hand, and to a further distance than an arrow. They principally make use of it in shooting birds. To the present day most of them lie on the ground, and take their meals seated on straw. They subsist principally on milk and on all kinds of flesh, especially that of swine, which they eat fresh and salted. Their swine live in the fields, and surpass in height, strength, and swiftness. To persons unaccustomed to approach them they are almost as dangerous as wolves. The people dwell in great arched houses, constructed of planks and wicker, and covered with a heavy thatched roof. They have sheep ami swine in such abundance, that they supply saga? and salted pork, in plenty, not only to Rome, but to most parts of Italy. Their gov- ernments were for tlie most part aristocratic. Formerly they chose a governor every year, and a military leader was always selected by the multitude. To their simplicity and vehemence the Gauls join much folly, arrogance, and love of orna- ment. They wear golden collars round their necks, and bracelets on their arms and wrists, and those who are of any dignity have garments dyed, and worked with gold. This lightness of character makes them intolerable when they con- quer, and throws them into consternation when worsted.' — Strabo, book iv. c. 4. Among the Britons, as we have seen, monarchy or chieftainship was hereditary, but in nearly all other respects the Belgoe and the Cantii were the same people. * Vita Agric. xxi. Gough's Camden, i. 141. Arelucologia, xv. 184. Horsley's Britannia Romana. Akerman's Archeeological Index, 44, 45. There are many remains of British earthworks in Oxfordshire, and more in Dorset. Cyclops Christianus. In the learned work with this title, Mr. Herbert attempts to show that the stone structures above mentioned are the work of Christian Britons after the departure of the Romans. But his case is by no means made out. f In all the Roman cities there were incorporations of operatives and arti- REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LIFE. 81 "With this new taste and skill in so many things, would ?, 00K 5 I - come new taste in matters of furniture and ornament. The „ Pottery. useful and the elegant in pottery were produced in great quantities in many parts of this island. Large traces of this branch of industry, dating from the time of the Romans, have been discovered in Kent, Northamptonshire, and else- where. The terra cotta produced by the same artists, was also in a beautiful style of workmanship. From the abun- dance of such remains on the sites of all the Roman stations ; and from other evidence, it is clear that the use of pottery was much more common among the Romans than it is among us. It is no longer to be doubted that ornaments from jet, or what is now called cannel coal, were produced in Roman Britain, and that our ancestors were familiar thus early with much skilful workmanship in glass. We find also that the Romans were by no means igno- Mines— ... coa i — rant of the mineral treasures to be found in Britain. They metals. burnt coals on the banks of the Tyne and elsewhere in those old days. They amassed large wealth by working mines for iron, and lead, and tin, and copper ; and false hopes were sometimes raised by their coming upon a vein of sil- ver, and even upon gold. Their principal iron works were in the forest of Dean ; and in the forest of Anderida, now the Weald country of Sussex and Kent. The Roman coins often found in the scoriae of these deserted works, as well as the abundance of Roman pottery, determine the date and origin of such works. The Roman citizen disposed to make himself acquainted Koman with the island of Britain towards the close of the third cen- tury, would of course consult some Itinerary setting forth its principal towns and roads. Our modern railway-map gives us something very like the chart that would be placed ficers, answering very much to the trade guilds familiar to us in the later times of British history ; but these incorporations were known in law by the name of 4 colleges.' These associations were intimately connected with religion, included a principle of caste, and have been variously described as fraternities and repub- lics. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that they should have been at times pro- hibited as politically dangerous^ — Palgrave, c. x. 331-335. See Horsley's Brit. Rom. 337-342, for evidence showing that colleges of this description were early introduced into Roman Britain. Du Cange, Gloss, voce ' Gynaecium.' Cod. Theod. iii. lib. x. tit. 20. Vol. I.— 6 82 CELTS AND ROMANS. ch2?5 L De f° re mm - The trunk lines of our new iron roads go to a. great extent along the track of the old military routes in Roman Britain. The cities and towns which form the termini of our main lines now, were most of them existing as terminating points then, and their names are only slightly, if at all changed. It is true the Romans generally con- structed their "roads in direct lines, crossing alike the hill and the valley. "Where such inequalities occur we now do our best to desert the old pathways. But the greater part of England is comparatively level ground. The road from Dover to London passed through Canterbury and Rochester in those days, as in later days. To leave London through the line of street now known as Bishopsgate, was to enter upon a road which sent off its branches to the Ilumber and the Tync, the Mersey and the Solway. Leaving London by the outlet now known as Ludgate, a smooth and safe road would be found open into Devonshire or South Wales, stretching from Gloucester to Shrewsbury, and striking off to St. George's Channel. Between these main lines were many branch lines, covering the whole land with a busy network of communication, connecting the greater cities with the population of the smaller town's and villages. Many of these roads passed through the dense forest, bor- dered on the stagnant marsh, pursued their arrowlike course across the desolate moorland, or opened to the wayfarer the sight of blue hills and rich valleys, full of beauty, and- of the signs of industry, wealth, and civilization. At short inter- vals along these roads, as on the banks of so many rivers, Roman stations made their appearance, with villas, and buildings of every description, clustered about them.* But the Roman villa supposes an advance in art beyond the barely useful. The humblest form of handicraft implies a measure of education and of mental development. But the social life of the Romans embraced that intellectual life which results from the direct and indirect influence ot science, letters, and general taste. To what extent were the Britons found capable of appreciating such refinements? * Horsley's Britannia Romana, book iii. Journal of the Archaiolopical Association,''!. 1-9; ii. 42,86, 164-169,324,339, 349. Wellbeloved's York under the Romans. Whitalier's Manchester. Moule's Essay on Roman Villas. REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LIFE. OO The Druids of Gaul and Britain, according to the testi- book i. ' , ,° Chap. 5. mony of nearly all our earlier authorities in relation to clo ^"^~ them, were men who owed their position to their science fl u r e u ^ e in " and learning, even more than to their office as priests. They are described as being profound students in physiology, botany, medicine, and surgery ; in arithmetic, geometry, mechanics, and astronomy. They are even said to have ex- celled in geography. In these descriptions there is no doubt much exaggeration. But it is certain that the Druids affected to be in possession of extraordinary knowledge on all these subjects ; and that whatever they knew was mixed up with pretensions to supernatural powers, and made to subserve their priestly rule. Their knowledge, besides being thus misapplied, and of necessity limited, and mixed with much error, was always the knowledge of a separate order of men, if not of a caste. It came to the people, in consequence, only indirectly, and rarely as a real advantage. So that when the Romans swept away the Druids, and took the natives under their own guidance, they had to com- mence the education of their new allies, as regarded any knowledge of letters, from the beginning.* Tacitus describes the course given to the occupations and The fine ° A arts — and tastes of the Britons towards the close of the first century, general ° culture. To wean them from tendencies that were ever disposing them to acts of insubordination ' Agricola held forth the baits of pleasure, encouraging them, as well by public as- sistance as by warm exhortations, to build temples, courts of justice, and commodious dwelling-houses. He bestowed encomiums on such as cheerfully obeyed : the slow and un- complying were branded with reproach ; and thus a spirit of emulation diffused itself, operating like a sense of duty. To establish a plan of education, and to give the sons of the leading chiefs a tincture of letters, was part of his policy. By way of encouragement he praised their talents, and al- ready saw them, by the force of their native genius, rising superior to the attainments of the Gauls. The consequence * Strabo, lib. ii. 138 ; iv. 181, 197. Diod. Sic. ii. 47 ; v. 31 ; xii. 36. Mela, iii. 2, 12. Ammian. Marcel, xv. 9. Cassar, de Bel. Gal. vi. 13, 14. Brucker, Hist. Philos. i. 314-316. Rowland's Mona, 84. BOOK I, Chap. 5. 84 CELTS AOT> KOMANS. was that they who had always disdained the Roman lan- guage began to cultivate its beauties.'* This scheme of education, to be sustained by the funds of the State, and to be controlled by that authority, was in accordance with the edicts and usages of the empire. Such establishments existed in the principal cities of every pro- vince. The design was to impart such a spirit and com- plexion to the educated life of every community subject to the sway of Home as should be favourable to that sway. In such schools the youth of Britain studied the language and literature of Home, and became familiar with science and art as known at that time to the Roman citizen. So pre- valent did the use of the Latin language become, that Gil- das speaks of the native tongue as having become almost ob- solete. But this statement must be received with great lim- itation. The Latin tongue never rooted itself among the Britons as it did among the Gauls. Brittany was the only province in Romanized Gaul that retained the Celtic tongue ; and there it was preserved mainly through the influence of settlers from this country. The traces of the Latin language which survived in Britain after the departure of the Ro- mans were small. In the Roman settlements, and in their immediate neighbourhood, the fact no doubt was as Gildas has stated. In such districts the Latin was the lamniaire generally spoken. In their costume, their houses, their amusements, and even in their religion, the British in such places almost ceased to be British. Of the mansions, the villas, the porticos, the baths, the temples, the theatres, and other structures which adorned such localities, fragments only remain. The long centuries of barbarism and violence which followed were not favourable to the preservation of such monuments. Vestiges, however, from the wreck of that epoch of civilization in our history, may be seen in every museum, and are excavated almost daily from the sites on which it flourished. The reader who has seen Pompeii, or who has a just con- ception of that place from representation, may judge, with- * Vita Agric. xxi. REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL LIFE. 85 out fear of mistake, concerning the appearance of the Ro- book l man houses and cities in Britain. The walls of the towns were of substantial and enduring masonry, rarely less than ten or twelve feet in thickness, and generally from twelve to fifteen feet in height. At given distances they were strengthened with round and projecting towers, and the gates appear to have been of wood, braced in various ways with iron. To a modern, the streets would seem narrow, the houses diminutive ; but the entire space included with- in the walls was not great. Even the walls of Colchester included little more than a hundred acres, those of Kenches- ter about twenty, those of Lymne twelve, those of Richbor- ough only four. It is probable that London itself did not then consist of more than three or four streets broad enough for wheels, those being the streets which led to the great outlets ; but from which there branched off numberless lanes and alleys, as paths only to persons on horseback, or to foot-passengers. This sense of smallness is felt, we presume, by every one who visits Pompeii, unless prepared for its inspection by more than usual preliminary study. But if the general scale of things in one of our Roman cities would be deemed contracted, the ornament in the houses of the wealthy would be regarded as profuse, and the conve- niences, in the way of apparatus for warming, for baths, and the like, would be accounted extraordinary, as found within such limits. You see the floors covered with tesselated pavement ; the walls frescoed with decorative paintings. The window-frames are filled with glass. The ceilings are rich in colouring, and in elaborated workmanship. The furniture is, for the most part, elegant and ornate. Alto- gether, the interior is sucji as would be seen in the houses of the wealthy in Italy, and in Rome itself. Of course the owners of such residences were not often natives, nor always Italians. Such houses were mostly the homes of military men, of government functionaries, and of successful mer- chants and landholders from all parts of the empire. One of the most memorable seats of Roman opulence influence of • t» »j • n -i ., . TT1* the Roman and taste m Britain was CaerJeon, on the river Usk, in cities. Monmouthshire. Caerleon stood at a good centre point in 86 CELTS AND ROMANS. chap" 5' re l a ti° n to the large territory of the Silures. On that spot, the bravest and the most powerful of the British tribes, sub- dued by the sword, were to be further subdued by the fas- cinations of art. According to the descriptions of Giraldus Cambrensis, the Roman antiquities on the site of Caerleon even so late as the twelfth century, must have been of as great magnitude as the ruins which have marked the site of Athens in our own time.* What Caerleon was to the Si- lures in the west, York was to the Brigantes, the great na- tion of the north ; and Colchester and St. Albans stood in a similar relation to the Iceni, and to the other native tribes of the east and south. Between these great points, as we have seen, the land was studded with cities or stations ; all of which exhibited, on a larger or a smaller scale, the same signs of civilization and wealth. When Christianity had gained a place among the Brit- ons, a new field was opened for the development of the tastes thus acquired. The learning of Pelagius and Celestius — British scholars known wherever the Latin language was spoken — was derived, we must suppose, from those public schools which the Romans had founded. In this manner the civilization of Rome, no less than its sword, was made to operate in favour of the Gospel. Christianity commends itself to intelligence and culture. Wherever it is to live, it must either find a soil of that nature, or create it. change in Such changes would, of course, affect the manners of the the manners ° f of the Britons. In this respect they had differed little from tribes Britons. ... in the same condition. While the greater part of the island was uncleared and undrained, the wild Indian sort of life * Itiner. Camb. lib. i. c. 5. Caerleon is situated on the right hand of the Usk, which winds in considerable breadth an Chap. 1. be surprised to see how a people accounted so rude contriv- ed to place restrictions on the royal power, to distinguish between the legislative and executive functions of a state, and to leave as little as possible in the administration of law to the discretion of the magistrate. Not less unexpect- ed, perhaps, will be the evidence of the care taken to deter- mine the limits between governing and governed ; to define the duties of husband and wife, parent and child, master and servant ; to classify offences ; to settle principles of evidence, and to adjust penalties to offences ; to ensure a sober main- tenance to the ministers of religion ; to encourage com- merce ; and to confer honour on gifted, learned, and scien- tific men.- All these seeds of civilization were in their course of de- velopment among the Britons, from the times when the greater number of them retreated westward. But many did not so retreat, and Anglo-Saxon history was to be affected considerably by these facts. The British writers, however, to whom we owe most in relation to English history, are Gildas, Nennius, Asser, and, we suppose we must add, Geoffrey of Monmouth. There were three writers of the name of Gildas, who Gildas - were contemporaries, or nearly so. The author of the his- torical work under that name was a monk of Bandon, in North "Wales. He appears to have become thoroughly Ro- manized in his tastes, and to have brought a very bad tem- per to the work of disparaging all, whether Britons, Scots, or Saxons, who were not of that party. This animus is so manifest, that some have doubted if he was really a Briton. His prejudices in this respect have led him to make state- ments which are known to be false ; and there is no doubt that his colouring generally is greatly exaggerated. Of course these facts are to be borne in mind in any use that is made of Gildas.* Recent criticism has shown that the work which has Nennius. been so long attributed to Nennius, was probably written * Ancient Laics and Institutes of Wales, book iii. c. i. f Britannic Researches, by the Rev. Beale Poste, 165-180. Vol. I.— 7 98 SAXONS AND DANES. B cu3. i L ^ a Briton named Marcus, -who became a bishop in Ireland. The work is now assigned to the year 822, and the great object of the writer is said to have been, to do honour to the memory of St. Germanus and St. Patrick. Kennius edited, or republished, the work about forty years later, and it has since borne his name. Many parts of this production con- sist of worthless traditions ; but there is a vein of truth in it that may be separated to the purposes of history.* The same may be said of the old Welsh bards Ancurin, and Ta- liesin, and of the Chronicle by Tysilio — of which more pre- sently. 