If it is true—as generally supposed—that the Britons, after being grievously oppressed by the Picts and Scots, called in the German tribes to assist them, then it naturally followed that, after driving back the Northern invaders, they themselves took possession of the land they had been fighting for.
In Lancashire, the desertion of the Romans probably led to a considerable part of the county being again laid waste, and the inhabitants scattered.
All authorities agree that for some forty years after the departure of the Romans the Britons were in continual strife, and that their independence brought to them only war and misery. The three Teutonic tribes known to the Romans as the Jutes, the Saxons and the Angles, in A.D. 449 appear to have called themselves Englishmen, and in that year they won their first battle against the Britons at Aylesford, in Kent. After this it took nearly 150 years to acquire the land from the South to the Forth. The Northern parts were for the most part taken possession of by the Angles, and divided into kingdoms, the boundaries of which are not known; some authorities place part of Lancashire in the kingdom of Deira, which had York for its centre, whilst others maintain that the kingdom of Strathclyde extended southward to the banks of the Dee; be this as it may, towards the close of the sixth century Lancashire formed part of the kingdom of Northumbria, which was held by the Angles. The inhabitants of these Northern parts, in their contests with the invaders, had the great advantage of having possession of the Roman strongholds, and no doubt offered a stubborn resistance. With the new rulers came new names, new language, and new customs, and many things that had been established by the former invaders were swept away.
We now come to the introduction of Christianity into Northumbria, which arose through the marriage of Æthelbert, King of Kent, at the close of the sixth century, with Bertha, daughter of King Charibert of Paris, who, being a convert to the Christian religion, made it a condition of her marriage that she should be allowed to worship in a small Roman–built church near Canterbury. Early in the next century Edwin, King of Northumbria, married Æthelburga, the daughter of Æthelbert, who, also being a Christian, took with her Paulinus, a follower of St. Augustine (see Chapter IX.).
It was not so easy, however, to make a convert of her husband, but after some delay he called together his Council, who declared themselves in favour of the new religion, and many of them were baptized at York, A.D. 627. This conversion led to a war between Edwin and the King of Mercia, who still held to his faith in Woden and Thor, when the King of Northumbria was killed at the battle of Hatfield in 633.
Shortly after this, CÆdwallon, King of the Welsh, became ruler over Northumbria, but only for a short time, as he was defeated and slain in battle by Oswald, who, afterwards succeeding to the thrones of Bernicia and Deira, again united Northumbria, and re–established the Christian creed. But Penda was determined to maintain the pagan religion, and, defeating Oswald at the battle of Maserfeld in 642, again held Northumbria. Subsequently another division appears to have taken place, and Lancashire became part of the kingdom of Deira, its ruler being Oswine, and continued so for some six years, when Oswi, who reigned in Bernicia (the other portion of Northumbria), caused Oswine to be slain, and again united the two kingdoms. Alcfrid, the son of Oswi, having married Cyneburga, daughter of Penda, was about this time appointed Regent over Deira, and afterwards a further fusion of the two families was brought about by the marriage of Alcfrid’s sister to Peada, son of Penda.
Oswi in 655 had a pitched battle with Penda at WinwÆd in Yorkshire,39 where the latter was defeated and slain. To celebrate this victory Oswi established twelve religious houses, six of which were in Deira (see Chapter IX.). Oswi died in 670, and his son Egfrid (or Ecgfrith) succeeded to the throne of Northumbria, which was now become a Christian and powerful kingdom. His short reign was marked by several military victories, the chief being his defeat of the King of Mercia, by which he gained the province of Lindiswards, or Lincolnshire; but in A.D. 685 Egfrid went across the Forth to repress a rising of the Picts, and in a great battle at Nectansmere in Yorkshire he and many of his nobles were slain, and with them fell the supremacy of ancient Northumbria. From this date to the establishment of the Heptarchy, Northumbria, though allowed to elect tributary rulers, was, except for a very short period, under the overlords of first Mercia and then Wessex. Green, in his “History of the English People,”40 says that Northumbria was “the literary centre of the Christian world in Western Europe. The whole learning of the age seemed to be summed up in a Northumbrian scholar, BÆda—the Venerable Bede, later times styled him.” The same writer adds: “From the death of BÆda the history of Northumbria is in fact only a wild story of lawlessness and bloodshed. King after king [tributary kings] was swept away by treason and revolt, the country fell into the hands of its turbulent nobles, the very fields lay waste, and the land was swept by famine and plague.” In A.D. 827 Egbert found no difficulty, after subduing the rest of England, in coming to peaceful terms with the Northumbrian nobles, and reducing the whole country from the British Channel to the Forth into one kingdom. For some time before the close of the eighth century Northumbria had been subject to frequent attacks from the Northmen, or Danes, who mostly came from Denmark and Norway, who have been frequently described as sea–pirates, distinguished for courage and ferocity and a strong hatred to the Christian religion, they themselves being worshippers of Woden and the other pagan gods. Soon after the middle of the tenth century the Danes were no longer content to make marauding expeditions, but aspired to become owners of the soil, and in 867, after a great victory near the city of York, they practically took possession of Northumbria, and a few years later the whole of England north of the Thames was in their hands. The subsequent wars between Alfred the Great and the Danes belong more to the general history of England; it will suffice here to state that in 878 was concluded the treaty of peace known as “Alfred and Guthrum’s Peace,” whereby the Danish settlers were recognised and the land on the east and north of Watling Street given up to them, that is, nearly all the east side of England from the Thames to the Tweed, where they were to be independent dwellers, with their own laws and institutions.41 Thus, almost the whole of Lancashire was left to the Danish invaders; but not, however, for a long period, as Edward the Elder, the son and successor of Alfred, having wrested Mercia from the Danes, marched against Northumbria, where a contest was avoided by the submission of the inhabitants, and, according to the Saxon Chronicle,42 having taken possession of Manchester, which he found almost in ruins, he refortified and garrisoned it in the year 923. Athelstan, the son of Edward the Elder, had frequent disturbances from the Northern Danes, who in 937, having united the Scots and the Welsh, met the King’s forces at Bruanburgh (supposed to be in Northumberland), where they were defeated; only, however, for a time, as they were not finally suppressed until the year 954, when Northumbria was placed under a governor with the title of Earl.
