great king applied himself to promote the happiness of his people by framing wise laws, and encouraging sound religion and all the arts of peace. His endeavour was to establish for ever by law such ancient Saxon customs as were favourable to freedom and virtue. We may mention the great safeguard for justice, that every man shall be tried by a jury of his peers or equals; and the institution of two councils, the one composed of thanes, or nobles, and bishops, the other (which was called the Witenagemot), a more general council of the nation, through which the public resolutions of the sovereign were to pass. It seems that the germ of these institutions existed in the customs of the Saxons, but they received from Alfred a more fixed and legal character. In order that the process of obtaining justice might be easy to all classes of people, he completed the division of the kingdom into counties and parishes, and distributed the powers of government among officers of various degrees, from the earl, who with the sheriff was set over the shire or county, to the tything man, who was bound for the good behaviour of his more immediate neighbours. Murder was now made punishable by death; and several laws were passed to better the condition of the churls or villains, who were slaves attached to the soil, and whose degraded state was the chief blot in the ancient Saxon customs. The authority of the law was so respected in the days of Alfred, that when golden bracelets were hung by the public highway, by way of trial, no man touched them.

Alfred was a favourer of sound learning and religion no less by his own example than by his laws. He gave eight hours of every day to study and the service of religion, and half his revenue to works of piety and charity. He sent a mission to carry alms to the Christians in India, (whose very existence was afterwards forgotten, till comparatively modern times,) and restored the ancient school at Oxford, which seems to have existed even from the days of St. Germain. Here he placed the learned John Scott, called Erigena, a native of Ireland, who is renowned for having opposed the corrupt doctrine that was now beginning to prevail in the Church of Rome on the subject of the Lord's Supper. It may thus be observed, that as the ancient British Church had little or no connexion with the see of Rome, so neither did the Saxon Church acknowledge its

authority to be decisive in matters either of doctrine or of discipline. Gratitude indeed was due from England to Rome for the benefits derived from the charity of Pope Gregory and the labour of Augustine, but nothing more.

The character of Alfred had been formed in the school of adversity. His reign, which was followed by a long period of suffering and darkness, has ever been regarded as the foundation of the British constitution: nor can any one tell how much it is owing (under God's blessing) to his laws and institutions, and to the memory of his glorious reign, that the love of freedom and the manly sense by which the English character has ever been distinguished, survived the superstition and oppression which were beginning to darken and enslave the whole of Europe.

Alfred died in the year A.D. 901, in the 52nd year of his life.

CHAPTER IV.

FROM THE REIGN OF ALFRED TO THE REIGN OF

CANUTE.

From A.D. 901 to A.D. 1016.

THE Saxon kings were for the most part wise and able princes, but the successive invasions of the Danes continually marred their efforts for the good of their people. Edward the Elder, who succeeded his father Alfred, is reckoned the founder of the University of Cambridge, as he established certain schools at that place, in imitation of those which had been restored and fostered by his father at Oxford. In the reign of Athelstan his son, who came to the throne A.D. 925, three foreign kings received instruction in England; Alan of Bretagne, Louis of France, and Haco of Norway. Athelstan defeated the Welsh under Howel the Good, and overthrew the Danes, who were assisted by Constantine, king of Scotland, at the great battle of Brunton, in Northumberland. Athelstan was the first of the Saxon princes who took the title of King of all Britain. He is said to have taken a cruel course with his brother Edwin, by turning him adrift in a ship without

sails or oars, because he suspected him of conspiring against his crown. The unhappy prince leapt overboard in despair, and thus perished. This king was however the author of several wise laws, by which he allowed the rank of thane to any merchant who should have made three voyages on his own account, and also to any franklin or freeholder who (besides certain other qualifications) should have a church with a bell-tower on his estate. He was succeeded by his brother Edmund I. (A.D. 940), a prince of remarkable promise, though forced by the Danes to agree to a partition of his kingdom with Anlaf their leader. He was slain in his own hall by a robber, named Leolf (A.D. 947), and his children being infants, the crown was bestowed on Edred, his brother. In those days it was so necessary that the sceptre should be in the hands of a prince of mature age and vigour, that though the principle of hereditary succession to the throne was owned, yet, when the heir was an infant, the nobles claimed the privilege of choosing some member of the family, more qualified to enter at once on the duties of the royal office. Edred was very victorious against the Danes, whose share in the kingdom he reduced to a province; but in his government he yielded too blindly to the monks, especially to Dunstan, then abbot of Glastonbury, who by reputed sanctity and false miracles obtained an immense influence throughout the kingdom. The long wars by which the country had been scourged were fatal to sound learning and religion, and the minds of men were thus prepared to receive many corrupt doctrines and superstitious practices. Worshipping of images and other superstitious practices were beginning to take the place of pure and undefiled religion. Attempts had been already made to enforce celibacy on the clergy, that is, to deny their right to marry according to their discretion. Instead of adjudging questions by rational proof, men sought to determine them by the Pagan custom of ordeals, (the folly of which was declared even by the Church of Rome,) in which the accuser and the accused were matched in single combat, or the accused was required to bear the touch of boiling water or red-hot iron.

