It is with a real, though a very melancholy pleasure, that I sit down to give you some account of the behaviour of our late excellent friend, Mr. Hume, during his last illness.
Though in his own judgment his disease was mortal and incurable, yet he allowed himself to be prevailed upon, by the entreaty of his friends, to try what might be the effects of a long journey. A few days before he set out, he wrote that account of his own life, which, together with his other papers, he has left to your care. My account, therefore, shall begin where his ends.
He set out for London towards the end of April, and at Morpeth met with Mr. John Home, and myself, who had both come down from London on purpose to see him, expecting to have found him at Edinburgh. Mr. Home returned with him, and attended him, during the whole of his stay in England, with that care and attention which might be expected from a temper so perfectly friendly and affectionate. As I had written to my mother that she might expect me in Scotland, I was under the necessity of continuing my journey. His disease seemed to yield to exercise and change of air, and when he arrived in London, he was apparently in much better health than when he left Edinburgh. He was advised to go to Bath to drink the waters, which appeared for some time to have so good an effect upon him, that even he himself began to entertain, what he was not apt to do, a better opinion of his own health. His symptoms, however, soon returned with their usual violence, and from that moment he gave up all thoughts of recovery, but submitted with the utmost cheerfulness, and the most perfect complacency and resignation. Upon his return to Edinburgh, though he found himself much weaker, yet his cheerfulness never abated, and he continued to divert himself, as usual, with correcting his own works for a new edition, with reading books of amusement, with the conversation of his friends, and sometimes in the evening with a party at his favourite game of whist. His cheerfulness was so great, and his conversation and amusements ran so much in their usual strain, that, notwithstanding all bad symptoms, many people could not believe he was dying. "I shall tell your friend, Colonel Edmonstone," said Doctor Dundas to him one day, "that I left you much better, and in a fair way of recovery." "Doctor," said he, "as I believe you would not choose to tell any thing but the truth, you had better tell him, that I am dying as fast as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily and cheerfully as my best friends could desire." Colonel Edmonstone soon afterwards came to see him, and take leave of him; and on his way home he could not forbear writing him a letter, bidding him once more an eternal adieu, and applying to him, as to a dying man, the beautiful French verses in which the AbbÉ Chaulieu, in expectation of his own death, laments his approaching separation from his friend the Marquis de la Fare. Mr. Hume's magnanimity and firmness were such, that his most affectionate friends knew that they hazarded nothing in talking or writing to him as to a dying man, and that, so far from being hurt by this frankness, he was rather pleased and flattered by it. I happened to come into his room while he was reading this letter, which he had just received, and which he immediately showed me. I told him, that though I was sensible how very much he was weakened, and that appearances were in many respects very bad, yet his cheerfulness was still so great, the spirit of life seemed still to be so very strong in him, that I could not help entertaining some faint hopes. He answered, "Your hopes are groundless. An habitual diarrhoea of more than a year's standing would be a very bad disease at any age: at my age it is a mortal one. When I lie down in the evening I feel myself weaker than when I rose in the morning, and when I rise in the morning weaker than when I lay down in the evening. I am sensible, besides, that some of my vital parts are affected, so that I must soon die." "Well," said I, "if it must be so, you have at least the satisfaction of leaving all your friends, your brother's family in particular, in great prosperity." He said that he felt that satisfaction so sensibly, that when he was reading, a few days before, Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, among all the excuses which are alleged to Charon for not entering readily into his boat, he could not find one that fitted him; he had no house to finish, he had no daughter to provide for, he had no enemies upon whom he wished to revenge himself. "I could not well imagine," said he, "what excuse I could make to Charon in order to obtain a little delay. I have done every thing of consequence which I ever meant to do, and I could at no time expect to leave my relations and friends in a better situation than that in which I am now likely to leave them: I therefore have all reason to die contented." He then diverted himself with inventing several jocular excuses, which he supposed he might make to Charon, and with imagining the very surly answers which it might suit the character of Charon to return to them. "Upon further consideration," said he, "I thought I might say to him, 'Good Charon, I have been correcting my works for a new edition. Allow me a little time, that I may see how the public receives the alterations.' But Charon would answer, 'When you have seen the effect of these, you will be for making other alterations. There will be no end of such excuses; so, honest friend, please step into the boat.' But I might still urge, 'Have a little patience, good Charon, I have been endeavouring to open the eyes of the public. If I live a few years longer, I may have the satisfaction of seeing the downfall of some of the prevailing systems of superstition.' But Charon would then lose all temper and decency—'You loitering rogue, that will not happen these many hundred years. Do you fancy I will grant you a lease for so long a term? Get into the boat this instant, you lazy, loitering rogue.'"
But though Mr. Hume always talked of his approaching dissolution with great cheerfulness, he never affected to make any parade of his magnanimity. He never mentioned the subject, but when the conversation naturally led to it, and never dwelt longer upon it than the course of the conversation happened to require. It was a subject, indeed, which occurred pretty frequently, in consequence of the inquiries which his friends, who came to see him, naturally made concerning the state of his health. The conversation which I mentioned above, and which passed on Thursday the 8th of August, was the last, except one, that I ever had with him. He had now become so very weak, that the company of his most intimate friends fatigued him; for his cheerfulness was still so great, his complaisance and social disposition were still so entire, that when any friend was with him, he could not help talking more, and with greater exertion, than suited the weakness of his body. At his own desire, therefore, I agreed to leave Edinburgh, where I was staying partly upon his account, and returned to my mother's house here, at Kirkaldy, upon condition that he would send for me whenever he wished to see me; the physician who saw him most frequently, Dr. Black, undertaking in the mean time to write me occasionally an account of the state of his health.
On the 22d of August, the doctor wrote me the following letter:
"Since my last, Mr. Hume has passed his time pretty easily, but is much weaker. He sits up, goes down stairs once a day, and amuses himself with reading, but seldom sees any body. He finds, that the conversation of his most intimate friends fatigues and oppresses him; and it is happy that he does not need it, for he is quite free from anxiety, impatience, or low spirits, and passes his time very well with the assistance of amusing books."
I received the day after a letter from Mr. Hume himself, of which the following is an extract:
"Edinburgh, Aug. 23, 1776
"MY DEAREST FRIEND,
"I am obliged to make use of my nephew's hand in writing to you, as I do not rise to-day. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"I go very fast to decline, and last night had a small fever, which I hoped might put a quicker period to this tedious illness; but, unluckily, it has in a great measure gone off. I cannot submit to your coming over here on my account, as it is possible for me to see you so small a part of the day; but Dr. Black can better inform you concerning the degree of strength which may from time to time remain with me.
"Adieu, &c."
Three days after, I received the following letter from Dr. Black:
"Edinburgh, Monday, Aug. 26, 1776.
"DEAR SIR,
"Yesterday, about four o'clock, afternoon, Mr. Hume expired. The near approach of his death became evident in the night between Thursday and Friday, when his disease became excessive, and soon weakened him so much, that he could no longer rise out of his bed. He continued to the last perfectly sensible, and free from much pain or feelings of distress. He never dropped the smallest expression of impatience; but when he had occasion to speak to the people about him, always did it with affection and tenderness. I thought it improper to write to bring you over, especially as I heard that he had dictated a letter to you, desiring you not to come. When he became very weak, it cost him an effort to speak, and he died in such a happy composure of mind that nothing could exceed it."
Thus died our most excellent and never to be forgotten friend; concerning whose philosophical opinions men will no doubt judge variously, every one approving or condemning them, according as they happen to coincide or disagree with his own; but concerning whose character and conduct there can scarce be a difference of opinion. His temper, indeed, seemed to be more happily balanced, if I may be allowed such an expression, than that perhaps of any other man I have ever known. Even in the lowest state of his fortune, his great and necessary frugality never hindered him from exercising, upon proper occasions, acts both of charity and generosity. It was a frugality founded not upon avarice, but upon the love of independency. The extreme gentleness of his nature never weakened either the firmness of his mind, or the steadiness of his resolutions. His constant pleasantry was the genuine effusion of good-nature and good-humour, tempered with delicacy and modesty, and without even the slightest tincture of malignity, so frequently the disagreeable source of what is called wit in other men. It never was the meaning of his raillery to mortify; and therefore, far from offending, it seldom failed to please and delight even those who were the objects of it. To his friends, who were frequently the objects of it, there was not perhaps one of all his great and amiable qualities which contributed more to endear his conversation. And that gaiety of temper, so agreeable in society, but which is so often accompanied with frivolous and superficial qualities, was in him certainly attended with the most severe application, the most extensive learning, the greatest depth of thought, and a capacity in every respect the most comprehensive. Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.
I ever am, dear Sir,
Most affectionately yours,
ADAM SMITH.
eglected the ordinary means of safety, and agreed, even in the present desperate extremity, that the revenues of the church should be exempted from all burthens, though imposed for national defence and security [d]. [FN [y] Padre Paolo, sopra beneficii ecclesiastici, p. 51, 52. edit. Colon. 1675 [z] Spell. Conc. vol. i. p. 268. [a] Padre Paolo, p. 132. [b] Parker, p. 77. [c] lngulph. p. 862. Seldens Hist. of Tithes, c. 8. [d] Asserius, p. 2. Chron. Sax. p. 76. W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 2. Ethelward, lib. 3. cap. 3. M. West. p. 158. Ingulph. p. 17. Alur. Beverl. p. 95]
[MN Ethelbald and Ethelbert. 857.] Ethelwolf lived only two years after making this grant, and by his will he shared England between his two eldest sons, Ethelbald and Ethelbert; the west being assigned to the former, the east to the latter. Ethelbald was a profligate prince, and marrying Judith, his mother-in-law, gave great offence to the people; but, moved by the remonstrances of Swithin, Bishop of Winchester, he was at last prevailed on to divorce her. His reign was short; and Ethelbert, his brother, succeeding to the government [MN 860.], behaved himself, during a reign of five years, in a manner more worthy of his birth and station. The kingdom, however, was still infested by the Danes, who made an inroad and sacked Winchester, but were there defeated. A body also of these pirates, who were quartered in the Isle of Thanet, having deceived the English by a treaty, unexpectedly broke into Kent, and committed great outrages.
[MN Ethered 866.] Ethelbert was succeeded by his brother Ethered, who, though he defended himself with bravery, enjoyed, during his whole reign, no tranquillity from those Danish irruptions. His younger brother, Alfred, seconded him in all his enterprises, and generously sacrificed to the public good all resentment which he might entertain on account of his being excluded by Ethered from a large patrimony which had been left him by his father.
The first landing of the Danes in the reign of Ethered was among the East Angles, who, more anxious for their present safety than for the common interest, entered into a separate treaty with the enemy, and furnished them with horses, which enabled them to make an irruption by land into the kingdom of Northumberland. They there seized the city of York, and defended it against Osbricht and Aella, two Northumbrian princes, who perished in the assault [f]. Encouraged by these successes, and by the superiority which they had acquired in arms, they now ventured, under the command of Hinguar and Hubba, to leave the sea-coast, and penetrating into Mercia, they took up their winter quarters at Nottingham, where they threatened the kingdom with a final subjection. The Mercians, in this extremity, applied to Ethered for succour, and that prince, with his brother Alfred, conducting a great army to Nottingham, obliged the enemy to dislodge [MN 870.], and to retreat into Northumberland. Their restless disposition, and their avidity for plunder, allowed them not to remain long in those quarters; they broke into East Anglia, defeated and took prisoner Edmund, the king of that country, whom they afterwards murdered in cool blood, and committing the most barbarous ravages on the people, particularly on the monasteries, they gave the East Angles cause to regret the temporary relief which they had obtained by assisting the common enemy. [FN [f] Asser. p. 6. Chron Sax. p. 79.]
[MN 871.] The next station of the Danes was at Reading, whence they infested the neighbouring country by their incursions. The Mercians, desirous of shaking off their dependence on Ethered, refused to join him with their forces; and that prince, attended by Alfred, was obliged to march against the enemy with the West Saxons alone, his hereditary subjects. The Danes, being defeated in an action, shut themselves up in their garrison; but quickly making thence an irruption, they routed the West Saxons, and obliged them to raise the siege. An action soon after ensued at Aston, in Berkshire, where the English, in the beginning of the day, were in danger of a total defeat. Alfred, advancing with one division of the army, was surrounded by the enemy in disadvantageous ground; and Ethered, who was at that time hearing mass, refused to march to his assistance till prayers should be finished [g]: but as he afterwards obtained the victory, this success, not the danger of Alfred, was ascribed by the monks to the piety of that monarch. This battle of Aston did not terminate the war: another battle was a little after fought at Basing, where the Danes were more successful; and being reinforced by a new army from their own country, they became every day more terrible to the English. Amidst these confusions, Ethered died of a wound which he had received in an action with the Danes; and left the inheritance of his cares and misfortunes, rather than of his grandeur, to his brother, Alfred, who was now twenty-two years of age. [FN [g] Asser. p. 7. W. Malm. lib. 2. cap. 3. Simeon Dunelm. p. 125. Anglia Sacra, vol. i. p. 205.]
[MN Alfred 871.] This prince gave very early marks of those great virtues and shining talents, by which, during the most difficult times, he saved his country from utter ruin and subversion. Ethelwolf, his father, the year after his return with Alfred from Rome, had again sent the young prince thither with a numerous retinue; and a report being spread of the kings death, the pope, Leo III., gave Alfred the royal unction [h]; whether prognosticating his future greatness from the appearances of his pregnant genius, or willing to pretend, even in that age, to the right of conferring kingdoms. Alfred, on his return home, became every day more the object of his fathers affections; but being indulged in all youthful pleasures, he was much neglected in his education; and he had already reached his twelfth year, when he was yet totally ignorant of the lowest elements of literature. His genius was first roused by the recital of Saxon poems, in which the queen took delight; and this species of erudition, which is sometimes able to make a considerable progress even among barbarians, expanded those noble and elevated sentiments which he had received from nature [i]. Encouraged by the queen, and stimulated by his own ardent inclination, he soon learned to read those compositions; and proceeded thence to acquire the knowledge of the Latin tongue, in which he met with authors that better prompted his heroic spirit, and directed his generous views. Absorbed in these elegant pursuits, he regarded his accession to royalty rather as an object of regret than of triumph [k]; but being called to the throne, in preference to his brothers children, as well by the will of his father, a circumstance which had great authority with the Anglo-Saxons [l], as by the vows of the whole nation, and the urgency of public affairs, he shook off his literary indolence, and exerted himself in the defence of his people. He had scarcely buried his brother, when he was obliged to take the field in order to oppose the Danes, who had seized Wilton, and were exercising their usual ravages on the countries around. He marched against them with the few troops which he could assemble on a sudden; and giving them battle, gained at first an advantage, but by his pursuing the victory too far, the superiority of the enemys numbers prevailed, and recovered them the day. Their loss, however, in the action, was so considerable, that, fearing Alfred would receive daily reinforcement from his subjects, they were content to stipulate for a safe retreat, and promised to depart the kingdom. For that purpose they were conducted to London, and allowed to take up winter quarters there; but, careless of their engagements, they immediately set themselves to the committing of spoil on the neighbouring country. Burrhed, King of Mercia, in whose territories London was situated, made a new stipulation with them, and engaged them, by presents of money, to remove to Lindesey, in Lincolnshire, a country which they had already reduced to ruin and desolation. Finding therefore no object in that place, either for their rapine or violence, they suddenly turned back upon Mercia, in a quarter where they expected to find it without defence; and fixing their station at Repton in Derbyshire, they laid the whole country desolate with fire and sword. Burrhed, despairing of success against an enemy whom no force could resist, and no treaties bind, abandoned his kingdom, and flying to Rome, took shelter in a cloister [m]. He was brother-in-law to Alfred, and the last who bore the title of king in Mercia. [FN [h] Asser. p. 2. W. Malm. lib. 2. cap. 2. Ingulph. p. 869. Simeon Dunelm. p. 120, 139. [i] Asser. p. 5. M. West. p. 167. [k] Asser. p. 7. [1] Ibid. p. 22. Simeon Dunelm. p. 121. [m] Asser. p. 8. Chron. Sax. p. 82. Ethelward, lib. 4. cap. 4.]
The West Saxons were now the only remaining power in England; and though supported by the vigour and abilities of Alfred, they were unable to sustain the efforts of those ravagers, who from all quarters invaded them. A new swarm of Danes came over this year under three princes, Guthrum, Oscitel, and Amund; and having first joined their countrymen at Repton, they soon found the necessity of separating, in order to provide for their subsistence. Part of them, under the command of Haldene, their chieftain [n], marched into Northumberland, where they fixed their quarters; part of them took quarters at Cambridge, whence they dislodged in the ensuing summer, and seized Wereham, in the county of Dorset, the very centre of Alfreds dominions. That prince so straitened them in these quarters, that they were content to come to a treaty with him, and stipulated to depart his country. Alfred, well acquainted with their usual perfidy, obliged them to swear upon the holy relics to the observance of the treaty [o]; not that he expected they would pay any veneration to the relics; but he hoped, that, if they now violated this oath, their impiety would infallibly draw down upon them the vengeance of Heaven. But the Danes, little apprehensive of the danger, suddenly, without seeking any pretence, fell upon Alfreds army; and having put it to rout, marched westward, and took possession of Exeter. The prince collected new forces, and exerted such vigour, that he fought in one year eight battles with the enemy [p], and reduced them to the utmost extremity. He hearkened however to new proposals of peace; and was satisfied to stipulate with them, that they would settle somewhere in England [q], and would not permit the entrance of more ravagers into the kingdom. But while he was expecting the execution of this treaty, which it seemed the interest of the Danes themselves to fulfil, he heard that another body had landed, and having collected all the scattered troops of their countrymen, had surprised Chippenham, then a considerable town, and were exercising their usual ravages all around them. [FN [n] Chron. Sax. p. 83. [o] Asser. p. 8. [p] Ibid. The Saxon Chronicle. p. 82, says nine battles. [q] Asser. p. 9. Alur. Beverl. p. 104.]
This last incident quite broke the spirit of the Saxons, and reduced them to despair. Finding that, after all the miserable havoc which they had undergone in their persons and in their property; after all the vigorous actions which they had exerted in their own defence; a new band, equally greedy of spoil and slaughter, had disembarked among them; they believed themselves abandoned by Heaven to destruction, and delivered over to those swarms of robbers, which the fertile north thus incessantly poured forth against them. Some left their country and retired into Wales, or fled beyond sea: others submitted to the conquerors, in hopes of appeasing their fury by a servile obedience [r]. And every mans attention being now engrossed in concern for his own preservation, no one would hearken to the exhortations of the king, who summoned them to make, under his conduct, one effort more in defence of their prince, their country, and their liberties. Alfred himself was obliged to relinquish the ensigns of his dignity, to dismiss his servants, and to seek shelter, in the meanest disguises, from the pursuit and fury of his enemies. He concealed himself under a peasants habit, and lived some time in the house of a neat-herd, who had been intrusted with the care of some of his cows [s]. There passed here an incident, which has been recorded by all the historians, and was long preserved by popular tradition; though it contains nothing memorable in itself, except so far as every circumstance is interesting which attends so much virtue and dignity reduced to such distress. The wife of the neat-herd was ignorant of the condition of her royal guest; and observing him one day busy by the fire-side in trimming his bows and arrows, she desired him to take care of some cakes which were toasting, while she was employed elsewhere in other domestic affairs. But Alfred, whose thoughts were otherwise engaged, neglected this injunction; and the good woman, on her return, finding her cakes all burnt, rated the king very severely, and upbraided him, that he always seemed very well pleased to eat her warm cakes, though he was thus negligent in toasting them [t]. [FN [r] Chron. Sax. p. 84. Alured Bever. p. 105. [s] Asser. p. 9. [t] Ibid M. West, p. 170.]
By degrees, Alfred, as he found the search of the enemy become more remiss, collected some of his retainers, and retired into the centre of a bog, formed by the stagnating waters of the Thone and Parret, in Somersetshire. He here found two acres of firm ground; and building a habitation on them, rendered himself secure by its fortifications, and still more by the unknown and inaccessible roads which led to it, and by the forests and morasses with which it was every way environed. This place he called Aethelingay, or the Isle of Nobles [u]; and it now bears the name of Athelney. He thence made frequent and unexpected sallies upon the Danes, who often felt the vigour of his arm, but knew not from what quarter the blow came. He subsisted himself and his followers by the plunder which he acquired; he procured them consolation by revenge; and from small successes he opened their minds to hope, that, notwithstanding his present low condition, more important victories might at length attend his valour. [FN [u] Chron. Sax. p. 65. W. Malm. lib. 2. cap. 4 Ethelward, lib. 4. cap. 4. Ingulph. p. 26.]
Alfred lay here concealed, but not inactive, during a twelvemonth, when the news of a prosperous event reached his ears, and called him to the field. Hubba, the Dane, having spread devastation, fire, and slaughter over Wales, had landed in Devonshire from twenty-three vessels, and laid siege to the castle of Kenwith, a place situated near the mouth of the small river Tau. Oddune, Earl of Devonshire, with his followers, had taken shelter there; and being ill supplied with provisions, and even with water, he determined, by some vigorous blow, to prevent the necessity of submitting to the barbarous enemy. He made a sudden sally on the Danes before sun-rising; and taking them unprepared, he put them to rout, pursued them with great slaughter, killed Hubba himself; and got possession of the famous REAFEN, or enchanted standard, in which the Danes put great confidence [w]. It contained the figure of a raven, which had been inwoven by the three sisters of Hinguar and Hubba, with many magical incantations, and which, by its different movements, prognosticated, as the Danes believed, the good or bad success of any enterprise [x]. [FN [w] Asser. p. 10. Chron. Sax. p. 84. Abbas Rieval, p. 395 Alured Beverl. p. 105. [x] Asser. p. 10.]
