was likewise to guard the rights of the crown, and to levy the fines imposed, which at that time formed a very considerable part of the public revenue.

An appeal lay from all these courts to the king himself, in council; and Alfred, in whom his subjects deservedly placed the highest confidence, was overwhelmed with appeals from all parts of the kingdom. The only remedy for this was to reform the ignorance and restrain the corruption of the inferior magistrates, from whence it arose. Alfred, therefore, was solicitous to appoint the ablest and the most upright of his nobility to exercise the office of sheriffs and earls. He punishe many for malversation, and he took care to enforce the study of letters, and particularly of the laws, as indispensable to their continuing in office.

Alfred likewise framed a body of laws, which, though now lost, is generally supposed to be the origin of what is termed the common law of England. The institutions of this prince will bring to mind many of the political regulations of Charlemagne, which have been described at some length, and to which those of The Great Alfred bear a very near resemblance.

This excellent prince wisely considered the cultivation of letters as the most effectual means of thoroughly eradicating barbarous dispositions. The ravages of the Danes had totally extinguished any small sparks of learning, by the dispersion of the monks, and the burning their monasteries and libraries. To repair these misfortunes, Alfred, like Charlemagne, invited learned men from all quarters of Europe to reside in his dominions. He established schools, and enjoined every freeholder possessed of two ploughs to send his children there for instruction. He is said to have founded, or, at least, to have liberally endowed the illustrious seminary afterwards known as the University of Oxford.

His own example was the most effectual encouragement to the promotion of a literary spirit. Alfred was himself, for that age, a most accomplished scholar, and considering the necessary toils and constant active employment, it is surprising how much he employed himself in the pursuits of literature. He is said to have divided his time into three equal parts :-one was allotted to the despatch of the business of government; another to diet, exercise, and sleep; and a third to study and devotion.* By this admiraole regularity of life, he found means, notwithstanding his constant. wars, and the care of entirely new modelling and civilizing his kingdom, to compose a variety of ingenious and learned works. He wrote many beautiful apologues and stories in poetry of a moral tendency. He translated the histories of Bede and Orozius, with the treatise of Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiæ

*Leland, in his Collectan. (cura Hearne, tom. i., 259,) mentions his manner of reckoning time by a candle marked with twenty-four divisions, which always burnt in his study.

Alfred, in short, in every view of his character, must be regarded as one of the wisest and best of men that ever occupied the throne of any nation.*

The most complete system of policy which human wisdom can devise must be ineffectual under weak governors and magistrates. The admirable institutions of Alfred were but partially and feebly enforced under his successors; and England, still a prey to the ravages of the Danes, and to intestine disorders, relapsed again into confusion and barbarism.

Edward, the son and successor of Alfred, whose military talents bore soine resemblance to those of his father, had no share of his political genius. He fought his battles with intrepidity; but unable to take advantage of circumstances, or to secure the order and force of government by a well-regulated administration, his ign was one continued scene of war and tumult, as were those of ins successors, Athelstan, Edmund, and Edred. In the reign of the latter prince, the priesthood began first to extend its influence over the minds of the English monarchs, and to concern itself no less in temporal affairs than in spiritual. Dunstan, a fanatical bigot, but sufficiently awake to his own interest and that of the church, ruled every thing under Edred, and under his successors Edwy, Edgar, and Edward the Martyr.

Under Ethelred, the successor of Edward, a youth of despicable talents, the Danes began seriously to project the conquest of England. Conducted by Sweyn, king of Denmark, and Olaus, king of Norway, they made a formidable descent upon the island, and, after various successes, compelled the dastardly Ethelred repeatedly to purchase a peace, which they as constantly violated. Ethelred indeed furnished them with strong causes. In the spirit of the weakest and most treacherous policy, he attempted to cut off, by a general massacre, all the Danes that had established themselves in the island. This produced, as might have been anticipated, the redoubled vengeance of their countrymen. At length the English nobility, ashamed of their prince, and seeing no other relief to the kingdom from its miseries, swore allegiance to Sweyn the Danish monarch; and Ethelred fled into Normandy, where he found protection from Richard, the grandson of the great Rollo, who, as we have already seen, first established his northern followers in that part of France.