3candina- ^ ne P oe * :i y °f Scandinavia makes us acquainted with tedtoadu 7 tnc Saxon and the Dane along those stormy creeks and bays tion. from which they launched forth as sea-kings some ten or twelve centuries since. It is M~ell to know what those chil- dren of Odin were before the education of time and circum- stances had given their descendants their great work to do in this island. The Edda, and the Song of Zodbrok, have their uses in this way. One of the first lessons of Provi- dence to this seaman race was to give them a settled home, and to make them Christians ; and, that done, we find them abstaining, with singular simplicity and sincerity, from all mention of what they had been as pagans. In that respect, the past with them was in a memorable degree the past. It is only as Christians that they become historians, and then a considerable space had intervened since their land- ing as freebooters on the shores of Britain. The space, however, between those events, was not such as to allow tradition to become uncertain concerning the one or the other. The north had been to them a region of myth and fable. . In Anglo-Saxon Britain there was no growth of that description. The imagination became otherwise occupied. Christian superstitions came into the place of pagan fictions. But it is not difficult to distinguish between the supersti- tions, and the genuine history with which they are connected.f * See the edition of this writer published by the Irish Archaeological Society, and edited by the Rev. Dr. Todd and the Hon. Algernon Herbert. Dublin. 1848. f Mallet's Northern Antiquities. SOURCES OF ANGLO-SAXON HISTOET. 99 When the venerable Bede wrote his Ecclesiastical His- B00K n. i i • it Chap. 1. tori/, more than two centuries had passed since the landing ; of Hengist and Horsa : something more than a century had Sa -f on ° # 7 ° •/ writers — intervened since the founding of the last of the Anglo-Saxon Bede - kingdoms ; and about a century since the conversion of Ethelbert by the preaching of Augustine. Bede was not so far removed, therefore, from the great events in the early history of the Anglo-Saxons, as to be incapable of giving us a report of those entitled to credit. His history was, in fact, so full, so trustworthy, and so extraordinary a perform- ance, as produced in such circumstances, that the sources from which it was derived were in a singular degree super- seded by it ; and the very success of this narrative, appears to have been fatal to the preservation of much of the mate- rial on which it was based. We learn, however, from Bede himself, that this material existed, and whence it was ob- tained. He questioned all persons likely to furnish him with credible intelligence. He obtained assistance, he tells us, from abbots, bishops, and archbishops, and even from the archives of Rome. What could be done in this way he did, and no man could acquit himself with more conscien- tious integrity in his labour. His belief in miracles was the weakness of his age, and does not in the least detract from his credibility. His history was not his only work, but this description applies to all he has written.* It is to be regretted that his account of affairs in Wessex is so limit- ed ; but in those days this was a natural consequence of a residence so far north as Bishopswearmouth. This defi- ciency is in part supplied by the next great authority on this period — the Saxon Chronicle. Several manuscripts of the Saxon Chronicle are extant, Saxon more or less complete, and differing more or less from each other. Each of these manuscripts has had one transcriber until the date comes to about the middle of the ninth cen- tury, the transcripts being made probably from some earlier source, or sources, now lost. The later entries are by dif- ferent hands, and mostly, it would seem, by contemporaries. * Mbnumenta Historica Britannica, ubi supra. 100 SAXONS AND DANES. Some suppose that we owe the transcriptions of the earlier portions to the patriotism of Alfred ; but on that point we have no certainty. All are agreed in their estimate of the general accuracy and great value of this record. It begins with the Roman invasion, and in several manuscripts de- scends to some time below the Conquest. In the early part it contains passages from Bede and other sources. In its later portions the information is often less full than might have been expected. Its language is Saxon, mostly in the dialect of "Wessex, sometimes in that of Mcrcia. In its later years the continuations are sometimes in Latin.* The volume published by our Record Commissioners in 1S40, intitled, The Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, stands as our next authority. This volume is of great value. It contains the laws of the Anglo-Saxon kings from Ethel- bert to Canute, the laws of the Conqueror, those called the laws of Edward the Confessor, and those ascribed to Henry I. It also contains a large body of ecclesiastical law, afford- ing frequent glimpses into the religious and social life of the time. With this publication we must class the Domes- day Book) with the valuable ' Introduction ' by Sir Henry Ellis ; also the collection of the Anglo-Saxon charters edit- ed by Mr. Kemble.f The sources of information which remain are more frag- mentary, consisting mostly of poetry and the lives of saints. Alfred and his age have a literary prominence, partly from the genius and writings of the ting, and partly from the writings of Asser, a Welsh ecclesiastic, whom Alfred at- tached as a scholar to his person and household. Readers who observe the authors cited by our popular historians in connexion with Anglo-Saxon history, will be aware that many of those authorities do not belong to Anglo-Saxon times, but to times considerably after the Con- quest. It will be seen also that they are commonly and silently adduced, as if their testimony were of the first order and decisive. But docs the case really so stand '. Among ■ Monumenta Historka Britannica, ubi supra. Tlie Church Histories of England, vol. ii. pt. i. Freface. \ Codec Diplomatics JEvi SaxonicL SOURCES OF ANGLO-SAXON HISTORY. 101 the writers of this class we may mention Florence of "Wor- book n - J Chap. 1. cester, Simeon of Durham, Henr y of Huntingdon, and Roger of Hoveden, Alured of Beverley, and Ingulf of Croyland. The work which bears the name of Florence is derived FIorence - mainly from Bede, Asser, the /Saxon Chronicle, and a His- tory of Ely. Florence died in a.d. 1118, and his work closes with that year. The Saxon language was familiar to him, and the manuscripts from which he copied are said to have been good. It is not, however, until this writer ap- proaches his own time that his material becomes important. Simeon of Durham's Chronicle extends from the year 818 simeon of ^ Durham. to 1129. It is taken almost wholly and literally from Flor- ence. It contains some things, however, relating to the north, not to be found elsewhere ; and more of the same material will be found in the History of the Kings of Eng- land, and in the History of Durham, by the same author. Huntingdon's narrative extends from the landing of Julius Cassar to the first half of the twelfth century. On the his- Hunting- tory of the Anglo-Saxons Henry availed himself of the best known sources ; and of some, both Welsh and English, which seem to have perished. He is full in his account of battles, and his narrative evinces a more free and manly spirit than is common with writers of his order. Hoveden novedcn. lived to the beginning of the thirteenth century. His work is much cited by historians ; but it is a transcript, almost from beginning to end, either of Simeon of Durham, or of Henry of Huntingdon. Alured of Beverley is a writer of Alured. the same description. His work consists of little more than transcriptions from Bede, Simeon of Durham, Florence of Worcester, and Geoffrey of Monmouth. But the work in this series which suggests the greatest caution in the use of these authorities is that attributed to Ingulf. Until with- ingulf. in the last thirty years, this work has been freely cited as a sufficient authority on the wide range of historical represen- tation contained in it. By the most competent judges, and on evidence only too manifest, its historical value has been shown to be very small.* Its errors and anachronisms, * Dr. Hlckes exposed the fictions to be found in this work, a century and a 102 SAXONS AND DANES. while professing to be an autobiography, are such as to cast a strong suspicion over the portions of true history that are to be found in it. The continuation by Peter of Blois is entitled to more credit, but that is another work. The historical romance by Geoffrey of Monmouth is little more than a rendering into Latin of the pretended Chronicle by the British writer Tysilio. "We may believe Geoffrey when he tells us that he received the manuscript on which his work was founded, from Armorica ; but it seems no less clear that the work was that attributed to Tysilio, who was a Briton, and lived in the early part of the eleventh century.* Neither production is of much value in regard to history, though both are objects of inter- est as relating to the literature of the times in which they were produced. The Chronicle attributed to Matthew of "Westminster contains some information relating to early Saxon and British affairs not found in other writers, and which may have been derived from trustworthy sources no longer existing. But as the sources are not mentioned, such passages are of no great authority. "William of Malmes- bury belongs to a limited class of writers, who, in the elev- enth and twelfth centuries aimed at something above com- pilation, and took the classical historians as their model. The imitation, as will be supposed, was not always in good taste. But Malmesbury is a valuable guide. The above instances will suffice to show the measure of authority which belongs to Anglo-Norman writers in regard to Anglo-Saxon history. "We should add, also, that in the men who write upon our history after the Conquest, a bias is often perceptible, disposing them greatly to underrate the Saxon nationality. Modern writers have not always been sufficiently on their guard against this influence, nor always sufficiently mindful of the fact, that in relation to British and Anglo-Saxon history, these writers can never be more than second-hand authorities. The question in regard to half ago. Praefatio in Thesaur. Ling. Vett. p. xxix. ed. Oxon. 1*703. See also Quarterly Review, xxxiv. 248, et seq., by Sir Francis Palgrave. Lappenberg, vol. i. pp. li. lii. Monumcnia Historica Britannica. * Poste's Britannic Researches. SOURCES OF ANGLO-SAXON HISTORY. 103 most of them is, not what have they said concerning times B op^ J 1 so long anterior to their own, but what authority have they had for what they say ? It is not enough that a modern historian professes to restrict himself to original authorities. Two things more are necessary — the intelligence that can estimate those authorities at their proper value, and the in- tegrity which shall ensure that an honest use is made of them. CHAPTER II. THE MIGRATION. ON the departure of the Romans, authority seems to have passed very much into the hands of the Roman settlers, and partly into the hands of the more able men among the Britons, or of such as claimed descent from the native princes. The usages found among the Britons of a later age, and which no doubt obtained among them even at this early period, were both monarchical and popular. Govern- ment was everywhere by kingship, and everywhere by popular assemblies. The obligation imposed on the tything and the hundred by the Anglo-Saxons, had been long before imposed by the Britons on kindred. The men responsible for each man's good conduct, were not men of the same neighbourhood, but men of the same blood.* How much of this usage was tolerated under the Romans is not known, but it became general when the Britons were left to them- selves. The British code of penalties was, in common witli the Anglo-Saxons, very much a code of fines and compen- sations, wherever compensation was possible. But organ- izations of this nature had been too much disturbed by the Romans to be soon restored and settled. An interval also was to pass in which feud was to do its usual mischief. The great difficulty of the Romans during the last two centuries of their rule in Britain, came from the frequent in- cursions of the Caledonians, who were in possession of the country north of the wall of Antoninus. These Caledonii of the Romans appear to have received a large accession of * Laws of Howell the Good, book iii. chap. i. THE MIGRATION. 105 settlers in those days from Ireland ; and with this migration B00K IL came the names of Scots and Picts. After the opening of the fourth century the whole people north of the Tyne are often so designated. Those tribes or clans knew nothing of the civilization which the Romans had introduced among the people of the south ; or knew it only to despise it as effeminate, and as the badge of servitude. They did noth- ing in the way of ploughing or sowing. It was their pleas- ure to roam about with their flocks and herds, and what they did not secure as wandering herdsmen, they obtained by hunting, or by levying contributions on their weaker neighbours. Gildas describes them as differing in some de- gree from each other in manners, but as influenced by the same thirst for blood, and as being more disposed to shroud their ' villanous faces ' in bushy hair, than to cover their persons with decent clothing.* The name Pict comes from their own language, and could hardly have been used to de- note the stained or pictured appearance of their bodies. When these troublesome neighbours heard of the de- Repulsed t>j parture of the Romans, they soon began to make incursions southward. The resistance they met with was at first more formidable than they had expected. Many who had served in the Roman army, both natives and settlers, resumed their weapons. Profiting by such leadership, the Britons repel- led the invaders. But the enemy learned wisdom from disas- ter. They came in greater numbers, and with better organ- ization. The Britons began to be much discouraged. They sent Assistance delegates to seek assistance from the Romans. The Empe- the e™ y ror Honorius despatched a legion from Gaul to their help ; the Romans chased the Scots back to their forests and fast- nesses; but this force did not remain in the island. f In the year 423 the Britons were again petitioners for help, and in 426 another legion appeared among them, led by Gal- lio Ravennas, a general who not only inflicted signal chas- tisement on the Scots, but spared no pains to put the Brit- ons in the way of defending themselves for the future. By * Hist. § 19. Bede, Eccles. Hist. lib. i. c. 2. f Gildas, Hist. § 16. Bede, Eccles. Hist, lib i. c. 12. Nennius, § 30. 106 SAXONS AND DANES. ^h^?. %' n * s advice they relinquished the wall of Antoninus, and with it the whole of the country between Newcastle and Edin- burgh. He superintended the repairs of the wall of Seve- rus, and urged the Britons to guard it well, as their most natural boundary northward. He warned them, moreover, that the Scots were not their only enemies. He assured them that they had fully as much to fear from the Frank and the Saxon ; and before leaving them, he gave them his assistance in raising fortresses, and many places of observa- tion, along the southern coast. This was in 427.* Eight years later a great battle was fought between the Scots and the Britons of the north. It is said to have been the most formidable encounter that had ever taken place between the two races. Its issue was disastrous to the Brit- ons. In 446 they seem to have made an effort to throw off the yoke which had been thus imposed on them, but with- out effect. It was by this section of the Britons, and in these circumstances, that the letter preserved in Gildas, entitled ' The groans of the Britons,' appears to have been written. It is addressed to Etius, the Roman governor in Gaul. It has been accepted by modern historians as genuine, and no document lias done so much towards producing an unfavour- able impression in regard to the character of the Britons gen- erally at this juncture. But in our estimate of this people it becomes us to look to their history as a whole, and to look well to the quarter where the blame of much that may seem blameworthy should be laid. It had been so long the policy of the Romans to deprive the Britons of all native leadership, that we scarcely need wonder if, when liberty was given them to avail themselves of such aid, it had ceas- ed to exist. Great was the change which had come over the country- men of Caractacus during the last four hundred years — the men who, in their time, had known how to chase before them, not only whole cohorts, but even legions of their op- pressors. Great, too, was the change which had come over the affairs of South Britain within a quarter of a century * Bede, Hist. lib. i. c. 12. Gildas, Hist. §§ 11, 18. THE MIGRATION. 107 .after the iinal departure of the Romans. Gildas wrote some- book ii. thing more than a century later; and, though we take his — '-' descriptions with great deduction, it is hardly to be doubt- ed that the safety of life and property ceased for a time through a large portion of the island. Lands which had been wont to yield abundant harvests lay uncultivated. Vil- lages and towns were to a large extent deserted and in ruins. Such of the Britons as opposed themselves to the Scots rare- ly did so in the open field, but waylaid them in the forests and passes. The monuments of Roman art were everywhere mutilated, or allowed to go to decay. Famine and disease came in the train of these disorders. It is difficult, how- ever, to say to how much of the country this description would apply, or how long it continued. We know that in the fifth century, when a formidable invasion by the Scots was said to be in preparation, the Britons of the south and west had their kings. Vortigern was then king over the people bordering on the Thames, and the Britons who dis- puted the entrance of Scot and Saxon for the next hundred years, did so under kings as leaders, and did so with no lit- tle courage and perseverance. To this interval belong all the chivalrous narratives concerning Aurelius, Uther Pen- dragon, and King Arthur. The King Yortigern mentioned, is the chief who has be- The come so memorable in our history from his invitation to axons ' the Saxons to become his auxiliaries in resisting the Scots. The first mention of the Saxons in history is by Ptolemy the geographer. Ptolemy makes them to be of Scythian de- scent. They were manifestly a branch of the great Teu- tonic family, and included tribes under various names be- sides those properly known as Saxons. About the middle of the second century the Saxons were in possession of that part of the shore of the modern duchy of Holstein which lies between the mouths of the Eyder and the Elbe. The Baltic side of the duchy, which still bears the name of An- glen, was the country of the Angles ; and the home of the Jutes — the Jutland-men — stretched indefinitely northward. Two centuries later these tribes, under the general name of Saxons, had spread their conquests so far south as to be 108 SAXONS AND DANES. 