When Alfred observed this symptom of successful resistance in his subjects, he left his retreat; but before he would assemble them in arms, or urge them to any attempt, which, if unfortunate, might, in their present despondency, prove fatal, he resolved to inspect himself the situation of the enemy, and to judge of the probability of success. For this purpose he entered their camp under the disguise of a harper, and passed unsuspected through every quarter. He so entertained them with his music and facetious humours, that he met with a welcome reception; and was even introduced to the tent of Guthrum, their prince, where he remained some days [y]. He remarked the supine security of the Danes, their contempt of the English, their negligence in foraging and plundering, and their dissolute wasting of what they gained by rapine and violence. Encouraged by these favourable appearances, he secretly sent emissaries to the most considerable of his subjects, and summoned them to a rendezvous, attended by their warlike followers, at Brixton, on the borders of Selwood forest [z]. The English, who had hoped to put an end to their calamities by servile submission, now found the insolence and rapine of the conqueror more intolerable than all past fatigues and dangers; and, at the appointed day, they joyfully resorted to their prince. On his appearance, they received him with shouts of applause [a]; and could not satiate their eyes with the sight of this beloved monarch, whom they had long regarded as dead, and who now, with voice and looks expressing his confidence of success, called them to liberty and to vengeance. He instantly conducted them to Eddington, where the Danes were encamped; and taking advantage of his previous knowledge of the place, he directed his attack against the most unguarded quarter of the enemy. The Danes, surprised to see an army of English, whom they considered as totally subdued, and still more astonished to hear that Alfred was at their head, made but a faint resistance, notwithstanding their superiority of number, and were soon put to flight with great slaughter. The remainder of the routed army, with their prince, was besieged by Alfred in a fortified camp to which they fled; but being reduced to extremity by want and hunger, they had recourse to the clemency of the victor, and offered to submit on any conditions. The king, no less generous than brave, gave them their lives; and even formed a scheme for converting them from mortal enemies into faithful subjects and confederates. He knew that the kingdoms of East Anglia and Northumberland were totally desolated by the frequent inroads of the Danes, and he now proposed to repeople them, by settling there Guthrum and his followers. He hoped that the new planters would at last betake themselves to industry, when, by reason of his resistance, and the exhausted condition of the country, they could no longer subsist by plunder; and that they might serve him as a rampart against any future incursions of their countrymen. But before he ratified these mild conditions with the Danes, he required that they should give him one pledge of their submission, and of their inclination to incorporate with the English, by declaring their conversion to Christianity [b]. Guthrum and his army had no aversion to the proposal; and without much instruction, or argument, or conference, they were all admitted to baptism. The king answered for Guthrum at the font, gave him the name of Athelstan, and received him as his adopted son [c]. [FN [y] W. Malm. lib. 2. cap. 4. [z] Chron. Sax. p. 85. [a] Asser. p. 10. Chron. Sax. p. 85. Simeon Dunelm. p. 128. Alured Beverl. p. 105. Abbas Rieval, p. 354. [b] Chron. Sax. p. 85. [c] Asser. p. 10. Chron. Sax. p. 90.]
[MN 880.] The success of the expedient seemed to correspond to Alfreds hopes: the greater part of the Danes settled peaceably in their new quarters: some smaller bodies of the same nation, which were dispersed in Mercia, were distributed into the five cities of Derby, Leicester, Stamford, Lincoln, and Nottingham, and were thence called the Fif or Five-burghers. The more turbulent and unquiet made an expedition into France, under the command of Hastings [d]; and, except by a short incursion of Danes, who sailed up the Thames, and landed at Fulham, but suddenly retreated to their ships on finding the country in a posture of defence, Alfred was not for some years infested by the inroads of those barbarians [e]. [FN [d] W. Malm. lib. 2. c. 4. Ingulph. p. 26. [e] Asser. p. 11.]
The king employed this interval of tranquillity in restoring order to the state, which had been shaken by so many violent convulsions; in establishing civil and military institutions; in composing the minds of men to industry and justice; and in providing against the return of like calamities. He was, more properly than his grandfather, Egbert, the sole monarch of the English, (for so the Saxons were now universally called,) because the kingdom of Mercia was at last incorporated in his state, and was governed by Ethelbert, his brother- in-law, who bore the title of Earl: and though the Danes, who peopled East Anglia and Northumberland, were for some time ruled immediately by their own princes, they all acknowledged a subordination to Alfred, and submitted to his superior authority. As equality among subjects is the great source of concord, Alfred gave the same laws to the Danes and English, and put them entirely on a like footing in the administration both of civil and criminal justice. The fine for the murder of a Dane was the same with that for the murder of an Englishman; the great symbol of equality in those ages.
The king, after rebuilding the ruined cities, particularly London [f], which had been destroyed by the Danes in the reign of Ethelwolf, established a regular militia for the defence of the kingdom. He ordained that all his people should be armed and registered; he assigned them a regular rotation of duty; he distributed part into the castles and fortresses which he built at proper places [g]; he required another part to take the field on any alarm, and to assemble at stated places of rendezvous; and he left a sufficient number at home, who were employed in the cultivation of the land, and who afterwards took their turn in military service [h]. The whole kingdom was like one great garrison; and the Danes could no sooner appear in one place, than a sufficient number was assembled to oppose them, without leaving the other quarters defenceless or disarmed [i]. [FN [f] Asser. p. 15. Chron. Sax. p. 88. M. West. p. 171. Simeon Dunelm. p. 131. Brompton, p. 812. Alured Beverl. ex edit. Hearne, p. 106. [g] Asser. p. 18. Ingulph. p. 27. [h] Chron. Sax. p. 92, 93. [i] Spellmans Life of Alfred, p. 147. edit. 1709.]
But Alfred, sensible that the proper method of opposing an enemy who made incursions by sea, was to meet them on their own element, took care to provide himself with a naval force [k], which though the most natural defence of an island, had hitherto been totally neglected by the English. He increased the shipping of his kingdom both in number and strength, and trained his subjects in the practice, as well of sailing as of naval action. He distributed his armed vessels in proper stations around the island, and was sure to meet the Danish ships either before or after they had landed their troops, and to pursue them in all their incursions. Though the Danes might suddenly, by surprise, disembark on the coast, which was generally become desolate by their frequent ravages, they were encountered by the English fleet in their retreat; and escaped not, as formerly, by abandoning their booty, but paid, by their total destruction, the penalty of the disorders which they had committed. [FN [k] Asser. p. 9. M. West. p. 179.]
In this manner Alfred repelled several inroads of these piratical Danes, and maintained his kingdom, during some years, in safety and tranquillity. A fleet of a hundred and twenty ships of war was stationed upon the coast; and being provided with warlike engines, as well as with expert seamen, both Frisians and English, (for Alfred supplied the defects of his own subjects by engaging able foreigners in his service,) maintained a superiority over these smaller bands with which England had so often been infested [l]. [MN 893.] But at last Hastings, the famous Danish chief, having ravaged all the provinces of France, both along the seacoast and the Loire and Seine, and being obliged to quit that country, more by the desolation which he himself had occasioned, than by the resistance of the inhabitants, appeared off the coast of Kent with a fleet of 330 sail. The greater part of the enemy disembarked in the Rother, and seized the fort of Apuldore. Hastings himself, commanding a fleet of eighty sail, entered the Thames, and fortifying Milton in Kent, began to spread his forces over the country, and to commit the most destructive ravages. But Alfred, on the first alarm of this descent, flew to the defence of his people, at the head of a select band of soldiers, whom he always kept about his person [m]; and gathering to him the armed militia from all quarters, appeared in the field with a force superior to the enemy. All straggling parties whom necessity, or love of plunder, had drawn to a distance from their chief encampment, were cut off by the English [n]; and these pirates, instead of increasing their spoil, found themselves cooped up in their fortifications, and obliged to subsist by the plunder which they had brought from France. Tired of this situation, which must in the end prove ruinous to them, the Danes at Apuldore rose suddenly from their encampment, with an intention of marching towards the Thames, and passing over into Essex: but they escaped not the vigilance of Alfred, who encountered then at Farnham, put them to rout [o], seized all their horses and baggage, and chased the runaways on board their ships, which carried them up the Colne to Mersey, in Essex, where they intrenched themselves. Hastings, at the same time, and probably by concert, made a like movement; and deserting Milton, took possession of Bamflete, near the Isle of Canvey, in the same county [p], where he hastily threw up fortifications for his defence against the power of Alfred. [FN [1] Asser. p. 11. Chron. Sax. p. 86, 87. M. West. p. 176. [m] Asser. p.19. [n] Chron. Sax. p. 92. [o] Ibid. p. 93. Flor. Wigorn, p. 595. [p] Chron. Sax. p. 93.]
Unfortunately for the English, Guthrum, prince of the East Anglian Danes, was now dead; as was also Guthred, whom the king had appointed governor of the Northumbrians; and those restless tribes, being no longer restrained by the authority of their princes, and being encouraged by the appearance of so great a body of their countrymen, broke into rebellion, shook off the authority of Alfred, and yielding to their inveterate habits of war and depredation [q], embarked on board two hundred and forty vessels, and appeared before Exeter in the west of England. Alfred lost not a moment in opposing this new enemy. Having left some forces at London to make head against Hastings and the other Danes, he marched suddenly to the west [r]; and falling on the rebels before they were aware, pursued them to their ships with great slaughter. These ravagers, sailing next to Sussex, began to plunder the country near Chichester; but the order which Alfred had every where established, sufficed here, without his presence, for the defence of the place; and the rebels, meeting with a new repulse, in which many of them were killed, and some of their ships taken [s], were obliged to put again to sea, and were discouraged from attempting any other enterprise. [FN [q] Ibid. p. 92. [r] Ibid. p. 93. [s] Chron. Sax. p. 96. Flor. Wigorn. p. 596.]
Meanwhile, the Danish invaders in Essex, having united their force under the command of Hastings, advanced into the inland country, and made spoil of all around them; but soon had reason to repent of their temerity. The English army left in London, assisted by a body of the citizens, attacked the enemy's intrenchments at Bamflete, overpowered the garrison, and having done great execution upon them, carried off the wife and two sons of Hastings [t]. Alfred generously spared these captives; and even restored them to Hastings [u], on condition that be should depart the kingdom. [FN [t] Chron. Sax. p. 94. M. West. p. 178. [u] M. West. p. 179.]
But though the king had thus honourably rid himself of this dangerous enemy, he had not entirely subdued or expelled the invaders. The piratical Danes willingly followed in an excursion any prosperous leader who gave them hopes of booty; but were not so easily induced to relinquish their enterprise, or submit to return, baffled and without plunder, into their native country. Great numbers of them, after the departure of Hastings, seized and fortified Shobury, at the mouth of the Thames; and having left a garrison there, they marched along the River, till they came to Boddington, in the county of Gloucester; where, being reinforced by some Welsh, they threw up intrenchments, and prepared for their defence. The king here surrounded them with the whole force of his dominions [w]; and as he had now a certain prospect of victory, he resolved to trust nothing to chance, but rather to master his enemies by famine than assault. They were reduced to such extremities, that, having eaten their own horses, and having many of them perished with hunger [x], they made a desperate sally upon the English; and though the greater number fell in the action, a considerable body made their escape [y]. These roved about for some time in England, still pursued by the vigilance of Alfred; they attacked Leicester with success, defended themselves in Hartford, and then fled to Quatford, where they were finally broken and subdued. The small remains of them either dispersed themselves among their countrymen in Northumberland and East Anglia [z], or had recourse again to the sea, where they exercised piracy, under the command of Sigefert, a Northumbrian. This freebooter, well acquainted with Alfreds naval preparations, had framed vessels of a new construction, higher, and longer, and swifter than those of the English; but the king soon discovered his superior skill, by building vessels still higher, and longer, and swifter than those of the Northumbrians; and falling upon them while they were exercising their ravages in the west, he took twenty of their ships, and having tried all the prisoners at Winchester, he hanged them as pirates, the common enemies of mankind. [FN [w] Chron. Sax. p. 94. [x] Ibid. M. West. p. 179. Flor. Wigorn. p. 596. [y] Chron. Sax. p. 95. [z] Chron. Sax. p. 97.]
The well-timed severity of this execution, together with the excellent posture of defence established every where, restored full tranquillity to England, and provided for the future security of the government. The East Anglian and Northumbrian Danes, on the first appearance of Alfred upon their frontiers, made anew the most humble submissions to him; and he thought it prudent to take them under his immediate government, without establishing over them a viceroy of their own nation [a]. The Welsh also acknowledged his authority; and this great prince had now, by prudence, and justice, and valour, established his sovereignty over all the southern parts of the island, from the English channel to the frontiers of Scotland; when he died [MN 901.], in the vigour of his age and the full strength of his faculties, after a glorious reign of twenty-nine years and a half [b]; in which he deservedly attained the appellation of Alfred the Great, and the title of Founder of the English Monarchy. [FN [a] Flor. Wigorn. p. 598. [b] Asser. p. 21. Chron. Sax. p. 99.]
The merit of this prince, both in private and public life, may with advantage be set in opposition to that of any monarch or citizen which the annals of any age or any nation can present to us. He seems indeed to be the model of that perfect character, which, under the denomination of a sage or wise man, philosophers have been fond of delineating, rather as a fiction of their imagination, than in hopes of ever seeing it really existing: so happily were all his virtues tempered together; so justly were they blended; and so powerfully did each prevent the other from exceeding its proper boundaries. He knew how to reconcile the most enterprising spirit with the coolest moderation; the most obstinate perseverance with the easiest flexibility; the most severe justice with the gentlest lenity; the greatest vigour in commanding with the most perfect affability of deportment [c]; the highest capacity and inclination for science, with the most shining talents for action. His civil and his military virtues are almost equally the objects of our admiration; excepting only, that the former, being more rare among princes, as well as more useful, seem chiefly to challenge our applause. Nature also, as if desirous that so bright a production of her skill should be set in the fairest light, had bestowed on him every bodily accomplishment, vigour of limbs, dignity of shape and air, with a pleasing, engaging, and open countenance [d]. Fortune alone, by throwing him into that barbarous age, deprived him of historians worthy to transmit his fame to posterity; and we wish to see him delineated in more lively colours, and with more particular strokes, that we may at least perceive some of those small specks and blemishes, from which, as a man, it is impossible he could be entirely exempted. [FN [c] Asser. p. 13. [d] Ibid. p. 5.]
But we should give but an imperfect idea of Alfreds merit, were we to confine our narration to his military exploits, and were not more particular in our account of his institutions for the execution of justice, and of his zeal for the encouragement of arts and sciences.
After Alfred had subdued, and had settled or expelled the Danes, he found the kingdom in the most wretched condition; desolated by the ravages of those barbarians, and thrown into disorders, which were calculated to perpetuate its misery. Though the great armies of the Danes were broken, the country was full of straggling troops of that nation, who, being accustomed to live by plunder, were become incapable of industry, and who, from the natural ferocity of their manners, indulged themselves in committing violence, even beyond what was requisite to supply their necessities. The English themselves, reduced to the most extreme indigence by these continued depredations, had shaken off all bands of government; and those who had been plundered today, betook themselves next day to a like disorderly life, and, from despair, joined the robbers in pillaging and ruining their fellow-citizens. These were the evils for which it was necessary that the vigilance and activity of Alfred should provide a remedy.
That he might render the execution of justice strict and regular; he divided all England into counties; these counties he subdivided into hundreds; and, the hundreds into tithings. Every householder was answerable for the behaviour of his family and slaves, and even of his guests, if they lived above three days in his house. Ten neighbouring householders were formed into one corporation, who, under the name of a tithing, decennary, or fribourg, were answerable for each others conduct, and over whom one person, called a tithingman, headbourg, or borsholder, was appointed to preside. Every man was punished as an outlaw who did not register himself in some tithing. And no man could change his habitation, without a warrant or certificate from the borsholder of the tithing to which he formerly belonged.
When any person in any tithing or decennary was guilty of a crime, the borsholder was summoned to answer for him; and if he were not willing to be surety for his appearance, and his clearing himself, the criminal was committed to prison, and there detained till his trial. If he fled, either before or after finding sureties, the borsholder and decennary became liable to inquiry, and were exposed to the penalties of law. Thirty-one days were allowed them for producing the criminal; and if that time elapsed without their being able to find him, the borsholder, with two other members of the decennary, was obliged to appear, and, together with three chief members of the three neighbouring decennaries, (making twelve in all,) to swear that his decennary was free from all privity both of the crime committed, and of the escape of the criminal. If the borsholder could not find such a number to answer for their innocence, the decennary was compelled by fine to make satisfaction to the king, according to the degree of the offence [f]. By this institution, every man was obliged from his own interest to keep a watchful eye over the conduct of his neighbours; and was in a manner surety for the behaviour of those who were placed under the division to which he belonged: whence these decennaries received the name of frank-pledges. [FN [f] Leges St. Edw. cap. 20. apud Wilkins, p. 202.]
Such a regular distribution of the people, with such a strict confinement in their habitation, may not be necessary in times when men are more inured to obedience and justice; and it might perhaps be regarded as destructive of liberty and commerce in a polished state; but it was well calculated to reduce that fierce and licentious people under the salutary restraint of law and government. But Alfred took care to temper these rigours by other institutions favourable to the freedom of the citizens; and nothing could be more popular and liberal than his plan for the administration of justice. The borsholder summoned together his whole decennary to assist him in deciding any lesser difference which occurred among the members of this small community. In affairs of greater moment, in appeals from the decennary, or in controversies arising between members of different decennaries, the cause was brought before the hundred, which consisted of ten decennaries, or a hundred families of freemen, and which was regularly assembled once in four weeks for the deciding of causes [g]. Their method of decision deserves to be noted, as being the origin of juries; an institution admirable in itself, and the best calculated for the preservation of liberty and the administration of justice that ever was devised by the wit of man. Twelve freeholders were chosen, who, having sworn, together with the hundreder, or presiding magistrate of that division, to administer impartial justice [h], proceeded to the examination of that cause which was submitted to their jurisdiction. And beside these monthly meetings of the hundred, there was an annual meeting, appointed for a more general inspection of the police of the district; for the inquiry into crimes, the correction of abuses in magistrates, and the obliging of every person to show the decennary in which he was registered. The people, in imitation of their ancestors, the ancient Germans, assembled there in arms; whence a hundred was sometimes called a wapentake, and its court served both for the support of military discipline, and for the administration of civil justice [i]. [FN [g] Leg. Edw. cap. 2. [h] Foedus Alfred. and Gothurn. apud Wilkins, cap. 3. p. 47. Leg. Ethelstani, cap. 2. apud Wilkins, p. 58. LL. Ethelr. § 4. Wilkins, p. 117. [i] Spellman, IN VOCE Wapentake.]
The next superior court to that of the hundred was the county-court, which met twice a year, after Michaelmas and Easter, and consisted of the freeholders of the county, who possessed an equal vote in the decision of causes. The bishop presided in this court, together with the alderman; and the proper object of the court was the receiving of appeals from the hundreds and decennaries, and the deciding of such controversies as arose between men of different hundreds. Formerly, the alderman possessed both the civil and military authority; but Alfred, sensible that this conjunction of powers rendered the nobility dangerous and independent, appointed also a sheriff in each county, who enjoyed a co-ordinate authority with the former in the judicial function [k]. His office also empowered him to guard the rights of the crown in the county, and to levy the fines imposed; which in that age formed no contemptible part of the public revenue. [FN [k] Ingulph. p. 870.]
There lay an appeal, in default of justice, from all these courts to the king himself in council; and as the people, sensible of the equity and great talents of Alfred, placed their chief confidence in him, he was soon overwhelmed with appeals from all parts of England. He was indefatigable in the despatch of these causes [l]; but finding that his time must be entirely engrossed by this branch of duty, he resolved to obviate the inconvenience, by correcting the ignorance or corruption of the inferior magistrates, from which it arose [m]. He took care to have his nobility instructed in letters and the laws [n]. He chose the earls and sheriffs from among the men most celebrated for probity and knowledge: he punished severely all malversation in office [o]: and he removed all the earls, whom he found unequal to the trust [p]; allowing only some of the more elderly to serve by a deputy, till their death should make room for more worthy successors. [FN [1] Asser. p. 20. [m] Ibid. p. 18, 21. Flor. Wigorn p. 594. Abbas Rieval, p. 355. [n] Flor. Wigorn. p. 594. Brompton. p. 811. [o] Le Miroir de Justice, chap. 2. [p] Asser. p. 20.]
The better to guide the magistrates in the administration of justice, Alfred framed a body of laws; which, though now lost, served long as the basis of English jurisprudence, and is generally deemed the origin of what is denominated the COMMON LAW. He appointed regular meetings of the states of England twice a year in London [q]; a city which he himself had repaired and beautified, and which he thus rendered the capital of the kingdom. The similarity of these institutions to the customs of the ancient Germans, to the practice of the other northern conquerors, and to the Saxon laws during the Heptarchy, prevents us from regarding Alfred as the sole author of this plan of government; and leads us rather to think, that, like a wise man, he contented himself with reforming, extending, and executing the institutions which he found previously established. But, on the whole, such success attended his legislation, that every thing bore suddenly a new face in England: robberies and iniquities of all kinds were repressed by the punishment or reformation of the criminals [r]: and so exact was the general police, that Alfred, it is said, hung up, by way of bravado, golden bracelets near the highways; and no man dared to touch them [s]. Yet, amidst these rigours of justice, this great prince preserved the most sacred regard to the liberty of his people; and it is a memorable sentiment preserved in his will, That it was just the English should for ever remain as free as their own thoughts [t]. [FN [q] Le Miroir de Justice. [r] Ingulph. p. 27. [s] W Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 4. [t] Asser. p. 24.]
As good morals and knowledge are almost inseparable in every age, though not in every individual; the care of Alfred for the encouragement of learning among his subjects was another useful branch of his legislation, and tended to reclaim the English from their former dissolute and ferocious manners: but the king was guided in this pursuit, less by political views, than by his natural bent and propensity towards letters. When he came to the throne, he found the nation sunk into the grossest ignorance and barbarism, proceeding from the continued disorders in the government, and from the ravages of the Danes: the monasteries were destroyed, the monks butchered or dispersed, their libraries burnt; and thus the only seats of erudition in those ages were totally subverted. Alfred himself complains, that on his accession he knew not one person, south of the Thames, who could so much as interpret the Latin service; and very few in the northern parts, who had reached even that pitch of erudition. But this prince invited over the most celebrated scholars from all parts of Europe; he established schools every where for the instruction of his people; he founded, at least repaired, the university of Oxford, and endowed it with many privileges, revenues, and immunities; he enjoined by law all freeholders possessed of two hides [u] of land or more, to send their children to school for their instruction; he gave preferment both in church and state to such only as had made some proficiency in knowledge: and by all these expedients he had the satisfaction, before his death, to see a great change in the face of affairs; and in a work of his, which is still extant, he congratulates himself on the progress which learning, under his patronage, had already made in England. [FN [u] A hide contained land sufficient to employ one plough. See H. Hunt. lib. 6. in A. D. 1008. Annal. Waverl. in A.D. 1083. Gervase of Tilbury says, it commonly contained about 100 acres.]