The beginning of the next century found the country in a very unsettled state in consequence of fresh invasions by the King of Denmark and Norway, and on the death of Ethelred, in April, 1016, London proclaimed Edmund King, whilst a council at Southampton accepted Canute the Dane; ultimately the English nobles compelled a division, and Northumbria, Mercia, and East Anglia fell to Canute, who a month later, on the death of Edmund, became King of England. Canute (or Cnut) during his reign did much to remove the hatred felt towards the Danes, but the tyranny and oppression exercised by his two sons, who succeeded him,43 revived the old feelings, and on the death of Harthacnut in 1043, after five–and–twenty years of Danish rule, the people elected one of the old English stock as the King, and Edward the Confessor ascended the throne.
During these six centuries Lancashire had many rulers, and must have been the scene of many a pitched battle. Its people were never long at peace, but rebellions, invasions, and wars of every kind fast followed each other. At one time they were governed by kings of Northumbria, at another by kings of England; at one time they were ruled by only tributary kings, or even only by tributary earls; sometimes the Christian religion was upheld, and sometimes they were referred back to Woden and Thor and Oden. Nevertheless, churches were built (see Chapter IX.), religious houses endowed, and castles erected. Many of its parishes were now formed, and its hundreds and tithings were meted out. Many of the parish and township names in Lancashire are suggestive of Saxon or Danish origin. Thus, Winwick, Elswick, Fishwick, Chadwick, Poulton, Walton, Sephton, Middleton, Eccleston, Broughton, Preston, Kirkham, Penwortham, Bispham, Cockerham, Oldham, Sowerby, Westby, Ribby, Formby, and a host of others, all point to their having once been held by the early settlers, as do also the terminative “rods” and “shaws” so common in the south of the county. In the old maps of the county a tract of land on the west side of the Wyre, between Shard and Fleetwood, is called Bergerode, which is a combination of the Anglo–Saxon words “Beor grade”—a shallow harbour. No doubt many of these places were held by Saxon Thanes, of which there were three classes; the highest of these held their lands and manors of the King, and probably had some kind of a castle or fortification erected on the manors, as well as in many cases a church, though probably only built of wood. To many places in the county have been assigned Saxon castles; Baines, in his “History of Lancashire,”44 has enumerated no less than twelve of these south of the Ribble, but for only two of them is there any absolute authority for the assumption, viz., Penwortham and Rochdale. At Penwortham William the Conqueror found a castle, and around it were six burgesses, three radmen (a class of freemen who served on horseback), only eight villeins (who were literally servants of the lords of the soil), and four neat–herds, or cattle–keepers; and amongst other possessions its owner had a moiety of the river–fishing, a wood, and aeries of hawks. The castle was occupied in the time of Henry III., when Randle de Blundeville, the Earl of Chester and Baron of Lancaster, held his court within its walls.45 All trace of it has now disappeared, but Castle Hill is its traditional site.
In the time of Edward the Confessor (A.D. 1041–1066) most of the land in Rochdale was held of the King by Gamel the Thane; part of this land was free from all duties except danegeld.46 There can be little doubt but that a Saxon Thane of this order had both his castle and its accompanying church. As to the existence of the former, it is placed beyond dispute by the name Castleton, which occurs in many very early deeds, and by the fact that in a charter, without date (but early in the thirteenth century), reference is made to “the land lying between” a field “and the ditch of the castle” (fossatum castelli), and the right of way is reserved for “ingoing and exit to the place of the castle” (locus castelli), and the right of footway to lands “in Castleton in the north part of Smythecumbesrode and an assartum called Sethe.” The boundaries detailed in the charter show that this castle, probably then in ruins, stood on the elevated ground still known as Castle Hill.47
There is a local tradition that at Bury, on the site called Castle Croft, once stood a Saxon castle; but there is no evidence to support this, and from the character of a portion of the foundations discovered in 1865, it seems more probable that the building which gave its name to the place was of much more recent date.