Ethelred, upon the death of Sweyn, who did not long enjoy his new dominions, endeavored to regain his kingdom; but he found in Canute, the son of Sweyn, a prince determined to make good his father's rights. The inglorious Ethelred died soon after, and left his empty title to his son Edmund, surnamed Ironside ; who possessed indeed courage and ability to have preserved his

*The character of Alfred is admirably described by Carte--Hist. of Eng., vol i., b. 4., § 18.

country from sinking into such calamities, but wanted talents to raise it from that abyss into which it had already fallen. After several desperate but unsuccessful engagements, he was compelled by his nobility, who urged it as the only means of saving the kingdom, to come to an accommodation with Canute, and to divide the dominions of England by treaty. The Danish prince got Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumberland; and the southern provinces were left to Edmund. But this prince survived the treaty only a few months. He was murdered at Oxford, by a conspiracy of the Danes, who thus made way for the succession of their monarch Canute to the throne of all England.

Edmund Ironside had left two sons, Edwin and Edward; the first measure of Canute was to seize these two princes, whom he sent abroad, to his ally the king of Sweden, with request that, as soon as they arrived at his court, they might be put to death. Humanity induced the Swedish monarch to spare their lives; he sent them into Hungary, where Solyman, the Hungarian king, gave his sister in marriage to Edwin the elder prince, and his sister in-law to Edward. Of this last marriage were born two children, Edgar Atheling, and Margaret, afterwards spouse to Malcolm Canmore, king of Scotland.

Canute, from the extent of his dominions, was one of the greatest monarchs of the age. He was sovereign of Denmark, Norway, and England. His character, as king of England, was not uniform. He was, in the first years of his reign, detested by his subjects, whom he loaded with the heaviest taxes, and exasperated by numberless acts of violence and oppression. In his latter years, his administration was mild and equitable, and he courted, in a particular manner, the favor of the church by munificent donations and endowments of monasteries.* He sustained the glory of his kingdom by compelling Malcolm Canmore to do homage for his possession of Cumberland, which that high-spirited prince had refused to submit to.

Canute left three sons:-the eldest, Sweyn, was crowned king of Norway; the youngest, Hardiknute, was in possession of Denmark, and claimed right to England, in virtue of a prior destination of his father, who afterwards altered his will, and left that kingdom to his immediate elder brother, Harold. A civil war would have ensued between these princes had not the English nobility interfered, and prompted a division of the kingdom. Harold, it was agreed, should have all the provinces north of the Thames, while Hardiknute should possess all to the south. Emma, widow of

*In the latter part of his life, to atone for his many acts of violence, he built churches, endowed monasteries, and imported relics; and had, indeed, a much better title to saintship than many of those who adorn the Roman calendar. He commissioned an agent at Rome to purchase St. Augustin's arm for one hundred talents of silver, a much greater sum than the finest statue of antiquity would then have sold for."-Grainger's Biog. Hist., Class i.

+ Carte, Hist. of Eng., vol. i., b. iv., § 31.

Canute, and mother of Hardiknute, had two sons by her former marriage with Ethelred. These princes, Edward and Alfred, had been brought up in Normandy, where their uncle, Robert, duke of Normandy, protected them against the resentment and jealousy of Canute. Harold wished to prosecute his father's purpose of extinguishing the Saxon blood in the posterity of Ethelred. Alfred, one of the princes, was invited to London, with many professions of regard. But Harold had given orders to surprise and murder his attendants, and the prince was led prisoner to a monastery, where he soon after died. Edward, hearing of his brother's fate, fled back into Normandy. Harold did not long enjoy the fruits of his crime, for he died in the fourth year of his reign; and Hardiknute, king of Denmark, betaking himself to England, was acknowledged sovereign of the whole kingdom without opposition. After a violent administration of two years he died, to the great comfort of his subjects, who now seized the opportunity of entirely shaking off the Danish yoke. The posterity of Edmund Ironside, Edgar Atheling and his sister Margaret, were the true heirs of the Saxon family; but their absence in Hungary appeared to the English a sufficient reason for giving a preference to Edward, the son of Ethelred, who was fortunately in the kingdom, and the Danes made no attempt to resist the voice of the nation.