But the most effectual expedient, employed by Alfred, for the encouragement of learning, was his own example, and the constant assiduity with which, notwithstanding the multiplicity and urgency of his affairs, he employed himself in the pursuits of knowledge. He usually divided his time into three equal portions: one was employed in sleep, and the refection of his body by diet and exercise; another in the despatch of business; a third in study and devotion; and that he might more exactly measure the hours, he made use of burning tapers of equal length, which he fixed in lanterns [w]; an expedient suited to that rude age, when the geometry of dialling, and the mechanism of clocks and watches, were totally unknown. And by such a regular distribution of his time, though he often laboured under great bodily infirmities [x], this martial hero, who fought in person fifty-six battles by sea and land [y], was able, during a life of no extraordinary length, to acquire more knowledge, and even to compose more books, than most studious men, though blessed with the greatest leisure and application, have, in more fortunate ages, made the object of their uninterrupted industry. [FN [w] Asser. p. 20. W. Malm. lib. 2. cap. 4. Ingulph. p. 870. [x] Asser. p. 4, 12, 13, 17. [y] W. Malm. lib. 4. cap. 4.]
Sensible that the people, at all times, especially when their understandings are obstructed by ignorance and bad education, are not much susceptible of speculative instruction, Alfred endeavoured to convey his morality by apologues, parables, stories, apophthegms, couched in poetry; and besides propagating among his subjects former compositions of that kind, which he found in the Saxon tongue [z], he exercised his genius in inventing works of a like nature [a], as well as in translating from the Greek the elegant fables of Aesop. He also gave Saxon translations of Orosiuss and Bedes histories; and of Boethius concerning the consolation of philosophy [b]. And he deemed it nowise derogatory from his other great characters of sovereign, legislator, warrior, and politician, thus to lead the way to his people in the pursuits of literature. [FN [z] Asser. p. 13. [a] Spellman, p. 124. Abbas Rieval, p. 355. [b] W. Malm. lib. 2. cap. 4. Brompton, p. 814.]
Meanwhile, this prince was not negligent in encouraging the vulgar and mechanical arts, which have a more sensible, though not a closer, connexion with the interests of society. He invited, from all quarters, industrious foreigners to repeople his country, which had been desolated by the ravages of the Danes [c]. He introduced and encouraged manufactures of all kinds; and no inventor or improver of any ingenious art did he suffer to go unrewarded [d]. He prompted men of activity to betake themselves to navigation, to push commerce into the most remote countries, and to acquire riches by propagating industry among their fellow-citizens. He set apart a seventh portion of his own revenue for maintaining a number of workmen, whom he constantly employed in rebuilding the ruined cities, castles, palaces, and monasteries [e]. Even the elegancies of life were brought to him from the Mediterranean and the Indies [f]; and his subjects, by seeing those productions of the peaceful arts, were taught to respect the virtues of justice and industry, from which alone they could arise. Both living and dead, Alfred was regarded by foreigners, no less than by his own subjects, as the greatest prince after Charlemagne that had appeared in Europe during several ages, and as one of the wisest and best that had ever adorned the annals of any nation. [FN [c] Asser. p. 13. Flor. Wigorn. p. 588. [d] Asser. p. 20. [e] Asser. p. 20. W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 4. [f] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 4.]
Alfred had, by his wife, Ethelswitha, daughter of a Mercian earl, three sons and three daughters. The eldest son, Edmund, died without issue, in his fathers lifetime. The third, Ethelward, inherited his fathers passion for letters, and lived a private life. The second, Edward, succeeded to his power; and passes by the appellation of Edward the Elder, being the first of that name who sat on the English throne.
[MN Edward the Elder. 901.] This prince, who equalled his father in military talents, though inferior to him in knowledge and erudition [g], found, immediately on his accession, a specimen of that turbulent life to which all princes and even all individuals were exposed, in an age when men, less restrained by law or justice, and less occupied by industry, had no aliment for their inquietude, but wars, insurrections, convulsions, rapine, and depredation. Ethelwald, his cousin-german, son of King Ethelbert, the elder brother of Alfred, insisted on his preferable title [h]; and arming his partisans, took possession of Winburne, where he seemed determined to defend himself to the last extremity, and to await the issue of his pretensions [i]. But when the king approached the town with a great army, Ethelwald, having the prospect of certain destruction, made his escape, and fled first into Normandy, thence into Northumberland; where he hoped that the people, who had been recently subdued by Alfred, and who were impatient of peace, would, on the intelligence of that great princes death, seize the first pretence or opportunity of rebellion. The event did not disappoint his expectations: the Northumbrians declared for him [k]; and Ethelwald having thus connected his interests with the Danish tribes, went beyond sea, and collecting a body of these freebooters, he excited the hopes of all those who had been accustomed to subsist by rapine and violence [l]. The East Anglian Danes joined his party: the Five-burgers, who were seated in the heart of Mercia, began to put themselves in motion; and the English found that they were again menaced with those convulsions, from which the valour and policy of Alfred had so lately rescued them. The rebels, headed by Ethelwald, made an incursion into the Counties of Gloucester, Oxford, and Wilts; and having exercised their ravages in these places, they retired with their booty, before the king, who had assembled an army, was able to approach them. Edward, however, who was determined that his preparations should not be fruitless, conducted his forces into East Anglia, and retaliated the injuries which the inhabitants had committed, by spreading the like devastation among them. Satiated with revenge, and loaded with booty, he gave orders to retire: but the authority of those ancient kings, which was feeble in peace, was not much better established in the field; and the Kentish men, greedy of more spoil, ventured, contrary to repeated orders, to stay behind him, and to take up their quarters in Bury. This disobedience proved in the issue fortunate to Edward. The Danes assaulted the Kentish men; but met with so vigorous a resistance, that, though they gained the field of battle, they bought that advantage by the loss of their bravest leaders, and among the rest, by that of Ethelwald, who perished in the action [m]. The king, freed from the fear of so dangerous a competitor, made peace on advantageous terms with the East Angles [n]. [FN [g] W. Malmes lib. 2. cap. 5 Hoveden, p. 421. [h] Chron. Sax. p. 99, 100. [i] Ibid. p. 100. H. Hunting. lib. 5. p. 352. [k] Chron. Sax. p. 100. H. Hunting. lib. 5. p. 352. [l] Chron. Sax. p. 100. Chron. Abb. St. Petri de Burgo, p. 24. [m] Chron. Sax. p. 101. Brompton, p. 832. [n] Chron. Sax. p. 102. Brompton, p. 832. Matth. West. p. 181.]
In order to restore England to such a state of tranquillity as it was then capable of attaining, nought was wanting but the subjection of the Northumbrians, who, assisted by the scattered Danes in Mercia, continually infested the bowels of the kingdom. Edward, in order to divert the force of these enemies, prepared a fleet to attack them by sea; hoping that, when his ships appeared on their coast, they must at least remain at home, and provide for their defence. But the Northumbrians were less anxious to secure their own property, than greedy to commit spoil on their enemy; and concluding, that the chief strength of the English was embarked on board the fleet, they thought the opportunity favourable, and entered Edwards territories with all their forces. The king, who was prepared against this event, attacked them on their return at Tetenhall, in the county of Stafford, put them to rout, recovered all the booty, and pursued them with great slaughter into their own country.
All the rest of Edwards reign was a scene of continued and successful action against the Northumbrians, the East Angles, the Five-burgers, and the foreign Danes who invaded him from Normandy and Britany. Nor was he less provident in putting his kingdom in a posture of defence, than vigorous in assaulting the enemy. He fortified the towns of Chester, Eddesbury, Warwick, Cherbury, Buckingham, Towcester, Maldon, Huntingdon, and Colchester. He fought two signal battles at Temsford and Maldon [o]. He vanquished Thurketill, a great Danish chief, and obliged him to retire with his followers into France, in quest of spoil and adventures. He subdued the East Angles, and forced them to swear allegiance to him; he expelled the two rival princes of Northumberland, Reginald and Sidroc, and acquired, for the present, the dominion of that province: several tribes of the Britons were subjected by him; and even the Scots, who, during the reign of Egbert, had, under the conduct of Kenneth their king, increased their power by the final subjection of the Picts, were nevertheless obliged to give him marks of submission [p]. In all these fortunate achievements he was assisted by the activity and prudence of his sister, Ethelfleda, who was widow of Ethelbert, Earl of Mercia, and who, after her husbands death, retained the government of that province. This princess, who had been reduced to extremity in childbed, refused afterwards all commerce with her husband; not from any weak superstition, as was common in that age, but because she deemed all domestic occupations unworthy of her masculine and ambitious spirit [q]. She died before her brother; and Edward, during the remainder of his reign, took upon himself the immediate government of Mercia, which before had been entrusted to the authority of a governor [r]. The Saxon Chronicle fixes the death of this prince in 925 [s]: his kingdom devolved to Athelstan, his natural son. [FN [o] Chron. Sax. p. 108. Flor. Wigorn. p. 601. [p] Chron. Sax. p. 110. Hoveden, p. 421. [q] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 5. M. West. p. 182. Ingulph. p. 28. Higden, p. 261. [r] Chron. Sax. p. 110. Brompton, p. 831. [s] Page 110.]
[MN Athelstan 925.] The stain in this princes birth was not, in those times, deemed so considerable as to exclude him from the throne; and Athelstan, being of an age, as well as of a capacity fitted for government, obtained the preference to Edwards younger children, who, though legitimate, were of too tender years to rule a nation so much exposed both to foreign invasion and to domestic convulsions. Some discontents, however, prevailed on his accession; and Alfred, a nobleman of considerable power, was thence encouraged to enter into a conspiracy against him. This incident is related by historians with circumstances, which the reader, according to the degree of credit he is disposed to give them, may impute either to the invention of monks, who forged them, or to their artifice, who found means of making them real. Alfred, it is said, being seized upon strong suspicions, but without any certain proof, firmly denied the .conspiracy imputed to him; and in order to justify himself, he offered to swear to his innocence before the pope, whose person, it was supposed, contained such superior sanctity, that no one could presume to give a false oath in his presence, and yet hope to escape the immediate vengeance of heaven. The king accepted of the condition, and Alfred was conducted to Rome; where, either conscious of his innocence, or neglecting the superstition to which he appealed, he ventured to make the oath required of him before John, who then filled the papal chair. But no sooner had he pronounced the fatal words, than he fell into convulsions, of which three days after he expired. The king, as if the guilt of the conspirator were now fully ascertained, confiscated his estate, and made a present of it to the monastery of Malmesbury [t]; secure that no doubts would ever thenceforth be entertained concerning the justice of his proceedings. [FN [t] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 6. Spell. Conc. p. 407.]
The dominion of Athelstan was no sooner established over his English subjects, than he endeavoured to give security to the government, by providing against the insurrections of the Danes, which had created so much disturbance to his predecessors. He marched into Northumberland; and finding that the inhabitants bore with impatience the English yoke, he thought it prudent to confer on Sithric, a Danish nobleman, the title of king, and to attach him to his interests, by giving him his sister, Editha, in marriage. But this policy proved by accident the source of dangerous consequences. Sithric died in a twelvemonth after; and his two sons by a former marriage, Anlaf and Godfrid, founding pretensions on their fathers elevation, assumed the sovereignty without waiting for Athelstans consent. They were soon expelled by the power of that monarch; and the former took shelter in Ireland, as the latter did in Scotland; where he received, during some time, protection from Constantine, who then enjoyed the crown of that. kingdom. The Scottish prince, however, continually solicited, and even menaced by Athelstan, at last promised to deliver up his guest; but secretly detesting this treachery, he gave Godfrid warning to make his escape [u]; and that fugitive, after subsisting by piracy for some years, freed the king by his death from any farther anxiety. Athelstan, resenting Constantines behaviour, entered Scotland with an army; and ravaging the country with impunity [w], he reduced the Scots to such distress, that their king was content to preserve his crown, by making submissions to the enemy. The English historians assert [x], that Constantine did homage to Athelstan for his kingdom; and they add, that the latter prince, being urged by his courtiers to push the present favourable opportunity, and entirely subdue Scotland, replied, that it was more glorious to confer than conquer kingdoms [y]. But those annals, so uncertain and imperfect in themselves, lose all credit when national prepossessions and animosities have place: and on that account, the Scotch historians, who, without having any more knowledge of the matter, strenuously deny the fact, seem more worthy of belief. [FN [u] W. Malm. lib. 2. cap. 6. [w] Chron. Sax. p. 111. Hoveden, p. 422. H. Hunting. lib. 5. p. 354. [x] Hoveden, p. 422. [y] Wm. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 6. Anglia Sacra, vol. i. p. 212.]
Constantine, whether he owed the retaining of his crown to the moderation of Athelstan, who was unwilling to employ all his advantages against him, or to the policy of that prince, who esteemed the humiliation of an enemy a greater acquisition than the subjection of a discontented and mutinous people, thought the behaviour of the English monarch more an object of resentment than of gratitude. He entered into a confederacy with Anlaf, who had collected a great body of Danish pirates, whom he found hovering in the Irish seas; and with some Welsh princes, who were terrified at the growing power of Athelstan: and all these allies made by concert an irruption with a great army into England. Athelstan, collecting his forces, met the enemy near Brunsbury, in Northumberland, and defeated them in a general engagement. This victory was chiefly ascribed to the valour of Turketul, the English chancellor: for in those turbulent ages no one was so much occupied in civil employments, as wholly to lay aside the military character [z]. [FN [z] The office of chancellor among the Anglo-Saxons resembled more that of a secretary of state, than that of our present chancellor. See Spellman, in voce CHANCELLARIUS.]
There is a circumstance not unworthy of notice, which historians relate, with regard to the transactions of this war. Anlaf, on the approach of the English army, thought that he could not venture too much to ensure a fortunate event; and, employing the artifice formerly practised by Alfred against the Danes, he entered the enemys camp in the habit of a minstrel. The stratagem was for the present attended with like success. He gave such satisfaction to the soldiers who flocked about him, that they introduced him to the kings tent; and Anlaf, having played before that prince and his nobles during their repast, was dismissed with a handsome reward. His prudence kept him from refusing the present; but his pride determined him, on his departure, to bury it, while he fancied that he was unespied by all the world. But a soldier in Athelstans camp, who had formerly served under Anlaf, had been struck with some suspicion on the first appearance of the minstrel; and was engaged by curiosity to observe all his motions. He regarded this last action as a full proof of Anlafs disguise; and he immediately carried the intelligence to Athelstan, who blamed him for not sooner giving him information, that he might have seized his enemy. But the soldier told him, that, as he had formerly sworn fealty to Anlaf, he could never have pardoned himself the treachery of betraying and ruining his ancient master; and that Athelstan himself, after such an instance of his criminal conduct, would have had equal reason to distrust his allegiance. Athelstan, having praised the generosity of the soldiers principles, reflected on the incident, which he foresaw might be attended with important consequences. He removed his station in the camp; and as a bishop arrived that evening with a reinforcement of troops, (for the ecclesiastics were then no less warlike than the civil magistrates,) he occupied with his train that very place which had been left vacant by the kings removal. The precaution of Athelstan was found prudent: for no sooner had darkness fallen, than Anlaf broke into the camp, and hastening directly to the place where he had left the kings tent, put the bishop to death before he had time to prepare for his defence [a]. [FN [a] W. Malmes. lib. 2 cap. 6. Higden, p. 263]
There fell several Danish and Welsh princes in the action of Brunsbury [b]; and Constantine and Anlaf made their escape with difficulty, leaving the greater part of their army on the field of battle. After this success, Athelstan enjoyed his crown in tranquillity; and he is regarded as one of the ablest and most active of those ancient princes. He passed a remarkable law, which was calculated for the encouragement of commerce, and which it required some liberality of mind in that age to have devised: that a merchant, who had made three long sea-voyages on his own account, should be admitted to the rank of a Thane or Gentleman. This prince died at Gloucester in the year 941 [c], after a reign of sixteen years, and was succeeded by Edmund, his legitimate brother. [FN [b] Brompton, p. 839 Ingulph. p. 29 [c] Chron. Sax. p. 114.]
[MN Edmund 941.] Edmund, on his accession, met with disturbance from the restless Northumbrians, who lay in wait for every opportunity of breaking into rebellion. But marching suddenly with his forces into their country, he so overawed the rebels, that they endeavoured to appease him by the most humble submissions [d]. In order to give him a surer pledge of their obedience, they offered to embrace Christianity; a religion which the English Danes had frequently professed, when reduced to difficulties, but which, for that very reason, they regarded as a badge of servitude, and shook off as soon as a favourable opportunity offered. Edmund, trusting little to their sincerity in this forced submission, used the precaution of removing the Five-burgers from the towns of Mercia, in which they had been allowed to settle; because it was always found, that they took advantage of every commotion, and introduced the rebellious, or foreign Danes, into the heart of the kingdom. He also conquered Cumberland from the Britons; and conferred that territory on Malcolm, King of Scotland, on condition that he should do him homage for it, and protect the north from all future incursions of the Danes. [FN [d] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 7. Brompton, p. 857]
Edmund was young when he came to the crown; yet was his reign short, as his death was violent. One day as he was solemnizing a festival in the county of Gloucester, he remarked, that Leolf, a notorious robber, whom he had sentenced to banishment, had yet the boldness to enter the hall where he himself dined, and to sit at table with his attendants. Enraged at this insolence, he ordered him to leave the room; but on his refusing to obey, the king, whose temper, naturally choleric, was inflamed by this additional insult, leaped on him himself, and seized him by the hair: but the ruffian, pushed to extremity, drew his dagger, and gave Edmund a wound, of which he immediately expired. This event happened in the year 946, and in the sixth year of the kings reign. Edmund left male issue, but so young, that they were incapable of governing the kingdom; and his brother, Edred, was promoted to the throne.
[MN Edred 946.] The reign of this prince, as those of his predecessors, was disturbed by the rebellions and incursions of the Northumbrian Danes, who, though frequently quelled, were never entirely subdued, nor had ever paid a sincere allegiance to the crown of England. The accession of a new king seemed to them a favourable opportunity for shaking off the yoke; but on Edreds appearance with an army, they made him their wonted submissions; and the king having wasted the country with fire and sword, as a punishment for their rebellion, obliged them to renew their oaths of allegiance; and he straight retired with his forces. The obedience of the Danes lasted no longer than the present terror. Provoked at the devastations of Edred, and even reduced by necessity to subsist on plunder, they broke into a new rebellion, and were again subdued; but the king, now instructed by experience, took greater precautions against their future revolt. He fixed English garrisons in their most considerable towns; and placed over them an English governor, who might watch all their motions, and suppress any insurrection on its first appearance. He obliged also Malcolm, King of Scotland, to renew his homage for the lands which he held in England.
Edred, though not unwarlike, nor unfit for active life, lay under the influence of the lowest superstition, and had blindly delivered over his conscience to the guidance of Dunstan, commonly called St. Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury, whom he advanced to the highest offices, and who covered, under the appearance of sanctity, the most violent and most insolent ambition. Taking advantage of the implicit confidence reposed in him by the king, this churchman imported into England a new order of monks, who much changed the state of ecclesiastical affairs, and excited, on their first establishment, the most violent commotions.
From the introduction of Christianity among the Saxons, there had been monasteries in England; and these establishments had extremely multiplied, by the donations of the princes and nobles; whose superstition, derived from their ignorance and precarious life, and increased by remorse for the crimes into which they were so frequently betrayed, knew no other expedient for appeasing the Deity than a profuse liberality towards the ecclesiastics. But the monks had hitherto been a species of secular priests, who lived after the manner of the present canons or prebendaries, and were both intermingled, in some degree, with the world, and endeavoured to render themselves useful to it. They were employed in the education of youth [e]: they had the disposal of their own time and industry: they were not subjected to the rigid rules of an order: they had made no vows of implicit obedience to their superiors [f]: and they still retained the choice, without quitting the convent, either of a married or a single life [g]. But a mistaken piety had produced in Italy a new species of monks called Benedictines; who, carrying farther the plausible principles of mortification, secluded themselves entirely from the world, renounced all claim to liberty, and made a merit of the most inviolable chastity. These practices and principles, which superstition at first engendered, were greedily embraced and promoted by the policy of the court of Rome. The Roman pontiff, who was making every day great advances towards an absolute sovereignty over the ecclesiastics, perceived that the celibacy of the clergy alone could break off entirely their connexion with the civil power, and depriving them of every other object of ambition, engage them to promote, with unceasing industry, the grandeur of their own order. He was sensible, that so long as the monks were indulged in marriage, and were permitted to rear families, they never could be subjected to strict discipline, or reduced to that slavery under their superiors, which was requisite to procure to the mandates issued from Rome, a ready and zealous obedience. Celibacy, therefore, began to be extolled, as the indispensable duty of priests; and the pope undertook to make all the clergy throughout the western world renounce at once the privilege of marriage: a fortunate policy; but at the same time an undertaking the most difficult of any, since he had the strongest propensities of human nature to encounter, and found, that the same connexions with the female sex, which generally encourage devotion, were here unfavourable to the success of his project. It is no wonder therefore, that this master-stroke of art should have met with violent contradiction, and that the interests of the hierarchy, and the inclinations of the priests, being now placed in this singular opposition, should, notwithstanding the continued efforts of Rome, have retarded the execution of that bold scheme, during the course of near three centuries. [FN [e] Osberne in Anglia Sacra, tom. 2. p. 92. [f] Osberne, p. 91. [g] See Whartons notes to Anglia Sacra, tom. 2. p. 91. Gervase, p. 1645. Chron Wint. MS. apud Spell. Conc. p. 434.]
As the bishops and parochial clergy lived apart with their families, and were more connected with the world, the hopes of success with them were fainter; and the pretence for making them renounce marriage was much less plausible. But the pope, having cast his eye on the monks as the basis of his authority, was determined to reduce them under strict rules of obedience, to procure them the credit of sanctity by an appearance of the most rigid mortification, and to break off all their other ties which might interfere with his spiritual policy. Under pretence, therefore, of reforming abuses, which were, in some degree, unavoidable in the ancient establishments, he had already spread over the southern countries of Europe the severe laws of the monastic life, and began to form attempts towards a like innovation in England. The favourable opportunity offered itself, (and it was greedily seized,) arising from the weak, superstition of Edred, and the violent impetuous character of Dunstan.
