common and their opulence increased, many unworthy men and women took the vows, still the existence in such barbarous times of monastic establishments whose inmates were men of peace, and maintained a standard of culture superior to that of their neighbours, distinctly made for civilisation.

The Peni

But if the monks taught by example, the parish clergy brought a sterner code to bear upon the passions of the people. Hitherto the idea of sin had been little known. In the eye of the state, murder could be expiated by the payment of a fine; and so slight was the value put upon human life, that crimes of violence were of everyday occurrence, while vice and gluttony passed unrebuked. Against this state of things Theodore opposed the penitential system of the Roman church, according to which murder was not only a crime against the state, but tential a sin against God to be expiated by the penance of the System. murderer. Such crime carried with it the necessity of fasting and prayer, often carried on for years; and until the penance enjoined by the church was complete the guilty party was regarded as outside the pale of the church and debarred from the benefit of taking part in its rights. In this way the church surrounded crime and the criminal with a feeling of religious awe; and though the temptation to commute penance for a money payment ultimately proved too strong for many of the clergy, and at the best too little stress was laid on the inward nature of repentance, still it is incontestable that among a rude people like the Saxons the effects of the first introduction of the penitential system were excellent.

Death of

Absence of

The Venerable Bede died in 735, and after his death and the termination of his Ecclesiastical History it is very difficult to follow the intricacies of English affairs. No other historian arose to take his place, Bede. and for a long time the entries in the Chronicle are provokingly meagre, and have to be eked out by scraps of information collected in the twelfth century by Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury from authorities which have not come down to us. Contem- Apart from the introduction of Christianity, the most imAuthorities, portant events which took place in the seventh and eighth centuries were those which were concerned with the struggle for supremacy which was going on between the several English kingdoms; but as this did not properly come under ecclesiastical history, even Bede supplies very little information, and after his death we are even more ignorant of what went on, until the great Alfred placed the compilation of the Chronicle upon a systematic footing.

porary

Arrangement of English

Kingdoms.

It appears, however, that about the time of the coming of Augustine the scattered English settlements had been consolidated as follows :-In the north, the Anglian kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira had been formed into Northumbria; the north folk and the south folk made up the kingdom of the East-Angles; Essex, Kent, and Sussex remained much as they had been at the conquest; Wessex had come to include not only the lands south of the Thames, but also the Isle of Wight and those districts of the Severn valley which had been overrun by Ceawlin. The rest of Middle England was occupied by a number of small tribes, who ultimately coalesced into a kingdom known by the vague title of Mercia, or the borderland.

Northum

Between these kingdoms there was for two centuries almost constant war; and if one of them acquired a temporary superiority, it was only at the price of having to meet a succession of rebellions from Struggle for its subject neighbours. For a time the West-Saxons, under Supremacy. Ceawlin, seemed likely to take the lead; but after the battle of Chester the Northumbrians came to the front, and in the reigns of Ethelfrith, Edwin, Oswald, and Oswy enjoyed a distinct supremacy, though from time to time the continuity of its sway was broken by brian successful revolts. Of these the most persistent was organised by Penda, who for a short time after the battle of Maserfield was decidedly the most powerful king in the island. Under Oswy, however, Northumbria recovered her position, and on the whole kept it till the year 685, when her king Egfrith and almost Nectans his entire army were destroyed by the Picts in the disastrous battle of Nectansmere, by the shores of the North Sea.'

that

Supremacy.

Battle of

mere.

After this a long period of disorder followed, in which the strength of Northumbria was dissipated, and then Mercia came to the front. Under Penda she had already been a formidable rival, and under Mercian his son Wulfhere and his grandnephew Ethelbald her Supremacy. power greatly increased. Wulfhere's principal achievement was the conquest from the West-Saxons of their possessions in the Severn valley; Ethelred, another son of Penda, overran Kent; Ethelbald conquered Somerton from the West-Saxons, and led the

Wulfhere.

Ethelbald.

whole force of the Southumbrians against the Welsh. In Offa. 752, however, he was routed by the West-Saxons at the

battle of Burford; but his place was taken by Offa, who of all the Mercian sovereigns was the most renowned.

Offa was a descendant of Penda, and came to the throne in the year 757. He defeated the Kentish men at Otford; the West-Saxons at