Edward, surnamed the Confessor, mounted the throne with the affections of his subjects. He was a mild, but a weak and pusillanimous prince. From his education in Normandy he had contracted a strong relish for the manners of that people, many of whom attended him into England, and were his particular favorites. His reign was embroiled by the turbulent and factious spirit of Godwin, earl of Wessex, and governor of Kent and Sussex. This nobleman, grounding his hopes upon his extensive authority and wealth, and the imbecility of his sovereign, very early conceived a plan for subverting the government, and assuming absolute power. He attempted an open rebellion in the kingdom, which Edward found no other means of quelling than by coming to an accommodation with the traitor. Godwin died in tne interim, and his son Harold, an enterprising youth, while he affected a modest and complying disposition to his sovereign, concealed the same ambitious views. He secured the affections of the nobility, united them to his interests, and succeeding to the immense possessions of his father, he was soon in a condition to make his pretensions formidable to Edward. This prince, then in the decline of life, would willingly have settled his dominions on his nephew, Edgar Atheling, the only remaining branch of the Saxon line, but the imbecility of this young man, he foresaw, would never make good his right against the pretensions of one so popular as Harold, whose views clearly aimed at sovereign power. It appeared to Edward more advisable to nominate for his successor William, duke of Normandy, a prince whose power

reputation, and great abilities, were sufficient to support any destination which he might make in his favor.*

This celebrated prince was the natural son of Robert, duke of Normandy, by the daughter of a furrier of Falaise. Illegitimacy, in those days, was accounted no stain, and his father left him, while yet a. minor, heir to his whole dominions. He had to struggle with an arrogant nobility, several of whom even advanced claims to his crown; but he very early showed a genius capable of asserting and vindicating his rights, and soon became the terror both of his rebellious subjects and of foreign invaders. He reduced his patrimonial dominions to the most implicit obedience: and through the whole of his life he seems to have regarded it as a fixed maxim, that inflexible rigor of conduct was the first duty and the wisest policy of a sovereign.

William paid a visit to England; and Edward, receiving him with all the regard due to the relationship that subsisted between them, and to the character of so celebrated a prince, gave him to understand that he intended him for his successor. His return to Normandy, however, gave the ambitious Harold an opportunity for the prosecution of his schemes. He continued to extend his influence among the nobility, by the most insinuating address, and it is not improbable that the rigid severity of the character of William, to which the manners of Harold formed so strong a contrast, contributed to the success of his pretensions.

Edward died in the twenty-fifth year of his reign, and Harold had so well prepared matters, that he took possession of the throne with as little disturbance as if he had succeeded by the most undisputed title.

Thus ended the line of the Saxon monarchs in England. The duke of Normandy, on receiving intelligence of the accession of Harold, resolved to assert his claims in the most effectual manner. He used the formality of first summoning that prince to resign his possession of the kingdom; but his summons was answered by a spirited declaration from Harold, that he would defend his right with the last drop of his blood. The preparations made by William for an invasion of England occupied a considerable length of time, and were proportionally formidable. The fame of so

great an enterprise, in an age of adventure, excited many of the nobility throughout the different kingdoms of Europe to repair with their followers to his standard. The counts of Anjou and Flanders encouraged their subjects to engage in the expedition, and even the court of France, though evidently contrary to its interest to contribute to the aggrandizement of so dangerous a vassal, increased the levies of William with many of the chief nobility of the kingdom. Harold Halfager, king of Norway, undertook to favor the expedition, by making a landing with a

Carte, vol. i., b iv., § 39.