Dunstan was born of noble parents in the west of England; and being educated under his uncle Aldhelm, then Archbishop of Canterbury, had betaken himself to the ecclesiastical life, and had acquired some character in the court of Edmund. He was, however, represented to that prince as a man of licentious manners [h]: and finding his fortune blasted by these suspicions, his ardent ambition prompted him to repair his indiscretions by running into an opposite extreme. He secluded himself entirely from the world; he framed a cell so small, that he could neither stand erect in it nor stretch out his limbs during his repose; and he here employed himself perpetually either in devotion or in manual labour [i]. It is probable, that his brain became gradually crazed by these solitary occupations, and that his head was filled with chimeras, which, being believed by himself and his stupid votaries, procured him the general character of sanctity among the people. He fancied that the devil, among the frequent visits which he paid him, was one day more earnest than usual in his temptations; till Dunstan, provoked at his importunity, seized him by the nose with a pair of red-hot pincers, as he put his head into the cell; and he held him there till that malignant spirit made the whole neighbourhood resound with his bellowings. This notable exploit was seriously credited and extolled by the public: it is transmitted to posterity by one who, considering the age in which he lived, may pass for a writer of some eloquence [k]; and it ensured to Dunstan a reputation which no real piety, much less virtue, could, even in the most enlightened period, have ever procured him with the people. [FN [h] Osberne, p. 95 Matth West, p. 187. [i] Osberne, p. 96. [k] Osberne, p. 97.]
Supported by the character obtained in his retreat, Dunstan appeared again in the world; and gained such an ascendant over Edred, who had succeeded to the crown, as made him not only the director of that princes conscience, but his counsellor in the most momentous affairs of government. He was placed at the head of the treasury [l], and being thus possessed both of power at court, and of credit with the populace, he was enabled to attempt with success the most arduous enterprises. Finding that his advancement had been owing to the opinion of his austerity, he professed himself a partisan of the rigid monastic rules; and after introducing that reformation into the convents of Glastonbury and Abingdon, he endeavoured to render it universal in the kingdom. [FN [1] Ibid. p. 102. Wallingford, p. 541.]
The minds of men were already well prepared for this innovation. The praises of an inviolable chastity had been carried to the highest extravagance by some of the first preachers of Christianity among the Saxons: the pleasures of love had been represented as incompatible with Christian perfection; and a total abstinence from all commerce with the sex was deemed such a meritorious penance, as was sufficient to atone for the greatest enormities. The consequence seemed natural, that those, at least, who officiated at the altar should be clear of this pollution; and when the doctrine of transubstantiation, which was now creeping in [m], was once fully established, the reverence to the real body of Christ in the eucharist bestowed on this argument an additional force and influence. The monks knew how to avail themselves of all these popular topics, and to set off their own character to the best advantage. They affected the greatest austerity of life and manners: they indulged themselves in the highest strains of devotion: they inveighed bitterly against the vices and pretended luxury of the age: they were particularly vehement against the dissolute lives of the secular clergy, their rivals: every instance of libertinism in any individual of that order was represented as a general corruption: and where other topics of defamation were wanting, their marriage became a sure subject of invective, and their wives received the name of CONCUBINE, or other more opprobrious appellation. The secular clergy, on the other hand, who were numerous and rich, and possessed of the ecclesiastical dignities, defended themselves with vigour, and endeavoured to retaliate upon their adversaries. The people were thrown into agitation; and few instances occur of more violent dissensions, excited by the most material differences in religion, or rather by the most frivolous: since it is a just remark, that the more affinity there is between theological parties, the greater commonly is their animosity. [FN [m] Spell. Conc. v. i. p. 452.]
The progress of the monks, which was become considerable, was somewhat retarded by the death of Edred, their partisan, who expired after a reign of nine years [n]. He left children; but as they were infants, his nephew, Edwy, son of Edmund, was placed on the throne. [FN [n] Chron. Sax. p. 115.]
[MN Edwy. 955.] Edwy, at the time of his accession, was not above sixteen or seventeen years of age, was possessed of the most amiable figure, and was even endowed, according to authentic accounts, with the most promising virtues [o]. He would have been the favourite of his people, had he not unhappily, at the commencement of his reign, been engaged in a controversy with the monks, whose rage, neither the graces of the body nor virtues of the mind could mitigate, and who have pursued his memory with the same unrelenting vengeance which they exercised against his person and dignity during his short and unfortunate reign. There was a beautiful princess of the royal blood, called Elgiva, who had made impression on the tender heart of Edwy; and as he was of an age when the force of the passions first begins to be felt, he had ventured, contrary to the advice of his gravest counsellors, and the remonstrances of the more dignified ecclesiastics [p], to espouse her; though she was within the degrees of affinity prohibited by the canon law [q]. As the austerity affected by the monks made them particularly violent on this occasion, Edwy entertained a strong prepossession against them; and seemed, on that account, determined not to second their project of expelling the seculars from all the convents, and of possessing themselves of those rich establishments. War was therefore declared between the king and the monks; and the former soon found reason to repent his provoking such dangerous enemies. On the day of his coronation, his nobility were assembled in a great hall, and were indulging themselves in that riot and disorder, which, from the example of their German ancestors, had become habitual to the English [r]; when Edwy, attracted by softer pleasures, retired into the queens apartment, and in that privacy gave reins to his fondness towards his wife, which was only moderately checked by the presence of her mother. Dunstan conjectured the reason of the kings retreat; and carrying along with him Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury, over whom he had gained an absolute ascendant, he burst into the apartment, upbraided Edwy with his lasciviousness, probably bestowed on the queen the most opprobrious epithet that can be applied to her sex, and tearing him from her arms, pushed him back, in a disgraceful manner, into the banquet of the nobles [s]. Edwy, though young, and opposed by the prejudices of the people, found an opportunity of taking revenge for this public insult. He questioned Dunstan concerning the administration of the treasury during the reign of his predecessor [t]; and when that minister refused to give any account of money expended, as he affirmed, by orders of the late king, he accused him of malversation in his office and banished him the kingdom. But Dunstans cabal was not inactive during his absence; they filled the public with high panegyrics on his sanctity; they exclaimed against the impiety of the king and queen; and having poisoned the minds of the people by these declamations, they proceeded to still more outrageous acts of violence against the royal authority. Archbishop Odo sent into the palace a party of soldiers, who seized the queen, and, having burned her face with a red-hot iron, in order to destroy that fatal beauty which had seduced Edwy, they carried her by force into Ireland, there to remain in perpetual exile [u]. Edwy, finding it in vain to resist, was obliged to consent to his divorce, which was pronounced by Odo [w]; and catastrophe, still more dismal, awaited the unhappy Elgiva. That amiable princess, being cured of her wounds, and having even obliterated the scars with which Odo had hoped to deface her beauty, returned into England, and was flying to the embraces of the king, whom she still regarded as her husband; when she fell into the hands of a party, whom the primate had sent to intercept her. Nothing but her death could now give security to Odo and the monks; and the most cruel death was requisite to satiate their vengeance. She was hamstringed; and expired a few days after at Gloucester, in the most acute torments [x]. [FN [o] H. Hunting. lib. 5. p. 356. [p] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 7. [q] Ibid. [r] Wallingford, p. 542. [s] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 7. Osberne, p. 83, 105. M. West. p. 195, 196. [t] Wallingford, p. 542. Alur. Beverl. p. 112. [u] Osberne, p. 84. Gervase, p. 1644. [w] Hoveden, p. 425. [x] Osberne, p. 84. Gervase, p. 1645, 1646.]
The English, blinded with superstition, instead of being shocked with this inhumanity, exclaimed that the misfortunes of Edwy and his consort were a just judgment for their dissolute contempt of the ecclesiastical statutes. They even proceeded to rebellion against their sovereign; and having placed Edgar at their head, the younger brother of Edwy, a boy of thirteen years of age, they soon put him in possession of Mercia, Northumberland, East Anglia; and chased Edwy into the southern counties. That it might not be doubtful at whose instigation this revolt was undertaken, Dunstan returned into England, and took upon him the government of Edgar and his party. He was first installed in the see of Worcester, then in that of London [y], and on Odos death, and the violent expulsion of Brithelm, his successor, in that of Canterbury [z]; of all which he long kept possession. Odo is transmitted to us by the monks under the character of a man of piety; Dunstan was even canonized: and is one of those numerous saints of the same stamp who disgrace the Romish calendar. Meanwhile the unhappy Edwy was excommunicated [a], and pursued with unrelenting vengeance; but his death, which happened soon after, freed his enemies from all further inquietude, and gave Edgar peaceable possession of the government [b]. [FN [y] Chron. Sax. p. 117. Flor Wigorn. p. 605. Wallingford, p. 544 [z] Hoveden p. 425. Osberne, p. 109. [a] Brompton, p. 863. [b] See note [B] at the end of the volume.]
[MN Edgar.] This prince, who mounted the throne in such early youth, soon discovered an excellent capacity in the administration of affairs; and his reign is one of the most fortunate that we meet with in the ancient English history. He showed no aversion to war, he made the wisest preparations against invaders; and by his vigour and foresight he was enabled, without any danger of suffering insults, to indulge his inclination towards peace, and to employ himself in supporting and improving the internal government of his kingdom. He maintained a body of disciplined troops; which he quartered in the north, in order to keep the mutinous Northumbrians in subjection, and to repel the inroads of the Scots. He built and supported a powerful navy [c]; and that he might retain the seamen in the practice of their duty, and always present a formidable armament to his enemies, he stationed three squadrons off the coast, and ordered them to make, from time to time, the circuit of his dominions [d]. The foreign Danes dared not to approach a country which appeared in such a posture of defence: the domestic Danes saw inevitable destruction to be the consequence of their tumults and insurrections: the neighbouring sovereigns, the King of Scotland, the Princes of Wales, of the Isle of Man, of the Orkneys, and even of Ireland [e], were reduced to pay submission to so formidable a monarch. He carried his superiority to a great height, and might have excited an universal combination against him, had not his power been so well established as to deprive his enemies of all hope of shaking it. It is said, that residing once at Chester, and having purposed to go by water to the abbey of St. John the Baptist, he obliged eight of his tributary princes to row him in a barge upon the Dee [f]. The English historians are fond of mentioning the name of Kenneth III, King of Scots, among the number: the Scottish historians either deny the fact, or assert that their king, if ever he acknowledged himself a vassal to Edgar, did him homage not for his crown, but for the dominions which he held in England. [FN [c] Higden, p. 265. [d] See note [C] at the end of the volume. [e] Spell. Conc. p. 32. [f] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8. Hoveden, p. 406. H. Hunting. lib. 5. p. 356.]
But the chief means by which Edgar maintained his authority, and preserved public peace, was the paying of court to Dunstan and the monks, who had at first placed him on the throne, and who, by their pretensions to superior sanctity and purity of manners, had acquired an ascendant over the people. He favoured their scheme for dispossessing the secular canons of all the monasteries [g]; he bestowed preferment on none but their partisans; he allowed Dunstan to resign the see of Worcester into the hands of Oswald, one of his creatures [h]; and to place Ethelwold, another of them, in that of Winchester [i]; he consulted these prelates in the administration of all ecclesiastical, and even in that of many civil affairs; and though the vigour of his own genius prevented him from being implicitly guided by them, the king and the bishops found such advantages in their mutual agreement, that they always acted in concert, and united their influence in preserving the peace and tranquillity of the kingdom. [FN [g] Chron. Sax. p. 117, 118. W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8. Hoveden, p. 425, 426 Osberne, p. 112. [h] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8. Hoveden, p. 425.]
In order to complete the great work of placing the new order of monks in all the convents, Edgar summoned a general council of the prelates and the heads of the religious orders. He here inveighed against the dissolute lives of the secular clergy; the smallness of their tonsure, which, it is probable, maintained no longer any resemblance to the crown of thorns; their negligence in attending the exercise of their function; their mixing with the laity in the pleasures of gaming, hunting, dancing, and singing; and their openly living with concubines, by which it is commonly supposed he meant their wives. He then turned himself to Dunstan, the primate; and in the name of King Edred, whom he supposed to look down from heaven with indignation against all those enormities, he thus addressed him: "It is you, Dunstan, by whose advice I founded monasteries, built churches, and expended my treasure in the support of religion and religious houses. You were my counsellor and assistant in all my schemes: you were the director of my conscience: to you I was obedient in all things. When did you call for supplies which I refused you? Was my assistance ever wanting to the poor? Did I deny support and establishments to the clergy and the convents? Did I not hearken to your instructions, who told me that these charities were, of all others, the most grateful to my Maker, and fixed a perpetual fund for the support of religion? And are all our pious endeavours now frustrated by the dissolute lives of the priests? Not that I throw any blame on you; you have reasoned, besought, inculcated, inveighed; but it now behoves you to use sharper and more vigorous remedies; and conjoining your spiritual authority with the civil power, to purge effectually the temple of God from thieves and intruders [k]." It is easy to imagine that this harangue had the desired effect; and that, when the king and prelates thus concurred with the popular prejudices, it was not long before the monks prevailed, and established their new discipline in almost all the convents. [FN [i] Gervase, p. 1646. Brompton, p. 864. Flor. Wigorn. p. 606. Chron. Abb. St. Petri de Burgo, p 27, 28. [k] Abbas Rieval. p. 360, 361. Spell. Conc. p. 476, 477, 478]
We may remark, that the declamations against the secular clergy are, both here and in all the historians, conveyed in general terms; and as that order of men are commonly restrained by the decency of their character, it is difficult to believe that the complaints against their dissolute manners could be so universally just as is pretended. It is more probable that the monks paid court to the populace by an affected austerity of life; and representing the most innocent liberties, taken by the other clergy, as great and unpardonable enormities, thereby prepared the way for the increase of their own power and influence. Edgar, however, like a true politician, concurred with the prevailing party; and he even indulged them in pretensions, which, though they might, when complied with, engage the monks to support royal authority during his own reign, proved afterwards dangerous to his successors, and gave disturbance to the whole civil power. He seconded the policy of the court of Rome, in granting to some monasteries an exemption from episcopal jurisdiction; he allowed the convents, even those of royal foundation, to usurp the election of their own abbot: and he admitted their forgeries of ancient charters, by which, from the pretended grant of former kings, they assumed many privileges and immunities [l] [FN [l] Chron. Sax. p. 118. W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8. Seldeni Spicileg. ad Eadm. p. 149, 157.]
These merits of Edgar have procured him the highest panegyrics from the monks, and he is transmitted to us, not only under the character of a consummate statesman and an active prince, praises to which he seems to have been justly entitled, but under that of a of a great saint and a man of virtue. But nothing could more betray both his hypocrisy in inveighing against the licentiousness of the secular clergy, and the interested spirit of his partisans, in bestowing such eulogies on his piety, than the usual tenour of his conduct, which was licentious to the highest degree, and violated every law, human and divine. Yet those very monks who, as we are told by Ingulf, a very ancient historian, had no idea of any moral or religious merit, except chastity and obedience, not only connived at his enormities, but loaded him with the greatest praises. History, however, has preserved some instances of his amours, from which, as from a specimen, we may form a conjecture of the rest.
Edgar broke into a convent, carried off Editha, a nun, by force, and even committed violence on her person [m]. For this act of sacrilege he was reprimanded by Dunstan; and that he might reconcile himself to the church, he was obliged not to separate from his mistress, but to abstain from wearing his crown during seven years, and to deprive himself so long of that vain ornament [n]; punishment very unequal to that which had been inflicted on the unfortunate Edwy, who, for a marriage which, in the strictest sense, could only deserve the name of irregular, was expelled his kingdom, saw his queen treated with singular barbarity, was loaded with calumnies, and has been represented to us under the most odious colours. Such is the ascendant which may be attained, by hypocrisy and cabal, over mankind. [FN [m] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8. Osberne, p. 3. Diceto p. 457. Higden, p. 265, 267, 266. Spell. Conc. p. 481. [n] Osberne, p. 111.]
There was another mistress of Edgar, with whom he first formed a connexion by a kind of accident. Passing one day by Andover, he lodged in the house of a nobleman, whose daughter, being endowed with all the graces of person and behaviour, inflamed him at first sight with the highest desire; and he resolved by any expedient to gratify it. As he had not leisure to employ courtship or address for attaining his purpose, he went directly to her mother, declared the violence of his passion, and desired that the young lady might be allowed to pass that very night with him. The mother was a woman of virtue, and determined not to dishonour her daughter and her family by compliance; but being well acquainted with the impetuosity of the kings temper, she thought it would be easier, as well as safer, to deceive than refuse him. She feigned therefore a submission to his will; but secretly ordered a waiting maid, of no disagreeable figure, to steal into the kings bed, after all the company should be retired to rest. In the morning before daybreak, the damsel, agreeably to the injunctions of her mistress, offered to retire; but Edgar, who had no reserve in his pleasures, and whose love to his bedfellow was rather inflamed by enjoyment, refused his consent, and employed force and entreaties to detain her. Elfleda, (for that was the name of the maid,) trusting to her own charms, and to the love with which, she hoped, she had now inspired the king, made probably but a faint resistance; and the return of light discovered the deceit to Edgar. He had passed a night so much to his satisfaction, that he expressed no displeasure with the old lady on account of her fraud; his love was transferred to Elfleda; she became his favourite mistress; and maintained her ascendant over him till his marriage with Elfrida [o]. [FN [o] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8. Higden, p. 268.]
The circumstances of his marriage with this lady were more singular and more criminal. Elfrida was daughter and heir of Olgar, Earl of Devonshire; and though she had been educated in the country, and had never appeared at court, she had filled all England with the reputation of her beauty. Edgar himself, who was indifferent to no accounts of this nature, found his curiosity excited by the frequent panegyrics which he heard of Elfrida; and reflecting on her noble birth, he resolved, if he found her charms answerable to their fame, to obtain possession of her on honourable terms. He communicated his intention to Earl Athelwold, his favourite; but used the precaution, before he made any advances to her parents, to order that nobleman, on some pretence, to pay them a visit, and to bring him a certain account of the beauty of their daughter. Athelwold, when introduced to the young lady, found general report to have fallen short of the truth; and being actuated by the most vehement love, he determined to sacrifice to this new passion his fidelity to his master, and to the trust reposed in him. He returned to Edgar and told him, that the riches alone, and high quality of Elfrida, had been the ground of the admiration paid her; and that her charms, far from being anywise extraordinary, would have been overlooked in a woman of inferior station. When he had, by this deceit, diverted the king from his purpose, he took an opportunity, after some interval, of turning again the conversation on Elfrida; he remarked, that though the parentage and fortune of the lady had not produced on him, as on others, any illusion with regard to her beauty, he could not forbear reflecting, that she would, on the whole, be an advantageous match for him, and might, by her birth and riches, make him sufficient compensation for the homeliness of her person. If the king, therefore, gave his approbation, he was determined to make proposals in his own behalf to the Earl of Devonshire, and doubted not to obtain his, as well as the young ladys consent to the marriage. Edgar, pleased with an expedient for establishing his favourites fortune, not only exhorted him to execute his purpose, but forwarded his success by his recommendations to the parents of Elfrida; and Athelwold was soon made happy in the possession of his mistress. Dreading, however, the detection of the artifice, he employed every pretence for detaining Elfrida in the country, and for keeping her at a distance from Edgar.
The violent passion of Athelwold had rendered him blind to the necessary consequences which must attend his conduct, and the advantages which the numerous enemies that always pursue a royal favourite would, by its means, be able to make against him. Edgar was soon informed of the truth; but before he would execute vengeance on Athelwolds treachery, he resolved to satisfy himself with his own eyes of the certainty and full extent of his guilt. He told him that he intended to pay him a visit in his castle, and be introduced to the acquaintance of his new married wife; and Athelwold, as he could not refuse the honour, only craved leave to go before him a few hours, that he might the better prepare every thing for his reception. He then discovered the whole matter to Elfrida; and begged her, if she had any regard either to her own honour or his life, to conceal from Edgar, by every circumstance of dress and behaviour, that fatal beauty, which had seduced him from fidelity to his friend, and had betrayed him into so many falsehoods. Elfrida promised compliance, though nothing was farther from her intentions. She deemed herself little beholden to Athelwold for a passion which had deprived her of a crown; and knowing the force of her own charms, she did not despair even yet of reaching that dignity, of which her husbands artifice had bereaved her. She appeared before the king with all the advantages which the richest attire and the most engaging airs could bestow upon her, and she excited at once in his bosom the highest love towards herself, and the most furious desire of revenge against her husband. He knew, however, how to dissemble these passions; and seducing Athelwold into a wood, on pretence of hunting, he stabbed him with his own hand, and soon after publicly espoused Elfrida [p]. [FN [p] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8. Hoveden, p. 426. Brompton, p. 865, 866. Flor. Wigorn. p. 606. Higd. p. 268.]
Before we conclude our account of this reign, we must mention two circumstances which are remarked by historians. The reputation of Edgar allured a great number of foreigners to visit his court; and he gave them encouragement to settle in England [q]. We are told that they imported all the vices of their respective countries, and contributed to corrupt the simple manners of the natives [r]. But as this simplicity of manners, so highly and often so injudiciously extolled, did not preserve them from barbarity and treachery, the greatest of all vices, and the most incident to a rude uncultivated people, we ought perhaps to deem their acquaintance with foreigners rather an advantage; as it tended to enlarge their views, and to cure them of those illiberal prejudices and rustic manners to which islanders are often subject. [FN [q] Chron. Sax. p. 116. H. Hunting. lib 5. p. 356. Brompton, p. 865. [r] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8.]
Another remarkable incident of this reign was the extirpation of wolves from England. This advantage was attained by the industrious policy of Edgar. He took great pains in hunting and pursuing those ravenous animals; and when he found that all that escaped him had taken shelter in the mountains and forests of Wales, he changed the tribute of money imposed on the Welsh princes by Athelstan, his predecessor [s], into an annual tribute of three hundred heads of wolves; which produced such diligence in hunting them, that the animal has been no more seen in this island. [FN [s] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 6. Brompton, p. 838.]
Edgar died after a reign of sixteen years, and in the thirty-third of his age. He was succeeded by Edward, whom he had by his first marriage with the daughter of Earl Ordmer.
[MN Edward the Martyr. 957.] The succession of this prince, who was only fifteen years of age at his fathers death, did not take place without much difficulty and opposition. Elfrida, his stepmother, had a son, Ethelred, seven years old, whom she attempted to raise to the throne: she affirmed that Edgars marriage with the mother of Edward was exposed to insuperable objections; and as she had possessed great credit with her husband, she had found means to acquire partisans, who seconded all her pretensions. But the title of Edward was supported by many advantages. He was appointed successor by the will of his father [t]: he was approaching to mans estate, and might soon be able to take into his own hands the reins of government: the principal nobility, dreading the imperious temper of Elfrida, were averse to her sons government, which must enlarge her authority, and probably put her in possession of the regency: above all, Dunstan, whose character of sanctity had given him the highest credit with the people, had espoused the cause of Edward, over whom he had already acquired a great ascendant [u]; and he was determined to execute the will of Edgar in his favour. To cut off all opposite pretensions, Dunstan resolutely anointed and crowned the young prince at Kingston; and the whole kingdom, without farther dispute, submitted to him [w]. [FN [t] Hoveden, p. 427. Eadmer, p. 3. [u] Eadmer, ex. edit. Seldeni, p. 3. [w] W. Malm. lib. 2. cap. 9. Hoveden, p. 427. Osberne, p. 113.]