3ook ii. found over the whole space between the Eyder and the Chap. 2. Rhine. In the middle of the fifth century, the time now under review, their territory embraced the whole country along the coast of the German Ocean, including both West and East Friesland, Holland, and Zealand, besides Westpha- lia and Saxony, and countries further north.* The part of those regions in which the Saxons are first known, was fringed with the most intricate shores, embra- cing many inlets and islands. Everywhere they were ex- posed to the influences of northern cold and tempest. Every- thing there seemed to combine for the purpose of training a hardy race to maritime adventure. The Saxons became all that a map would suggest as probable in the history of rude tribes so placed. Steady industry they despised. Their great trust was in their swords. Plunder by sea or by land was their chief vocation. Band after band, as they subdued districts, settled in them, compelling the vanquish- ed to do their husbandry, while they went forth themselves from season to season in search of new adventure and new spoil. Every man had his chief, to whom he promised fidel- ity ; and when an enterprise embraced several chiefs, one was invested with supreme command for the occasion. They used the bow, the spear, the sword, the battle-axe, and a club with spikes projecting from a knob at the end, and sometimes called the ' hammer.' The last three of these wea- pons were of great length and weight. But the men of the Saxon race were generally above the middle stature, power- fully built, and could make these implements fall with ter- rible effect upon an enemy. They wore helmets, the metal of which descended on either side of the head to the ears, and sometimes sent a line of protection down the centre of the forehead. All the more exposed parts of their persons were guarded in like manner. xons of Of course this description applies to the Saxons of the otuiy. fifth century ; in their earlier adventures there was little of this martial presence about them. In those early days their * Ptol. Geoff, ii. c. 2. Eutrop. ix. Steph. Byzant. voc. Saxone.i. Orosius, lib. i. § i. Ad Bremen" ccx. Bede, Eccles. Hist. lib. i. c. 15 ; lib. v. c. ii. Cluver. Ant. Germ. iii. 96 et seq. Chron. Sax. an. 449. THE MIGRATION. 109 boats or vessels were mostly of lath and oisier work, overlaid book il with skins. But in the time of Yortigern the chiule of the Saxon pirate vied with the Roman galley in strength and spaciousness. So armed, and with such vessels, the Saxon sea-kings, as they were called, became the terror of their time, especially along the coasts of Gaul and Britain. Be- fore Saxon Britain was heard of, Britain, Belgium, and Gaul had their Saxon shore — coast lands, so called in conse- quence of their exposure to attacks from this formidable enemy. In the fifth century, their numbers, their skill, their audacity, and their cruelty, had combined to make them the most dreaded foe of civilization north of the Rhine. Con- stantine the Great, Theodosius, and Stilicho, had distin- guished themselves by their attempts to check the incur- sions of these assailants. But as the strength of the empire declined, the boldness of these enemies increased. In fact, they made rapid progress in the art of war by means of the encounters with civilized and disciplined foes to which they were from time to time committed. The event to be de- sired was, that their successes should open to them induce- ments to relinquish a mode of life so pregnant with evil to themselves and to humanity. The qualities conspicuous in them were such as to ensure their eminent success in the race of civilization should circumstances arise to dispose them to such pursuits. Our Saxon authorities relate, that in the year 447 or 449, Hengist Yortigern, a British king near the Thames, invited two Sax — Saxon. on chiefs, named Hengist and Horsa, to assist him in repel- ling an invasion by the Picts and Scots ; that these chiefs, who were brothers, landed in Thanet, a portion of Kent, sep- arated from the mainland of that district by a river ; that the Saxons soon chased the Scots from the lands they had devastated ; that with the consent of Yortigern, the Saxon force in Thanet was increased considerably ; that this in- crease caused distrust among the Britons ; that the increase of pay thus made necessary led to disputes ; that these dis- putes issued in open war ; that after a long series of con- flicts, victory declared in favour of the Saxons ; that Hen- gist became king of Kent, and in the year 488 bequeathed 110 SAXONS AND DANES. his authority to his son iEsca, having exercised it fifteen years. Our British authorities say that Hengist and Horsa were exiles in search of a home ; that the increase of the force in Thanet was treacherously managed ; that the design of that movement was to conquer the country ; that Hengist had a beautiful daughter named Rowena, who, when the Saxon and British chiefs were over their cups, was employed to present a goblet to Vortigern ; that Vortigern fell into the snare thus laid for him, by becoming enamoured of Row- ena, so as to be prepared to barter the kingdom of Kent as the price of possessing her person ; that in the wars which ensued, Vortigern was disowned by his subjects, and his son Vortimer raised to sovereignty in his stead ; that for several years Hengist was compelled to seek refuge in his ships, and to subsist by his piracies ; that at a feast after- wards given by the Saxon leaders, some three hundred Brit- ish chiefs were treacherously murdered ; that the only one of the British chiefs who was spared was Vortigern ; and that, notwithstanding the alleged unpopularity of this prince, to secure the liberation of Vortigern, the people of Kent, Sussex, Middlesex, and Essex consented to receive Hengist as their king." The discrepancies between these two accounts are such as we might expect from sources so distinct and so hostile. But there is a substance of statement common to them both, sufficient to show that Hengist and Horsa are historical per- sons, and that the commonly understood facts of their lives may be received as history. To attempt to reduce them to mythic personages, and to conclude that we really know nothing of the matter, would be to follow a fashion in criti- cism, and to underrate the lights of the past. It is very probable that Hengist and Horsa were chiefs in search of a home, and that their policy from the first was to find a home in this country, either by stipulation or the sword. But the story concerning the slaughter of the British chiefs comes from Nennius. Had it been a fact, Gildas could not * Bede, Eccles. Hist. lib. I. c. 15. Chron. Sax. ad aim. 449 et seq. Gil- das, Hist. §§ 23-26. Nennius, §§ 31, 36-38, 44-45. THE MIGRATION. Ill have been ignorant of it, and would not have failed to give ^ok ii. it prominence. An account of the conquests of the Saxons in Thurino-ia contains a similar fiction. Horsa fell in an early encounter with the Britons. Hen- Else of tho J Saxon Oc- gist, as the Saxon authorities relate, did not become sover- tai- chy. eign of Kent before the year 473 — more than twenty years after his first compact with Vortigern. The British accounts indicate that the resistance made was thus obstinate, and in part successful ; and the space intervening between the rise of this first state of the Saxon Octarchy, and the rise of the last, is a century and a half. Sussex, the kingdom of the South Saxons, was the second state established. It was founded by Ella in 496. This was the smallest state of the Octarchy. The state of the West Saxons, which dates from the year 519, was of much greater extent, embracing Sur- rey, Berks, Dorset, Somerset, and Devon, with parts of Hampshire and Cornwall. The founder of this sovereignty was Cerdic. East Anglia included Norfolk, Suffolk, Cam- bridge, the Isle of Ely, and part of Bedfordshire, and was es- tablished by Uffa in the year 540. Erkenwen laid the foun- dation of the state of the East Saxons, which compreh ended Essex, Middlesex, and a southern district of Hertfordshire. This kingdom commences with the year 542. The kingdom of Bernicia was established by Ida in 548, under whom the Angles possessed themselves of Northumberland, and of the northern parts of Westmoreland and Cumberland, with the part of Scotland between Newcastle and Edinburgh. The kingdom of Deira embraced Lancashire and Yorkshire, with the southern divisions of Westmoreland and Cumber- land. While this kingdom continued separate the Saxon states in Britain were an Octarchy ; its union with North- umbria, which was the case for the most part, reduced them to a Heptarchy. We have seen that the kingdom of the South Saxons was founded by a chief named Ella ; and it was a chief of that name who founded the kingdom of Dei- ra, about sixty years later. Mercia, the last of the Saxon kingdoms, does not make its appearance before the year 586 ; but it was, in regard to extent of territory, the most considerable state in the Octarchy, comprehending all the 112 SAXONS AND DANES. Course of the Saxon conquests. British re sistance. book * L midland counties, and forming for centuries the great bar- rier kingdom between the Saxons and the Welsh.* It will be seen from this sketch that the conquest of the Saxons followed the same track that had been taken by the Romans. From the coast of Kent the invaders gradually spread themselves southward, northward, and westward — the country of Caractacus, which was the last to submit to the Romans, being the last to submit to the Saxons. Where the Romans had been most ascendant, the Saxons gained their earliest and their easiest victories. In this manner did the portion of our island known by the name of England pass into the hands of the people from whom it derived that name. During a hundred and fifty years the Britons continued to measure weapons with the Saxons in defence of this soil ; a fact sufficient to warrant distrust of the pictures given of this people by Gildas. The chivalrous performances assign- ed to this period of British history by British tradition and romance may be entitled to little credit. But fictions so impassioned and so permanent imply facts — the mythic Ar- thur, supposes a real one. The conception of an age of he- roes can have no place with a people who are not them- selves heroic. It is unfortunate indeed, for the fame of those supposed heroes, that writers so near their time as Bede and Gildas should seem to have heard so little about them. But, on the other hand, the writings of the ancient bards, Aneurin and Taliesin, and those of Nennius, of Tysi- lio, and of Geoffrey of Monmouth, point to the channel through which the faith of a people in regard to that heroic age has descended. We have no great confidence in what these writers record as facts, but there is an historical signi- ficance in the spirit which pervades their productions. The renowned Arthur is not an Armorican, but strictly a British hero. The conception of him has come to us from a people whose descendants are still living about us. We have now seen that the forty years between the de- parture of the Romans and the coming in of the Saxons were, for the most part, years of retrogression in British * Bede, Eccles. Hist, passim. Chron. Sax. ad ann. 449-588. Summary. Chap. 2. THE MIGRATION. 113 history. Even then, the season of inquietude and disaster book ii. had not come to an end. The ravages of the Saxons were to follow those of the Picts and Scots ; and though the Sax- on was a less barbarous antagonist than the Scot, his wars seemed for a time to have completed what his precursor had done only in part. The sea-king from the Elbe has come into the place of the prefect of the Tiber, and the general change is such as this change of names will suggest. Yery memorable in English history is this Second Revolution by the Sword. Vol. I.— 8 CHAPTEE III. ELSE OF TILE ENGLISH MONABCHY EGBERT. THE wars of rude communities possess so much in com- mon, as to be entitled to small consideration from the historian. But there arc instances in which such narratives may have their place among the valuable materials of his- tory. Such events may illustrate the character of a people, and may have influenced their local settlements. They may have contributed in this way to the development of the modification of the languages, the institutions, and the usages of races. In all these respects the war-history of Anglo-Saxon Britain was influential, and merits a degree of attention on this account that would not otherwise be due to it. The wars of the Saxons during the first three centuries after their settlement in Britain, were wars carried on in part with the natives, and in part with each other. Every Btate was won by the sword, and kept only by the sword. The dangers of each state in its earlier history, came from the partially vanquished Britons ; in its later history, from the rivalries which grew up between the new sovereignties when established. It must suffice to touch on the outline of this subject, and especially on such points as indicate a tendency to substitute unity for partition — to give existence to a central and consolidated sovereignty. During more than twenty years Ilengist and his fol- lowers were engaged in frequent and deadly hostilities with the Britons. Xot until the close of that interval can the kingdom of Kent be said to have been established. Ayles ford, Crayford, and "Wippendsfleet are places in that coun RISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY EGBERT. 115 ty which became memorable in the history of this struggle.* B °o K "• Ella, and his three sons, who established the neighbour kingdom of the South Saxons, met with a resistance no less resolute and protracted. The great forest of Andreds-lea was long an asylum to the Britons in their reverses. Cerdic, the founder of the kingdom of the "West Saxons, which em- braced a much larger territory than either of the states above mentioned, was engaged in hot wars with the Britons over the west of England, from 495 to 519. Thus slow and costly was the progress of the Saxon chiefs generally, in giving existence to the several states of the Hep- tarchy, f But it does not appear that any one of the branches of intention of the great German family who thus sought a new home in in their de- t» • • i • i • i i •' • n • • -i • scents upon Jt>ntam, did so with the intention of continuing the piratical Britain. and marauding life to which they had been accustomed in their own country. With the possession of a richer soil, and under the influence of a more genial climate, they were prepared to turn their thoughts towards the arts of peace, and towards the means necessary to give security to their acquisitions and their power. The language of Bede and of the Saxon Chronicle is ex- office of ... in i i i r> n Bretwalda. plicit as to the tact that during the first century of the Heptarchy, one of its princes generally possessed a prece- dence of the rest, under the title of the Bretwalda, or the ' wielder.' Some seven, indeed nine, princes are named, as having sustained this dignity. But there were intervals in which the authority of the prince claiming that precedence was not more than partially acknowledged. Indeed, during more than a century and a half it ceased to exist ; and the real power of the Bretwalda at any time was so limited and undefined, that it is impossible now to say in what it con- sisted. In its existence, however, we see evidence that the existence of some such authority was felt to be highly ex- pedient, if not necessary ; and it gives us the embryo of the power which was at length to centre in a single person as monarch of all England.^ * Chron. Sax. a.p. 440-488. Chron. Ethelwerd, c. i. Bede, Hist. c. 15. f Chron. Sax. a.d. 477-519. Ethelwerd, c. i. \ Bede, Hist. ii. 5. Chron. Sax. a.d. 827. Ethelwerd, iii. c. 2. 116 SAXONS AND DANES. B c°n°? 3 L Disputes concerning this precedence gave rise to the first war of one Anglo-Saxon state upon another. Ella of Sussex, from some unknown cause, was the first Britwalda. On his decease, Ethelbert of Kent, then only sixteen years of age, laid claim to that rank. But his competitor was Ceawlin, the powerful King of Wessex, who humbled him in battle. Ceawlin gained repeated victories over the Brit- ons, united the territory of the South Saxons to that of the West Saxons, and survived as Bretwalda to the year 593. On the death of Ceawlin, the disputed title was conferred on Ethelbert, who retained it to the year 616. But it did not pass into the hands of his son. Jledwald, King of the East Angles, was its next possessor. No power had ever been so formidable to the Picts and Scots as Northumbria became about this time ; and the terror with which the severities of the settlers in those northern provinces had filled their freebooting neighbours lasted for several genera- tions. Edwin of Northumbria became Bretwalda in 627 ; and was the most potent among the princes who had hitherto borne that title. Not only the Saxon, but the British kings, are said to have acknowledged his sovereignty, so far as to pay him tribute ; and his own dominions, besides includ- ing the united kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira, extended so far as to include the Isle of Anglesea and the Isle of Man. But Mercia became jealous of Northumbria. in t>33, Penda of Mercia, and Ceadwalla of North Wales, combined their forces against that kingdom. In a battle at Hatfield, in Yorkshire, Edwin, and one of his sons, were slain ; an- other son was murdered when the battle had ceased. Such members of the family of Edwin as survived sought refuge with their relative then ruling in Kent. The victors over- ran the prostrate country, pillaging without limit, and de- stroying without mercy, the Christian Welsh, exceeding, it is said, in their atrocities, the pagan Mercians. But Oswald, a nephew of Edwin, at length avenged the fate of his kin- dred ; and, under his powerful sway, the two northern king- doms were once more united. Oswald was the sixth Bret- ,walda ; but his reign was short. In the eighth year of his RISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY EGBERT. 117 sovereignty he, too, was defeated by the Mercians under B £®* \ L Penda. Oswald was succeeded, both as king of Northum- bria, and as Bretwalda, by his brother, Oswy, who strength- ened his claim to the throne by marrying his cousin, the daughter of Edwin. Through the next twenty-eight years — years of storm and change — the sceptre of Northumbria was wielded by a strong hand. But Oswy was the last Bretwalda. He died in 670.