time is left upon our land, and we ourselves, even in the combat between those jealous and contiguous princedoms, see the indomitable energy and aggressive disposition of our race; and as the populations of all the seven had the same descent, and were equal in courage, and several were nearly balanced in extent of territory, it is interesting to see the circumstances which threw the final preponderance on the side of one of the sister states, and stamped on all the component territories the great name of England. The first element of conquest abroad is security at home. Rome was safe within the sea-girt peninsula and the Italian Alps before she sent her eagles to Syria or Britain. Greece was impregnable within her own boundaries before she attempted the subjugation of Persia; and if you will examine on a smaller scale the map of heptarchic Britain, you will see the future dominator of the rest in the one which has the most easily defended borders. This was Wessex. The sea was on the south throughout its whole extent, and when it had overrun the thinly-peopled districts of Sussex, and united them to its powers, and when Kent also fell under its authority by the disorders which distracted its government, its northern boundary was the easily defended Thames and the wild lands extending from Dorchester to the Bristol Channel. Its west was guarded from the subdued and dispirited Britons of Cornwall and Devon by the hills of Somerset; and a simple restoration of the old Roman fortifications gave the unscientific Saxons of Wessex all the advantages of that conquering and restraining people's military and engineering skill. Nearest to Wessex in population and extent was the midland Mercia; but the name itself is a proof that its lands were everywhere conterminous with a rival state's. If it gathered its forces to resist Wessex, bands of enemies crossed over to it from the peninsular East Anglia, crowded down upon it from the warlike and hostile Northumbria, and came shouting across the Wye and through the Forest of Radnor from the unappease A.D. 837.] DEATH OF EGBERT. 47 able valleys of Wales. When at length the kingdom of Wessex, thus strengthened by its tributaries, fell into the hands of one of the great men whom even the darkest ages sometimes produce, and Egbert-who had spent many years of exile, an honoured guest and appreciating scholar, in the court of the great Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle-was restored to his rightful inheritance, all the constituent parts of supreme authority required only to be fitted together, and the crown of all England rested on the brow of the wisest and best of Englishmen. Soon after this time we hear nothing of the old partitions of the country. The names died out by the substitution of other territorial divisions which still remain; and probably a man of Staffordshire or Yorkshire would have been as much astonished in the tenth century as in the present, if he had been called a Mercian or Deirian. Wessex, fortunate equally in rulers and situation, had boasted in the previous century of the only other Saxon king who could compare with the politic and warlike Egbert. This was Ina-admired by all the nations as a warrior and king, but lauded with the eloquence of enthusiasm when his chroniclers describe his piety of life and generosity to the Church. A ruler and legislator greatly in advance of his time, his crowning achievements are the foundations of monasteries like Abingdon and Glastonbury, and his bestowal of Peter's Pence on the Roman chair. Tired of state and trial, the saintly king resigned his dignity in 728, and retired to Rome. Avoiding show and ostentation, clothed in plebeian apparel, and living by the labour of his hands, he grew old, and died in that capital of the faith. Great trouble had followed his desertion of the throne. The public estimation of the monastic virtues had changed, and his wiser successor knew the duties of his royal state too well to be seduced by his example; but unfortunately, ten years after the submission of all the kingdoms came the untimely death of Egbert, the Bretwelda-or wide ruler-a name equivalent to that of Emperor, as it expressed a royalty superior to that of kings. Though ostentatiously assumed at intervals by seven of the chiefs of states which happened for a short time to be predominant over two or three of the others, this title had never been so justly earned or so nobly borne: and anarchy was again threatened to the land when the strong hand and clear intellect were withdrawn in 837. A.D. LANDMARKS OF CHRONOLOGY. A.D. 418. State of Britain after the depar- 511. Battle of Baden Hill, near Bath, ture of the Romans. 