It was of great importance to Dunstan and the monks, to place on the throne a king favourable to their cause: the secular clergy had still partisans in England, who wished to support them in the possession of the convents, and of the ecclesiastical authority. On the first intelligence of Edgars death, Alfere, Duke of Mercia, expelled the new orders of monks from all the monasteries which lay within his jurisdiction [x]; but Elfwin, Duke of East Anglia, and Brithnot, Duke of the East Saxons, protected them within their territories, and insisted upon the execution of the late laws enacted in their favour. In order to settle this controversy, there were summoned several synods, which, according to the practice of those times, consisted partly of ecclesiastical members, partly of the lay nobility. The monks were able to prevail in these assemblies; though, as it appears, contrary to the secret wishes, if not the declared inclination, of the leading men in the nation [y]: they had more invention in forging miracles to support their cause; or having been so fortunate as to obtain, by their pretended austerities, the character of piety, their miracles were more credited by the populace. [FN [x] Chron. Sax. p. 123. W. Malmes. lib. 2, cap. 9. Hoveden, p. 427. Brompton, p. 870. Flor. Wigorn. p. 607. [y] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 9.]
In one synod, Dunstan, finding the majority of votes against him, rose up and informed the audience, that he had that instant received an immediate revelation in behalf of the monks: the assembly was so astonished at this intelligence, or probably so overawed by the populace, that they proceeded no farther in their deliberations. In another synod, a voice issued from the crucifix, and informed the members that the establishment of the monks was founded on the will of Heaven, and could not be opposed without impiety [z]. But the miracle performed in the third synod was still more alarming: the floor of the hall in which the assembly met sunk of a sudden and a great number of the members were either bruised or killed by the fall. It was remarked, that Dunstan had that day prevented the king from attending the synod, and that the beam, on which his own chair stood, was the only one that did not sink under the weight of the assembly [a]. But these circumstances, instead of begetting any suspicion of contrivance, were regarded as the surest proof of the immediate interposition of Providence in behalf of those favourites of Heaven. [FN [z] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 9. Osberne, p. 112. Gervase, p. 1647. Brompton, p. 870. Higden, p. 269. [a] Chron. Sax. p. 124. W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 9. Hoveden, p. 427. H. Hunting. lib. 5. p. 357. Gervase, p. 1647. Brompton, p. 870. Flor. Wigorn. p. 607. Higden, p. 269. Chron. Abb. St. Petri de Burgo, p. 29.]
Edward lived four years after his accession, and there passed nothing memorable during his reign. His death alone was memorable and tragical [b]: this young prince was endowed with the most amiable innocence of manners; and as his own intentions were always pure, he was incapable of entertaining any suspicion against others. Though his step-mother had opposed his succession, and had raised a party in favour of her own son, he always showed her marks of regard, and even expressed, on all occasions, the most tender affection towards his brother. He was hunting one day in Dorsetshire; and being led by the chase near Corfe-castle, where Elfrida resided, he took the opportunity of paying her a visit, unattended by any of his retinue, and he thereby presented her with the opportunity which she had long wished for. After he had mounted his horse, he desired some liquor to be brought him: while he was holding the cup to his head, a servant of Elfrida approached him, and gave him a stab behind. The prince, finding himself wounded, put spurs to his horse; but becoming faint by loss of blood, he fell from the saddle, his foot stuck in the stirrup, and he was dragged along by his unruly horse till he expired. Being tracked by the blood, his body was found, and was privately interred at Wareham by his servants. [FN [b] Chron. Sax. p. 124.]
The youth and innocence of this prince, with his tragical death, begat such compassion among the people, that they believed miracles to be wrought at his tomb; and they give him the appellation of Martyr, though his murder had no connexion with any religious principle or opinion. Elfrida built monasteries, and performed many penances, in order to atone for her guilt; but could never, by all her hypocrisy or remorses, recover the good opinion of the public, though so easily deluded in those ignorant ages.
se that the crown was considered as altogether elective; and that a regular plan was traced by the constitution for supplying, by the suffrages of the people, every vacancy made by the demise of the first magistrate. If any king left a son of an age and capacity fit for government, the young prince naturally stepped into the throne: if he was a minor, his uncle, or the next prince of the blood, was promoted to the government, and left the sceptre to his posterity: any sovereign, by taking previous measures with the leading men, had it greatly in his power to appoint his successor: all these changes, and indeed the ordinary administration of government, required the express concurrence, or at least the tacit acquiescence, of the people; but possession, however obtained, was extremely apt to secure their obedience, and the idea of any right, which was once excluded, was but feeble and imperfect. This is so much the case in all barbarous monarchies, and occurs so often in the history of the Anglo-Saxons, that we cannot consistently entertain any other notion of their government. The idea of an hereditary succession in authority is so natural to men, and is so much fortified by the usual rule in transmitting private possessions, that it must retain a great influence on every society, which does not exclude it by the refinements of a republican constitution. But as there is a material difference between government and private possessions, and every man is not as much qualified for exercising the one, as for enjoying the other, a people, who are not sensible of the general advantages attending a fixed rule, and apt to make great leaps in the succession, and frequently to pass over the person, who, had he possessed the requisite years and abilities, would have been thought entitled to the sovereignty. Thus, these monarchies are not, strictly speaking, either elective or hereditary; and though the destination of a prince may often be followed in appointing his successor, they can as little be regarded as wholly testamentary. The states by their suffrage may sometimes establish a sovereign; but they more frequently recognize the person whom they find established: a few great men take the lead; the people, overawed and influenced, acquiesce in the government; and the reigning prince, provided he be of the royal family, passes undisputedly for the legal sovereign.
[MN The Wittenagemot.] It is confessed, that our knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon history and antiquities is too imperfect to afford us means of determining, with certainty, all the prerogatives of the crown and privileges of the people, or of giving an exact delineation of that government. It is probable, also, that the constitution might be somewhat different in the different kingdoms of the Heptarchy, and that it changed considerably during the course of six centuries, which elapsed from the first invasion of the Saxons till the Norman conquest [a]. But most of these differences and changes, with their causes and effects, are unknown to us. It only appears, that at all times, and in all the kingdoms, there was a national council, called a Wittenagemot, or assembly of the wise men, (for that is the import of the term,) whose consent was requisite for enacting laws, and for ratifying the chief acts of public administration. The preambles to all the laws of Ethelbert, Ina, Alfred, Edward the Elder, Athelstan, Edmond, Edgar, Ethelred, and Edward the Confessor; even those to the laws of Canute, though a kind of conqueror, put this matter beyond controversy, and carry proofs everywhere of a limited and legal government. But who were the constituent members of this Wittenagemot has not been determined with certainty by antiquaries. It is agreed, that the bishops and abbots [b] were an essential part; and it is also evident, from the tenour of those ancient laws, that the Wittenagemot enacted statutes which regulated the ecclesiastical as well as civil government, and that those dangerous principles, by which the church is totally severed from the state, were hitherto unknown to the Anglo-Saxons [c]. It also appears, that the aldermen, or governors of counties, who, after the Danish times, were often called earls [d], were admitted into this council, and gave their consent to the public statutes. But besides the prelates and aldermen, there is also mention of the Wites, or Wise-men, as a component part of the Wittenagemot; but who THESE were, is not so clearly ascertained by the laws or the history of that period. The matter would probably be of difficult discussion, even were it examined impartially; but as our modern parties have chosen to divide on this point, the question has been disputed with the greater obstinacy, and the arguments on both sides have become, on that account, the more captious and deceitful. Our monarchical faction maintain, that these WITES, or SAPIENTES, were the judges, or men learned in the law; the popular faction assert them to be representatives of the boroughs, or what we now call the Commons. [FN [a] We know of one change, not inconsiderable, in the Saxon constitution. The Saxon Annals, p. 49, inform us, that it was in early times the prerogative of the king to name the dukes, earls, aldermen, and sheriffs of the counties. Asser, a contemporary writer, informs us, that Alfred deposed all the ignorant aldermen, and appointed men of more capacity in their place. Yet the laws of Edward the Confessor, Sec. 35, say expressly, that the Heretoghs or dukes, and the sheriffs, were chosen by the freeholders in the folkmote, a county court, which was assembled once a year, and where all the freeholders swore allegiance to the king. [b] Sometimes abbesses were admitted; at least, they often sign the kings charters or grants. Spellm. Gloss. in verbo PARLIAMENTUM. [c] Wilkins, passim. [d] See note [G] at the end of the volume.]
The expressions employed by all ancient historians, in mentioning the Wittenagemot, seem to contradict the latter supposition. The members are almost always called the PRINCIPES, SATRAPAE, OPTIMATES, MAGNATES, PROCERES; terms which seem to suppose an aristocracy, and to exclude the Commons. The boroughs also, from the low state of commerce, were so small and so poor, and the inhabitants lived in such dependence on the great men [e], that it seemed nowise probable they would be admitted as a part of the national councils. The Commons are well known to have had no share in the governments established by the Franks, Burgundians, and other northern nations; and we may conclude that the Saxons, who remained longer barbarous and uncivilized than those tribes, would never think of conferring such an extraordinary privilege on trade and industry. The military profession alone was honourable among all those conquerors; the warriors subsisted by their possessions in land; they became considerable by their influence over their vassals, retainers, tenants, and slaves; and it requires strong proof to convince us that they would admit any of a rank so much inferior as the burgesses, to share with them in the legislative authority. Tacitus indeed affirms, that among the ancient Germans, the consent of all the members of the community was required in every important deliberation; but he speaks not of representatives; and this ancient practice, mentioned by the Roman historian, could only have place in small tribes, where every citizen might, without inconvenience, be assembled upon any extraordinary emergency. After principalities became extensive; after the difference of property had formed distinctions more important than those which arose from personal strength and valour, we may conclude, that the national assemblies must have been more limited in their number, and composed only of the more considerable citizens. [FN [e] Bradys Treatise of English Boroughs, p. 3, 4, 5, &c.]
But though we must exclude the burgesses, or Commons from the Saxon Wittenagemot, there is some necessity for supposing that this assembly consisted of other members than the prelates, abbots, aldermen, and the judges or privy council. For as all these, excepting some of the ecclesiastics [f], were anciently appointed by the king, had there been no other legislative authority, the royal power had been in a great measure absolute, contrary to the tenour of all the historians, and to the practice of all the northern nations. We may therefore conclude, that the more considerable proprietors of land were, without any election, constituent members of the national assembly; there is reason to think that forty hides, or between four and five thousand acres, was the estate requisite for entitling the possessor to this honourable privilege. We find a passage in an ancient author [g], by which it appears, that a person of very noble birth, even one allied to the crown, was not esteemed a PRINCEPS (the term usually employed by ancient historians, when the Wittenagemot is mentioned) till he had acquired a fortune of that amount. Nor need we imagine that the public council would become disorderly or confused by admitting so great a multitude. The landed property of England was probably in few hands during the Saxon times; at least during the latter part of that period; and as men had hardly any ambition to attend those public councils, there was no danger of the assemblys becoming too numerous for the despatch of the little business which was brought before them. [FN [f] There is some reason to think, that the bishops were sometimes chosen by the Wittenagemot, and confirmed by the king. Eddius, cap. 2. The abbots in the monasteries of royal foundation were anciently named by the king; though Edgar gave the monks the election, and only reserved to himself the ratification. This destination was afterwards frequently violated; and the abbots, as well as bishops were afterwards all appointed by the king; as we learn from Ingulph, a writer contemporary with the conquest. [g] Hist. Eliensis, lib. 2 cap. 40.]
It is certain, that, whatever we may determine concerning the constituent members of the Wittenagemot, in whom, with the king, the legislature resided, the Anglo-Saxon government, in the period preceding the Norman conquest, was become extremely aristocratical; the royal authority was very limited; the people, even if admitted to that assembly, were of little or no weight and consideration. We have hints given us in historians, of the great power and riches of particular noblemen: and it could not but happen, after the abolition of the Heptarchy, when the king lived at a distance from the provinces, that those great proprietors, who resided on their estates, would much augment their authority over their vassals and retainers, and over all the inhabitants of the neighbourhood. Hence the immeasurable power assumed by Harold, Godwin, Leofric, Siward, Morcar, Edwin, Edric, and Alfric, who controlled the authority of the kings, and rendered themselves quite necessary in the government. The two latter, though detested by the people, on account of their joining a foreign enemy, still preserved their power and influence; and we may therefore conclude, that their authority was founded, not on popularity, but on family rights and possessions. There is one Athelstan, mentioned in the reign of the king of that name, who is called Alderman of all England, and is said to be half-king; though the monarch himself was a prince of valour and abilities [h]. And we find, that in the latter Saxon times, and in these alone, the great office went from father to son, and became in a manner hereditary in the families [i]. [FN [h] Hist. Rames. Sec. 3, p. 387. [i] Roger Hoveden, giving the reason why William the Conqueror made Cospatric Earl of Northumberland, says, NAM EX MATERNO SANGUINE ATTINEBAT AD EUM HONOR ILLIUS COMITATUS. ERAT ENIM EX MATRE ALGITHA, FILIA UTHREDI COMITIS. See also Sim. Dun. p. 205. We see in those instances the same tendency towards rendering offices hereditary, which took place, during a more early period, on the continent, and which had already produced there its full effect.]
The circumstances attending the invasions of the Danes would also serve much to increase the power of the principal nobility. Those freebooters made unexpected inroads on all quarters; and there was a necessity that each county should resist them by its own force, and under the conduct of its own nobility and its own magistrates. For the same reason that a general war, managed by the united efforts of the state, commonly augments the power of the crown; those private wars and inroads turned to the advantage of the aldermen and nobles.
Among that military and turbulent people, so averse to commerce and the arts, and so little inured to industry, justice was commonly very ill administered, and great oppression and violence seem to have prevailed. These disorders would be increased by the exorbitant power of the aristocracy; and would, in their turn, contribute to increase it. Men, not daring to rely on the guardianship of the laws, were obliged to devote themselves to the service of some chieftain, whose orders they followed, even to the disturbance of the government, or the injury of their fellow-citizens, and who afforded them, in return, protection from any insult or injustice by strangers. Hence, we find by the extracts which Dr. Brady has given us from Domesday, that almost all the inhabitants, even of towns, had placed themselves under the clientship of some particular nobleman, whose patronage they purchased by annual payments, and whom they were obliged to consider as their sovereign, more than the king himself, or even the legislature [k]. A client, though a freeman, was supposed so much to belong to his patron, that his murderer was obliged by law to pay a fine to the latter, as a compensation for his loss; in like manner as he paid a fine to the master for the murder of his slave [l]. Men who were of a more considerable rank, but not powerful enough each to support himself by his own independent authority, entered into formal confederacies with each other, and composed a kind of separate community, which rendered itself formidable to all aggressors. Dr. Hickes has preserved a curious Saxon bond of this kind, which he calls a SODALITIUM, and which contains many particulars characteristical of the manners and customs of the times [m]. All the associates are there said to be gentlemen of Cambridgeshire, and they swear before the holy relics to observe their confederacy, and to be faithful to each other: they promise to bury any of the associates who dies, in whatever place he had appointed; to contribute to his funeral charges, and to attend at his interment; and whoever is wanting in this last duty, binds himself to pay a measure of honey. When any of the associates is in danger, and calls for the assistance of his fellows, they promise, besides flying to his succour, to give information to the sheriff; and if he be negligent in protecting the person exposed to danger, they engage to levy a fine of one pound upon him: if the president of the society himself be wanting in this particular, he binds himself to pay one pound; unless he has the reasonable excuse of sickness, or of duty to his superior. When any of the associates is murdered, they are to exact eight pounds from the murderer; and if he refuse to pay it, they are to prosecute him for the sum at their joint expense. If any of the associates who happens to be poor kill a man, the society are to contribute, by a certain proportion, to pay his fine: a mark a-piece if the fine be seven hundred shillings; less if the person killed be a clown or ceorle; the half of that sum, again, if he be a Welshman. But where any of the associates kills a man, wilfully and without provocation, he must himself pay the fine. If any of the associates kill any of his fellows in a like criminal manner, besides paying the usual fine to the relations of the deceased, he must pay eight pounds to the society, or renounce the benefit of it; in which case, they bind themselves, under the penalty of one pound, never to eat or drink with him, except in the presence of the king, bishop, or alderman. There are other regulations to protect themselves and their servants from all injuries, to revenge such as are committed, and to prevent their giving abusive language to each other; and the fine, which they engage to pay for this last offence, is a measure of honey. [FN [k] Bradys Treatise of Boroughs, p. 3, 4, 5, &c. The case was the same with the freemen in the country. See Pref. to his Hist. p. 8, 9, 10, &c. [1] LL. Edw. Conf. Sec. 8. apud Ingulph. [m] Dissert. Epist. p. 21.]
It is not to be doubted but a confederacy of this kind must have been a great source of friendship and attachment; when men lived in perpetual danger from enemies, robbers, and oppressors, and received protection chiefly from their personal valour, and from the assistance of their friends or patrons. As animosities were then more violent, connexions were also more intimate, whether voluntary or derived from blood: the most remote degree of propinquity was regarded: an indelible memory of benefits was preserved: severe vengeance was taken for injuries, both from a point of honour, and as the best means of future security: and the civil union being weak, many private engagements were contracted in order to supply its place, and to procure men that safety which the laws and their own innocence were not alone able to insure to them.
On the whole, notwithstanding the seeming liberty, or rather licentiousness, of the Anglo-Saxons, the great body even of the free citizens, in those ages, really enjoyed much less true liberty, than where the execution of the laws is the most severe, and where subjects are reduced to the strictest subordination and dependence on the civil magistrate. The reason is derived from the excess itself of that liberty. Men must guard themselves at any price against insults and injuries; and where they receive not protection from the laws and magistrate, they will seek it by submission to superiors, and by herding in some private confederacy which acts under the direction of a powerful leader. And thus all anarchy is the immediate cause of tyranny, if not over the state, at least over many of the individuals. Security was provided by the Saxon laws to all members of the Wittenagemot, both in going and returning, EXCEPT THEY WERE NOTORIOUS THIEVES AND ROBBERS.
[MN The several orders of men.] The German Saxons, as the other nations of that continent, were divided into three ranks of men, the noble, the free, and the slaves [n]. This distinction they brought over with them into Britain. [FN [n] Nithard. Hist. lib. 4.]
The nobles were called thanes; and were of two kinds, the kings thanes and lesser thanes. The latter seem to have been dependent on the former; and to have received lands, for which they paid rent, services, or attendance in peace and war [o]. We know of no title which raised any one to the rank of thane, except noble birth and the possession of land. The former was always much regarded by all the German nations, even in their most barbarous state; and as the Saxon nobility, having little credit, could scarcely burthen their estates with much debt, and as the Commons had little trade or industry by which they could accumulate riches, these two ranks of men, even though they were not separated by positive laws, might remain long distinct, and the noble families continue many ages in opulence and splendour. There were no middle ranks of men that could gradually mix with their superiors, and insensibly procure to themselves honour and distinction. If by any extraordinary accident a mean person acquired riches, a circumstance so singular made him be known and remarked; he became the object of envy, as well as of indignation, to all the nobles; he would have great difficulty to defend what he had acquired; and he would find it impossible to protect himself from oppression, except by courting the patronage of some great chieftain, and paying a large price for his safety. [FN [o] Spellm. Feuds and Tenures, p. 40.]
There are two statutes among the Saxon laws which seem calculated to confound those different ranks of men; that of Athelstan, by which a merchant, who had made three long sea voyages on his own account, was entitled to the quality of thane [p]; and that of the same prince, by which a ceorle or husbandman, who had been able to purchase five hides of land, and had a chapel, a kitchen, a hall, and a bell, was raised to the same distinction [q]. But the opportunities were so few, by which a merchant or ceorle could thus exalt himself above his rank, that the law could never overcome the reigning prejudices; the distinction between noble and base blood would still be indelible; and the well-born thanes would entertain the highest contempt for those legal and factitious ones. Though we are not informed of any of these circumstances by ancient historians, they are so much founded on the nature of things, that we may admit them as a necessary and infallible consequence of the situation of the kingdom during those ages. [FN [p] Wilkins, p. 71. [q] Selden, Titles of Honour, p. 515. Wilkins, p. 70.]
The cities appear by Domesday-book to have been at the Conquest little better than villages [r]. York itself, though it was always the second, at least the third [s], city in England, and was the capital of a great province, which never was thoroughly united with the rest, contained but one thousand four hundred and eighteen families [t]. Malmsbury tells us [u], that the great distinction between the Anglo-Saxon nobility, and the French or Norman was, that the latter built magnificent and stately castles; whereas the former consumed their immense fortunes in riot and, hospitality, and in mean houses. We may thence infer, that the arts in general were much less advanced in England than in France; a greater number of idle servants and retainers lived about the great families; and as these, even in France, were powerful enough to disturb the execution of the laws, we may judge of the authority acquired by the aristocracy in England. When Earl Godwin besieged the Confessor in London, he summoned from all parts his huscarles or houseceorles and retainers, and thereby constrained his sovereign to accept of the conditions which he was pleased to impose upon him. [FN [r] Winchester, being the capital of the West Saxon monarchy, was anciently a considerable city. Gul. Pict. p. 210. [s] Norwich contained 738 houses, Exeter 315, Ipswich 538, Northampton 60, Hereford 146, Canterbury 262, Bath 64, Southampton 84, Warwick 225. See Brady of Boroughs, p. 3, 4, 5, 6, &c. These are the most considerable he mentions. The account of them is extracted from Domesday-book. [t] Bradys Treatise of Boroughs, p. 10. There were six wards, besides the archbishops palace; and five of these wards contained the number of families here mentioned, which, at the rate of five persons to a family, makes about 7000 souls. The sixth ward was laid waste. [u] p. 102. See also, De Gest. Angl. p. 333.]