* It thus appears that the office of Bretwalda was recos:- £ u ? a . ce of A L ~ Britain not nized, more or less, among the Ancdo-Saxons during nearly favourable o o o J to a con- tWO centuries — from the death of Hensrist, in 488, to the l\? u ™ ce of o ' ' the Hep- death of Oswy, in 670. The office had come into existence tarchy - from a sense of common danger and of common interest ; and it owed its continuance to the feeling in which it had originated. This danger was apprehended as likely to come from the Britons in the west, from the Scots in the north, and from the unsettled hordes on the other side the German Ocean. But the idea of combination against these foes was more an idea than a reality. Experience had shown this ; and the function of Bretwalda appears to have ceased as it became manifest that the uses of it were imaginary. But so long as a Bretwalda was acknowledged, there was the probability that a powerful chief, under that title, would some day become king of Anglo-Saxon Britain. From the manner in which the Saxons became possessed of the coun- try, it was natural that it should be parcelled out into a number of separate and comparatively small sovereignties. Rut there was nothing in the surface of the country to favour the perpetuity of the state of things so originated. Greece, by the intersections of its seas and mountains, ap- peared to be mapped out by the hand of Providence to be- come the home of a number of small and independent states. Not so that part of.Britain which has since become known as Engand. The fastnesses of Wales, and the York- shire and Grampian Hills, might long present impediments in the way of a great national unity. But over the remain- ing portion of the island the lines of separation between * Chron. Sax. a.d. 488-670. Ethelwerd, lib. i. n. Bede, Hist. ii. 5. 118 SAXONS AND DANES. E chap s L territory and territory were so faint, that the necessary alternative was, between a state of almost perpetual fend, and the concentration of the several states into one by some leader powerful enough to realize such a change. But the office of Bretwalda is perpetuated through nearly two cen- turies, and no one of the princes sustaining it becomes thus potent. And now a hundred and thirty years intervene between the death of the last Bretwalda and the accession of Egbert, sometimes described as the first king of England ; and two centuries and a half are to pass before the accession of Athelstan, the first Anglo-Saxon king really entitled, to that description. The history of the Anglo-Saxons during something more than the first half of the next two hundred and fifty years, is mainly the history of the three principal states — Nortlmm- bria, Mereia, and "Wessex. These states, as seen on the map, form a crescent, one point of the curve taking its start from the part of Scotland bounded by Glasgow and Edin- burgh, and the other point terminating in Cornwall. In the hollow of this crescent lies the home of the Welsh ; beyond the outer line of it, and stretching toward the English Chan- nel and the German Ocean, lay the kingdom of the East Saxons, Sussex, Kent, and East Anglia. An intelligent conception of this period in English history is not possible without keeping these facts in mind. Northum- During the hundred and thirty years between the death of Oswy, the last Bretwalda, and the accession of Egbert to the throne of Wessex, the sceptre of Xorthumbria passed into new hands upon the average every seven or ten years. Of these princes, the one-half perished in the constantly recurring wars of the period ; and the other half, with only one or two exceptions, were despatched or dethroned by their own subjects. These facts suggest much in regard to the disorder and crime prevalent among that people. But the reality in this case was such as hardly to be reached by the imagination. Egfrid, who succeeded Oswy his father, compelled both the Scots and the Mercians to respect his territory. But his wars were incessant — now with the Mercians, now with KISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY — EGBERT. 119 the Irish, and now with the Scots. In an expedition against book ii the latter he was beset in the passes of the country, and experienced a signal defeat. His own body was among the slain. Few of his followers escaped. An army sent against the Scots by Aldfrid, his successor, shared the same fate. The reign of Aldfrid, ' the learned,' was comparatively peaceful. But on his decease, the history of ISTorthumbria becomes such a calendar of enormities that we feel no dis- position to dwell upon it. Kindred struggled against kindred for the possession of the supreme power : the prize seized at the cost of perfidy and blood to-day, was snatched away by hands as little scrupulous to-morrow ; and men who had hoped to brave the storm in which so many had perished, were glad to escape from the fury everywhere abroad, by seeking admission to a convent, as affording them their only chance of security and repose.' Charle- magne denounced these Northumbrians as ' a perverse and perfidious nation, worse than pagans.' * Mercia, we have seen, was the middle kingdom, between power of Korthumbria on the one hand, and Wessex on the other. With a powerful rival on either side, and with such bad neighbours as the Welsh along its whole western border, it seemed necessary to its independence that it should be the strongest kingdom of the three. But the comparative power of these states depended on power in their kings ; and each oscillated accordingly, as their monarchs happened to be men of capacity, or devoid of it. Oswy of Northumbria acquired a partial ascendency over Mercia. But before his decease in 670, the Mercians asserted their independence and something more. In 661 Wulphere, the son of Penda, who then ruled in Mercia, overran Wessex, and attached portions of its territory to his own. But Wulphere died in 675, and before his death Egfurth of Nbrthumbria had again turned the scale in favour of the northern kingdom. Ethelred, who reigned over Mercia the next thirty years, sustained its independence and reputation. Little need be said of the two immediate * Bede, Hist. iii. 14-27 ; iv. 26 ; r. 23. Chron. Sax. a.d. 617-800. Malms. de Reg. 120 SAXONS AND DANES B chap "' successors °f Etlielred — Csenred and Ceolred. The first retired to a monastery after a reign of five years. The second shortened his days by licentiousness. Their conjoint reigns numbered twelve years, and these appear to have been years of quiet to their subjects. Ethelbald, the next king of Mercia, reigned from 716 to 757. He was a man of dissolute habits through the greater portion of his life. But he was also a man of capacity, both in council and in the field. For a time, not only the lesser states of the Heptarchy, but even "Wessex acknowdged his authority. But in 752 the West Saxons cast off the yoke which Ethelbald had imposed on them. In a memorable battle at Burford in Oxfordshire, the Mercians were not only defeated, but the panic which seized the army was attributed to a want of courage in their king. A few years later Ethelbald was succeeded by the celebrated Offa. Riso of offa. The first fourteen years in the reign of Offa were spent in quelling disaffection among his own subjects. Subse- quently he waged successful wars against Kent, and Wes- sex, and the Britons. To guard his territory against the incursions of the latter enemy, he constructed a trench and embankment, known in after times as ' Offa's dyke.' This work parted off the border territory of the Welsh from that of the Mercians, over the whole line of country from the neighbourhood of Chester to the lower banks of the Severn. offa and Through the influence of the Anglo-Saxon scholar Charle- magne. Alcuin, a correspondence took place between Offa and Charlemagne. The king of the Franks performed the office of mediator between Offa and certain Mercian thanes who had become exiles in France as the consequence of having committed themselves against the authority of Offa in the early period of his reign. "We learn also that Charlemagne felt aggrieved by some fiscal irregularities attributed to cer- tain Mercian manufacturers who imported wollen goods into France. On these matters the result of the communications between the two kings was satisfactory. But not so on matters of another kind. Charles requested the hand of a RISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY — EGBERT. 121 daughter of Offa for one of his illegitimate sons. Offa, in book ii. return, requested the hand of a French princess for his eldest son Egfurth. But this presumption, as it was deemed, offended the pride of the Frank, and the correspondence between the two kings came to an end. The hand of the princess which Charlemagne had soli- * r " r( 'f °* i- ~ ^ Ethelbert. cited for his son was afterwards sought by Ethelbert, king of East Anglia. Ethelbert was young and accomplished, and possessed of many estimable qualities. Approaching the borders of Mercia, the young king despatched a messenger with presents, and with a letter, stating the object of his errand. In reply, assurance was given of a cordial wel- come ; and on his arrival, himself and his retinue were re- ceived with every apparent demonstration of respect and good feeling. As the advance of the evening brought the feasting and merry-making to a close, Ethelbert withdrew to his chamber. Presently a messenger sought access to him, and stated that the king wished to confer with him on some matters affecting the purpose of his visit. Ethel- bert at once followed the footsteps of his guide. But the way led through a dark narrow passage, and there, from invisible hands, the confiding youth received a number of wounds which at once deprived him of life. Offa affected surprise, indignation, the deepest grief ; he would see no one, and so on. But history points to his wife as having suggested this atrocious deed, and to himself as having con- sented to it. It is enough to say that Offa seized on the domains of his murdered guest. But in two short years the blood-guilty monarch was called to his account. This crime has fixed infamy on the name of Offa and his queen. Un- happily, such deeds were not rare in the history of ruling men and ruling women through this period of our history. Egfurth, the son of Offa, reigned but a few months ; and, after a few years of vicissitude and misfortune, that once powerful family became extinct. Cenulf, of the family of Penda, was the next king of Mercia. His reign is chiefly remarkable for his invasion of Kent, and from the part taken by him in certain ecclesiasti- cal disputes which will claim our attention in another place. 122 SAXONS AND DANES. B ci?S. a' Kenelm, his son, a boy of seven years of age, was murdered a few months after his accession. Ceolwulf, who succeeded him, was dethroned in the second year of his sovereignty. Beornwulf, the next in succession, had to submit to the ris- ing power of Egbert of Wessex.* Wefsex! ° f ^ e are now c o m e upon a track which promises to bring us within sight of the object of our search — a concentration of the sovereignty in Anglo-Saxon Britain. We have seen that in 488 Ceawlin, king of "Wessex, became Bretwalda, on the decease of the first great Saxon adventurer, Hengist of Kent. Ceawlin was succeeded by his nephews Ceolric and Ceolwulf. ' The reign of Ceolwulf was long, and emi- nently successful. The Scots and Picts, the Britons and the Saxons, all felt the power of his hand. The South Saxons struggled in vain to become independent of his sway. The Britons he compelled to leave the plains of Gloucestershire, and to seek an asylum on the opposite banks of the Severn. On the death of Ceolwulf, in Gil, the successive reigns of the two nephews were followed by the conjoint reigns of two brothers, Cyncgils and Cuichelm, sons of Ceolwulf. Through twenty-four years the two brothers reigned in har- mony and successfully. They chastised an aggressive spirit manifested by the East Saxons ; and they were victors in their encounters with the Britons, especially in a great bat- tle at Brampton in Somersetshire. Even the strength of Penda of Mercia, if not inferior to their own, was not suffi- cient to subdue them. Cuichelm died in 635, Cyncgils in 642. Coinwald, the son of Ceolwulf, was the next King of Wessex. He reigned thirty years. He waged successful war against the Britons. But in his time the "West Saxons bowed to the supremacy of Mercia, first under Penda, and afterwards under Wulphere. On the death of Ceolwulf, his widow, Sexburga, and several members of his family, set up their claim to be his successor, and for some thirteen years the country was filled with disorder and violence. In coftdwaiia. 685 Ceadwalla, a descendant of Ceawlin, became king. * Citron. Sac. a.d. 661 et scq. Ethelwerd, lib i. — iv. passim. Florence Wig- orn. a.d. 661-819. Bede. Lappenberg, Hist. Eng. i. 221-238. RISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY EGBERT. 123 Ceadwalla was not more than twenty-six years of age. But B r °°K \i he had made no secret of his pretensions to the throne, had a ^^ shown himself brave and able, and Centwin, the last king, had named him as his successor. His arms were successful against the South Saxons, and against the Jutes of Kent , and of the Isle of Wight. But his murder of the two sons of Arvald, a chief who had defended the latter place against him, betrayed his want of magnanimity, and proclaimed him as unscrupulous and cruel. He had formed a friend- ship in exile with another exile, Wilfrid, sometime Bishoj) of York. Under the influence of that ecclesiastic he visit- ed Rome, to receive baptism from the hands of the Pope ; but, before putting off the baptismal vestments, he was seized with the sickness of which he died seven days after- wards. If the reign of Ceadwalla was short, that of Ina, his sue- ina. cessor, was long — it was also memorable. It extended to thirty-seven years — from 688 to 726. Ina added the wis- dom of the legislator to his genius and courage as a military chief. He, too, ended his days as a religious pilgrim in Rome. His subjects, who appear to have grown impatient of his sway, were now left to reap as they had sown. They had embittered the latter days of a good king, and many long years of disorder and suffering awaited them. The succession to the throne was disputed. Their enemies, es- pecially the Britons, availed themselves of the season of weakness to make injurious inroads upon their territory. The successive reigns of Ethelheard, Cuthred, Sigebyrcht, Cynewulf, and Brittric give us alternations of success and defeat in wars against the Mercians and the Britons, with the too common admixture of deeds of treachery and mur- der. Of Brittric' we only know that he was chosen by the Wessex thanes as successor to Cynewulf; that at first he had a competitor in Egbert, who, after fifteen years of exile, was to be his successor ; and that he met his death by drinking from a poisoned cup wdiich his queen had prepared for a young nobleman, of whose place in the affections of the king she had become jealous. This queen was Eadbur- ga, a daughter of Offa. 124 SAXONS AND DANES. BOOK II. Chap. 3. Accession of Egbert. Extent of bis autho- rity. England not design- ed for an Heptarchy. On the death of Brittric, Egbert was the only surviving descendant of Cerdic, the founder of Wessex. His claim to the throne was undisputed. His years of exile had been to him years of education. Under Charlemagne he became proficient in matters of war and government. The early years of his reign were wisely employed in improving the condition of his people, and in consolidating his power. Subsequently he extended his conquests into Wales, and the western counties of England. The Britons in those ter- ritories had never been so far subdued.* But it was not until more than twenty years after his accession that Egbert ventured to attack the Mercians. The East Anglians urged him strongly to this enterprise. They still remembered the murder of their young king Ethelbert, and longed to see a fitting vengeance descend on the power which they viewed as stained with his blood. The victory of Egbert over Beornwulf of Mercia, in 823, enabled him to assert his sov- ereignty over the East Saxons, Kent, and East Anglia. Sussex was already a part of Wessex. It only remained that Northumbria should acknowledge his supremacy. In 828 that acknowledgment was extorted without an appeal to the sword. Egbert thus became the eighth Bretwalda, or, as some have designated him, the first king of all England. Separate states had their kings under Egbert, as under those who had borne the title of Bretwalda before him. But from Cerdic, through Egbert, all the dynasties to which England has been subject have claimed to be descended. It is this fact, as much as his high authority, that has made the name of Egbert a landmark in English history, f So we see a century and a half pass away between the death of the seventh Bretwalda and the appearance of the eighth. But the power of Egbert, as Ave have intimated, was much greater than that of his predecessors, and gave better promise of continuance. "With him the title of Bretwalda * ' The same year Egbert laid waste West Wales from eastward to westward.' — Chron. Sac. ad an. 813. \ Chron. Sax. a.d. 4S8-S2Y. ' This Egbert,' says the chronicler, ' was the eighth king of the English nation who ruled over all the southern provinces, and those which are separated from the north by the Humber,' a.d. 827. Ethelwerd, ii. 9, 10, 12, 13-20. Flor. Wigorn. a.d. 672 et seq. Lappenberg, Hist. Eng. i. 251. Mackintosh, Hist. Eng. EISE OF TIIE ENGLISH MONAECHY — EGBERT. 