Winwick, near Warrington, has also its traditional Saxon castle, and also lays claim to having within its parish the site of the battle–field where Oswald, King of Northumbria, fell on August 5, A.D. 642. Bede48 records that the Christian King was slain in a great battle against the pagan ruler over the Mercians at a place called Maserfield, and adds that such was his faith in God that ever since his death infirm men and cattle are healed by visiting the spot where he was killed; some, taking the dust from the soil and putting it in water, were able to heal their sick friends; by this means the earth had been by degrees carried away, so that a hole remained as deep as the height of a man.
This Maserfield, or Maserfeld, was by Camden and others supposed to be near Oswestry, in Shropshire, but there are many good reasons for assuming that the engagement took place in Makerfield, near Winwick; the very ancient parish church is dedicated to St. Oswald, and half a mile to the north of it is St. Oswald’s Well, which is at the present day in a deep ditch, and until within quite recent times was in the charge of a paid custodian, whose duty it was to keep the water from contamination;49 an ancient inscription on the wall of the south side of the church also appears to confirm the opinion.
In Aldingham Moat Hill (in Furness) we have an example of the moated mound or “burh” of a Saxon lord, which probably dates from the tenth century.50 The earthwork consists of three divisions. The rectangular camp, is surrounded by a ditch nearly 40 feet wide, and 4 or 5 feet deep, the space thus enclosed being about 100 feet square. About 100 yards south of this there is a straight piece of ditch which runs almost at right angles to the sea–cliff for some 250 feet. South again of this ditch, but separated from it by about 40 yards, stands the moated “burh” itself, on the very edge of the cliff; the ditch and part of the mound have been washed away by the sea. The “burh” is about 30 feet high, and 96 feet above the sea–level. The ditch is about 10 feet deep, and between 15 and 20 feet broad at the bottom. This was the fortified home of the Anglo–Saxon clan settled in this place. The rectangular enclosure may have been the meeting–place of the folk–moot of the settlement. Pennington Castle Hill is a somewhat similar mound, but some of the characteristics of a “burh” are wanting; nevertheless, it was doubtless the fortified ton of the Pennings. Near to it is a place called Ellabarrow, which takes its name from a large tumulus 400 feet in circumference, known as Coninger or Coninsher.
The remains which from time to time have been discovered, and which can with certainty be classed as Danish or Anglo–Saxon, are not nearly so numerous as one would have expected. Saxon stone crosses (or portions of them) have been found at Bolton, Whalley, Burnley, Halton, Heysham, Lancaster, and Winwick, and the ornamentation of several of them is beautiful and interesting. The so called “hog–backed” stone in Heysham churchyard has given rise to much controversy, and is undoubtedly of very great antiquity.51 Saxon tumuli have been opened at Langho, Winwick, and some few other places, and coins belonging to this period have occasionally been exhumed; notably at Cuerdale, where nearly 2,000 coins were found which were believed to have been struck by one of the Danish rulers of Northumbria, and large numbers of very similar coins have been dug up at Harkirke, in the parish of Sefton. Some of these coins were of King Alfred’s time, others were of Guthred, or Gulfrith (son of Ivan), who was King of Northumbria A.D. 883 to 894, who was supposed to have on embracing Christianity taken the name of Cnvt, which is engraved on the coins.52
It is believed that at Billington, near Whalley, in A.D. 798, King Ethelred met the conspirator Wada, and defeated him in a battle in which on both sides great numbers were slain.53 Near to this place is a large tumulus known as the “Lowe,” which has never been properly explored; but at Brockhole Eses (which is quite near to Billington) a tumulus was found to contain human bones and iron spear–heads.
At Claughton, in the parish of Garstang, a tumulus of this period was opened in 1822, and found to contain, in addition to charred human bones, large convex brooches of white metal, beads of coloured paste, iron and stone axes, spear–heads and a sword;54 remains very similar in character to these were also dug up at Crossmoor, in Inskip, in 1889.55
In the time which immediately preceded the coming of the Norman Conqueror, Lancashire must have been very sparsely populated; in every part of it there were vast forests, and great stretches of moss and fern; agriculture was everywhere neglected; towns, in the modern sense, there were none; but here and there, clustering as if for protection round some Saxon Thane’s castle or fortified dwelling–place, were groups of wooden houses and rude huts, and scattered sparsely over the county were the clearings (assarts or rods) and the tons of the primitive settlers, with, in some districts, a wooden building doing duty as a church. Except where the old Roman roads were still in use, the means of passage from one place to another was difficult and dangerous; the people were of many tribes and nations—remnants of ancient British families, Angles, Saxons, Danes, Scandinavians, and even Normans contributed to the general stock—and as there were many tribes, so were there various religions, although Christianity had now become the general accepted faith. But for all this, much had been accomplished by time and experience to prepare the mind of the people to accept the tenet that union is strength, and that only by an undivided kingdom could come peace, wealth, and prosperity.