The lower rank of freemen were denominated ceorles among the Anglo-Saxons; and, where they were industrious, they were chiefly employed in husbandry: whence a ceorle and a husbandman became in a manner synonymous terms. They cultivated the farms of the nobility or thanes, for which they paid rent; and they seem to have been removeable at pleasure. For there is little mention of leases among the Anglo-Saxons; the pride of the nobility, together with the general ignorance of writing, must have rendered these contracts very rare, and must have kept the husbandmen in a dependent condition. The rents of farms were then chiefly paid in kind [w]. [FN [w] LL. Inae, Sec. 70. These laws fixed the rents for a hide; but it is difficult to convert it into modern measures.]
But the most numerous rank by far in the community seems to have been the slaves or villains, who were the property of their lords, and were consequently incapable themselves of possessing any property. Dr. Brady assures us, from a survey of Domesday-book [x], that in all the counties of England, the far greater part of the land was occupied by them, and that the husbandmen, and still more the socmen, who were tenants that could not be removed at pleasure, were very few in comparison. This was not the case with the German nations, as far as we can collect from the account given us by Tacitus. The perpetual wars in the Heptarchy, and the depredations of the Danes, seem to have been the cause of this great alteration with the Anglo-Saxons. Prisoners taken in battle, or carried off in the frequent inroads, were then reduced to slavery; and became, by right of war [y], entirely at the disposal of their lords. Great property in the nobles, especially if joined to an irregular administration of justice, naturally favours the power of the aristocracy; but still more so if the practice of slavery be admitted, and has become very common. The nobility not only possess the influence which always attends riches, but also the power which the laws give them over their slaves and villains. It then becomes difficult, and almost impossible, for a private man to remain altogether free and independent. [FN [x] General Preface to his Hist. p. 7, 8, 9 &c. [y] LL. Edg. Sec. 14 apud Spellm. Conc. vol. 1. p. 471.]
There were two kinds of slaves among the Anglo-Saxons; household slaves, after the manner of the ancients, and praedial, or rustic, after the manner of the Germans [z]. These latter resembled the serfs, which are at present to be met with in Poland, Denmark, and some parts of Germany. The power of a master over his slaves was not unlimited among the Anglo-Saxons, as it was among their ancestors. If a man beat out his slaves eye or teeth, the slave recovered his liberty [a]: if he killed him, he paid a fine to the king, provided the slave died within a day after the wound or blow; otherwise it passed unpunished [b]. The selling of themselves or children to slavery was always the practice among the German nations [c], and was continued by the Anglo-Saxons [d]. [FN [z] Spellm. Gloss. in verb. SERRUS [a] LL. Aelf. Sec. 20. [b] Ibid 17. [c] Tacit. de Morib. Germ. [d] LL. Inae, Sec. 11 LL. Aelf. Sec. 12.]
The great lords and abbots among the Anglo-Saxons possessed a criminal jurisdiction within their territories, and could punish without appeal, any thieves or robbers whom they caught there [e]. This institution must have had a very contrary effect to that which was intended, and must have procured robbers a sure protection on the lands of such noblemen as did not sincerely mean to discourage crimes and violence. [FN [e] Higden, lib. 1. cap. 50. LL. Edw. Conf. Sec. 26. Spellm. Conc. vol. i. p. 415. Gloss. in verb. HALIGEMOT ET INFANGENTHEFE.]
[MN Courts of justice.] But though the general strain of the Anglo-Saxon government seems to have become aristocratical, there were still considerable remains of the ancient democracy, which were not indeed sufficient to protect the lowest of the people, without the patronage of some great lord, but might give security, and even some degree of dignity, to the gentry, or inferior nobility. The administration of justice, in particular, by the courts of the decennary, the hundred, and the county, was well calculated to defend general liberty, and to restrain the power of the nobles. In the county courts, or shiremotes, all the freeholders were assembled twice a year, and received appeals from the inferior courts. They there decided all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil; and the bishop, together with the alderman or earl, presided over them [f]. The affair was determined in a summary manner, without much pleading, formality, or delay, by a majority of voices; and the bishop and alderman had no farther authority than to keep order among the freeholders, and interpose with their opinion [g]. Where justice was denied during three sessions by the hundred, and then by the county court, there lay an appeal to the kings court [h]; but this was not practised on slight occasions. The alderman received a third of the fines levied in those courts [i]; and as most of the punishments were then pecuniary, this perquisite formed a considerable part of the profits belonging to his office. The two-thirds also which went to the king, made no contemptible part of the public revenue. Any freeholder was fined who absented himself thrice from these courts [k]. [FN [f] LL. Edg. Sec. 5. Wilkins, p. 78. LL. Canut. Sec. 17. Wilkins, p. 136. [g] Hickes, Dissert. Epist. p. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. [h] LL. Edg Sec. 2. Wilkins, p. 77. LL. Canut. Sec. 18. apud Wilkins, p. 136. [i] LL. Edw. Conf. Sec. 31. [k] LL. Ethelst. Sec. 20.]
As the extreme ignorance of the age made deeds and writings very rare, the county or hundred court was the place where the most remarkable civil transactions were finished, in order to preserve the memory of them, and prevent all future disputes. Here testaments were promulgated, slaves manumitted, bargains of sale concluded; and sometimes, for greater security, the most considerable of these deeds were inserted in the blank leaves of the parish bible, which thus became a kind of register too sacred to be falsified. It was not unusual to add to the deed an imprecation on all such as should be guilty of that crime [l]. [FN [1] Hickes, Dissert. Epist.]
Among a people, who lived in so simple a manner as the Anglo-Saxons, the judicial power is always of greater importance than the legislative. There were few or no taxes imposed by the states; there were few statutes enacted; and the nation was less governed by laws than by customs, which admitted a great latitude of interpretation. Though it should therefore be allowed that the Wittenagemot was altogether composed of the principal nobility, the county courts, where all the freeholders were admitted, and which regulated all the daily occurrences of life, formed a wide basis for the government, and were no contemptible checks on the aristocracy. But there is another power still more important than either the judicial or legislative; to wit, the power of injuring or serving by immediate force and violence, for which it is difficult to obtain redress in courts of justice. In all extensive governments, where the execution of the laws is feeble, this power naturally falls into the hands of the principal nobility; and the degree of it which prevails cannot be determined so much by the public statutes, as by small incidents in history, by particular customs, and sometimes by the reason and nature of things. The Highlands of Scotland have long been entitled by law to every privilege of British subjects; but it was not till very lately that the common people could in fact enjoy these privileges.
The powers of all the members of the Anglo-Saxon government are disputed among historians and antiquaries; the extreme obscurity of the subject, even though faction had never entered into the question, would naturally have begotten those controversies. But the great influence of the lords over their slaves and tenants, the clientship of the burghers, the total want of a middling rank of men, the extent of the monarchy, the loose execution of the laws, the continued disorders and convulsions of the state; all these circumstances evince that the Anglo-Saxon government became at last extremely aristocratical; and the events, during the period immediately preceding the conquest, confirm this inference or conjecture.
[MN Criminal law.] Both the punishments inflicted by the Anglo-Saxon courts of judicature, and the methods of proof employed in all causes, appear somewhat singular, and are very different from those which prevail at present among all civilized nations.
We must conceive that the ancient Germans were little removed from the original state of nature: the social confederacy among them was more martial than civil: they had chiefly in view the means of attack or defence against public enemies, not those of protection against their fellow-citizens: their possessions were so slender and so equal, that they were not exposed to great danger; and the natural bravery of the people made every man trust to himself, and to his particular friends, for his defence or vengeance. This defect in the political union drew much closer the knot of particular confederacies; an insult upon any man was regarded by all his relations and associates as a common injury; they were bound by honour, as well as by a sense of common interest, to revenge his death, or any violence which he had suffered: they retaliated on the aggressor by like acts of violence; and if he were protected, as was natural and usual, by his own clan, the quarrel was spread still wider, and bred endless disorders in the nation.
The Frisians, a tribe of the Germans, had never advanced beyond this wild and imperfect state of society; and the right of private revenge still remained among them unlimited and uncontrolled [m]. But the other German nations, in the age of Tacitus, had made one step farther towards completing the political or civil union. Though it still continued to be an indispensable point of honour for every clan to revenge the death or injury of a member, the magistrate had acquired a right of interposing in the quarrel, and of accommodating the difference. He obliged the person maimed or injured, and the relations of one killed, to accept of a present from the aggressor and his relations [n], as a compensation for the injury [o], and to drop all farther prosecution of revenge. That the accommodation of one quarrel might not be the source of more, this present was fixed and certain, according to the rank of the person killed, or injured, and was commonly paid in cattle, the chief property of those rude and uncultivated nations. A present of this kind gratified the revenge of the injured family, by the loss which the aggressor suffered; it satisfied their pride, by the submission which it expressed; it diminished their regret for the loss or injury of a kinsman, by their acquisition of new property; and thus general peace was for a moment restored to the society [p]. [FN [m] LL. Fris. tit. 2. apud. Lindenbrog. p. 491. [n] LL. Aethelb. Sec. 23. LL. Aelf. Sec. 27. [o] Called by the Saxons MOEGBOTA. [p] Tacit. de Morib. Germ. The author says, that the price of the composition was fixed; which must have been by the laws and the interposition of the magistrates.]
But when the German nations had been settled some time in the provinces of the Roman empire, they made still another step towards a more cultivated life, and their criminal justice gradually improved and refined itself. The magistrate, whose office it was to guard public peace, and to suppress private animosities, conceived himself to be injured by every injury done to any of his people; and besides the compensation to the person who suffered, or to his family, he thought himself entitled to exact a fine called the Fridwit as an atonement for the breach of peace, and as a reward for the pains which he had taken in accommodating the quarrel. When this idea, which is so natural, was once suggested, it was willingly received both by sovereign and people. The numerous fines which were levied augmented the revenue of the king; and the people were sensible that he would be more vigilant in interposing with his good offices, when he reaped such immediate advantage from them; and that injuries would be less frequent, when, besides compensation to the person injured, they were exposed to this additional penalty [q]. [FN [q] Besides paying money to the relations of the deceased, and to the king, the murderer was also obliged to pay the master of a slave or vassal a sum as a compensation for his loss. This was called the MANBOTE. See Spell. Gloss. in verb. FREDUM, MANBOT.]
This short abstract contains the history of the criminal jurisprudence of the northern nations for several centuries. The state of England in this particular, during the period of the Anglo-Saxons, may be judged of by the collection of ancient laws, published by Lambard and Wilkins. The chief purport of these laws is not to prevent or entirely suppress private quarrels, which the legislature knew to be impossible, but only to regulate and moderate them. The laws of Alfred enjoin, that if any one know that his enemy or aggressor, after doing him an injury, resolves to keep within his own house, AND HIS OWN LANDS [r], he shall not fight him till he require compensation for the injury. If he be strong enough to besiege him in his house, he may do it for seven days without attacking him; and if the aggressor be willing, during that time, to surrender himself and his arms, his adversary may detain him thirty days; but is afterwards obliged to restore him safe to his kindred, AND BE CONTENT WITH THE COMPENSATION. If the criminal fly to the temple, that sanctuary must not be violated. Where the assailant has not force sufficient to besiege the criminal in his house, he must apply to the alderman for assistance; and if the alderman refuse aid, the assailant must have recourse to the king; and he is not allowed to assault the house till after this supreme magistrate has refused assistance. If any one meet with his enemy, and be ignorant that he was resolved to keep within his own lands, he must, before he attack him, require him to surrender himself prisoner, and deliver up his arms; in which case he may detain him thirty days: but if he refuse to deliver up his arms, it is then lawful to fight him. A slave may fight in his master's quarrel: a father may fight in his son's with any one, except with his master [s]. [FN [r] The addition of these last words in Italics appears necessary from what follows in the same law. [s] LL. Aelfr. Sec. 28 Wilkins, p. 43.]
It was enacted by King Ina, that no man should take revenge for an injury till he had first demanded compensation, and had been refused it [t]. [FN [t] LL. Inae, Sec. 9.]
King Edmond, in the preamble to his laws, mentions the general misery occasioned by the multiplicity of private feuds and battles; and he establishes several expedients for remedying this grievance. He ordained that if any one commit murder, be may, with the assistance of his kindred, pay within a twelvemonth the fine of his crime; and if they abandon him, he shall alone sustain the deadly feud or quarrel with the kindred of the murdered person: his own kindred are free from the feud, but on condition that they neither converse with the criminal, nor supply him with meat or OTHER NECESSARIES: if any of them, after renouncing him, receive him into their house, OR GIVE HIM ASSISTANCE, they are finable to the king, and are involved in the feud. If the kindred of the murdered person take revenge on any but the criminal himself, AFTER HE IS ABANDONED BY HIS KINDRED, all their property is forfeited, and they are declared to be enemies to the king and all his friends [u]. It is also ordained, that the fine for murder shall never be remitted by the king [w]; and that no criminal shall be killed who flies to the church, or any of the kings towns [x]; and the king himself declares, that his house shall give no protection to murderers, till they have satisfied the church by their penance, and the kindred of the deceased, by making compensation [y]. The method appointed for transacting this composition is found in the same law [z]. [FN [u] LL. Edm. Sec. 1. Wilkins, p. 73. [w] LL. Edm. Sec. 3. [x] Ibid. Sec. 2. [y] Ibid. Sec. 4. [z] Ibid Sec. 7.]
These attempts of Edmond, to contract and diminish the feuds, were contrary to the ancient spirit of the northern barbarians, and were a step towards a more regular administration of justice. By the Salic law, any man might, by a public declaration, exempt himself from his family quarrels: but then he was considered by the law as no longer belonging to the family; and he was deprived of all right of succession, as the punishment of his cowardice [a]. [FN [a] Tit. 63.]
The price of the king's head, or his weregild, as it was then called, was by law thirty thousand thrimsas, near thirteen hundred pounds of present money. The price of the prince's head was fifteen thousand thrimsas; that of a bishop's or alderman's, eight thousand; a sheriffs four thousand; a thane's or clergyman's, two thousand; a ceorle's, two hundred and sixty-six. These prices were fixed by the laws of the Angles. By the Mercian law, the price of a ceorle's head was two hundred shillings; that of a thane's six times as much; that of a king's six times more [b]. By the laws of Kent, the price of the archbishop's head was higher than that of the kings [c]. Such respect was then paid to the ecclesiastics! It must be understood, that where a person was unable or unwilling to pay the fine, he was put out of the protection of law, and the kindred of the deceased had liberty to punish him as they thought proper. [FN [b] Wilkins, p. 71, 72. [c] LL. Elthredi, apud Wilkins, p. 110.]
Some antiquarians [d] have thought, that these compensations were only given for manslaughter, not for wilful murder: but no such distinction appears in the laws; and it is contradicted by the practice of all the other barbarous nations [e], by that of the ancient Germans [f], and by that curious monument above mentioned, a Saxon antiquity, preserved by Hickes. There is indeed a law of Alfred's, which makes wilful murder capital [g]; but this seems only to have been an attempt of that great legislator towards establishing a better police in the kingdom, and it probably remained without execution. By the laws of the same prince, a conspiracy against the life of the king might be redeemed by a fine [h]. [FN [d] Tyrrel, Introduction, vol. i. p.126. Carte, vol. i. p. 366. [e] Lindenbrogius, passim. [f] Tac. de Mor. Germ. [g] LL. Aelf. Sec. 12. Wilkins, p. 29. It is probable that by wilful murder Alfred means a treacherous murder, committed by one who had no declared feud with another. [h] LL. Aelf. Sec. 4 Wilkins, p. 35.]
The price of all kinds of wounds was likewise fixed by the Saxon laws: a wound of an inch long under the hair, was paid with one shilling; one of a like size in the face, two shillings: thirty shillings for the loss of an ear, and so forth [i]. There seems not to have been any difference made, according to the dignity of the person. By the laws of Ethelbert, any one who committed adultery with his neighbour's wife, was obliged to pay him a fine, and buy him another wife [k]. [FN [i] LL. Elf. Sec. 40. See also, LL. Ethelb. Sec. 34, &c. [k] LL. Ethelb. Sec. 32.]
These institutions are not peculiar to the ancient Germans. They seem to be the necessary progress of criminal jurisprudence among every free people, where the will of the sovereign is not implicitly obeyed. We find them among the ancient Greeks during the time of the Trojan war. Compositions for murder are mentioned in Nestor's speech to Achilles in the ninth Iliad and are called APOINAI. The Irish, who never had any connexions with the German nations, adopted the same practice till very lately; and the price of a man's head was called among them his ERIC; as we learn from Sir John Davis. The same custom seems also to have prevailed among the Jews [l]. [FN [l] Exod. cap. xxi. 29, 30.]
Theft and robbery were frequent among the Anglo-Saxons. In order to impose some check upon these crimes, it was ordained, that no man should sell or buy any thing above twenty-pence value, except in open market [m]; and every bargain of sale must be executed before witnesses [n]. Gangs of robbers much disturbed the peace of the country; and the law determined, that a tribe of banditti, consisting of between seven and thirty-five persons, was to be called a TURMA, or troop: any greater company was denominated an army [o]. The punishments for this crime were various, but none of them capital [p]. If any man could track his stolen cattle into another's ground, the latter was obliged to show the tracks out of it, or pay their value [q]. [FN [m] LL. Aethelst. Sec. 12. [n] Ibid. Sec. 10, 12. LL. Edg. apud Wilkins, p. 80. LL. Ethelredi, Sec. 4 apud Wilkins, p. 103. Hloth. and Eadm. Sec. 16. LL. Canut. Sec. 22. [o] LL. Inae, Sec. 12. [p] LL. Inae, Sec. 37. [q] LL. Aethelst. Sec. 2. Wilkins, p. 63.]
Rebellion, to whatever excess it was carried, was not capital, but might be redeemed by a sum of money [r]. The legislators, knowing it impossible to prevent all disorders, only imposed a higher fine on breaches of the peace committed in the king's court, or before an alderman or bishop. An alehouse too seems to have been considered as a privileged place; and any quarrels that arose there were more severely punished than elsewhere [s]. [FN [r] LL. Ethelredi, apud Wilkins, p. 110. LL. Aelf. Sec. 4. Wilkins, p. 35. [s] LL. Hloth. and Eadm. Sec. 12, 13. LL. Ethelr. apud Wilkins, p. 117.]
[MN Rules of proof.] If the manner of punishing crimes among the Anglo-Saxons appear singular, the proofs were not less so; and were also the natural result of the situation of the people. Whatever we may imagine concerning the usual truth and sincerity of men who live in a rude and barbarous state, there is much more falsehood, and even perjury among them, than among civilized nations; virtue which is nothing but a more enlarged and more cultivated reason, never flourishes to any degree, nor is founded on steady principles of honour, except where a good education becomes general; and where men are taught the pernicious consequences of vice, treachery, and immorality. Even superstition, though more prevalent among ignorant nations, is but a poor supply for the defects in knowledge and education: our European ancestors, who employed every moment the expedient of swearing on extraordinary crosses and relics, were less honourable in all engagements than their posterity, who, from experience, have omitted those ineffectual securities. This general proneness to perjury was much increased by the usual want of discernment in judges, who could not discuss an intricate evidence, and were obliged to number, not weigh, the testimony of the witnesses [t]. Hence the ridiculous practice of obliging men to bring compurgators, who, as they did not pretend to know any thing of the fact, expressed upon oath, that they believed the person spoke true; and these compurgators were in some cases multiplied to the number of three hundred [u]. The practice also of single combat was employed by most nations on the continent as a remedy against false evidence [w]; and though it was frequently dropped, from the opposition of the clergy, it was continually revived from experience of the falsehood attending the testimony of witnesses [x]. It became at last a species of jurisprudence: the cases were determined by law, in which the party might challenge his adversary, or the witnesses, or the judge himself [y]: and though these customs were absurd, they were rather an improvement on the methods of trial which had formerly been practised among those barbarous nations, and which still prevailed among the Anglo-Saxons. [FN [t] Sometimes the laws fixed easy general rules for weighing the credibility of witnesses. A man whose life was estimated at 120 shillings, counterbalanced six ceorles, each of whose lives was only valued at 20 shillings, and his oath was deemed equivalent to that of all the six. See Wilkins, p. 72. [u] Praef. Nicol. ad Wilkins, p 11. [w] LL. Burgund. cap. 45. LL. Lomb. lib. 2. tit. 55, cap. 34. [x] LL. Longob. lib. 2. tit. 55. cap. 23. apud Landenb. p. 661. [y] See Desfontaines and Beaumanoir.]
When any controversy about a fact became too intricate for those ignorant judges to unravel, they had recourse to what they called the judgment of God; that is, to fortune: their methods of consulting this oracle were various. One of them was the decision of the CROSS: it was practised in this manner: when a person was accused of any crime, he first cleared himself by oath, and he was attended by eleven compurgators. He next took two pieces of wood, one of which was marked with the sign of the cross, and wrapping both up in wool, he placed them on the altar, or on some celebrated relic. After solemn prayers for the success of the experiment, a priest, or, in his stead, some unexperienced youth, took up one of the pieces of wood, and if he happened upon that which was marked with the figure of the cross, the person was pronounced innocent; if otherwise, guilty [z]. This practice, as it arose from superstition, was abolished by it in France. The emperor, Lewis the Debonnaire, prohibited that method of trial, not because it was uncertain, but lest that sacred figure, says he, of the cross should be prostituted in common disputes and controversies [a]. [FN [z] LL. Frison. tit. 14. apud Lindenbrogium, p. 496. [a] Du Cange, in verb. CRUX.]
The ordeal was another established method of trial among the Anglo- Saxons. It was practised either by boiling water or red-hot iron. The former was appropriated to the common people; the latter to the nobility. The water or iron was consecrated by many prayers, masses, fastings, and exorcisms [b]; after which the person accused either took up a stone sunk in the water [c] to a certain depth, or carried the iron to a certain distance; and his hand being wrapped up, and the covering sealed for three days, if there appeared, on examining it, no marks of burning, he was pronounced innocent; if otherwise, guilty [d]. The trial by cold water was different: the person was thrown into consecrated water; if he swam, he was guilty; if he sunk, innocent [e]. It is difficult for us to conceive how any innocent person could ever escape by the one trial, or any criminal be convicted by the other. But there was another usage admirably calculated for allowing every criminal to escape who had confidence enough to try it. A consecrated cake, called a corsned, was produced; which if the person could swallow and digest he was pronounced innocent [f]. [FN [b] Spellm. in verb. ORDEAL. Parker, p. 155. Lindenbrog. p 1299. [c] LL. Inae, Sec. 77. [d] Sometimes the person accused walked barefoot over red-hot iron. [e] Spellm. in verb. ORDEALIUM. [f] Spellm. in verb. CORSNED Parker, p. 156. Text. Roffens. p. 33.]