125 was a reality. Experience must often have suggested that b ° h °k n. this subdivision of territory, in a country which left no one state any strong natural means of defence against another, must be inseparable from much inquietude and suffering. Over the space of more than three centuries the same evils had been constantly arising from this source. The history of the Heptarchy had been in fact the history of a struggle for the mastery. In time, the master would be sure to come, and the more advanced civilization of "Wessex, together with its closer relation to the continent, seemed clearly to point to that kingdom as the seat of the future sovereignty. Even the ravages of the Danes, while they tended rather to dis- tract and weaken the several states than to unite them, operated favourably for Wessex, inasmuch as they fell in their greatest weight upon its rivals. But, beside the calamities which came from the frequent Evils from n i i • rn • it -i an elective wars of the different states with each other, there were monarchy. others, hardly less considerable, arising from the custom which made the monarchy in all those states in a great measure elective. The successor to the vacant throne was generally sought in the family of the deceased king. But the nearest of kin did not always succeed if not otherwise eligible. If of tender years, or of deficient capacity, the claim of an elder son might give place to that of a younger, or even to that of some collateral branch of the family. Hence, on the death of a king, there was often room for the question, who should succeed him ? Even in anticipa- tion of that event, factions were formed, intrigues were rife, and much mischief ensued even when the competitors did not proceed to the length of settling their differences by the sword. But there were strong reasons urged in favour of ^ytje ° ~ right of suc- this custom, notwithstanding these grave consequences at- cessi ° 1 } ^ as tendant upon it. It should be remembered that this usage, and the ideas and feelings on which it was based, were essentially German. Our rude Saxon ancestors were not men to change their customs suddenly. It would require a considerably advanced state of civilization to enable them to see the advantages and the possibility of a wider unity, 126 SAXONS AND DANES. so as to be willing to make the partial sacrifices necessary to secure that more general object. In their circumstances, they were not only likely to adhere to their separate organ- izations, but it was in the highest degree expedient that the right of succession should be left in this measure open. Everything seemed to depend on the character of the man at the head of their affairs. Hence, when the next in suc- cession was deemed incompetent, he might be superseded by the next, or by some remote kinsman. From these causes, the isolations of the Heptarchy, and the uncertain- ties of succession, would stand or fall together, and it is hard to say how much longer they would have continued to im- pede the general interest of the Germanic settlers in Britain, if new influences, supplying new motives, had not come into action. One of these influences we find in the Northman inva- sions. That event put an end to international feud, if it did not produce unity ; and, as we have said, favoured the rising power of Wessex. Another event, tending to the same result, we see in the introduction of Christianity. In the Christianity embraced by the Anglo-Saxons the Roman ele- ment was predominant, and that was in all respects an ele- ment of centralization. The civil law of Rome, and the ecclesiastical law which had long been growing up beside it, did everything by means of a strong centralized power. Theodore, a Greek, who came early to the see of Canter- bury, was intent on bringing all the churches of the Heptarchy under one scheme of discipline, so as out of them all to con- stitute in reality one church. Such an ignoring of the civil barriers by which each state was separated from the rest, was a strong anticipation of the time when all those states should constitute one kingdom. Wilfrid, bishop of York, a Saxon, filled the Heptarchy with disputes for more than forty years by his zeal for two objects ; first, to secure a strict uniformity in the religious observances of the churches in the different states ; and then to connect them all, as branches of one great national church, with the see of Rome. Men so earnest in working out such a policy, de- clared plainly that the monarchy over these churches which KISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY EGBERT. 127 in their mind was the most expedient, was not a sevenfold B ° 0K J 1 - . 1 Chap. 8. monarchy, with its endless strifes, but a central power, that should be strong in its great principle of unity. How the impediments in the way of this consummation in the time of Egbert were subsequently removed will appear in the next chapter. CHAPTER IV. EISE OF THE EXGLISII MONAKCHY ATHELSTAN. WE have seen, that during several centuries, neither the Britons on the one hand, nor the Picts and Scots, on the other, had been sufficiently formidable as antagonists to dispose the Anglo-Saxon states towards any combined course of action from a sense of common danger. But another cause of this indisposition towards union may be found where it has not hitherto been sought — viz., in the geographical positions of the several states of the Heptarchy towards each other. These positions were such as to fence off the whole border-land, both of the Welsh and of the Scots ; and each of the great Saxon states bordering on those bad neighbours judged itself competent to deal with its own foes along its own line of territory, and was dis- posed to content itself with that wardenship as being prop- erly its own. We read nothing accordingly of allied forces as carrying on the wars of the Wessex men westward, or of the Northumbrian men northward. Nor do we find the men of Mercia, whose lands lay between these two, acting at any time with either. The smaller states of the Hep- tarchy — Kent, Sussex, Essex, and East Anglia — were shut off, as we have shown, both from the Britons and the Scots, by the strong curved belt formed by the three greater states, Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex. No force from "Wales or Scotland could reach those lesser states without passing through the territory of these greater states. It was, in con- sequence, from the three more powerful Saxon states, and not from the Celt, either in the west or in the north, that RISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY ATHELSTAN. 129 the four lesser states of the Heptarchy had to apprehend bo°^ ii. danger. But a new foe is now about to assail both the greater Novelty of the danger and the smaller kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon Britain. This fr°m the foe is one who will seem to become only the more formida- ble the more he is resisted. He will necessitate a suspension of feuds. He will baffle in no small degree the best con- centrated means that can be directed against him. The enemy in this case, is a maritime enemy, and the sea-board of Britain is of great extent. The points of danger accord- ingly are many, and widely apart, and seem to require that the means of defence should be widely diffused. The great want of the exigency, accordingly, must be the want of confederation, and united action. But, from the nature of the attacks to J)e repelled, such action will be extremely difficult to realize. Every local force will be naturally disposed to look to its local interests and dangers. War between one Saxon state and another may come to an end, but combined operation for their common security will still be hard to accomplish. Had the concentration of the sov- ereignty in Anglo-Saxon Britain been realized earlier, the new invader might have experienced such a reception as would have taught him to seek his booty or his home else- where. But the English monarchy had barely come into existence, when it became exposed to dangers that would have tasked its resources to the utmost had it been old and consolidated. The power which was to pros- trate everything in France, might well prove formidable to the Saxons in Britain. Of the skill which experience gives in working from a centre, our ancestors of those days knew little ; and the intelligence and virtue necessary to subordinate the local to the general, prejudice to patriotism, was, as may be supposed, in a great degree wanting. Under the year 787 the Saxon Chronicle records the First de- „ _j ', , . - 1 n-nn T-in scent of the marriage ot Bnttric, the predecessor ot Egbert, to Eadburga, Danes. the daughter of Offa, and then adds : ' In his days first came three ships of Northmen, out of Hserethaland. * And * Lappenberg says that, by Haerethaland we are, probably, to ' understand Vol. I.— 9 130 SAXONS AND DANES. BOOK II. Chap. 4. Country of the North- men — aim of their in- cursions. Causes of this move- ment. the reeve rode to the place, and would have driven them to the king's town, because he knew not who they were, and they there slew him. These were the first ships of Danish men which sought the land of the English nation.' The next record of this description was in 794. Under that year we read : ' The Heathens ravaged among the Northumbrians, and plundered Egferth's monastery at Done-mouth ; and there one of their leaders was slain, and also some of their ships were wrecked by a tempest ; and many of them were there drowned, and some came on shore alive, and they were soon slain at the river's mouth.' These are our only notices of the descents of these ' Northmen — Danish men ' — and ' Heathens,' as they are called, before the ac- cession of Egbert. The people thus variously designated .in the earliest notices of them in our annals, were as diversified in origin as the above terms would suggest. The shores of the Baltic, including Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, with their nu- merous islands, formed the country from which they came. What the Saxons had been in the sixth century, the Danes had become, in nearly all respects, in the ninth century — pirates ; but pirates capable of prosecuting their schemes of war and plunder upon a large scale, on the land or on the deep. After the first few experiments, their object in visiting Britain appears to have been to secure a settlement in the country, but a settlement which they seem to have contemplat- ed as to be made, not so much by subduing the natives, as by destroying them. "We know not the causes which prompted the first great Saxon movement. The increase of numbers, the pres- sure of new tribes migrating westward, rival leaderships and convulsions — any, or all of these circumstances, might have contributed to give the stream of races the direction then taken by them. But we are not left so much in un- certainty in regard to the causes which disposed the North- men to direct their course towards Britain, in preference to seekinp; a settlement on shores nearer to their own. The con Hordeland in Norway, famed for its sea-kings, and which, at a later period, sen* forth the unyielding discoverers of Iceland.' — Hist. ii. 12. EISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY — ATHELSTAN. 131 quests of Charlemagne in Germany, and the sternness with book il which he insisted that all subdued by him to the condition of subjects, should profess themselves Christians, opposed a formidable barrier to migration southward. A few years only had intervened since the achievements of Charlemagne, in Germany, when these invaders begin to make their appear- ance in this country. It should be stated, also, that our own aristocratic law of primogeniture was rigorously enforced among those northern hordes. The eldest son inherited the property of his father. The younger sons were left to make acquisitions for themselves by such means as should appear to them expedient. Hence the Corsair life so commonly assumed among that people, and the ease with which a chief of capacity and daring could attract followers to his standard. The ter- rible scourge which came thus into action, passed along the shores of Flanders, Holland, France, and Ireland, and fell with memorable effect on Britain. * In 832 the Danes appeared in the Thames, ravaged the • Isle of Sheppey, and retired unmolested with their spoil. In the year following, an armament of five-and-thirty vessels entered the Dart, and Egbert, after a stubborn engagement, was compelled to leave the enemy master of the field. Two years later, another force landed in Cornwall, and pre- vailed on some of the Cornish Britons to join their ranks. But in the next battle victory was on the side of the Sax- ons. Egbert died the following year. It was now evident that the object of the Danes was to intentions . . . , J , , of the secure a permanent looting m the country, and not simply Danes. to possess themselves of booty. Measures were taken to guard the coast more effectually. Military officers were stationed from place to place, that on the approach of an enemy the armed men of the district might be assem- bled to resist a landing. In the first year of Ethelwulf, who succeeded his father Egbert, three separate armaments appeared off the coast of Britain. The king opposed him- self to one of these, but with what success is unknown. * Mallet's Northern Antiquities. Lappenberg, ii. 10-18, and note by Thorpe. Turner's Anglo-Saxons, i. book iv. c. 1, 2. f Chron. Sax. ad an. 832-836. 132 SAXONS AND DANES. book ii. The force which landed at Southampton was defeated by the men of Hampshire ; but that which landed at Portland pre- vailed against the men of Dorset. The army which made its appearance in Lincolnshire in 838 was more powerful than any that had preceded it. The men who encountered the invaders perished by the sword or in the marshes ; and the enemy ravaged the country at pleasure from the Hum- ber to the Thames. The next year battles were fought, with great loss of life, at Canterbury, Rochester, and near London. In 840 Ethelwulf led his men against a force which had landed from thirty-five ships, but was defeated. The next four years in the Saxon Chronicle are blank ; but under the year 851 we find the following record : This year, Ceorl, the ealdorman, with the men of Devonshire, fought against the heathen men at Wicanbeorg, and there made great slaughter, and got the victory. And the same year king Athelstan, and Ealchere the ealdorman, fought on shipboard, and slew a great number of the enemy at Sandwich in Kent, and took, nine ships, and put the others to flight ; and the heathen men remained for the first time over the winter in Thanet. And the same year came three hundred and fifty ships to the mouth of the Thames, and the crews landed and took Canterbury and London by storm, and put to flight Beorht- wulf, king of the Mercians, with his army, and then went south over the Thame into Surry ; and there king Ethel- wulf and his son Ethelbald, with the army of the "West Saxons, fought against them at Aclea [Ockley], and there made the greatest slaughter among the heathen army that we have heard reported to the present day.' But these partial successes did not free the country from the Northmen. In 853 there was destructive warfare in Thanet between the ' heathen men' on the one side, and the men of Kent and Sussex on the other ; and under the year 855 we find the following significant entry in the Chronicle above cited : ' This year the heathen men for the first time remained over the winter in Sheppey ; and the same year King Ethelwulf gave by charter the tenth of his land throughout the kingdom for the glory of God and his own KISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY ATHELSTAN. 133 eternal salvation. And the same year he went to Home in book ii. great state, and dwelt there twelve months, and then re- — - turned homewards.' The reader would probably think that the king who could be absent from his domain for such a space of time, at such a season, and on such an errand, was not inaptly described by Malmesbury, as a man more fitted to wear a cowl, than to wield a sceptre.* Ethelwulf died two years after his return from Home. Ethelbald and Ethelbert, sons of Ethelwulf, had distin- guished themselves in the resistance made to the Danes, and had given an appearance of vigour to the reign of their father which the king himself could never have imparted to it. But history gives us no account of the military achieve- ments of these princes during the short period of their sove- reignty. Ethelbald reigned two years only ; Ethelbert died in 865, having reigned five years. Ethelbert was succeeded by Ethelred, the third of the sons of Ethel- wulf. It is from the accession of Ethelred to the throne of Wes- Accession of Ethelred, sex, at a time when so much was expected from Wessex bv brother »f ' i i i Alfred. the other states, that we have to date the most terrible suc- cesses and devastations of the Northmen. The struggle now becomes national. The question now to be decided is, whether the Dane or the Saxon is to be the future possessor of England. From the armaments of the invader, it is clear that the object of his enterprise is thus large. The Saxons were now made to feel that the danger affected all, and could be resisted only by a union embracing all. But the history of the ravages which become so wide-spread from this time has some antecedents that should be men- tioned. In the last year of Ethelbert the Danes made a descent storyof on Northumbria. That kingdom had assumed a sort of in- Lodbrog. dependence since the death of Egbert ; and at this time two chiefs, Osbert and Ella, had filled it with dissensions, * Dr. Lingard {Hist. i. 211 et seq.) takes exception to this censure of Malmes- bury, and to soften the reproach cast upon Ethelwulf, and on the superstitious influences which made him what he was, the historian has represented the danger from the Northmen in this reign as much less than we know it to have been. — Chron. Sax. Asser, Vita Alfred. 134: SAXONS AND DANES. £0°^ i r - as competitors for rule. Ella at once turned his arms ' against the Northmen, defeated them, and made their leader prisoner. It proved that these depredators were only a remnant of a much larger gathering, whose point of desti- nation had been the coast of Britain. But many vessels had been wrecked ; and the chief who had been captured, was found to be no other than Ragnar Lodbrog, a man whose deeds had made his name the terror of every coast from the Baltic to Ireland. Twenty years since he had ascended the Seine, made himself master of Paris, and surrendered it to the Franks on condition of receiving 7000 pounds of silver as the price of its ransom. Ella doomed the veteran ma- rauder to death. He was cast into a dungeon of venomous snakes ; and the poetry of his people describes him as con- soling himself in his suffering by predicting that the ' cubs' — meaning his sons — would take good recompense for the loss of the ' boar.' * Enterprise Tliis was in 865. In the next year Inguar and Ubbo, of Inguar ^ ° and ubbo. sons of Ragnar, found themselves at the head of twenty thousand men, who were ready to share the fortunes of their chiefs, and to avenge the fat e of their father. The arma- ment appears to have been driven past the coast of North- umbria by unfavourable winds. But a landing was se- cured without opposition on the neighbour coast of East Anglia. This army, great as it may seem, was not deemed equal to the object contemplated. The winter of 866-7 was in great part occupied in securing reinforcements, in collecting horses for cavalry, and in attempting to sow disunion among the natives. In February, the invaders began their march towards Northumbria, and in a fortnight they had fixed their head- quarters in York. Osbert and Ella, laying aside their dif- ferences, joined in an attack upon the enemy in the neigh- bourhood of that city. The onset was in favour of the as- sailants ; but in the fight within the city the courage of the Northmen became desperate, Osbert and the most distin- guished of his followers were slain, and it was the fate of * Asser, Vita Alf. Chron. Sax. Saxo Grammat. 