Bensington; and, having enticed the king of the East-Angles to his court, he had him treacherously beheaded. Thus he gained supremacy over the south of the island; but though Northumbria was unable to dispute his power, his authority does not appear to have been recognised beyond the Humber. Against the Welsh, Offa was more successful than any English king since the days of Ethelfrith and Edwin, for he captured the great border stronghold of Shrewsbury, settled Englishmen on the low-lying lands to the west of the Severn and the Dee, and secured them from molestation by erecting from the mouth of the Dee to that of the Wye the rampart of earth the remains of Offa's Dyke. which are still known as Offa's Dyke. Offa persuaded Pope Hadrian to make Lichfield an archbishopric, and to place under it the sees of Worcester, Sidnacester, Leicester, Hereford, Elmham, and Dunwich; so that London, Selsey, Rochester, and Winchester were left under Canterbury, and Ripon, Hexham, Lindisfarne, and Whithern under York. However, after Offa's death, Lichfield lost its archbishop, and the suffragan sees reverted to Canterbury. It was in Offa's days Charles the that Charles the Great began the career which ended in the Great. restoration of the Roman empire of the West-the most important event in Europe since the invasion of the Teutonic hordes ; and it is a strong proof of the esteem in which the great Englishman was held that Charles condescended to correspond with him on terms of equality. Englishmen, indeed, were well known to Charles, for Alcuin, one of his most learned men, came from Northumbria, and from Alcuin's letters we learn that English merchants were in the habit of resorting to his dominions. One untoward event marked Offa's reign, namely, the first appearance upon the coast of the Scandinavian pirates, who were to attempt in the ninth century to repeat the settlement which the English had carried out in the fifth and sixth. Offa died in 796; and though his successor Kenwulf retained Offa's power, from his death the power of the Mercian monarchy, mainly owing to struggles for the crown, rapidly declined.

Meanwhile, the West-Saxons, who since the death of Ceawlin had held a distinctly secondary place, were rapidly coming to the front. This was West-Saxon due to the ability of their king, Egbert, who, having during Supremacy. the life of Offa been compelled to take refuge at the court of Charles the Great, had learned from the Franks a culture of Reign of mind and a refinement of manner to which the English were strangers. He acquired, also, the political and military skill for which the Franks were celebrated; and the fame of his accomplishments having reached Wessex, his countrymen invited him to return home and assume the crown, which he did in the year 802.

Egbert.

Conquest of

acquires a Egbert general

supremacy

During his reign of thirty-seven years, Egbert devoted himself to the task of bringing the neighbouring kingdoms under his sway, precisely as his predecessors Edwin and Offa had done in England, and as Charles the Great, king of the Franks, had recently done on the Continent. His first exploit was the complete subjugation Cornwall. of Cornwall or West-Wales, and in 825 he broke the power of Mercia by defeating an invading host of Mercians under their king Beornwulf in the great battle of Ellandun. This success he instantly Battle of followed up by overrunning the Mercian under-kingdoms, and Ellandun. compelled the men of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Essex to acknowledge his overlordship, while he received the East-Anglians, the hereditary enemies of the Mercians, into alliance. Two years later he invaded Mercia and subdued it, so bringing under his authority all England south of the Humber; and a threat of invasion was sufficient to force the Northumbrians also to offer obedience and allegiance. In 828, Egbert again turned his attention to the Welsh, and conquered North Wales, so that only the Welsh of Strathclyde and the Picts and Scots remained wholly independent. The last years of Egbert were occupied in defending Wessex itself against the invasions of the Northmen-a subject which belongs to a subsequent chapter. At his death, which happened in 839, his dominions showed the same symptoms of disintegration which had been exhibited by those of his predecessors and by the Continental dominion of Charles the Great; for while his eldest son, Ethelwulf, received Wessex, apparently with the overlordship, Kent, Essex, and Sussex were made into an appanage for his younger son, Athelstan. Great indeed as were the achievements of Egbert, there is nothing to show that they would have been more lasting than those of Edwin and Offa had it not been for external causes which ultimately resulted in permanently placing the supremacy of all England in the hands of the West-Saxon dynasty.

in South

Britain.

CHAPTER V

INSTITUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH

Physical Features of the Country-Local Government of the Township, the Hundred, and the Shire-Central Government in the hands of the King and Witenagemot-English Society in the Ninth Century.

Ir is now time to deal with the political constitution of the English kingdoms and with the social customs of the English.

The Seven

From the close of the sixth century to the time of Egbert seven kingdoms stand out as always distinct from one another, though Kingdoms. sometimes united in more or less political union. These are those of the Northumbrians, the Mercians, the East-Anglians, the WestSaxons, the East-Saxons, the South-Saxons, and the Kentishmen; and it is important to note that it was usual to speak not of Wessex but of the West-Saxons, the men of the race and not the territory in which they dwelt constituting the political state. Sometimes other groups are spoken of as having a separate existence, such as the men of Surrey or the Lindiswaras; but in general the states named are the most prominent.

Of these the South and East Saxons were single tribes; the Kentishmen seem to have been formed by the union of two tribes, whose respective capitals were Rochester and Canterbury; the Mercians and Northumbrians were agglomerations of smaller settlements, whose names and boundaries were preserved down to the time of the settlement of the Northmen; the East-Anglians comprised the North and South folk; and the West-Saxons had absorbed the Meonwaras, Jutish settlers who dwelt in and near the Isle of Wight. Each of these kingdoms was complete in itself; and the position of Egbert was that of a king of the WestSaxons whose overlordship was, for the time being, acknowledged by the other English states.

The boundaries of these kingdoms were prescribed to them by the lie of the country; for in those days the country was covered with rugged mountain, soaking bog, and impenetrable forest to an