[MN Military force.] The feudal law, if it had place at all among the Anglo-Saxons, which is doubtful, was not certainly extended over all the landed property, and was not attended with those consequences of homage, reliefs [g], wardship, marriage, and other burdens, which were inseparable from it in the kingdoms of the continent. As the Saxons expelled, or almost entirely destroyed, the ancient Britons, they planted themselves in this island on the same footing with their ancestors in Germany, and found no occasion for the feudal institutions [h], which were calculated to maintain a kind of standing army, always in readiness to suppress any insurrection among the conquered people. The trouble and expense of defending the state in England lay equally upon all the land; and it was usual for every five hides to equip a man for the service. The TRINODA NECESSITAS, as it was called, or the burden of military expeditions, of repairing highways, and of building and supporting bridges, was inseparable from landed property, even though it belonged to the church or monasteries, unless exempted by a particular charter [i]. The ceorles or husbandmen were provided with arms, and were obliged to take their turn in military duty [k]. There were computed to be two hundred and forty-three thousand six hundred hides in England [l]; consequently, the ordinary military force of the kingdom consisted of forty-eight thousand seven hundred and twenty men; though, no doubt, on extraordinary occasions, a greater number might be assembled. The king and nobility had some military tenants, who were called Sithcun-men [m]. And there were some lands annexed to the office of alderman, and to other offices; but these probably were not of great extent, and were possessed only during pleasure, as in the commencement of the feudal law in other countries of Europe. [FN [g] On the death of an alderman, a greater or lesser thane, there was a payment made to the king of his best arms; and this was called his heriot: but this was not of the nature of a relief. See Spellm. of Tenures, p. 2. The value of this heriot fixed by Canute's laws, Sec. 69. [h] Bracton de Acqu. rer. domin. lib. 2. cap. 16. See more fully Spellman of Feuds and Tenures, and Craigius de jure feud. lib. 1. dieg. 7. [i] Spellm. Conc. vol. i. p. 256. [k] Inae, Sec. 51. [l] Spellm. of Feuds and Tenures, p. 17. [m] Spellm. Conc. vol. i. p. 195.]
[MN Public revenue.] The revenue of the king seems to have consisted chiefly in his demesnes, which were large; and in the tolls and imposts which he probably levied at discretion on the boroughs and seaports that lay within his demesnes. He could not alienate any part of the crown lands, even to religious uses, without the consent of the states [n]. Danegelt was a land-tax of a shilling a hide, imposed by the states [o], either for payment of the sums exacted by the Danes, or for putting the kingdom in a posture of defence against those invaders [p]. [FN [n] Spellm. Conc. vol. i. p. 340. [o] Chron. Sax p. 128. [p] LL. Edw. Con. Sec. 12.]
[MN Value of money.] The Saxon pound, as likewise that which was coined for some centuries after the Conquest, was near three times the weight of our present money: there were forty-eight shillings in the pound, and five pence in a shilling [q]; consequently, a Saxon shilling was near a fifth heavier than ours, and a Saxon penny near three times as heavy [r]. As to the value of money in those times, compared to commodities, there are some, though not very certain, means of computation. A sheep, by the laws of Athelstan, was estimated at a shilling; that is, fifteen pence of our money. The fleece was two fifths of the value of the whole sheep [s]; much above its present estimation; and the reason probably was, that the Saxons, like the ancients, were little acquainted with any clothing but what was made of wool. Silk and cotton were quite unknown: linen was not much used. An ox was computed at six times the value of a sheep; a cow at four [t]. If we suppose that the cattle in that age, from the defects in husbandry, were not so large as they are at present in England, we may compute that money was then near ten times of greater value. A horse was valued at about thirty-six shillings of our money, or thirty Saxon shillings [u]; a mare a third less A man at three pounds [w]. The board wages of a child the first year was eight shillings, together with a cow's pasture in summer, and an ox's in winter [x]. William of Malmesbury mentions it as a remarkably high price, that William Rufus gave fifteen marks for a horse, or about thirty pounds of our present money [y]. Between the years 900 and 1000, Ednoth bought a hide of land for about a hundred and eighteen shillings of our present money [z]. This was little more than a shilling an acre, which indeed appears to have been the usual price, as we may learn from other accounts [a]. A palfrey was sold for twelve shillings about the year 966 [b]. The value of an ox in King Ethelred's time was between seven and eight shillings; a cow about six shillings [c]. Gervas of Tilbury says, that in Henry I.'s time, bread which would suffice a hundred men for a day was rated at three shillings, or a shilling of that age; for it is thought that, soon after the Conquest, a pound sterling was divided into twenty shillings: a sheep was rated at a shilling; and so of other things in proportion. In Athelstan's time a ram was valued at a shilling, or four pence Saxon [d]. The tenants of Shireburn were obliged, at their choice, to pay either sixpence or four hens [e]. About 1232, the Abbot of St. Alban's going on a journey, hired seven handsome stout horses; and agreed, if any of them died on the road, to pay the owner thirty shillings a-piece of our present money [f]. It is to be remarked, that in all ancient times the raising of corn, especially wheat, being a species of manufactory, that commodity always bore a higher price, compared to cattle, than it does in our times [g]. The Saxon Chronicle tells us [h], that in the reign of Edward the Confessor, there was the most terrible famine ever known; insomuch that a quarter of wheat rose to sixty pennies, or fifteen shillings of our present money. Consequently it was as dear as if it now cost seven pounds ten shillings. This much exceeds the great famine in the end of Queen Elizabeth, when a quarter of wheat was sold for four pounds. Money in this last period was nearly of the same value as in our time. These severe famines are a certain proof of bad husbandry. [FN [q] LL. Aelf. Sec. 40. [r] Fleetwoods Chron. Pretiosum, p. 27, 28, &c. [s] LL. Inae, Sec. 69. [t] Wilkins, p 66. [u] Ibid. p. 126. [w] Ibid. [x] LL. Inae, Sec. 38. [y] p. 121. [z] Hist. Rames, p. 415. [a] Hist. Eliens. p. 473. [b] Ibid. p. 471. [c] Wilkins, p. 126. [d] Ibid. p. 56. [e] Monast. Anglic. vol. ii. p. 528. [f] Mat. Paris. [g] Fleetwood, p. 83, 94, 96, 98. [h] p. 157.]
On the whole, there are three things to be considered, wherever a sum of money is mentioned in ancient times. First, the change of denomination, by which a pound has been reduced to the third part of its ancient weight in silver. Secondly, the change in value by the greater plenty of money, which has reduced the same weight of silver to ten times less value compared to commodities; and consequently a pound sterling to the thirtieth part of the ancient value. Thirdly, the fewer people and less industry, which were then to be found in every European kingdom. This circumstance made even the thirtieth part of the sum more difficult to levy, and caused any sum to have more than thirty times greater weight and influence, both abroad and at home, than in our times; in the same manner that a sum, a hundred thousand pounds, for instance, is at present more difficult to levy in a small state, such as Bavaria, and can produce greater effects on such a small community, than on England. This last difference is not easy to be calculated: but allowing that England has now six times more industry, and three times more people than it had at the Conquest, and for some reigns after that period, we are upon that supposition to conceive, taking all circumstances together, every sum of money mentioned by historians, as if it were multiplied more than a hundredfold above a sum of the same denomination at present.
In the Saxon times, land was divided equally among all the male children of the deceased, according to the custom of Gavelkind. The practice of entails is to be found in those times [i]. Land was chiefly of two kinds, bockland, or land held by book or charter, which was regarded as full property, and descended to the heirs of the possessor; and folkland, or the land held by the ceorles and common people, who were removable at pleasure, and were indeed only tenants during the will of their lords. [FN [i] LL Aelf. Sec. 37, apud Wilkins, p. 43.]
The first attempt which we find in England to separate the ecclesiastical from the civil jurisdiction, was that law of Edgar, by which all disputes among the clergy were ordered to be carried before the bishop [k]. The penances were then very severe; but as a man could buy them off with money, or might substitute others to perform them, they lay easy upon the rich [l]. [FN [k] Wilkins, p. 83. [l] Wilkins, p. 96, 97. Spellm. Conc. p. 473.]
[MN Manners.] With regard to the manners of the Anglo-Saxons we can say little, but that they were in general a rude uncultivated people, ignorant of letters, unskilled in the mechanical arts, untamed to submission under law and government, addicted to intemperance, riot, and disorder. Their best quality was their military courage, which yet was not supported by discipline or conduct. Their want of fidelity to the prince, or to any trust reposed in them, appears strongly in the history of their later period; and their want of humanity in all their history. Even the Norman historians, notwithstanding the low state of the arts in their own country, speak of them as barbarians, when they mention the invasion made upon them by the Duke of Normandy [m]. The Conquest put the people in a situation of receiving slowly, from abroad, the rudiments of science and cultivation, and of correcting their rough and licentious manners. [FN [m] Gul. Pict. p. 202.]
There is a circumstance not unworthy of notice, which historians relate, with regard to the transactions of this war. Anlaf, on the approach of the English army, thought that he could not venture too much to ensure a fortunate event; and, employing the artifice formerly practised by Alfred against the Danes, he entered the enemys camp in the habit of a minstrel. The stratagem was for the present attended with like success. He gave such satisfaction to the soldiers who flocked about him, that they introduced him to the kings tent; and Anlaf, having played before that prince and his nobles during their repast, was dismissed with a handsome reward. His prudence kept him from refusing the present; but his pride determined him, on his departure, to bury it, while he fancied that he was unespied by all the world. But a soldier in Athelstans camp, who had formerly served under Anlaf, had been struck with some suspicion on the first appearance of the minstrel; and was engaged by curiosity to observe all his motions. He regarded this last action as a full proof of Anlafs disguise; and he immediately carried the intelligence to Athelstan, who blamed him for not sooner giving him information, that he might have seized his enemy. But the soldier told him, that, as he had formerly sworn fealty to Anlaf, he could never have pardoned himself the treachery of betraying and ruining his ancient master; and that Athelstan himself, after such an instance of his criminal conduct, would have had equal reason to distrust his allegiance. Athelstan, having praised the generosity of the soldiers principles, reflected on the incident, which he foresaw might be attended with important consequences. He removed his station in the camp; and as a bishop arrived that evening with a reinforcement of troops, (for the ecclesiastics were then no less warlike than the civil magistrates,) he occupied with his train that very place which had been left vacant by the kings removal. The precaution of Athelstan was found prudent: for no sooner had darkness fallen, than Anlaf broke into the camp, and hastening directly to the place where he had left the kings tent, put the bishop to death before he had time to prepare for his defence [a]. [FN [a] W. Malmes. lib. 2 cap. 6. Higden, p. 263]
There fell several Danish and Welsh princes in the action of Brunsbury [b]; and Constantine and Anlaf made their escape with difficulty, leaving the greater part of their army on the field of battle. After this success, Athelstan enjoyed his crown in tranquillity; and he is regarded as one of the ablest and most active of those ancient princes. He passed a remarkable law, which was calculated for the encouragement of commerce, and which it required some liberality of mind in that age to have devised: that a merchant, who had made three long sea-voyages on his own account, should be admitted to the rank of a Thane or Gentleman. This prince died at Gloucester in the year 941 [c], after a reign of sixteen years, and was succeeded by Edmund, his legitimate brother. [FN [b] Brompton, p. 839 Ingulph. p. 29 [c] Chron. Sax. p. 114.]
[MN Edmund 941.] Edmund, on his accession, met with disturbance from the restless Northumbrians, who lay in wait for every opportunity of breaking into rebellion. But marching suddenly with his forces into their country, he so overawed the rebels, that they endeavoured to appease him by the most humble submissions [d]. In order to give him a surer pledge of their obedience, they offered to embrace Christianity; a religion which the English Danes had frequently professed, when reduced to difficulties, but which, for that very reason, they regarded as a badge of servitude, and shook off as soon as a favourable opportunity offered. Edmund, trusting little to their sincerity in this forced submission, used the precaution of removing the Five-burgers from the towns of Mercia, in which they had been allowed to settle; because it was always found, that they took advantage of every commotion, and introduced the rebellious, or foreign Danes, into the heart of the kingdom. He also conquered Cumberland from the Britons; and conferred that territory on Malcolm, King of Scotland, on condition that he should do him homage for it, and protect the north from all future incursions of the Danes. [FN [d] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 7. Brompton, p. 857]
Edmund was young when he came to the crown; yet was his reign short, as his death was violent. One day as he was solemnizing a festival in the county of Gloucester, he remarked, that Leolf, a notorious robber, whom he had sentenced to banishment, had yet the boldness to enter the hall where he himself dined, and to sit at table with his attendants. Enraged at this insolence, he ordered him to leave the room; but on his refusing to obey, the king, whose temper, naturally choleric, was inflamed by this additional insult, leaped on him himself, and seized him by the hair: but the ruffian, pushed to extremity, drew his dagger, and gave Edmund a wound, of which he immediately expired. This event happened in the year 946, and in the sixth year of the kings reign. Edmund left male issue, but so young, that they were incapable of governing the kingdom; and his brother, Edred, was promoted to the throne.
[MN Edred 946.] The reign of this prince, as those of his predecessors, was disturbed by the rebellions and incursions of the Northumbrian Danes, who, though frequently quelled, were never entirely subdued, nor had ever paid a sincere allegiance to the crown of England. The accession of a new king seemed to them a favourable opportunity for shaking off the yoke; but on Edreds appearance with an army, they made him their wonted submissions; and the king having wasted the country with fire and sword, as a punishment for their rebellion, obliged them to renew their oaths of allegiance; and he straight retired with his forces. The obedience of the Danes lasted no longer than the present terror. Provoked at the devastations of Edred, and even reduced by necessity to subsist on plunder, they broke into a new rebellion, and were again subdued; but the king, now instructed by experience, took greater precautions against their future revolt. He fixed English garrisons in their most considerable towns; and placed over them an English governor, who might watch all their motions, and suppress any insurrection on its first appearance. He obliged also Malcolm, King of Scotland, to renew his homage for the lands which he held in England.
Edred, though not unwarlike, nor unfit for active life, lay under the influence of the lowest superstition, and had blindly delivered over his conscience to the guidance of Dunstan, commonly called St. Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury, whom he advanced to the highest offices, and who covered, under the appearance of sanctity, the most violent and most insolent ambition. Taking advantage of the implicit confidence reposed in him by the king, this churchman imported into England a new order of monks, who much changed the state of ecclesiastical affairs, and excited, on their first establishment, the most violent commotions.
From the introduction of Christianity among the Saxons, there had been monasteries in England; and these establishments had extremely multiplied, by the donations of the princes and nobles; whose superstition, derived from their ignorance and precarious life, and increased by remorse for the crimes into which they were so frequently betrayed, knew no other expedient for appeasing the Deity than a profuse liberality towards the ecclesiastics. But the monks had hitherto been a species of secular priests, who lived after the manner of the present canons or prebendaries, and were both intermingled, in some degree, with the world, and endeavoured to render themselves useful to it. They were employed in the education of youth [e]: they had the disposal of their own time and industry: they were not subjected to the rigid rules of an order: they had made no vows of implicit obedience to their superiors [f]: and they still retained the choice, without quitting the convent, either of a married or a single life [g]. But a mistaken piety had produced in Italy a new species of monks called Benedictines; who, carrying farther the plausible principles of mortification, secluded themselves entirely from the world, renounced all claim to liberty, and made a merit of the most inviolable chastity. These practices and principles, which superstition at first engendered, were greedily embraced and promoted by the policy of the court of Rome. The Roman pontiff, who was making every day great advances towards an absolute sovereignty over the ecclesiastics, perceived that the celibacy of the clergy alone could break off entirely their connexion with the civil power, and depriving them of every other object of ambition, engage them to promote, with unceasing industry, the grandeur of their own order. He was sensible, that so long as the monks were indulged in marriage, and were permitted to rear families, they never could be subjected to strict discipline, or reduced to that slavery under their superiors, which was requisite to procure to the mandates issued from Rome, a ready and zealous obedience. Celibacy, therefore, began to be extolled, as the indispensable duty of priests; and the pope undertook to make all the clergy throughout the western world renounce at once the privilege of marriage: a fortunate policy; but at the same time an undertaking the most difficult of any, since he had the strongest propensities of human nature to encounter, and found, that the same connexions with the female sex, which generally encourage devotion, were here unfavourable to the success of his project. It is no wonder therefore, that this master-stroke of art should have met with violent contradiction, and that the interests of the hierarchy, and the inclinations of the priests, being now placed in this singular opposition, should, notwithstanding the continued efforts of Rome, have retarded the execution of that bold scheme, during the course of near three centuries. [FN [e] Osberne in Anglia Sacra, tom. 2. p. 92. [f] Osberne, p. 91. [g] See Whartons notes to Anglia Sacra, tom. 2. p. 91. Gervase, p. 1645. Chron Wint. MS. apud Spell. Conc. p. 434.]
As the bishops and parochial clergy lived apart with their families, and were more connected with the world, the hopes of success with them were fainter; and the pretence for making them renounce marriage was much less plausible. But the pope, having cast his eye on the monks as the basis of his authority, was determined to reduce them under strict rules of obedience, to procure them the credit of sanctity by an appearance of the most rigid mortification, and to break off all their other ties which might interfere with his spiritual policy. Under pretence, therefore, of reforming abuses, which were, in some degree, unavoidable in the ancient establishments, he had already spread over the southern countries of Europe the severe laws of the monastic life, and began to form attempts towards a like innovation in England. The favourable opportunity offered itself, (and it was greedily seized,) arising from the weak, superstition of Edred, and the violent impetuous character of Dunstan.
Dunstan was born of noble parents in the west of England; and being educated under his uncle Aldhelm, then Archbishop of Canterbury, had betaken himself to the ecclesiastical life, and had acquired some character in the court of Edmund. He was, however, represented to that prince as a man of licentious manners [h]: and finding his fortune blasted by these suspicions, his ardent ambition prompted him to repair his indiscretions by running into an opposite extreme. He secluded himself entirely from the world; he framed a cell so small, that he could neither stand erect in it nor stretch out his limbs during his repose; and he here employed himself perpetually either in devotion or in manual labour [i]. It is probable, that his brain became gradually crazed by these solitary occupations, and that his head was filled with chimeras, which, being believed by himself and his stupid votaries, procured him the general character of sanctity among the people. He fancied that the devil, among the frequent visits which he paid him, was one day more earnest than usual in his temptations; till Dunstan, provoked at his importunity, seized him by the nose with a pair of red-hot pincers, as he put his head into the cell; and he held him there till that malignant spirit made the whole neighbourhood resound with his bellowings. This notable exploit was seriously credited and extolled by the public: it is transmitted to posterity by one who, considering the age in which he lived, may pass for a writer of some eloquence [k]; and it ensured to Dunstan a reputation which no real piety, much less virtue, could, even in the most enlightened period, have ever procured him with the people. [FN [h] Osberne, p. 95 Matth West, p. 187. [i] Osberne, p. 96. [k] Osberne, p. 97.]
Supported by the character obtained in his retreat, Dunstan appeared again in the world; and gained such an ascendant over Edred, who had succeeded to the crown, as made him not only the director of that princes conscience, but his counsellor in the most momentous affairs of government. He was placed at the head of the treasury [l], and being thus possessed both of power at court, and of credit with the populace, he was enabled to attempt with success the most arduous enterprises. Finding that his advancement had been owing to the opinion of his austerity, he professed himself a partisan of the rigid monastic rules; and after introducing that reformation into the convents of Glastonbury and Abingdon, he endeavoured to render it universal in the kingdom. [FN [1] Ibid. p. 102. Wallingford, p. 541.]
The minds of men were already well prepared for this innovation. The praises of an inviolable chastity had been carried to the highest extravagance by some of the first preachers of Christianity among the Saxons: the pleasures of love had been represented as incompatible with Christian perfection; and a total abstinence from all commerce with the sex was deemed such a meritorious penance, as was sufficient to atone for the greatest enormities. The consequence seemed natural, that those, at least, who officiated at the altar should be clear of this pollution; and when the doctrine of transubstantiation, which was now creeping in [m], was once fully established, the reverence to the real body of Christ in the eucharist bestowed on this argument an additional force and influence. The monks knew how to avail themselves of all these popular topics, and to set off their own character to the best advantage. They affected the greatest austerity of life and manners: they indulged themselves in the highest strains of devotion: they inveighed bitterly against the vices and pretended luxury of the age: they were particularly vehement against the dissolute lives of the secular clergy, their rivals: every instance of libertinism in any individual of that order was represented as a general corruption: and where other topics of defamation were wanting, their marriage became a sure subject of invective, and their wives received the name of CONCUBINE, or other more opprobrious appellation. The secular clergy, on the other hand, who were numerous and rich, and possessed of the ecclesiastical dignities, defended themselves with vigour, and endeavoured to retaliate upon their adversaries. The people were thrown into agitation; and few instances occur of more violent dissensions, excited by the most material differences in religion, or rather by the most frivolous: since it is a just remark, that the more affinity there is between theological parties, the greater commonly is their animosity. [FN [m] Spell. Conc. v. i. p. 452.]
The progress of the monks, which was become considerable, was somewhat retarded by the death of Edred, their partisan, who expired after a reign of nine years [n]. He left children; but as they were infants, his nephew, Edwy, son of Edmund, was placed on the throne. [FN [n] Chron. Sax. p. 115.]