176. Turner's Anglo- Saxons, book iv. c. 3. EISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY — ATIIELSTAN. 135 Ella to fall alive into tlie hand of the sons of Ragnar. His B o° K ?• ° Cuap. 4. ribs were severed, his lnngs were torn through the crevice thus made, and salt was thrown on the wounds. This kind of death, horrible as it may seem, was not uncommon among the Northmen. From that day England north of the Humber may be said to have been subdued. An army was stationed at York to secure the possession, and to protect in some meas- ure the industry of the country ; while a second, and a much larger army, directed its way southward. But at Nottingham the progress of this force was The check ° at Nottin"- checked. The army opposed to it was one of great strength, ham. It was led by the king of Mercia, and by Ethelred and his brother Alfred, from "Wessex. The Northmen shrank from the hazard of an engagement, and surrendered the place on condition of being allowed to retrace their steps northward. The Danes from Nottingham then rejoined their country- men at York.* But the check thus given to the enemy was transient. The three years which followed before the accession of Alfred to the throne of Wessex, were years of memorable calamity to the people of Saxon Britain. Inguar, re- nowned for his far-seeing craft, and Ubbo, no less renowned for his ferocious bravery, led their forces, without opposi- tion, through Mercia into East Anglia. Another horde of adventurers, in the meantime, landed at Lindsey in Lincoln- shire, who possessed themselves of the rich monastery of Bardeney, plundered it, razed it to the ground, and put all the inmates to the sword, f In the absence of Burhed, the king of Mercia, who chose Battle of to be otherwise employed, Algar, a young ealdorman, cele- brated for his patriotism and courage, is said to have sum- moned the bolder men of the marshes to his standard. Many obeyed his call, even monks are described as ex- changing the cowl for the helmet, and as resolved to defend their Christian homes to the last against the merciless pagans. Tolius, a lay brother of high military reputation, * Chron. Sax. Asser. Snorrc, 108. Pet. Olaus, 111. f Sax. Chron. Asser. 136 SAXONS AND DANES. ^n^p I 1 ' ^ e< ^ tne con tingent of this description from the Abbey of Croyland. The chivalrous men thus brought together faced the enemy at a place called Kesteven. In the desperate encounter on that spot three Danish kings were slain, and Algar and his followers chased the Danes to the entrance of their camp. Kight then came on. In the morning came the alarming tidings that five kings and five jarls had reached the Danish camp during the night. Three-fourths of Algar's men now deemed their condition hopeless, and fled. But the small band left took the sacrament from the ecclesiastics, now their companions in arms, and resolved to oppose themselves to the last to the odds against them. The Danes buried their slaughtered kings, and then sharpened their weapons for the revenge to follow. But the wings and centre of the Saxons were found to be immo- vable. So well had they chosen their position, and such was their steady bravery, that through the whole day they defended themselves against showers of arrows, and the hea- vy s\v< >rds of their assailants. Towards evening the Danes feigned a retreat. Algar had cautioned his men against this stratagem. But it was in vain. They descended in chase of the foe — and then began the carnage. For now they were encompassed by numbers, and the Saxons fell on every side. Algar and Tolius, indeed, with a few faithful adherents, regained the hill-side, and there kept the enemy at bay, until, covered with wounds, their bodies were added to the heaps of the slain. The few youths who gave report of this tragedy to the monks of Croyland, were the only survivors. jestrnctivo From that battle-field the ' heathen army ' might be larch of J ° iic Danes, tracked by the conflagrations which marked its way. The wealthy abbeys of Croyland and Medeshamstede were de- stroyed, and no lives that could be reached were spared. The head of the abbot of Croyland was struck ofl on the steps of the altar. In storming Medeshamstede a son of Bagnar was wounded ; and, to avenge it, Ubbo, his brother, is said to have inflicted the death-wound on the abbot and eighty monks with his own hand. Huntingdon and Ely shared the fate of the places above named. The nuns of RISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY — ATHELSTAN. 137 Ely, who were many of them from wealthy and noble fam- book il ilies, suffered indignities worse than death. Thetford was the next place taken, and that also was given to the flames. The good king Edmund opposed them in vain, and met a Martyrdom martyr's death at their hands. The name of St. Edmund Edmund. stands hiffh in the Roman calendar in after ages. East An- ts o glia now ceased to be a Christian state. The pagan leader Guthorm claimed it as his own. Mercia had shown nothing of its ancient prowess in this hour of trial. It rested with the West Saxons to determine the race and the faith that should obtain in the future of Britain.* We have said that the Northmen now invaded Britain The East- Anglian in such numbers as to show that their obiect was not so Da ? e ?i n - much transient plunder as a settlement. But no country sex - could be productive under such masters. "With them, to possess was to impoverish. Moreover, their restless and rov- ing habits, after a short interval of quiet, often became too strong to be controlled by their new resolutions. Nor was it possible that they should be without some sense of dan- ger, so long as a large portion of the country remained in the hands of a people who might possibly become strong, and who would not fail to be intensely disposed to use their strength in avenging the wrongs of the past. Some of these barbarian hordes, accordingly, having secured their booty, returned for a season to their homes ; while others, who might have been expected to settle in the acquisitions they had made, are found seeking new excitement in new adventures. Under such influences, in the early part of the year 871, a large division of the ' heathen army ' in East Anglia di- rected their course towards the lands of the "West Saxons. This army was led by the two kings Bagseg and TIalfdene, * That the Danes marched over the territory above named, and left upon it the terrible traces of their presence, we learn from the Saxon Chronicle, Asser, and other sources. But for the particulars concerning Algar, and the battle of Kesteven, we are indebted to the more doubtful authority of the history attrib- uted to Ingulf. I am disposed, however, on many grounds, rather to credit than distrust that narrative in this instance. It describes nothing which is not charac- teristic of the historical personages named, and of the struggle generally between the belligerents. In this case there was nothing to be gained by invention, and the substance of the narrative is certainly truthful. 133 SAXONS AND DANES. BOOK II. Chap. 4. Battle of Beading. Battle of Ashdune. by Guthorm, by two distinguislied chiefs named Sidroc, and by the jarls — or earls — Osbearn, Frene, and Harald. They ascended the Thames in their ships, and sending off detachments in different directions, overran the coast-lands and the south provinces of the "West Saxon territory in great multitudes. The main division penetrated as far as Read- ing, in Berkshire, and made themselves masters of that place, as a favourable point from which to convey their plunder by means of the river to the sea. On the third day after their arrival, a part of this divi- sion mounted their horses, and sallied forth into the country in search of spoil. The other part remained in the town, and occupied themselves in strengthening its fortifications. The men of Wessex had not expected such visitors at so early a season. But Ethelwulf, an ealdorman of that dis- trict, called all possessed of arms in his neighbourhood to- gether, and determined to attack the marauders before they should rejoin their confederates at Reading. lie met them at a place called Englafield. In the resolute encounter which followed, one of the jarls was slain, and the rest were put to flight." Four days later, king Ethelred and his brother Alfred appeared before the walls of Reading. The Danes were slow to accept the challenge thus given to them. But while the Saxons were busy in forming an encampment, the ene- my rushed forth upon them, and took them by surprise. The battle which ensued was obstinate. The prospect of victory changed for some time from side to side. In the end the heathen men prevailed, and the body of the brave ealdorman Ethelwulf was among those who had fallen, f Enough, however, had taken place to show that the men of Wessex were likely to furnish much graver employment to their enemies than had been imposed upon them in the other Saxon states.;}: Four days only had passed when Ethelred and Alfred were again prepared to take the field. Their place of meeting was Ashdune (or Aston) in Berkshire. The battle on that spot was a real trial of strength. The * Chron. Sax. 871. Asser, Vit. Alf. \ Chron. Sax. a.d. 871. Asser, Vita Alf % Ibid. KISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY — ATHELSTAN. 139 Danes felt that it became them to avail themselves of every B °°^ Im- possible advantage. The position they had taken was on an eminence, crowned with a short thick underwood, from which, as a kind of breastwork, it would be easy to gall the Saxons in attempting to reach the summit. Alfred was early at the foot of the hill, and prompt in his preparations for the fray. But Ethelred was at mass, and though ap- prised that the moment for action had come, refused to move until the last word should be pronounced by the priest. The king should have given the order for battle, but Alfred, having waited until waiting longer became perilous, raised the signal, and speedily the weapons of his followers were in full play upon the enemy. The fight became stubborn — destructive — hand to hand. Ethelred soon joined his divi- sion, and charged boldly on the men under the kings Bag- seg and Halfdene. Brave deeds were done by the North- men on that day, but braver by the Saxons. At length the former began to waver, the Saxons rushed on with new courage, and the slaughter which ensued is described by an- cient writers as the greatest England had ever witnessed. Ethelred slew the king Bagseg with his own hand. Among the dead were the two Sidrocs, the three jarls Osbearn, Frene, and Harald, with many more who were accounted the flower and hope of the Northmen. The Saxons chased the fugitives from Aston to Reading, strewing the whole way with the slain.* But the calamity of these times was, that to sweep off these barbarians on any scale seemed to be to little pur- pose. The void of to-day was filled up with swarms of new-comers to-morrow. The hive which sent them forth seemed to be inexhaustible. Thus, within a few weeks af- ter the battle of Ashdune, came another at Basing in Hamp- shire, and another at Merton, near to Ashdune. In these engagements the West Saxons acquitted themselves with their wonted ability and courage ; but many of the bravest among them fell, and the enemy, though in neither case a victor, in both cases, to use the language of the old chroni- cle, ' kept the place of carnage.' It was at this juncture of * Asser, a.d. 871. Chron. Sax. 140 SAXONS AND DANES. BOOK II. Chap. 4. Accession Of Alfred. Increased power of the Danes. affairs that Ethelred breathed his last — whether from wounds or natural causes is uncertain. His conduct on the whole had been such as to entitle him to the esteem and affection of his subjects. It is in such circumstances that Alfred, since known as the ' great,' comes to the possession of king- ly power.* The character and reign of Alfred have many claims to our attention. Our concern in this place is simply with the military events of his career, and their result. The sons of Ethelred were children ; and there was much in the past, and everything in the present, to prepare men for seeing in Alfred the natural successor to the throne. In place of the court pageants usual on an accession, the scenes awaiting the new king were such as menaced every- thing most valued by himself and his subjects. The strife before them was deadly, its issue to the last degree doubtful. Soon after the battle of Merton, strong reinforcements join- ed the army at Reading. Bolder incursions were made into the neighbouring country. "Weeks passed and Alfred found it impossible to raise an army capable of meeting such an enemy. His loss from the odds opposed to him at Wilton added to the discouragement of his subjects, and to the sense of weakness which weighed at this time on his own spirit. In twelve months, eight regular engagements had taken place, besides almost incessant skirmishing. Great had been the losses of the Northmen, but great also had been the losses of the king. In the meanwhile Alfred's sup- plies of men, expert in the use of the weapons of war, did not keep pace with those of his enemies ; nor was he at liberty to resort to plunder to replenish his exchequer. The issue was, that in the first year of his reign he consented, along with his thanes, to buy off the invaders. But it soon be- came known that all such compacts with that people were worse than useless. The Mercians had tried the expedient. It impoverished them without giving them the promised se- curity. In 874 that once powerful kingdom ceased to exist. In that year, Burhed, its last king, sought an asylum in Rome. One Ceolwulf was set up by the Danes in his * Asser, 21-24. Chron. Sax. a.d. 871. Flor. Wigorn. KISE OF THE ENGLISH MONAKCHY — ATHELSTAN. 141 stead, but was used, as the Romans often used such men, as B ° 0K n - . . -, Chap. 4. a tool to bear the odium of their own extortions. Many of the Danes now settled in that country, and gave names to the localities of their choice which have descended to our times.* From 875 to 878 the gloom thickened over Anglo-Sax- on Britain. The old districts being exhausted, the pirate hordes began the exploring of new ground. A second ef- fort was made to bribe them to a distance, and to bind them by special means to their promise ; but the same per- fidy followed. They possessed themselves of Wareham and Exeter, as places of strength, and places whence they might readily descend to the sea with such spoil as they should obtain. Durinsr these troubled years, however, the naval history Alfred o •/ • » i i raises a of England may be said to have commenced. Alfred built fleet - or collected a number of ships, manned them with brave seamen, and by this means destroyed the greater part of a Danish fleet, which had been driven by foul weather on the coast of Dorset. This was in 877. The armament thus scattered or annihilated, was destined for the relief of Exeter. The besieged, seeing no chance of succour, capitulated, giv- ing hostages to abstain from further hostilities in "Wessex. But, reaching Gloucester, they renewed the work of pillage and destruction. The impoverished condition to which they had reduced all the Saxon kingdoms, prompted the banditti which now covered the land, to explore the barren homes of the Welsh, and of the Picts and Scots. But that proved a bootless errand. The last effort made at this crisis against these sons of the destroyer, was at Kynwith, where a feeble garrison resisted a rigorous siege, and surprising the besieg- ers in a sally, destroyed more than a thousand of them. And now the time had come in which the high spirit of the Saxon race appeared to have forsaken them. Many fled with such moveables as they could take with them to other countries ; the rest seem to have learned to look on their unhappy condition as a destiny, and to submit.f *„Chron. Sax. a.d. 871-8'74. Asser, 24-26. f Chron. Sax. a.d. 873-877. Asser, 24-29. 142 SAXONS AND DANES. BOOK II. Chap. 4. The lowest, stage of dis- order and depression. Alfred leaves his retreat. Popular feeling is ever liable to these alternations. Its excesses in elevation and depression come from the same cause. To yield to the pressure of the many, whether for good or evil, is natural to man. Where all seem to obey, it is hard for the individual to resist, But there are some noble natures to whom such self-sustaining power is given, and who can hope where hope seems to have forsaken all beside. Alfred the king was one of these. He might have gathered his staff together, and have found high mili- tary service in other lands ; or he might have journeyed as a pilgrim to that old Rome upon whose shrines he had gazed in his boyhood. In that case, what would have been the future of English history ? The old northern paganism — which the Saxon had abandoned — would have again become ascendant. The religion of the Cross would probably have ceased. The barbaric customs of Scandinavia would have found a new home in Britain. The near prospect of that powerful English monarchy, towards which so many in- fluences had seemed to be converging, would have vanished. This island might have become, and have long continued, the great rendezvous of sea-kings — the base from which they would have gone forth to spread their devastations, super- stitions, and barbarisms over the fairest provinces of Europe. Alfred could believe that this was not to be. He could have faith in God. To prevent such calamity, he could watch his last watch, offer his last prayer, do his last pos- sible deed. It is clear that he must have thought it pos- sible that even from this state of things there might be a return, and that it behoved him to be vigilant, patient, and ready. The selfish did not rule in this man — but the hu- mane, the patriotic, the religious ; and he has his reward. The seeds of the coming England were in that great heart ; though its ground-spring of action, we can readily suppose, was a simple sense of duty. During the winter of 877-8 the king concealed himself among the woods and lowlands of Somersetshire. Miser- able was the shelter there found, and difficult often was it to obtain the poorest means of subsistence for himself and his few faithful followers. But with the new life of the RISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY ATHELSTAN". 