Edred, who died A.D. 955, was succeeded by Edwy, the son of Edmund, who did all in his power to weaken the

influence of the monks. A pathetic tale has been told of the usage which Edwy and his queen Elgiva received at the hands of Dunstan, and Odo, archbishop of Canterbury. According to this account their marriage was opposed, and their union severed by those monks, on the ground of a relationship within the prohibited degrees. It is said that Elgiva was, by Odo's orders, branded in the face and conveyed to Ireland, and on returning some time afterwards to Edwy, was waylaid and miserably murdered, while Edgar, another son of Edmund, was induced to revolt against his brother. By another account, it is said that the kingdom was divided by the nobles between Edwy and Edgar at Edred's death. The whole history therefore is very doubtful. It is certain, indeed, that Dunstan was more ambitious of worldly power, and more unscrupulous in seeking it, than became his office; but he was the author of many useful practical laws which the Church still acknowledges; and Archbishop Odo has left writings which betoken a very different temper from that which has been ascribed to him. The more probable account is, that Elgiva was killed in a revolt of the people against Edwy; who himself died after a reign of four years, on which the authority of Edgar was acknowledged throughout the kingdom.

This king has been called Edgar the Peaceable, from the peace which England enjoyed under his reign. His power was such, that his barge was rowed on the river Dee by the King of Man and several Welsh and Scottish chieftains, while he himself sat at the helm. Edgar, who made Dunstan archbishop of Canterbury, has been greatly extolled by this monk, to whom he lent his whole influence; but he seems to have been a prince of unscrupulous character. This appears from the adventure of Elfrida, the heiress of Devonshire, of whose beauty the king heard such reports as led him to send Ethelwald, his friend, to ascertain their truth. The faithless messenger wooed her on his own account. On his return, he declared that the report of her beauty was false, but that he was himself desirous of marrying so great an heiress. The king allowed this marriage, and finding afterwards that he had been deceived by Ethelwald, is said to have caused his murder. However this may be, Edgar undoubtedly lost no time in marrying his widow, who became the mother of Ethelred II.

It was by Edgar's exertions that the wolves with which England was greatly infested were completely extirpated. He was succeeded, A.D. 975, by Edward, his son by a former wife, who is known as Edward the Martyr. Within three years from his accession, the youthful king was murdered by order of his stepmother Elfrida, at Corfe Castle, where that queen resided, and where Edward had stopped while hunting, to show respect to his father's widow. Elfrida was tempted to this crime by her desire to see the crown on the head of her own son, who now succeeded his murdered brother, A.D. 978.

His name was Ethelred, and he was called the Unready, from the feeble resistance which he made to the Danes, who were now again rising against their Saxon rulers. Ethelred was weak enough to purchase the departure of the hordes that were continually arriving; and finding that this expedient did but encourage their return, he resolved on a perfidious massacre of all the Danes in England, which was executed with circumstances of the most savage cruelty. The crime soon brought its punishment in the arrival of fresh swarms under Sweyne and Anlaf (kings of Denmark and Norway), resolved on avenging the slaughter of their countrymen by the ruin of England. Ethelred

fled to Richard, the duke of Normandy, whose sister Emma he had married; and Sweyne was proclaimed king of England, A.D. 1013.

The death of Sweyne soon followed; and Ethelred returned to give fresh proof of weakness in his feeble efforts against Canute, the son of Sweyne; but died shortly after his return, A.D. 1016. Canute then met with a more manly foe in Edmund (surnamed Ironside), the son of Ethelred, who struggled with great skill and courage to recover his inheritance, but was defeated with great loss at Essenden, in Herts, and afterwards basely murdered. This was A.D. 1016, and Canute then became master of the kingdom.

Such was the issue of those weak and perfidious measures by which Ethelred had endeavoured to maintain his power. The crimes also of Edgar and Elfrida were thus signally marked with the Divine displeasure; and we learn that neither nation nor family can eventually prosper, which builds its house on a foundation of wrong.