447. Vortigern, Prince of the Dan where Cerdic is defeated by Arthur. monii, elected sovereign of 521. Cerdic founds the West Saxon 455. Contests between the Britons and the Saxons. Hengist declared King of Kent. 458. The defeated Britons retire into Wales and Armorica, or Brit- +467. The famous Arthur, King of 709. The Saxon laws promulgated Devon and Cornwall. 475. Vortimer poisoned by his mother in-law, Rowena. 476. Hengist murders Vortigern and his principal nobility. 488. Death of Hengist. 495. Cerdic, a Saxon general, arrives in Britain, from whom descended the Kings of England to Edward the Confessor. 497-527. Various contests between Cerdic and the Britons. by Ina, king of the West Saxons. 787. First arrival of the Danes in England. 810-812. Egbert reduces the Welsh of South Wales. 824. Termination of the Saxon Hep tarchy. 827. Egbert, the first sole monarch of BOOK IV. THE DANISH-ENGLISH OCCUPATION. A.D. 837 to A.D. 1066. § 1. Sea-kings, or Norsemen.-§ 2. Northern pirates. Scandinavian songs. § 3. Invasion of the Danes, and capture of York, &c.§ 4. Alfred the Great.-§ 5. The Anglo-Saxon and Danish territories. §6. Government and laws.-§ 7. Genius and energy of Alfred. Reign of Edward.--§ 8. Athelstane's power and conquests.-§ 9. Edmund, son of Athelstane.-§ 10. Reign of Edred. State of the Church and clergy. St. Dunstan. His influence and pretended miracles. § 11. Reign of Edwy. His contests with St. Dunstan. -12. Reign of Edgar. His fortunate position.-§ 13. Reign of Edward. Assassinated.-§ 14. Reign of Ethelred II. Incursions of the Danes, and their massacre.-§ 15. Sweyn, King of Denmark. His conquest of England.-§ 16. Invasion of Canute. Death of Ethelred. Edmund Ironside. He divides the kingdom with Canute. Accession of Canute after the death of Edmund. §. 17. The principal acts of his reign. His character. His popularity. He rebukes the flatteries of his courtiers. His devotion to the Church. His death. Emma, Queen of Canute. Reign of Harold Harefoot.-§ 18. Hardicanute.-§ 19. Edward the Confessor. Earl Godwin. Earl Godwin's revolt, and seizure of his estates.-§ 20. Eustace of Bologne.-§ 21. Visit of William, Duke of Normandy.§ 22. Rise of Harold. Pope Nicholas II.-§ 23. Harold succeeds to the crown. § 1. Ir needed a strong hand and clear intellect to resist the enemies which now made their appearance in the land. Egbert's death, besides depriving his subjects of his guidance, had weakened the country by a division of his various states among his sons. Wessex was again a separate kingdom, and might have begun its course of victory and supremacy once more against the other populations, but was diverted from its dreams of ambition, if any it entertained, by a danger that made it apply all its efforts to self-defence. This was an E invasion of a new and totally uncivilized people, who made landings in various parts of the country, and everywhere marked their presence with the blood of all they met. Possession had by this time entirely obliterated from the descendants of Hengist and Horsa the nature and circumstances of their own invasion. But if the wish of the poet had been granted them, "to see ourselves as others see us," they could not have had a closer presentment of their own onslaughts upon the Romanized Celts. The same brutal disregard of life, and enmity to the very appearance of refinement, the same truculent beliefs and degrading ideas of a future life characterized the Sea-kings, or Norsemen, who now descended on our shores, as had carried terror and destruction among the cities and villas of that earlier time. While the Saxons were irritated at the audacity of those imitators of their own achievements, and wondering at the lawlessness of those pitiless barbarians, horde after horde of armed Danes and Norwegians mounted their small barks in the bays and creeks of the Baltic, and in three days' sail, when they availed themselves of a favourable wind, ran them on the beach of our eastern coast. Gathering the crews of as many of them as they could, they murdered, burned, and pillaged throughout the district where they had landed; and loaded with booty, and shrieking songs of triumph over the massacre of monks and women, betook themselves to the sea again, and carried the same devastation to some other part of the shore. The first landing in Cornwall (which occurred in Egbert's life-time) was repulsed with loss, and the native Britons still occupying that district were ruthlessly punished for the aid they had afforded the invader. The next landings were in greater force, and in another quarter. Division and enmity had broken out in the newly-resuscitated Deira, Bernicia, and Mercia. They owned the uneasy sway of the younger son of Egbert, and were paralyzed with the diversity, unexpectedness, and fury of the assaults. |