143 spring-time came new hope to the fugitives. We meddle £ 00K * L not now with the traditionary or the doubtful. Suffice it to say, that in the spring of 878 Alfred quitted his retreat at Athelney, and called the faithful men of the district to his standard, and that he soon found himself surrounded by a brave and loyal host, who gazed upon their king as upon one who had been dead and was alive again. Some weeks passed in collecting greater numbers, in severe military ex- ercises, and in some successful skirmishing. "Wilts and Hants, as well as Somerset, sent their supplies of men and means. The head-quarters of the Danes was at Chippenham. ^" a j u °^ e Alfred marched in that direction. But the place where the two armies met was Ethadune, probably Edington, near Westbury, in Wiltshire. The White Horse on the side of Edington Hill, seen at different points to a distance of many miles across the vale beneath, is still recognized by the traveller as commemorative of the death-struggle which once raged on that eminence. The conflict was desperate on the part of the Danes, but decisive on the side of the Saxons. The Northmen were chased from that high border of Salisbury Plain, down the slope towards Chippenham, and no quarter was given. Chippenham itself was besieged, and after fourteen days was compelled to capitulate. The veteran Guthorm, the commander of the Danes in that place, some weeks later, professed himself a Christian. His chiefs for the most part followed his example. Alfred himself stood sponsor for his old enemy, and, though the passions of the past returned upon him at times with great force, and rendered him still in some degree unfaithful to the trust reposed in him, Guthorm ended his days in com- parative tranquillity, as the possessor of East Anglia, and still adhering to his new faith. Before his decease, the heathenism he had introduced had nearly disappeared.* Alfred deemed it wise to favour the disposition of the Alfred's Danes to remain in the land, stipulating, however, as the Guthorm. condition, that they should conform themselves to the order and habits of settled and civilized communities. He ap- * Chron. Sax. a.d. 878. Asser, 31 et seq. 144 SAXONS AND DANES. Effects of the wars with the. Dunes. book ii. pears to have thought that men so acquiring a home in the country, would come by degrees to have their own motives for resisting further invasion ; and that mixing gradually with the Saxons, they would contribute to the stability of the throne, and to the future unity and progress of the nation. The mischiefs of this policy were great, but possibly those of a contrary course would have been greater. We have seen that the invasions of the Northmen began to be formidable in the reign of Egbert. The battle of Ethadune brought eighty years of war and destruction to a temporary close.* Great was the check given to all things condncive to social progress by these devastations. The previous wars of the Eeptarchy, frequent and pregnant with evil as they were, had not been inconsistent with signs of improvement, both in social and religious life. But on all this the Danish invasions came as the hand of a de- stroyer. One good, however, came out of this wide march of evil. The reconstruction of the Heptarchy was impos- sible. Its machinery had been bo crushed, it> elements had been so consumed, that no one could hope to succeed in attempting to replace it, or anything resembling it. North- umbria, partly from the ravages of the Northmen, and partly from its own dissensions, had almost ceased to Ik 1 a kingdom. The same was still more true of Mercia. Wis- sex, with its race of Cerdic represented in Alfred, became the destined centre' of unity for the coming time. The natural course of the smaller eastern states was, that they should avail themselves of the safety which the weak may derive from their friendly relations to the strong. The years of pence which Alfred had won by successful war, were sedulously and wisely employed in adding to the military strength of his dominions. Mercia he had assigned to the able oversight of the ealdorman Ethelred, his son-in- law. The "Welsh princes readily acknowledged his author- ity ; and the East Anglian and Northumbrian Danes were, in effect, if not in form, subject to it.f * The arms of the Northmen were now turned mainly towards France. Ckron. Sax. a.d. 881-887. f Asser, 36 et seq. Chron. Sax. a.d. 886, 894. Alfred's precautions. KISE OF THE ENGLISH MONAKCHY — ATHELSTAN. 145 Nothing less than the precaution thus taken could have B ° OK n - ° l Chap. 4. saved the kingdom from the hands of the Northmen to- m - — ° The mva- wards the close of the reign of Alfred. Hastings, a Danish ?i (,1 \ . under ~ o ' _ Hastincs. chief who had traversed Gaul and other countries almost at pleasure during the last forty years, resolved in 893 to at- tempt the establishment of a kingdom for himself in Brit- ain. His armaments were commensurate with his design. One fleet of eighty ships, conducted by Hastings himself, ascended the Swale, and took up its position on the north- ern coast of Kent ; the other, consisting of two hundred and fifty ships, landed its warriors on the south coast, near the point now known as Komney Marsh. Alfred took posses- sion of a high ground between these opposite points, and brought so much sagacity to his plans, that the movements of his antagonists, expert and treacherous as they proved, were thoroughly counter-worked. Baffled and scattered, they succeeded in making their devastations visible in widely distant parts of the island ; but their great scheme,, after three years of toil, frustration, and. loss, ended in fail- ure. The Northumbrian and East Anglian Danes became so far the partisans of Hastings as to suggest the expediency of measures that should secure a less doubtful allegiance from that quarter. Guthorm was now dead ; and Hastings subsequently found his home in the city of Chartres, the adjacent territory being ceded to him, on certain feudal con- ditions, by Charles the Simple.* In England, the Danes were now the dangerous element. K a i? ns O > o better or- Not a few of them had learnt to live peaceably ; but it was f^an tho evident that their old propensities were so strong in others Danes- as to dispose them to join almost any standard which prom- ised them a greater measure of independence and licence. "With regard to organization and government, however, the Danes were in the ninth century very much wkat the Sax- ons had been in the fifth and sixth centuries. Experience had made them familiar with the action of small confeder- acies. Combined action on a large scale they had to learn as time and circumstances only could teach them. On this * Chron. Sax. a.d. 894, 895. Asser. Ethelwerd. Flor. Wigorn. ad an. 893, 894. Vol. I.— 10 UG SAXOXS AND DANES. Power of Edward and of Athelstan Invasion under Anlaff. Battle of Brunan- burgh. B c°ha? i L mate rial point the education of the Anglo-Saxons, as forced upon them by the events of the last fonr centuries, gave them a decided advantage. Under Edward, the son and successor of Alfred, the Anglo-Saxons availed themselves of this advantage with much effect. Before his death in 924, Edward had fully subdued the disaffected in the East Anglian states and in Northumbria, had annexed Mercia formally to Wessex, and was the acknowledged sovereign of a larger territory than had owned the authority of the most fortunate of his predecessors.* But if the authority of Edward exceeded that of the most potent among his precursors, the authority of Athelstan, who next ascended the throne of Cerdic, was still more weighty and extended. He asserted his sove- reignty, and with success, over Nortlmmbria. He taught the Britons of Wales and Cornwall the expediency of sub- mission. Even the king of Scotland was among his depend- ents. Great, however^ as was this power of Athelstan, a crisis came in which he needed all his resources. He had given his daughter Editha in marriage to a Northman named Sightric, who had come to be possessed of a kind of roy- alty over Northumbria. Sightric died within a year after his marriage and his baptism. Athelstan then seized on Northumbria in right of his daughter. But Anlaff, one of the sons of Sightric, was not disposed to submit to this summary proceeding. He fled before the power of Athel- stan at the time. But about ten years later he appeared in the Humber as the commander of a fleet consisting of more than six hundred vessels. The warriors in this confedera- tion were mostly sea-kings and their followers, but ulti- mately the army included many Northumbrian Danes, with larger contingents from the Scots and the Britons. The two armies met at Brunanburgh in ISTorthumbria. The numbers were greater than had been opposed to each other on the same field in British history since the issue of the struggle between the Celts and the Romans. The battle Chron. Sax. a.d. 901-924. Ingulph. 28. RISE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY ATHELSTAN. 147 of Brimanbiirgli raged from morning until evening ; but book il victory was with the Saxons. Anlaff escaped. Among the — - dead were five sea-kings and seven jarls, besides a son of the kino- of Scotland. The issue of that day made Athel- Athcistan p J kins* of all stan truly ' King of England.' Egbert, and even Alfred and England. Edward, ruled England as kings of "Wessex. But the mon- archy of Cerdic now absorbed every other within the limits of the country to which the name of England has since been given. * * Chron. Sax. Malms, de Reg. lib. ii. 26. / CHAPTER V. KISE OF THE DANISH MONAKCHY. B c°°a* 5 L A THELSTAK was succeeded by his half-brother Edmund, Edmiind "^ * nen about eighteen years of age. Edmund had ac- Atheistan quired reputation as a soldier at Brunanburgh. But the &£«£ fear which the genius of Athelstan had inspired having tion ' passed away, the Danes of Xorthumbria invited Anlaff to try his fortune anew in England. The Danes of Mercia, and many in East Anglia, it is said, joined in the revolt. Even Wulfstan, the archbishop of York played the traitor. Edmund encountered the enemy at Tarn worth. The issue there was in favour of the insurgents. The scale, however, soon turned to the other side. The king besieged the rebels in Leicester ; and so menacing were his approaches, that Anlaff and "Wulfstan made their escape by night. The end was, that through the intervention of Odo, archbishop of Canterbury, himself the son of a Dane who had fought against Alfred, Anlaff was permitted to retain the sover- • eignty of the territory north of the Watling Street, and Ed- mund was reconciled to Wulfstan. But Anlaff died soon afterwards ; and the two chiefs, Anlaff and Regnald, who were allowed to divide his territory between them, were finally deprived of their sovereignty by Edmund, who de- clared himself master of Xorthumbria. The policy and the arms of Edmund were at length equally successful in the affairs of Wales and Scotland. * Edmund had reigned six years only when he fell by the dagger of Leof, an outlaw, during a religious festival at * Chron. Sax. a.d. 941-946. Flor. Wigorn. ad an. 924 et seq. Ethelwerd, chap. vi. Malms, de Reg. lib. ii. c. 7. EISE OF THE DANISH MONARCHY. 149 Pucklechurch in Gloucestershire. He left two sons ; but b °ok ii. Cuap. 5. they were young children, and the "Witan chose Ed red his brother to be kina;. Edred was crowned by Archbishop Edred— * x continued Odo at Kingston. As usual, the first trouble of the new inquietude <-> from the sovereign came from the Danes of the northern counties. J 1 ?*™ - O brian The nine years of his reign were almost wholly occupied Danes - in quelling insurrection and faction in that part of his do- minions. But from this time we may date the final subjec- tion of Nbrthumbria. The death of Edred was the result of a disease from which he had suffered so long and so greatly, that the successes of his reign were attributed mainly to the able services of the notorious Dunstan, and to the wisdom of Turketul, the accredited minister of his affairs. * Edwy, the eldest son of Edmund, now became king, f^z His reign is chiefly remarkable from the feud between him P° wer - and the ecclesiastics of his time, especially with Dunstan. But these circumstances belong to the religious history of this period. It must suffice to say in this place, that a reign of two short years in the history of this unhappy prince, was more than enough to show that the time had come in which the civil power attempting to sustain itself in independence of the ecclesiastical, would need to be a power exercised with no ordinary firmness and sagacity, f Before the death of Edwy, Edgar, his younger brother, ? < * gar ~j* , i had taken possession of Mercia. He now became king, and rest - is designated in history as ' the peaceful.' Not that he was incapable of military enterprise, nor that his reign passed away without an unsheathing of the sword. But Edgar, though dissolute enough in his habits, was careful to profit by the experience of his brother, and to make friends of the ecclesiastics. He did much also to conciliate the foreign settlers in Britain, by ceding to them privileges in accord- ance with their national usages. Above all, he raised a powerful navy to guard the shores of his dominions. His ships, divided into several armaments, went forth every spring to protect the coast against further descents from the * Chron. Sax. a.d. 946 et seq. Florence Wigorn. ad an. 955-958. Malms. de Reg. lib. ii. c. 1. f For the Komanist version of the quarrel between Edwy and St. Dunstan see Dr. Lingard ; for a more faithful version of the affair see Lappenberg. 150 SAXONS AND DANES. BOOK II. Chap. 5. Edward the martyr. Etholrod the Un- ready. vessels of the Northmen. The king himself sailed from year to year with them. By this time the most famous of the sea-kings had found settlements in various countries. The north was more quiet than it had been for some genera- tions past. And such adventurers as might be disposed towards new enterprises were taught by these signs of prep- aration to avoid the shores of Britain. Edgar was a man of intelligence and firmness, but as he died when not more than thirty years of age, these measures warrant us in sup- posing that he was influenced in his policy by heads of more experience than his own. In the ballad literature of the time he was lauded as the most powerful king that Eng- land had known. * Edgar left two sons, Edward and Ethelred ; the first thirteen years of age, the second seven. Factions, civil and ecclesiastical, embroiled the commencement of the reign of Edward ' the Martyr.' In this fact, together with his mur der, at the bidding of his step-mother Elfrida, while refresh- ing himself on a hunting excursion at her castle-gate, we possess nearly all we know concerning this ill-fated prince. Corfe Castle became memorable from this deed. Edward was then in the eighteenth year of his age, and the third of his reign, f Ethelred, the son of Elfrida, was now the only remaining prince of the blood. The fact that he was the son of the woman who had murdered his predecessor was felt as a difficulty. But it was not deemed a sufficient ground for pre- cluding him from the throne at the hazard of a civil war. The reign which had thus commenced in crime, is memo- rable for its shame and its disasters. If man could overlook blood-guiltiness, Providence seemed not so to do. The thirty-eight years during which Ethelred was king, are more full of suffering and humiliation than the like inter- val in any other period of English history. The Northmen begin to descend anew on the coast, in greater or smaller numbers, from year to year. After a * Chron. Sax. a.d. 957 et seq. Florence Wigorn. ad an. 960-975. Malms. de Reg. lib. ii. c. 8. There is much in the reign of Edgar that seems to confirm the account in Ingulf of the high capacity and influence of Turketul. \ Chron. Sax. Malms, de Reg. lib. ii. c. 9. RISE OF TIIE DANISH MONARCHY. 151 while, no province, from the Land's End to the Orkneys, B q^ g l or from East Anglia to St. Davids, is found to be secure from their approach. Everywhere they repeat the plunder, the devastation, and the merciless destruction of human life, which had marked the path of their precursors two centu- ries since. In the meanwhile attempts to concentrate the force of the country for its common safety are so feebly prosecuted, and are so easily frustrated by local factions and selfish considerations, that failure follows upon failure in sickening succession. Instances of individual or local courage and self-devotion occur, but end in nothing, from the want of such a central influence as might secure unity by inspiring confidence. The command of such forces as were raised, was entrusted, for the most part, to men who, from their Danish origin, their Danish connexions, or other causes, betray, one after another, the confidence reposed in them ; and, strange to say, are seen rising to new responsi- bilities only to repeat their old treasons. Cruel to the weak, Ethelred was a craven before the strong. Seasons that should have been employed in collecting and marshal- ling the strength of his kingdom, were surrendered to selfish and sensuous indulgence. Too ready was he to believe that the enemy with whom he had to do was one who might be bribed to seek other quarters, or at least into forbearance and quiet as settlers. Large sums were collected for this purpose, from time to time ; but the oaths exacted from the men who received them were forgotten almost as soon as uttered. By this wretched policy Ethelred became a tool in the hands of the enemy, by whose means the plunder of his own subjects was made more easy and effectual than would otherwise have been possible. Twenty-four years had passed since the accession of Massacre oi Ethelred, and the greater part of those years marked by the circumstances above mentioned, when the king resolved on a deed which has covered him with infamy, and which, as might have been foreseen, was to bring heavy retribu- tion in its train. It was no secret that the Saxons regarded the Danes resident among them with distrust and hatred. The relation of these people to the common enemy ; and 152 SAXONS AND DANES. B cm.p "' st *^ more tne ^ act tnat they na d generally shown themselves much more disposed to favour than to repel the invaders, had given a special intensity to the feeling ordinarily sepa- rating race from race.