[MN Edwy. 955.] Edwy, at the time of his accession, was not above sixteen or seventeen years of age, was possessed of the most amiable figure, and was even endowed, according to authentic accounts, with the most promising virtues [o]. He would have been the favourite of his people, had he not unhappily, at the commencement of his reign, been engaged in a controversy with the monks, whose rage, neither the graces of the body nor virtues of the mind could mitigate, and who have pursued his memory with the same unrelenting vengeance which they exercised against his person and dignity during his short and unfortunate reign. There was a beautiful princess of the royal blood, called Elgiva, who had made impression on the tender heart of Edwy; and as he was of an age when the force of the passions first begins to be felt, he had ventured, contrary to the advice of his gravest counsellors, and the remonstrances of the more dignified ecclesiastics [p], to espouse her; though she was within the degrees of affinity prohibited by the canon law [q]. As the austerity affected by the monks made them particularly violent on this occasion, Edwy entertained a strong prepossession against them; and seemed, on that account, determined not to second their project of expelling the seculars from all the convents, and of possessing themselves of those rich establishments. War was therefore declared between the king and the monks; and the former soon found reason to repent his provoking such dangerous enemies. On the day of his coronation, his nobility were assembled in a great hall, and were indulging themselves in that riot and disorder, which, from the example of their German ancestors, had become habitual to the English [r]; when Edwy, attracted by softer pleasures, retired into the queens apartment, and in that privacy gave reins to his fondness towards his wife, which was only moderately checked by the presence of her mother. Dunstan conjectured the reason of the kings retreat; and carrying along with him Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury, over whom he had gained an absolute ascendant, he burst into the apartment, upbraided Edwy with his lasciviousness, probably bestowed on the queen the most opprobrious epithet that can be applied to her sex, and tearing him from her arms, pushed him back, in a disgraceful manner, into the banquet of the nobles [s]. Edwy, though young, and opposed by the prejudices of the people, found an opportunity of taking revenge for this public insult. He questioned Dunstan concerning the administration of the treasury during the reign of his predecessor [t]; and when that minister refused to give any account of money expended, as he affirmed, by orders of the late king, he accused him of malversation in his office and banished him the kingdom. But Dunstans cabal was not inactive during his absence; they filled the public with high panegyrics on his sanctity; they exclaimed against the impiety of the king and queen; and having poisoned the minds of the people by these declamations, they proceeded to still more outrageous acts of violence against the royal authority. Archbishop Odo sent into the palace a party of soldiers, who seized the queen, and, having burned her face with a red-hot iron, in order to destroy that fatal beauty which had seduced Edwy, they carried her by force into Ireland, there to remain in perpetual exile [u]. Edwy, finding it in vain to resist, was obliged to consent to his divorce, which was pronounced by Odo [w]; and catastrophe, still more dismal, awaited the unhappy Elgiva. That amiable princess, being cured of her wounds, and having even obliterated the scars with which Odo had hoped to deface her beauty, returned into England, and was flying to the embraces of the king, whom she still regarded as her husband; when she fell into the hands of a party, whom the primate had sent to intercept her. Nothing but her death could now give security to Odo and the monks; and the most cruel death was requisite to satiate their vengeance. She was hamstringed; and expired a few days after at Gloucester, in the most acute torments [x]. [FN [o] H. Hunting. lib. 5. p. 356. [p] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 7. [q] Ibid. [r] Wallingford, p. 542. [s] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 7. Osberne, p. 83, 105. M. West. p. 195, 196. [t] Wallingford, p. 542. Alur. Beverl. p. 112. [u] Osberne, p. 84. Gervase, p. 1644. [w] Hoveden, p. 425. [x] Osberne, p. 84. Gervase, p. 1645, 1646.]
The English, blinded with superstition, instead of being shocked with this inhumanity, exclaimed that the misfortunes of Edwy and his consort were a just judgment for their dissolute contempt of the ecclesiastical statutes. They even proceeded to rebellion against their sovereign; and having placed Edgar at their head, the younger brother of Edwy, a boy of thirteen years of age, they soon put him in possession of Mercia, Northumberland, East Anglia; and chased Edwy into the southern counties. That it might not be doubtful at whose instigation this revolt was undertaken, Dunstan returned into England, and took upon him the government of Edgar and his party. He was first installed in the see of Worcester, then in that of London [y], and on Odos death, and the violent expulsion of Brithelm, his successor, in that of Canterbury [z]; of all which he long kept possession. Odo is transmitted to us by the monks under the character of a man of piety; Dunstan was even canonized: and is one of those numerous saints of the same stamp who disgrace the Romish calendar. Meanwhile the unhappy Edwy was excommunicated [a], and pursued with unrelenting vengeance; but his death, which happened soon after, freed his enemies from all further inquietude, and gave Edgar peaceable possession of the government [b]. [FN [y] Chron. Sax. p. 117. Flor Wigorn. p. 605. Wallingford, p. 544 [z] Hoveden p. 425. Osberne, p. 109. [a] Brompton, p. 863. [b] See note [B] at the end of the volume.]
[MN Edgar.] This prince, who mounted the throne in such early youth, soon discovered an excellent capacity in the administration of affairs; and his reign is one of the most fortunate that we meet with in the ancient English history. He showed no aversion to war, he made the wisest preparations against invaders; and by his vigour and foresight he was enabled, without any danger of suffering insults, to indulge his inclination towards peace, and to employ himself in supporting and improving the internal government of his kingdom. He maintained a body of disciplined troops; which he quartered in the north, in order to keep the mutinous Northumbrians in subjection, and to repel the inroads of the Scots. He built and supported a powerful navy [c]; and that he might retain the seamen in the practice of their duty, and always present a formidable armament to his enemies, he stationed three squadrons off the coast, and ordered them to make, from time to time, the circuit of his dominions [d]. The foreign Danes dared not to approach a country which appeared in such a posture of defence: the domestic Danes saw inevitable destruction to be the consequence of their tumults and insurrections: the neighbouring sovereigns, the King of Scotland, the Princes of Wales, of the Isle of Man, of the Orkneys, and even of Ireland [e], were reduced to pay submission to so formidable a monarch. He carried his superiority to a great height, and might have excited an universal combination against him, had not his power been so well established as to deprive his enemies of all hope of shaking it. It is said, that residing once at Chester, and having purposed to go by water to the abbey of St. John the Baptist, he obliged eight of his tributary princes to row him in a barge upon the Dee [f]. The English historians are fond of mentioning the name of Kenneth III, King of Scots, among the number: the Scottish historians either deny the fact, or assert that their king, if ever he acknowledged himself a vassal to Edgar, did him homage not for his crown, but for the dominions which he held in England. [FN [c] Higden, p. 265. [d] See note [C] at the end of the volume. [e] Spell. Conc. p. 32. [f] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8. Hoveden, p. 406. H. Hunting. lib. 5. p. 356.]
But the chief means by which Edgar maintained his authority, and preserved public peace, was the paying of court to Dunstan and the monks, who had at first placed him on the throne, and who, by their pretensions to superior sanctity and purity of manners, had acquired an ascendant over the people. He favoured their scheme for dispossessing the secular canons of all the monasteries [g]; he bestowed preferment on none but their partisans; he allowed Dunstan to resign the see of Worcester into the hands of Oswald, one of his creatures [h]; and to place Ethelwold, another of them, in that of Winchester [i]; he consulted these prelates in the administration of all ecclesiastical, and even in that of many civil affairs; and though the vigour of his own genius prevented him from being implicitly guided by them, the king and the bishops found such advantages in their mutual agreement, that they always acted in concert, and united their influence in preserving the peace and tranquillity of the kingdom. [FN [g] Chron. Sax. p. 117, 118. W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8. Hoveden, p. 425, 426 Osberne, p. 112. [h] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8. Hoveden, p. 425.]
In order to complete the great work of placing the new order of monks in all the convents, Edgar summoned a general council of the prelates and the heads of the religious orders. He here inveighed against the dissolute lives of the secular clergy; the smallness of their tonsure, which, it is probable, maintained no longer any resemblance to the crown of thorns; their negligence in attending the exercise of their function; their mixing with the laity in the pleasures of gaming, hunting, dancing, and singing; and their openly living with concubines, by which it is commonly supposed he meant their wives. He then turned himself to Dunstan, the primate; and in the name of King Edred, whom he supposed to look down from heaven with indignation against all those enormities, he thus addressed him: "It is you, Dunstan, by whose advice I founded monasteries, built churches, and expended my treasure in the support of religion and religious houses. You were my counsellor and assistant in all my schemes: you were the director of my conscience: to you I was obedient in all things. When did you call for supplies which I refused you? Was my assistance ever wanting to the poor? Did I deny support and establishments to the clergy and the convents? Did I not hearken to your instructions, who told me that these charities were, of all others, the most grateful to my Maker, and fixed a perpetual fund for the support of religion? And are all our pious endeavours now frustrated by the dissolute lives of the priests? Not that I throw any blame on you; you have reasoned, besought, inculcated, inveighed; but it now behoves you to use sharper and more vigorous remedies; and conjoining your spiritual authority with the civil power, to purge effectually the temple of God from thieves and intruders [k]." It is easy to imagine that this harangue had the desired effect; and that, when the king and prelates thus concurred with the popular prejudices, it was not long before the monks prevailed, and established their new discipline in almost all the convents. [FN [i] Gervase, p. 1646. Brompton, p. 864. Flor. Wigorn. p. 606. Chron. Abb. St. Petri de Burgo, p 27, 28. [k] Abbas Rieval. p. 360, 361. Spell. Conc. p. 476, 477, 478]
We may remark, that the declamations against the secular clergy are, both here and in all the historians, conveyed in general terms; and as that order of men are commonly restrained by the decency of their character, it is difficult to believe that the complaints against their dissolute manners could be so universally just as is pretended. It is more probable that the monks paid court to the populace by an affected austerity of life; and representing the most innocent liberties, taken by the other clergy, as great and unpardonable enormities, thereby prepared the way for the increase of their own power and influence. Edgar, however, like a true politician, concurred with the prevailing party; and he even indulged them in pretensions, which, though they might, when complied with, engage the monks to support royal authority during his own reign, proved afterwards dangerous to his successors, and gave disturbance to the whole civil power. He seconded the policy of the court of Rome, in granting to some monasteries an exemption from episcopal jurisdiction; he allowed the convents, even those of royal foundation, to usurp the election of their own abbot: and he admitted their forgeries of ancient charters, by which, from the pretended grant of former kings, they assumed many privileges and immunities [l] [FN [l] Chron. Sax. p. 118. W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8. Seldeni Spicileg. ad Eadm. p. 149, 157.]
These merits of Edgar have procured him the highest panegyrics from the monks, and he is transmitted to us, not only under the character of a consummate statesman and an active prince, praises to which he seems to have been justly entitled, but under that of a of a great saint and a man of virtue. But nothing could more betray both his hypocrisy in inveighing against the licentiousness of the secular clergy, and the interested spirit of his partisans, in bestowing such eulogies on his piety, than the usual tenour of his conduct, which was licentious to the highest degree, and violated every law, human and divine. Yet those very monks who, as we are told by Ingulf, a very ancient historian, had no idea of any moral or religious merit, except chastity and obedience, not only connived at his enormities, but loaded him with the greatest praises. History, however, has preserved some instances of his amours, from which, as from a specimen, we may form a conjecture of the rest.
Edgar broke into a convent, carried off Editha, a nun, by force, and even committed violence on her person [m]. For this act of sacrilege he was reprimanded by Dunstan; and that he might reconcile himself to the church, he was obliged not to separate from his mistress, but to abstain from wearing his crown during seven years, and to deprive himself so long of that vain ornament [n]; punishment very unequal to that which had been inflicted on the unfortunate Edwy, who, for a marriage which, in the strictest sense, could only deserve the name of irregular, was expelled his kingdom, saw his queen treated with singular barbarity, was loaded with calumnies, and has been represented to us under the most odious colours. Such is the ascendant which may be attained, by hypocrisy and cabal, over mankind. [FN [m] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8. Osberne, p. 3. Diceto p. 457. Higden, p. 265, 267, 266. Spell. Conc. p. 481. [n] Osberne, p. 111.]
There was another mistress of Edgar, with whom he first formed a connexion by a kind of accident. Passing one day by Andover, he lodged in the house of a nobleman, whose daughter, being endowed with all the graces of person and behaviour, inflamed him at first sight with the highest desire; and he resolved by any expedient to gratify it. As he had not leisure to employ courtship or address for attaining his purpose, he went directly to her mother, declared the violence of his passion, and desired that the young lady might be allowed to pass that very night with him. The mother was a woman of virtue, and determined not to dishonour her daughter and her family by compliance; but being well acquainted with the impetuosity of the kings temper, she thought it would be easier, as well as safer, to deceive than refuse him. She feigned therefore a submission to his will; but secretly ordered a waiting maid, of no disagreeable figure, to steal into the kings bed, after all the company should be retired to rest. In the morning before daybreak, the damsel, agreeably to the injunctions of her mistress, offered to retire; but Edgar, who had no reserve in his pleasures, and whose love to his bedfellow was rather inflamed by enjoyment, refused his consent, and employed force and entreaties to detain her. Elfleda, (for that was the name of the maid,) trusting to her own charms, and to the love with which, she hoped, she had now inspired the king, made probably but a faint resistance; and the return of light discovered the deceit to Edgar. He had passed a night so much to his satisfaction, that he expressed no displeasure with the old lady on account of her fraud; his love was transferred to Elfleda; she became his favourite mistress; and maintained her ascendant over him till his marriage with Elfrida [o]. [FN [o] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8. Higden, p. 268.]
The circumstances of his marriage with this lady were more singular and more criminal. Elfrida was daughter and heir of Olgar, Earl of Devonshire; and though she had been educated in the country, and had never appeared at court, she had filled all England with the reputation of her beauty. Edgar himself, who was indifferent to no accounts of this nature, found his curiosity excited by the frequent panegyrics which he heard of Elfrida; and reflecting on her noble birth, he resolved, if he found her charms answerable to their fame, to obtain possession of her on honourable terms. He communicated his intention to Earl Athelwold, his favourite; but used the precaution, before he made any advances to her parents, to order that nobleman, on some pretence, to pay them a visit, and to bring him a certain account of the beauty of their daughter. Athelwold, when introduced to the young lady, found general report to have fallen short of the truth; and being actuated by the most vehement love, he determined to sacrifice to this new passion his fidelity to his master, and to the trust reposed in him. He returned to Edgar and told him, that the riches alone, and high quality of Elfrida, had been the ground of the admiration paid her; and that her charms, far from being anywise extraordinary, would have been overlooked in a woman of inferior station. When he had, by this deceit, diverted the king from his purpose, he took an opportunity, after some interval, of turning again the conversation on Elfrida; he remarked, that though the parentage and fortune of the lady had not produced on him, as on others, any illusion with regard to her beauty, he could not forbear reflecting, that she would, on the whole, be an advantageous match for him, and might, by her birth and riches, make him sufficient compensation for the homeliness of her person. If the king, therefore, gave his approbation, he was determined to make proposals in his own behalf to the Earl of Devonshire, and doubted not to obtain his, as well as the young ladys consent to the marriage. Edgar, pleased with an expedient for establishing his favourites fortune, not only exhorted him to execute his purpose, but forwarded his success by his recommendations to the parents of Elfrida; and Athelwold was soon made happy in the possession of his mistress. Dreading, however, the detection of the artifice, he employed every pretence for detaining Elfrida in the country, and for keeping her at a distance from Edgar.
The violent passion of Athelwold had rendered him blind to the necessary consequences which must attend his conduct, and the advantages which the numerous enemies that always pursue a royal favourite would, by its means, be able to make against him. Edgar was soon informed of the truth; but before he would execute vengeance on Athelwolds treachery, he resolved to satisfy himself with his own eyes of the certainty and full extent of his guilt. He told him that he intended to pay him a visit in his castle, and be introduced to the acquaintance of his new married wife; and Athelwold, as he could not refuse the honour, only craved leave to go before him a few hours, that he might the better prepare every thing for his reception. He then discovered the whole matter to Elfrida; and begged her, if she had any regard either to her own honour or his life, to conceal from Edgar, by every circumstance of dress and behaviour, that fatal beauty, which had seduced him from fidelity to his friend, and had betrayed him into so many falsehoods. Elfrida promised compliance, though nothing was farther from her intentions. She deemed herself little beholden to Athelwold for a passion which had deprived her of a crown; and knowing the force of her own charms, she did not despair even yet of reaching that dignity, of which her husbands artifice had bereaved her. She appeared before the king with all the advantages which the richest attire and the most engaging airs could bestow upon her, and she excited at once in his bosom the highest love towards herself, and the most furious desire of revenge against her husband. He knew, however, how to dissemble these passions; and seducing Athelwold into a wood, on pretence of hunting, he stabbed him with his own hand, and soon after publicly espoused Elfrida [p]. [FN [p] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8. Hoveden, p. 426. Brompton, p. 865, 866. Flor. Wigorn. p. 606. Higd. p. 268.]
Before we conclude our account of this reign, we must mention two circumstances which are remarked by historians. The reputation of Edgar allured a great number of foreigners to visit his court; and he gave them encouragement to settle in England [q]. We are told that they imported all the vices of their respective countries, and contributed to corrupt the simple manners of the natives [r]. But as this simplicity of manners, so highly and often so injudiciously extolled, did not preserve them from barbarity and treachery, the greatest of all vices, and the most incident to a rude uncultivated people, we ought perhaps to deem their acquaintance with foreigners rather an advantage; as it tended to enlarge their views, and to cure them of those illiberal prejudices and rustic manners to which islanders are often subject. [FN [q] Chron. Sax. p. 116. H. Hunting. lib 5. p. 356. Brompton, p. 865. [r] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 8.]
Another remarkable incident of this reign was the extirpation of wolves from England. This advantage was attained by the industrious policy of Edgar. He took great pains in hunting and pursuing those ravenous animals; and when he found that all that escaped him had taken shelter in the mountains and forests of Wales, he changed the tribute of money imposed on the Welsh princes by Athelstan, his predecessor [s], into an annual tribute of three hundred heads of wolves; which produced such diligence in hunting them, that the animal has been no more seen in this island. [FN [s] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 6. Brompton, p. 838.]
Edgar died after a reign of sixteen years, and in the thirty-third of his age. He was succeeded by Edward, whom he had by his first marriage with the daughter of Earl Ordmer.
[MN Edward the Martyr. 957.] The succession of this prince, who was only fifteen years of age at his fathers death, did not take place without much difficulty and opposition. Elfrida, his stepmother, had a son, Ethelred, seven years old, whom she attempted to raise to the throne: she affirmed that Edgars marriage with the mother of Edward was exposed to insuperable objections; and as she had possessed great credit with her husband, she had found means to acquire partisans, who seconded all her pretensions. But the title of Edward was supported by many advantages. He was appointed successor by the will of his father [t]: he was approaching to mans estate, and might soon be able to take into his own hands the reins of government: the principal nobility, dreading the imperious temper of Elfrida, were averse to her sons government, which must enlarge her authority, and probably put her in possession of the regency: above all, Dunstan, whose character of sanctity had given him the highest credit with the people, had espoused the cause of Edward, over whom he had already acquired a great ascendant [u]; and he was determined to execute the will of Edgar in his favour. To cut off all opposite pretensions, Dunstan resolutely anointed and crowned the young prince at Kingston; and the whole kingdom, without farther dispute, submitted to him [w]. [FN [t] Hoveden, p. 427. Eadmer, p. 3. [u] Eadmer, ex. edit. Seldeni, p. 3. [w] W. Malm. lib. 2. cap. 9. Hoveden, p. 427. Osberne, p. 113.]
It was of great importance to Dunstan and the monks, to place on the throne a king favourable to their cause: the secular clergy had still partisans in England, who wished to support them in the possession of the convents, and of the ecclesiastical authority. On the first intelligence of Edgars death, Alfere, Duke of Mercia, expelled the new orders of monks from all the monasteries which lay within his jurisdiction [x]; but Elfwin, Duke of East Anglia, and Brithnot, Duke of the East Saxons, protected them within their territories, and insisted upon the execution of the late laws enacted in their favour. In order to settle this controversy, there were summoned several synods, which, according to the practice of those times, consisted partly of ecclesiastical members, partly of the lay nobility. The monks were able to prevail in these assemblies; though, as it appears, contrary to the secret wishes, if not the declared inclination, of the leading men in the nation [y]: they had more invention in forging miracles to support their cause; or having been so fortunate as to obtain, by their pretended austerities, the character of piety, their miracles were more credited by the populace. [FN [x] Chron. Sax. p. 123. W. Malmes. lib. 2, cap. 9. Hoveden, p. 427. Brompton, p. 870. Flor. Wigorn. p. 607. [y] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 9.]
In one synod, Dunstan, finding the majority of votes against him, rose up and informed the audience, that he had that instant received an immediate revelation in behalf of the monks: the assembly was so astonished at this intelligence, or probably so overawed by the populace, that they proceeded no farther in their deliberations. In another synod, a voice issued from the crucifix, and informed the members that the establishment of the monks was founded on the will of Heaven, and could not be opposed without impiety [z]. But the miracle performed in the third synod was still more alarming: the floor of the hall in which the assembly met sunk of a sudden and a great number of the members were either bruised or killed by the fall. It was remarked, that Dunstan had that day prevented the king from attending the synod, and that the beam, on which his own chair stood, was the only one that did not sink under the weight of the assembly [a]. But these circumstances, instead of begetting any suspicion of contrivance, were regarded as the surest proof of the immediate interposition of Providence in behalf of those favourites of Heaven. [FN [z] W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 9. Osberne, p. 112. Gervase, p. 1647. Brompton, p. 870. Higden, p. 269. [a] Chron. Sax. p. 124. W. Malmes. lib. 2. cap. 9. Hoveden, p. 427. H. Hunting. lib. 5. p. 357. Gervase, p. 1647. Brompton, p. 870. Flor. Wigorn. p. 607. Higden, p. 269. Chron. Abb. St. Petri de Burgo, p. 29.]
Edward lived four years after his accession, and there passed nothing memorable during his reign. His death alone was memorable and tragical [b]: this young prince was endowed with the most amiable innocence of manners; and as his own intentions were always pure, he was incapable of entertaining any suspicion against others. Though his step-mother had opposed his succession, and had raised a party in favour of her own son, he always showed her marks of regard, and even expressed, on all occasions, the most tender affection towards his brother. He was hunting one day in Dorsetshire; and being led by the chase near Corfe-castle, where Elfrida resided, he took the opportunity of paying her a visit, unattended by any of his retinue, and he thereby presented her with the opportunity which she had long wished for. After he had mounted his horse, he desired some liquor to be brought him: while he was holding the cup to his head, a servant of Elfrida approached him, and gave him a stab behind. The prince, finding himself wounded, put spurs to his horse; but becoming faint by loss of blood, he fell from the saddle, his foot stuck in the stirrup, and he was dragged along by his unruly horse till he expired. Being tracked by the blood, his body was found, and was privately interred at Wareham by his servants. [FN [b] Chron. Sax. p. 124.]
The youth and innocence of this prince, with his tragical death, begat such compassion among the people, that they believed miracles to be wrought at his tomb; and they give him the appellation of Martyr, though his murder had no connexion with any religious principle or opinion. Elfrida built monasteries, and performed many penances, in order to atone for her guilt; but could never, by all her hypocrisy or remorses, recover the good opinion of the public, though so easily deluded in those ignorant ages.