* Ethelred, it would seem, had ceased to expect fidelity from this class of his subjects ; and, to save himself from the machinations of traitors within the camp, he determined that an attempt should be made utterly to destroy them. In the spring of the year 1002 secret orders were issued, that on the approaching religious festival in honour of St. Brice, the Saxons should fall unawares upon the Danes, and put them to death. The orders were kept secret ; and on the appointed day the massacre ensued, the fury of the pop- ulace in many places adding not a little cruelty to the work of destruction. It is supposed that the Danes must have num- bered at this time nearly a third of the inhabitants of Eng- land. "We may be sure, therefore, that this destruction was rather local than general. It has been thought that the Danes whose removal was meditated were those only who, as retainers to the nobles, wore arms, and who had so often turned the arms entrusted to them to traitorous uses. But if such was the limit of the project, in execution it passed beyond those bounds. Where the massacre took place, neither sex nor age was spared. Among the victims was a distinguished Northman named Palig. This man had repaid the bounty of Ethelred by fighting under the stand- ard of his enemies. Palig and his children were all doomed to die. Gunhilda, his wife, was a sister of Sweyn, the great Danish chieftain ; and in submitting with heroic dignity to her fate, after witnessing the death of her husband and her son, she is said to have predicted that all England would have ere long to meet a weighty reckoning for the deeds of that day. f sweyn'sin- Tlie next year Sweyn made his appearance in England at the head of a powerful army. Exeter, through the treachery of its commander, passed into his hands. During * Ulfkytel, the ruler of East Anglia, was the only Dane who, in the language of Malmesbury, ' resisted the invaders with any degree of spirit,' in the reign of Ethelred.— De Reg. lib. ii. c. 10. f Chron. Sax. Florence Wigorn. ad an. 1002. Malms, de Reg. lib. ii. c. 10. vasion. RISE OF THE DANISH MONARCHY. 153 four years, the country, with the exception of some fortified b ° h °k n. places, was wholly at his mercy. Everywhere he came as an avenger — not only to plunder, but to consume by fire, and to cut down with the sword. At the end of the fourth year he consented to leave the island on condition of receiv- ing thirty-six thousand pounds of silver ; and that sum was paid to him. But the army under Sweyn had no sooner departed, than under'aW another, no less ferocious, appeared under Thurchil. This c ' ' chief affected to seek vengeance for the death of a brother, as Sweyn had sought it for the death of a sister. Another three years of unchecked exposure to Danish spoliation and cruelty now awaited the unhappy country. Elphege, the good archbishop of Canterbury, was doomed to see the peo- ple, the town, and the cathedral of Canterbury destroyed by these demons, and then to perish himself by their hands,' from the blows inflicted on him while in their cups. Could he have descended to save his life by paying the price which had been fixed upon it, he might have been spared. Hav- ing ravaged half the kingdom, Thurchil consented to enter the service of Ethelred for the sum of forty-eight thousand pounds. This proposal was accepted, and the greater part of his followers showed a disposition to settle in the country. Swevn had secretly consented to this invasion bv Thur- Second in- 1-1 - in England. most powerful on the eastern side of the hills of Cumberland and Yorkshire, the Britons on the western side. These com- parative numbers, moreover, and these relations to territory, appear to have remained much the same, as regarded the population, amidst all the revolutions of power among those who affected to govern them. The Britons of Cumbria, of Cambria, and of the "West, with their chain of military sta- tions, reaching from the rock of Dumbarton to Mount St. Michael, have left traces of their blood and language along the whole of that distance. The ancient Cumber survives in the modern Cumberland — which means the country of the Cymry, or, as it is sometimes written, the Cumry. From the Clyde to the Dee the Cumry were once the prevalent race. Even the power of Atlielstan was not sufficient to awe them into subjection. They fought against him at Brunanbnrgh — showing, in that instance, as the Britons generally did, a greater disposition to Bide with the Danes than with the Saxons. In the West, extending from Som- erset to Cornwall, the characteristics of the British were gradually effaced by the ascendency, first of the Saxons, and afterwards of the Normans. In Cumbria title same change must be attributed to infusions from the Angles and the Set-, but more especially to an invasion of the province by thc Scandinavians in the tenth century. From the moun- tain- of Wales the descendants of the ancient Cumry have seen their brethren in the west and north melt away in the great stream of mingling populations, while they have themselves retained their old Celtic speech, and their old features of ( leltic nationality. We have seen the extent to which the Danes became possessors of the English territory. In 8TG Halfdene, the Northman, divided Northumbria among his followers, who BOOn became cultivators of the soil which had so fallen to them. The treaty of Alfred with Guthorm placed East Anglia — including ^Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, the Isle of Ely, a portion of Bedfordshire, and parts adjacent — in the hands of that chief, to beholden by him and his descend- ants in subordination to Wessex. Mercia — the territory of the great Offa — became a prey to these invaders, who at NEW DISTKIBUTTONS OF KACE. 165 length gave stability to their acquisitions in that quarter b ? h °k ii. by the power which they concentrated in the Five Danish burgs — viz. Lincoln, ^Nottingham, Derby, Leicester, and Stamford. Some make these burgs to be seven, including York and Chester. So some three-fourths of Anglo-Saxon Britain came to be, in a political sense, and for a time, Danish, the ruling power over that large surface of country having passed into the hands of that people. The Angles, the Britons, and the Scots in those territories were all nu- merous, much more numerous than the Danes ; but the Danes, who found settlements among them, had been suffi- ciently strong to subdue them. We have seen that there were many oscillations of power between these new con- querors and the conquered ; but that the Danes were con- querors to this extent, and possessed such sway, though only for a season, is a fact that must have had much in- fluen e on the future. The policy of Alfred, when he had saved "VVessex, was to cede to the Danes, upon conditions, the territories they had won, and to do all that might be done towards amalgamating the different races into one people. Through all these influences the Danish blood in Ens;- General ° g ° distribution land be ame the most prevalent in East Anglia ; next, along the eastern coast between the Humber and the Forth ; and next, in the midland counties, forming the kingdom of Mercia. In the west, the admixture was between the Sax- ons and the British. In all the lands to the north and north-west, it consisted in a large displacement of the Brit- ish element by the Anglian and Danish. All these facts, it will be seen, related to the position of the Danes in Anglo-Saxon Britain before the accession of Canute. The formidable invasions which immediately pre- ceded that event, and the event itself, of course added much, both in the way of numbers and influence, to the Danish power in this country before the Conquest. During the latter half of the tenth century a powerful N ^ g | aa Norwegian migration appears to have set in, with little j^f^" noise, but with much steadiness and effect, on Cumberland westmore- and the parts adjoining. "We have reason to suppose that 166 SAXONS AND DANES. B cS. "' ^" S m ig rat ion did not pass the Yorkshire hills from the east. Its approach appears to have been by means of the Irish sea, and the Isle of Man, from the west. But so con- siderable was this movement at the time mentioned, that the traces of the Celtic population in those parts in the times which follow, are few and faint, while the traces of the Scan- dinavian, in the names of places and other remains, are still found almost everywhere. The link which had connected the Celts of the hill country of Wales with those of the hill country of Scotland, was thus displaced ; and the blood of the Northmen, either Danes or Saxons, became the domi- nant blood along the whole of the lowlands between the Mersey and the Clyde. Karnes ending in thwaite,* Jyy, and thorp, \ are of very frequent occurrence over that district ; and all these are of Scandinavian origin. But then they mingle freely with names ending in ton, ham, and worth, which are of Saxon origin. So it is over a great part of England : and, though the Saxon and the Danish languages included much in common, the prevalence of such names from the one or the other of those languages in a district, may be taken as a pretty certain indication of the preva- lence of race in that locality before the Conquest.:}: The Northmen who made their descent from the Solway on the shores of Cumberland, were probably of the same stock with those who, about the same time, had secured a footing in Pembrokeshire. The names ~Mi\ford and Haver- ford, can hardly have been of Saxon origin. The localities * ' Thwaite: Norwegian thveit, Danish tved. This is one of the most charac- teristic terms of our district, occurring the most frequently in Cumberland, which has about a hundred names in which it appears; being also very common in Westmoreland, becoming scarce as we advance into Yorkshire, and ceasing alto- gether when we arrive at the more purely Danish district of Lincoln.' — The Northmen in Cumberland and Westmoreland, by Robert Ferguson, 1856. The term thwaite was used to denote a ' clearing,' and occurs most frequently where there was much wood to be cleared. In Norway itself it occurs in some places more than others ; in many instances in our Lake districts, the term and its prefix have been transplanted from the mother country, as the names of places in Eng- land reappear in the United States. •j- By is a termination denoting a dwelling-place, or home, and is more Danish than Norwegian ; the same may be said of thorp, which denotes a village. \ The Cumberland Britons, pressed by the Saxons and Northmen, seem to have retired by degrees into Wales, leaving little trace of themselves behind, except in some Celtic names of places which have survived them. There is noth- ing Celtic among the present inhabitants of the district. NEW DISTRIBUTIONS OF KACE. 167 do not answer to the Saxon use of tlie term ford — but these book ii. " Chap. 6. places are truly described by the Norse word fiord, which denotes an arm of the sea. The word holm, too, applied to the Yl&t-holm and the Steep-holm, in the Bristol Channel, is not the Saxon nor the British, but the Norwegian name for island* It is to be remembered, then, that Saxons and Northmen were related as branches to one parent stem : and, what is more, that the same may be said of the Normans, who were destined to become so blended on our soil with both. But the Northman had come as an intruder on the ground of the Saxon ; and this fact was fatal to the unity that might have enabled them to resist the next invader, to whom they were both to become subject. It is clear that the strength of the Danish element in Anglo-Saxon Britain was great — much greater than is commonly apprehended ; and disas- trous in many respects as was the collision between the two races on our soil, it is probable that the two together fur- nished a better stamina for the England of a later age, than would have been furnished by the Saxon alone. It is not easy to say how much of our passion for the sea, and of our power there, have come from the blood of this later genera- tion of sea-kings who found their home among us. It is cer- tain that our great sea-captains, and our men of genius in all departments, have their full share of Danish names among them. But if the Danish race were to contribute towards our greatness in the end, it is not less certain that they proved a sad impediment to our progress in the be- ginning. It should, however, be distinctly remembered, that the language of England, which was not to become Norman, never became Danish. It is thus manifest that the race which continued to be the most diffused, and the most rooted in the land through all changes was the Anglian or Saxon. At the Conquest, the language spoken in the coun- try contained words from the Latin, more from the Danish, and more than is commonly supposed from the Celtic ; but its forms and its substance were those which had been * The Northmen in Cumberland and Westmoreland, pp. 9, 10. 168 SAXONS AND DANES. book il introduced by tlie three great branches of the migration, the Jutes, the Saxons, and the Angles, and especially by the latter, the destined root of England and of its English- men. * An Account of the Banes and Norwegians in England, Scotland, and Ireland, by E. J. H. Worsaae. London, 1852. 'On the Races of Lancashire, as indicated by the Social Names and the Dialect of the County,' see Proceedings of the Philological Society, 1855. 'English Ethnography,' by Dr. Donaldson, Cambridge Essays, 1856. ' We entirely miss in English,' says Dr. Donaldson, ' any traces of the distinctive peculiarities of the Danish language. We do not find the article postfixed, there are great differences in the numerals, the substan- tive verb follows a different form in the plural, and the peculiar negative particle, ikke, is never used in this island. From this last circumstance alone we feel con- vinced that the Danes exerted only a transitory and limited influence on the lan- guage and national characteristics of our ancestors.' — Ibid. CHAPTER VII. REVOLUTION IN" RELIGION IN ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN. RELIGION in some form is a want of humanity. All book ii. communities accordingly, even the lowest, have their Eel ]^~ a religions. The choice in history is always found to lie, not "herace 7 ° f between any particular religion and no religion, but be- tween one religion and another. Nor is it just to suppose that a religion which may appear to us to be very unreas- onable, can never have been a religion deeply felt, or sin- cerely believed. As a rule, the men who sustain false relig- ions, are as firm believers in the religion they profess, as are the nations who sustain what we hold to be a more true and enlightened faith. Everywhere, in consequence, religion is one of the most its potency potent influences m making the man and the nation such as we find them. Nowhere is this more true than in the case of such rude communities as come before us in the history of the Saxons and the Danes. Strong are the relations between ignorance and credulity. Many causes may have contributed to make the religion of a people such as it is ; but religion once imbibed, becomes itself a cause of wide and powerful influence. In this island the Saxon and the Heathen x , . ■ , life of the Dane soon learnt to relinquish their heathenism. But the saxonand r^i ••• i'ii t ' ie Dane. Christianity which they embraced was much too narrow and intolerant to allow of their giving us any satisfactory account of their old religion when once they had embraced the new. Frequent as is the mention made by the Christian Saxons of the pagans of their own time, and of the preceding time, there is a remarkable absence in their writings of any 170 SAXOXS AXD DANES. BOOK II. Chap. 7. Their early faith dete- riorated. Identity of religious faith be- tween the Saxon and the Dane. attempt to describe the nature of the heathenism once so familiar to themselves. So that our direct information on this subject, especially as regards the Anglo-Saxons, is much more fragmentary and obscure than might have been ex- pected. * It is certain, however, that the objects of worship among the Anglo-Saxons were the same substantially with those recognised by the wide-spread German race on the Con- tinent. The mythology of the Teutonic nations as known to Cffisar and Tacitus, was only partially developed, as com- pared with the shape which that worship had assumed some three or four centuries later, when the Saxons invaded Brit- ain. The worship which the first Germanic settlers brought into the north of Europe is supposed to have recognised one Supreme Being, in a manner unknown among their de- scendants in later ages, f This purer faith the first emi- grants bore with them from the East, as they made their way along the track of territory between the Caspian and the Euxine. By degrees this belief gave place to a more complicated system of nature worship, and to hero and demon worship. In history, monotheism always declines where the authority of revelation fails. If that doctrine is to be secure as the faith of a nation, it must rest on some more intelligible ground than reason can present to the popular understand- ing. Creature worship, in some form or other, is natural to man. The immediate worship of an Infinite Creator is too hard for him. The chasm between the ordinary capacities of men and such an object of worship, is too great to be passed by any process of metaphysical thought possible to such capacities. The history of all false religions, and the history of the larger portion of Christendom itself, furnishes evidence but too conclusive on this point. But whatever may have pre* * In the canons of the Anglo-Saxon Church, the remains of the old paganism among the people are never named but to be condemned ; and the topic often occurs. — See Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, 18, 23, 24, 71-74, 86, 162, 396, 397, 419. Persistence in heathen worship after the profession of Christianity became general was made capital. — Ibid. \ Mallet's Northern Antiquities, c. iv. v. REVOLUTION IN RELIGION. 171 ceded, it is certain that the worship of the Saxons, Jutes, ^^ T 7 L and Angles, in the fifth and sixth centuries, had become ' very much what the Danish worship is known to he in the ninth and tenth centuries. The gods worshipped by the Danes when they became invaders of Britain, were the gods after whom the Anglo-Saxons had named the days of the week three centuries earlier. During those centuries the Scalds of the Northmen may have expanded and embellish- ed the mythic fictions of their race, but the tree, though it had grown, was still the same tree. In the religious life of the Dane, accordingly, as indicated in the Edda, we have beyond doubt the main elements of the religious life of the Saxon, from whose earlier traditions the Edda itself was in great part derived. Our object in this place does not require that we should attempt to distinguish between the true and the false in the mythology of the northern nations. Our business just now is not with what the Saxon or the Dane should have believ- ed, but with what they did believe. Their divinities may have had some place in history, but they owe the character under which they are known to us to the forms of thought, and to the passions dominant among their worshippers. Such worshippers fashion their gods, and are fashioned by them. To know their deities, in consequence, is to know themselves. With the Dane, and with the Saxon before him, Odin o